CELEBRATE HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT TONIGHT: Every year the environmental scolds ask us to sit in the dark contemplating our sins against Mother Earth for what they call “Earth Hour.” Instead, you could join us in celebrating Human Achievement Hour. As well as keeping the lights on, you could be:

• Watching your favorite TV show or movie thanks to satellite technology
• Participating in the craft brewing revolution with a cold drink
• Facetiming or Skyping with far-off friends and family
• Traveling home from a night out with a rideshare driver
• Relaxing at home with plenty of food, heat, and hot water for your family

Celebrate just how far we’ve come from the preindustrial age and, if you’d like, use the hashtag #HAH2018 and tweet examples and photos at @ceidotorg.

(Bumped.)

CELEBRATE HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT THIS SATURDAY: Every year the environmental scolds ask us to sit in the dark contemplating our sins against Mother Earth for what they call “Earth Hour.” Instead, you could join us in celebrating Human Achievement Hour. As well as keeping the lights on, you could be:

• Watching your favorite TV show or movie thanks to satellite technology
• Participating in the craft brewing revolution with a cold drink
• Facetiming or Skyping with far-off friends and family
• Traveling home from a night out with a rideshare driver
• Relaxing at home with plenty of food, heat, and hot water for your family

Celebrate just how far we’ve come from the preindustrial age and, if you’d like, use the hashtag #HAH2018 and tweet examples and photos at @ceidotorg.

TACKLING THE DEEP STATE: I was honored to speak at a panel at CPAC last week entitled, “New Sheriff in Town: How Trump is Taking Down Lawless Government Agencies.” There’s a nice write-up of the panel at LifeZette.

THE DUES AND DON’TS OF UNION LIFE: The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Janus v. AFSCME today, the case that will decide whether government unions still have the right to force non-members to support their inherently political activities. My organization, CEI, has a video explaining what’s at stake:

You can learn more about the case here. Some of you might remember that I wrote about this sort of thing at length in my last book, Stealing You Blind.

WHERE’S MY FLYING CAR, DAMMIT?: Uber appears to be taking the lead in *actually making this happen* with Uber Elevate.

CHANGE: The man who should have been Labor Secretary, Andy Puzder, writes in the Wall Street Journal about how the employment atmosphere is changing:

The Obama economy was a “part time” economy that failed to generate the full-time jobs Americans need.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people working full time increased by 2.4 million in 2017, compared with only 1.6 million in 2016. In other words, the overall number of jobs added was lower in 2017, but only because hundreds of thousands of people left part-time for full-time jobs.

Both 2016 and 2017 set some year-end records. In 2016, BLS recorded the highest number of people working part time at year’s end since it began recording the data in 1968. In 2017, it recorded the highest number of people working full time at year’s end since 1968 and the fewest working part-time since 2011.

As I mentioned last week, the next thing to look for is people being attracted back into the labor force from never-ending education and the like.

BOOM TOWN: New jobs numbers and projected GDP boom point to the old truth – supply-side measures work. My take over at CEI’s blog is here. Note there’s a lot of work still to do to recover from the Obama slump.

BUREAUCRATS GET A LIFELINE: The DC Circuit has upheld the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reversing an earlier decision by a 3 judge panel. I’ll have more to say elsewhere (and will link it here) but this question will probably go to SCOTUS. With any luck, this will be the zenith of the regulatory state’s protection from constitutional checks and balances.

THE LEFT EATS ITS OWN, PART MMMMCCCLXVII: Climate alarmist Bill Nye called out by “500 Women Scientists” for legitimizing climate skepticism by attending the State of the Union address. “500 Women Scientists,” by the way, appears to be four women.

THERE’S THAT MODIFIER “SOCIAL” AGAIN: Blackrock CEO says businesses need to serve a “social purpose.” At USA Today, I argue that they already do.

SPARE THE ROD AND…: The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has just released a study (PDF link) on the effect of Obama-era suspension policies required by the Department of Education that coerced school districts into enacting softer discipline policies. Surprise, surprise – the policies had a negative impact on test scores in Wisconsin public schools.

IF ONLY CONGRESS COULD AGREE TO ZERO FUNDING FOR AGENCIES: One of the bizarre features of the CFPB’s unconstitutional structure is that the Bureau gets no funding from Congress. Instead, the Director simply writes to the Fed requesting funds, which the Fed has to grant up to a certain variable limit. Acting Director Mick Mulvaney has just put in his first such request – for $0.

Politico Pro reports:

In a letter to Fed chair Janet Yellen obtained by POLITICO, Mulvaney wrote that the bureau already has $177 million in the bank, enough to cover the $145 million the bureau has budgeted for its second quarter. Cordray had maintained a “reserve fund” in case of overruns or emergencies, but Mulvaney said he didn’t see any reason for it, since the Fed has always given the bureau the money it needs. Mulvaney, who is also Trump’s budget director, noted that instead of advancing the funds to the bureau, the Fed could return them to the Treasury and reduce the deficit.

“While this approximately $145 million may not make much of a dent in the deficit, the men and women at the Bureau are proud to do their part to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Mulvaney wrote.

I can’t stop smiling.

ETA: More from the excellent Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner here.

HOW TO HANDLE THE LEFT: British Channel 4 interviewer attempts to ambush Canadian professor who espouses heretical views and gets shellacked. As Douglas Murray says, “That isn’t news. It isn’t even interviewing. It is grandstanding. This nation’s broadcasters should feel ashamed.” Not just the British nation’s…

MINIMUM WAGE PAIN II: Pizzerias in New York state are changing their names to avoid the minimum wage hikes.

MINIMUM WAGE PAIN: Red Robin eliminates bus boys as a result of labor cost increases. Note that these aren’t positions easily replaced by automation. Other workers will have to work harder to make up the gap left by positions that politicians decided were worth more than the business owner did.

IF YOU CAN’T READ THIS, BLAME A TEACHERS’ UNION: A couple of years ago, my organization published a series of studies that showed that strong union laws depressed states’ economic outcomes. Now, researchers from Cornell have looked at the effect of collective bargaining by teachers’ unions on educational outcomes. The results?

We find robust evidence that exposure to teacher collective bargaining laws worsens the future labor market outcomes of men: living in a state that has a duty-to-bargain law for all 12 grade-school years reduces male earnings by $1,493 (or 2.75%) per year and decreases hours worked by 0.52 hours per week. Estimates for women do not show consistent evidence of negative effects on these outcomes. The earnings estimates for men indicate that teacher collective bargaining reduces earnings by $149.6 billion in the US annually. Among men, we also find evidence of lower employment rates, which is driven by lower labor force participation. Exposure to collective bargaining laws leads to reductions in the skill levels of the occupations into which male workers sort as well. Effects are largest among black and Hispanic men, although white and Asian men also experience sizable negative impacts of collective bargaining exposure. Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we demonstrate that collective bargaining law exposure leads to reductions in measured cognitive and non-cognitive skills among young adults, and these effects are larger for men.

My children’s old middle school principal (a real innovator) used to say that he loved teachers’ union states – because he could visit them and recruit good, hungry young teachers whose careers were stymied by union rules.

WELL I NEVER: Grocery stores pass through all of the cost increases from minimum wage hikes to their customers in price rises. Guess who bears the brunt…

SWAMP DRAINING 101: CFPB whistleblower Ron Rubin on how Donald Trump evicted Elizabeth Warren from the Bureau. Related: another whistleblower alleges that her bosses at the CFPB urged her to falsify a report relating to a financial service center business.

PROHIBITION 2.0: In Virginia, only the government can sell liquor. Here’s why, in a short film from the Federalist Society, featuring my colleague Angela Logomasini.

A CONSERVATIVE BRIT IN DC (NOT ME) WRITES: Ryan Bourne, formerly of London’s Institute of Economic Affairs and now of the Cato Institute reflects on his first year in DC. He’s noticed something:

[A]rticle after article is written as if this really is the end of the world…[W]ho cares for…truths? Walk around DC and you’ll overhear young people declaring confidently how the tax bill is terrible for them financially. That it is championed by Trump is seemingly good enough reason that it must necessarily be bad for liberals.

Welcome to DC, Ryan!

GREEDY CORPORATION ALERT: In immediate wake of tax bill passing, AT&T Will Give Workers $1,000 Bonuses to Celebrate the Tax Bill.

FASTER, PLEASE: Blockchains are poised to end the era of passwords – and password database security breaches. The idea of a self-sovereign ID should please everyone, although I still can’t stop laughing at the sentence at the end of the linked article.

AX CFPB’S TPS REPORTS: According to the (excellent) legal eagles David Rifkin and Andrew Grossman, new Acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney can use the oft-overlooked Paperwork Reduction Act to nullify many of his predecessor’s regulations (paywall likely):

Federal agencies are eager to impose paperwork burdens on citizens and businesses. It costs an agency almost nothing to impose a new record-keeping requirement or reporting mandate. The expense falls on those required to carry it out. The obvious solution was to put agencies on a paperwork budget and force them to internalize the costs they foist on the public.

To ensure that agencies don’t evade that responsibility, the PRA established robust centralized oversight in the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House. Every “information collection request” issued or imposed by a federal agency must be approved by OMB. That includes government forms as well as requirements that private parties collect information. If OMB disapproves a request, the agency cannot enforce it…

The CFPB was designed to be an independent agency, but unlike the others it has a single director. The PRA limits the ability to overrule to “an independent regulatory agency which is administered by two or more members.” So OMB can disapprove any action by the bureau that imposes unnecessary or excessive paperwork burdens, without fear of being overruled.

Mr. Mulvaney should exercise that power. Every single provision of the short-term lending rule is structured around information collection requests subject to the PRA. The rule’s central requirement is that lenders determine a borrower’s ability to repay by demanding financial information from the borrower, verifying it, and then recording the result of various calculations. Each step is its own paperwork burden.

It’s a burden that the CFPB admits will destroy 80% of the short-term lending industry.

WHAT A FARRAGO: At CNS News, I argue that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is an offense to the Constitution, and it is time to abolish it.

ENJOY THE FEAST: Are there neurotoxins in your Thanksgiving meal? That’s a QTWTAIN, says environmental risk expert Angela Logomasini. As she notes, a lot of the hysteria is politically-driven:

Disregarding this reality, media hype about conventional produce and synthetic pesticides suggests they pose serious health risks. Much of this hype appears politically driven. For example, after a Trump administration decision rejecting an environmental activist petition to ban the pesticide known as chlorpyrifos, media attacks exploded. They absurdly allege that the pesticide is a dangerous “neurotoxin” similar to chemical warfare agents such as sarin gas and that it’s use could actually lead to brain damage.

As she points out, the real risk is from organic pathogens, which we’ve known about for a long time. So cook everything properly, and enjoy the feast! Happy Thanksgiving to all!