This is the thread for news. What’s on your mind today?
Let’s start with ObamaCare today. How’s that workin’ out?
Uh, not well, not well at all.
From CNBC
“The owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants is putting more workers on part-time status in a test aimed at limiting the impact of looming health coverage requirements.”
“Darden Restaurants declined to give details but said the test is only in restaurants in four markets across the country. The test entails increasing the number of workers on part-time status, meaning they work less than 30 hours a week. Under the new health care act, companies will be required to provide health care to full-time employees by 2014. That would significantly boost labor costs for businesses.”
Read more here
Now before anybody goes and starts up an Occupy Darden rally, consider why this is happening. The answer is ObamaCare. And it’s already hammering our economy and these companies. It’s not only causing hours to be cut, it’s eliminating jobs as well. It’s just not what this economy needed.
From the WashingtonExaminer
“Fully implementing Obamacare regulations have already cost the U.S. economy $27.6 billion and more than 18,000 jobs according to a new study released today. Just the top ten most expensive regulations have cost $24.4 billion, according to the new non-partisan and independent American Action Forum (AAF) report.
Just complying with the state health exchanges alone has to cost employers $3.4 billion according to the AAF totals which were compiled from Federal Register data. In addition to the regulatory costs, AAF estimates that Obamacare regulatory compliance has eaten up more than 60 million hours in paperwork. At 2,000 hours a year that comes to 30,000 jobs.
The AAF paper also calculated the regulatory costs and job losses in each state for the top ten must expensive Obamacare regulations. California has borne the brunt of Obamacare’s costs suffering $3.4 billion in costs and 2,917 jobs lost. Texas has been hit second hardest with $1.8 billion in costs and 1,292 jobs lost.”
Read more here
And here’s the PDF of the study from AmericanActionForum
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I found this interesting as well. It appears the Presidents assertions about Romney’s economic plan have been inaccurate.
I know,
😯
shocking right?
From HeritageBlog
“The Tax Policy Center is the industry standard for producing high-quality tax data that are integral to tax policy debates. However, in this TPC report, the authors’ choices and assumptions lead them to a carefully chosen result that is misleading and biased. This hinders the debate on tax reform because lawmakers and the public need accurate information to make good decisions.
At best, this TPC analysis confirms that tax reform will require political leaders to make difficult decisions. This is self-evident. If tax reform were easy, Washington would have reformed the current 26-year-old code long ago.”
Read more here
The whole debunking of this flawed study, also from Heritage, is here
Here’s what a Princeton economist has to say, via Breitbart
“Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama, and liberal think tanks have claimed Mitt Romney’s plan to cut tax rates across the board by 20 percent is bad arithmetic, but a Princeton economics professor, Harvey Rosen, examined Romney’s proposals in a paper and concluded Romney’s plan would work. The economy would have to grow by 3 percentage points more over the term of his plan than it would have without his plan.”
Read more here
The whole piece from the Princeton economist is here in PDF
Wandering Views 
The rest of the CNBC article points out that Darden already has 75 percent of its employees on a part time basis and has in the past couple of years engaged in heavy rounds of cost cutting — including tip sharing for wait staff so that the 2.13 cents they pay per hour can be augmented by distributing tips equally (talk about redistributionist methods — guess that’s ok when done to the working class …)
AJ, American Action Forum has on its board, Tom Ridge, MNorm Coleman, Elaine Chao, Jeb Bush … sure its non-partisan. (if you close your eyes, whistle a happy tune and only think of God and country ….)
Budget assumptions — that is part of the question on taxes etc that is often not discussed and one can find flaws in deficit reduction plans looking at those assumptions. And economists frequently disagree when arguing the assumptions. I sometimes think the dismal science is too kind a nickname for economics.
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So now the State Department actually denies that it ever concluded that the anti-Islamic film sparked the consulate attack in Libya? Absolutely bizarre.
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CB,
No, it’s not OK. In fact, it’s really crappy. I don’t think someone like a waitress should have to share their tips. Pay the busboy and bartender what they deserve and don’t take it out of the waitress’s hard earned money. It’s just wrong.
And they made the assumptions they made just so they could get the results they wanted. Flawed? Yes, but that doesn’t stop Obama from touting them because they’re saying what he wants to hear. But the Princeton piece makes it clear that they used a flawed method to reach their conclusions, and that Romney/Ryan’s plan actually does, or can do, what they say it will.
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Remember folks, the press is nuetral. Unbiased and all that. Just keep repeating it.
Looks like Romney and Ryan’s been set up. Bet the questions favor Biden and Obama. Why you ask? Oh, no reason………
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/10/abc-news-scrambles-to-cover-up-barack-obamas-attendance-at-vp-debate-moderators-wedding/
“President Barack Obama was a guest at the 1991 wedding of ABC senior foreign correspondent and vice presidential debate moderator Martha Raddatz, The Daily Caller has learned. Obama and groom Julius Genachowski, whom Obama would later tap to head the Federal Communications Commission, were Harvard Law School classmates at the time and members of the Harvard Law Review.
After TheDC made preliminary inquiries Monday to confirm Obama’s attendance at the wedding, ABC leaked a pre-emptive statement to news outlets including Politico and The Daily Beast Tuesday, revealing what may have been internal network pressure felt just days before Raddatz was scheduled to moderate the one and only vice-presidential debate Thursday night.
Both Politico and The Daily Beast jumped to ABC and Raddatz’s defense. The Huffington Post, a liberal news outlet, joined them shortly thereafter, while calling “unusual” ABC’s attempt to kill the story before it gained wide circulation.”
Nothin’ to see here folks, move along…….
🙄
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CB
Sometimes I wonder about our lawmakers. Did it take a rocket scientist to figure out what would happen when our lawmakers decided that anyone who worked 40 hours a week should get health insurance? Companies who have lots of low skill workers would limit hours for them. Was this a surprise to you?
When this first came to my attention, I just shook my head. Stupid Democrats. Stupid labor unions.
When I was working, I looked at my check stub for deductions. $700 a month for Kaiser Permanente medical insurance, a truly gold plated plan. That was $4.38 an hour! A very nice perk. Walmart? McDonald’s? Retail? Not so much.
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See what Jack Walsh said today over at WSJ? Heh! He doesn’t take it back. IN fact he takes the Obama Admin to task for their laundered unemployment numbers.
That unemployment number dropping to 7.8% ? Bogus? Yeah. The economy would have had to grow exponentially to get that number.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444897304578046260406091012.html?
And Hypocrisy? “Obama Supporter” is thy name.
Quote:
“Take, for example, one of my chief critics in this go-round, Austan Goolsbee, former chairman of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers. Back in 2003, Mr. Goolsbee himself, commenting on a Bush-era unemployment figure, wrote in a New York Times op-ed: “the government has cooked the books.”
No kidding? You think they do that?
And Jack isn’t the only one finally being skeptical of the bogus numbers:
Quote:
“The good news is that the current debate has resulted in people giving the whole issue of unemployment data more thought. Moreover, it led to some of the campaign’s biggest supporters admitting that the number merited a closer look—and even expressing skepticism. The New York Times in a Sunday editorial, for instance, acknowledged the 7.8% figure is “partly due to a statistical fluke.””
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Uh… sorry, that’d be Jack Welch.
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Bob
Not remotely because those business have been cutting hours for years — just a shade under 40. In other words — this is not new. It was happening before the ACA.
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Yeah, well my insurance premiums weren’t climbing 35% every year…
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MiM,
Here’s a little more on the Jack Welsh thing. Along with the seemingly co-ordinated media attacks on him for stating the obvious. I thought at first that references to incest might be abit unfair. But when you look at, the term seems appropriate.
http://www.redstate.com/2012/10/09/chucktodd-and-the-incest-conspiracy/
“I got a great laugh out of this Chuck Todd near meltdown on Meet the Depressed the other day. His voice quivered in moral outrage over Jack Welch suggesting something was up with the unemployment numbers last Friday. Chuck Todd proclaimed, “What we’re doing, we’re corroding trust in our government in a way, and one time responsible people are doing to control it. And the idea that Donald Trump and Jack Welch, rich people with crazy conspiracy, can get traction on this, is a bad trend.””
“He really does not get it. Chuck Todd reflects most of the media not getting it. As ratings decline, newspaper fold, and they all scream about how biased Fox News is, they do not get it.
Neil King is a political reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He is married to Shailagh Murray who left a reporting job at the Washington Post to take the job of Joe Biden’s communications director. She replaced Jay Carney who moved to the White House and who himself left Time to take the communications director role for Biden.
John Harris of the Politico is married to an abortion rights activist who used to run NARAL Virginia.
The Politico’s Chief Washington Correspondent, Jonathan Allen, left the Politico to work for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then returned to the Politico.”
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I think I can honestly and fairly say that anyone who believes those government unemployment numbers are accurate is a gullible idiot.
I mean, who would you trust? A government full of politicians who like to euphemize $120 Trillion worth of Federal Debt by calling it “unfunded liabilities”, or a guy like Jack Welch?
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MIM
I have friends who had health care premiums rising to the same tune well before ACA was being debated. Again, nothing new. How short our memories are in America! Gov’t # — you do realize that bookeeping by the BLS was changed in the Reagan era and has used the same methodology since the Reagan era – so comparitively this month’s figure is a shade higher than Pres. Reagan’s was before reelection.
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Today’s congressional hearing on the Benghazi attack was very…revealing. It’s amazing that even while undergoing questioning from the committee, administration officials still choose not to be transparent with the truth.
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“…so comparitively this month’s figure is a shade higher than Pres. Reagan’s was before reelection.”
I don’t believe it.
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