“After mountain runner Michelino Sunseri ascended and descended Grand Teton in record time last fall, his corporate sponsor, The North Face, heralded his achievement as “an impossible dream—come true.” Then came the nightmare: Federal prosecutors charged Sunseri with a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail for using a trail that the National Park Service described as closed, although it had never bothered to clearly inform the public of that designation.”
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“Canaparo noted other examples gathered by Mike Chase, author of the comical yet accurate book How to Become a Federal Criminal. It is a federal crime, for instance, “to sell a tufted mattress unless you have burned 9 cigarettes on the tufted part of it,” “to submit a design to the Federal Duck Stamp contest if your design does not primarily feature ‘eligible waterfowl,'” and “to sell a small ball across state lines unless it is marked with a warning that says, ‘this toy is a small ball.'”
Getting a handle on this bewildering situation will require more than prosecutorial restraint, a matter of discretion that is subject to change at any time. Canaparo argues that Congress should eliminate “excess federal crimes,” add mens rea (“guilty mind”) requirements to provisions that lack them, and recognize a defense for people who did not realize their conduct was unlawful. As he notes, rampant overcriminalization makes a mockery of the old adage that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.””
“Expropriating billions of dollars from American businesses is injurious and capricious. Citizens of the E.U. benefit from the American technology sector; siphoning capital from U.S. tech firms leaves them with less to commit to research and development, stymieing further innovation. The E.U. should stop penalizing American firms that outcompete their European counterparts.”
“They found first that the passage of age-verification laws corresponded to a significant reduction in searchers for Pornhub, the dominant porn platform complying with these laws.
That’s what proponents of age-verification laws want, right?
Not so fast. The passage of such laws was also linked to significant increases in searches for XVideos, the dominant porn platform noncompliant with these laws.
The researchers also found age-verification laws linked to an increase in searches for virtual private network (VPN) services, which can mask a user’s location, thereby allowing people in states where age-verification laws exist to appear as if they’re visiting websites from within a state where no such laws exist.
“Our findings highlight that while these regulation efforts reduce traffic to compliant firms and likely a net reduction overall to this type of content, individuals adapt primarily by moving to content providers that do not require age verification,” states the paper.”
“Passed in 1920, the Jones Act severely limits competition in the American shipping market by requiring that ships operating between U.S. ports be American-built, American-crewed, and American-flagged. The number of ships that meet the Jones Act’s standards has been declining for decades, and now fewer than 100 are in operation. Anyone who wants to ship goods—including rum—from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or other outlying U.S. territories to the mainland is required to use one of those few dozen vessels.
Unsurprisingly, the lack of competition drives up shipping costs. The lawsuit points out that it costs roughly three times as much to ship rum from Hawaii to Los Angeles as it does to ship the same goods from Los Angeles to Australia—an international route where greater competition keeps prices lower, even though the trip is significantly longer.”
“The rule intends to reduce federal bureaucracy by reverting the mission of CEQ to its origins. The agency, which was created with the passage of NEPA, was originally intended to advise the executive branch on environmental matters and NEPA implementation. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order that required federal agencies to comply with NEPA regulations published by the CEQ. Since then, the council has been the guiding agency for the federal government’s NEPA reviews.
Trump’s executive order reversed Carter’s, which rescinded CEQ’s regulatory authority over other federal agencies. The proposed rule, if implemented, would not strike down NEPA altogether (this would require congressional approval). Instead, it would remove CEQ’s NEPA regulations from the federal register and allow federal agencies to use their own rules to comply with the law. Many agencies, including the Department of Energy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Forest Service, already have their own NEPA regulations in place.
Any effort to streamline the NEPA process should be welcomed by all. Since its passage in 1969, the law has become a redundant, bureaucratic nightmare that has slowed down or killed key infrastructure, energy, and environmental projects.”