OpenMarket

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on September 23 directing the California Air Resources Board to draft rules that will ban the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles in the state by 2035. Whether California has the legal authority to restrict consumer choice and economic liberty on so massive a scale may be decided next year in litigation now before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

It is not enough to get rid of this or that harmful regulation. For the benefits to last, there must be system-level reform to the rulemaking process that keeps generating those rules. Institutions matter. One of the best of those institution-level reform ideas now has COVID-19-focused legislation at the ready: the independent regulatory reduction commission.

On September 24, 2020, the House Oversight Subcommittee on Environment held a hearing titled “Climate Change Part IV: Moving Towards a Sustainable Future.” The written statements of the four majority witnesses are posted on the Subcommittee’s website but not the written statement of Heritage Foundation statistician and data scientist Dr. Kevin Dayaratna. It is available here.

The vast majority of people who drive for rideshare company Uber in California do so for less than 40 hours or less a week. That’s the result of a survey Uber put out on about the drivers for its app-based service. The numbers are in line with other surveys on the subject. Most people who drive for rideshare service companies do so only part-time and therefore can’t be considered traditional employees.

Earlier this month, The New York Times reported at length about a report commissioned by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, titled “Managing Climate Risks in the Financial System.” While it has not been endorsed by the full Commission, it is remarkable in its scope and detail, and any innocent reader would conclude that climate change is horrible and already wreaking havoc.

The Department of Labor proposed a new rule this week to adjust the legal definition of “employer” and clarify when people that work for one are traditional employees or contractors. It may help keep gig economy companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and others from being regulated out of existence.

Yesterday, in the most recent installment of CEI’s “Repeal for Resilience” event series, CEI President Kent Lassman welcomed Securities and Exchange Commission member Hester Peirce and former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins for a discussion on the future of finance regulation. Peirce led off with a description of some of the SEC’s helpful policy responses to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Business Roundtable released a new policy document recently, “Addressing Climate Change.” The statement seems crafted to cover BRT members over a wide range of scenarios while exposing them to the least possible financial risk. That’s fine for them, but not exactly some kind of major change in corporate attitudes. It is also unlikely to garner them the environmental halo they clearly covet.

Tech companies regulators are targeting have the pandemic easier to endure. Antitrust lawsuits would not help the COVID-19 response. The real cost of antitrust policy is its chilling effect on new innovations. Ramping up antitrust enforcement would leave us less resilient against the next crisis. Read the new CEI paper, “Repeal #NeverNeeded Antitrust Laws that Hinder COVID-19 Response.”

Republican members of the Senate Commerce Committee recently introduced the SAFE DATA Act. While the bill includes much needed federal preemption of state privacy laws, it also creates regulations that would threaten innovation and ultimately harm consumers more than it helps them.