Tag Archives: government

Another Reason for Smaller Government

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Even with lives at stake—lives in the middle of a budding pandemic—Big Government bureaucracies are more interested in protecting turf and responsibility ducking than they are in their fundamental task of protecting American citizens’ safety from foreign problems.

Worse, one of the bureaucracies involved in this cynical ego-based Federal road block has nothing to do with the medical questions involved. First, the experts, at least by training and experience, if not by smooth performance:

The hazardous waste protocols in place for hospitals require staff to place any potentially infected substances—whether it is medical equipment or protective gear—into special hazardous waste containers. That waste then is supposed to be turned over to licensed hazardous waste companies, where it is incinerated or chemically sterilized, according to the CDC.

However, because that other Big Government agency thinks it must have something to say about handling hazardous medical waste, we get this [emphasis added]:

Due to specific Ebola-related regulations issued by the US Department of Transportation (DOT), which governs what medical waste companies can and cannot transport, the usual waste haulers or medical waste disposal companies are prohibited from accepting Ebola-contaminated waste until it has been properly packaged in accordance with DOT guidelines.

And so we get this problem, delineated by [Dr Jeffrey, National Global and Public Health Committee Chairman for Infectious Diseases Society of America] Duchin:

The medical waste companies are refusing to come and pick up the waste because of the DOT regulations, which the CDC does not agree with.

Never mind that the sole experts in the matter, the CDC, has said the Ebola waste ready for safe handling by medical waste companies.

Just to add to this ego-ridden fiasco, we also have this, demonstrating that it’s not only the Federal government that’s gotten too big, too turf-ridden, with too many egos embedded:

[A] Louisiana waste disposal facility, Chemical Waste Management Inc-Lake Charles, says it will not accept the ashes generated when Duncan’s belongings were incinerated, at least not until state officials agree that it would pose no threat to the public.

And this nonsense: The Louisiana Attorney General, Buddy Caldwell, has sued in state court to block the transportation of the waste to the Calcasieu Parish facility (the waste disposal facility in question), and a Louisiana state judge has agreed and blocked the shipment. Because these guys—a state government lawyer and the state government’s judge—know better.

These are yet others reason for shrinking government.

Crony Capitalism and Big Government

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California’s health insurance exchange has awarded $184 million in contracts without the competitive bidding and oversight that is standard practice across state government, including deals that sent millions of dollars to a firm whose employees have long-standing ties to the agency’s executive director.

Several of those contracts worth a total of $4.2 million went to a consulting firm, The Tori Group, whose founder has strong professional ties to agency Executive Director Peter Lee, while others were awarded to a subsidiary of a health care company he once headed.

It isn’t just state government, though, nor is this problem limited to government-run medical “care.” Think, also, Solyndra and A123, Tesla in Nevada, “green” energy subsidies, Dodd-Frank and too big to fail, farm subsidies, loan guarantees for big corporations like Boeing and GE (roughly $6 billion between them, via the Ex-Im Bank), even the Senate barbershop (!).

If our government weren’t so big, so taxing, so spending; if we turned the rascals out more often in our biennial elections, our government wouldn’t have the wherewithal with which to engage in crony capitalism, and we citizens could get back to capitalist capitalism and general prosperity.

PRC, Hong Kong, and Rights

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The situation in Hong Kong, which the People’s Republic of China has created with its high-handed treatment of the Special Administrative Region, is getting tighter.

[Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying] Leung told voters it is better to agree to Beijing’s plans for nominating candidates and to hold an election, than to stick with the current system of having an Election Commission choose the chief executive.

“It is definitely better to have universal suffrage than not,” Leung said. “It is definitely better to have the chief executive elected by 5 million eligible voters than by 1,200 people. And it is definitely better to cast your vote at the polling station than to stay home and watch on television the 1,200 members of the Election Committee cast their votes.”

This is cynically misleading. The 1,200 to whom Leung referred are the nominating committee of the Communist Party of China. They’ve been the ones—and they continue to be the ones, now formally under the control of the Party’s Standing Committee—who will determine who the candidates will be that those “5 million eligible voters” can select from. Those 5 million are only being allowed to rubber stamp the selection made by those 1,200. This is no elective choice. Of course, Leung and his PRC masters know this.

And

[PRC President] Xi Jinping, who has taken a hard line against any perceived threat to the Communist Party’s hold on power, vowed in a National Day speech to “steadfastly safeguard” Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability.

This is just wind in the trees. Xi knows full well that Beijing cannot “steadfastly safeguard” Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability. Only the people of Hong Kong, acting for and by themselves, without outside interference, can do that.

And

China’s government…so far it has not overtly intervened, leaving Hong Kong authorities to handle the crisis.

This is a misunderstanding. The Hong Kong authorities are in the streets, not in the government buildings. The people are sovereign over their government in a free state. Of course, this is hard to realize from inside a despotic state.

The protesters, upset that Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has refused to meet them, have threatened to expand their demonstrations unless he resigns and the Chinese leadership agrees to broader electoral reforms.

It’s clear from the breadth of these protests, that the PRC has lost the consent of the Hong Kong-ese to govern them. PRC governance, thus, is illegitimate. This is corroborated by the protest news clampdown the PRC has done, especially in contrast to the freely flowing protest news within Hong Kong.

And finally, there’s this failure, this one from the West.

British Prime Minister David Cameron saying he planned to summon the Chinese ambassador to discuss the dispute, saying it is essential that Hong Kong’s people have a genuine right to choose their top leader.

This is an even greater misunderstanding, both by its existence and coming as it does from the leader of the birthplace of John Locke. No, Prime Minister, each one of Hong Kong’s people is created with an inalienable right to his own liberty and happiness. That means he has an inalienable right to choose his own government and the men who operate it. What is essential is that Hong Kong’s people have that right genuinely acknowledged and accepted.

More Party-of-No Yeses

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The House passed three more bills in this short period before the mid-term election campaign recess.

One bill makes it illegal for IRS workers to use personal email accounts to conduct official business.

It’s already illegal to do this in many circumstances, as all official business communications must be recorded and saved. It’s also already contrary to IRS policy; although the IRS has ignored this policy whenever that became convenient.

This is, at bottom, an obvious move, too: private enterprise has, for years, held the flip side—the use of company equipment to conduct personal business—to be a fire-able offense; although they allow some limited personal use.

Another bill guarantees groups that are denied tax-exempt status the right to appeal the decision to a separate IRS office.

Also an obvious move. No government decision should be appeal-proof at the outset.

The third bill addresses complaints from groups that have had their confidential taxpayer information improperly disclosed by IRS employees. The bill allows the IRS to tell victims about the status of investigations into the disclosures. Current law forbids the IRS from releasing such information.

Here, I disagree slightly: the bill should require the IRS to disclose status information, not merely permit it. Still, it’s a step in the right direction.

Watch these three obvious moves die in the Democratic Party-controlled Senate.

How Does This Work?

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A Senate investigation released Wednesday [17 Sep] found that hackers linked to the Chinese government broke into US military transportation companies’ computer networks 20 times in a year.

But the Senate Armed Services Committee says officials of the US Transportation Command, responsible for moving troops across the globe in times of crisis, were told about just two of those incidents. If a system was compromised, they may not have known, the panel said.

[Emphasis added.] How is it possible that military transporters were not told that systems on which their functions depended had been compromised? Who made the decision to withhold these critical data? Why is that person/those people not being called to account? Why are those contractors who sat on these data still under contract?