March 23, 2013

Killing business one year at a time.

I am currently looking for a job.  Finding a full time position being offered is rare, in this part of the country.  Part time jobs are all the rage.

Companies are trying to figure out what makes the most fiscal sense, when it comes to the Obamacare laws.

A Title I teaching assistant in the public school system mentioned that they've reclassified full time from 32 down to 30 hours. So what the school system has done is the whole entire support staff has been cut to 28 hours so they will not have to offer healthcare.  Which means they will have to go to the state exchange or pay the IRS.

We are now being told to expect a jump in rates, 20% to 100%!   This far exceeds what the CBO was given to score, back when the hard sell was going on.  It was all based in fantasy.  The reality is big cash or cut hours and jobs.  Our already sluggish economy is going to hit spike strips...

As a self-employed accountant and financial analyst, Swanson has paid for her insurance coverage on the individual market for about 13 years. She watched her monthly premium climb from around $136 in 2001 to more than $600 before she could find cheaper coverage. She's frustrated that the overhaul may add to her bill.

Then there is the state run exchanges as well.  I have no doubt these bureaucratic nightmares waiting to happen are going to be deified and vilified by we the people.  The real winners are the States who do nothing and let the Fed come in and run things.  The, so far inaccurate, Congressional Budget Office predicts a slow start overall, with only 7 million gaining coverage through the exchanges next year, rising to 24 million in 2016.

So the news is not good and getting worse.  There are those who claim this will collapse into a single payer federal system.  Lord help us all.

March 13, 2013

More Obamacare bad news!

Obamacare has become the daily bad news generator.   Clocking in at 2,700 pages, is this open-ended piece of legislation that allows the secretary of Health and Human Services and various bureaucracies to write the regulations on the fly.  It is no wonder nobody really knows all that's in this bill and what's coming our way.

To start with we now find that the government estimates are off by 100%. The Original estimation in 2010 put the new tax burden at $569 billion.  Now we have had a correction (?) to $1.058 trillion.  Which makes a couple of points.  Until the Fed starts using standard accounting practices, nothing money related will have any relationship to reality.  Second, estimates by the government are a tool to sell something much more expensive, in sales this is the bait and switch...

Another bit of bad news, our pets get hit with Obamacare increases as well, thanks to the 2.3 percent device tax.  

I like having nutritional information on my food.  It does allow me to make better choices.  However, some of the overreaching regulations now under Obamacare are going to cause havoc for the food biz, meaning we will be seeing higher costs.

So far we have the pre-existing conditions goodness also no more hoops for our older kids to be under insurance.  We also have more expensive coverage with less quality.

March 11, 2013

Lies our Government tells.

Wow look at the news!  The unemployment rate ticked downwards to a stellar 7.7%!  This must mean that everyone has a job now and things are looking great!  Obama can notch up another win!

Or so you would think reading this news from our main stream media...  You have to dive for truth behind the numbers.   Unemployment is defined as by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as people who do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the past four weeks, and are currently available for work. Also, people who were temporarily laid off and are waiting to be called back to that job are included in the unemployment statistics.  The 7.7 percent is misleading at the surface, much more telling is the  Labor Force Participation rate. Which is the percentage of working-age persons in an economy who are employed or  unemployed but looking for a job.  That number is 63.5% for February.  This means there is a huge number of unemployed, much higher then 7.7%.

 "The number of people with full-time jobs fell by 212,000, while 382,000 Americans took part-time jobs, thus producing the reported 170,000 gain in total employment (which includes everyone who worked at all). “Full-time-equivalent” (FTE) jobs, which we can approximate as the number of full-time jobs plus the number of part-time jobs divided by two, fell by 21,000."

Really does not look as rosy as our Journalists are reporting...?  Not much cause for celebration.

The Labor force participation rate dropped in February.  You can look at prognostication and ascribe meaning to any number.  The fact remains people are out of work and jobs are scarce.

March 06, 2013

Why Democrats Shouldn’t Eulogize Hugo Chavez (From Think Progress!)

Why Democrats Shouldn’t Eulogize Hugo Chavez: pRep. Jose E. Serrano (D-NY) released a statement today praising former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, despite the latter’s record of harsh crackdowns on his political opponents and state-sanctioned persecution against Venezuela’s Jewish population. Serrano tweeted a statement praising Chavez as an a champion of the oppressed, writing that “Hugo Chavez was a leader that understood [...]/p

March 03, 2013

Media .vs. Molestation

As a Catholic the various entertainment centers tend to continue with the molestation jokes to a disconcerting   numbers.  If one was to swallow the spin, you would think the pervasive number of molestation are instigated by the clergy and the Church has done nothing more then shield the perpetrators.  This is a major falsehood.

First of all it is this bloggers opinion that ANYONE convicted of child molestation should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.  Further they should be regulated to make it nigh impossible for the crime to be repeated.

Notwithstanding the media hysteria over sex abuse in the Catholic Church, priests abuse at a rate far lower than that of other males. While even one case of abuse is too many, approximately only 4% of all active priests between 1950 and 2002 were even accused of abuse – a rate far lower than that of other males in the general population.  Source, source.

 You would never know it from the media's frenzied coverage, but the bulk of reported stories of sex abuse stem from a historical anomaly as the vast majority of allegations occurred only during the narrow band of time of the Sexual Revolution from the 1960s to the early 1980s. And despite media intimations of dark conspiracies and cover-ups, the Church merely followed the then-prevailing view of experts that offenders could be successfully rehabilitated and sent accused priests off treatment, rather than reporting them to police, which then resulted in a high rate of recidivism.


From the 1950s through the 1970s, the Catholic Church, following the then-prevailing societal practice, sent suspected abusers to psychologists rather than calling the police.

In this respect, the Church was far from alone. When the Church was sending accused priests to psychological treatment, "the criminal justice system was doing the very same thing with convicted offenders – sending them to treatment instead of prison." Source.

Yet in almost every media account, the media has failed to provide this important historical context that the Church was following the then-reigning advice of experts to send accused priests to treatment. Source.


Tragically, sending accused priests to treatment rather than reporting them to the police only resulted in a high rate of recidivism among those priests. According to the 2004 John Jay College report, 149 priests were "serial abusers" (10+ victims) and accounted for an alarming 26% of all of the abuse between 1950 and 2002. Source.

Yet these 149 men represent only one-tenth of one percent of all priests who served in the Catholic Church in the United States between 1950 and 2002. Most accused priests (56%) have been the subject of only one allegation.




March 01, 2013

Your government at work


U.S. economy grew 0.1% in fourth quarter
http://www.marketwatch.com/sto...

Personal assets crash 22% under Obama
http://washingtonexaminer.com/...

Obama Government Equal to Population in 1776
http://www.whitehousedossier.c...

Obama's EPA Kills Texas Power Plant and 3900
http://washingtonexaminer.com/...

HHS Adds $9.1 Billion in New Regs in Just 4 Days
http://dailycaller.com/2013/01...

State Department Delays Keystone Pipeline Decision
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/...

At this pace, the U.S. won’t get back to full employment until 2022
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Latest Obamacare casualty: 100 workers at Smith & Nephew
http://www.washingtontimes.com...

Supermarkets cry foul as FDA proposes new food labeling rule under ObamaCare
http://www.foxnews.com/politic...

Despite court ruling, EPA raises biofuel estimate
http://www.foxnews.com/politic...

Obamacare red tape burden: 127,602,371 hours yearly
http://washingtonexaminer.com/...

GAO Report: Obamacare Adds $6.2 Trillion to Long-Term Deficit
http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Study: $15.8 billion in possible new regulations for February
http://dailycaller.com/2013/02...

States Cutting Employee Hours to Avoid Obamacare Costs
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-G...

New England fishermen protest federal regulations in letter to Congress
http://www.foxnews.com/politic...

ObamaCare Forces Universal to Drop Insurance for Part-Timers
http://www.orlandosentinel.com...

Price of Gallon of Gas Up 96% Under Obama
http://cnsnews.com/news/articl...

Bypassing Congress Forthcoming regulation likely means no new coal-fired power plants will be built in the United States
http://www.usnews.com/news/art...

Worst recovery Ever
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...