Great Moments in Government Regs, 1,000s of Low-Level Bank Employees Have Been Fired

From USA Today:

Richard Eggers doesn't look like a mastermind of financial crime. The former farm boy speaks deliberately, can't remember the last time he got a speeding ticket, and favors suspenders, horn-rim glasses and plaid shirts. But the 68-year-old Vietnam veteran is still too risky for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, in Des Moines, Iowa, which fired him on July 12 from his $29,795-a-year job as a customer service representative.

Egger's crime? Putting a cardboard cutout of a dime in a washing machine in nearby Carlisle, Iowa, on Feb. 2, 1963.

Eggers got a chance to explain himself to company officials after they received the results of his criminal background check from a Florida company called First Advantage. He was fired anyway.

The computerized report obtained by First Advantage listed Eggers' crime as "fraud." However, records in the Warren County Courthouse confirmed his account of the 1963 incident. The files say he was arrested as a 19-year old for "operating a coin changing machine by false means" and convicted of that charge.

Big banks have been firing low-level employees like Eggers since the issuance of new federal banking employment guidelines in May 2011 and new mortgage employment guidelines in February. The tougher standards are meant to weed out executives and mid-level bank employees guilty of transactional crimes, like identity fraud or mortgage fraud, but they are being applied across-the-board thanks to $1 million a day fines for noncompliance.

Banks have fired thousands of workers nationally because of the rules, said Natasha Buchanan, an attorney with Higbee & Associates in Santa Ana, Calif., who has helped some of the banking workers regain their eligibility to be employed.

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Videos on the Hydraulic Fracturing Process and the Energy Prosperity It Has Brought to North Dakota

Here's the technology driving our energy bonanza.

Here's another great animation (see another one here) of the drilling technology that is responsible for America's revolutionary, game-changing, shale-based energy bonanza, which was described by CEO Robin West of PFC Energy as the "energy equivalent of the Berlin Wall coming down."

The video above comes from the Energy from Shale organization: 

"Hydraulic fracturing is a process that has been used for more than 60 years for the extraction of oil and natural gas from underground shale formations. The technology continues to improve accessing abundant energy sources, while limiting environmental impact."
 
The videos below are also from Energy from Shale, and they explain how hydraulic fracturing and shale oil are supporting communities in North Dakota by bringing energy-related jobs and prosperity to the state's Bakken region.

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Classic Milton Friedman Video from 1977

 
In this classic video from 1977, Milton Friedman delivers a 52-minute lecture at Utah State University titled "Myths That Conceal Reality" including: 1) the Robber Baron Myth, 2) the Great Depression Myth, 3) the Demand for Government Service Myth, 4) the Free Lunch Myth, and 5) the Robin Hood Myth. 

Here's how Milton Friedman introduces his lecture:

"As you are all aware, there has been a drastic shift in public attitudes public opinion in the past fifty years or so, with respect to the role of the individual on the one hand and the role of government and collective institutions on the other."

"There has been a shift in the philosophy and attitudes of the public from a belief in individual responsibility, from a belief in a society in which the role of government was as an umpire, to a belief in a society in which the emphasis is on social responsibility and the role of government as Big Brother and protector of the individual. As always when such shifts arise in public opinion, they are largely produced and reinforced by the development of myths about prior experience."

"Somebody wrote that a myth is like an air mattress: there’s nothing in it, but it’s wonderfully comfortable, and deflation causes an uncomfortable jolt. My purpose today is to give you that jolt."

HT: Newsalert

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Great Moments in Government Overreach: DOJ Accuses Sacramento Library of Discrimination

The Sacramento Public Library Authority partnered with Barnes and Noble on a trial basis to provide a NOOK e-book reader at each of its 28 libraries, pre-loaded with 20 books in a variety of genres.  Sure seems like a sensible,  innovative, market-based, consumer-friendly option now that so many people do their reading using Kindles, NOOKs, and iPads instead of print copies.  

So what's the problem? According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the pilot e-reader program violates the Americans with Disabilities Act because it discriminates against blind patrons of the library, because NOOK e-readers are "inaccessible" to the blind.  The library reached a settlement that requires it to purchase iPod touch and iPad devices, which read e-books aloud with a computerized voice.  DOJ has also directed the library not to buy any additional e-readers that exclude blind and it requires the library to train its staff on ADA compliance.

Read the whole story here (CNS News) or here (Sacramento Bee).  Here's the full text of the settlement and the DOJ press release.

Question: Isn't the Sacramento Public Library's entire collection of books, magazines, and newspapers in hard copy also"inaccessible" to its blind patrons?  

Update: Census data on Sacramento indicate that a language other than English is spoken in almost 37% of the city's homes, so couldn't you make a case that the books in English at the city's libraries be "inaccessible" to many of the local residents?  If so, then shouldn't the libraries be required to have each book available in several languages?  

Update: The DOJ's enforcement of equal treatment and non-discriminatory practices seems to be somewhat selective. In the case above, it was considered illegal to give sighted people special treatment, preferences or access to resources at public libraries that were not available to blind people, and the legal standard applied was "equal treatment under the law for all at a publicly funded library."  But the DOJ doesn't seem equally concerned about special preferences at publicly-funded universities, where it allows a different legal standard of "unequal treatment" and "special preferences" based on race?       

HT: Curtis Purington

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Quotation of the Day: Comparing Abstractions

"Sports statistics are kept in a much more rational way than statistics about political issues. Have you ever seen statistics on what percentage of the home runs over the years have been hit by batters hitting in the .320s versus batters hitting in the .280s or the .340s? Not very likely."

"Such statistics would make no sense, because different batters are in these brackets from one year to the next. You wouldn't be comparing people, you would be comparing abstractions and mistaking those abstractions for people."

"But, in politics and in commentaries on political issues, people talk incessantly about how "the top one percent" of income earners are getting more money or how the "bottom 20 percent" are falling behind. Yet the turnover in income brackets over a decade is at least as great as the turnover in batting average brackets."

~Thomas Sowell 


Update: "Comparing the top income bracket with the bottom income bracket over a period of years tells you nothing about what is happening to the actual flesh-and-blood human beings who are moving between brackets during those years. Following trends among income brackets over the years creates the illusion of following people over time. But the only way to follow people is to follow people."

~Thomas Sowell's 2007 column on Income Confusion 


Update: “Only by focusing on the income brackets, instead of the actual people moving between those brackets, have the intelligentsia been able to verbally create a "problem" for which a "solution" is necessary. They have created a powerful vision of "classes" with "disparities" and "inequities" in income, caused by "barriers" created by "society." But the routine rise of millions of people out of the lowest quintile over time makes a mockery of the "barriers" assumed by many, if not most, of the intelligentsia.”

 ~Thomas Sowell

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Quotation of the Day: Gender Pay Discrimination

"The reason economists have trouble with the idea of rampant [gender] pay discrimination is that it defies common sense. Let's say I own a company and I am employing only men. Is it really true that I could fire all the men, replace them with women and lower my cost of labor by 23%? If I could do that why wouldn't I? If I were stupid enough not to do it, wouldn't a competitor of mine do it and drive me out of business?"

"In other words, if workers received substantially different pay for doing the same job, an employer would have to be leaving a lot of money on the table by not hiring the lower-paid employees. (Remember, most people who believe in pay discrimination also believe most CEOs are selfish, money-grubbing sorts as well.) And it can't just be one employer. In order for pay differentials to persist in entire industries, every employer in the market must be willing to discriminate — including the firms run by women!"

~John Goodman

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Quotation of the Day: Happy Capital Day?

"Capital without labor means machines with no operators, or financial resources without the manpower to invest in. Labor without capital looks like Haiti or North Korea: plenty of people working but doing it with sticks instead of bulldozers, or starting a small enterprise with pocket change instead of a bank loan."

"Like most Americans, I’ve traditionally celebrated labor on Labor Day weekend—not organized labor or compulsory labor unions, mind you, but the noble act of physical labor to produce the things we want and need. Nothing at all wrong about that!"

"But this year on Labor Day weekend, I’ll also be thinking about the remarkable achievements of inventors of labor-saving devices, the risk-taking venture capitalists who put their own money (not your tax money) on the line and the fact that nobody in America has to dig a ditch with a spoon or cut his lawn with a knife. Indeed, what could possibly be wrong about having a “Capital Day” in odd numbered years and a “Labor Day” in the even-numbered ones?"

"Labor Day and Capital Day. I know of no good reason why we should have just one and not the other."

~Larry Reed, President of the Foundation for Economic Education

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