“The state’s leaders are acting like this is some unexpected perfect storm, but it’s one that’s been on the horizon for several years. “California’s one-two punch—forcing companies to write risky policies while also limiting their ability to charge market rates—would leave insurers with little choice but stop writing new policies,” I wrote in 2021. Last March, I warned insurance companies are “quietly fleeing” the state. Two months later, they stopped being quiet about it. In May, State Farm announced its freeze on writing new homeowner policies.”
“Haidt cites 476 studies in his book that seem to represent an overwhelming case. But two-thirds of them were published before 2010, or before the period that Haidt focuses on in the book. Only 22 of them have data on either heavy social media use or serious mental issues among adolescents, and none have data on both.
There are a few good studies cited in the book. For example, one co-authored by psychologist Jean Twenge uses a large and carefully selected sample with a high response rate. It employs exploratory data analysis rather than cookbook statistical routines.
Unfortunately for Haidt, that study undercuts his claim. The authors did find that heavy television watchers, video game players, and computer and phone users were less happy. But the similar graphs for these four ways of spending time suggest that the specific activity didn’t matter. This study actually suggests that spending an excessive amount of time in front of any one type of screen is unhealthy—not that there’s anything uniquely dangerous about social media.”
“The 53-car freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last year was operated by a crew of three men, none of whom were able to prevent the cascade of mechanical and communication failures that led to the unfortunate accident.
In response to that crash, the federal Department of Transportation announced on Tuesday a new policy requiring freight trains to operate with at least two-person crews—a mandate that the Biden administration says will enhance rail safety.
If you’ve passed first grade, you might now find yourself asking a rather basic question: Isn’t three more than two?
Rest assured that it is. However, in Washington, the policy-making calculus often relies on fuzzy math that is heavily influenced by the pull of special interests and the strong sense of do-something-ism.
Both are on display in the new freight railroad mandate. The derailment in East Palestine was bad, and something must be done. This is something, so now it is being done—and bonus points can be scored because doing this specific thing will please the Biden administration’s labor union allies, which have been lobbying the government for years to impose exactly this two-person crew mandate.
On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said it should be “common sense” that “large freight trains, some of which can be over three miles long, should have at least two crew members on board.”
The length of the train has absolutely nothing to do with it, but Buttigieg is gesturing toward the idea that a second person on board could bring the train to a halt if the driver is somehow incapacitated. And, indeed, it was longstanding railroading practice to have multiple people in the cab of freight trains for exactly this reason.
These days, however, it is automation and not a backup engineer that is responsible for a dramatic decline in railway accidents and injuries. Thanks to positive train control (PTC)—essentially a computer-based override system that monitors speed and track signals to avert collisions, and which railroads have been mandated by Congress to use since 2008—rail accidents have fallen by 30 percent while employee injuries are down 40 percent since 2000, according to data from the Association of American Railroads (AAR), an industry group.
Additionally, Buttigieg’s claim about “common sense” comports with neither the specifics of the East Palestine accident nor recent governmental reviews of the two-person crew mandate.
The Federal Railroad Administration spent three years investigating a proposed two-person crew mandate before concluding in 2019 that the rule was not “necessary or appropriate for railroad operations to be conducted safely,” largely because of the safety gains already made by automation. More recently, Congress considered—but, notably, did not enact—a two-member crew mandate in the wake of the East Palestine derailment.
As for the the East Palestine incident, having a crew of 10 people driving the train likely wouldn’t have made any difference. The crash was caused by an overheated wheel bearing, which failed and derailed the train as the crew was attempting to bring it to a stop. The three-person crew should have been alerted to the problem sooner, but at least one track-side detector meant to spot the wheel issue was not working properly.”
“New York’s rollout of marijuana legalization has been a “disaster,” as Hochul conceded in January. “Every other storefront” is an unlicensed pot shop, she told The Buffalo News. “It’s insane.”
That disaster has frustrated would-be retailers, left farmers in the lurch, played havoc with tax revenue projections, and made a joke out of any expectation that New York, by learning from the experience of states that legalized marijuana earlier, would do a better job of displacing the black market. The insanity that Hochul perceives is a product of bad decisions by politicians who should have known better and obstruction by regulators who sacrificed efficiency on the altar of diversity.
Unlike states such as New Jersey, where voters approved legalization in 2020, and Maryland, where a similar ballot initiative passed two years later, New York did not initially allow existing medical dispensaries to start serving the recreational market. Its slow and complicated licensing process, which was skewed by an “equity” program that prioritized approval of applicants with marijuana-related criminal records or their relatives, is maddeningly hard to navigate.
Those preferences invited lawsuits by people who were excluded, which further delayed approval of licenses. Guidance and financial help for people struggling to jump through the state’s hoops never materialized. And as in other states, high taxes and burdensome regulations have made it hard for licensed businesses to compete with unauthorized dealers.”
“A bill recently introduced in Colorado aims to make dating apps such as Hinge and Bumble safer for users. The first section of S.B. 24-011 would force all dating services with any users in Colorado to submit an annual report to Colorado’s attorney general about misconduct reports from users in the state or about users in the state. If that isn’t available, the app must report all misconduct reports from the entire United States. These reports would all become public.
While the bill leaves some of the details up to the state’s attorney general, this would probably mean that when people file false reports about each other on dating apps, the reports would all become public record. The bill uses the term “information about a member,” suggesting that it would require disclosure about each individual member. Scorned lovers, racists, incels, and others with hostile motives could file false reports and harm people’s job and dating prospects in the future. And a report on a government website looks a lot more legitimate than someone mad on social media. These reports might even lead to law enforcement investigating innocent users.”
…
“Dating apps are horrible because they have horrible users—like the man who brought me to a cafeteria, drank a beverage that he packed for himself without asking me if I wanted one, grilled me for 15 minutes, and ghosted. (I later learned he was 14 years older than he claimed and Hinge had repeatedly banned him. He’s tried to match with me three times more since that day.)”
“According to Dawson, nuclear power is “the most scalable, reliable, efficient, land-conserving, material-sparing, zero-emission source of energy ever created.” Wind and solar aren’t as reliable because they depend on intermittent weather. They also require much more land than nuclear plants, which use about 1 percent of what solar farms need and 0.3 percent of what wind farms require to yield the same amount of energy.
The economics of nuclear power are undoubtedly challenging, but its advocates say that’s primarily because of its thorny politics. The headache of building a new power plant is vividly exemplified by Georgia’s Plant Vogtle. The first U.S. reactor built from scratch since 1974, the project turned into a nightmare scenario: It took almost 17 years from when the first permit was filed for construction to begin, it cost more than $28 billion, and it bankrupted the developer in the process.
Nuclear regulation is “based on politics and fear-mongering and a lack of understanding,” explains Indian Point’s vice president, Frank Spagnuolo. If they aren’t shut down, he says, power plants such as Indian Point could safely continue to provide clean energy for decades. ”
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), calling the prices of bank overdraft protection “junk fees,” now proposes to interfere with these prices.
We’ve been down this road before. Last year, the CFPB proposed capping credit card late fees at $8 as part of President Joe Biden’s populist appeal to consumers who dislike this cost, which is obviously everyone. The problem, as I and many others explained at the time, is that late fees encourage timely payment, and their practical elimination leaves lenders unable to offset the risk of working with people who have lower credit.
The result will be fewer lines of credit available to those who need credit the most. But that’s a difficult outcome for most to see compared to the tangible benefit of lowering fees. Even consumers denied credit won’t know what or who to blame, so it’s no surprise that CFPB is expected to finalize the late fee rule any day now.
The next CFPB price control scheme would cap overdraft fees at levels as low as $3 per overdraft transaction. Commenting on this rule, Biden sounded perfectly populist: “For too long, some banks have charged exorbitant overdraft fees—sometimes $30 or more—that often hit the most vulnerable Americans the hardest, all while banks pad their bottom lines.” He added, “Banks call it a service—I call it exploitation.”
I get it. I remember the annoyance I felt when I was charged such fees. However, I reminded myself that it was the price to pay for not having one of my checks bounce or a debit card payment declined. It’s fair to wonder whether most of the people proposing these rules have ever had a checking account balance low enough to need the overdraft cushion.
In fact, overdraft protection is an optional, opt-in service that allows consumers to spend money they don’t have at the bank’s expense. Purchases are approved that would otherwise be declined for lack of funds. For low-income consumers, this service is sometimes vital. And indeed, consumers report by wide margins that they are glad it exists even though it naturally comes at a cost.
Thankfully for all of us, CFPB bureaucrats agree that banks should charge a fee. Unfortunately, they think they know best what these fees should be.”
…
“Banks might go even further. Given the slim profit margins they earn on small bank accounts, it’s possible that the loss of overdraft protection revenue results in some simply abandoning the very customers—the least well off—whom interventionists claim to be protecting.”
“Lawmakers who support a new generation of advanced nuclear power are setting their sights on what they see as the technology’s top obstacle: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Biden administration has touted small, factory-built reactors as a possible lifeline for an aging nuclear industry and a crucial step toward cutting the nation’s planet-warming emissions. But only one reactor design has gotten the greenlight from the NRC, and administration-backed advanced nuclear energy projects are struggling to get off the ground.
Key leaders in the House and Senate are now considering fundamental changes to the NRC, an independent federal agency tasked with protecting public safety and health.
The House Energy and Commerce and Senate Environment and Public Works committees are negotiating a compromise legislative package that would streamline regulations at the NRC and potentially adjust the agency’s mission statement, as I write today.
The talks come after four Senate Democrats recently kneecapped a renomination bid for one of the NRC’s longtime regulators, Jeff Baran, who was first appointed by former President Barack Obama.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) was among the Democrats who called Baran an overzealous regulator overtly hostile to nuclear energy. Today, Manchin said he won’t support any nominee who’s too focused on safety.
“We’re just looking for people who understand that we have to have nuclear energy in the mix,” Manchin said.
Lawmakers believe fundamentally changing the NRC, in leadership and policy, will give so-called small modular reactors a fighting chance to succeed.”
“California’s attempt at forcing gig workers to become traditional employees backfired by driving many of those workers out of their jobs.
In the wake of a new law (Assembly Bill 5) that was intended to reclassify many independent contractors as regular employees, self-employment in California fell by 10.5 percent and overall employment tumbled by 4.4 percent, according to a study released Thursday by the Mercatus Center, a free market think tank housed at George Mason University. In professions where self-employment was more common, the effects were more dramatic, and in some fields employment declined by as much as 28 percent after A.B. 5’s implementation.”
“Documents shared with Reason show the rents paid by several New York City tenants at their rent-stabilized apartments. Other documents shared with Reason, as well as public property information, show the same tenants own additional property worth north of $1 million. Some of these rent-stabilized tenants are themselves landlords who rent out their properties for more than what their rent-stabilized apartments cost.
That includes a married couple with a four-bedroom home in the tony community of East Hampton, New York. The husband is a wine broker. The wife is a real estate associate with Sotheby’s International Realty. A county document show their East Hampton property has an appraised value of $2 million.
The couple’s address on that same document is a rent-stabilized apartment in Lower Manhattan where the legal rent as of September 2023 is $931 a month. Online rental listings show market-rate one-bedroom apartments in the same neighborhood renting for anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000.
Another woman, an anthropologist with her own consultancy firm, is listed as the lessee of a Brooklyn Heights apartment with a legal monthly rent of $2,436. Market-rate one-bedroom apartments in the same neighborhood go from $4,000 to $5,000 a month.
County property records show that the same woman owns a home in the Long Island community of Greenport, New York. She advertises it as a vacation home for rent on her personal website, and it’s listed on several rental websites with a quoted monthly rental price of $12,000.”
“This is all perfectly legal. New York’s rent stabilization law has no means-testing requirements. That means people of any income can benefit from its suppressed rents.
Wealthy tenants are getting some of the best deals out of the state’s rent stabilization law. An in-depth Wall Street Journal analysis from 2019 found that regulated rents in richer Manhattan are around half that of market-rate rents. Regulated rents in working-class areas of Queens and the Bronx are at most few hundred dollars less than market rents.
Higher-income rent-stabilized tenants were paying 39 percent less rent on average than their peers in market-rate apartments. Lower-income rent-stabilized tenants were paying only 15 percent less than their peers in market-rate apartments.”