Tag Archives: government

Contraception Coverage and Freedom

Posted on by
Reply

Just to look at one small aspect of Americans’ liberties, here’s an item: mandated coverage of women’s contraception.

Senator Roy Blunt’s (R, MO) amendment was an attempt to restore a measure of liberty; a copy is here;  it said, in part [emphasis added]

(E) While PPACA provides an exemption for some religious groups that object to participation in Government health programs generally, it does not allow purchasers, plan sponsors, and other stakeholders with religious or moral objections to specific items or services to decline providing or obtaining coverage of such items or services, or allow health care providers with such objections to decline to provide them.

It also says

(A) FOR HEALTH PLANS.—A health plan shall not be considered to have failed…on the basis that it declines to provide coverage of specific items or services because—(i) providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan; or (ii) such coverage (in the case of individual coverage) is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the purchaser or beneficiary of the coverage.

The measure was voted down in the Senate on Thursday by a nearly straight party-line vote of 51-48.  In the run-up to the vote, Senate Democrats had cast it as an attempt to limit women’s access to birth control.  They also had claimed

[T]he bill is “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and may allow employers to exclude coverage for any conditions they find religiously or morally objectionable.

They say this could become a slippery slope, resulting in the exclusion of coverage for HIV & AIDS, mental health, hemophilia, STD’s and more

The Obama administration blasted Blunt’s amendment in a press release Wednesday, saying the president’s supporters need to “stand for a woman’s right to make her own health decisions.”

I certainly hope the amendment, had it passed, would have allowed exclusion—or a decision not to purchase—for “and conditions” that are “religiously or morally objectionable.”  This is an area in which our Constitution, so routinely disregarded by the Progressive administration, explicitly barred the Federal government from entering.  Furthermore, aside from the freedom of choice issues related to mandating coverage—and so paying for this coverage when it’s unwanted or unneeded—and the ludicrous “essential health benefits” aspects of contraception, what religious or moral grounds would be cited?  The Progressives have carefully declined to offer any examples.

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D, NJ) was especially disingenuous in his argument against this amendment.

I don’t want Republican politicians making decisions about my family’s health care.  Women are capable of making their own health-care decisions.

Except, no, they’re not.  Not after Lautenberg got his way: their decision is thrust upon them by this Progressive and his fellows.  Senator Lautenberg and the Federal government now will make health-care decisions in lieu of them.  Obama claimed to “stand for a woman’s right to make her own health decisions,” but with this vote, women are not allowed to decline to purchase a health-care service they do not want or will not use or find morally or religiously objectionable.  They must buy.  They cannot make their own health decision.  Read again the Section E quoted at the start.  See the freedom of choice that the Progressives voted down.

This is Stimulating

Posted on by
Reply

…on a couple of levels (but, no, it didn’t generate a tingle down my leg).  Paul Chesser, of the National Legal and Policy Center, wrote about a law firm and Fisker Automotive earlier this week.  Of particular interest to me in the article were two things.  One was this:

Debevoise & Plimpton LLC, received $1,842,180 in Recovery Act funds to provide legal advice, conduct due diligence, and review documents for two loans from DOE’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program.  One $529 million loan award was to Fisker Automotive to develop and produce two lines of electric vehicles….

Debevoise provided the same services to DOE for its $5.9 billion loan to Ford Motor Company, to convert five of its factories…so they can produce more fuel-efficient vehicles.

That’s a potful of taxpayer money for what seems a straightforward legal task (I won’t go into the political donations employees of the firm made; there’s more of that in the article.  Besides, there’s no evidence of anything illegal having been done here).  Perhaps some of the lawyers reading this can weigh in on the actual costs and charges such analyses normally entail.  I also wonder how many jobs were “saved or created” by this particular Stimulus payout.  Oh, wait, Chesser addressed this:

At the height of its legal services activity for DOE, 1.25 jobs were created that were attributable to Debevoise’s work on the two loans.

The other thing is the quality of the due diligence and analysis provided.  Now it’s certainly possible that loans on which proper due diligence has been done will still fail.  But getting information about this particular loan analysis out of the Department of Energy has been like pulling teeth from a chicken.  Judicial Watch has been forced to sue in Federal court under the Freedom of Information Act to get any serious data concerning this loan of taxpayer money.  The cynic in me has to ask what information has the administration so nervous.

Of What Polity is Merkel Chancellor?

Posted on by
Reply

Spiegel International Online, in an article a couple days ago, insisted that

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has a problem. External pressure on her government to back an increase in the size of the permanent euro backstop fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), is rapidly growing, with Berlin now virtually isolated among the G-20 and the euro zone, with the International Monetary Fund insisting as well.  Even the world’s developing countries are calling for Merkel to agree to boost the firewall….

Internally, however, she is in a bind.  Aid fatigue has set in among Merkel’s conservatives…and the political appetite in her cabinet for countering such skepticism is limited.  …  Renegade lawmakers in the aisles of her governing coalition…meant Merkel fell short of the symbolic “chancellor’s majority,” an absolute majority of Bundestag seats with just coalition votes.

Moreover, which case the article’s author elides, the German people have never favored seeing their hard-earned money, turned over to their government in taxes, sent overseas to reward the irresponsible populations and governments of other countries for their profligacy.

Leaving aside the economic and moral foolishness of continuing—much less expanding—the bailout facility(s), Chancellor Merkel, and her fellow German citizens, need to clarify in their own minds for whom she works—those German citizens who hired her to be their country’s chief executive, or foreign nationals in Europe and elsewhere.  This clarification will eliminate the bind.

Why Would Anyone Buy This Debt?

Posted on by
Reply

Greece, last week, passed its Collective Action Clause legislation in preparation for its upcoming bond swap, wherein bondholders have agreed, in general, to a write down of some 53%: they’ll trade the bonds they hold for new bonds issued by the Greek government that will run out to just over half the value of those original bonds.  This was a—more or less—voluntary swap: agree to the deal or risk losing everything as Greece explicitly defaults.

However.

What the CACs do is force all bond holders to make the swap, whether they want to or not, once a minimum per centage of holders make the swap.  It’s important to note here that this was done retroactively—years after the bonds had been sold, years after a solemn debt agreement had been committed to by the Greek government (and the bond purchasers, but they’re not the ones making this commitment change).  In short, the CACs change the original terms of the debt, and they do so entirely unilaterally, and only after the fact.

There are two problems with this.  One, the most important, has to do with integrity and morality.  The Greek government, and the Greek citizens collectively, can be derided for their foolishness in running up so large a debt compared to the country’s ability to repay, and many of us have done so.  However, to things that are known a priori on any debt sale agreement are that there is a non-zero possibility of default, even on a government debt, and this is priced into the cost of buying a sovereign debt instrument, at however small a premium.  The other thing that is known is that the terms of the deal will be honored by all parties to it, come what may.  Even were the Greek government, for instance, explicitly to default on its bonds—to go through, for instance, the (inter)national equivalent of an American bankruptcy court proceeding—everything would proceed in accordance with already known rules and conditions.

This unilateral, retroactive change to the terms of these debt agreements, though, destroys that integrity, that morality.  An entity that will welch on its commitments as soon as they become inconvenient (albeit a large inconvenience in the present case, but there are more honest alternatives even here) cannot be trusted to honor any future commitments whenever those might become inconvenient.

The other problem is a moral hazard one; although this one has a chance of not materializing.  The moral hazard here is not the classical economist’s moral hazard, but a different kind.  Consider, for example, a basketball or soccer player who hits the game winner as the clock expires.  This player gets credit—gets the positive moral hazard—for hitting the winner.  Never mind that this is wholly unjustified: his teammates and he have spent the entire game keeping it so close that a single shot out of the 150 or so in an NBA game or dozen or so on goal in a soccer match, makes the difference.  Any shot from the first one taken in the first quarter to the penultimate one taken late in game, any of those, has significance equal to that last one made.

So it is with Greek bond holders in a more negative sense.  Suppose the required per centage of bond holders, less one, makes the swap.  The swap fails, and the Greeks default.  It’s easy to identify the game winning shooter and to lionize him.  It’s also easy to identify the bond holders who reject the swap, and I suggest that the last one to make that list will not be lionized.  All bond holders are put into this box, also, though.

Under these circumstances, I ask again my question: why would anyone buy this country’s debt in future?  An actual “I can’t pay, so I default” would bring about sore hits to Greece’s future borrowing capacity, but such a default would not, of necessity, impugn Greek honesty.  They would recover, and in pretty short order.  But having destroyed their integrity?

Regulations Impacting Free Speech

Posted on by
Reply

Now we see this from the New Jersey Law Journal [emphasis added]:

As corporate money continues its steady flow through the post-Citizens United world of U.S. elections, general counsel may soon have a new disclosure item to worry about. Last Friday, commissioner Luis Aguilar of the Securities and Exchange Commission called for the agency to consider a new rule requiring public companies to disclose all political spending. Shareholder proxy proposals seeking disclosure of corporate political donations are at a new high this year, according to the National Association of Corporate Directors. Aguilar says shareholder pressure is working, because nearly 60 percent of the S&P 100 companies had political disclosure policies in place as of December 31, compared with only a handful seven years earlier.

Never mind that, if shareholder pressure is working, a Government rule controlling free speech in this arena is plainly unwarranted.  This is just another cynical Progressive administration attempt to regulate free speech.