Which is More Important?

Posted on 17 April 2014 by eehines

A Federal judge’s oath of office, or adherence to superior court precedent? To be sure, both hierarchy in our judiciary and the precedence of rulings are critical to rule of law and to the US remaining a nation of laws and not of men. But so is a judge’s adherence to his oath of office, and so is the Constitution.

Here’s the oath:

I, _________, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as _________, according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.

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Obamacare Rates

Posted on 17 April 2014 by eehines

So much (to pound the dead horse) for rates going down $2,500 per, courtesy of Obamacare.

The research team at investment bank Morgan Stanley surveyed 131 brokers, finding that December 2013 rates are rising in excess of 6% in the small group market, and 9% in the individual market.

But that’s just chump change, so far (except for the victims of the rise).

[H]ealth plans are also predicting higher cost trends in 2014, after years of stabilization (much of it attributable to the economic downturn [and its long-term non-recovery, say I], which reduced medical utilization rates).

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What To Do About Ukraine

Posted on 16 April 2014 by eehines

KT McFarland has some thoughts. After taking notice of President Barack Obama’s foolishness in worrying that supporting the victim of Russian invasion in any material way might antagonize the victim’s attacker, she suggests [emphasis hers]

First, if the Ukrainian people want to fight for their freedom, we should help them. …with intelligence, communications, and logistics.
If it comes to a civil war, the fighting will be short and bloody, and Russia will win.

Second, we should shore up our NATO allies. We should reverse course and build the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

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Obama’s War

Posted on 16 April 2014 by eehines

…on women and on minorities in general continues apace.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would kill off 500,000 jobs…57% of those jobs are held by women.

Women would be disproportionately harmed: those 57% work out to a loss of 285,000 jobs for women. I suppose, though, that given this administration’s current buzz, President Barack Obama and his coterie view this as a general good.

Obama’s war is just as devastating on other groups of Americans whom his mouth holds in high favor, but his actions plainly disdain. The Employment Policies Institute has some of the sordid details.

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More Fear of Competition

Posted on 15 April 2014 by eehines

..in the arena for ideas, again by Progressives. This time as they attack children in New York for having a different idea.

A 13-year-old at Orange-Ulster BOCES in New York was suspended for two days last week for the heinous crime of telling her classmates and friends that they did not have to sit for Common Core examinations. Never mind that she was telling the truth—the exams are entirely voluntary. Never mind that the word had to come from her because the school administration, in their transparency, had withheld this information from parents.

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On Denying Market Forces vis-à-vis Supply and Demand

Posted on 15 April 2014 by eehines

Here’s an interesting graph from AEIDeas:

What this illustrates is the outcome of the lack of a market for organs to be transplanted, in this graph, specifically kidneys.

As Mark Perry put it in his article [emphasis his],

While the annual number of kidney transplant operations has remained relatively flat since 2005 in a range between about 16,500 and 17,000, the number of registered patients on the waiting list continues to increase. From about 65,000 registered patients in 2005, the waiting list for a kidney transplant has increased by more than 50% over the last eight years, and by 35,000 patients, to the 100,019 patients who are currently on the kidney waiting list.

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Sounds Like A Reason

Posted on 14 April 2014 by eehines

…to continue shedding light on this man, and on Progressivism and the Democratic Party generally.

Nevada’s Democrat Secretary of State [Ross Miller] says he’ll do all in his power to crush a conservative organization that ran ads against him in his campaign to become the state’s attorney general.

As Secretary of State, he’s also the one who oversees elections—including the one in which he’s running.

And he’s doing his “Stifle, Edith” act because he doesn’t like a political ad being run by the State Government Leadership Foundation. If you’re curious, the ad is here, but the content isn’t particularly important.

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What Ayaan Hirsi Ali Might Have Said

Posted on 14 April 2014 by eehines

…at Brandeis University, had the school’s…management (I hesitate to say leadership)…not been so cowardly. Following is excerpted from her op-ed in The Wall Street Journal (RTWT).

So I ask: Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era? Both Christianity and Judaism have had their eras of reform. I would argue that the time has come for a Muslim Reformation.

Is such an argument inadmissible? It surely should not be at a university that was founded in the wake of the Holocaust, at a time when many American universities still imposed quotas on Jews.

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More Failed Government

Posted on 13 April 2014 by eehines

This example isn’t a demonstration of dishonesty, and it isn’t unique to this administration.

Market-sensitive information vitally important to health-insurance companies has once again reached Wall Street before the public, and this time it appears to have come from the government itself.

On Dec 3, an official with the agency in charge of Medicare spending held a conference call for industry officials. During the call, he provided data suggesting that federal funding for private Medicare plans would likely fall more than expected.

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Standards and Government Mendacity

Posted on 12 April 2014 by eehines

Some of you are familiar with EEOC v Kaplan, a case in which the EEOC sued Kaplan Higher Education Corporation for the crime of using background checks to screen job applicants prior to hiring them. EEOC’s case centered on the nonsense of disparate impact: in the present case, since blacks have more bad debts than whites—for reasons wholly unrelated to the questions at issue in Kaplan—they were more often disqualified from hiring by Kaplan than were whites.

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