Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) has introduced a bill offering the first legislative step toward administrative law court (ALC) reform. Known as the Seventh Amendment Restoration Act, the legislation would provide a critical avenue for people to bring their cases against federal agencies directly to federal courts. Specifically, Hageman’s proposed Seventh Amendment Restoration Act would allow … Read more
Just when you think that things might be about to turn around with regard to the explosion of unbelievably stupid laws and regulations to harass and annoy the people, along comes another one that’s stupid enough to top them all. This one has sprung up seemingly out of nowhere in the past few weeks, in … Read more
beadledom noun: a stupid or officious display or exercise of authority associated with petty officials, and historically epitomized in England’s parish beadles, who kept order in the church and the poorhouse. From Despair, Inc.: Idiotic, officious displays of authority as practiced by petty bureaucrats and officeholders
Apparently consumers are too stupid to know that butter contains milk. Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recalled almost 80,000 pounds of Costco’s popular store-brand butter due to a crucial labeling error. While the butter listed “cream” as an ingredient, the packaging lacked a critical allergen warning alerting consumers that butter contains … Read more
Today, we have a tweet that tells us everything we need to know about government bureaucracy. Alex Stapp of the Institute for Progress tweeted about the staggering expansion of middle management in Washington.The tweet shows five sentences from a story in the Atlantic last month, authored by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini. And Mr. Stapp … Read more
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME on June 27, 2018, that forced government-union fees are unconstitutional. By doing so, the Court affirmed what many people had felt for years: Public unions are inherently political, and making people pay dues to these unions is the same as compelling them to support a political … Read more
The Trump administration briefly liberalized dishwasher standards, but the Biden administration quickly reimposed the old rules. Dish soap maker Procter & Gamble has an odd new ad campaign urging folks to “do it” every night by loading their dishwashers instead of wasting time and water on handwashing. Persuading people to put crusty dishes in a … Read more
For nearly 30 years, Amos Miller has owned and operated Miller’s Organic Farm, an all-natural Amish farm located in Bird-in-Hand Pennsylvania. Like many Amish farmers, Miller likes to do things the old-fashioned way. He doesn’t use electricity, fertilizer, or gasoline, and he also stays away from modern preservatives. The farm’s reputation has grown over the … Read more
Bryan Caplan raises the question. From the standpoint of the textbook Median Voter Model, this is awfully puzzling. Even if urbanites are extremely left-wing, you would expect urban Republicans to move sharply left to accommodate them. Once they do so, the standard prediction is that Republicans will win half the time. But plainly they don’t. … Read more
In Wanting, Luke Burgis writes, One hundred years ago, there was a much wider gap in knowledge between someone who had a doctoral degree and someone who didn’t. Today, with the world’s information at nearly everyone’s fingertips, the knowledge gap between people with a great amount of formal education and those with less has narrowed. … Read more
The best way for a college to improve its admissions process would be to abolish the admissions office. A simple formula involving high school grades and SAT scores would be best. If many applicants meet the minimum standards for admission, then a lottery can be used to select those to whom to offer admission. Admissions … Read more
Tyranny of the Status Quo – Bureaucrats His great achievement is, and likely will remain, being the guy on the ballot not named Trump. Joe Biden, like George H. W. Bush, lacks “the vision thing.” Don’t read that as though it’s a bad thing. “[A] new administration has some six to nine months … Read more
I was born in Iowa, raised in the mountains of Virginia, and attended Virginia Tech sporadically from 1974 to 1976 before dropping out to try my luck writing. At some point in the late 1970s, individual liberty became my highest political value and I resolved to do what I could to defend it. I had … Read more