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Bryan McKenzie of the Charlottesville Daily Progress reports that small banks are confused by new federal “regulations” that seem to appear at random:With a quarter-century in the industry, Patricia G. Satterfield has long recognized that regulation of banks is a subjective practice. But the ...
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Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II, the attorney general of Virginia, issued administrative subpoenas earlier this year to the University of Virginia — a corporation created and run by the state — seeking documents related to the work of former professor Michael Mann, a co-author of the ...
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Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, interviewed in USA Today:Q: What’s the result of the Wild Oats merger?A: The end result is that it’s been great. Our Wild Oats same — store sales were up like 16% in the second quarter.Q: Would you do that ...
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Edwin S. Rockefeller, a longtime antitrust lawyer and onetime chair of the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Section, has said, “Antitrust is a religion.” He did not mean that in a good way. His 2007 book, aptly titled The Antitrust Religion, explains that antitrust is ...
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As I noted yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission now punishes individuals who publish comments online about products for sale without disclosing their own “material interest” in the product. The FTC’s complaint said that it violates federal law to deprive consumers of facts that “would ...
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The Federal Trade Commission is now actively policing comments left on commercial websites and punishing individual commenters who do not disclose their business interests to the government’s satisfaction. In a proposed order announced today, the FTC accused Reverb Communications, Inc., a public relations firm ...
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Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports calls out the “swindlers” who run Major League Baseball’s Florida Marlins for lying toA look at the leak of the Marlins’ financial information to Deadspin confirmed the long-held belief that the team takes a healthy chunk of MLB-distributed money ...
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“Too many ‘free’ offers come with strings attached,” warned David Vladeck recently. Who is David Vladeck? Why, he’s the person in charge of protecting you from unscrupulous businesses. Vladeck is director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, and his warning came in ...
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It’s the economic question of our time, posed via Twitter by Brooke Oberwetter:Stand-alone cupcake stores: What’s the f*cking business model? How long can $3 cupcakes demand possibly be sustained? Nonsense.This is not a new question. I alluded to the $3 cupcake phenomenon in ...
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A federal grand jury indicted former Major League Baseball pitcher Roger Clemens today for lying about his alleged personal use of anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, and vitamin B12. In addition to perjury and false statements charges, the grand jury also accused Clemens of “obstruction ...
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In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed two months ago, the Federal Trade Commission refused to disclose 48 pages of documents related to the agency’s exclusive contract with an outside company to handle funds and customer data obtained in so-called consumer ...
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Rule 13-4 of the Rules of Golf prohibit a player from touching the ground with his club while making a shot inside a bunker. The penalty for breach of this rule is two strokes added to the player’s score. Anyone who was unaware of this ...
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Darelle Revis signed a six-year contract with the New York Jets in 2007 that guaranteed him at least $11 million in base salary and bonuses. His base salary for the upcoming 2010 season is $550,000, which is relatively low for a player of his position, ...
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The Federal Trade Commission published its order against Intel today. Most of the order actually deals with intellectual property issues, a domain the FTC has progressively tried to wrestle away from the patent system and the courts. This order does bring the FTC ...
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This has been coming for awhile. Yesterday Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus—the wife of Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz—wrote a critical column on the ethical troubles of House Democrats Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters:I’m certainly not suggesting that most lawmakers are as heedless ...
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And now for our “Narcissistic State Announcement of the Week“:Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz will be joined by Bureau of Competition Director Richard Feinstein at FTC Headquarters on Wednesday, August 4, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. ET to detail the terms of the Commission’s ...
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Ted Frank of the Center for Class Action Fairness reports that a federal court has certified an antitrust class action brought on behalf of all iPhone owners—alleging Apple’s exclusive deal with AT&T illegally monopolizes the market for “iPhone telephone service.” Frank notes this is ...
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Berin Szoka, a self-described “cyber-libertarian” attorney who works for the DC-based Progress and Freedom Foundation, felt it necessary to backpedal recently on his criticism of the Federal Trade Commission. Szoka wrote on July 13 that he and his PFF colleagues are “actually big fans ...
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Earlier this year the Obama administration kidnapped Ian Norris, a British citizen and former chief executive of Morgan Crucible, and forced him to stand trial on fabricated “obstruction of justice” charges. A Philadelphia jury acquitted him of that and several lesser charges, but convicted him ...
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The Federal Trade Commission’s time machine worked its magic again, restoring the market for a particular group of herbicides to its pre-2008 condition:Australian chemical company Nufarm Limited has agreed to sell certain assets and modify some of its business agreements to settle Federal Trade ...
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I was reading a Beltway columnist’s cry this morning over the can’t-return-quickly-enough federal death tax. The tax does not apply for deaths in 2010 — but it will for deaths in 2011 and beyond — which means George Steinbrenner’s sons were spared one heckuva tax ...
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This should be obvious, but the reason governments can’t stop themselves from inflating real estate bubbles is that taxes based on the “assessed” value of real estate are the lifeblood of most local governments. It’s always in the government’s interest to value real property as ...
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For the second time this week, the Federal Trade Commission ordered a company to undo a previously completed merger. Today the FTC announced Fidelity National Financial, Inc., will sell a number of property title databases to Commission-selected buyers. The FTC said Fidelity’s 2008 ...
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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals entered the following “unpublished” decision today in Novak v. Warner Brothers Pirctures, LLC:Deborah Novak, John Witek, and Witek & Novak, Inc., (collectively, the “Producers”) hold the copyright in Ashes to Glory, a documentary film that portrays the rebuilding of ...
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As I reported last month, the Federal Trade Commission issued an administrative complaint against the North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners, “alleging that it is harming competition by blocking non-dentists from providing teeth-whitening services in the state.” Unfortunately for the FTC, ...