Tag Archives: regulation

Mandates and Freedom

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Recall that HHS’ original rule regarding contraceptive coverage by “insurance” companies

exempted churches and other houses of worship, but required faith-affiliated charities, universities and other nonprofits to provide the coverage for their employees.

HHS’ finalized rule, which they claim is an outstanding compromise,

simplified the definition of religious organizations that are fully exempt from the requirement.  The change means a church that also ran a soup kitchen would not have to comply.

But “faith-affiliated charities, universities and other nonprofits” still are required to provide the contraceptive coverage.  Moreover,

religious nonprofits must notify their insurance company that they object to birth control coverage.  The insurer or administrator of the plan will then notify affected employees separately that coverage will be provided at no cost.  The insurers would be reimbursed by a credit against fees owed the government.

Of course, HHS omits to say to whom there is no cost.  It’s also unclear what happens in the event there are more credits than fees.  Who pays the difference?  In either event, it seems clear to me, it’s the taxpayers—and the “insurers’ ” customers—who pay.

Eric Rassbach, of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, has pointed out

As we said when the proposed rule was issued, this doesn’t solve the religious conscience problem because it still makes our non-profit clients the gatekeepers to abortion and provides no protection to religious businesses[.]

Michael Hash, Director of the HHS Office of Health Reform, demurs from that description.  Faith-based groups, says he, were given another reprieve, until 1 Jan, to comply.

But they still have to comply—screw ’em.

Here is an impact of capricious Federal regulation (apologies for the redundancy) on individual liberty.

Arrogance

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Fox News‘ headline says it all:

Obama planning to sidestep Congress for next phase in climate change agenda

He came through on that in his Tuesday speech: he intends to implement his climate change claptrap by diktat through his EPA, wholly ignoring the will of the people and our representatives.  In the realization of his speech, his

national plan to combat climate change…include[s] the first-ever federal regulations on carbon dioxide emitted by existing power plants….

In a speech at Georgetown University Tuesday Obama…announce[d] he’s issuing a presidential memorandum to implement the regulations….

And

…he is directing his administration to allow enough renewables on public lands to power 6 million homes by 2020, effectively doubling the capacity from solar, wind and geothermal projects on federal property.

But he won’t allow oil and gas drilling—or the associated jobs and cheap energy.  Expensive energy that the unemployed can’t get is better, you see.  Additionally, there’ll be

…$8 billion in federal loan guarantees to spur investment in technologies that can keep carbon dioxide produced by power plants from being released into the atmosphere.

Never minding that actual science, rather than the pseudo-science of his followers, has shown that CO2 is a trailing indicator of increasing health of the planet.

Congress?  I don’ need no stinkin’ Congress.

“All of the Above” is just Obamatalk

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Kelly David Burke has the sorry tale in a recent Fox News article.

The Bush administration had set aside 1.3 million acres for oil shale and tar sands development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.  The new Bureau of Land Management plan cuts that amount by two-thirds, down to 700,000 acres….

I’ll elide Burke’s poor arithmetic—the 600,000 acre reduction amounts to a reduction of a bit under 50%–he is, after all, a journalist; his point remains valid: this is an enormous reduction in oil resource availability.

President Barack Obama’s BLM has its excusesrationale all lined up though.  It’s

…not against oil shale and tar sands development, but will restrict the amount of public lands available for leasing until the processes are proven, and proven safe.

Never mind that Canada has been successfully and safely extracting oil from shale and from tar sands for decades, and US companies have been extracting from shale for nearly as long with similar success and safety.

This is, in the end, just part of Obama’s effort to artificially suppress the price of otherwise unviable solar and wind energy sources with enormous subsidies and loans while trying to restrict the supply of oil (and gas) in an attempt to price these sources up into the stratospheric range of even the subsidized “green” energy…sources.

It’s all of a piece with his decision elsewhere to slow walk oil leases and drilling permits.

Rakoff Was Both Right and Victorious

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Recall Federal District Judge Jed Rakoff’s decision a while ago rejecting an SEC-Citibank settlement, in which Citibank agreed to pay an enormous vigfine to the SEC in return for the latter’s desisting from harassinghectoring the former any further.  Rakoff’s heartburn concerned the lack of statement by either party of guilt or innocence by Citibank—Citi would simply pay the protectionfine and the SEC would stop its threats.

Now there’s an update to the SEC side of this.

The Securities and Exchange Commission intends to make companies and individuals admit wrongdoing as a condition of settling civil charges in certain cases, or be forced to fight the charges in court, the agency’s Chairman Mary Jo White said Tuesday.

Is this a direct result of Rakoff’s rudeness in holding out for actual culpability before a fine gets assessed?  Maybe, but not directly.  This change didn’t occur until after a review of the overall situation initiated by SEC Chairman Mary Jo White when she took over last spring.

It does, though, come after Rakoff’s argument that the ability to avoid admitting liability allows companies to treat settlements as just a “cost of doing business.”  He didn’t argue this explicitly, but I do: it also allows government agencies to extort money and other…concessions…from businesses and individuals with whom those agencies have a disagreement of any sort.  Sort of like the IRS and the DoJ do.

“Victorious” may be too strong, but this clearly is a step in the right direction.

In Which The Swiss Government Votes for National Sovereignty

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Switzerland’s lower house of Parliament voted 123-63 against the measure [to let Swiss banks otherwise violate Swiss banking laws to give up data demanded by the US], which would have enabled many of the Alpine nation’s banks to sidestep the Swiss banking secrecy laws and start handing information to the US Department of Justice about any past help they may have given to Americans hiding undeclared wealth in Swiss accounts.

Those lawmakers were worried about, among other things,

the heavy-handedness of the US effort to have them sign off on legislation that might have exposed the country’s banks and bank employees to legal hazards.  Lawmakers had also raised concerns about the lack of detail in the plan regarding potential fines for banks that would have opted to participate.

Peter Kunz, Professor of Business Law at the University of Bern, disagreed:

This is the major problem.  Swiss banks, and banks in general, need some certainty in their business—and right now no one really knows what’s going to happen.

I disagree with the good professor.  To the extent there is uncertainty, it’s in the Swiss government’s behavior.  With this rejection, Swiss banks remain free to obey Swiss law without fear of retaliation, which would not have been possible under the proposed law.  That law would have subjected Swiss banks to the vagaries of American law.

This may be more coming down the pike.

Senior officials from Germany, France, Japan and the European Commission have expressed deep concern to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about the Fed’s proposed new regulatory regime for foreign banks under Section 165 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

This is what concerns them:

the Fed proposes to require over two dozen foreign banks to move their U.S. broker-dealer and other nonbranch operations under separately capitalized, intermediate holding companies that would be subject to U.S. bank capital requirements, liquidity buffers and single counterparty credit limits.

…

For purposes of complying with the Fed’s higher capital requirements under Section 165, U.S. bank holding companies would be allowed to take account of their global consolidated operations. Foreign bank-owned IHCs would not—which means that capital held at the foreign bank parent level would not be available to support U.S. operations. This would tilt the competitive playing field against foreign bank-owned broker-dealers, and it is a glaring violation of long-standing principles of equal national treatment.

Sovereignty—what a concept.