Lina Khan’s Failed FTC Experiment
Norms fulfill an important role in bureaucracies. They enable sustainable impact. Understanding how people work together and how institutions make, promulgate, and cement rules is vital. Impatient turbulence doesn’t work in this context.
“The FTC has persisted in relentless norm-busting, beginning with Mr. Biden’s designating Ms. Khan as chair immediately after she was confirmed as a commissioner—without telling the Senate he intended to do so. It continued by limiting information available to minority commissioners, companies under investigation and Congress. Further, according to a designated agency ethics official, Ms. Khan became the first agency employee to ignore the advice that she recuse herself from participating in a specific party matter owing to “appearance or other federal ethics grounds.” Before joining the commission Ms. Khan had opined that Meta, one of the parties to a challenged merger, should be denied such acquisitions. She chose to participate anyway, and members of the commission sought to conceal her disregard for ethical guidance.
“Norms are essential, particularly when people with strong but different opinions must work together. When they are undermined, so too are social and professional cohesion. Such is the case at Ms. Khan’s FTC. While the commission is certainly active, promulgating rules and filing lawsuits, the painstaking organization and planning necessary to make its efforts permanent are nowhere to be found. As legendary basketball coach John Wooden said, “Never mistake activity for achievement.””
When I first moved to Boston for school, a friend offered me a ride in his car. He was a local.
He rolled through a stop sign. I gasped. (I come from a long line of rule abiders.)
He smiled and turned to me. “It’s more of a guide really.”
It would appear that the supremacy of Congress as the governing body for the administrative state is also “more of a guide.”
“The NLRB rule issued last year redefined franchise and contract-based businesses so unions can bargain collectively with any employer with “indirect control” over working conditions. Previously the employer had to have direct control. The change is intended to help unions organize more than 800,000 franchise firms, most of them small businesses.
“Democrats had tried and failed to pass the joint-employer standard when they ran all of Congress in 2021-2022, but these days that failure hardly matters. The administrative state writes the laws and runs our lives no matter what Congress does. Mr. Biden’s veto killed the repeal resolution that had passed the Senate, 50-48, with Democrats Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Maine’s Angus King voting yes. It passed the House 206-177, with eight Democrats in support.”
The Wages of Bureaucracy Are Stagnation
Interesting long tweet suggesting that the level of imposed bureaucratic friction should be proportional to firm size to encourage entrepreneurship.
This, however, ignores the fact that bureaucracy favors the large.
Biden Races to Trump-Proof His Agenda
A decent overview of the Congressional Review Act and one that explains the recent bonanza of rulemaking in Washington.
“The past few months have seen a frenzy of regulatory activity. In April, government agencies finalized nearly three dozen economically significant regulations, more than during any single month of Biden’s presidency, according to the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center. New policy announcements from the White House are being rolled out multiple times each week on issues ranging from tighter environmental rules to new restrictions on noncompete agreements.
““They’re all looking back to what happened in 2017 and thinking, ‘That could repeat itself in 2025,’” said Steven Balla, the co-director of GW’s Regulatory Studies Center, which analyzes the Congressional Review Act.
“Administration officials say they have until late May to wrap up key regulations, though that timeline could change as a result of the CRA’s arcane and difficult-to-navigate rules. “