Commentary

Ten things Obama did to discourage companies from hiring

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This article was written a week ago on Investors Business Daily, and it is still in the top five!

Below is my favorite of the ten.

Excerpt:

Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act of 2010 (ObamaCare).

According to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, ObamaCare will hike taxes an estimated $15.2 billion, and the middle class will get whacked. We’ve already seen health insurance premiums go up because of costly ObamaCare mandates, which means less money available for spending on other things.

Moreover, employer mandates, taxes and penalties will reduce funds available for private-sector hiring. The mandates, taxes and penalties kick in when an employer has more than 50 employees, and they apply to all employees, so one effect of the law is to discourage small businesses — which create most American jobs — from hiring more than 50 people.

If a business has 45 employees and it needs to hire eight more people for a total of 53 employees, but it doesn’t offer health insurance or its insurance plan doesn’t satisfy the latest ObamaCare regulations, hiring those eight additional people would entail a $2,000 penalty for each of the 53 employees — a total of $106,000!

Many other provisions are likely to have unintended consequences, as well. The 2.5% excise tax on high-tech companies that produce pacemakers, heart valves, stents, defibrillators and other medical devices that help improve the quality of life or save lives is an estimated $20 billion hit. Anything that increases the cost of doing business is bad for jobs.

A mandate, by the way, is when the government forces all insurance company plans to cover elective things like abortions. When insurance companies have to cover more politically correct lifestlye choices, the premiums that normal people pay go up to cover the weird stuff. Are you a normal person? Did your medical premiums go up, or did you lose medical coverage through your employer? If so, then thank Obama – he needed to make sure that all his favorite special interest groups (e.g. – Planned Parenthood) got their money.

Read the remaining nine here.

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Is it a good idea to give the government money to run health care?

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Consider this article from the UK Daily Mail, which shows how socialized medicine is working out in socialist Europe. (H/T Memeorandum via ECM)

Excerpt:

A ‘man of 21 with learning disabilities has been granted taxpayers’ money to fly to Amsterdam and have sex with a prostitute.

His social worker says sex is a ‘human right’ for the unnamed individual – described as a frustrated virgin.

His trip to a brothel in the Dutch capital’s red light district next month is being funded through a £520million scheme introduced by the last government to empower those with disabilities.

They are given a personal budget and can choose what services this is spent on.

This is what happens when taxpayers hand their own money to bureaucrats to spend. When you have your money in your hand, you use 100% of that money to buy things you want because you need them – like breast cancer exams. But when you give a bureaucrat your money, their goal for spending that money is to buy votes so that they can keep their job and to feel good about themselves. And what makes them feel good about themselves is equalizing life outcomes. They don’t think that anyone should have to face the unhappy consequences of their own decisions.

In some provinces of Canada, sex changes and in vitro fertilization are taxpayer-funded. Abortion is taxpayer-funded in every province. That’s socialized medicine. Equalizing life outcomes by transferring wealth from a person who has money to a person who has a felt need.

Here’s a comprehensive article from The American Spectator that explains what we can expect from our version of socialized medicine, i.e. – “Obamacare”. (H/T ECM)

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Nancy Pelosi wants investigation of Ground Zero mosque opponents

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Here’s the video of Nancy Pelosi’s remarks. (H/T Washington Times)

Transcript:

“There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded.”

She doesn’t want to know where the millions of dollars to fund the mosque came from… she wants to investigate the finances of people who disagree with the mosque. Presumably, this would mean that she wants to investigate the finances of the families of 9/11 victims to see who is funding their opposition to the Ground Zero mosque.

Here’s the response from Debra Burlingame and Tim Sumners, the co-founders of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America. (H/T Weekly Standard)

For the last four months, 9/11 families, first responders, survivors and concerned citizens have been asking where developers are getting funding for a $100-million dollar mosque and Islamic center planned for Ground Zero. The imam who is heading the project has refused to identify the source of the $5 million cash that was used to purchase the building, and told an Arab newspaper that he will get funding for the project from Arab and Muslim countries. Given the imam’s statements, that America was “an accessory to the crime” on 9/11, that “Osama Bin Laden was made in the U.S.A.” as well as his repeated refusal to condemn Hamas, we believe he has an obligation to come clean to the public on his financial sources. Our concern has been amplified by news that the imam’s worldwide “Shariah Index Project” is being funded by the Malaysian government, and that he is a principal figure in the Perdana Global Peace Project, the number one funder of the Gaza Flotilla, a violent attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Today we learn that instead of taking our concerns seriously, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi suggested that the opponents of the Ground Zero mosque should be investigated. This comment is clearly intended to intimidate those of us who are speaking out to preserve the sanctity of Ground Zero, where more than 20,000 human remains have been recovered, 1,845 in the last five years. We can assure Ms. Pelosi that whatever funds we have spent to get our message out, they pale in comparison to the price we have personally paid since that day, and continue to pay as a result of the mosque project. The vast majority of the American people support us. They lived through September 11 with us, and they know, as we do, that this not a “local issue.” What happened on 9/11 affected all Americans.

Remember in November.