Congress is considering H.R. 5050, the Social Networking Online Protection Act, which would prohibit employers from requiring or requesting that employees provide a user name, password, or other means for accessing a personal account on a social networking website.
Cato at Liberty
Cato at Liberty
Email Signup
Sign up to have blog posts delivered straight to your inbox!
Topics
Federal Agencies Out of Control: Quick Roundup
Today, a Washington Post editorial asks whether the Environment Protection Agency is out of control because one of its officials spoke of “crucifying” businesspeople who may run afoul of that agency’s regulations. The short answer is Yes, it is out of control. Go here for the longer answer.
The Drug Enforcement Agency is also out of control. Daniel Chong was left in a holding cell for days without food, water, or a toilet. Agents forgot about him. Poor Chong attempted suicide because he was so distressed.
Meanwhile the Secret Service is under scrutiny for the security detail that was partying with prostitutes in advance of President Obama’s trip to South America. The agents involved say they are puzzled by the spotlight since their supervisors were aware of similar conduct in the past and it was no big deal.
Obama Labor Department Won’t Ban Kids’ Farm Chores
Farm families, along with the cause of liberty, won an important battle last week when the Obama administration scrapped plans to prohibit kids from doing a wide range of jobs in agriculture, even on farms belonging to their own family members. The rules would have barred youngsters under 16 from working with animals, storage bins, power-driven equipment, and various other things found on farms; perhaps most significant, they took an exceedingly narrow view of the so-called parental exemption provided by the law, so that (in the rules as proposed last year) kids would have been forbidden to work on an uncle or grandparent’s farm, or any farm less than “wholly” owned by their own parents. The Department of Labor was inundated by upwards of 10,000 comments, overwhelmingly negative, from farmers and ranchers; playing out in press outlets like the Custer County, Neb. Chief, the controversy was mostly ignored by the Eastern press, though NPR did do a report in December.
Commentator Ira Stoll has connected the dots about the Obama administration’s tendency to press ahead on extreme regulatory measures, then back off after a public outcry builds:
Examples include the mandatory automobile back-up camera rule, the ban of all cellphone use, even hands-free, while driving, the ban on 100 watt incandescent light bulbs, the NLRB’s action preventing Boeing from opening a factory in South Carolina, a right-to-work state, and the IRS’s cumbersome Form 1099 requirement as part of Obamacare.
Last fall I noted the same pattern, including retreats on EPA standards on dust, smog, and cross-state air pollution, and a misbegotten rule on lead abatement that could have made it prohibitively expensive to rehabilitate older homes. As I said at the time:
This, then, seems to be the new Obama administration compromise position …: they’ll hold off for now on saddling the economy with at least some potentially ruinous regulations — but they’ll make sure you know they’re not happy about having to take that stand.
More on the Obama administration and regulation here.
Medicare Fraud Posse Cackles as If They Laid an Asteroid
What the media blare:
Levinson Snags $515 Million in Health Care Fraud
More than 100 Charged in Massive Medicare Fraud Busts in 7 Cities in Scams Totaling $452 Mil
What I hear:
Drip .… .… . . drip … .… .… . .
Why? As the latter article notes, “authorities have targeted fraud that’s believed to cost the government between $60 billion and $90 billion each year.” So add up those two figures, which include frauds that occurred in multiple years, and you get somewhere between 1.1 percent and 1.6 percent of the amount that Medicare and Medicaid enable criminals to steal from taxpayers in a single year.
Neither article makes it clear how paltry these anti-fraud efforts are. But at least the former article asks:
So what is it about the government’s health care programs that make them such inviting targets for white collar criminals?
I answer that question here, and in this video:
Related Tags
Alabama Gov. Vows to Veto ObamaCare Exchange
According to WSFA-12 News, Alabama legislators are working on legislation to create an ObamaCare Exchange. But:
Governor Robert Bentley [R] will likely veto the bill.
“This legislation is premature. The federal government has yet to establish clear guidelines for a health insurance exchange,” said Deputy Communications Director Jeremy King, in a statement to WSFA 12 News. “Also, the federal government has extended some deadlines for putting an exchange together. Plus, the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the constitutionality of the federal health care law. If Supreme Court justices strike down the law as the Governor hopes they will, there will be no need for such an exchange. Either way, there is no need to establish an exchange at this point,” the statement went on to say.
“Doing so without clear guidance from Washington would simply be a guessing game. Also, there would still be time in the 2013 session to set up an exchange if the law is upheld. If this legislation is approved in the current session, a veto can be expected.”
Full story and video here.
Related Tags
From the Annals of ObamaCare: ‘Illinois Suspends Insurance Exchange Setup’
Here’s the story from WIUS, the NPR affiliate at the University of Illinois Springfield:
A health exchange is one of the main initial components of the Affordable Care Act.
It’s basically a table of insurance plans people who don’t currently have coverage could choose from once the national health care law hits its stride. If it ever does.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in March challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare.
“I’ve suspended the talks on the Illinois insurance exchange until the Supreme Court makes its decision, which we expect in June,” Rep. Frank Mautino (D- Spring Valley), who has been leading Illinois’ talks to set up the exchange, said.
“As the negotiator, it’s very difficult to have … businesses – decide how much they’re willing to pay to run an exchange, when the federal law may go away. So I’ve lost a lot of the strength of negotiation,” he said.
Controversial aspects include who’ll run the exchange, how much power insurance companies will get, and who’ll pay for it.
About 50 organizations, including insurance companies, business groups, and health care advocates had been meeting weekly.
Audio is also available here.
Democrats control the executive and legislative branches of government in Illinois.
Related Tags
Postal Reform: A Telling Survey
First-class mail is the USPS’s most profitable product. Thus, the large – and permanent – drop in first-class mail volume has the USPS facing red ink as far as the eye can see. The U.S. Postal Service’s inspector general recently reported its findings from focus group discussions held with high-volume first-class mailers and mail service providers. The feedback is quite telling:
- Both mailers and customers are turning to electronic alternatives for the obvious reason that it’s cheaper and more efficient than physical mail. The participants estimated that the per-piece cost of sending transactional mail (e.g., billing statements, invoices, etc) is 45 to 50 cents whereas it costs between “pennies” and 13 cents to send mail electronically. The report notes that “the most senior levels of corporate management have already made decisions to move to electronic means as quickly as possible.”
- The uncertainty caused by congressional dithering over, and mismanagement of, the USPS has created an incentive for mailers to seek alternatives. Participants noted that the USPS “struggles to respond to business setbacks or market changes in a timely manner the way the private corporations can, in part because of legal, regulatory, and congressional constraints.” The constraints include the USPS not being “able to optimize its retail network, close plants, reduce delivery days, or control pricing, like other businesses.”
- According to the report, “Postal Inspection Service investigations and compliance have left a ‘bad taste’ in the mouths of a large segment of high-volume mailers.” Call me crazy, but when you’re already losing customers, it’s probably not a good idea to irritate the ones that you have left.
- On the future of first-class mail, the message is pretty clear: “While the advent of 100 percent electronic communication is not imminent, all focus group participants envisioned a point in the future when the continued use of paper communications, and thus mail, will cease to make economic sense.”
Unfortunately, Congress’s view of the future doesn’t extend beyond the next election. See, for example, the postal “reform” bill recently passed in the Senate that I discussed on Tuesday.