News

Obamacare in action: 301 employers cut employee hours and/or jobs

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Investors Business Daily reports on the job creator response to Obamacare mandates.

Excerpt:

More than 300 employers have cut work hours or jobs, or otherwise shifted away from full-time staff, to limit liability under ObamaCare, according to a newly updated IBD analysis.

The ObamaCare Employer Mandate: A List Of Cuts To Work Hours, Jobs now includes 62 private employers and 239 public-sector employers. The list includes 80 school districts that have cited Affordable Care Act costs as a reason for cutting work hours — or in several cases outsourcing functions — of part-time instructional aides, cafeteria workers, custodians and bus drivers.

It also includes 46 universities and colleges — in some cases college systems — that have reduced teaching loads for adjunct faculty.

The 43 entries added to the list in the past two weeks reflect numerous actions taken before the Obama administration announced a one-year delay ofObamaCare employer mandate penalties on July 2. But the list also includes actions taken more recently, such as SeaWorld Entertainment’s decision to limit part-time workers to 28 hours per week, down from 32 hours previously.

Although the mandate won’t take effect until January 2015, fines will be based on employment levels beginning in the second half of 2014 — or earlier.

[…]In addition to SeaWorld (SEAS), 10 other private employers just added to the list include a group home for disabled adults; a YMCA; two private universities; the K-VA-T Food Stores regional supermarket; the Bealls regional department store ; and four restaurant operations.

[…]Workers in low-wage industries clocked the shortest average workweek on record in July, just 27.4 hours, an IBD analysis of the latest available Bureau of Labor Statistics industry data shows.

This low-wage segment covers 29 million private-sector workers, 25% of the total, in about 40 industry groups where nonsupervisors make up to about $14.50 an hour.

While the IBD list of private-sector hour-cutters is quite small to prove otherwise, it does offer clues that can be of help in interpreting official industry data on hours worked.

For example, the workweek at general merchandise stores tumbled from 31.1 hours in December to 29.8 hours in July. The inclusion of Wal-Mart (WMT) and Bealls on IBD’s list point to ObamaCare’s employer mandate as a significant contributing factor.

The average workweek in the hotel and accommodations industry hit a record low in July — lower than in the aftermath of 9/11 or at the bottom of the Great Recession.

In July, the workweek for nonsupervisors fell to 28.8 hours, down from 30.7 hours in March 2010, when ObamaCare was signed into law.

I’m looking forward to the 2014 elections, when we will get to vote again on this after we’ve seen “what’s in the bill”. I don’t think that the media’s blatherings are going to be able to convince people who are working under 30 hours a week that Obamacare was the right way to reform health care policy.

Commentary

Five things to learn from “The Hobbit”

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This is from the Art of Manliness blog.

The 5 things:

  1. You can aspire to and achieve greatness no matter who you are and no matter your stage in life
  2. A great leader knows when it’s time to step back and let go
  3. There are some things in life we just have to accomplish on our own
  4. To simply continue on is one of the bravest things that can be done
  5. A great story always has conflict or hardship

And my favorite of the five – the one that had meaning for me – is #5:

5. A great story always has conflict or hardship. Imagine your life as a story. Not too long ago, we even had a guest post about this — our life is a journey, and a heroic one at that. Imagine yourself sitting down with your grandkids and telling them the story of you. “Well, I made some money, bought a few cars, sat around and watched TV for a few hours every night, and that’s about it.” Pretty boring, isn’t it? Now imagine that you can start hours worth of stories with, “I explored…I traveled…I fell in love…I fought and won…I overcame…I sweated…” Not only would the story be better, but you likely would be far more satisfied with the course of your life.

J.R.R. Tolkien agrees. “Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyways.” He is saying that a life of good ease is a boring one. It’s often what the American dream aspires to, but the reality is that personal growth, and even enjoyment, are things that come out of some kind of challenge. Whether it’s huffing and puffing and groaning your way up a mountain for the view at the top, or getting laid off and finally realizing you don’t want to be in a cubicle anymore, joy is often found after a bit of trudging. Don’t shy away from challenge. Embrace it, and know that someday it’ll make for a great story.

The Hobbit was the first big book that I ever read as a child, and I think that it inspired me to move far away from home as soon as I completed graduate school, so I could make my fortune. An adventurous spirit isn’t free – it has to be put into a boy by what he reads. When I was young, I read “The Hobbit”. You should make your children read “The Hobbit”. Put into their minds at a young age the idea that life is an adventure, that dangers and hardships are normal, and that character counts. Put into their minds that all goodness requires sacrifice. I think that things are going to get harder for Christians going forward so it’s better that they be ready for it.

News

Obama administration files papers to take Hobby Lobby to Supreme Court

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From Life News.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration today filed papers taking the Christian craft store Hobby Lobby to the Supreme Court to make it comply with the HHS mandate that compels religious companies to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs for their employees.

In July, a federal court granted Hobby Lobby a preliminary injunction against the HHS abortion-drug mandate. The injunction prevented the Obama administration from enforcing the mandate against the Christian company, but the Obama administration appealed that ruling today. The government’s appeal makes it highly likely that the Supreme Court will decide the issue in the upcoming term.

“The United States government is taking the remarkable position that private individuals lose their religious freedom when they make a living,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead lawyer for Hobby Lobby. “We’re confident that the Supreme Court will reject the government’s extreme position and hold that religious liberty is for everyone—including people who run a business.”

Duncan said the appeals court victory for Hobby Lobby this summer had the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting the Obama administration’s argument that the Green family and their family-owned businesses, Hobby Lobby and a Christian bookstore chain named Mardel, could not legally exercise their religious views. The court further said the businesses were likely to win their challenge to the HHS mandate.

The government’s petition comes the same day as a petition in Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, another case involving a challenge to the HHS mandate.

The court will consider the government’s petition in the next six weeks. If the petition is granted, the case would be argued and decided before the end of the Court’s term in June.

So now you know what “pro-choice” really means. It means force Christians to pay for drugs that kill unborn babies, against their consciences. It means fascism. Using the power of government to compel people to act against their consciences.