Tag Archives: regulation

Again, Progress

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EEOC v Freeman concerned an events company that used [criminal and credit] background checks in employment decisions between July 2006 and August 2011. The company had experienced problems with employee drug use, embezzlement, and workplace violence, and saw background checks as a legitimate way to screen applicants.

US District Judge Roger Titus scored the agency for…putting employers “in the ‘Hobson’s choice’ of ignoring criminal history and credit background, thus exposing themselves to potential liability for criminal and fraudulent acts committed by employees, on the one hand, or incurring the wrath of the EEOC for having utilized information deemed fundamental by most employers.”

And if that wasn’t a clear enough message, he continued: “Something more, far more, than what is relied upon by the EEOC in this case must be utilized to justify a disparate impact claim based upon criminal history and credit checks.  To require less, would be to condemn the use of common sense, and this is simply not what the discrimination laws of this country require.”

There’s more to this:

[T]he [EEOC] didn’t show that Freeman Co discriminated against black applicants by using criminal-background checks or credit checks in its hiring process.

Well, duh.  The judge went on:

The story of the present action has been that of a theory in search of facts to support it.  But there are simply no facts here to support [the EEOC’s claim that black applicants were improperly discriminated against].

Freeman has 4,100 full-time and 25,000 to 30,000 part-time employees; that part-time to full-time ratio is a potful of turnover—which puts a premium on those background checks.

Progress, indeed.

Short-of-Death Panels

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Power Line received an email the other day from a gentleman who is…how shall I put it—unimpressed…with Obamacare.  It’s a long email, but you should read it all.  It recounts his experiences following a pair of strokes—one of them massive—he suffered a bit under two years ago at the ripe old age of 30.  The man spent three months in the hospital, much of that time on life support, and his doctors tell him that had he survived (his chances were about 1%—as he notes, a new meaning for a Democrat mantra), he should have been a vegetable.  But he had a Cadillac insurance policy—one of those openly attacked by Obamacare, and he had very much good fortune that Obamacare would have obviated.

There’s much in the man’s email that recounts his good fortune at not—yet—having to wear the yoke of Obamacare; I want to excerpt just a bit [emphasis added].

Had I been an elderly patient responsible for my own care, or not had the extraordinary family connections that I have at my disposal, I would have been in serious trouble and undoubtedly come out of this much worse.
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I saw the cost-cutting is much more tangible.  A major factor in my recovery has been physical, occupational, and speech therapy.  Without those things I wouldn’t be able to roll over, put on my socks, or eat, among other things.  In fact, before my therapy began I was scheduled to enter assisted living.  Because my therapy was so effective….
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One of the things Obamacare is doing is forcing Medicare’s CMS to cut back on quite a lot of rehabilitation services.
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One of the things that changed for “new” stroke patients was limiting reimbursable therapy visits of all kinds for stroke patients to ten total (because my stokes had happened before the change I was grandfathered in, so to speak).  Ten!

I have had well north of 200 visits.  At upwards of $250/visit for most therapy not many folks could sustain that for long without insurance (and remember, jobs go away when you’re in the hospital as long as I was).  Had I been restricted to ten visits my best case scenario would have involved a home nurse.  I wouldn’t have been able to find work.  And had I been single (as many stroke patients are because they’re elderly and their spouse has passed) I would have become destitute, thus likely landing in the Medicaid system, eventually.

That’s an incredible and frightening amount of power to be put in the hands of DC bureaucrats.  My therapy was at one of my hospitals (I had four) and every day I heard Medicaid patients being told their therapy visits were being cut off.  Those CMS decisions are consigning people to wheelchairs, or worse.
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Granted, my case was exceptionally bad but being limited to 10 visits almost would have been a death sentence.  I’ve experienced some of the most awful things imaginable and to think that a bureaucratic decision made in Washington…could have consigned me to that forever….

It’s August and our Representatives and Senators are in town hall season—those of them with the courage to face us up close and in public, and to listen to us.  Go there, and go there often.  Tell our Congressmen to put an end to Obamacare—no more argument, no more “debate,” no more dithering.  Tell both Democrats and Republicans.  Tell the Progressives and Conservatives, too.

Remember, in the primaries and elections of 2014, who follows your instructions this season.  Also remember who didn’t even have the courage to face you in an open town hall.

Objections to Cancelling Fannie, Freddie

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Are coming out; here are two.  The existence of these objections demonstrates the disaster that government involvement in the market, together with the resulting dependence on government, generate.

Kelly Powers, Vice President for Advocacy at the Arizona Mortgage Lenders Association:

[She insists that] there isn’t enough private capital to step in and take over, and the results on lending could be damaging.

“It would make it much more difficult for people to borrow.  There would be less liquidity and less players in the game.  The requirements would go up and people won’t be able to qualify for loans.”

She added that she “doesn’t want to operate without a government safety net.”

Of course there isn’t enough private capital today: Uncle Sugar has been providing taxpayer money, either directly, or indirectly through “guaranties.”  Liquidity will develop as the market develops and wants it, based on actual demand and supply, not on the availability of the public trough funded by private tax money—which is our money, not government’s and not yours.

With regard to loan “requirements” and “borrowing difficulty,” once the liquidity aspect is sorted out through the transition period (both President Barack Obama and a bipartisan bill in progress—that also excludes future government participation—posit five-six years for getting rid of Fannie and Freddie) lending and borrowing…difficulty…will more closely be based on actual credit worthiness.  See a nearby post.

In the end, a business whose leadership is unable to function without its collective hand in the taxpayer’s pocket isn’t ready for prime time.  No, if you’re unable to take a risk and suffer the consequences without assurance of government bailout, then you’re a failure as a businessman already.

Independent Bankers of America President and CEO Cam Fine also wants his association’s hands in our pockets, and he added a different objection.

It is extremely complex and it would be a delicate venture to get all of the moving parts in place.  It would take a great deal of coordination and cooperation among private investors, mortgage producers, properly funded and established and all of that would have to be done simultaneously.

Again, this is malarkey.  If it’s hard to do, that just emphasizes the importance of getting started.  More importantly, over the posited transition period, a free market will evolve the needed “moving parts” just fine.  If a business(man) is unable to develop in an evolving market place, if a business(man) is unable to take the first step on a business path without the last step—which never arrives in a human endeavor; the last step is itself constantly changing—being planned out to a gnat’s patootie, if a business(man) is unable to function except in a centrally planned economy, there’s no place for that business(man) here.

In Which I Agree with President Obama

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…mostly.

In a speech Tuesday in Phoenix, Obama call[ed] for transitioning the business model of Fannie and Freddie into a system where “private capital must be wiped out before the government pays on any form of catastrophic guarantee,” a senior administration official said.

If he really wants to, this is mostly good.  Those taking the risks should be the ones to reap the rewards—and the only ones to suffer the loss.  Taxpayers should not be dragged into a failure at all.

And that’s the “mostly” part: “before the government pays on any form of catastrophic guarantee” should not be a player at all.  This is what private insurance in a free market is for.

Obama will also renew his calls for sweeping mortgage refinancing legislation when he travels to Phoenix Tuesday.

Here, not so much.  The only sweeping legislation necessary is the repeal of the Community Reinvestment Act, a high-minded sounding idea that in the realization has been used only to browbeat lenders into making bad loans to poor credit risks.

…a call for expanding refinancing eligibility for homeowners who do not have government-backed mortgages.

In particular, there’s no need for a government determination of “refinancing eligibility.”  The market will determine that, just fine.  Government distortions from the market do no good at all; they only destroy the pricing information extant.

Car Pooling

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…but only the union way.

In the past month, San Francisco International Airport officials have been citing and arresting drivers from mobile-app enabled rideshare companies that pick up and drop off passengers, an airport spokesman said.  Airport spokesman Doug Yakel said there have been seven citizen arrests issued to “various offenders” since July 10.  The airport had issued cease and desist letters to several rideshare companies, including Lyft, Sidecarv and Uber, in April.

Notice that these are not “professional” drivers—not union cabbies—that are being harassed.  CBS San Francisco points out that the harasses are “drivers participating in a mobile app arrangement typified by Sidecar.”

Naturally, a union—a taxi union in this case—objects to rideshare at “their” airport.  The competition might save the customers money (good for them, bad for the protected class), and it might save gas (good for the environment, bad for—well, not much of anyone).

But there’s a solution afoot:

The state Public Utilities Commission, which regulates and licenses passenger carriers, has been looking into how to regulate these new types of companies.

Of course.  Because we Americans are just too stupid to be trusted to do anything on our own, without a Know Better Government’s regulation to tell us what to do, how to do it, and when we should do it.