Category Archives: Uncategorized

White House drops hundreds of proposed rules

The White House has withdrawn or removed from active consideration more than 800 regulations proposed during the Obama administration. Among the regulations are auto safety protections, environmental protections, worker protections, and a range of others. A New York Times article is here. Public Citizen's reaction is here. The list of remaining rules under consideration and […]

In case you want to read the actual CBO report on the repeal-only version of Trumpcare . . .

No doubt our readers have heard about the Congressional Budget Office's report on the repeal-only version of Trumpcare (sometimes pushed by Trump and often times pushed by ACA-hater purists). But if you want to actually read it, go here. The two key take-aways on number of people covered and premiums: The number of people who are […]

Ninth Circuit poised to resolve major free speech issue in secret proceeding

by Paul Alan Levy The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has issued an order signed only by the Clerk declaring that a significant free speech issue bearing on the rights of anonymous Internet users will be decided in a totally secret proceeding, involving sealed briefs, a sealed record, and without any […]

“As Paperwork Goes Missing, Private Student Loan Debts May Be Wiped Away”

The New York Times reports: Tens of thousands of people who took out private loans to pay for college but have not been able to keep up payments may get their debts wiped away because critical paperwork is missing. The troubled loans, which total at least $5 billion, are at the center of a protracted […]

Study Finds Consumers Have Harder Time Avoiding Native Ads

Anocha Aribarg and Eric M. Schwartz, both of Michigan's Business School, have written Consumer Responses to Native Advertising.  Here's the abstract: Native advertising is a type of online advertising that matches the form and function of the platform on which it appears. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) monitors this form of advertising and has […]

Disclosures Trap More Consumers: Guardian: Thousands sign up to clean sewage because they didn’t read the small print

Here. Seems like there's another one of these kinds of stories every year.  Here's an excerpt: 22,000 people have now found themselves legally bound to 1000 hours of community service, including, but not limited to, cleaning toilets at festivals, scraping chewing gum off the streets and “manually relieving sewer blockages”. The (hopefully) joke clause was […]

When and why does Congress create independent agencies?

Given the political and legal controversy over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's status as an independent agency, and the challenge to its structure pending en banc in the D.C. Circuit (go, for instance, here, here, and here), our readers may be interested in The Genesis of Independent Agencies by Patrick Corrigan and RIchard Revesz. Here is the abstract: The status […]

Two lawsuits challenging Trump’s “Election Integrity” Commission

Two new lawsuits challenge conduct of Trump's "Election Integrity" Commission.  ACLU v. Trump maintains that the Commission is meeting in secret and hiding its records in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Read the complaint here. And then there is Public Citizen v. U.S. Department of the Army, which Public Citizen describes this way: The Privacy Act […]

Judge gives preliminary approval to Wells Fargo settlement

The Washington Post reports: Wells Fargo has received preliminary approval to pay out $142 million to customers affected by the bank’s sales practices scandal. A federal judge gave preliminary approval Saturday to the deal that would settle claims over fraudulent accounts going back to 2002. The San Francisco-based bank and lawyers for customers reached the […]