Category Archives: regulation

Government Intrusion

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…into citizens’ lives, and one State government’s response.

Virginians who try to sell homemade food from their kitchens are feeling the heat from state and local inspectors.

“I have to turn down my neighbors when they ask if they can buy pesto I make from my own basil plants,” says Bernadette Barber, a farmer in Lancaster, VA.

And

In Arlington, government inspectors shut down a home-based soup maker, even though no customer complaints had been registered. Others have encountered similar fates, stripping them of needed income.

Because Government Knows Better. And there might be a problem.

No. Our Constitution was designed to facilitate us restraining government beforehand, not the other way around. The Virginia legislature appears to understand that.

HB 1290, sponsored by Delegate Rob Bell, R-Charlottesville, would end home-kitchen inspections on items produced for direct sale. The goods would bear a label stating that the products are not for resale and were processed without state inspection.

Absent this, government, “You’re missing a good opportunity to shut up.” It’s worth tracking this bill to see whether it gets enacted.

How’s Obamacare Working Out?

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How’s Obamacare Working Out?

President Barack Obama offered this justification for the structure of his Obamacare:

My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. That’s how the market works. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. And without competition, the price of insurance goes up and quality goes down.

How’s he doing by his own standard?

  • In 2015, 89% of total US counties will have five or fewer companies selling coverage in the exchanges. In 2014, 94% of counties had five or fewer insurers on the exchange.
  • In 2015, the exchange market in 57% of US counties will feature competition among three or fewer insurers. In 2014, 78% of all counties had three or fewer insurers.
  • In Texas, 62% of the state’s counties have only one or two insurers offering coverage in the exchange in 2015. There are 14 different insurers selling policies on the Texas exchange, but no Texas county has more than nine carriers offering coverage.
  • West Virginia still has only one insurer offering coverage on the exchange in 2015. Thus, any state resident purchasing coverage on the ACA’s exchange has no choice of insurer.

A tiny bit of improvement over last year, except in West Virginia, where 100% is controlled by just one company.

But.

By another measure, this one the GAO’s, as reported at the link above,

…in 2013 the individual insurance market encompassed 1,232 insurance carriers selling full health coverage. Obamacare exchanges support just 310 insurance companies as of 2015.

Lastly, this is the trend according to the GAO since Obamacare became law; some of the data predate ObamaMart’s activation:InsurerShare

Hmm….

Good Medicine for Bad Bankers

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That’s the title of an Alan Blinder op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. It’s subtitled One way to keep bankers from behaving badly is to hit them in their pocketbooks with penalties that affect bonuses.

Blinder cited remarks by New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley:

Mr Dudley highlighted the “ongoing occurrences of serious professional misbehavior, ethical lapses and compliance failures” at giant financial institutions. And he warned the audience, which included a number of the world’s leading bankers, that unless the epidemic of bad behavior stops, “the inevitable conclusion will be reached that your firms are too big and complex to manage,” in which case “your firms need to be dramatically downsized and simplified.”

You bet. However, Blinder wants more government interference, even after government’s proven failure to manage economies of any sort. He wants a points system for bank(er)s’ misbehavior, with a sufficient accumulation of points leading to an offending bank’s loss of its banking license. And he wants government to dictate where in a bank its losses should be allocated. Because businessmen and their accountants can’t be trusted with this judgment. But government can be.

No, the best way to achieve “hitting them in their pocketbooks” is to have the bankers’ jobs at risk through free market sanctions on their banks’ continued viability—let those banks fail and enter bankruptcy. And the best way to achieve that would be to eliminate the too-big-too-fail sewage of Dodd-Frank.

Sorry I’m late with this today.  Ate up with dumb and with lazy.

Perjury?

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This is the oath that witnesses before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requires of its witnesses, when those witnesses are sworn (and if one witness is required to be sworn, they all must be) (scroll to Rule 9, para (g)). It’s not the same oath for all committees, but it’s typical.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

I mention this because it turns out

Then-Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller wrote in an email in June 2012, about a month before a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing….

“I am beginning to wonder whether I should do [the hearing] and affirmatively use it to put a stake in politics and c4 [regarding IRS targeting of conservative organizations applying for 501(c)(4) status].”

Miller also was never directly asked about the targeting. That removes the legal aspect of perjury: Miller would seem not to have perjured himself.

But morally? Yew betcha.

Crony Capitalism

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Montreal-based CGI Group Inc, the company that received a $74 million contract to develop and maintain the Hawaii Health Connector web portal, will be awarded another year-long state maintenance contract despite the ongoing problems with the site.

The money comes from a $204 million federal contract the state received in 2012 to set up the Obamacare network in the islands.

This is the same crowd that had so much fun with the ObamaMart failure in 2013.

Hmm….