Category Archives: Uncategorized

Politics apparently Trumps deliberation in effort to kill ACA

According to this story by Matt Fuller, the original sponsors of the bill to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act have now been cut out of the legislative process and won't know what they are voting on. And it sounds like the last-minute revisions will cause massive harm to people most in need of essential health […]

Who gains and who loses under the Affordable Care Act replacement?

An Urban Institute report issued today on the "American Health Care Act" finds that, "taking both tax reductions and benefit reductions into account, the average high-income family would be significantly better off and the average low-income family would be significantly worse off under the AHCA." Specifically, under the bill, "[t]he average family with less than […]

Congress’s power to obtain, review, and disclose Trump’s (and other tax filers’) tax returns

Law prof George Yin has written a brief and timely paper called Congressional Authority to Obtain and Release Tax Returns. Yin is the former chief of staff of Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation. In his paper, Yin explains that particular congressional committees possess the power to obtain, review, and disclose filers' tax returns in limited circumstances and […]

Should administrative rule makers take account of moral obligations and, if so, how?

That's the topic of Moral Commitments in Cost-Benefit Analysis by law profs Eric Posner and Cass Sunstein. Here is the abstract: The regulatory state has become a cost-benefit state, in the sense that under prevailing executive orders, agencies must catalogue the costs and benefits of regulations before issuing them, and in general, must show that their benefits […]

Virginia Updates Its Anti-SLAPP Law, Stiffening the Standard for Many Libel Claims

by Paul Alan Levy With the signature of Governor Terry McAuliffe having been added last week, Virginia has adopted a modest improvement to its very narrow anti-SLAPP statute.   The new law, SB 1413,  is not nearly as strong as in the anti-SLAPP laws in California and other model states, but it has something that we […]

“Trump administration rolls back protections for people in default on student loans”

That's the name of this article by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel. Some background: In mid-2015, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that student-loan guaranty agencies may not assess collection costs against borrowers who enter the federal government’s loan rehabilitation program within 60 days of defaulting on their loans. One of the two judges in the Seventh Circuit […]

“Trump’s Washington Hotel is a Bridge Too Far for Fair Competition”

That's the name of this opinion piece by Steven Schooner & Alan Morrison, two of the lawyers for the Cork Wine Bar in its unfair competition suit against Trump and his new hotel in D.C. (Subscription possibly required.) For more information about the suit, go to our original post about the suit. Here is an excerpt from […]