News

Who knows more about economics? Obama or people who run businesses?

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Consider this article from The American Spectator, which talks about the Obammunist response to companies losing massive amounts of money because of Obamacare. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

By last Friday, AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co., and AK Steel Holding Corp. had all announced that they were taking the one-time charges on their first-quarter balance sheets. More companies were expected to make similar announcements this week.

[…]On Friday White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett were calling the CEOs and Washington office heads of the companies that took the financial hits and attacked them for doing so. One Washington office head said that the White House calls were accusatory and “downright rude.”

[…]”Most of these people [in the Administration] have never had a real job in their lives. They don’t understand a thing about business, and that includes the President,” says a senior lobbyist for one of the companies that announced the charge. “My CEO sat with the President over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the President what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the President didn’t understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him; he clearly had not been briefed and didn’t know what was in the bill.”

[…]”We had memos on these issues, but none of our people, we think, looked at them,” says  a staffer. “When they saw the stories last week about the charges some of the companies were taking, they were genuinely surprised and assumed that the companies were just doing this to embarrass them.  They really believed this bill would immediately lower costs. They just didn’t understand what they were voting on.”

And more from National Review, where the CEO of Aetna was interviewed. (H/T Ace of Spades via ECM)

Excerpt:

Will insurance premiums go up?

The answer is yes, and some of the things that will drive those premiums are significant additional taxes the industry will ultimately have to pay in the first year.

The President said that this bill would not have any impact on people who already had coverage, that it was about the uninsured, that there would be no change. Will this legislation change the coverage of people who are already paying for it?

My perception is, yes, things will change. You might not have a plan that includes the exact same doctors. You might have plans that have richer benefits, and therefore you’re going to pay more for benefits you may or may not want. It would have been a better message to say, we’re going to make certain you maintain your eligibility.

The “Robin Hood” intention of giving to the unproductive by taking from the productive seldom pays off, since the productive are the ones who give people jobs. And a lot of people are going to lose their jobs because of Obama’s economic ignorance. Either that, or companies will raise their insurance premiums, so that the poor will have to pay more for health care. Obama doesn’t know what he is doing, he probably thinks that communism has made Cuba rich. He’s just trying to help poor America reach the opulence of communist North Korea.

News

Obama’s nationalization of student loans killed private sector jobs

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Marathon Pundit reports.

Excerpt:

PENNSYLVANIA: “Sallie Mae Decided Against Hiring 300 Temporary Workers At Its Loan Servicing Center After The Passage Of Student Lending Reform. Still to be determined are the long-term effects on the nearly 1,000 workers at the company’s facility in the Hanover Industrial Estates. “The temporary jobs that were posted in preparation for this year’s peak loan processing season have been eliminated,” Martha Holler, spokeswoman for Sallie Mae, said in an e-mail Friday. The move was in reaction to the passage Thursday of The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act that was included in the health care reform bill.” (“Sallie Mae plan for 300 temps halted,” The Times Leader, 3/27/10)

NEBRASKA: “Congressional Votes On Thursday To End Federally Subsidized Student Lending By Private Companies Will Mean Job Cuts At Lincoln Student Loan Company Nelnet, a company spokesman said Friday. “We are very disappointed by this political news,” spokesman Ben Kiser said. “We believe it is poor public policy that will eliminate a part of our business and result in job losses in our community.” Kiser declined to give any details about the scope of the cuts, although he said they will occur over the next several months. Nelnet employs about 2,100 people, including more than 800 in Lincoln. The provision to end the Federal Family Education Loan Program and to channel all federal student lending directly through the government was tacked on to the controversial health insurance overhaul reconciliation legislation.” (“End Of Student Loan Program Will Mean Job Cuts At Nelnet,” Lincoln Journal Star, 3/26/10)

And more from this post:

STUDENT LOAN CENTER IN LYNN HAVEN, FLORIDA: “It’s Devastating With The Swipe Of A Pen We Can Wipe-Out 700-Jobs.” “Another potential nail in the coffin for SallieMae Thursday. The U.S. Senate has passed a Health Care Reconciliation bill. The ‘fix it’ bill reshapes parts of the new health care overhaul law. The Democrats voted down all 40 Republican amendments to the bill. One of those was an amendment offered by Florida Senator George Lemieux that would have protected SallieMae and some 700 local jobs. Lemieux’s proposal would have stripped the health care bill of the language which basically takes the student loan program from the private sector. The bill now goes back to the House for a final vote. ‘It’s devastating with the swipe of a pen we can wipe-out 700-jobs.’ Renee Meng said it was a sad day for the SallieMae center in Lynn Haven where she described the staff as devastated and heartbroken.” (“Time Could Be Short For SallieMae In Lynn Haven,” WJHG-NBC, 3/25/10)

Thousands of jobs lost. People who can’t feed their families, send their children to university or even get medical care. All because of Obama. The voters had fears about the future. And the voters believed that he could make real life go away with a magic wand called “big government”.

Videos

Michele Bachmann promises to work to repeal Obamacare

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According to a Bloomberg national poll, the majority of Americans are as depressed as I am about the direction that the country is going in. And I think that that the health care reform bill is part of the problem.

But Michele Bachmann has a plan.

First, she doesn’t sugar-coat the problem.

Second, she has a plan to solve the problem.

Last week was very depressing for me… but she gives me hope.

Michele Bachmann has a book that I have

By the way, check out he bookshelf that appears behind her in the second video. I can make out War Footing, published by the Naval Institute Press, on the left side of the bottom shelf. I have that book in my office shelf at work.

Details:

America has been at war for years, but until now, it has not been clear with whom or precisely for what. And we have not been using the full resources we need to win.

With the publication of War Footing, lead-authored by Frank Gaffney, it not only becomes clear who the enemy is and how high the stakes are, but also exactly how we can prevail.

War Footing shows that we are engaged in nothing less than a War for the Free World. This is a fight to the death with Islamofascists, Muslim extremists driven by a totalitarian political ideology that, like Nazism or Communism before it, is determined to destroy freedom and the people who love it.

Mr. Gaffney and his esteemed colleagues offer ten specific steps that Americans, as individuals and as communities, can take to ensure their way of life and safety and the future well-being of their children and grandchildren. These steps include detailed recommendations about how to:

This book is a highly readable and definitive owners manual for the War for the Free World. Whether we like it or not, every American owns a stake in its outcome. War Footing tells us how we can make sure it comes out right.

Among those who contributed brilliant analyses and commonsense recommendations to War Footing are: R. James Woolsey, Victor Davis Hanson, General Tom McInerney, General Paul Vallely, Alex Alexiev, Andrew McCarthy, Claudia Rosett, Michael Rubin, Daniel Goure, Caroline Glick, and Michael Waller. Their inputs – and those of twenty other contributors – help make this strategy for winning the War for the Free World as readable as it is needed.

If there is one thing I like to see in women other than fiscal conservatism, it’s foreign policy conservatism. War is often the only way to stop tyranny and bloodshed in countries. The world is not a happy-clappy place. The United States military protects the safety of other nations by just being present, and sometimes even by fighting. We face serious threats. It’s good to see that Michele is at least aware of what is going on in the world. I think that most people who are anti-war really haven’t read anything about the way the world really is.