According to the FTC, approximately 18 million workers in America are covered by these agreements, which equates to roughly 30 million people. This final ruling would eliminate all new noncompete agreements for workers and it would force these companies to allow current and former employees know that they won’t enforce them.

Additionally, they will also have to eliminate existing agreements for most employees, although the agreements may remain in effect for senior executives. //

Pro-business groups like the Chamber of Commerce all say that the rule targets businesses that are simply trying to prevent intellectual property or information and also calls into question the FTC's authority to retroactively kill agreements that were made before they voted to eliminate the rule. //

The two dissenting commissioners on the FTC both say that they don't support non-compete agreements entirely across the board, however, they do believe that the FTC lacks the authority to enact such a ruling without first getting Congress to enact legislation to do so.

European farmers are reshaping the political landscape across the Atlantic just months before the EU’s parliamentary elections.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has proposed new energy efficiency standards for distribution transformers. Almost all transformers produced under the new standard would feature amorphous steel cores that are, according to the DOE, significantly more energy efficient than those made of traditional, grain-oriented electrical steel. //

Portland General Electric has two critical points in its response to the delusional DOE.

First, Mandating a complete overhaul of transformer production during a severe shortage is basically insane. //

Second, the amorphous core transformers are significantly larger, leading to a host of technical issues that would jack up energy costs even more. //

An example for size comparison is that a 25KVA pole mounted amorphous core transformer is roughly the size of a 50KVA steel core transformer. This illustrates how much larger the new amorphous core transformers would need to be.

…This triggers a host of related issues that utilities would need to address. //

There is only one Grain-Oriented Electrical Steel (GOES) core maker in the United States (Butler Works, owned by Cleveland-Cliffs). That plant says that the rule is placing its operation in jeopardy.

He also explains how the Supreme Court opting for liberty and due process is a bad thing. If the courts are going to monitor what the agencies are doing, then the agencies might not do anything.

Because SCOTUS is relentlessly hostile to the administrative state, this system stacks the deck in favor of deregulation. Which—let’s be honest—means boosting Republican presidents and hobbling Democratic ones.

A decision is expected in June, and I'll be off work for a month, getting drunk on liberal tears. //

ConservativeInMinnesota
6 hours ago
The best thing that could happen is to strike down the administrative state as being unconstitutional. A fourth branch of government was never authorized by the founders.

Somehow the federal bureaucracies have more power over most Americans daily lives than the other three. They need reined in and brought under control. //

SantiagoMatamoros ConservativeInMinnesota
5 hours ago
Given that, the word Democrat does not appear once in the U.S. Constitution.

Article 4 Section 4
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence. //

ConservativeInMinnesota SantiagoMatamoros
4 hours ago edited
Agreed on a Republic. The following about the powers Congress has seems useful - Art 1 Sec 8:

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Congress needs to pass all laws needed to execute the powers and all other powers vested by the Constitution. Congress can't delegate their authority, the Constitution doesn't let them. Departments don't have authority to make regulatory rules, only to enforce them. //

anon-m0b0
6 hours ago
It will go 5-4 with Roberts siding with the liberals, but the conservatives winning. The DOL rule written and released this week to kill off independent contractors is a perfect reason to kill Chevron.

Side note: Notice how everyone always already knows how the liberals will vote? No one ever seems to wonder if they will vote with thr conservatives, do they? //

DK duffer
6 hours ago edited
The Chevron defense also allowed Congress to make a law so ambiguous no one knew what to do with it. So federal agencies were ‘given’ authority to make rules that interpreted the law. When people complained about an agency’s regulations Congress shrugged and said that isn’t what we intended the agency misunderstood our intent. Nothing was done to correct bureaucratic overreach and the state grew and grew and became the tyrants we have to deal with today. Do not think the bureaucracy will go quietly into the night. //

Maria_Garcia_US (XX)
5 hours ago
Fed employee here,
Chevron needs to die a very quick death. Just today, I was trying to find the legal authorization for a multi-BILLION dollar project. The supposed "authorization" upon which DOD wrote implementation policy & guidance for? Surveys. The authority gave the Secretary of the Army the right to conduct surveys. Not study anything. Not build anything. Just surveys.
About 10 years ago, I was researching legal authorization for a multi-million dollar project only to find out that we did NOT have authorization to study or build that particular project. How they got around it? By getting Senator "Don't call me ma'am. Call me senator." to get her committee together to write a committee resolution. Not legislation authorizing anything. A Senate committee resolution. The House controls the purse strings, supposedly.
Another example is "Waters of the US" under the Commerce Clause. That was supposed to mean any coastal or river waters used for commerce: the transportation of goods & services. Rivers like the Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri. Not the Rio Grande, Pecos River, Little Muddy Creek or The Branch. And once dams were places (as opposed to locks) the bigger rivers really weren't navigable anymore. So tell me where the CEQ, EPA, even the Department of the Interior have any Constitutional leg to stand one let alone arrest, detain or fine anyone? //

Dieter Schultz Maria_Garcia_US (XX)
5 hours ago
There's been some discussion around the non-delegation doctrine and how it is really not OK for the legislature can't 'authorize another entity to exercise the power or function which it is constitutionally authorized to exercise itself'.

For my money, if Congress can't keep up on, and track of, what it wants to regulate then maybe it should consider that they shouldn't be regulating it. //

EDMUND
6 hours ago edited
Where this decision falls short is the assumption that
1: agencies base their decisions on "wisdom" rather than the raw acquisition of power and
2: that they are any more responsive to a "constituency" than a federal judge. //

Robert A Hahn
4 hours ago
We see in the way the Biden Administration deals with their new "free college for all via executive order" entitlement just how Democratic administrations will dance around the absence of Chevron.

They're regulating dishwashers under the Energy Conservation Act? Somebody sues and gets a court to say, "Nope. Nothing in the Energy Conservation Act gives you the authority to do that."

The next day they're right back at it, now regulating dishwashers under the Safety for Children Amendment to the Foghorn-Leghorn Act. The lawsuits start over again from Square One. Two years later when the courts strike that one down, the agency switches to the Germ-Free Kitchens Act of 1946. Now they claim that authorizes them to screw with dishwashers. Back to Square One again with the lawsuits.

Biden is on his third supposed reason why he's allowed to give people free college using taxpayer money. Every time a court strikes one down, his lawyers find another one. //

Doubtless Democrats will argue that they can enact new laws and regulations to remedy the problem their last “solution” caused.

But the socialist left ignores that no law requires companies to invest in new drugs at all — they only do so because it makes financial sense. If it does not, then companies may invest in cloud computing technology, driverless cars, or many other types of projects instead.

Thatch @THATCH_ARISES
·
Here is some good news!

I already have to run things through my dishwaser twice because it is so "efficient" compared to the ones which only had to be run once.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey @AGAndrewBailey
BREAKING: The Fifth Circuit has sided with us in our lawsuit against Joe Biden's Department of Energy, stating "it is unclear how or why DOE thinks it has any statutory authority to regulate 'water use' in dishwashers and washing machines."
12:38 AM · Jan 9, 2024 //

Margot Cleveland @ProfMJCleveland
·
Wait! Does this mean we'll be able to buy a dishwasher that doesn't take 3.75 hours to wash and dry?
1:22 AM · Jan 9, 2024

It's not an overstatement to say the general consensus among current Chrysler/Dodge owners varies from depression to outrage. The cars that we love, these special beasts that made owning that pinup poster fantasy finally attainable, are once again being taken from us, not because of sales or the free market, but because the “government knows best."

Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments for Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, which challenges the authority of the administrative state. The defendant is George Jarkesy, a conservative radio host who was fined over half-a-million dollars by the SEC for allegedly defrauding investors and appealed this sentence by arguing that the SEC does not have the constitutional authority to do this. //

Ignoring the alarmism, Rosenblum’s reasoning somehow combines naivety and cynicism into an incoherent yet typically leftist argument. The cynical aspect is that he confuses the whole government with an executive agency. This means that instead of protecting the rights of its citizens, as is explicitly stated in the Declaration of Independence, the government exists to tell its citizens what to do and how to do it. If the government is prevented from doing this, then Americans will automatically degenerate into savages and resort to harming one another in every way possible.

The naive aspect is that he assumes that executive agencies are actually neutral, trustworthy, and competent. Whether it’s the SEC, IRS, or the FBI, their agents are professionals with a heart of gold. They could never be corrupted with unbridled authority or gargantuan budgets. They would never target specific Americans, conduct political witch hunts, or neglect their actual responsibilities. //

Moreover, it is highly debatable just how honest and effective the SEC has been in keeping investors safe and preventing market manipulation. Whether it’s the insider trading of politicians like Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi, the multibillion-dollar fraud of scammers like Sam Bankman-Fried, or the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, it seems questionable that the SEC focuses its efforts on the financial shenanigans of a relatively small investor like George Jarkesy. And in today’s political climate, it would be foolish to assume that Jarkesy’s conservative positions didn’t also factor into the charges. //

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Jarkesy, it could make the market free once again and significantly weaken an unruly administrative state.

As exhausting as it is to read that list, the FCC itself says it is not an exhaustive list. The Biden administration’s plan empowers the FCC to regulate every aspect of the internet sector for the first time ever. The plan is motivated by an ideology of government control that is not compatible with the fundamental precepts of free market capitalism.

But it gets worse.

The FCC reserves the right under this plan to regulate both “actions and omissions, whether recurring or a single instance.” In other words, if you take any action, you may be liable; and if you do nothing, you may be liable.

There is no path to complying with this standardless regime. It reads like a planning document drawn up in the faculty lounge of a university’s Soviet Studies Department.