Tag Archives: government

Rule…Law

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Christopher DeMuth, writing in The Weekly Standard, notes among other things that

Obamacare is introducing a new form of government​—​improvisational government, characterized by continuous ad hoc revisions of statutory law by executive decree. This is a reversion to a primitive form that long antedates our Constitution and rule-of-law traditions.

Indeed.  What DeMuth calls “continuous ad hoc revisions…by decree” is simply rule-by-law.  Something at which the People’s Republic of China has excelled for centuries.  President Barack Obama might well take some advice from those folks.

Who Lost?

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Dunstan Prial at Fox Business, noted that

The Treasury Department on Monday announced that the government has sold its remaining shares of General Motors, and that losses from the 2009 auto industry bailout total about $15 billion.

In a conference call, Treasury officials said the government has recovered about $39.9 billion of the $49.5 billion earmarked for GM under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) approved by Congress as the company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy nearly five years ago.

And

Treasury has intermittently sold its shares of GM but always at a price below that which would have allowed the government to break even on the deal, which accounts for the nearly $10 billion in losses.

And

The government has lost an additional $1.3 billion on its bailout to Chrysler[.]

Leaving aside that the auto industry was not bailed out, nor was it ever at risk—only two failing car companies were at risk—there is another misunderstanding, and one that’s surprising from a business writer.  The government lost nothing on these bailouts.  The government has nothing of its own, and so it has nothing that it can lose.

We American taxpayers lost those $10 billion on GM, those $1.3 billion on that Italian car company, those $15 billion overall.

Free Speech, Progressive Style

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A day after he questioned President Obama’s decision to unwind a major tenet of the health-care law and said the nation’s capital might not go along, DC insurance commissioner William P White was fired.

White did acknowledge that the Deputy Mayor who fired him didn’t specifically lay the cause off to White’s reluctance to rubberstamp Obama, but the DM didn’t give any other reason, either.  And the timing of the firing is…curious.

In a statement White issued after Obama announced his ObamaFix, White said in part,

The action today undercuts the purpose of the exchanges, including the District’s DC Health Link, by creating exceptions that make it more difficult for them to operate[.]

A senior city official, carefully speaking only anonymously, said White’s statement should have been sent to Deputy Mayor Victor Hoskins for prior approval first.  So, the DC Mayor reserves to himself the actions of DC Health Link and he reserves to himself authority for determining the validity and legality of insurance policies sold in the district—not the insurance commissioner’s office.

Yeah.  And if the political line isn’t toed, if the political, pre-written speech is not carefully recited, you’re out.

Hmm….

Free Speech, Belgian Style

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Didier Bellens, CEO of Belgacom (Belgium’s largest telecommunications company) has been fired.  He complained too much about government regulation and taxes.

As The Wall Street Journal described it,

Over the years, Mr Bellens has launched a number of broadsides against the government.  Friday’s dismissal comes after the latest attack, in which he asked a business club breakfast in the chic Brussels suburb of Uccle, “Who’s the worst shareholder?”  His answer: “The Belgian state.”

Yep.  The Belgian government owns 53.5% of Belgacom.  And the government disapproved of Bellens’ political—even business—speech.  Last Friday, Prime Minister Elio di Rupo fired Bellens, announcing

The repeated, accumulated outbursts have irreversibly damaged the confidence of the Belgian state in Mr Bellens[.]

There can’t even be an argument that Bellens hadn’t been performing up to snuff from a business perspective.  Stefaan Genoe, a telecommunications analyst at brokerage Petercam, had this about Bellens’ results:

Overall, Belgacom has evolved very well strategically during his tenure.  It has a very healthy balance sheet.

Dividends are still attractive, at 8 or 9%[.]

And the Progressives in our own government want to Europeanize us.

Hmm….

A Typical Bureaucracy

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Via the Washington Examiner comes this Obamacare bureaucracy organization chart.  Maybe it’s satirical.

This damning charge about Obamacare preparation by that bureaucracy comes from the same link:

Federal officials did not permit testing of the Obamacare healthcare.gov website or issue final system requirements until four to six days before its Oct 1 launch, according to an individual with direct knowledge of the project.

How does that work, exactly?  Oh, wait—maybe the WE is overstating the case a bit—does any bureaucracy with that organization look like it’s capable of making any decision more complex than whether to get a cup of coffee on the way back from the rest room?

Plus this: The officials running the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decided they would act as the systems integrator, the central coordinator for the entire program.  Pay no attention to the fact that the CMS is, itself, an agglomeration of lots of disparate organizations.  Or that the officials “in charge” there have no concept of organizational, much less systems, organization.

But RTWT.

And this, from The Wall Street Journal, on President Barack Obama’s Rose Garden version of a Shamwow Infomercial pitch–Operators are standing by! [I stole that line from Chris Stirewalt]–and his touting his 800 number as the fix to all the…kinks…in his Obamacare:

[W]e called the hotline on Monday and the automated menu redirected us to Healthcare.gov, which in turn told us to get in touch with someone at the call center.

Yeah.