Colluding The Little Guy Out Of Business
The wonderful Institute for Justice is taking this immigrant cabbie's case. George Will writes about him in the WaPo, and how he's been screwed over by Big Limo:

Ali Bokhari, now 39, emigrated from Pakistan in 2000 and eventually settled here as a taxi driver. He soon experienced a quintessentially American itch, a nagging sense that "I cannot grow." But he had an idea: "I can build a better business model for something Nashville has been missing." He built it and now knows that no good deed goes unpunished by today's political model -- collusion between entrenched businesses and compliant government.

Bokhari bought a black Lincoln sedan and began offering cut-rate rides -- an average of $25 -- to and from the airport, around downtown and in neighborhoods not well served by taxis. After one year he had 12 cars. Now he has 20, and 15 independent contractors with their own cars, and a Web site, and lots of customers. He also has some enemies, including the established taxi and sedan companies and a city government that is, as interventionist governments generally are, devoted to regulations that protect the strong by preserving the status quo.

With the quiet support of the taxi companies, which have not raised rates since Bokhari and some similar entrepreneurs went into business, the limo companies got regulators to require a $45 minimum charge for any ride. Not content with that gross injury, government added crippling insults: It limited the age of cars and number of miles on them -- regardless of the cars' condition -- and forbade dispatches via cellphones, which is how start-up limo companies operate.

...But the Constitution, and especially the 14th Amendment, is supposed to protect the individual's liberty, including economic liberty, from government's depredations. One purpose of that amendment's protection of "the privileges or immunities" of U.S. citizenship was to defend the economic liberties of freed slaves from laws restricting entry into trades and businesses -- laws written to insulate white Southern businessmen from competition. But the amendment protects all the "privileges or immunities" of all Americans.

In 1873, in a 5 to 4 decision in the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Supreme Court, without any warrant from legislative history of the 14th Amendment, construed "privileges or immunities" so narrowly as to make it a nullity. Now, however, Bokhari may help catalyze a reconsideration of the constitutional basis of economic liberty.

Somebody sent me a check for $25 for theFIRE.org (I think they were old and aren't on board with PayPal). I endorsed it over to FIRE and I'll mail it tomorrow. Both FIRE and IJ are excellent causes, should you wish to donate. They defend people who otherwise probably couldn't afford a defense -- in turn defending the civil liberties of all of us.