lawsuits

On January 10, the city of New York filed suit against BP, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell.

Business groups have long campaigned against frivolous lawsuits.  And yet the problem resembles government’s challenge in planning an economy

By withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, President Donald Trump may have avoided myriad legal efforts to force the administration to restrict fossil fuel development and use in the United States.

We’ve written extensively about the bipartisan, awful, awfully mis-named Innovation and PATENT Acts. Bills which would undermine the ability of patent holders to protect their property from thieves. By making it exponentially more difficult for them to do the one thing they can to stop the thieves – sue them.

If you want more of something, mandate it, subsidize it and exempt it from regulations. If you want less of something, punish it with taxes and regulations. Put more bluntly, the power to tax and regulate is the power to destroy. This is the First Rule of Government.

The Barack Obama Administration has almost inarguably executed more unilateral sweeping power grabs than any previous presidency ever. Administration defenders lamely point to the number of Executive Orders issued: “GOP Slams ‘Imperial’ Obama After Fewest Executive Orders In 100 Years (CHART).” Which is technically true – but totally irrelevant.

The small and dwindling contingent in favor of the terrible, patent-smashing bills being considered in Congress suffer from an obsessive fetish — “patent trolls.” It’s at once a mantra — and a Pavlovian fervor-inducer. Just say “patent troll” in front of any member of this tiny cohort — and watch them freak out.

Chicago’s Netflix tax took effect on September 1st and already Chicagoans are seeing the ill effects. Nine plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit challenging Chicago’s authority to tax a streaming Internet service with the 9% surcharge it typically reserves to other forms of entertainment.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has in recent years imposed numerous new regulatory rules strangling the freedoms of businesses and property owners. Latching on to every possible excuse for regulating economic activities by citing microscopic effects on air and water, EPA has shown no respect for any boundaries in imposing its draconian mandates. State governments are experiencing the effects and are increasingly taking action to reduce the amount of economic carnage the Obama administration’s EPA inflicts.

In a welcome show of bipartisanship, the U.S. Senate took a significant step in the direction of freer global trade in April. The Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (TPA), cosponsored by Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), is designed to fast-track approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a landmark trade agreement currently under negotiation by the United States and 10 other Pacific Rim countries.

Joy Pullmann, managing editor at The Federalist and education research fellow at the Heartland Institute discusses some of the top education policy stories of 2014 with Heather Kays, managing editor of School Reform News. Pullmann and Kays also discuss what’s to come in 2015.

Ignoring the language of the law, the Obama administration decided to give tax credits through the federally established exchange. This triggered several lawsuits, with two courts ruling to uphold the law as written, thereby preventing tax credits from being applied to individuals who signed up through the federal exchange, while a third court sided with the administration’s argument Congress simply forgot to write into the law that tax credits could be given through federal exchanges.

Over a three-year period, 2009-2012, Department of Justice data shows American taxpayers footed the bill for more than $53 million in so-called environmental groups’ legal fees—and the actual number could be much higher. The real motivation behind the Endangered Species Act (ESA) litigation, perhaps, could have more to do with vengeance and penance than with a real desire to protect flora and fauna.