- Loan servicers prepare to throw large sums at making “forced placed insurance” class actions go away [Kevin Funnell]
- How Are Small Banks Faring Under Dodd-Frank?
[Hester Peirce, Ian Robinson, Thomas Stratmann, Mercatus] - “How the Feds Can Take Even Legally Earned Bitcoins” [Peter Coy, Business Week]
- “No Shame Dept.: Lawyers Sue Over Practically Every Merger, Again” [Daniel Fisher]
- Brewster Kahle on Know Your Customer: “‘Bank Secrecy Act’ I suggest is a misnomer– it is more accurately the ‘Bank Surveillance Act'” [Kahle.org, earlier here, here, etc.]
- SEC to [over-]regulate business brokers under Dodd-Frank? [David Burton, Heritage]
- “Lawyer: How I Committed Insider Trading” [Bloomberg Law video via Prof. Bainbridge]
- “The Federal Reserve at 100” [Cato Unbound; Gerald O’Driscoll, Lawrence White, Scott Sumner, Jerry Jordan]
Archive for March, 2014
Courts and the Kansas schools, cont’d
Andrew Ujifusa at Education Week (“Kansas Ruling Fuels Debate on Adequacy of Funding”) quotes me:
But the union’s solution of significantly higher funding for schools isn’t the obvious or correct one to Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Cato Institute. In a March 10 blog post on the website of the libertarian think tank, Mr. Olson said that Kansas’ finance fight is just one piece of a larger strategy that seeks to “seize control of school funding” through the courts.
In the process, he argued in a subsequent interview, that movement is subverting representative democracy by ignoring what state legislators decide on K-12 funding.
“I see it as a way in which the educational establishment uses litigation to entrench itself against supervision by other branches of government and voters interested in cutting budgets,” Mr. Olson said.
I go on to discuss California’s Serrano v. Priest and its unexpected consequence, voters’ limitation of property taxes through Proposition 13. And this from Ben Wilterdink at American Legislator on the latest ruling:
Kansas has faced this problem before. In 2005 the State Supreme Court ordered Kansas to spend more on education. Kansas lawmakers complied, but now the Court is again ordering more spending. Kansas already spends more than 50 percent of its budget on K-12 education, and if this ruling stands, it will be forced to spend 62 percent of its budget on education. All of this is despite the fact that when measured against regional per-pupil spending, Kansas is funding education quite well.
Earlier here, etc.
Related: Steve Malanga on school finance lawsuits and other “positive-rights” litigation at state supreme courts [City Journal]
Welcome Wall Street Journal readers
Last week the Department of Justice announced a deal with Toyota in which the Japanese automaker would fork over $1.2 billion and place itself under supervision for allegedly not being forthcoming enough with information at the height of the 2009-2010 panic over claims of unintended acceleration in its cars. The acceleration claims themselves had turned out to be almost entirely bogus, and were refuted in a report from the federal government’s own expert agency, NHTSA. Instead, the prosecution relied on a single count of wire fraud: Toyota had supposedly given regulators, Congress and the public an erroneously positive view of its safety efforts. It should therefore have to “forfeit” a huge sum supposedly related to the volume of business it did over a relevant period.
I’ve got an opinion piece in Monday’s Wall Street Journal (unpaywalled Cato version here, related Cato post here) about this whole appalling affair, which should frighten other businesses that might face draconian charges in future not just for compliance infractions, but more broadly for defending their products in the court of public opinion. Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s grandstanding and demagogic press release goes to some lengths to leave the impression “that unintended acceleration is some mysterious phenomenon of auto design unrelated to flooring the accelerator.” Someone here is irresponsibly misleading the motoring public and withholding vital safety information, but it’s not Toyota.
A few related links: NHTSA unintended acceleration report, Car & Driver’s coverage, and my 2010 opinion piece. And Holman Jenkins at the WSJ (paywalled) compares the still-unfolding story of ignition problems at GM, also discussed by Paul Barrett at Business Week.
Pennsylvania AG: maybe I’ll sue Inquirer over its coverage
Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane dropped a longstanding corruption “sting” probe that had snagged several Philly officials. The Philadelphia Inquirer raised questions about her decision in its reporting, which contributed to a public outcry over the episode. Then Attorney General Kane brought a prominent libel litigator with her to a meeting with the Inquirer editors, and that lawyer announced that Kane was exploring her options of suing the paper and others that had reported on the matter, and that he was going to do the talking for her.
On Sunday the paper continued to cover the sting story here and here. Ed Krayewski comments at Reason. Longtime Overlawyered readers may recognize the name of Kane’s attorney Richard Sprague.
DWI checkpoint critic arrested as passenger in pulled-over car
“A Baton Rouge-area defense attorney known for criticizing the use of sobriety checkpoints was handcuffed and taken to jail early Wednesday after exiting the passenger side of his vehicle while intoxicated and informing his driver of her right to refuse a sobriety test, police said.” His attorney says Jarrett Ambeau, charged with obstructing an officer, “really was just trying to protect his client.” [Baton Rouge Advocate]
“Belgium bans a wide range of sexist speech”
The bill originated in a desire to control men’s accosting of women on the street, but according to Eugene Volokh it sweeps much more broadly than that: it exposes speakers to imprisonment even for written communication, not necessarily individually targeted, that is “evidently intended to express contempt for a person because of his gender, or that regards them as inferior, or reduces them to their sexual dimension, and which has the effect of violating someone’s dignity.” [Rik Torfs and Jogchum Vrielink via Volokh] Torfs and Vrielink point out a perhaps unexpected corollary, which could also restrict speech:
A logical side effect of making sexism illegal is that the simple act of accusing someone of being sexist, may amount to criminal defamation. Under Belgian law, as in many other legal systems, it is an offense to accuse someone of having committed crimes that they were not actually convicted for. Law is often a double-edged sword.
Maryland roundup
- “Maryland To Cut Estate Tax As Blue States Fall In Line” [Ashlea Ebeling, Forbes]
- Why is the state doling out tax credits to the successful House of Cards TV series? [David Boaz, Cato]
- Union boon at kids’ expense: assembly moves to impose prevailing-wage scheme on school construction [Carroll County Times, Maryland Reporter]
- Bill appears to have stalled: “Proposed Maryland Law Could Lead to Confiscation Of Guns from Noncomplying Folks with Criminal Records” [Brian Doherty, Reason, HB0623]
- “HHS Inspector General To Examine Maryland’s Troubled Health Exchange” [Kaiser Health News]
- Bill to prohibit fracking reported unfavorably by environmental committee, but opponents set sights on blocking LNG terminal at Cove Point in Calvert County, compressor at Myersville in Frederick County [MLW; Sean Hackbarth, US Chamber; Frederick News Post]
- “Maryland politicians already reneging on pension reforms” [Steve Malanga, Public Sector Inc.]
A “Stand Your Ground” backgrounder
Decent articles on Stand Your Ground in the general press are relatively few, being far outnumbered by those that are sensationalist, axe-grinding or simply uninformed. So it’s nice to be able to recommend this one by Peter Jamison in the Tampa Bay Times [via Jacob Sullum].
In other news, a United Nations panel in Geneva monitoring compliance with international human rights law has questioned a wide range of United States domestic policies, including some states’ adoption of Stand Your Ground as well as lack of gun control and other offenses. “The committee is charged with upholding the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a UN treaty that the US ratified in 1992.” Another reminder that treaties have consequences, and that ratification of other purported human rights treaties, such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (CRPD), would not be without public consequences relating to many domestic policies. [Guardian]
Against cameras at the Supreme Court
The rest of government, from Congress to the White House to prosecution to the regulatory agencies, is already rife with grandstanding. We don’t need or want it in the branch that’s supposed to be best insulated from popular passions. [Tamara Tabo, Above the Law] Earlier on cameras in the courtroom here.
Labor and wage-hour roundup
- Nomination of David Weil as Labor Department wage/hour chief could be flashpoint in overtime furor [Terence Smith, Hill] Another reaction to President’s scheme [Don Boudreaux, Cafe Hayek, earlier here and here]
- Oregon: longshoreman’s union says NLRB charges of blinding, threatened rape meant “to distract” [Oregonian]
- Who thinks hiking the minimum wage would kill jobs? Company chief financial officers, to name one group [Steve Hanke, Cato]
- Tourists’ casual naivete about union politics at NYC hotel made for tension, hilarity [How May We Hate You via @tedfrank]
- Just for fun: Wichita business’s creative responses to union’s “Shame On…” signs reach Round 2 [Volokh on first round, Subaru of Wichita on second round]
- Workers’ comp claims at government agencies in Maryland can be odd [Baltimore Sun via Jeff Quinton]
- Are unions losing their grip on the California Democratic Party? [Dan Walters]