Sometimes the inquiring technical mind cannot pass an opportunity to analyze what’s going on in the surrounding society. With me, that compulsion for analysis recently arose when the Forest Service announced it planned to approve a new pipeline to provide water for snowmaking on the local ski hill, some 2600 feet (more or less) above the town. As they say in the dry southwest, whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting. Continue reading
Blog » Regulation »
Blog 59. Medicare, Medicaid, Medigap, and Affordable Whatever
The new national health insurance, officially the named the Affordable Care Act, is commonly called “Obamacare” because that’s a way to reduce a complex issue to one word. Continue reading
Blog 58. Hierarchy in Regulation
Society is a set of regulations—written and unwritten—that specify how a person, a social entity, or business should act. Continue reading
Blog 57. Energiewende – We should try it
Energiewende is the appellation for Germany’s transition toward a sustainable energy supply. George Maue, first secretary for energy and climate at the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., described the transition in his editorial published in the Nov-Dec 2013 issue of Solar Today magazine. Continue reading
Blog 54. Money, McCutcheon, and the Supreme Court
What happened?
On Wednesday, April 2, 2014, the Supreme Court issued its decision on the McCutcheon case, in which Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon and the Republican National Committee claimed that the Federal Election Campaign Act restricted his freedom of speech. In a 5-to-4 decision, the Court agreed that limitation of political spending limits personal speech. Continue reading
Blog 50. Principles and hubris
We all live by principles—at least, most of us think we do. Principles are not necessarily lofty. Continue reading
Blog 47. The elephant in the room
Of the economically developed countries of the world, the U.S. has the most dysfunctional society—that is, we have depression despite material goods, materialism without community, more teen and single parents, less trust, more impoverishment, higher infant mortality, more drugs, obesity, school bullying and school shootings. Continue reading
Blog 39. Is federal regulation legal?
In drafting the federal constitution, the founding fathers didn’t foresee a government involved in administering diverse things like air travel, radio waves, rivers, and food purity. The Constitution specifically allows regulation of interstate commerce and postal roads, but, for example, does it allow federal regulation of pollution in rivers? Continue reading