Under the Government’s Wing

An Insidious Mindset

By Justin Katz | December 11, 2010 |

So, the Providence Journal editorial board likes ObamaCare. What are you gonna do? A recent unsigned editorial, though, points toward a disturbing underlying premise: Let us start with one of the provisions most beefed about on the campaign trail but also most necessary — the requirement that everyone buy coverage. Forcing people to obtain insurance…

Your Kids’ Diet, Their Business?

By Justin Katz | December 8, 2010 |

The fat cats in Washington will soon be telling your children what they can and cannot purchase to eat in school. The U.S. government will also be regulating what sorts of treats school-related organizations can provide during fundraisers and luring more children to after-school meals, making it even easier for busy parents to ignore the…

Land and Money

By Justin Katz | December 3, 2010 |

Last month, Marc noted that the Providence Journal editors’ article pointing out that some relatively conservative states lead the nation in per-capita stimulus funding conveniently sliced the data. As Marc showed, the top 10 states by dollar amount were not all that surprising. As he also showed, funding per square mile shifted the list to…

TSA Enters New Terrain

By Justin Katz | November 21, 2010 |

This video is currently Drudge’s headline, and at the time of posting has only about 8,000 views, so I’m sure it’s newly in the public realm. Frankly, this should be the metaphorical shirt stripped from the entire enterprise of the Transportation Security Administration: Surely there are means of providing airplane security without strip searching children…

Pre-Boarding Pat-Downs May or May not Be Necessary; A Waiver to Any Group (Other Than Pilots) Will Render Them Completely Pointless

By Monique Chartier | November 19, 2010 |

Further to Marc’s post, on the one hand, the TSA has yet to explain the logic of scanning or patting down, in search of weapons and other deadly contraband, airline pilots minutes before they enter the cockpit and come into possession of the ultimate ability to terrorize a commercial flight. On the other, in an…

Cap Without the Trade

By Justin Katz | November 17, 2010 |

A blurb in a recent edition of National Review’s The Week offers a necessary reminder of an issue that shouldn’t slip out of public view: Having seized for itself, with the help of the courts, the authority to regulate greenhouse gases without the consent of Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency under Obama has aggressively proceeded…

Transparency? Equality? ObamaCare Waivers Issued to 111 (One Hundred Eleven) Companies

By Monique Chartier | November 16, 2010 |

… a one year waiver but how easy will it be to simply grant an extension after the first year … and after the second … and so on? (Kind of like Gina Raimondo and the one year moratorium she issued on her tax returns.) These waivers [H/T Fred Thompson Show] raise, first of all,…

Who the Government Thinks Is “Good”

By Justin Katz | November 10, 2010 |

It’s not a new program, and I know I’ve read about it before without finding reason for objection, but, somehow, I’m seeing this sort of thing in a new light, recently: Foreclosures are leading to home-buying deals — half off the appraised value — as the federal government sells houses it has repossessed. For people…

Another Problem With Entitlements Is That People Feel Entitled to Raises, Too

By Justin Katz | October 27, 2010 |

I’ve been meaning to comment on this casting of the non-increasing Social Security payments for a couple of weeks: As if voters don’t have enough to be angry about this election year, the government is expected to announce this week that more than 58 million Social Security recipients will go through another year without an…

The Premature Death of Incandescence

By Justin Katz | October 13, 2010 |

The latest National Review offers a brief reminder to stock up on incandescent light bulbs: … the nation’s last major incandescent-light-bulb factory, in Winchester, Va., has shut down, a victim of the enforced switch to more efficient twisted fluorescent bulbs. It’s bad enough that Congress is telling Americans what to light their houses with, but…