The rule went into effect during Obama's tenure, on August 2, 2016. The rule had been under consideration since 2014. Draft regulation was published in 2015. The rule was finalized on June 3, 2016. It went through extensive comment and debate. This was not an economic poison pill. It was well-considered regulation, one that spent years in the rulemaking process. And while Barack Obama lived in Chicago, he was not a part of Chicago machine politics, so calling him a Chicago Democrat is inaccurate as well (and not being a Chicago Democrat is also part of why he lost his initial Illinois House of Representatives race). Every premise of your argument is incorrect.
The only problem with anti-environmentalism as a response for bringing industry back is that it won't work.
Coal's biggest problem is the price of natural gas, which is cheaper, easier to use and move, cleaner burning, and less expensive to set up. Any issue with coal starts and ends there - it's just not economically competitive.
The methane rule, which is applicable to oil and natural gas wells, would prevent methane and VOC (volatile organic compound) emission. While methane is largely a greenhouse gas issue, VOCs do cause increased ozone, which causes smog, which has its own health costs, in addition to the toxic effects of VOCs. Even if the costs on those industries were reduced, the resulting increased health costs on individuals would swamp whatever gains to industry might be had. In addition to the fact that methane emission reduction also leads to increased natural gas recapture, and it is unclear that under a true cost-benefit analysis that the methane rule would still impose net costs. And that's true of most environmental regulation. They have had the effect of shifting jobs and industries from one place to another, but they don't kill industries. New jobs are often created in helping to comply with new environmental rules and regulations.
For other industry, and I'm guessing you mean manufacturing here, the biggest cost component is labor. Unless the price of labor is drastically lower, certain kinds of manufacturing will be done where it is cheaper. Where the biggest cost component of manufacturing industries isn't labor, it is technology, which leads to massively increased productivity per worker, and fewer jobs in manufacturing overall. Wages would have to drastically drop (or the US dollar would have to be drastically devalued) for labor to be priced more competitively on the international market. Manufacturing is turning out like agriculture in the U.S. -- requiring fewer and fewer workers for greater and greater productivity.
Changing environmental regulations will do little to bring industry back to America that has left. That isn't why they left in the first place.
President's can't defund enforcement: President Nixon got in trouble for that, and Congress essentially curtailed the President's ability to impound appropriated funds. (See The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974).
Congress can defund enforcement: they have control of the pursestrings.
As for defunding the Clean Air Act rules, it doesn't matter if Congress doesn't fund enforcement. If the EPA doesn't enforce them, citizens can file lawsuits against polluters to enforce the Act. The Clean Air Act itself would have to be amended to completely prevent enforcement of the methane rule.
The EPA does have the authority to define certain penalties, but others are written into the Clean Air Act (CAA) itself. But even if the EPA decides not to enforce the rule itself, once the rule is in place, it can be enforced by others. Why?
Under 1990 amendments to the CAA, any person may file a civil action against any person, including the United States (EPA) for violations of emission standards or limitations, or violation of an order issued by the EPA or a state with respect to such a standard or limitation. Citizens may also file a civil action against the EPA Administrator for failing to perform its duties under the CAA, as well as intervene in an action led by the EPA or a state or local regulatory authority. Even I was not aware of this, so you are forgiven for your ignorance.
So even if the EPA doesn't want to enforce it, tough. If it doesn't, violators can still be sued, the EPA and the EPA administrator can be sued, and enforcement penalties can still be required under court order. A court can order the EPA to impose penalties, or as would likely be the case, the court would impose the appropriate penalties itself as part of its order. That's why the stay was important - without the stay, even if the EPA doesn't enforce it, others can.
It's not obvious to me that the rule will go away: that's the thing about the rulemaking process under the APA - you can influence the process, but it cannot be arbitrary and capricious. An agency can be swayed or not swayed by the comments presented, but it has to actually respond to them, and if it fails to do so, upon review, courts can say whether or not the rule adopted was reasonable or not. Whether the regulation is good or bad, it survived the rulemaking process, which means that to change it, the change has to go through the rulemaking process. A rewritten rule may be weaker, but I'm not certain that it would go away. Methane is really bad as a greenhouse gas, and much of the leak detection and prevention would already be required for VOC emission prevention.
President Obama was my state Senator before he was my State's Senator, before he became President. I have met the man (at our then local coffee and donut shop). I know that he would have preferred to enact more legislation. He knew the limits of executive orders and regulations, and it wasn't any surprise that executive orders were rescinded and that regulations were overturned. He did the same to his predecessor. But with a hostile Congress uninterested in working with him for 6 years of his presidency, he did what he thought he could through executive action and regulation, even though it might not last. And if President Trump faces a hostile Congress, he should do the same. A President should do what they think is right, and if that tests the limits of their constitutional authority, the other branches should slap the executive down. That's part of the design of our great system.
No, that's not what's going on. The EPA has the authority under the Clean Air Act to write the rule. The EPA also has the authority to rewrite the rule without Congress getting involved. But to do so, the EPA has to follow the rules and procedures that Congress has laid down for rewriting the rule. That's the problem: Scott Pruitt and the EPA aren't following the rules to do that.
Once a rule is adopted, the EPA has to enforce the rule, even while it is reconsidering or rewriting the rule. This is to prevent shenanigans where an agency might begin a rewriting process, nullify the old rule, and never finish writing the new one. If they did that, it would effectively rewrite the old rule without giving people involved a chance to challenge the new rule. And the EPA is not granted any statutory authority to stay enforcement of a rule while it reconsiders it, except in certain circumstances that the court said didn't apply, and even then, only for 90 days.
If the administration had argued that the EPA had failed to follow the RFA, that would be one thing. But it didn't. It argued that the stay was justified under Section 307(d)(7)(B) of the Clean Air Act. And it wasn't. Every administration has to follow the law to change the rules and regulations they do not agree with.
Circuit Court Judges are judges, so Judge Brown's dissent was wrong for a variety of reasons that were detailed in the opinion.
The point that Judge Brown was making about finality is that until an agency makes a "final action," a court generally is not authorized by the APA to review the action, that is, a court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case. I understand the argument, but it is bogus, because the EPA wasn't authorized in the first place to stay the rule.
Was the EPA authorized to grant a 90 day stay in the first place? The Court answers no. The EPA is only allowed to issue a stay if one of two conditions are satisfied (see 42 USC 7607(d)(7)(B): 1. "If the person raising an objection can demonstrate to the Administrator that it was impracticable to raise such objection within such time or" 2. "if the grounds for such objection arose after the period for public comment (but within the time specified for judicial review) and if such objection is of central relevance to the outcome of the rule."
And the Court looks through the previous rulemaking process, and sees that the objections were previously raised in the last rulemaking, so it concludes that the grant of the stay was in excess of it statutory authority.
As the opinion makes clear, the EPA intended to stay the action for two years, as long as the rulemaking process continued. That, the opinion argues, turns the stay into a revocation, an amendment without the proper process. Either way, that makes the agency action sufficiently final to grant the court jurisdiction to review.
Is it? The rules allow for some "wiggle room" in things like enforcement and unusual circumstances. Seems silly for the courts to order the EPA to send out enforcement agents to measure methane emissions when there is a very high probability these rules won't even exist 90 days later and no punishment for violations would be imposed.
Actually, the rules in this instance don't allow for "wiggle room." The APA was designed to curb was the discretion that agencies had with regards to the regulations that Congress allowed them to create. They couldn't decide one thing one day, and then completely switch to something else another day. To change rules, there are procedures and processes that must be followed. If an agency doesn't do that, it is acting outside the law.
This wasn't an unusual circumstance, or an issue of prosecutorial discretion. It was a wholesale decision to overturn the law without following the proper procedure. The rulemaking process to enact the methane rule took over 2 years, starting in 2014. The rulemaking process to rewrite them will likely take as long, and the authority which allows the stay does not allow the rule to be ignored while it is reconsidered ("Such reconsideration shall not postpone the effectiveness of the rule."). So after the 90 days, the EPA would have to enforce the rule, which it stated it did not intend to do in the notice of proposed rulemaking for the methane rule revision. Which itself would violate the law, because even while the rule is being reconsidered, it is still effective.
So while there are issues of discretion, extenuating circumstances, "wiggle room," this was not one of them.
The questions of this case had to do with the Court's jurisdiction to hear the case and the legality of the stay the EPA wanted to impose, neither of which imply any question of agency interpretation, which is where Chevron deference would apply. Chevron deference had nothing to do with this case.
It's not an assumption, it's an estimate based on my previous 10 years of studying the Supreme Court. So I'll back it up.
If the Supreme Court of the United States (not the "Supremes" you idiot) chooses to take this case, will you come back here and admit you didn't know what you were talking about?
If the Supreme Court Justices decide to take an interest in the case, I'll certainly have to reevaluate my opinion, but I don't see 4 votes for granting a cert petition. The opinion relies on settled administrative law. None of it is particularly controversial. And while Chief Justice Roberts has shown an interest in reshaping the Court's administrative law jurisprudence, much of that reshaping has more to do with limiting deference to agency decisions than with the other issues at play in this case. The questions that could be appealed would either be about whether the court had jurisdiction to hear the case, which has been settled law for the past 40 years (delaying a rule's effective date is tantamount to revoking or amending the rule, constituting a final agency action that can be reviewed by the court), or that the stay was lawful - a much harder thing to justify, since the statute the administration cites (42 U.S.C. 7607(d)(7)(B)) allows only a 90 day stay during reconsideration, and only under certain circumstances, far shorter than the two year stay the Trump administration wanted the put in place.
Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg would not vote to grant cert in this instance, and while Justices Roberts and Kennedy have doubts about the administrative state, it is more along questions of deference to agency decisions, not questions of statutory interpretation or judicial power to review agency action. I am not certain that even Justice Thomas, strict textualist that he is, would vote to grant cert in this case. You need four votes to grant cert, and 5 to overturn. And the justices can count - most won't vote to grant cert unless they think they can get the fifth vote to overturn the lower court decision.
But I could be wrong, and have been in the past. I don't think that's the case here, however.
They have taken up a wide variety of cases that challenge federal law, and this is certainly one that qualifies. On the other hand, if there is enough jurisprudence on the APA already they will let the lower court ruling stand.
There is an entire body of jurisprudence on the APA built up through the past 70 years that makes up most of administrative law.
Unless they find good reason that this rule may be overturned if the EPA overstepped its authority.
Except that wasn't what this case was about. No one in the case argued that the EPA overstepped its authority. The methane rule was promulgated under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, which authorizes the EPA to issue technology based standards which apply to specific categories of stationary sources of air pollution. No one is challenging the methane rule on that basis, because the EPA does have the authority under the Clean Air Act to issue it.
The Clean Air and Clean Water Acts are very clear about what the EPA can do - capriciously adding items that some administrations consider pollutants like CO2 and NG may violate those Acts.
And here, the Clean Air Act was very clear. The oil and natural gas industry is a source category for which the EPA is required to issue standards of performance. Prior standards already in place covered the emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The standard was updated to include methane. This was not a capricious addition: methane leaks very often coincide with leaks of VOCs that produce air toxics like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene, and stopping methane leaks will prevent VOC leaks, and in general,
Well, Congress has the power to enact laws under the Constitution. This is how Congress allocated their power to unelected bureaucrats to write laws: 1. Congress enacted laws that delegated further rulemaking authority (with some guidance as to how to make those rules) to an agency, generally under the executive branch. 2. Congress enacted a law, the APA - the Administrative Procedure Act, that defines the rules and processes those agencies must follow to exercise their rulemaking authority. It lays out rules and procedures agencies have to follow, and rules that are adopted pursuant to those procedures then have the force of law. 3. Congress has also enacted other laws, allowing Congress to overturn a regulation on a simple majority vote expressing disapproval of that regulation, continuing to reserve the ability to undo those regulations.
So unelected bureaucrats have the power to write rules/regulations that have the force of law because Congress delegated that to them and let them do it.
As for regulators later being able to change the regulations, that's never been the issue. The judges noted that the administration can continue its rulemaking process to revise the methane rule. But what the administration cannot do is stay enforcement of the methane rule in the interim without a legal basis for doing so.
But the methane rule isn't about power plants: it's about harvesting natural gas and other fossil fuels, and how companies that do that should detect, prevent, and repair leaks of methane. So it isn't the power plants that objected to the rule, it's the oil and natural gas companies.
And you're completely wrong about this. Agency regulations are, for the most part, governed by the Administrative Procedure Act, the APA. Agencies, like the EPA, have to follow the procedures set out in the APA to write or change regulations they are empowered to create. It isn't at the whim of the current Administration, though administrations do have a lot of control over the process.
The methane rule was adopted by the EPA pursuant to the Clean Air Act, and followed the procedures of the APA for notice, public participation, and comment. It is a validly adopted regulation. It cannot be changed at the will of any administration - a change will require another rulemaking process under the APA, with notice, public participation, and comment. Which the Trump administration has started. That they can do.
But while that rulemaking process is under way, they have no legal basis to delay or stay implementation and enforcement of the rule that was adopted. That's what the case was about. Not about being able to change the rule, but about not enforcing the rule while it is being reconsidered. And the judges did not overstep their bounds at all, since the APA gives them jurisdiction to consider these kinds of disputes.
No, the Court is ruling on the EPA failing to obey a law called the Administrative Procedure Act. That's the law that lets administrative agencies create regulations under the authority delegated to them by Congress. Those rules/regulations, when properly adopted under the procedures of the APA, then have the force of law, and are essentially laws themselves.
And under the APA, Congress granted jurisdiction to the Courts to review agency action on these rules. So the courts have nowhere overstepped their authority in this case. They issued a ruling on a current law: the methane rule was validly adopted by the EPA following the procedures of the APA. The only person who overstepped their authority was Scott Pruitt, current EPA administrator, who had no legal basis for issuing a stay of that rule.
It won't get overturned on appeal. There aren't enough votes at the DC Circuit to overturn this opinion en banc, and I doubt the Supreme Court will want to hear it.
This is a case about the Administrative Procedure Act, about the rule of law. It is not about any lack of democracy. As the Court opinion pointed out, the EPA can engage in the rulemaking process to change or eliminate the rule it adopted. It just can't lawlessly fail to enforce the rule it adopted in the meanwhile.
Because the EPA has to follow the Administrative Procedure Act if it wants to NOT implement a rule it has already adopted. And the EPA didn't do so. This ruling won't be overturned: not enough votes to overturn en banc, and it's not a case the Supremes will have interest in.
The methane rule, along with many other administrative regulations, are governed by the Administrative Procedure Act (the APA, for short). The APA is the law, enacted in 1946, that governs how administrative agencies of the federal government can propose and establish any regulation they are empowered to create. For rulemaking (writing or changing regulations), it requires notice, public participation, agency response and feedback, and a permanent record of the rulemaking activity itself. All of that had to be done for the methane rule to be adopted by the EPA. It was adopted, and Congress had a chance to overturn the regulation, and it decided not to (a vote to overturn the regulation failed in the Senate).
The Trump administration's EPA doesn't want to enforce the methane rule, but they have to now. It is the law. So what the EPA tried to do is stay it (prevent enforcement) while they went through the rulemaking process of trying to get rid of it. And various groups sued because the EPA did not have a legal basis to stay enforcement while the rule is being reconsidered. And the Court agreed. While the EPA could appeal this ruling, their possibility of success is slim. There aren't enough votes on the DC Circuit to overturn the panel opinion and rehear the case en banc, and the odds of the Supreme Court hearing the case are minimal. The opinion is a pretty straightforward application of the APA to the case.
So while the EPA is going through the rulemaking process to get rid of the methane rule, they will have to enforce it in the meanwhile, and it is not entirely clear that the result of a new rulemaking would be repeal of the methane rule, due to the notice, public participation, and comment parts of the rulemaking process.
President Obama would have been happy to enforce the methane rule, as would 51 US Senators in the current Congress, apparently. It's not a dick move to enact laws and regulations you believe in, no matter how misguided they may be. People have sincere differences of opinion on policy, and engaging in the legislative and administrative processes to change those policies are part of our democratic system. The real dick move was by Scott Pruitt, when he tried to stay enforcement of a regulation without having the legal authority to do so.
There isn't any data that shows that low wage workers lost their jobs because of the minimum wage increase. And the fact that the data does not demonstrate statistically significant effects from the first minimum wage increase indicate that a modest raise in the minimum wage will have minimal effects. From the data in Seattle, it appears that even raising the current federal minimum wage by 50% would have little to no effect.
Better to have more EITC, or frankly, anything else that directly addresses people in poverty.
The EITC is a good idea! You know who supported the largest expansion of the EITC? Reagan did in 1986. Every President since Gerald Ford (who enacted it) has helped expand the EITC. Who supports expansion of the EITC today? It isn't part of anyone's agenda in Congress.
And that's because the EITC costs money to implement, and it costs tax money to pay out. Every time it has come before Congress recently it has been slapped down. Because the Republican Congress doesn't believe in it, and today's conservatives don't believe in it. Because to fund increases in the EITC, taxes would need to be raised. So, theoretically, an EITC would be better. A negative income tax would be even better. But we live in a world with actual policies and politics and economics, not a theoretical one. And in the actual world, only a minimum wage increase has been able to be enacted, and only in localities. And I don't hear anyone in Congress clamoring for a negative income tax.
I did read the UW analysis. And the UW analysis isn't damning at all. It says there was no statistically significant effect for the first minimum wage increase to $11. There was no effect on headcount. Only with the increase to $13 was there a significant effect, and that may have been increased by the timing (at the beginning of the year, when spending and employment decrease after the holidays). And what was the final conclusion? "We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies."
This study didn't prove any of the things you said about the minimum wage. The minimum wage at $11 didn't hurt people, and at $13, there aren't signs that it is hurting people either. You would need to drastically raise the minimum wage before it would seriously begin to affect employment. What this study has shown are small, barely statistically significant distributional effects. Seattle hasn't made a mistake at all.
Did you read the paper? Or even just Table 3 on Page 45 of the paper? "Our finding of zero impact on headcount employment in the restaurant industry echoes many prior studies." Essentially, fewer people are employed at lower wages, but headcount employment has not decreased, and actually increased. The effects of the minimum wage increase to $11 were minimal, and not statistically significant. The increase to $13 was statistically significant, and may have demonstrated employers adjusting by adopting any of a number of strategies, either finding or training more skilled, experienced, or efficient workers and paying them a higher wage, automating the tasks in some cases, or just not having the work done at all. So all of these effects they have seen are distributional effects, and only really on the second increase.
I know everyone isn't going to read a 63 page NBER Working Paper (even I only skimmed it), but there is a good reason to use $19/hr as where to draw the line. That's because they're trying to find a point on the wage line where above that amount, there appears to have been no impact caused by the minimum wage increase. They are conservative in adopting $19/hr as the dividing line, because if there is any effect on employment overall, it should be caught by that level. They could have just as easily adopted something just above the minimum wage, and the numbers wouldn't have been much different.
How many people earning $10/hr lost their job? Can't answer that question. What I can answer is this: Was there a net loss of jobs due to the minimumw age increase? Here's the quote: "Our finding of zero impact on headcount employment in the restaurant industry echoes many prior studies."
Zero impact. No net loss of jobs. And there was almost no effect period from the first minimum wage increase to $11/hr. Only with the increase to $13/hr were they able to claim effects of any statistical significance. This is a good study, but the headline doesn't tell the whole tale.
By 1940, the average income was $1,368. Someone making minimum wage ($.30 by 1940) would earn about $600 per year at the minimum, working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks per year. It also means the minimum wage increased 20% in the first two years.
In 2015, median household income in the US (according to census figures) was $56,516. Working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks for $4.25 would earn just $8500. A yearly income of $24787.72 would be a similar multiple of the average income, which would yield an hourly wage of $12.39.
It should likely be higher. The average household income is much higher, $72,641, which would yield a comparable hourly wage of $15.93. Inflation isn't the only factor to consider on how much the minimum wage should be raised.
A simple Google search proves you wrong about Paul Krugman, who has come to support raising the minimum wage. Saying that most economists don't like the concept of a minimum wage is completely overstating the case.
And you should still be downmodded as a troll, one: for being pointlessly wrong, and two: for saying I told you so.
Trump knew that what he was asking of Comey was wrong. Why do I say this? 1. He asked everyone to leave the room. If this was incidental, or accidental, why have everyone leave? 2. When Kushner and Priebus were looking in from another room, Trump told them to get out and shut the door. That's further evidence that he knew what he was asking for was wrong. 3. He made sure that it was just Comey and Trump together, so that it would be a he-said/he-said situation.
All of this is evidence of knowledge, intent, and it is further backed up by the fact that Trump fired Comey at later date and said that it was because of the Russia investigation. Someone who doesn't know that what they're doing is wrong will not go to such lengths to disguise and conceal their wrongdoing.
The difference between business and government doesn't factor into this one. Trump was acting like a person engaged in a criminal conspiracy, not simply someone ignorant of the laws governing criminal investigations.
There's no case that could be made for that in California. The crime of bribery in California is defined in Cal. Penal Code 92 - 100, and it applies only to those bribing, "... judicial officer, juror, referee, arbitrator, or umpire, or to any person who may be authorized by law to hear or determine any question or controversy..." None of the individuals that Daleiden and Merritt recorded would qualify for that.
As for violence against the person, that is referring specifically to Sections 187-248 of the California Penal Code. That includes crimes of Homicide, Mayhem, Kidnapping, Robbery, Assault and Battery, False Imprisonment and Human Trafficking, but only crimes that rise to a felony level. None of the crimes within that section would apply. While California does define homicide to be the "unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought" (Cal. Penal Code 187(a)), it expressly exempts fetuses in cases of abortion, when done by a surgeon to save the life of the mother, or where the mother aids, solicits, abets, or consents to the act. So there too, there isn't a case to be made.
Daleiden and Merritt recorded people without their consent in California, and, as far as I can tell, fall under no exception to the prohibition against secretly recording others.
This is EXTREMELY bad advice in California. It does not matter if you are in public or in private. Whether you are in a private setting like a home, a semi-public setting like a restaurant, or a public setting like a town square, you will still violate Cal. Penal Code 632 if the communication is confidential. What matters is whether the communication is confidential: whether there is an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy of the communication.
You can be in a bustling restaurant and have an objectively reasonable expectation that you will not be overheard or recorded. You can be sitting on a park bench in full view of everyone and have an objectively reasonable expectation that you will not be overheard or recorded. You can be sitting in a private home, with lights and cameras set up around you, and signs saying that filming is going on, and have no reasonable expectation that you will not be overheard or recorded. Whether a communication is confidential is a fact intensive inquiry. So get the other party's consent in California if you want to record.
Yes, intentionally recording a confidential communication without consent is a felony. See Cal. Penal Code 632. Just making the recording without consent subjects you to possible civil liability as well. See Cal. Penal Code 637.2. The crimes for which you can secretly record individuals to without their consent to obtain evidence of criminal activity are limited, largely to extortion, kidnapping, bribery, and felonies involving violence against the person. See Cal. Penal Code 633.5. Obtaining consent to record the communication is the best way to avoid these possible penalties in California.
Slashdot Mirror
The rule went into effect during Obama's tenure, on August 2, 2016. The rule had been under consideration since 2014. Draft regulation was published in 2015. The rule was finalized on June 3, 2016. It went through extensive comment and debate. This was not an economic poison pill. It was well-considered regulation, one that spent years in the rulemaking process. And while Barack Obama lived in Chicago, he was not a part of Chicago machine politics, so calling him a Chicago Democrat is inaccurate as well (and not being a Chicago Democrat is also part of why he lost his initial Illinois House of Representatives race). Every premise of your argument is incorrect.
The only problem with anti-environmentalism as a response for bringing industry back is that it won't work.
Coal's biggest problem is the price of natural gas, which is cheaper, easier to use and move, cleaner burning, and less expensive to set up. Any issue with coal starts and ends there - it's just not economically competitive.
The methane rule, which is applicable to oil and natural gas wells, would prevent methane and VOC (volatile organic compound) emission. While methane is largely a greenhouse gas issue, VOCs do cause increased ozone, which causes smog, which has its own health costs, in addition to the toxic effects of VOCs. Even if the costs on those industries were reduced, the resulting increased health costs on individuals would swamp whatever gains to industry might be had. In addition to the fact that methane emission reduction also leads to increased natural gas recapture, and it is unclear that under a true cost-benefit analysis that the methane rule would still impose net costs. And that's true of most environmental regulation. They have had the effect of shifting jobs and industries from one place to another, but they don't kill industries. New jobs are often created in helping to comply with new environmental rules and regulations.
For other industry, and I'm guessing you mean manufacturing here, the biggest cost component is labor. Unless the price of labor is drastically lower, certain kinds of manufacturing will be done where it is cheaper. Where the biggest cost component of manufacturing industries isn't labor, it is technology, which leads to massively increased productivity per worker, and fewer jobs in manufacturing overall. Wages would have to drastically drop (or the US dollar would have to be drastically devalued) for labor to be priced more competitively on the international market. Manufacturing is turning out like agriculture in the U.S. -- requiring fewer and fewer workers for greater and greater productivity.
Changing environmental regulations will do little to bring industry back to America that has left. That isn't why they left in the first place.
President's can't defund enforcement: President Nixon got in trouble for that, and Congress essentially curtailed the President's ability to impound appropriated funds. (See The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974).
Congress can defund enforcement: they have control of the pursestrings.
As for defunding the Clean Air Act rules, it doesn't matter if Congress doesn't fund enforcement. If the EPA doesn't enforce them, citizens can file lawsuits against polluters to enforce the Act. The Clean Air Act itself would have to be amended to completely prevent enforcement of the methane rule.
The EPA does have the authority to define certain penalties, but others are written into the Clean Air Act (CAA) itself. But even if the EPA decides not to enforce the rule itself, once the rule is in place, it can be enforced by others. Why?
Under 1990 amendments to the CAA, any person may file a civil action against any person, including the United States (EPA) for violations of emission standards or limitations, or violation of an order issued by the EPA or a state with respect to such a standard or limitation. Citizens may also file a civil action against the EPA Administrator for failing to perform its duties under the CAA, as well as intervene in an action led by the EPA or a state or local regulatory authority. Even I was not aware of this, so you are forgiven for your ignorance.
So even if the EPA doesn't want to enforce it, tough. If it doesn't, violators can still be sued, the EPA and the EPA administrator can be sued, and enforcement penalties can still be required under court order. A court can order the EPA to impose penalties, or as would likely be the case, the court would impose the appropriate penalties itself as part of its order. That's why the stay was important - without the stay, even if the EPA doesn't enforce it, others can.
It's not obvious to me that the rule will go away: that's the thing about the rulemaking process under the APA - you can influence the process, but it cannot be arbitrary and capricious. An agency can be swayed or not swayed by the comments presented, but it has to actually respond to them, and if it fails to do so, upon review, courts can say whether or not the rule adopted was reasonable or not. Whether the regulation is good or bad, it survived the rulemaking process, which means that to change it, the change has to go through the rulemaking process. A rewritten rule may be weaker, but I'm not certain that it would go away. Methane is really bad as a greenhouse gas, and much of the leak detection and prevention would already be required for VOC emission prevention.
President Obama was my state Senator before he was my State's Senator, before he became President. I have met the man (at our then local coffee and donut shop). I know that he would have preferred to enact more legislation. He knew the limits of executive orders and regulations, and it wasn't any surprise that executive orders were rescinded and that regulations were overturned. He did the same to his predecessor. But with a hostile Congress uninterested in working with him for 6 years of his presidency, he did what he thought he could through executive action and regulation, even though it might not last. And if President Trump faces a hostile Congress, he should do the same. A President should do what they think is right, and if that tests the limits of their constitutional authority, the other branches should slap the executive down. That's part of the design of our great system.
No, that's not what's going on. The EPA has the authority under the Clean Air Act to write the rule.
The EPA also has the authority to rewrite the rule without Congress getting involved.
But to do so, the EPA has to follow the rules and procedures that Congress has laid down for rewriting the rule.
That's the problem: Scott Pruitt and the EPA aren't following the rules to do that.
Once a rule is adopted, the EPA has to enforce the rule, even while it is reconsidering or rewriting the rule.
This is to prevent shenanigans where an agency might begin a rewriting process, nullify the old rule, and never finish writing the new one.
If they did that, it would effectively rewrite the old rule without giving people involved a chance to challenge the new rule.
And the EPA is not granted any statutory authority to stay enforcement of a rule while it reconsiders it, except in certain circumstances that the court said didn't apply, and even then, only for 90 days.
If the administration had argued that the EPA had failed to follow the RFA, that would be one thing. But it didn't. It argued that the stay was justified under Section 307(d)(7)(B) of the Clean Air Act. And it wasn't. Every administration has to follow the law to change the rules and regulations they do not agree with.
Circuit Court Judges are judges, so Judge Brown's dissent was wrong for a variety of reasons that were detailed in the opinion.
The point that Judge Brown was making about finality is that until an agency makes a "final action," a court generally is not authorized by the APA to review the action, that is, a court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case. I understand the argument, but it is bogus, because the EPA wasn't authorized in the first place to stay the rule.
Was the EPA authorized to grant a 90 day stay in the first place? The Court answers no. The EPA is only allowed to issue a stay if one of two conditions are satisfied (see 42 USC 7607(d)(7)(B):
1. "If the person raising an objection can demonstrate to the Administrator that it was impracticable to raise such objection within such time or"
2. "if the grounds for such objection arose after the period for public comment (but within the time specified for judicial review) and if such objection is of central relevance to the outcome of the rule."
And the Court looks through the previous rulemaking process, and sees that the objections were previously raised in the last rulemaking, so it concludes that the grant of the stay was in excess of it statutory authority.
As the opinion makes clear, the EPA intended to stay the action for two years, as long as the rulemaking process continued. That, the opinion argues, turns the stay into a revocation, an amendment without the proper process. Either way, that makes the agency action sufficiently final to grant the court jurisdiction to review.
Is it? The rules allow for some "wiggle room" in things like enforcement and unusual circumstances. Seems silly for the courts to order the EPA to send out enforcement agents to measure methane emissions when there is a very high probability these rules won't even exist 90 days later and no punishment for violations would be imposed.
Actually, the rules in this instance don't allow for "wiggle room." The APA was designed to curb was the discretion that agencies had with regards to the regulations that Congress allowed them to create. They couldn't decide one thing one day, and then completely switch to something else another day. To change rules, there are procedures and processes that must be followed. If an agency doesn't do that, it is acting outside the law.
This wasn't an unusual circumstance, or an issue of prosecutorial discretion. It was a wholesale decision to overturn the law without following the proper procedure. The rulemaking process to enact the methane rule took over 2 years, starting in 2014. The rulemaking process to rewrite them will likely take as long, and the authority which allows the stay does not allow the rule to be ignored while it is reconsidered ("Such reconsideration shall not postpone the effectiveness of the rule."). So after the 90 days, the EPA would have to enforce the rule, which it stated it did not intend to do in the notice of proposed rulemaking for the methane rule revision. Which itself would violate the law, because even while the rule is being reconsidered, it is still effective.
So while there are issues of discretion, extenuating circumstances, "wiggle room," this was not one of them.
The questions of this case had to do with the Court's jurisdiction to hear the case and the legality of the stay the EPA wanted to impose, neither of which imply any question of agency interpretation, which is where Chevron deference would apply. Chevron deference had nothing to do with this case.
You can't really back that assumption up.
It's not an assumption, it's an estimate based on my previous 10 years of studying the Supreme Court. So I'll back it up.
If the Supreme Court of the United States (not the "Supremes" you idiot) chooses to take this case, will you come back here and admit you didn't know what you were talking about?
If the Supreme Court Justices decide to take an interest in the case, I'll certainly have to reevaluate my opinion, but I don't see 4 votes for granting a cert petition. The opinion relies on settled administrative law. None of it is particularly controversial. And while Chief Justice Roberts has shown an interest in reshaping the Court's administrative law jurisprudence, much of that reshaping has more to do with limiting deference to agency decisions than with the other issues at play in this case. The questions that could be appealed would either be about whether the court had jurisdiction to hear the case, which has been settled law for the past 40 years (delaying a rule's effective date is tantamount to revoking or amending the rule, constituting a final agency action that can be reviewed by the court), or that the stay was lawful - a much harder thing to justify, since the statute the administration cites (42 U.S.C. 7607(d)(7)(B)) allows only a 90 day stay during reconsideration, and only under certain circumstances, far shorter than the two year stay the Trump administration wanted the put in place.
Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg would not vote to grant cert in this instance, and while Justices Roberts and Kennedy have doubts about the administrative state, it is more along questions of deference to agency decisions, not questions of statutory interpretation or judicial power to review agency action. I am not certain that even Justice Thomas, strict textualist that he is, would vote to grant cert in this case. You need four votes to grant cert, and 5 to overturn. And the justices can count - most won't vote to grant cert unless they think they can get the fifth vote to overturn the lower court decision.
But I could be wrong, and have been in the past. I don't think that's the case here, however.
They have taken up a wide variety of cases that challenge federal law, and this is certainly one that qualifies. On the other hand, if there is enough jurisprudence on the APA already they will let the lower court ruling stand.
There is an entire body of jurisprudence on the APA built up through the past 70 years that makes up most of administrative law.
Unless they find good reason that this rule may be overturned if the EPA overstepped its authority.
Except that wasn't what this case was about. No one in the case argued that the EPA overstepped its authority. The methane rule was promulgated under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, which authorizes the EPA to issue technology based standards which apply to specific categories of stationary sources of air pollution. No one is challenging the methane rule on that basis, because the EPA does have the authority under the Clean Air Act to issue it.
The Clean Air and Clean Water Acts are very clear about what the EPA can do - capriciously adding items that some administrations consider pollutants like CO2 and NG may violate those Acts.
And here, the Clean Air Act was very clear. The oil and natural gas industry is a source category for which the EPA is required to issue standards of performance. Prior standards already in place covered the emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The standard was updated to include methane. This was not a capricious addition: methane leaks very often coincide with leaks of VOCs that produce air toxics like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene, and stopping methane leaks will prevent VOC leaks, and in general,
Well, Congress has the power to enact laws under the Constitution. This is how Congress allocated their power to unelected bureaucrats to write laws:
1. Congress enacted laws that delegated further rulemaking authority (with some guidance as to how to make those rules) to an agency, generally under the executive branch.
2. Congress enacted a law, the APA - the Administrative Procedure Act, that defines the rules and processes those agencies must follow to exercise their rulemaking authority. It lays out rules and procedures agencies have to follow, and rules that are adopted pursuant to those procedures then have the force of law. 3. Congress has also enacted other laws, allowing Congress to overturn a regulation on a simple majority vote expressing disapproval of that regulation, continuing to reserve the ability to undo those regulations.
So unelected bureaucrats have the power to write rules/regulations that have the force of law because Congress delegated that to them and let them do it.
As for regulators later being able to change the regulations, that's never been the issue. The judges noted that the administration can continue its rulemaking process to revise the methane rule. But what the administration cannot do is stay enforcement of the methane rule in the interim without a legal basis for doing so.
But the methane rule isn't about power plants: it's about harvesting natural gas and other fossil fuels, and how companies that do that should detect, prevent, and repair leaks of methane. So it isn't the power plants that objected to the rule, it's the oil and natural gas companies.
And you're completely wrong about this. Agency regulations are, for the most part, governed by the Administrative Procedure Act, the APA. Agencies, like the EPA, have to follow the procedures set out in the APA to write or change regulations they are empowered to create. It isn't at the whim of the current Administration, though administrations do have a lot of control over the process.
The methane rule was adopted by the EPA pursuant to the Clean Air Act, and followed the procedures of the APA for notice, public participation, and comment. It is a validly adopted regulation. It cannot be changed at the will of any administration - a change will require another rulemaking process under the APA, with notice, public participation, and comment. Which the Trump administration has started. That they can do.
But while that rulemaking process is under way, they have no legal basis to delay or stay implementation and enforcement of the rule that was adopted. That's what the case was about. Not about being able to change the rule, but about not enforcing the rule while it is being reconsidered. And the judges did not overstep their bounds at all, since the APA gives them jurisdiction to consider these kinds of disputes.
No, the Court is ruling on the EPA failing to obey a law called the Administrative Procedure Act. That's the law that lets administrative agencies create regulations under the authority delegated to them by Congress. Those rules/regulations, when properly adopted under the procedures of the APA, then have the force of law, and are essentially laws themselves.
And under the APA, Congress granted jurisdiction to the Courts to review agency action on these rules. So the courts have nowhere overstepped their authority in this case. They issued a ruling on a current law: the methane rule was validly adopted by the EPA following the procedures of the APA. The only person who overstepped their authority was Scott Pruitt, current EPA administrator, who had no legal basis for issuing a stay of that rule.
It won't get overturned on appeal. There aren't enough votes at the DC Circuit to overturn this opinion en banc, and I doubt the Supreme Court will want to hear it.
This is a case about the Administrative Procedure Act, about the rule of law. It is not about any lack of democracy. As the Court opinion pointed out, the EPA can engage in the rulemaking process to change or eliminate the rule it adopted. It just can't lawlessly fail to enforce the rule it adopted in the meanwhile.
Because the EPA has to follow the Administrative Procedure Act if it wants to NOT implement a rule it has already adopted. And the EPA didn't do so.
This ruling won't be overturned: not enough votes to overturn en banc, and it's not a case the Supremes will have interest in.
The methane rule, along with many other administrative regulations, are governed by the Administrative Procedure Act (the APA, for short). The APA is the law, enacted in 1946, that governs how administrative agencies of the federal government can propose and establish any regulation they are empowered to create. For rulemaking (writing or changing regulations), it requires notice, public participation, agency response and feedback, and a permanent record of the rulemaking activity itself. All of that had to be done for the methane rule to be adopted by the EPA. It was adopted, and Congress had a chance to overturn the regulation, and it decided not to (a vote to overturn the regulation failed in the Senate).
The Trump administration's EPA doesn't want to enforce the methane rule, but they have to now. It is the law. So what the EPA tried to do is stay it (prevent enforcement) while they went through the rulemaking process of trying to get rid of it. And various groups sued because the EPA did not have a legal basis to stay enforcement while the rule is being reconsidered. And the Court agreed. While the EPA could appeal this ruling, their possibility of success is slim. There aren't enough votes on the DC Circuit to overturn the panel opinion and rehear the case en banc, and the odds of the Supreme Court hearing the case are minimal. The opinion is a pretty straightforward application of the APA to the case.
So while the EPA is going through the rulemaking process to get rid of the methane rule, they will have to enforce it in the meanwhile, and it is not entirely clear that the result of a new rulemaking would be repeal of the methane rule, due to the notice, public participation, and comment parts of the rulemaking process.
President Obama would have been happy to enforce the methane rule, as would 51 US Senators in the current Congress, apparently. It's not a dick move to enact laws and regulations you believe in, no matter how misguided they may be. People have sincere differences of opinion on policy, and engaging in the legislative and administrative processes to change those policies are part of our democratic system. The real dick move was by Scott Pruitt, when he tried to stay enforcement of a regulation without having the legal authority to do so.
There isn't any data that shows that low wage workers lost their jobs because of the minimum wage increase. And the fact that the data does not demonstrate statistically significant effects from the first minimum wage increase indicate that a modest raise in the minimum wage will have minimal effects. From the data in Seattle, it appears that even raising the current federal minimum wage by 50% would have little to no effect.
Better to have more EITC, or frankly, anything else that directly addresses people in poverty.
The EITC is a good idea! You know who supported the largest expansion of the EITC? Reagan did in 1986. Every President since Gerald Ford (who enacted it) has helped expand the EITC. Who supports expansion of the EITC today? It isn't part of anyone's agenda in Congress.
And that's because the EITC costs money to implement, and it costs tax money to pay out. Every time it has come before Congress recently it has been slapped down. Because the Republican Congress doesn't believe in it, and today's conservatives don't believe in it. Because to fund increases in the EITC, taxes would need to be raised. So, theoretically, an EITC would be better. A negative income tax would be even better. But we live in a world with actual policies and politics and economics, not a theoretical one. And in the actual world, only a minimum wage increase has been able to be enacted, and only in localities. And I don't hear anyone in Congress clamoring for a negative income tax.
I did read the UW analysis. And the UW analysis isn't damning at all. It says there was no statistically significant effect for the first minimum wage increase to $11. There was no effect on headcount. Only with the increase to $13 was there a significant effect, and that may have been increased by the timing (at the beginning of the year, when spending and employment decrease after the holidays). And what was the final conclusion? "We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies."
This study didn't prove any of the things you said about the minimum wage. The minimum wage at $11 didn't hurt people, and at $13, there aren't signs that it is hurting people either. You would need to drastically raise the minimum wage before it would seriously begin to affect employment. What this study has shown are small, barely statistically significant distributional effects. Seattle hasn't made a mistake at all.
The only one going full retard is you.
Did you read the paper? Or even just Table 3 on Page 45 of the paper?
"Our finding of zero impact on headcount employment in the restaurant industry echoes many prior studies."
Essentially, fewer people are employed at lower wages, but headcount employment has not decreased, and actually increased.
The effects of the minimum wage increase to $11 were minimal, and not statistically significant. The increase to $13 was statistically significant, and may have demonstrated employers adjusting by adopting any of a number of strategies, either finding or training more skilled, experienced, or efficient workers and paying them a higher wage, automating the tasks in some cases, or just not having the work done at all.
So all of these effects they have seen are distributional effects, and only really on the second increase.
I know everyone isn't going to read a 63 page NBER Working Paper (even I only skimmed it), but there is a good reason to use $19/hr as where to draw the line. That's because they're trying to find a point on the wage line where above that amount, there appears to have been no impact caused by the minimum wage increase. They are conservative in adopting $19/hr as the dividing line, because if there is any effect on employment overall, it should be caught by that level. They could have just as easily adopted something just above the minimum wage, and the numbers wouldn't have been much different.
How many people earning $10/hr lost their job? Can't answer that question. What I can answer is this: Was there a net loss of jobs due to the minimumw age increase? Here's the quote: "Our finding of zero impact on headcount employment in the restaurant industry echoes many prior studies."
Zero impact. No net loss of jobs. And there was almost no effect period from the first minimum wage increase to $11/hr. Only with the increase to $13/hr were they able to claim effects of any statistical significance. This is a good study, but the headline doesn't tell the whole tale.
By 1940, the average income was $1,368. Someone making minimum wage ($.30 by 1940) would earn about $600 per year at the minimum, working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks per year. It also means the minimum wage increased 20% in the first two years.
In 2015, median household income in the US (according to census figures) was $56,516. Working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks for $4.25 would earn just $8500. A yearly income of $24787.72 would be a similar multiple of the average income, which would yield an hourly wage of $12.39.
It should likely be higher. The average household income is much higher, $72,641, which would yield a comparable hourly wage of $15.93. Inflation isn't the only factor to consider on how much the minimum wage should be raised.
A simple Google search proves you wrong about Paul Krugman, who has come to support raising the minimum wage. Saying that most economists don't like the concept of a minimum wage is completely overstating the case.
And you should still be downmodded as a troll, one: for being pointlessly wrong, and two: for saying I told you so.
Trump knew that what he was asking of Comey was wrong. Why do I say this?
1. He asked everyone to leave the room. If this was incidental, or accidental, why have everyone leave?
2. When Kushner and Priebus were looking in from another room, Trump told them to get out and shut the door. That's further evidence that he knew what he was asking for was wrong.
3. He made sure that it was just Comey and Trump together, so that it would be a he-said/he-said situation.
All of this is evidence of knowledge, intent, and it is further backed up by the fact that Trump fired Comey at later date and said that it was because of the Russia investigation. Someone who doesn't know that what they're doing is wrong will not go to such lengths to disguise and conceal their wrongdoing.
The difference between business and government doesn't factor into this one. Trump was acting like a person engaged in a criminal conspiracy, not simply someone ignorant of the laws governing criminal investigations.
There's no case that could be made for that in California. The crime of bribery in California is defined in Cal. Penal Code 92 - 100, and it applies only to those bribing, "... judicial officer, juror, referee, arbitrator, or umpire, or to any person who may be authorized by law to hear or determine any question or controversy..." None of the individuals that Daleiden and Merritt recorded would qualify for that.
As for violence against the person, that is referring specifically to Sections 187-248 of the California Penal Code. That includes crimes of Homicide, Mayhem, Kidnapping, Robbery, Assault and Battery, False Imprisonment and Human Trafficking, but only crimes that rise to a felony level. None of the crimes within that section would apply. While California does define homicide to be the "unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought" (Cal. Penal Code 187(a)), it expressly exempts fetuses in cases of abortion, when done by a surgeon to save the life of the mother, or where the mother aids, solicits, abets, or consents to the act. So there too, there isn't a case to be made.
Daleiden and Merritt recorded people without their consent in California, and, as far as I can tell, fall under no exception to the prohibition against secretly recording others.
This is EXTREMELY bad advice in California.
It does not matter if you are in public or in private. Whether you are in a private setting like a home, a semi-public setting like a restaurant, or a public setting like a town square, you will still violate Cal. Penal Code 632 if the communication is confidential.
What matters is whether the communication is confidential: whether there is an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy of the communication.
You can be in a bustling restaurant and have an objectively reasonable expectation that you will not be overheard or recorded.
You can be sitting on a park bench in full view of everyone and have an objectively reasonable expectation that you will not be overheard or recorded.
You can be sitting in a private home, with lights and cameras set up around you, and signs saying that filming is going on, and have no reasonable expectation that you will not be overheard or recorded.
Whether a communication is confidential is a fact intensive inquiry. So get the other party's consent in California if you want to record.
Yes, intentionally recording a confidential communication without consent is a felony. See Cal. Penal Code 632.
Just making the recording without consent subjects you to possible civil liability as well. See Cal. Penal Code 637.2.
The crimes for which you can secretly record individuals to without their consent to obtain evidence of criminal activity are limited, largely to extortion, kidnapping, bribery, and felonies involving violence against the person. See Cal. Penal Code 633.5.
Obtaining consent to record the communication is the best way to avoid these possible penalties in California.