Category Archives: politics

The Business with Iran

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal opined on Iran’s missile launch last week and President Donald Trump’s imposition of sanctions against Iran in response.

[I]t does look as if President Trump may be willing to do what Mr Obama refused to do, which is to rigorously enforce the [nuclear weapons development] agreement….

Trump said during the campaign that he might not tear up the Executive Agreement, but instead enforce it to the letter.

Why would his doing so now be such a surprise? Oh, wait, the NLMSM spiked that part of his commitments while focusing, disparagingly, on his earlier musing about tearing up the EA.

What Should a Health Plan Cover?

Posted on by
Reply

Anna Wilde Mathews wondered about that in her piece in The Wall Street Journal.  First, a couple of asides.  Notice the tacit acknowledgment that we have no health insurance plans available.  That industry was eliminated in toto by Obamacare, which replaced the industry with a Federally mandated, publicly/privately funded health coverage welfare program.  Next, notice the tacit assumption in the piece’s subhead: that the law should mandate business decisions.

To the piece itself:

The 2010 health law created a new set of federal requirements for plans sold to individuals and small businesses, including a list of 10 benefits, among them prescription drugs, mental-health services and laboratory tests. It also mandated that plans cover preventive services such as vaccinations at no cost to enrollees.

Along with women’s contraceptives (but not men’s…) at no cost to enrollees or the businesses providing the plans.

Trimming certain benefit categories from the required list could sharply raise the cost of those benefits for consumers who opt to have them.

That’s Mathews’ claim, anyway.  What she’s chosen to ignore is that a competitive, free market would sharply reduce the cost of most of those “benefits.”  What she’s also chosen to ignore is that eliminating the mandatory nature of the coverages would sharply lower the cost to millions of others who don’t need those “benefits,” but who must pay for them anyway—even if they’re included in a plan at “no cost to enrollees,” a fiction cynically foisted onto us by the Obama administration.  Enrollees certainly are paying for them; the added cost is simply hidden in a higher overall price.  And the rest of us are paying for them, too, in premiums similarly elevated to pay for that required coverage and/or in the taxes we must pay to pay for the subsidy.

It’s certainly true that other, rarer or more expensive to treat problems would have higher prices, but there’s never been a case made for why Government should pay for these ahead of family, friends, charity, church, local community—the usual suspects.

Plans with skinnier coverage can carry lower premiums, actuaries say. But as with everything in health care, that comes with a trade-off.

NSS.  But those trade-off decisions belong to the individual, not to Government.

Senator Collins Misunderstands

Posted on by
Reply

Senator Susan Collins (R, ME), in explaining her decision to vote against Betsy DeVos’ confirmation as Secretary of Education, said

She has, no doubt, done valuable work.  Her concentration on charter schools and vouchers, however, raises the question about whether or not she fully appreciates that the secretary of education’s primary focus must be on helping states and communities, parents, teachers, school board administrators, school board members, and administrators strengthen our public schools.

What a monumental lack of understanding of the primary focus of the DoEd.  The DoEd, to the extent the Federal government should be involved in non-secondary education at all, must be focused on aiding states and communities, parents, [and] teachers improve the quality of education available to the local jurisdictions’ children.  That will include, necessarily, public schools and their management, but it cannot—just as necessarily—be limited to public schools.

Full stop.

Judge James Robart’s TRO

Posted on by
4

Some of you may have heard that Judge Robarts, of the Western District of Washington, has issued a Temporary Restraining Order in favor of Washington and Minnesota (which joined the case after its initial filing by Washington) blocking the Federal government from enforcing President Donald Trump’s Executive Order delaying entry into the US of immigrants from seven terrorist or terror-sponsoring nations in the Middle East.  The EO was intended to create a pause in the flow of people from that area into the US until our vetting procedures could be examined and improved as much as might be.

As Robart described in his order, a TRO must meet all of four criteria, and it’s on the plaintiffs (Washington and Minnesota) to prove that each of those criteria are met.  Those criteria are (Robart cited two sets of criteria; they’re functionally the same, per Robart; below is the more detailed description) [quotes omitted]:

(1) that he is likely to succeed on the merits, (2) that he is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief, (3) that the balance of equities tips in his favor, and ( 4) that an injunction is in the public interest.

Robart then ruled that the plaintiffs had met these criteria:

The court finds that the States have satisfied these standards and that the court should issue a TRO. The States have satisfied the Winter test [the more detailed test described above] because they have shown that they are likely to succeed on the merits of the claims that would entitle them to relief; the States are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief; the balance of the equities favor the States; and a TRO is in the public interest.

So far, so good.  Then Robart provided his rationale for this finding.

Specifically, for purposes of the entry of this TRO, the court finds that the States have met their burden of demonstrating that they face immediate and irreparable injury as a result of the signing and implementation of the Executive Order. The Executive Order adversely affects the States’ residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations, and freedom to travel. These harms extend to the States by virtue of their roles as parens patriae of the residents living within their borders. In addition, the States themselves are harmed by virtue of the damage that implementation of the Executive Order has inflicted upon the operations and missions of their public universities and other institutions of higher learning, as well as injury to the States’ operations, tax bases, and public funds. These harms are significant and ongoing. Accordingly, the court concludes that a TRO against Federal Defendants is necessary until such time as the court can hear and decide the States’ request for a preliminary injunction.

That’s it.  No substantiation, nor even claim, that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits, no substantiation, nor even claim, that balance of equities tips in favor of the plaintiffs, no substantiation, nor even claim, of public interest.  Only a claim that irreparable harm is likely absent a TRO—but even here, there’s no real substantiation, just a repeat of the States’ claims.

We’re simply supposed to accept the single, superficial claim of harm as by itself satisfying the other three criteria.  But what about that (I’ll come back to the claimed harm in a bit)?

Likely to succeed on the merits?  Based on what? Robart has failed to present any merits other than his repetition of plaintiffs’ claims.

Balance of equities tips in favor of the plaintiffs?  Suppose, arguendo, that the claimed harms are real.  There was no investigation into balance, no presentation in this TRO that the Federal government’s interest in the nation-wide public’s welfare, the nation’s security, is outweighed by this harm.

And that public interest: see above; Robart didn’t even look into that, or if he did, he chose to omit the outcome of that enquiry from his order.

Now about those harms the States are alleging and that Robart apparently simply accepted withut question.  The Executive Order adversely affects the States’ residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations, and freedom to travel.  In what way?  Robart declined to say.  Further, a 90- to 120-day delay in reentry into the US imparts no serious education harm, only a delay for those students involved.  This is an inconvenience, not a harm.  To the extent the delay impacts employment (unidentified, but lets assume of the delayed immigrants), that’s a matter between the employee and employer, and to the extent legal relief is appropriate here, that is a separate case.  Freedom to travel?  That’s what borders are: no non-citizen has freedom to travel across borders; noncitizens—even visa holders—must have the permission of the receiving nation prior to entering.  Furthermore, existing permission—those visas—can be suspended or revoked at the receiving nation’s discretion.  Family relations?  Sure, these will be interrupted, and that’s a serious inconvenience.  But it’s only an interruption, and it cannot outweigh the Federal government’s interest in the welfare of all of the public or its interest in the nation’s security.

The extension of these individual harms to the States is too far a reach.  The States by virtue of their roles as parens patriae of the residents living within their borders, indeed, but the people whose travel is being interrupted aren’t known to be residents.  Many of them may well have established residency, but there was no showing that all of them have or even a showing that a significant fraction of them have.  (From this, it’s even not clear that the States have standing to bring their suit—another matter unsubstantiated here.)

Clearly, these matters affect only a subset of the delayed travelers, to the extent they affect any—yet Robart’s order lets in, without delay, those unaffected, too; the TRO is not properly limited to those claimed to be harmed.

The States themselves are harmed by virtue of the damage…inflicted upon the operations and missions of their public universities and other institutions of higher learning, as well as injury to the States’ operations, tax bases, and public funds?  This is an even bigger reach.  Any students affected by the EO are so few in number as to be a drop in the bucket compared to the schools’ populations.  Nor are the States’ governments’ or government facilities’ materially harmed—nor even trivially harmed—by the delayed entry of these travelers.  Robarts declined even to say how these delays impact public revenues.

This is a bad, wholly unsubstantiated TRO, and it should be dismissed out of hand.

Cowardice? Or Tyranny?

Posted on by
2

Earlier in the week, Breitbart News Editor Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at UC Berkeley, but the institution (I can’t call it a school) canceled his appearance two hours before its start because protestors enrolled in the institution protested, violently with fire and smoke bombs.

Security allegedly was present, but the violence and damage occurred anyway.  UC Berkeley issued a statement about its decision that said, in part,

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the violence and unlawful behavior that was on display, and deeply regret that those tactics will now overshadow the efforts to engage in legitimate and lawful protest against the performer’s presence and perspectives[.]

The institution’s management talked about condemnation of the violence, but it chose to do nothing about it, it chose instead to allow the violence contribute to the destruction of free speech within its facilities.

Notice another thing in that statement.  The institution’s managers regret that violence “overshadowing” other protests against free speech, but they don’t have a minim of regret for the protests against free speech.

Nor is free speech in the Berkeley institution helped by the timidity of the Berkeley College Republicans.

Pieter Sittler, a spokesman for the Berkeley College Republicans, said the club doesn’t support everything Yiannopoulos says but “he gives a voice to repressed conservative thought on American college campuses.”

There’s no need for the protective qualifier; it isn’t relevant to the matter at hand: whether a man will be allowed to speak aloud a contrary opinion in the institution.

The cowardice, or the tyranny, of the Left says the only speech that may be freely spoken is that which the Left will permit and no other.  The timidity of the others functionally condones this tyranny.  The overt actions of the institution’s managers, limited as it is to idle chit-chat, actively condones this tyranny.

The only question remaining concerns Yiannopoulis’ description of the event:

[T]he Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.

Are they such cowards?  Or do they really favor such tyranny?  Or is this the cowardice of tyranny?