Millions of small businesses risk ruin over a new mandate



Millions of small-business owners, including those running LLCs and S corporations, face looming financial penalties and even jail time due to the Corporate Transparency Act Beneficial Ownership Information rule, also known as CTA BOI. With the January 1 deadline approaching, Congress must act now by passing one of the proposed delay bills, or Donald Trump must pledge that his administration will not enforce fines for noncompliance.

What is the CTA BOI rule, and what’s the problem?

As Glenn Beck and I have discussed this past year, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a division of the Treasury Department, issued the CTA BOI rule, which requires businesses to report personal information about all owners and decision-makers. This includes submitting a photo ID, such as a driver's license or passport, for each person. The stated goal of the rule is to combat cartels, terrorism, and money laundering. However, this reasoning is deeply flawed. Criminal organizations are unlikely to voluntarily register their businesses, leaving law-abiding small businesses to shoulder the compliance burden.

Large businesses are exempt from this rule, meaning small businesses and other entities, such as certain housing associations, bear the brunt of the regulation. The penalties for noncompliance are excessive, including daily fines exceeding $500 and potential jail time. Additionally, the rule requires businesses to submit sensitive personal data, creating a cybersecurity risk if hackers target the database.

Congress has failed to act decisively

Despite at least 10 pending lawsuits challenging the rule's constitutionality, including one where a federal district court declared it unconstitutional, Congress has not taken definitive action. Multiple delay bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate, yet none have moved forward. A recent report estimated compliance rates at just 10%, meaning millions of small businesses could face penalties under an unconstitutional rule.

Small-business owners are not financial criminals. They are the backbone of the American economy and deserve better treatment. This rule unfairly targets them, and Congress or President-elect Trump must take immediate action to protect these businesses.

What needs to happen?

Congress must pass a delay bill before the January 1 deadline. Alternatively, President-elect Trump could reassure small-business owners that his administration will not enforce the fines, giving them much-needed breathing room. This would allow time to overturn the rule entirely in 2025.

Last week, 44 members of Congress sent a letter to FinCEN requesting a delay, but more concrete action is necessary. Small businesses need clear communication and protection from this onerous regulation.

What can you do?

Call your representatives and spread the word on social media. Urge Congress and the Trump administration to take swift action. Small businesses need support, not unnecessary barriers, to thrive. Let’s prioritize empowering the American entrepreneurial spirit and protecting the backbone of our economy.

How Kamala Harris' dim-witted AI policies have harmed Americans



Kamala Harris probably knows little — or nothing — about AI policy. “AI is kind of a fancy thing. First of all, it's two letters. It means 'artificial intelligence,’” Vice President Kamala Harris explained to labor and civil rights leaders last year.

But if Harris pulls off a victory in November, she would hold a massive influence over America’s AI regulatory approach.

As Biden’s AI czar, Harris has advocated for woke and globalist AI regulations that promote left-wing social causes, curb free speech and stifle innovation, and limit competition — a stark contrast to Trump’s and the RNC’s laissez-faire, conservative, pro-tech AI platform. Though she didn't have much experience on AI policy, Biden still decided that Harris would be the right pick to lead the country’s AI policy — an issue that could give the American economy an edge over China’s.

Last year, Harris held an AI roundtable where she promised civil rights leaders to implement AI policies that address the “legitimate concern…about how racial bias and other types of biases will impact the lives of people because of AI” by “establishing protections knowing that certain people will be targeted based on their socioeconomic status, based on their race, based upon their disability status.”

And this year, Harris announced the creation of a Council of Chief AI Officers, in which left-wing bureaucrats would be appointed in every federal agency to “address the climate crisis” and “advance equitable outcomes.” Even though these AI officers will also be tasked with protecting Americans’ privacy and security, the Biden administration has made it clear that “protecting Americans” includes protecting minority groups from “oppression.” So don’t be surprised when this council converts into another government propaganda arm to implement progressive cultural ideology.

Curbing free speech

ARTIFICIAL EXPLANATION? Kamala Harris struggles to explain what AI iswww.youtube.com

Not only is Harris concerned with AI’s racial biases, but she is also concerned with AI’s ability to spread information quickly — “threats which to many people feel existential,” she told a London audience before the Global Summit of AI Safety. "Consider, for example … when people around the world cannot discern fact from fiction because of a flood of AI-enabled misinformation and disinformation.”

It’s obvious that Harris and other globalist progressives don’t actually care about misinformation. The World Economic Forum calls for AI regulation since “manipulated and falsified information is now the most severe short-term risk the world faces,” echoing Harris’ anti-free-speech language.

Meanwhile, leftists spread misinformation about Trump and allied groups all the time. Their worry is that AI could expand the influence of conservative and right-wing movements in ways they can’t control. Their pre-emptive solution is AI regulations to limit free speech for conservatives and any other group they deem a rival or problem.

Without such tools, as the WEF warns, free speech online “could trigger civil unrest and confrontation. It will also lead to growing distrust of media and government sources.” Misinformation and disinformation, they insist, will “deepen polarized views in societies where political opinion is already entrenched.”

Of course, the globalist elites consider themselves the only proper arbiter of what counts as misinformation. In their minds, they hold a monopoly on truth and Americans are incapable of independently discerning right from wrong. Voting for a Republican can only mean they were deceived by “misinformation.”

Combatting misinformation is just code for censoring speech. Many Chinese AI chatbots don’t answer questions about Tiananmen Square. Now American search engines refuse to autocomplete queries about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. What’s to say that a Kamala Harris-regulated chatbot won’t answer questions about Fauci’s COVID lies or will block all information concerning the assassination attempt?

Expanding monopolies

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Regulations are typically associated with antitrust and breaking up monopolies in order to ensure a fair market. And some in the Biden/Harris administration have aggressively pushed to regulate AI in hopes of creating a competitive market.

Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, wrote a pro-AI-regulation New York Times op-ed in which she argues that “public officials have a responsibility to ensure this hard-learned history doesn’t repeat itself,” alluding to big tech’s giant monopolies that have dominated the tech sector.

“As companies race to deploy and monetize A.I., the Federal Trade Commission is taking a close look at how we can best achieve our dual mandate to promote fair competition and to protect Americans from unfair or deceptive practices,” Khan wrote. She continued, urging regulators to be “vigilant,” warning that without regulating AI, “dominant firms could use their control over these key inputs to exclude or discriminate against downstream rivals, picking winners and losers in ways that further entrench their dominance.”

Harris’ regulatory approach, however, while heavy in regulations, will only expand the monopolies Khan wants to break up.

As AI czar, Harris worked with big tech elites, including the CEOs of Google and Microsoft, to regulate AI and crush competition. Last summer, Harris convened with Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI to discuss the “safe, secure, and transparent development of AI technology.” President Biden also met with industry leaders to discuss AI regulation, an effort widely criticized as cronyism. Federalist editor Emily Jashinsky likened the meeting to assembling “a bunch of Railway Barons and saying, ‘I'm really curious. I want you to tell us what we need to do to protect the people from this.’”

If Harris were serious about protecting Americans from big tech and AI abuses, why would she meet with the very people she claims need to be regulated and ask them which regulations they want or don’t want?

Obviously, big tech wants regulations that will limit competition and increase its market power while scaremongering about how other regulations or the lack of its preferred regulations will stifle innovation. Big tech companies, like Google, want regulations to make it harder for startups to enter the market but oppose regulations that cap their own market share.

Under an administration led by Kamala Harris, we’d only see more unnecessary red tape for AI development. For Harris, AI policy is just another weapon to achieve progressive ends. In her eyes, equitable outcomes, not increased innovation and productivity, are the primary benchmark of a successful AI policy. And for establishment liberals, whom Harris now leads, doing the bidding of big tech is just an added bonus that will help garner popularity among the elites.

It’s Time For Congress To Take Out America’s Regulatory Trash

The Supreme Court’s Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision makes now the perfect time to get started.

JD Vance's populist plans to break up Big Tech monopolies



Last night, Sen. JD Vance officially accepted the Republican nomination for vice president at the 2024 Republican Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sending optimism to Silicon Valley and the tech community.

A right-wing populist, Vance has been critical of the old right’s market fundamentalism in favor of the new right’s pro-worker economic nationalism — one that calls for antitrust crackdowns on Big Tech. A New York Times article described Vance as “pro-labor, a fan of crypto and the F.T.C.'s Lina Khan, and says Big Tech is too powerful.”

Without tough antitrust legislation against Big Tech monopolies and pro-innovation regulatory reform, Big Tech will continue to enjoy its “wall of laws and regulations that protect and entrench their positions and that new startups cannot possibly scale.” Breaking up Big Tech, on the other hand, will empower startups and foster an innovative environment.

Last February, Vance called for government action against Google, tweeting, “It’s time to break Google up,” since Google is “an explicitly progressive technology company“ and “a threat to democracy.”

“In October and November, as millions of undecided voters consider their choice for president, they will go to Google and ask 'Did Donald Trump say X?' 'Is Biden too old to be president?' The results they see will be explicitly biased towards Democrats,” Vance tweeted.

A conservative trustbuster?

Vance has drawn criticism from the libertarian right for bucking the GOP’s free-market orthodoxy and praising Biden-appointed Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan’s aggressive trust-busting revolution against Silicon Valley and private equity. As FTC chair, Khan has battled various big multinational businesses by cracking down on corporations who make bogus “Made in America” claims, going after a private equity firm’s plan to “drive up the price of anesthesia services provided to Texas patients,” and suing Kochava for selling geolocation data and violating Americans’ privacy.

At RemedyFest, an antitrust conference organized by Y Combinator and Bloomberg, Vance told conference attendees that he “look[s] at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration who ... is doing a pretty good job.”

Following Vance’s VP announcement, Reason, a libertarian publication,put out a story attacking Vance’s “love” for Khan’s “anti-free markets” and “anti-innovation, anti-tech, anti-big business, and anti-consumer agenda.”

“A second Trump administration may mirror some of the tactics of Khan and the Biden administration but turn them against policies and companies that left-leaning types support. No matter who wins the election this November, we're looking at four more years of aggressively anti-free market policies coming from the FTC,” Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote.

Some, like libertarian journalist Brad Polumbo, have also likened him to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), claiming Vance “has more in common with [her] on economic policy than Ronald Reagan” due to his open willingness to go after large corporations, raise their taxes, and “do whatever else is necessary to fight these goons.”

Others, however, are pleased with the GOP’s populist trajectory. Oren Cass, chief economist at American Compass, tweeted, “Exceptional VP pick. @jdvance1's conservative economics and dedication to American workers captures perfectly the Republican Party’s transformation over the past eight years.”

Little Tech vs. Big Tech’s agenda

Marc AndreesenJustin Sullivan/Getty

Vance’s support for aggressive trust-busting and regulations creates an interesting dynamic within the GOP. With the exception of being pro-crypto, Vance holds many ostensibly anti-tech stances, putting him at odds with some of his biggest supporters — tech billionaires and venture capitalists.

It was reported that Elon Musk and tech investor David Sacks helped push Vance over the line for Trump’s VP selection. Furthermore, Vance first got into politics through his exploration into venture capital. He initially worked at Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital after briefly working in corporate law. And a couple of years later, he started his own venture capital firm, Narya Capital, where he raised $93 million from several tech billionaires, including Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen.

After his spell in venture capital, Vance shifted his eyes to holding public office. Vance went on to win an Ohio Senate seat even after a hotly contested GOP primary in large part due to Peter Thiel’s record-breaking $15 million donation. Thiel also helped garner large donations from wealthy individuals, including David Sacks.

Considering the tech sector’s increasing support for Trump and Vance’s ties to tech billionaires and venture capitalists, some are starting to think the 47th administration might go soft on Big Tech and “switch on Lina Khan now.”

Fortunately, Vance is not likely to. After all, Big Tech’s agenda isn’t always in the interest of America’s tech sector because “their interests are often at odds with a positive technological future as they are more interested in regulatory capture and preserving their monopolies. As a result, technology startups need a voice,” venture capitalist Ben Horowitz wrote in a blog post.

Startups, also referred to as “Little Tech,” are at the heart of the American tech sector and could turn the 21st century into the American century. In Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s Little Tech Agenda, they highlight Little Tech’s role as "the vanguard of American technology supremacy." They say, “From Edison and Ford to Hughes and Lockheed to SpaceX and Tesla, the path to greatness starts in a garage.”

Vance’s endorsement of Khan’s antitrust revolution serves as a net positive for America’s tech industry since Little Tech faces huge disadvantages by having to “go up against incumbent companies that have overwhelmingly superior brands, market positions, customer bases, and financial strength — incumbents that are out to strangle startup competition in the cradle.”

The Little Tech agenda could be the catalyst that recaptures American supremacy. The Trump/Vance ticket must not back down from Big Tech. Andreessen and Horowitz don’t explicitly endorse Khan’s trust-busting, but without tough antitrust legislation against Big Tech monopolies and pro-innovation regulatory reform, Big Tech will continue to enjoy its “wall of laws and regulations that protect and entrench their positions and that new startups cannot possibly scale.” Breaking up Big Tech, on the other hand, will empower startups and foster an innovative environment.

As Andreessen and Ben Horowitz write, “The glory of a second American Century is within our reach. Let’s grasp it.”

Biden Added $745 Billion Worth Of Regulations In 2023

'The federal government published $745.2 billion in total net costs'

House Passes Bill To Curb Administrative State, Require Congress To Approve New Major Rules

The bill requires a vote of Congress to approve all 'major' rules costing $100 million or more

Appliance apocalypse: Dishwashers next on the chopping block to combat climate change



The Department of Energy rolled out a proposal for more stringent energy and water efficiency standards for dishwashers Friday, a move consumers may be less than enthused about, the Competitive Enterprise Institute reported.

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm insists the new standards will save Americans $652 million in utility bills while "mitigating harmful carbon pollution."

"This Administration is using all of the tools at our disposal to save Americans money while promoting innovations that will reduce carbon pollution and combat the climate crisis," Sec. Granholm said in a statement lauding the appliance standards.

By 2027, ordinary household dishwashers would have to use 27% less power and 34% less water in their default cycles under the proposed rules, Bloomberg reported. The agency estimates the change will cost consumers $15 on the front end of a dishwasher purchase, but say consumers would save thrice that on the back end with decreased operating costs over the lifetime of the machine.

Theoretically, anyway.

The problem arises when consumers, unhappy with the cleanliness of their dishes after running a normal cycle, might run the dishes through twice, or even wash dishes by hand, which is far less efficient in terms of the amount of water used.

In addition to the proposed regulations for dishwashers, the document also set its sights on electric motors and beverage vending machines.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, an organization that promotes regulatory reform, calls the DOE's dishwasher proposal "the most anti-consumer of them all."

Further, CEI says the move violates the statute under which the agency derives its appliance standard-setting authority: namely, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 that forbids it from to place energy efficiency over product performance, choice, and features.

The DOE's rules would lower the limits on the amount of water and amount of energy a dishwasher can use for its default cycle. The current limit is 5 gallons of water per cycle. The new regulations would slash that to 3.2 gallons.

Most dishwashers on the market already use 3.5 gallons or fewer, according to Fox Business.

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, using the DOE's own cost estimates, says compliance will cost manufacturers $2.5 billion.

President Biden revoked a Trump-era deregulatory measure that created a "short-cycle" category for cycles that took an hour or less. Those manufacturers were not saddled with the meeting the existing efficiency standards, as Reason explained.

The Biden administration jettisoned that measure in 2022. Now, the energy efficiency rules are even more strict.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!