Spoiler: liquor licenses in the city of Boston, capped in number, sell for hundreds of thousands taxi-medallion style [Dante Ramos, Boston Globe]
Posts Tagged ‘Boston’
Labor roundup
- Huffington Post writer lauds alleged Boston city hall union extortion scheme as in “pursuit of progressive social goals”. More: Peter Ubertaccio on U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz;
- As NLRB continues leftward march, new ruling will corral more temporary workers into unions [Industry Week]
- “Bloated, Broke, and Bullied: Mired in debt and strong-armed by its unions, the Port Authority [of NY and NJ] lavishes outlandish pay and benefits on its workforce.” [Steve Malanga, City Journal]
- “Blistering” 13-page dissent in Schwan’s Home Service: “NLRB Member Philip Miscimarra is mad as hell about the Board’s current position on employee-handbook policies and protected concerted activity” [Jon Hyman]
- For decades, until the Reagan administration, federal labor law banned home knitting as an organized commercial activity. During much of the same period Great Britain was proud of its equivalent [1947 Home Industries Exposition via Jot101]
- They’ll be watching you: more on Philadelphia union drones [Connor Wolf/Daily Caller, earlier]
Labor roundup
- Forget about event permits unless you hire union? Feds arrest Boston mayor’s tourism aide on extortion charges [Connor Wolf/Daily Caller, Boston Herald, indictment, WCVB (auto-plays)]
- Georgia to feds: franchise law is state law, and you’re not free to tear up its terms to favor unions [International Franchise Association, Connor Wolf/Daily Caller]
- Unique California farm-labor law binds growers to “contracts” they never signed. Is that even constitutional? [Ilya Shapiro, Cato] Upstate farmers furious over Gov. Cuomo’s move to unionize farm labor in New York [City and State]
- NLRB strikes down innocuous handbook provision expecting employees to maintain “positive” workplace environment [Jon Hyman] “Is it time for a new NLRB rule on handbook policies?” [same]
- “Funding Ideology, Not Research, at University of California ‘Labor Institutes'” [Steven Greenhut, Reason]
- NLRB Philadelphia regional director, criticized over role in pro-union fund, suspended for 30 days [Law360, Labor Union Report]
Wrong opinions? No permits for him!
Boston mayor Martin Walsh gives Donald Trump the Chick-Fil-A rush over his immigration opinions [Boston Herald]:
If Donald Trump ever wants to build a hotel in Boston, he’ll need to apologize for his comments about Mexican immigrants first, the Hub’s mayor said.
“I just don’t agree with him at all,” Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh told the Herald yesterday. “I think his comments are inappropriate. And if he wanted to build a hotel here, he’d have to make some apologies to people in this country.”
More on the use of permitting, licensing, and other levers of power to punish speech and the exercise of other legal rights at Overlawyered’s all-new regulatory retaliation tag. And no, I’m not exactly thrilled with Mayor Walsh for making me take Trump’s side in an argument.
P.S. Now the NYC sequel, from Mayor Bill de Blasio: no more city contracts for the guy with the wrong opinions [The Hill] And welcome readers from the Foundation for Economic Education, which generously calls this blog “indispensable.”
December 2 roundup
- “Lying to a Lover Could Become ‘Rape’ In New Jersey” [Elizabeth Nolan Brown/Reason, Scott Greenfield]
- “A $21 Check Prompts Toyota Driver to Wonder Who Benefited from Class Action” [Jacob Gershman, WSJ Law Blog]
- On “right of publicity” litigation over the image of the late General George Patton [Eugene Volokh]
- HBO exec: “We have probably 160 lawyers” looking at film about Scientology [The Hollywood Reporter]
- Revisiting the old and unlamented Cambridge, Mass. rent control system [Fred Meyer, earlier]
- Lawyers! Wanna win big by appealing to the jurors’ “reptile” brain? Check this highly educational offering [Keenan Ball]
- “Suit claims Google’s listings for unlicensed locksmiths harmed licensed business” [ABA Journal]
The benefit of liberation from rent control
A new paper estimates that Massachusetts voters’ decision to end rent control added $2 billion to the value of Cambridge, Mass. residential housing stock over 10 years. While some of this represents the improved worth of rental property whose value had been artificially suppressed by the previous law, much of it reflects improvements in the value of other, nearby property that had never been under rent control, as increased rates of renovation and improvement made whole neighborhoods more desirable. “In net, our estimates imply that more than half (55 percent) of the capitalized cost of rent control was borne by owners of never-controlled properties, illustrating both the importance of spillovers in housing markets and the potential unintended side effects of price ceilings.” [David H. Autor, Christopher J. Palmer and Parag A. Pathak, Cato Research Briefs in Economic Policy]
Boston attack on Padma Lakshmi and crew
If done by anyone other than unionists, this would by now be a trending national story:
The Teamsters picketers were already mad. By the time Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi’s car pulled up to the Steel & Rye restaurant in the picturesque New England town of Milton just outside Boston, one of them ran up to her car and screamed, “We’re gonna bash that pretty face in, you f*cking wh*re!”
“She was scared,” said a Top Chef crewmember who witnessed the incident.
Bravo had incurred the wrath of Charlestown-based Teamsters Local 25 by using its own production assistants as drivers, reports the Boston Herald:
The picketers lobbed sexist, racist and homophobic slurs at the rest of the cast and crew for most of the day, the website reported, and when production wrapped, the “Top Chef” crew found that tires were slashed on 14 of their cars. Milton police confirmed that the union members were “threatening, heckling and harassing” but said no arrests were made.
The Herald quotes a spokeswoman for Local 25, Melissa Hurley, sounding completely unapologetic: “As far as we’re concerned, nothing happened.” Or to put it differently: Teamsters Will Be Teamsters.
More, including the violent history that makes this incident anything but “isolated,” from the Boston Globe. I’ve posted on the curious exemption of unions from the law of harassment, stalking, hostile environment, intimidation, etc. here, here (more on Philadelphia Quaker meetinghouse arson), and in various other posts, as well as in my book The Excuse Factory.
Supreme Court and constitutional law roundup
- Boston’s North End, the home-as-one’s-castle doctrine, and how we got the Fourth Amendment [Ted Widmer, Globe]
- NYT sniffs at Origination Clause as basis for ObamaCare challenge, but many framers of Constitution saw it as vital [Trevor Burrus, Forbes; Ilya Shapiro; four years ago on another Origination Clause episode]
- Justice Scalia, concurring in Schuette, knocks the fabled Carolene Products footnote down a peg [Michael Schearer]
- SCOTUS lets stand New Jersey’s very extreme gun control law. Was it serious about reviving the Second Amendment? [Ilya Shapiro]
- Didn’t link this earlier: Kenneth Anderson discusses his excellent Cato Supreme Court Review article on Kiobel, the Alien Tort case [Opinio Juris]
- Kurt Lash guestblogs on 14th Amendment privileges and immunities clause [Volokh Conspiracy]
- Supreme Court reviving law/equity distinction? (Hope so.) [Samuel Bray, SSRN via Solum]
Boston cops vs. holiday parties
It’s illegal to have an open bar at a ticketed event in Massachusetts, and if you overlook that rule the Boston cops might just show up and get you to “voluntarily” turn some of the event’s proceeds over to them. [Clark at Popehat]
Public employment roundup
- Detroit: pension trustees’ sins come home to roost [Steve Malanga, City Journal; Aaron Renn/Urbanophile; Steven Greenhut (CALPERS next?)] Role of binding arbitration [Malanga, IBD]
- Since declaring bankruptcy San Bernardino has given police $2 million in raises [Scott Shackford] Twenty-eight members of Santa Monica police force made more than $200K last year [Ira Stoll, Future of Capitalism] “Do other big city balance sheets resemble Detroit’s?” [Public Sector Inc.]
- Phoenix firefighters sue insurance company over workers’ comp denials [ABC 15]
- Under new California law, county worker who stole $360,000 may forfeit pension [San Diego Union-Tribune]
- “Crime Rate in Camden, NJ Going Down After Unionized Police Force Sacked” [Ed Krayewski, Reason (“On any given day, 30 percent of the force was absent because of the liberal sick policies.”)]
- Trying to drop one’s membership in the Michigan Education Association can be a long-drawn business [Sean Higgins, Washington Examiner]
- Lawrence Harmon, Boston Globe; Police unions fight to protect even worst of bad apples [Greenhut, City Journal on California and use of “Brady lists”]