Category Archives: regulation

The Meaning of the Recent European Union Parliamentary Elections

Posted on by
Reply

Spiegel Online International wrote earlier in the week about the EU’s parliamentary elections. From those elections, there could be a power shift away from the European Council, made up of the heads of the EU member nations, toward the European Parliament, made up of Members of the European Parliament elected by the citizens of the member nations.

This power shift is possible because of two things: one is that the citizens cast their votes for their MEPs based in large part on dissatisfaction with the EU leadership in what in the US would be the Executive Branch—including the European Commission President—with the proximate outcome of a large increase in the number of MEPs representing various euro-skeptic parties at the direct expense of the pro-EU parties.

The other is that these citizens, through their new MEPs, now want their say on who their next Commission President should be, and they have a clear preference. However, the Commission, the traditional determiner of the President with the EU Parliament simply rubber stamping the choice, want to retain that decision, and they want someone else.

That’s a long introduction with which to get to the point of this post. The IOS had this to say, in part, on the matter:

[I]n many countries, the vote’s outcome was more a reflection of domestic political frustrations than a broader statement on European issues.

That, though, is the nature of federations. The constituent states vote their individual interests as determined by the citizens of those states, by design, and compromises among those states’ MEP contingents occur, to be implicitly ratified or rejected by the states’ citizens in the next round of MEP elections—Adam Smith in the political world.

As long as the EU continues to not understand that simple fact, it always will be fraught with the sorts of economic and political failures it has experienced—and still is experiencing— every time there’s even a minor crisis in politics or economics.

It appears as though the misunderstanding will continue for a long and dangerous time.

It comes down to who, in the end, is responsible for choosing the next head of the Commission, a body of 33,000 employees that is in charge of proposing new legislation and monitoring compliance with EU treaties. Is it up to the voters? Or up to the governments of EU member states?

And This Tidbit Re Obamacare—Finding Out More of What Is In It

Posted on by
Reply

Even The New York Times is starting to figure it out.

Many employers had thought they could shift health costs to the government by sending their employees to a health insurance exchange with a tax-free contribution of cash to help pay premiums, but the Obama administration has squelched the idea in a new ruling. Such arrangements do not satisfy the health care law, the administration said, and employers may be subject to a tax penalty of $100 a day—or $36,500 a year—for each employee who goes into the individual marketplace.

The ruling…by the Internal Revenue Service…blocks any wholesale move by employers to dump employees into the exchanges.

Many employers—some that now offer coverage and some that do not—had concluded that it would be cheaper to provide each employee with a lump sum of money to buy insurance on an exchange, instead of providing coverage directly.

And

When employers provide coverage, their contributions, averaging more than $5,000 a year per employee, are not counted as taxable income to workers. But the Internal Revenue Service said employers could not meet their obligations under the health care law by simply reimbursing employees for some or all of their premium costs.

Of course, in a sane world, such reimbursement would be equivalent to providing coverage, just letting the individual

Never mind that such reimbursements are exactly that coverage—especially since the reimbursements are paid only when there’s been a health plan bought: sort of contained in the meaning of “reimbursement.” But then Big Government would have to accept that individuals are fully capable of exercising their own choice—their own judgment—in the matter, rather than needing Momma IRS’ judgment.

There’s more in the NYT‘s piece….

Obamacare—Finding Out More of What Is In It

Posted on by
Reply

Labor is discovering more about Obamacare that isn’t all that.

the law doesn’t take into account that health benefits have been negotiated by employers and unions over decades, and that rewriting plans to meet new requirements can affect wages and other labor terms.

And

Uncertainty about future costs is also hampering negotiations. One of the biggest looming unknowns is the so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost health plans scheduled to take effect in 2018. The provision imposes a 40% tax on the annual cost of health care above $10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for family coverage.

The regional transit system in Philadelphia, Septa, estimates the tax will boost its health-care costs by $15 million a year, or 12.5% of the $120 million it currently spends each year on health coverage.

And [emphasis added]

Another provision of the law that eliminates caps on annual and lifetime health-care costs has forced multi-employer plans to purchase their own insurance to prevent potential runaway costs from bankrupting plans.

Jim Ray, a lawyer who represents the Laborers International Union of North America in benefits negotiations, said these provisions have increased construction-industry health plans’ costs by 5% to 10%, and already resulted in lower wages for some laborers. He said employers are frequently seeking contract language to cap their own liability for future cost increases from the law.

“When we first supported the calls for health-care reform, we thought it was going to bring costs down,” he said.

Hmm….

Coups and Freedom

Posted on by
Reply

Thailand’s new ruling junta said Thursday it has no desire to “cling to power” but also has no clear timeframe for when it will allow free elections.

“We will definitely have an election,” said Lt General Chatchalerm Chalermsukh, the army’s deputy chief of staff. But he added, “this will take some time. If you ask me how long it will take, that’s difficult to answer.”

And

Several political figures, mostly on the pro-government side, were held incommunicado for a week and freed only after signing a waiver agreeing not to say or do anything that could stir conflict.

And

The military has said it will crack down on online speech it considers inflammatory.

And further from Chatchalerm:

Today there are still protests. It shows that some people want to create turmoil. So it’s impossible to hold elections at the moment.

Well, all right, then.

Nanny State and School Lunches

Posted on by
Reply

The fight over school lunches intensified Tuesday as first lady Michelle Obama defended her signature school-nutrition program during a meeting with school officials and decried efforts in Congress to allow schools to delay the program.

“Now is not the time to roll back everything we have worked for,” Ms Obama said[.]

Part of the fight, presently, is over a House proposal to waive the school “nutrition” program’s requirements for those schools that can’t afford to comply. Part of the fight is over puny servings that leave the student hungry—and so just as distracted from learning as if he had eaten a sugar-laden lunch. Part of the fight is over who should pay for the mandated lunching system, even by those schools able to “afford” those costs.

But none of the fight is over whether States should determine for themselves what their schools should be doing in their cafeterias. Worse, none of the fight is over what the parents should be doing about their children’s nutrition.

Whose responsibility are the kids, after all? Certainly not the schools’. Certainly not the State governments’. Most especially not the Federal government’s.

The parents are responsible for their own children. If their kids aren’t getting adequate lunches at school, and that argument is a reasonable one, then the parents should be sending their kids to those schools with sack lunches that are balanced and nutritious and with appropriate (the parents’ definition, not government’s) serving sizes. And an enjoyable treat—which may be a sugar bomb, it may be an extra piece of fruit, it may be…. That treat should be determined by what the responsible parents have been teaching their kids, from the cradle, about healthy as well as fun eating. That treat should not at all be influenced by a government intruding into a family’s lunch table.

Greater parental involvement won’t help much in improving the nutrition of children from poverty-stricken (true poverty, not the Federal Poverty Guideline defined poverty) homes, whose only real meal too often comes from the school they attend. But those children aren’t helped, either, by a Federally-mandated one-size-fits-all law that requires schools in well-to-do districts to supply what those children’s well-to-do parents should be supplying. Nor are those children helped who are in school districts that can’t afford yet another costly Federal mandate and so must sacrifice education on the Church of Nanny State’s altar of “appropriate” school lunches.

However, limiting an overreaching, private resource-grasping (can you say taxes?) Federal government will leave more resources in the private economy where they belong. From that better private economy, family, friends, church, charity, et al., will be much better equipped to help the children in those truly poverty stricken families, and by being local being able to apply resources directly and more efficiently to those most needing the help.