Monthly Archives: February 2014

Law Enforcement

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…and President Barack Obama.  House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) said last Thursday,

There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws.  It’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.

This comes close to killing any sort of immigration reform before the November mid-terms.  Asked about this statement in a following daily mid-day press conference, Obama said through his Press Secretary Jay Carney the following:

The president has an exceptional record of improving border security on his watch.

Notice that.  Both Boehner’s description of the lack of trust in Obama to enforce the law and the question about that lack of trust were general; they were not limited in any way, including regarding any particular subset of the law.

Carney’s Obama’s evasiveness in answering the question is a clear demonstration of the factors underlying that lack of trust.

Friday’s Jobs Report

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…again shows the failure of President Barack Obama’s economic ideology.  And it comes in conjunction with the CBO’s report that Obama’s Obamacare is destructive of American employment.

The jobs report showed that we added all of 113,000 jobs in January.  Oh, and the headline unemployment rate fell to 6.6%.  That drop in unemployment is a thing about which to brag?  Not so much.

In 2013, we added (an inadequate) 194,000 jobs per month.  Adding December’s numbers, the two months of December and January contained a total of 188,000 jobs.  We really need to be adding in the range of 330,000-350,000 per month in order to have a decent recovery from any recession, much less the Panic of 2008 (which ordinary Americans think still is in progress, albeit at the level of recession rather than panic).

Also buried in the numbers is a broader measure of unemployment: a statistic that also includes part-time workers who’d rather work full-time and folks that are marginally attached to the labor force (those unemployed who are on the verge of giving up but haven’t yet).  This broader measure of unemployment was 12.7% for January.  That’s a drop from December’s broader unemployment rate (of 13.1%), but it’s still abysmally high.

This is, for all that, improvement–how is that a failure?  We’re where we should have been four years ago, even according to President Barack Obama’s own predictions back then.

Or, as James Pethokoukis puts it at AEIdeas,

Before the Great Recession, there were 122 million full-time jobs in America. Now 4 1/2 years after its end, there are still just 118 million full-time jobs in America despite a labor force that is 1.6 million larger and a nonjailed, nonmilitary adult working-age population that is 14 million larger.

This graph which Pethokoukis reprinted from the Federal Reserve Economic Database paints the picture: http://www.aei-ideas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/020714jobs1.png

Regulations Begetting Regulations

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Insurers are facing pressure from regulators and lawmakers about plans that offer limited choices of doctors and hospitals, a tactic the industry said is vital to keep down coverage prices in the new health law’s marketplaces.

Yeah—Obamacare regulates what coverages must be offered and at what prices (i.e., at no increase in price while adding mandatory coverage for contraceptives, pre-natal care, maternity care, etc.  And regardless of whether the man required to buy a health plan needs these things.  Or the empty-nesters.  Or post-menopausal women.  Or…).

However, since the insurers can only control costs—and remain in this new business of supplying government-mandated welfare—by controlling how many doctors or hospitals are in their networks, now we “need” additional regulations to “instruct” the insurers in this area.

Under [a] new federal proposal, insurers selling plans in the federally run marketplace would be required to submit to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services a full list of providers in a network before their plans are approved for listing in the exchanges.  In the future, regulators also plan to develop federal standards for the required number of providers.

And [Emphasis added]

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said he plans to revise his agency’s standards for insurers’ health networks partly because current regulations don’t give him enough power to continue oversight after a health plan goes on the market.

And so on, across lots of states.

Of course, absent government’s Obamacare intervention in this “market,” such layers of regulation wouldn’t be necessary.  The bottom layer of regulation wouldn’t be necessary.

But then, what would these bureaucrats do for jobs?  How would Progressive politicians justify their elective jobs?

Another Federal Agency

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…that needs to be eliminated and its work force returned to the private sector.  The Federal Election Commission believes that the 1st Amendment and inconvenient parts of the Federal Election Campaign Act don’t apply to it.

A Boston TV station [emphasis added]

had invited two congressional candidates (a Democrat and a Republican) into its studio to appear on “On the Record” in the weeks leading up to the 2012 election and formatted the joint appearance as a 30-minute debate.

Another candidate (a Libertarian) who was not invited filed a complaint alleging that the value of WCVB’s production costs and airtime constituted unlawful corporate contributions to the two candidates who were invited.  Corporate contributions to federal candidates are illegal and people who make them face stiff fines, injunctions, and can even go to prison.

The Federal Election Campaign Act, which established the FEC, regulates money in federal campaigns to protect American citizens from corrupt politicians.  It also expressly forbids the agency from regulating the press.  Congress enacted this “press exemption” to protect the profoundly important First Amendment right of the press to inform the public about campaigns and candidates without government interference.

WCVB invoked the First Amendment and the campaign act’s press exemption.  When the FEC considered the matter in November 2013, the staff recommended that the agency disregard both.

That the FEC ultimately—and officially—accepted the legitimacy of WCVB’s decision-making process for selecting those candidates simply emphasizes the arrogant mendacity of the agency.  As the WSJ so correctly notes,

A decision to approve implies the power to disapprove.

Neither are within the scope of FEC authority, and the FEC knows that.

Remember, too, that this is the same FEC that insisted that it had the authority to ban books.*  Such an agency has no place in the lives of Americans, much less in our government.

 

*This exchange involving Justice Samuel Alito and Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart, arguing for the FEC in Citizens United:

Alito: Do you think the Constitution required Congress to draw the line where it did, limiting [the “electioneering communications” ban] to broadcast and cable and so forth?  What’s your answer to [the] point that there isn’t any constitutional difference between the distribution of this movie on video [on] demand and providing access on the Internet, providing DVDs, either through a commercial service or maybe in a public library, providing the same thing in a book?  Would the Constitution permit the restriction of all of those as well?

Stewart: I think the Constitution would have permitted Congress to apply the electioneering communication[s] restrictions…to additional media as well.

Alito: That’s pretty incredible.  You think that if a book was published, a campaign biography that was the functional equivalent of express advocacy, that could be banned.  …  The government’s position is that the 1st Amendment allows the banning of a book if it’s published by a corporation?

Stewart [In answer to a related follow-up question from Justice Anthony Kennedy]: [A] corporation could be barred from using its general treasury funds to publish the book….

Another Judge Gets One Right

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This one seems small, but it has large implications.

It seems that a motorist in Ellisville, MO, flashed his headlights at oncoming motorists to warn them of a speed trap.  An Ellisville police officer saw that and, in keeping with the city’s policy of suppressing such warnings, promptly arrested the motorist, who then faced a $1,000 fine and points against his driver’s license toward its suspension.

During the course of the motorist’s subsequent lawsuit over this violation of his 1st Amendment right, the city recognized the error of its policy and eliminated it.

Federal Judge Henry Autrey remained unimpressed, though, as he ruled against the city and for the motorist.  In his ruling, Autrey wrote that flashing one’s headlights

sends a message to bring one’s driving in conformity with the law—whether it be by slowing down, turning on one’s own headlamps at dusk or in the rain, or proceeding with caution.

There’s not even anything controversial about that form of speech.  Autrey also wrote, on the matter of Ellisville having corrected its policy,

The chilling effect of Ellisville’s policy and custom of having its police officers pull over, detain, and cite individuals who are perceived as having communicated to oncoming traffic by flashing their headlamps and then prosecuting and imposing fines upon those individuals remains, regardless….

Indeed.  The formality of the ruling was necessary to alleviate a bit of that effect.