Tag Archives: responsibilities

Insulting?

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Army Colonel Jeffery Nance, the presiding judge in the Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl desertion case has some concerns, officially because Bergdahl’s lawyers has them; unfortunately, Nance has his own, and they’re misplaced.

The judge…called video of [President Donald] Trump repeatedly calling Bergdahl a traitor during campaign speeches “disturbing” at a pre-trial hearing Monday.

He went further:

He also asked prosecutors pointed questions about whether Trump’s criticism has already created a public perception that Bergdahl won’t be treated fairly.

Nance exposed his own prejudgment with his characterization of a politician’s—a businessman as political tyro’s—campaign rhetoric as disturbing as though such blather might prejudice Bergdahl’s case.  Nance then deepened his failure with his implication that the trial participants—judge, lawyers, jury—might be influenced by doings from outside the courtroom.

It got worse.  Nance asked the prosecution lawyers,

You’re not at all concerned about the statement he made, “If I get in we will review his case”…after ranting and raving about no jail time?

Ranting?  More importantly, though, is Nance’s slur here against officers and NCOs in the United States Army—that they’re such cowards they’ll be swayed from their duty as jurors by campaign commentary.

The trial needs to go forward.  The Army and Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers deserve justice.  Bergdahl deserves justice: if the charges are dropped by this judge, Bergdahl can never be viewed as anything other than a deserter, even if he were not.  A fair trial—juried by officers and NCOs who aren’t the timid Milquetoasts Nance thinks they are—will determine Bergdahl’s guilt or innocence; ducking away from the trial cannot.

What Should a Health Plan Cover?

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Anna Wilde Mathews wondered about that in her piece in The Wall Street Journal.  First, a couple of asides.  Notice the tacit acknowledgment that we have no health insurance plans available.  That industry was eliminated in toto by Obamacare, which replaced the industry with a Federally mandated, publicly/privately funded health coverage welfare program.  Next, notice the tacit assumption in the piece’s subhead: that the law should mandate business decisions.

To the piece itself:

The 2010 health law created a new set of federal requirements for plans sold to individuals and small businesses, including a list of 10 benefits, among them prescription drugs, mental-health services and laboratory tests. It also mandated that plans cover preventive services such as vaccinations at no cost to enrollees.

Along with women’s contraceptives (but not men’s…) at no cost to enrollees or the businesses providing the plans.

Trimming certain benefit categories from the required list could sharply raise the cost of those benefits for consumers who opt to have them.

That’s Mathews’ claim, anyway.  What she’s chosen to ignore is that a competitive, free market would sharply reduce the cost of most of those “benefits.”  What she’s also chosen to ignore is that eliminating the mandatory nature of the coverages would sharply lower the cost to millions of others who don’t need those “benefits,” but who must pay for them anyway—even if they’re included in a plan at “no cost to enrollees,” a fiction cynically foisted onto us by the Obama administration.  Enrollees certainly are paying for them; the added cost is simply hidden in a higher overall price.  And the rest of us are paying for them, too, in premiums similarly elevated to pay for that required coverage and/or in the taxes we must pay to pay for the subsidy.

It’s certainly true that other, rarer or more expensive to treat problems would have higher prices, but there’s never been a case made for why Government should pay for these ahead of family, friends, charity, church, local community—the usual suspects.

Plans with skinnier coverage can carry lower premiums, actuaries say. But as with everything in health care, that comes with a trade-off.

NSS.  But those trade-off decisions belong to the individual, not to Government.

Bigotry from Ignorance

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The Owners of Strata Plan LMS 4025* owns a building in City of Vancouver, British Columbia, that houses among other businesses a restaurant that went out of business.  Mengfa International, which owns a small restaurant chain known as Moby Dick’s, wants to open a Moby Dick’s restaurant in that space, but the strata won’t allow it.

It insisted “that the word ‘Dick’ in Moby Dick was an offensive term[.]”

Mengfa demurred (and is suing the strata):

It says that the Moby Dick name and logo are “not offensive to the public, given its literary significance and fame.”

Which would be obvious to anyone with an actual education.  It’s just as obvious to anyone outside a particular building in the City that Dick is a common nickname for those named Richard.  As it is, the strata’s claim, aside from interfering with legitimate business, is a deep insult to the intelligence of anyone with any sort of education.  Or possessed of actual experience of the world, even just that part of it immediately outside the bubble formed from a shell of brick and mortar.

Illiterati like the members of the building council that runs this strata illustrate the bigotry that flows from the ignorance that too many modern education systems create when they put feel-good esteem froo-froo ahead of actual education and performance accountability for students.

Call me Ishmael, indeed.

*A strata, according to the Courthouse News Service site is a Canadian legal entity that

may be created to divide a building or buildings or land into “separate components that are individually owned and common components owned by all of the owners.”

The building of LMS 4025 is run by a building council.

Personal Responsibility

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What a concept.  The proximate subject is whether Montana citizens should be allowed “road beer,” a beer or other alcoholic drink while sitting as a passenger in a car on a Montana road.  Road beer currently is prohibited.

A young Montana Republican State Congressman, Daniel Zolnikov, is backing House Bill 206, which would allow passengers in a car to drink while continuing the prohibition against drivers drinking.  Listen to the man on the larger principle.

The argument was made—how about if it tempts the driver?  That’s like saying (designated drivers) shouldn’t go to bars in case they’re tempted to have a drink. Where is the self-responsibility? This isn’t allowing for people to drink and drive, it’s allowing a passenger to have a beer.

And

[Zolnikov] told KGVO…[i]t’s time to stop “treating adults like children.”

 

Indeed.

Obamacare Subsidies

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In a case involving Federal government payments to Obamacare insurers to “reimburse” them for health coverage plan discounts the government requires those insurers to provide low-income plan buyers, a Federal district court judge in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (which gives the judge’s ruling nationwide jurisdiction) ruled those payments to be unconstitutional—the payments had been being made even though no funds had been appropriated for the purpose by Congress.

Following President-Elect Donald Trump’s election, an appeal of the ruling to the DC Circuit has been HIAed at the request of the House of Representatives, one of the litigants in the original case at trial.  The pause was requested—and granted—to give the incoming Trump administration time to set up its own actions regarding Obamacare and so render the present case moot.

Now two DC lawyers have filed an “emergency” motion on behalf of two California citizens (can you say, “Yay! Fees!” boys and girls?) to get the appellate court to actively settle the matter, in so far as an intermediate appellate court can settle anything.  The California citizens’ argument, through these lawyers goes something like this:

suspending the litigation until during the power transition would essentially allow the lower-court injunction against the Obamacare subsidies to stand. They say they expect that a Trump-led Justice Department would either dismiss the Obama administration’s appeal or strike a settlement with Republicans allowing the injunction to take effect at some later date.

Litigants are allowed to do that, and it’s irrelevant to the matter at hand.  This case, of the question of constitutionality of the reimbursements, has nothing intrinsic in it concerning the right of litigants to it to ask for a pause pending nearby government action that would render the case irrelevant, nor is there anything present that would prevent a court from granting that pause based on that same nearby pending action.  Indeed, the court would be wasting its time arriving at a ruling when that ruling would soon become irrelevant.

The citizens’ argument continues:

Either way…the effect would be “devastating consequences for the individuals who receive these reductions, as well as for the Nation’s health insurance and health care systems generally.”
…without those payments to help offset deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, more insurers likely would drop their participation on the marketplaces. The exchanges, a centerpiece of the health law, would further wither.

That’s certainly a worthy discussion to have, and the nation has been discussing it for the last six years.  However, it’s a purely political discussion, and it has no place at all in a court.  This argument has no bearing on the case before the DC district or appellate court, and it has no bearing on the Circuit’s decision to hold the appeal in abeyance pending Trump administration action (or inaction).

The citizens also raised this item:

The enrollees essentially argue that if they were allowed to intervene and were to succeed in overturning the injunction against the subsidies, Republicans could no longer say their hands are tied by a court order.

That there is a true fact.  And it’s just as irrelevant as the citizens’ foregoing arguments.  The discussion and the question of whether the subsidies ought to be made are political ones, not legal ones, and so the discussion and associated debates are the exclusive province of the political branches of government: the Congress, ultimately in conjunction with the President.  Whose hands are tied and by what is not a question for a court of law.  Full stop.