Category Archives: regulation

The Arrogance of Government

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Here is an example of why we have a Constitution that explicitly limits the power of the Federal government and within that Constitution a Bill of Rights that both explains those limits and explicitly reserves the infinity of remaining rights and powers to the people and to the states.

This example, though, is by one of those state governments, the government of Maryland which also says it’s legal for approved gangs to commit trespass and terrorize children inside their own homes.  State Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D, Dist 27) said this in all seriousness:

We’ve allowed them to manufacture.  We’ve allowed them to sell, and we’ve cut back on their paperwork.

Notice that: government has allowed.  Because government will make these decisions, because what a manufacturer—or anyone—can do is only what a government will permit.

Never mind that the Maryland Constitution says this in Article I of its Declaration of Rights:

That all Government of right originates from the People, is founded in compact only, and instituted solely for the good of the whole….

In other words, government works for the people, and what government can do is what the people will permit, not the other way around.

Oh, wait, this is just Progressives disregarding yet another Constitution that’s more than 100 years old, confusing, and not binding on anything.

Extremist Left on the Prowl, Again

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The Freedom from Religion Foundation is attacking a Viet Nam War memorial, and it’s attacking Coos Bay, OR, for having it.

The atrocity this time is a small memorial erected by the local Jaycees in 1972—as that war was winding down—and that has a Latin cross atop it*:CoosBayVietNamMemorial

FFRF attorney Rebecca Markert, in a letter to City Manager Rodger Craddock, wrote—and she was actually serious

We have no objection to the veterans’ memorials.  Our objection is to the message of endorsement of Christianity over other religions and non-religions.  The Christian-only memorial sends a message that the government only cares about the deaths of Christian soldiers, not Jewish, other non-Christian, and non-religious soldiers[.]

She might want to consult with some of those Jewish, other non-Christian, and non-religious soldiers.  They certainly have been supportive of the Latin cross at the Mojave Desert and Mt Soledad War Memorials.  Maybe it’s because Latin Crosses aren’t Christian symbols, per se, on war memorials; they’re symbols, instead of our fallen and of our respect for their sacrifice and the sacrifice of their surviving families.  That’s a degree of respect the FFRF might want to start showing.

Craddock has the right of it:

With all the issues facing our city, we probably have more important things to do[.]

Indeed.

 

*The photo is by KCBY.

Competition and Cadillac Insurance

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Under Obamacare, writes Emily Chasan in The Wall Street Journal, employers will be required by 2018 to pay a tax of 40% on health care plans that President Barack Obama and his minion, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, decide for themselves are somehow “excessively rich” in the benefits they pay out.

The excuse these two and other Progressives make for this is that these Cadillac plans, with their low deductibles and “generous” medical coverage, will encourage overuse of our health-care system.  Sure.  Everyone needs to be covered.  But only to a government-approved degree.  And never mind that those low deductibles make the policy purchasers ineligible for Health Savings Accounts—Progressives don’t want Americans to have those, anyway.

But these folks also ignore—or don’t understand—another aspect of their interference.  Competition in a free market for health insurance, including an ability for insurers to charge risk-based premiums, and for health services would address that “overuse” concern much more efficiently than a 2000 page law with its tens of thousands of pages of HHS rules ever could.  Such an environment would directly impact the costs born both by suppliers and their customers/patients.

The competition would drive down the prices charged, and risk-based premiums within that environment would enable insurers to bill for the coverage offered in accordance with the actual likelihood of payout.  Yes, some high-risk coverages would get more expensive, but the vast majority of coverages, by not having to be priced so as to subsidize those high risks, would get a lot cheaper.

Also, customers and patients would gravitate to the combination of policy coverage and medical service usage that actually interested them, instead of having to buy a government-approved policy that included things only a bureaucrat could love.  An equilibrium would develop that had customers and patients getting the policies and services they wanted at prices that suited them with insurers and providers offering those services and policies at prices that would let them stay in business.

There’s no need of a tax to manage demand and supply.  Americans are fully capable of doing that for themselves in a free, competitive market.

Big Brother Alive and Well?

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The House Judiciary Subcommittee held a meeting a week ago Tuesday on potential new provisions of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, and the outcome was very disquieting.  Richard Littlehale, of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, made this recommendation, and he was serious:

Billions of texts are sent every day, and some surely contain key evidence about criminal activity.  Text messaging often plays a big role in investigations related to domestic violence, stalking, menacing, drug trafficking, and weapons trafficking.

The subcommittee wound up suggesting longer retention times of interpersonal electronic messages as well as the creation of expedited federal access to these databases.

That’s the ticket: we need to start prying into everyone’s personal business because someone, somewhere, might be thinking about committing a crime.  Our 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments need to by federally regulated.  Sure.  That’s the story, and they’re sticking to it.

Already, many of the message transporters and facility providers retain copies of our electronic correspondence for inordinately long times: Verizon, for instance as recently as 2010, kept customer text messages on file for three to five days, while Virgin Mobile stored them for 90 days.

Other providers haven’t been so cavalier with our private correspondence.  AT&T (then Cingular Wireless in the text-messaging arena), Sprint, and Nextel didn’t hang onto any of it for any length of time.

Of course, that means these…persons…in the House need to standardize message handling.  All for the convenience of government.  Littlehale talked about this, too.

We’re at the mercy of the service providers to determine how long it’s going take them to comply with that request [for the customer’s messages].  I would suggest whatever the level of standard of proof, the thing that really matters most to us at state and local law enforcement is prompt response.

Well, I would suggest that this is a textbook example of why none of the providers should retain this information at all, for any length of time.

And this from Republicans and Conservatives.

This is Backwards

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Here’s another case of government’s men who should know better, not knowing.

From the New Jersey Law Journal comes a description of a court considering the (mis)use of one law to feed the impact of another.  Sorry about the paywall; here’s a summary [emphasis added].

COURT TO DECIDE IF SEAT BELT LAPSE CAN SUPPORT A CRIMINAL CONVICTION The New Jersey Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether violation of the 1984 law that made seat belt wearing mandatory can support a criminal conviction under another statute.  To be reviewed is an appeals court holding that not wearing a seat belt can be a predicate offense for N.J.S.A. 2C:40-18, which criminalizes “knowingly violat[ing] a law intended to protect the public health and safety” through reckless conduct that injures another.  In State v. Lenihan, A-4667-10, the Appellate Division found the statute’s language gives no indication the Legislature would object to how it is being applied in this case, where the unbelted driver’s passenger was killed.

Leaving aside the question of how far a court—or any other government branch—should reach in order to criminalize an activity, giving no indication of objection is not the same as positively approving.

The principle embedded in our Federal Constitution in the 9th and 10th Amendments is this: negatively, enumeration in the Constitution does not limit or deny the not-enumerated to the people, and positively, powers not delegated to the United States are, in their remaining infinite entirety, left wholly to the States and to the people.  Moreover, these Amendments are to a Constitution that was written by We the People—an acknowledgment of the sovereignty of the members of our social compact over the government we members, we citizens, hire to administer and to protect our rights.

If that principle is valid, though, it’s valid everywhere.  The citizens of each State of these United States are sovereign over each of their State governments, also.  Hence, here, too, positive action must be taken to proscribe a thing.  Absent active proscription, that thing must remain within the province of the individual, either acting alone or in concert with (some of) his fellows, to do or not do.

Thus, unless the New Jersey (or any other State) legislature definitively states, in the present case for instance, that not using a seat belt criminalizes other behavior under other law, it cannot be so used by a court.