The Hill reports on a concrete example this week of international trade rules interfering with U.S. regulatory policy: The House passed legislation late Wednesday that would repeal country-of-origin labeling requirements for beef, pork and chicken products. Why the change? The World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled last month against the U.S. appeal to keep its existing […]
Author Archives: Scott Michelman
In the wake of reports that low-wage workers are being subject to non-compete clauses (i.e., terms in their employment agreement that limit the ability to work for other companies in the same field after leaving their current employment), Senators Franken and Murphy introduced a bill last week to protect workers' ability to switch jobs. As […]
A recent Washington Post article focuses on something many of you probably know: lotteries are terrible for poor people, because lottery participants are disproportionately poor and (of course) the odds against winning are astronomically high. The Post story also makes another, more subtle point about the problem with lotteries: many people write off the deleterious […]
A new Public Citizen report, “The Healthcare Industry’s Castoffs,” documents the nature and repercussions of injuries suffered by nurses. This report is the first in a five-part series spotlighting injuries to health care workers, potential methods to reduce these injuries, the policy positions of stakeholders and the implementation of solutions. As Public Citizen reported in 2013, […]
Proving yet again that proposed "free trade" deals are about a lot more than trade, Wikileaks has released a set of documents showing how the proposed "Trade in Services Agreement," or TISA, "would take a major step towards deregulating financial industries, and could affect everything from local maritime and air traffic rules to domestic regulations […]
A joint report by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency concludes that "[d]espite vigorous new regulatory controls adopted in the wake of the recent financial crisis, financial lending has only become riskier." The report cites banks' leveraged lending, which involves making a loan and then […]
The Huffington Post has the story.
After years of laws permitting more and more government surveillance of cell phone and email users' private communications, this week Congress finally passed a law setting limits, the USA Freedom Act. President Obama signed it yesterday. Among other provisions, the law requires the government to seek judicial approval to search the data, which will no […]
NPR reports today on a Michigan State student who protested a tar sands pipeline by using a bike lock to secure himself to a truck involved in the construction. At the end of the 90-minute protest, the student (ironically named Tarr) was arrested for trespassing, which he expected. But the company responsible for the project, […]
As an eye-opening op-ed in the Baltimore Sun pointed out last week, there are places in the U.S., even densely populated places, where access to essential medications is quite difficult. Acutely, pharmacies remained closed in Baltimore in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray riots. But there is a larger, more systemic problem, as the op-ed […]