Tag Archives: regulation

Who’s In Charge?

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State Financial Officers Foundation CEO OJ Oleka noted in his Wall Street Journal op-ed the foolishness of Minnesota’s decision to eliminate its State Treasurer position with effect ‘way back in 2003. Supporters insisted that the position was purely clerical and so not worth the million dollars a year cost. Instead, the position’s responsibilities were scattered around to other State agencies. Oleka added

When no statewide official is clearly responsible for safeguarding public money, taxpayers pay the price.

Like with the multi-billion dollar Medicaid fraud that’s being uncovered in Minnesota. Only it’s not just the citizens of Minnesota who are paying that price; it’s all of us citizens all across these United States.

Oleka also pointed out the value of having someone in charge of watchdogging a State’s public money.

Across the states, financial officers are proving that vigilance works. Kentucky Auditor Allison Ball uncovered $800 million in wrongful Medicaid payments. North Carolina Treasurer Brad Briner found $170 million in unspent funds, while Iowa’s Roby Smith delivered a record $469 million return on investments that help fund state services.

There’s another factor here, though. Every one of those officials are Republicans.

Hmm….

Drug Mistake

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President Donald Trump (R) signed an Executive Order that reclassified marijuana from a Schedule 1 drug (highly dangerous and tightly controlled) to a Schedule 3 drug (not so dangerous, not so tightly controlled, but still illegal at the Federal level.

This is a mistake.

Leave aside all the dangers of modern-day marijuana or its unproven medical uses (multiple studies conflict with each other on the effectivity of a variety of constituent chemicals).

If the purpose really was to improve access for research (to, among other things, address those medical uses and those dangers), there was a simpler way to do that. Schedule 1 drugs are, in fact, deucedly difficult to obtain, even for researchers. However, that could have been addressed by setting up a licensing facility that would ease access to marijuana by approved laboratories and approved researchers working in those laboratories specifically on marijuana research.

It still can be. Trump’s EO can be rescinded, and that licensing facility still can be stood up.

Nanny State Strikes Again

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The lede has it.

California regulators have given Tesla 90 days to meet compliance after an administrative law judge found the company deceived consumers by falsely implying its cars could drive on their own.

The article got specific down the page.

California’s DMV first brought the case against Tesla in 2022, arguing the automaker’s use of product names “Autopilot” and “Full-Self Driving Capability” amounted to false advertising. The regulator said Tesla’s use of this language implied to drivers that its cars could function as autonomous vehicles.

Ninety days to stop calling an autopilot an autopilot and to stop calling a full-self driving capability a full-self-driving capability. Never mind that Tesla’s instructions also instruct drivers to remain alert and to keep at least one hand on the steering wheel.

Because California’s government officials think California citizens are grindingly stupid and cannot think for themselves.

Red Tape Redundancy

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A letter-writer in Monday’s Letters section of The Wall Street Journal was rightly concerned about red tape redundancy, but he missed the mark on one form of it.

One can’t work with children without undergoing specific training and, in many states, extensive background checks. There’s value in those measures, but how about some coordination?
While living in New Jersey, I was fingerprinted for my teaching license in Somerset County and, later, in Middlesex County, despite having permanent certification in New York. I was then fingerprinted for gun purchases, coaching recreational soccer, and teaching Sunday school. At some point, it all becomes too exhausting.

There’s nothing redundant about being checked via immutable personal characteristics at each of those application points. Fingerprinting is an important way of determining that the person doing the applying is who he claims to be. Those multiple applications may or may not be by the same person.

Having been IDed by fingerprints and confirmed to be the same person across those multiple applications, though, there should be no need to repeat the rest of the applications beyond what’s unique to the function being applied for. Those repeats are what would be redundant and want better coordination.

If They Depend on Subsidies…

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…then they shouldn’t be in business. The subheadline laid it out:

Republicans want to shift subsidies away from some of the frailest companies in the industry

In this context, “the industry” is the health care coverage industry, and the subsidies are those paid health coverage providers in the Affordable Care Act. I claim, though, that “private” companies that require government handouts are neither all that private nor deserving of staying in business. If they cannot survive without taxpayer money as anything more than a shortish-term loan to survive a catastrophe, they should be left to go out of business.

The news writer at the link made a big deal out of the need for the subsidies to those coverage providers in order to hold down the prices—the premiums—the customers pay for the policies, jerking tears especially for the lower income customers. What he does not address, though, is the deductibles and the out-of-pocket caps those Obamacare policies have. The deductibles and caps each separately represent significant fractions of those lower income customers’ income. They, especially, had better not get sick. If they do, their strait is not much different from that of those folks who are uninsured at all.

The subsidies paid into their hands directly would at least give them a little relief, but that’s only a stop gap. The real solution is to eliminate the ACA altogether and free up the health care coverage industry, restoring it to a health insurance industry in a free market with policies marketable nationwide, rather than limiting them to intrastate sales with the permissions and regulations of fifty different States.

Companies providing health care coverage or insurance should see their prosperity in how well they treat their customers and how well they serve them. Their prosperity should not come from government handouts—transfers from us taxpayers who don’t use their services.