Tag Archives: economics

Another Intrusive Government Regulation

Posted on by
Reply

US regulators proposed requiring the nation’s largest banks and financial firms to hold back executives’ bonus pay for four years, extending by a year the common industry practice on Wall Street incentive payouts.

The plan would also require a minimum period of seven years for the biggest firms to “claw back” bonuses if it turns out an executive’s actions hurt the institution.

In a free market economy—that is to say, a healthy economy—this would be a business decision, validated or rejected by that business’ owners and its marketplace customers.  However, in this Progressive-Democrat Party administration, this is a Government Decision, made by Government Know Betters, because those actually participating in an economy, with their own money on the line, can’t possibly understand the situation.

Another hint of a Government with too many employees and too little work: this…rule…was developed by no less than six agencies.

More Veterans Administration…Misbehavior

Posted on by
Reply

Department of Veterans Affairs investigators conducted spot checks at 10 veterans benefits offices around the country and came to a disturbing conclusion: the VA has been systemically shredding documents related to veterans’ claims—some potentially affecting their benefits.

The VA Office of Inspector General conducted the surprise audit at 10 regional offices on July 20, 2015, after an investigation into inappropriate shredding in Los Angeles found that staff there was destroying veterans’ mail related to claims….

And

Of 155 claims-related documents [in the to-be-shredded bins], 69 were found to have been incorrectly placed in shred bins at six of the regional offices: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Reno[.]

For the math challenged senior VA employees, that’s a 44% rate.  That rate is not consistent with mere carelessness.

This is part of a venerable history of misbehaviors that is just too widespread and too long-lasting to be accidental.  Especially against the backdrop of VA management’s refusal to terminate, for cause or for any reason, those at any level who are misbehaving.

It might seem nice that it’s the VA’s own IG facility is the one that’s finding these failures to perform, but maybe that IG is doing so secure in the knowledge that there will be no consequences to the findings.  The VA’s IG, after all, works directly for the VA’s Secretary.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Who Enrolls in Obamacare?

Posted on by
Reply

What’s the effect of that on costs under Obamacare?  The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association rudely conducted a study of the matter, and they found

  • New enrollees in individual health plans in 2014 and 2015 had higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, depression, coronary artery disease, HIV and Hepatitis C than those enrolled before ObamaCare.
  • New enrollees received significantly more medical care, on average, than those with individual or employer-based plans.
  • New enrollees had more inpatient admissions, outpatient visits, prescriptions filled and emergency room visits.
  • Medical costs for new members were, on average, 19% higher than for employer-based members in 2014, and 22% higher last year. Average monthly medical spending for those newly enrolled members also rose at a higher rate in that period.

And

A recent Daily Caller examination of annual reports from insurers also found storm clouds on the horizon of the exchanges.  It found that 8 of the 11 remaining exchanges may fail this year, despite assurances from the Obama administration.

All of which will lead to rising costs.  That increased use of medical care and health coverage plans, paid for with OPM, will drive health plan providers’ costs and so their premiums charged the customer (read: the government/your tax money).  The greatly reduced ObamaMarts will drive costs to the health plan provider customer, since subsidies—OPM—will be lost to them, also.

A report from Freedom Partners earlier this year showed premiums on the individual market are rising by double digits in most states.

Didn’t President Barack Obama (D) promise the contrary?  Both the current Democratic Party Presidential candidates are promising to extend this even further, too.

Elections have consequences.

A State Appeals Court Missed the Point

Posted on by
Reply

Recall the California case, Vergara v California, in which nine students and the nonprofit advocacy group Students Matter, sued the State of California, arguing that the State’s tenure laws and its firing and layoff policies made it too hard to fire bad teachers, thereby denying students a decent education.  At trial, the students won, and the laws were struck as unconstitutional.  Naturally, teachers unions—California Teachers Association and California Federation of Teachers—anxious to protect its tenure perks, appealed.

Last Thursday, a State appellate court

said the plaintiffs had not successfully proven that some students were indeed getting an inferior education because of job protection provisions.

The appellate court wrote, with a straight face,

Although the statutes may lead to the hiring and retention of more ineffective teachers than a hypothetical alternative system would, the statutes do not address the assignment of teachers.  Instead, administrators—not the statutes—ultimately determine where teachers within a district are assigned to teach.

What the appellate court carefully ignored is that it doesn’t matter where bad teachers are assigned to teach.  The statutes in question require that they be assigned somewhere, to inflict their incompetence on unfortunate students somewhere.

That was the point of the suit: the statutes…lead to the hiring and retention of more ineffective teachers….

Score another victory of union prerogative over the welfare of our children.

A Presumption of Guilt

Posted on by
Reply

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget earlier this week accepted for final review a rule that would force banks to identify the owners of companies behind shadowy financial transactions, such as the firms revealed in the Panama Papers scandal or the ones used to buy real estate.  It would close a loophole that critics say allows criminal money into the US financial system.

Never mind that the vast majority of the Panama Papers’ shell companies are entirely legitimate.  Never mind that, in a free country, there has to be probable cause driven by a presumption of innocence to go looking for “criminal money,” not just a government man’s idle suspicion, or a dislike for a person or an entity, or a liking for fishing expeditions.

Of course Government must be above such petty concerns.

A spokesman for FinCEN [Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the originator of this rule] said the agency couldn’t provide specifics on the contents of any final rule, nor could he predict the timing for publishing a final rule.  He declined to comment further.

Of course not.  And of course.

This also represents another instance of this Democratic administration’s post-America attitude.

The International Monetary Fund weighed in as well, criticizing the US in July 2015 for failing to move quickly enough on identifying beneficial owners, saying the rule, as proposed, was too weak.

“There were no requirements for [financial institutions] to look beyond a customer to establish the identity of the beneficial owners in all cases,” the IMF said at the time.

Nor need there be, absent a court’s order based on probable cause, but hey—it’s an extranational institution that’s objecting.  That matters.

Sure.