Yesterday I looked at some criticisms of Justin Amash, a new House member from Michigan. I noted that Amash explained his votes on his Facebook page. However, I gave the wrong link for Amash’s page. His official page may be found here which comprises his explanations for his votes.
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‘Medicare Loses Nearly Four Times as Much Money as Health Insurers Make’
The latest from Jeffrey H. Anderson, which I’ll file under I‑Wish‐I’d‐Said‐That:
In a newly released report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that, in fiscal year 2010, $48 billion in taxpayer money was squandered on fraudulent or improper Medicare claims. Meanwhile, the nation’s ten largest health insurance companies made combined profits of $12.7 billion in 2010 (according to Fortune 500). In other words, for every $1 made by the nation’s ten largest insurers, Medicare lost nearly $4…
Actually, it may have been even worse than that: The GAO writes that this $48 billion in taxpayer money that went down the drain doesn’t even represent Medicare’s full tally of lost revenue, since it “did not include improper payments in its Part D prescription drug benefit, for which the agency has not yet estimated a total amount.”
Courtesy of The Weekly Standard.
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Cops on Camera: LAPD Edition
The L.A. Times has an article highlighting the twentieth anniversary of the Rodney King beating and how video of that event introduced the LAPD to modern citizen journalism.
Today, things are far different and the tape that so tainted the LAPD has a clear legacy in how officers think about their jobs. Police now work in a YouTube world in which cellphones double as cameras, news helicopters transmit close‐up footage of unfolding police pursuits, and surveillance cameras capture arrests or shootings. Police officials are increasingly recording their officers. Compared to the cops who beat King, officers these days hit the streets with a new reality ingrained in their minds: Someone is always watching.
“Early on in their training, I always tell them, ‘I don’t care if you’re in a bathroom taking care of your personal business…. Whatever you do, assume it will be caught on video,’ ” said Sgt. Heather Fungaroli, who supervises recruits at the LAPD’s academy. “We tell them if they’re doing the right thing then they have no reason to worry.”
That’s progress, and as I’ve said before, a video camera is an honest cop’s best friend.
There’s still plenty of room for improvement. The LAPD paid $1.7 million to a news camera operator injured by its officers at the 2007 May Day melee. LAPD officers have also been caught on camera assaulting a bicyclist and illegally detaining a man for taking photographs on a public sidewalk. You can track police intimidation of citizen journalists at Cop Block’s War on Cameras interactive map, patterned after Cato’s own Raidmap.
Here is the Cato video, Cops on Camera:
For more on cops and cameras, check out the event Cato hosted last year and Radley Balko’s feature at Reason, “The War on Cameras.”
Will U.S. Finally Keep Its Word with Mexico on Cross‐border Trucking?
President Obama and Mexican President Calderon announced this afternoon that the U.S. government will finally allow qualified, safety certified Mexican truckers to deliver goods in the United States, fulfilling a commitment our government made more than 17 years ago in the North American Free Trade Agreement. It’s about time.
America’s violation of the agreement had resulted in sanctions against $2.4 billion worth of U.S. exports to Mexico. According to one press report today,
The plan, announced at a news conference by the two presidents, will allow for half of those tariffs to be lifted immediately. It will establish a reciprocal, phased‐in pilot program that allows Mexican trucks to operate inside the U.S. provided they comply with a series of safety and driver‐skills and language tests monitored by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Under the NAFTA agreement, the United States and Mexico agreed to allow trucks from each country to deliver goods to destinations inside the other country, provided the trucks met the same safety regulations that apply to domestic truckers. But under pressure from the Teamsters Union, President Clinton refused to implement the program during his presidency.
President George W. Bush, to his credit, tried to fulfill the U.S. obligation under NAFTA. His administration launched a pilot program in 2007, which allowed a limited number of Mexican trucking companies to deliver goods to U.S. destinations beyond the 25‐mile commercial zone along the U.S.-Mexican border. Citing unsubstantiated safety concerns, and in the face of ongoing union pressure, a bipartisan majority in Congress voted to cut off funding for the program in 2009.
After years of patiently waiting for its northern neighbor to do the right thing, and after lawfully pursing its grievance through procedures set up by NAFTA, the Mexican government responded to the end of the pilot program by imposing punitive duties on $2.4 billion worth of U.S. exports to Mexico. The duties were strategically aimed at a range of politically sensitive products.
The safety issue was never a valid reason to suspend the program. As we’ve noted at the Center for Trade Policy Studies (time and time again), the NAFTA agreement requires Mexican trucks to meet every safety standard and then some that are imposed on U.S. trucks. Under the pilot program, Mexican trucks actually proved to have a better safety record than U.S. trucks.
Under the NAFTA agreement, President Obama has the authority he needs to bring the United States into full compliance. He should act quickly to bring this embarrassing and damaging episode to an end.
Is the REAL ID Rebellion Coming to Florida?
Until now, Florida has not been one of the states to buck the federal government’s national ID mandate, established in the REAL ID Act of 2005. A pair of grand jury reports in 2002 had moved the state to tighten its driver licensing processes prior to any federal action, so it was already doing many of the things that the Department of Homeland Security is now seeking to require of states in the name of REAL ID.
Full compliance with REAL ID remains a distant hope, so DHS has set out a list of 18 “milestones,” progress toward which it is treating as REAL ID compliance. Full compliance with REAL ID includes putting driver information into a network for nationwide information sharing—including scanned copies of basic identity documents. It includes giving all licensees and ID holders a nationally uniform driver’s license or ID card so their identity can be checked at airports, federal facilities, and wherever the Secretary of Homeland Security determines to have federal checkpoints.
Again, the state of Florida meets DHS’ milestones. Starting from an already strict driver licensing regime, the state’s bureaucrats have been doing (and asking the legislature to do) things that match up with the requirements of the national ID law. But now, thanks to the work of Florida’s Tenth Amendment Center, Floridians Against REAL ID, and others, the legislature is beginning to pay attention.
Why is it so hard for law‐abiding citizens and residents of Florida to get or renew their licenses? What kinds of barriers to progress are being thrown in front of lawful immigrants from Haiti, who haven’t the documentation required to get a license and thus a job?
Rep. Geraldine Thompson (D‑Orlando) has lived in Florida since 1955 and was elected to the Florida legislature in 2006. She was born in New Orleans and is not able to get a copy of her birth certificate. The Florida Department of Motor Vehicles would not accept her Florida House ID card as proof of her identity!
Several members of the Florida legislature are concerned that the state is scanning and databasing the basic identity documents of Floridians, exposing those documents and the people of Florida to unknown cybersecurity risks. If these databases were hacked, Floridians’ data would be treasure trove for identity fraud. A breach of an entire state’s identity data could collapse the system we now rely on to know who people are. This is not an improvement in security for Floridians.
Florida’s Cuban ex‐pat population has some idea of what could result if they were herded into a national identity system. They are too familiar with central government control of access to goods, services, employment, and other essentials of life. Advocates of national ID systems here in the United States have already argued for using REAL ID to control access to employment, to financial services and credit, to medicines, to housing, and more.
In my testimony to the Florida legislature, I noted that the federal government is impotent to enforce REAL ID. The political costs of a DHS attack on air travel (if it refused to recognize drivers’ licenses from non‐compliant states at airport checkpoints) would be too high. Indeed, word is spreading that DHS will soon extend the REAL ID deadline once again.
What’s clear from my visit to Florida is that legislators there respond to what they hear from their constituents. It’s unclear what the Florida legislature will do to reassert control of its driver licensing policy from the concerted action of the federal government and its motor vehicle bureaucrats.
One of the questions they might ask is, “Who committed Florida to comply with REAL ID?” That’s item number seventeen in the DHS’ eighteen‐point material compliance checklist.
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It’s Official: Governors Implementing ObamaCare Are Undermining the Lawsuits
Judge Roger Vinson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida has just responded to the Obama administration’s “motion to clarify” his prior ruling, which declared ObamaCare unconstitutional and void. That “motion to clarify” essentially asked Vinson, “Didn’t you really mean that we can keep implementing ObamaCare while we appeal your ruling?” Today, Vinson answered, “No.”
The attorneys representing the plaintiffs, who include Florida and 25 other states, argued that the administration’s “motion to clarify” was actually a veiled request to have Vinson stay (i.e., set aside) his original order blocking implementation. Vinson agreed, and therefore treated the Obama administration’s “motion to clarify” as a motion to stay, which he granted. Vinson made clear, however, that if the administration fails to file a notice of appeal by March 10 or fails to seek an expedited appeal either with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court, then his stay will lift and the administration will (once again) be barred from implementing or enforcing ObamaCare. In other words, Vinson prevented the Obama administration from treating his stay as an excuse to ignore his ruling while the further entrenching the law.
It would have been better if Vinson had stuck to his original order blocking implementation. Yet he made clear that one of the reasons he did not is that many of the states asking him to strike down the law are implementing it anyway. Vinson wrote that the case for blocking implementation:
is undercut by the fact that at least eight of the plaintiff states…have represented that they will continue to implement and fully comply with the Act’s requirements — in an abundance of caution while this case is on appeal — irrespective of my ruling.
As the Obama administration explained to the court:
[S]ince the Court entered its judgment on January 31, at least 24 of the 26 plaintiff states have applied for additional grants authorized or appropriated by the ACA, continued to draw down grant funds previously awarded under the ACA, or otherwise availed themselves of resources made available by the ACA. Indeed, South Carolina has continued to drawn down exchange planning grant funds, even though it has declared the Act “void and unenforceable.” Similarly, Utah has described the declaratory judgment as an “injunction against further implementation” of the Act, but has continued to draw down Pre‐existing Condition Insurance Plan (“PCIP”) funds and to request Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (“ERRP”) reimbursements.
Now would be a good time for the South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R), and the governors of the other 22 plaintiff states to join Alaska and Florida in refusing to accept any further ObamaCare funds, returning the ObamaCare funds they have already received, and ceasing all implementation activities, including “planning” efforts.
Tea partiers and other conservative groups turned on House Republicans in a dispute over when the House would vote to cut off all ObamaCare spending. Where’s the outrage over the governors and state legislators that are eagerly pursuing that funding, actively implementing the law, and preventing judges from stopping implementation?
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Privatizing Public Broadcasting
I appeared on WFPL, the NPR affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky, today to argue for ending the federal funding for NPR and PBS. Sort of like Daniel in the lion’s den. But since I survived, and since NPR stations are using all their government dollars to mount a vigorous radio and internet campaign to get more government dollars, I thought I would pull together some of my writings on the topic.
You should shortly be able to listen to the show here. I made the point that we have a $1.5 trillion deficit, and every spending program has to be on the table. But more importantly, as I said in my article on the top ten reasons to privatize public broadcasting,
And the number one reason to privatize public broadcasting is:
1. The separation of news and state. We wouldn’t want the federal government to publish a national newspaper. Why should we have a government television network and a government radio network? If anything should be kept separate from government and politics, it’s the news and public affairs programming that Americans watch. When government brings us the news—with all the inevitable bias and spin—the government is putting its thumb on the scales of democracy. It’s time for that to stop.
Here’s my testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee — four public broadcasting CEOs and me — which is actually more balanced than most congressional hearings. This includes data on public broadcasting demographics that I cited on the air.
Here’s the Cato Handbook for Policymakers chapter on “Cultural Agencies.”
Here’s my speech, “The Separation of Art and State,” delivered at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts.
Read my reflections on the scandals in public broadcasting here.