What is going on with Obamacare, otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act? Spirits were high about quick action in the House and even the Senate. Ideas have not been lacking—there are several plans out there to replace the present law. The obstacle seems to be the usual collective suspect—politicians and their obsessive worry about […]
Archives
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What Will Congress Do About Obamacare?
29 Jan 2017
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The City of Man
15 Jan 2017
I am sitting in the San Antonio airport, waiting for my flight back home, reflecting on an excellent Values and Capitalism retreat here and–the subject of this blog–my walk yesterday. My goal was to walk to a bookstore about two miles from my downtown hotel. I had mapped it out using Googlemaps and set out […]
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A Real-Life Story of Bureaucratic Dysfunction
21 Dec 2016
If you want to read a classic insider narrative of the degeneration and dysfunction of a large and powerful (and unlimited) federal bureaucracy, read here: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443227/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-tragic-failures. The article chronicles the work of one highly placed lawyer in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before it was slapped hard by the Federal courts. I have frequently written about […]
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Bureaucracy and the New President
20 Dec 2016
I was reading an interesting article in Reason today that directly addressed one of the major issues I have raised before and frequently alluded to (see http://reason.com/archives/2016/12/19/trump-versus-the-we-bes, December 20, 2016). It has to do with the theme of “Trump versus the bureaucracy.” One could substitute any president’s name in that slogan since the 1930s at […]
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Trump’s Trumps
15 Dec 2016
A new controversy–well, not really new, just renewed–has now taken the stage regarding President-Elect Donald Trump’s transition. This one concerns the “flavor” of his cabinet choices, taken collectively. The media and Democrats are trying to figure out (1) what they tell us about Trump and (2) what the supporter–stakeholders think about the choices. Those are […]
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A Really Bad Legacy, and How to Reverse It
17 Nov 2016
President Obama and his executive agencies set a new record for the number of pages of new regulations in one day: 527 pages (in a single day!). For the year the number of pages so far is also a record, at 81,640 pages. It is also worth noting that seven of the the top eight […]
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Why? And What Now?
09 Nov 2016
At about 3 AM last night we were informed that Donald Trump would be our 45th president. My daughter photographed the screen and we all went to bed. But now the next phase in all this process begins: governance–which is very different from winning a campaign. Before I get to that, let me say a […]
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Conservatives and Cronyism: Time to Take Action
04 Nov 2016
A really important column appeared November 3, 2016 by Yuval Levin in the National Review Online. The title was “It’s Time for the Right to Get Serious about Tackling Cronyism,” and that title perfectly captures the thrust of the article. You can read it here: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441691/conservatism-cronyism-policy-solutions-right. (Sorry, Bert Wheeler, I still can’t master just “link”). […]
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Buried in Red Tape and Administrative Law
30 Sep 2016
I am just getting around to reading a book I have meant to read for over a year, Is Administrative Law Unlawful? By Philip Hamburger (University of Chicago, 2014). Besides, this is also a good time to raise the whole issue of administrative rulemaking, regulations and judicial hearings, something that in the last 70 years […]
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Miscellaneous Interesting (and Weird) News
13 Sep 2016
There are all sorts of interesting and disturbing issues and events out there in the news these days, some obscure and others more obvious and with greater implications. Below I simply want to list a few I have been reading about in recent days, and then later perhaps write some longer blogs on some of […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach