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Utah's Third Attempt To Regulate Keywords Fails
Eric Goldman writes "Earlier this month, we discussed HB 450, the Utah Legislature's third attempt to regulate keyword advertising after the past two efforts failed miserably. The latest attempt barely passed the Utah House, aided in part by a 'yes' vote from Representative Jennifer Seelig, who also happens to be a lobbyist-employee of 1-800 Contacts, the principal advocate of HB 450. Nevertheless, HB 450 died in the Utah Senate without a vote when the Utah Legislature adjourned last night. Despite the seeming good news, it would be surprising if the Utah Legislature didn't try a fourth time to regulate keyword advertising in a future session."
Let it go huh? Geez...
third post1111
I'm sure they'll eventually try something even dumber...like legislating that Pluto is a planet...
Like...here...in Illinois...
DOH!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I can't imagine any legislature would even consider this seriously since there is no way for them to enforce this except for those businesses that deal in keywords and have servers in Utah and the company only deals in Utah (i.e. not on the internet). I would think that other than that, the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution applies and they would not be able to regulate it at the state level. Is this the case? I am usually wrong so I would like someone with a better sense of the law to comment on this.
From what I can extract from the less than informative articles referenced, these bills attempt to protect Utah (read Mormon) companies from having to compete with out-of-state companies that provide the same goods and services. Something tells me this would eventually be shot down on constitutional grounds. I mean, imagine the state legislature of Maine trying to ban advertising for Coke because there's a Maine registered brand called Maine's Best Maple Cola (I'm just making this up).
But yes, they get elected and they think they have to DO SOMETHING. Lulz.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
"if Bush-era deregulation is the cause of the U.S. market woes, then why is the European Union, the world's most stringently-regulated capitalist "country", in recession too?"
What you are missing through your fog of suspect thought patterns is that European financial problems, as well as those of Asia and most of the rest of the world, were the direct result of American (US) lack of regulation and the interconnected nature of the current global economic system. To put it country simple, it only takes ONE APPLE to spoil the barrel, and that rotten apple was destined for an American apple pie.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Your signature suggests a bias. Might look into changing that.
I think what bothers a lot of people is that we were told for many years "Oh, no. We have to have free markets. We must deregulate everything!", and then many decided to take an unethical approach to how they go about their business and it turned out that they might not have been trustworthy after all. In the last days of the previous administration, they reversed course into a "worst of both worlds" scenario: Remove all limitations and then fund them to keep them afloat when their machinations didn't pan out. (I don't know where the new administration is going with this, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that a huge policy swing towards "No more federal aid" might not make as much sense as a gradual approach towards change.)
But, to answer your question, heavily-regulated markets in Europe didn't keep them from investing outside of their local market. We fucked up, and so the impact doesn't stop at our borders, every foreign investor gets to feel the pinch as well.
I can't imagine any legislature would even consider this seriously since there is no way for them to enforce this except for those businesses that deal in keywords and have servers in Utah and the company only deals in Utah (i.e. not on the internet). I would think that other than that, the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution applies and they would not be able to regulate it at the state level. Is this the case? I am usually wrong so I would like someone with a better sense of the law to comment on this.
This has nothing to do with the law; it has to do with politics.
You grossly over estimate the altruism, intelligence, and motives of politicians. This legislation is designed to get votes. Period. Some cry baby vocal minority out there wants this and the rest of the population, more than likely, doesn't give a shit.
In the meantime, the politicians get the support of the vocal obnoxious cry baby group (volunteer labor and money), which then enables said politicians get to keep their over paid cushy jobs.
Simple.
Any time you have a law like this being proposed (especially one being proposed again and again), there is some special interest group or big company or lobby group pushing for it. Who is doing it in this case and why pick Utah as the place to lobby for it? (a testbed to get similar laws passed in other states?)
A great book about it: The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy.
Basically these characters want "free markets" when they are doing well and taxpayer-funded socialism when they are not. Whereas what we had in the U.S. until the '30s was the "boom and bust" cycle, fueling ever greater bubbles and collapses until it finally became apparent that the nation couldn't take much more of this nonsense. And then along came the Neonuts and it was back on the ferris wheel again.
But yes, everything you say is spot on and cogent.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Actually, the member states of the EU are in widely varying degrees of recession. The UK is totally and utterly screwed, near bankruptcy -- mainly because it was Bush's lapdog for a decade, because its Neues Arbeit Regime looked after itself first, and because they are nothing more than the willing puppets of corporate interests.
Iceland is screwed because it depended on the UK too much. France and Germany are affected, but they do have much more banking regulation and it's nothing like as bad. The other member states are affected less still for the same reasons.
This is why there is so much disagreement at the G20 talks right now -- many EU countries are actually doing ok, despite the recession, and don't want the US and UK imposing desperate Keynsian burn and spend tactics. Since, they don't need them, and would that probably drive them further into depression and instability, just like the US and UK.
The whole of this mess though, does relate to this article. The fundamental problem in today's society is that corporate interests overrule the will of the people. Governments everywhere are bought and sold. I have no idea how we fix this -- corporations are too powerful. However, we really, really, really need to. All of us, in every country.
Maybe it starts with corporate employees from grassroots up. If you work for a corporation, why do you allow all life on Earth to be exploited for your masters bidding? You can change things, you have free will, and a duty to us all. Those of us who don't work in corporations really can't do anything it seems.
Great! First Utah gives us Orrin Hatch and the DMCA and now this? Can the rest of America vote to replace Utah with Puerto Rico?
Right? At least that's what (almost) everybody keeps telling me. "We need government to regulate business because a free market doesn't work, as we discovered with the current recession." Utah's Legislature is just regulating the advertising market as it's "supposed" to do. They are doing their job, so where's the problem?
Nice attempt at a strawman using an absolute blanket statement (typical Repuglican tactic) but you're wrong. The free market usually works most of the time. Sometimes however regulation is an absolute necessity because companies only have one obligation and that is to make a profit.
Making a profit != Best interests of America
Consider the current economic mess the U.S. is in. I'll throw you this bone, it DID start under Clinton when he pressured Fannie/Freddie to loosen lending requirements to let more people borrow. Fannie and Freddie worked for so many years because they DID have such tight lending requirements.
When it became possible for everyone with a pulse to get a mortgage by not using Freddie/Fannie but with unregulated companies taking their place, you have the rise of the CDOs against mortgage backed securities and the problem with these CDOs is that they can be resold and resold countless times without regulation.
Credit Default Swaps written against these is ultimately what brought America into this. SO it's not a partisan issue although you could say with CDOs/CDS being sold for 8 years under Bush why they never looked into it.
It was pure greed. The system worked fine under Fannie/Freddie when the tight requirements (READ: REGULATION) was in place.
Here's another analogy since I can't write it in crayon for you.
Imagine that your neighbor buys his 16 year old son a $30,000 V8 Mustang to celebrate the kid's newly acquired driver's license. Say you think the kid is going to wreck the car, because you know what a reckless brat he is. So you take out an insurance policy for the value of his car. Only you don't take just one. You take 100, maybe 1000. Say everyone else in your neighborhood does the same thing, because there are no insurance regulations that prevent it. Now you have a $30,000 dollar unsecured asset insured for $300,000,000, underwritten by an entity with nowhere near the assets to cover all the bets if the kid wrecks the car. Throw short sellers into the mix, and you have some of the neighbors giving the kid a fifth of Jack Daniels before his Friday night date.
Sometimes regulation is a good thing.
hogwash... just because you want america's markets to be fair with the rest of the world... guess what LIFE ISN'T FAIR, imo we needed a recession to knock idiots like you around. why the hell are you putting your trust in a human economy? go ahead and invest just keep enough money on the side in savings, its called planning ahead. have you noticed the widening gap between middle class and rich people? clinton deregulated more stuff then bush did.
Although that is the accepted explanation, by no means is it complete. There was an enormous real estate asset bubble in Europe (most notably in Spain) and one in the Middle East (the UAE and Qatar). It was inevitable that these bubbles would burst, but the one in the USA burst first.
One major cause of the current fiasco is that the Regulatory Agencies were simply not doing their jobs. The incompetence and sloth of the "civil servants" is what is meant by the term of "failure of oversight". What good are more regulations if regulators fail to enforce the existing ones?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Actually, I'm 98% in cash (including gold) and have been since your hero Idiot II lowered the tax rate on capital gains. No, I am not an idiot (except for the time I bet on the Bank of England against George Soros).
No, I don't want the "markets to be fair with the rest of the world." I want the criminal types who cost the American people billions of dollars to be locked up in prison along with the guys who stole $200 from a bleeping liquor store. Life may not be fair, but the G-D D-NED legal system that regulates wall street needs to be, or you will be spouting your tripe from the side of the barrel you are selling apples from on the street corner. Why do you not get this? Did someone drop you on your head when you were a little kid?
And really, like Mike Malloy says, after you syntax-challenged characters have managed to destroy the financial system of the world, you might just want to sit in the corner and BE QUIET.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Funny how the label is "Representative" when a Democrat politician backs these insane Internet regulations.
The following cryptic phone messages were left for key voters in the Utah Senate:
Google enjoys sex with beagles
Hey, Carlos Norris wants to be the president of Texas. I say, let him have it. And then watch the Mexican drug lords eat his lunch for him without federal troops from Washington.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Sometimes regulation is a good thing.
And sometimes regulation causes major economic failures. Like the one we're dealing with now.
See, the risk of market regulation is that it gives people a false sense of security. And that's *exactly* what happened with the sub-prime mortgage securities. They were based on models that were so complex regulators couldn't understand them, so the regulators contracted out the analysis to basically the same bunch of investment banks that were pushing them. But hardly anybody *buying* the securities realized this. They looked at the AAA ratings, listened to the assurances from the sellers and said "These guys can't be lying because the SEC would be stomping them into the ground if they were".
The existence of regulation basically eliminated due diligence. People trusted that the regulators were doing their job, because the regulators and regulations WERE in place! But whether it's just that the business had outpaced the regulators or the regulators were asleep at the wheel, the controls that everyone believed were in place were not.
The cause of the sub-prime fiasco wasn't that there was no regulation. The problem was *ineffective* regulation, which wasn't known to be ineffective, and that is a thousand times worse than no regulation.
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So basically you're saying that, since people lie, there's no point in making any rules.
I'm just going to go ahead and disagree with you on that one.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
So basically you're saying that, since people lie, there's no point in making any rules.
Nope, not what I said at all.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I think the point is regulation is only as good as the regulators. If the regulators aren't worth their salt, then regulation won't do jack. If we aren't going to regulate properly, then there isn't much point talking about how "deregulation is bad", or "we need more regulation"
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
The wider question is why people were looking to take out mortgages and other types of household credit in the first place. A bit of spend on some reasonable social housing so those that couldn't really afford it didn't need to turn to the credit system for a decent place to live would have been much cheaper than the bailout.
There were some other structural issues. The so called "death" of monetarism people called because the money supply was rapidly growing and inflation was staying low may have been premature. The money (credit) had to go somewhere, and it went into assets. A speculative boom being the result.
Just a few thoughts...
Who's with me?! I SAID... WHO'S WITH ME!!??
companies only have one obligation and that is to make a profit
If you look closely, you'll find that government has exactly the same goal. How else can we explain the fact that governments only expand in total revenue over time, never reduce? No government in history -- democracy or otherwise -- has ever significantly, permanently, and willingly reduced it's overall revenue. The people in the business of government consistently vote to make government bigger, never smaller. Yet somehow, we trust these people more than those who actually have something to lose by making bad investments?
The free market works just fine, you need regulation to *have* a free market though. The banks collapsed because no regulation meant no information about the assets being sold, and people who got adjustable rate mortgages weren't told that the banks would jack the interest rates up so high that the mortgage payments doubled.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
You forgot Eastern Europe. It experienced a bubble similar to the U.S. housing market, with large investments from the west in various homes/companies that are now going bankrupt.
BTW - watch the EU government carefully. During the 30s the U.S. government made a huge power grab, taking-over tasks traditionally controlled by the state governments, so that Washington became the power. I expect the EU government to do the same thing - and you'll endup kowtowing to Brussels as your focus.
>>>Maybe it starts with corporate employees from grassroots up. If you work for a corporation, why do you allow all life on Earth to be exploited for your masters bidding? You can change things, you have free will, and a duty to us all.
>>>
That leads to getting fired. The employee-corporate relationship is a lot like serf-to-landlord. You do what you're told or you get removed, and then you have no way to feed yourself.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>companies only have one obligation and that is to make a profit.
An easy fix is to outlaw corporations, such that companies are owned by an individual (or group) and those individuals are directly responsible for all acts. Such a company would still want profit, but they'd also have other motives like following the golden rule (treat others like you want to be treated) and a desire not to be prosecuted for manslaughter if a car blows-up (desire to make safe cars), and so on.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>it DID start under Clinton when he pressured Fannie/Freddie to loosen lending requirements to let more people borrow.
What good are regulations if a single man (clinton) or group (democrats in congress) can throw-out the regulations so easily? Perhaps the real flaw is we rely too much on government, especially when that government is directly responsible for the bubble.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>since people lie, there's no point in making any rules
No. Since businessmen and politicians lie ("Yeah it's safe to buy a $400,000 home even though you only earn $20,000 a year"), you can't trust either of them. Neither corporations nor governments can be trusted, so stop looking to them for advice. Instead rely on yourself.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>why people were looking to take out mortgages and other types of household credit in the first place.
Because the government-owned schools taught us to buy-buy-buy even if we had to go deep into debt to get our shiny-new toys (yes that includes shiny-new houses). The solution is for schools to teach people to say no, and save money first, and then pay cash.
>>>A bit of spend on some reasonable social housing
Sorry but I'm not working my ass off to buy somebody else a house. That's a violation of my rights and theft of labor. Let those persons save their own money to buy a small $40,000 starter home. Or rent, like I did when I first started.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>you need regulation to *have* a free market though.
Nonsense. Even in the total absence of government, a market will exist as people trade goods for goods, or gold/silver for goods. In fact one of the best "booms" of recent history was in the early and late 1800s, when the U.S. government took a hands-off policy of non-interference.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
On what planet was the financial system deregulated? This occurred in one of the most extremely regulated and least free industries we have. It makes other "heavily regulated" industries look positively libertine.
The problem was not with "deregulation", but with pervasively *bad* regulation that was designed more for political expediency than robust markets (e.g. FASB 157). The market will always find the equilibrium tacitly created by the government, but the government never takes responsibility for the unintended consequences of its regulatory actions even when the potential consequences were well understood at the time the regulations were implemented. The problem was not deregulation, it was too much bad regulation.
Compounding this was a lack of enforcement of regulations, due in large part to regulatory capture. I would point out, for example, that Obama appointed Mary Schapiro to be the head of the SEC, the very same person responsible for ignoring or stonewalling whistleblowers in a number of high-profile fraud cases, including the Madoff case. When a person so obviously incompetent at enforcing regulations or policing fraud gets promoted to the top enforcement position, it strongly suggests that regulations are not about regulating.
>>>why people were looking to take out mortgages and other types of household credit in the first place.
Because the government-owned schools taught us to buy-buy-buy even if we had to go deep into debt to get our shiny-new toys (yes that includes shiny-new houses). The solution is for schools to teach people to say no, and save money first, and then pay cash.
>>>A bit of spend on some reasonable social housing
Sorry but I'm not working my ass off to buy somebody else a house. That's a violation of my rights and theft of labor. Let those persons save their own money to buy a small $40,000 starter home. Or rent, like I did when I first started.
No, instead you're working your ass off to pay for the collapse of the financial system. Personally I'd rather chip in a bit to make sure everyone in my neighborhood has decent accomodation.
As for the theft of labour argument, hahaha, what are you? A Marxist? Cause that's exactly what Marx says your boss is doing. The big wake up call from the current crisis is that you're going to be taxed regardless. So, you can vote for your taxes to pay for bombs and bailouts, or houses and hospitals....
Who's with me?! I SAID... WHO'S WITH ME!!??
Why undermine your point with name calling?
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