Free Republic

Your next new home air conditioner could set you back $12,000 or more, with federal regulators contributing to the rising cost of staying cool. Before 2020, buying and installing a new residential central air conditioner typically cost well under $10,000. Many jobs, including both purchase and installation, fell in the $6,000 to $7,000 range—about half the current price—says Martin Hoover, a co-owner of Atlanta-based Empire Heating & Air Conditioning. While many factors, including rising material costs, have contributed to the increase in prices, regulations have played an outsize role. The Energy Department in January 2023 issued a new efficiency standard...

As a seasoned restaurant consultant deeply entrenched in the industry, I've got my finger on the pulse of what's happening. Running a restaurant has always been a tough gig. Everyone seems to think their family recipe will turn into a gold mine, but sadly, it's not just about the quality of Grandma's lasagna. There are myriad challenges to navigate in this business. From securing the right location and talent to nailing down a winning concept, dealing with everything from theft to insurance, not to mention the endless stream of fees, licenses, and paperwork, the restaurant industry can nickel and dime...

Back in 1969, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), mandating environmental reviews for all major projects to determine their environment impact and allowing for periods of public comment. This has generally been beneficial, but it opens the door to lengthy lawsuits from environmental activists that can tie projects up in the courts for years. There may be some significant changes coming to the process, however, but only for certain types of projects. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has just finished what's being described as a "rule change" that will remove many delays and "streamline" the...

“Trade Compliance” is a subset of regulatory compliance, focused primarily on export controls and the Customs rules concerning importing and duty assessment. Outside of the occasional discovery of illegal Chinese copies of branded gym shoes, or the even rarer news story about a company caught selling technology to the Iranians or North Koreans, this specialty rarely makes the mainstream news. An exception occurred as April, 2024 came to an end: the Federal Trade Commission announced a record fine against an American retail chain, Williams-Sonoma, and its subsidiaries (including Rejuvenation, Goldtouch, and the Pottery Barn family), for violations of the FTC’s...

Three and a half years into the Biden Administration, and to an ordinary citizen on the ground it might seem like not that much has changed as to energy. Despite hundreds of government actions and initiative in an all-of-government regulatory onslaught to transform the energy economy, the important things have been remarkable stable. Production of oil and gas are actually up, and prices increases have been relatively modest — far less than one might have anticipated from the extreme regulatory hostility to production. The percentage of what is called “primary energy” (that is, energy for everything, not just electricity) coming...

The Biden administration has saddled the U.S. economy with more than $1 trillion worth of final rules and regulations thus far in 2024, according to analysis conducted by the American Action Forum (AAF).The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final emissions regulations for light- and medium-duty vehicles, which some have characterized as an electric vehicle (EV) mandate, pushed the costs of the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda over the $1 trillion threshold for 2024, alone, according to AAF’s analysis. Across all agencies and regulatory actions last week, the federal government published regulations imposing $103 billion worth of total costs and 11.6 million annual...

With the proliferation of bureaucrats in leftist-run California, they're descending like locusts onto the farms of not just California's lower Central Valley, but now the Napa Valley and its wine makers, according to the U.K. Daily Mail. The farmers are swatting back. The Daily Mail reports:Napa Valley's prestigious wineries have launched a revolt against 'abusive' county officials, accusing bureaucrats of killing the region's famous vineyards with absurd and excessive red tape.Wealthy vintners say they are being 'crushed' by 'gross regulatory overreach', which has included penalizing wineries for planting trees, making jam and conducting wine tastings on their own land.One vineyard...

Remember when doing away with “net neutrality” was going to kill the internet? It went away and nothing happened.But now it’s back.The Biden admin and its media lackeys are hyping this as a pro-consumer move. The reality is that the actual impact on consumers has been and likely will be nonexistent unless Team Socialism figures out a way to leverage it for some nefarious purpose. And that certainly should not be ruled out.Net neutrality is about rewarding the biggest lobbyists and that means feeding the biggest censors.We were told that not having net neutrality would endanger our internet access. The...

The Biden administration on Thursday placed the final cornerstone of its plan to tackle climate change: a regulation that would force the nation’s coal-fired power plants to virtually eliminate the planet-warming pollution they release into the air or shut down. The regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency requires coal plants in the United States to reduce 90% of their greenhouse pollution by 2039, one year earlier than the agency had initially proposed. The compressed timeline was welcomed by climate activists but condemned by coal executives who said the new standards would be impossible to meet... Taken together, the regulations could...

Breitbart economics editor John Carney said Thursday on Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow” that President Joe Biden is implementing regulations that were crushing the economy. Carney said, “When you add on giant regulatory burdens onto the private sector what you end up doing is crushing the ability of businesses to grow, crushing the ability of businesses to hire people, crushing people to start new businesses. That is what happened under Obama when it was just 1/5 of what Biden has done. Biden this is just the track record so far, imagine what he will do when he is a lame duck...

About 2 1/2 years ago I wrote a post titled "California plans to kill the residential solar industry." At the time, I had just had solar panels installed on my roof to save money and within months California announced a new plan (Net Metering 3.0) that would have taxed me and anyone else who owned a rooftop solar system for owning the panels. I predicted that if this plan passed, California's rooftop solar industry would fall off a cliff.The result of Net Metering 3.0 is likely going to be the end of the residential solar industry in California. I have...

The Senate on Wednesday afternoon voted in favor of passing a bill reversing the Biden administration's actions mandating states to track and set reduction goals for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles on highways. The chamber approved the resolution in a 53-47 vote in which Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Jon Tester, D-Mont.; and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., joined every Republican voting in the affirmative. The bill was introduced in February by Sens. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.; Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; and Manchin. "Few things are more frustrating in government than un-elected bureaucrats asserting authority they don’t have and foisting federal...

The Biden administration has announced in recent weeks new stringent emissions requirements for virtually the entire American transportation system.The Environmental Protection Agency will mandate by the year 2035 that virtually every car made and sold in America must be an EV. No more gas cars. The New York Times comically declared that motorists don't have to worry because this "is not a ban on gasoline-powered vehicles." Sure it isn't. Today less than 2% of cars use the electric power grid for fuel. So soon we will see 50 times more demand for electricity from autos. Then the EPA announced new...

A federal district court has overturned the Biden administration's climate rule that required states to track and set reduction goals for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles on highways. In a sweeping judgment late Monday, Judge Benjamin Beaton of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky ordered the Federal Highway Administration to stand down on the rules, which the agency finalized in November. The ruling represents a major victory for the State of Kentucky, which challenged the regulations alongside 21 other states. "President Biden’s radical environmental agenda has lost touch with reality, and Kentucky families, farmers and workers...

Democrats in Congress are encouraging the Biden administration to quickly enact a slew of far-reaching regulations ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to Punchbowl News. The Biden administration has pursued an aggressive regulatory agenda to implement President Joe Biden’s political priorities, including measures to encourage the production of more electric vehicles, forgive student loans, restrict “junk fees” by service providers and ban non-competition clauses in contracts, among many others. Amid concerns that Biden may not win the election against former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, Democrats have been encouraging the administration to finalize rules as soon as...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday set strict emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks, buses and other large vehicles, an action that officials said will help clean up some of the nation’s largest sources of planet-warming greenhouse gases. The new rules, which take effect for model years 2027 through 2032, will avoid up to 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the next three decades and provide $13 billion in net benefits in the form of fewer hospital visits, lost work days and deaths, the EPA said. The new standards will especially benefit an estimated 72 million...

The Biden administration has begun a crackdown on emissions generated by heavy duty diesel trucks and buses with regulations announced Friday aimed at forcing those vehicles to hit zero pollution targets by the end of the decade. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims the new rules represent the “strongest-ever greenhouse gas emissions” standards of their kind with everything from city buses and box trucks to garbage trucks and 18-wheelers targeted.

Democrats in Congress are encouraging the Biden administration to quickly enact a slew of far-reaching regulations ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to Punchbowl News. The Biden administration has pursued an aggressive regulatory agenda to implement President Joe Biden’s political priorities, including measures to encourage the production of more electric vehicles, forgive student loans, restrict “junk fees” by service providers and ban non-competition clauses in contracts, among many others. Amid concerns that Biden may not win the election against former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, Democrats have been encouraging the administration to finalize rules as soon as...

When future historians decide to write the definitive treatise on the downfall of the state of California, we can be sure that the final days of August 2022 will feature very prominently. It was on August 25 that the state announced a bold plan to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by the year 2035. Everything had to be electric from that point forward. What would that do to the economy of the state of California, given how expensive electric vehicles are? Where were we going to get the materials to manufacture all of these new EV batteries? No one...

A constitutional battle is shaping up over whether the U.S. government can force the owners and top employees of small businesses to send their addresses and photo IDs to federal financial crime investigators. The Biden administration has appealed a decision by a federal judge in Alabama, who ruled this month the Corporate Transparency Act exceeded the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution. The government says the information collected from small businesses will ferret out shell companies and help law and intelligence officers foil human smugglers, drug traffickers and terrorists. The appeal has a good chance because courts rarely strike...