OpenMarket

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healy on Tuesday jumped on the bandwagon that California Governor Gavin Newsom started by suing rideshare companies Uber and Lyft in her state for the crime of “misclassifying their drivers as independent contractors.” Healy is accusing them of skirting their responsibility to abide by state and federal employment regulations like minimum wage and overtime.

Along with its regulatory reforms, the Trump administration has also sought to unleash the American economy by streamlining the federal permitting process for major infrastructure projects like roads and pipelines. A key component of this effort was finalized today in the form of a rule making key changes and clarifications to the National Environmental Policy Act.

New COVID cases continued to rise, and the Supreme Court handed down a number of controversial decisions to end its term. Regulatory agencies issued new regulations ranging from web coatings to sling carriers.

A favorite tactic used by unions to prevent membership losses, and the accompanying loss of dues money, is making the process of opting out of as difficult and confusing as possible. Government employee unions may now get a taste of their own medicine thanks to a federal rule announced Thursday that puts the burden on unions, not workers, to deal with the process.

For more than a decade, one of the areas of broad bipartisan agreement in Congress was on protecting police officers “unfairly targeted” for their “aggressive enforcement of the laws.” It was the one area where conservative tough-on-crime and liberal pro-labor positions overlapped.

During hearings related to Nancy Beck’s nomination to the Consumer Product Safety Commission earlier this month, Senate Democrats engaged in what basically amounted to character assassination. Today we examine claims that Beck somehow blocked regulations to ban asbestos.

Regulatory reform is one of the most important policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis. Removing obstacles to health care can save lives. Removing barriers against remote education, telecommuting, and gig jobs can help people make ends meet. But getting rid of this or that #NeverNeeded regulation is not enough. Policy makers need to reform the rulemaking process that continues to generate bad rules.

On June 30, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis released its report. There is little original in the report. Most of its sweeping and costly climate policy recommendations have been around for decades and are very similar to the provisions in last year’s Green New Deal. But one thing is novel, and that is how rapidly the report is becoming outdated in light of COVID-19.

Trade barriers are an obvious #NeverNeeded candidate for removal during a pandemic and a recession. They make medical supplies scarcer and more expensive. They raise consumer prices at a time when millions of people are losing their jobs. And other countries retaliate, so U.S. businesses find shrunken markets for their goods through no fault of their own. Tariffs must go.

Federal agencies have been required by Executive Order 13891 to create “a single, searchable, indexed database that contains or links to all guidance documents in effect.” Agencies were given until June 27, 2020 to comply. Not all were ready and some got a waiver. So for the time being, CEI's Wayne Crews made the substitute compilation presented here.