While I Was Away
So I took a month-and-a-half off to write a book on regulation (if it ever comes out, you can be sure, I’ll be promoting it here!). And so I have plenty to say since my wife is getting tired of listening to my rants. I’ll get to the sequester and the big news in the next few days but in the mean time, here is some lesser but important things you may have missed, since you didn’t have little old me around to highlight it.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that the proportion of the plight of the poorest is worsening:
The number of lower income households struggling to pay their monthly rent and who may also be living in substandard housing continued to grow between 2009 and 2011 according to a new report released today by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 2011, HUD reports nearly 8.5 million lower income families paid more than half their monthly income for rent, lived in severely substandard housing, or both.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals (the one for which the Senate cannot confirm judges) supported the Fish and Wildlife Service protection of the polar bear:
A federal court rejected a challenge Friday to the Fish and Wildlife Services’s 2008 decision to classify polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a 2011 ruling by a lower court, which the State of Alaska and hunting groups were challenging.
Copyright 2013 Liberaland
By: Stuart Shapiro
Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.