Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

For the Children

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Liberals love their programs “for the children;” albeit they’re carefully paid for with OPM. Take, for instance Michelle Obama’s school lunch program, which has become a Federal government mandate—carefully paid for by the States and the school districts. But never mind, it’s for the children.

Now we get this. A food service worker in the Irving Middle School in Pocatello, ID, gave a lunch to a 12-yr-old girl who had no money to pay for it. The lunch cost all of $1.70, and the food service worker offered to pay the bill for the child.

No dice, said District 25 Director of Human Resources, Susan Petit. You’re fired, she said in her letter telling the worker that she’d been fired.

It’s for the children.

Update: The Pocatello/Chubbuck School District No 25 has apparently released a statement (it’s not available on the District’s Web site as I write this) that offers the food service worker her job back.  Buried at the bottom of the 600+ word statement was this sentence:

The District has been in communication with Ms. Bowden extending an opportunity for her to return to employment with the District.

However, as of last night, the food service worker hadn’t actually heard anything from the District, much less anything about the details of this “opportunity.”

Maybe It’s Time

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I’ve written before about the…suboptimality…of the SEC using its own “court” system (in quotes because it’s more of a kangaroo court system, with the SEC serving as accuser, prosecutor, judge (no jury), punisher, and appellate “court”). The SEC has even pretended to be changing its ways.

Now, this.

After five years, four judges, three rulings, two appeals and the loss of their careers, John Flannery and James Hopkins this month won their legal battle against the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The former State Street Corp executives’ long legal fight took place almost entirely in the SEC’s in-house court system, which agency officials have lauded as offering a fast-track alternative to federal court.

Their problem is all too typical of this SEC.

Since Mary Jo White became SEC chairman in April 2013, the median time for the agency to decide appeals of its in-house judges’ decisions has increased to 19 months….

Then there’s the excuse.

A key part of the agency’s argument has been that the internal tribunal is more efficient.

You bet it is. The conviction and upholding rate is through the roof compared with the rates from those cases that make it out of the SEC and into an actual Federal court.

Since the bureaucrats at the SEC place their own imperatives ahead of their job, maybe it’s time to disband the SEC and replace it with a securities industry overseer that will place its job ahead of the imperatives of the new, fresh personnel who will populate it.

Alternatively, maybe it’d be sufficient to replace the head bureaucrat with someone who understands for whom she works.

Maybe It’s Time

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Banks fear a growing number of employees are unwittingly exposing valuable information to hackers or in some cases leaving digital clues that make a breach possible.

And

Several banks are also increasingly testing whether their employees unintentionally leave them susceptible to hackers by falling prey to “spear-phishing” attempts, in which criminals lure recipients to click on links.

And

Weeks after JP Morgan Chase & Co was hit with a massive data breach that exposed information from 76 million households, the country’s biggest bank by assets sent a fake phishing email as a test to its more than 250,000 employees. Roughly 20% of them clicked on it, according to people familiar with the email.

There’s no excuse for employees, in this day and age, being so gullible or so careless.

If employees are going to continue to be willfully irresponsible, maybe it’s time for employers to get hard-nosed in the workplace: company equipment is for company business exclusively, including during lunch or other breaks. With firing being the default sanction for misuse.

Full stop.

Another Foolish Argument

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Nebraska and Oklahoma have asked the Supreme Court to strike Colorado’s 2012 marijuana initiative on the grounds that the Colorado constitutional amendment has sparked crime increases in their own states. To the extent that can be shown, it’s an argument worth having.

Enter President Barack Obama through his Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli, in Verrilli’s brief to the Supreme Court, in which Obama urged the Court to reject the case:

Entertaining the type of dispute at issue here—essentially that one State’s laws make it more likely that third parties will violate federal and state law in another State—would represent a substantial and unwarranted expansion of this Court’s original jurisdiction.

Here’s what our Constitution says about the Supreme Court’s role in disputes between States, which Verilli’s brief also cites:

In all Cases…in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction.

Verrilli’s brief also cited the First Judiciary Act, a hoary old law passed by the First Congress’ first session in 1789 averring, among other things, that the Supreme Court in particular has

original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States.

Notice those two cites: there is nowhere contained within either any caveat or limit. There is nothing that says, “Except when it’s inconvenient to Government,” or “Except when there’s something else,” or….

Despite that, the Solicitor General, in his brief (undoubtedly written for him by that better lawyer than his lawyers—it certainly contains Obama’s depth and style of legal thinking [/snark]), made the claim that taking the case would represent a substantial and unwarranted expansion of the Court’s role in settling a dispute between States.

Nonsense. This is a textbook example of a dispute between States, and it’s directly within the Court’s constitutionally mandated function, especially as fleshed out by Congress and a President who signed the fleshing-out into law. The Court may decide it’s a bogus beef, and that would be a useful precedent to set.

But it’s entirely a Supreme Court decision. Verrilli and his boss know this full well.

A Difference in Philosophy

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British Prime Minister David Cameron is…discussing…the British requirements for continued membership in the European Union with the rest of the leadership of the EU. One of the points of contention is the degree of welfare participation migrants from mainland EU should receive while in Great Britain. Cameron wants to

curb[] welfare benefits for other EU citizens working in the UK for four years.

EU leaders have voiced strong opposition to his plan, saying it would breach the fundamental principle of free movement of people within the bloc.

The EU leaders’ objection, of course, is nonsense. A benefits freeze would leave migrants free to come and go as they please; the British position is a benefits freeze, not a movement restriction. The only thing being frozen would be the migrants’ ability to freeload off the British taxpayer.

Cameron also points out that a benefits freeze would help reduce migration to the UK. Well, duh. Reducing the incentives to come where the freeloading is easy certainly reduce the amount of movement in that direction.

The difference between Cameron and the European leaders is the difference between a measure of self-determination and individual responsibility on the one hand, and Government Knows Better on the other.