Tag Archives: regulation

Regarding Flint

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EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman, who resigned in February, explained to Congress on Tuesday that “during the summer and fall of 2015 the Region 5 Flint team actively evaluated and reevaluated the enforcement options available.”  But she chose not to intervene in September because she worried that the Michigan Attorney General might sue the agency.  When have legal risks ever stopped the EPA?

The Wall Street Journal has a valid question.  But both the editorial staff and the EPA ignore another matter: the publicity of a Michigan AG lawsuit against the EPA would have resulted in a high level of public oversight of the EPA, of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and of Flint’s tap water.

Now the Bill Must Pass?

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The Georgia legislature has passed a bill and put it in front of the governor that would

protect pastors from performing same-sex marriages and give “faith-based” organizations permission to deny use of their business for anything they find “objectionable.” Businesses wouldn’t have to hire anyone whose religious beliefs are different from theirs[.]

The NFL doesn’t like that.

“NFL policies emphasize tolerance and inclusiveness, and prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other improper standard,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy said. “Whether the laws and regulations of a state and local community are consistent with these policies would be one of many factors NFL owners may use to evaluate potential Super Bowl host sites.”

So, what else does that mean?  Would the NFL then require the Atlanta Falcons to leave Georgia, too?  Sounds like this is a dare that Georgia must accept: the governor must sign the bill.

Too Far

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In New York,

Instead of handing patients slips of paper, physicians soon must electronically send orders directly to pharmacies for everything from antibiotics to cholesterol pills to painkillers, with some exceptions. Otherwise, prescribers face the possibility of fines, license loss or even jail.

Because New York’s Know Betters know better.

However.

Digital prescribing thwarts prescription-slip forgery and theft….

They also expose the patient, the doctor, and the pharmacy to hacking.  Sort of like an IRS or an OMB hack we all know and love.

There are other downsides.

Patients, for instance, could accidentally have prescriptions sent to the wrong pharmacy or to one that has closed or out of stock by the time they arrive. Instead of taking a piece of paper to another pharmacy, patients have to get the doctor to re-issue the prescription or the pharmacy to transfer it.

It’s also harder for patients to shop around for medication deals when a script is in a pharmacy’s system instead of in hand, says Dr. Joseph R. Maldonado, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York.

And there’s the business of government meddling in a private enterprise’s internal affairs and here interfering with a doctor-patient admin function.

No matter how well intentioned, government cannot be allowed into a private business’ concerns.  New York still is being a nanny state.

Federally Mandated Wages

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Here’s another fiasco-in-waiting being manufactured by the Progressive-Democrat Party and its leader, President Barack Obama.

The Obama administration has advanced to the final stages a contentious rule that will make millions more Americans eligible for overtime pay….

The Labor Department sent its final version of the overtime-pay regulation to the White House Office of Management and Budget on Monday for review, according to an administration official.

This rule will force employers to pay overtime for hours worked beyond 40 in a week to salaried workers whose annual basic salary is $50,440 or less—an increase of more than 200%.

As any grade schooler who’s on an allowance knows, when the price of something goes up, the grade schooler buys less of that thing.  When the price of labor goes up….

This government interference in the private economy will have two effects: salaried employees who used to put in the overtime now will be barred from that—to the overall detriment of the company’s productivity and so competitiveness, and from that to the detriment of the jobs of that company.

Alternatively, the company, in an effort to maintain company-level productivity, will suck up and pay the overtime.  This will drive up the cost of the company’s products, reduce the funding available for R&D, and from that harm the competitiveness of the company to the detriment of the jobs at that company.

Alternatively, the company will hire fewer workers, replace fewer workers who depart for any of a variety of reasons, to the detriment of employment generally.

These folks of the Left know that; they’re some of the smartest people around, as they assure us.  But, hey—union votes.

Central Management

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China is having a harder time managing a property market that is diverging, the country’s housing minister said Tuesday.

“The differences are severe, and it is worsening,” Chen Zhenggao said at a news conference on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress on Tuesday.  “The situation in the first-tier cities and the third- and fourth-tier cities are different, which brings about challenges to our regulatory work, and is a major issue.”

[emphasis added]  And this:

“This is a trade-off,” said Rosealea Yao, an analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics.  “On one hand, you want rural workers to buy homes,” she said.  “But there is a need to prop up housing prices because Chinese people only buy homes when prices are rising.  Inadvertently, this then fuels sharp gains in home prices in first-tier cities.”

There’s a hint there about the utility of managing a large, complex economy from a center that’s far distant from that economy.  Maybe, just maybe, the PRC should lay off from those one-size-fits-all rules.  Or even lay off from regulating so much at all.

Of course, that would mean a lessening of personal power for the men of the PRC government….