Under the Government’s Wing

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…

Regulating for Their Own Benefit

By Justin Katz | October 13, 2010 |

Not surprisingly, politicians are strongly bipartisan in protecting their own unique ability to engage in insider trading: A few lawmakers proposed a bill that would prevent members and employees of Congress from trading securities based on nonpublic information they obtain. The legislation has languished since 2006. “Congressional staff are often privy to inside information, and…

When Government Is All, Political Connections Are Decisive.

By Justin Katz | October 5, 2010 |

Stephen Spruiell describes the “atypical” way in which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has handled ShoreBank, a Chicago-founded bank with a leftist lending bent. Apparently, “the FDIC relieved ShoreBank of its most toxic assets but left largely intact its management team — a highly unusual move” — and is not requiring an adjustment of…

And Government Busts Our Boom

By Justin Katz | September 17, 2010 |

After a brief lesson in economics — which is most likely to be ignored by those most in need of heeding it — Kevin Williamson notes that the tweaks and adjustments that central planners make to running systems are not light in their effects: … It’s easy to say: Well, we’ll just raise the retirement…

Government Drives Us Crazy

By Justin Katz | September 17, 2010 |

My first thought, upon reading about Butler Hospital’s attempts to gain government approval for a 26-bed addition for psychiatric patients was, “Must everything be a controversy?” Unfortunately, the more government involves itself in every corner of American society, the more the answer becomes, “yes.” Psychiatric hospitals around the country have also been expanding, and about…

Hitchens’ “Dossier” on Bloomberg

By Monique Chartier | September 15, 2010 |

During his just-ended Dem primary campaign, Anthony Gemma darkly warned that, bad as his attack informational ads were, the GOP had even worse goods on David Cicilline. It will be interesting to see over the next seven weeks whether this hypothesized dossier pertaining to the newly chosen Dem congressional candidate materializes. Meanwhile, the unaffiliated mayor…