Tag Archives: political economy

Companies Tracking Customers

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It turns out this isn’t limited to cookies through browsers and overt tracking software.

There’s another software package that businesses use to track their users activities. Log4j

is used on computer servers to keep records of users’ activities so they can be reviewed later by security or software development teams.

Businesses are secretly tracking our activities as we interact with them digitally, not just quietly through cookies and tracking tools. Maybe not only those teams, either. It wouldn’t surprise me if marketing teams were using our data, and if other teams were putting together packages of our data to peddle to other companies.

It’s widespread, too.

The nonprofit Apache Software Foundation, a group that distributes the open-source tool at no cost, has said [Log4j] has been downloaded millions of times.

Nice.

And just to add a floatie to that puddle, Log4j has a serious security flaw.

The flaw is particularly dangerous given the widespread use of Log4j on corporate networks and the ease with which hackers could exploit the vulnerability, security experts say.

And

Attackers could use the bug to break into computer networks to steal sensitive data, prepare for ransomware attacks, or create backdoors that will allow them to maintain access to corporate systems even after the flawed software has been patched.

That exposure isn’t limited to personal information, either, or to the nefarious uses to which businesses put out personal information.  It ranges up to the technologies of businesses, including defense contractors.

Free Enterprise

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The politicians populating Vermont’s State government don’t like it; they’re taking an overt step to bring the State’s economy under centralized control. These politicians are using the State’s insurance industry—already an industry with limited freedom to operate in all States, not just in Vermont—as their tool to do this.

Vermont is now one of the first states to require health insurers to pay for the costs associated with at-home COVID-19 tests, Governor Phil Scott (R) announced.

Yes, this is a Republican governor. A weak Republican governor, with a Progressive-Democrat State House of Representatives and State Senate.

Never mind that, if consumers in a free market environment wanted the tests covered by their insurers, competition would lead the insurers to cover them. Never mind, either, that that same competition would drive the cost of that coverage to its lowest level.

Instead, with this Government-driven requirement, coverage costs will be elevated, propped up by the artificial, Government-created demand. And, notwithstanding the disingenuous claim of the State’s Department of Financial Regulation Commissioner, Michael Pieciak, that the tests will be free, they will not only cost all Vermonters in the form of elevated premiums and/or limited quality of coverage elsewhere in the policies, all Vermonters will be paying for the tests of the few.

Socialism in action. Vermont businesses—insurers are just the camel’s nose—are free to produce whatever goods and services they choose, so long as Government politicians approve.

Big Progressive-Democrat Government

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A Rasmussen poll suggests that a majority of Americans oppose the socialism in the policies of the Biden-Harris administration.

That’s encouraging, but I have some concerns about the policies anyway, given that they’re being jammed through without regard for the views of the government’s employers.

The socialism aspect of the Biden-Harris and Progressive-Democratic Party policies is less a matter of the raw spending and usurious taxes in them much more a matter of the strings attached to the spending and of who gets (punitively) taxed.

The strings attached would give the Federal government more control over the States and over what businesses are allowed to produce and the prices they charge. The proposed tax structure would give the Federal government more indirect control by “encouraging” businesses to comport themselves IAW Government wishes.

That control is the essence of socialism, whether the control is through outright ownership or through controlling production permissions.

The spendthriftiness should be enough by itself to keep the bill from being passed.

The tax distortions should be enough by itself to keep the bill from being passed.

The increased Government control should be enough by itself to keep the bill from being passed.

Unfortunately, dangerously, each of the three individually (as well as together) are tightly aligned with Progressive-Democratic Party goals of spending to buy votes, taxing the Evil Rich to virtue-signal for votes, and to outright accrete power to Party.

Two Mistakes

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The Chevron Deference “rule,” which the Supreme Court coalesced out of the æther in its 37-year-old Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council ruling, comes up again in this year’s American Hospital Association v Becerra case, which centers on Medicare’s drug reimbursement schedule for hospitals.

The Supremes invented a two-step evaluation of Executive Branch agency rules in that Chevron case:

First, courts are to give effect to the “unambiguously expressed intent of Congress.” Second, if a court finds that the statute is ambiguous…then it is bound to respect any plausible agency interpretation.

The second step contains the two mistakes, a remarkable achievement even for the activist Court that dreamed up the process.

First, if a court finds that the statute is ambiguous, then the court has no other option, under each of our Constitution and the judge’s/Justices’ oaths of office, to strike the statute as unconstitutionally ambiguous. It has no need, it cannot, then reach that second bit.

Second, a court is not at all bound to respect any plausible agency interpretation. Far from it. In evaluating an agency rule or regulation—having found the statute constitutionally clear—any court must, by the Supreme Court’s rule, treat the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress as their limit. From that, a court must evaluate, de novo, the rule or regulation for whether it fits within the clear confines of the statute.

There can be no deference to another branch of government, much less to a subordinate agency of another branch, if judges of the judicial branch are to be faithful to our Constitution’s construction of three coequal branches of government, rather than to, say, the British construction of the judiciary being subordinate to another branch (Parliament in the British construction).

If the Supreme Court is to satisfy its function in AHA, it must rescind, reverse, root out to every jot and tittle Chevron Deference (and all other deferences, vis., Skidmore, City of Arlington v FCC‘s Arlington, etc) and evaluate the Becerra rule on the basis of whether the governing statute truly is unambiguous and if so, then on the fit of Becerra’s rule within that statute.

A Rain Tax

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It’s back.

Recall the Maryland rain tax that Progressive-Democrats in that State’s legislature actually got passed into law. That…foolishness…contributed to the State’s Progressive-Democrat Governor getting tossed at the next election and replaced by a Republican. The State’s legislature then repealed the tax within the next couple years.

Now we see that the Progressive-Democrat City Manager for Fairfax (that Fairfax), Robert Stalzer, proposed

taxing local residents and businesses for the amount of rainwater that falls on their roofs, driveways, parking lots, and other “impervious surfaces” on their property.

Just the News opened its article on this with this bit from The Beatles:

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet

Not to be outdone, or not too badly, anyway, I offer this adaptation from The Lovin’ Spoonful:

You and me and rain on the roof,
Caught up in a taxing shower,
Going broke while it soaks our wallets.
Maybe we’ll be broke in hours,
Waiting out the Guv….

To quote Joe Biden, who railed in a different venue, this is a bonehead idea.