-By Warner Todd Huston
For the last two years many businesses have been warning that because Obamacare will hurt them so badly they will cease offering employees healthcare and dump employees onto the Obamacare exchanges. But now the IRS has ruled that business will not be allowed to do this and this move guarantees that companies will begin a massive wave of layoffs to make up the costs.
An article in The New York Times relays the bad news to employers that no matter what they thought they were going to do, they are stuck with the massive new costs of Obamacare and they won’t be able to escape that massive tax increase by just closing out their healthcare benefits.
“Many employers,” the Times reported on May 25,”had concluded that it would be cheaper to provide each employee with a lump sum of money to buy insurance on an exchange, instead of providing coverage directly.”
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New IRS Obamacare Rule Guarantees Massive Job Loss”
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told graduates in Maryland that they should ignore “hateful rants” like that from Clippers owner Donald Sterling. Holder said that voter ID and “zero tolerance” policies in schools are worse on minorities than anything Sterling could have done.
Of all the countries in the world that have the potential to become one of the world’s next great superpowers, India is a nation poised to take that step. While there is an awful lot holding that giant nation back, their latest election just might be the next step to a more secure, prosperous future.
When one thinks about unions, one usually assumes that it is an organization geared toward guarding the interests of its members, the average, every day worker. But in Michigan that notion seems almost quaint. No, in Michigan, the unions are guarding the interests of union bigwigs and actually dealing away the benefits of members to keep the unions toughs in clover. 
Illinois is constantly at the bottom in every metric that measures our most successful states. It is perennially either the 48th, 49th, or 50th worst state in every category. And now we learn that the state is spending up to $12 million a year that it doesn’t have on Medicaid for people who are dead! Can this state become more of a joke?
April brought us Earth Day and with it at focus on both our ecosystem and those that claim it is their highest interest to protect the same. With reflection, though, we have to wonder if these self-appointed guardians of our environment are really just foxes guarding the henhouse succumbing to the temptation of power and money, even as they demonize those “greedy” corporate interests, they oppose. In many cases we may discover that these supposed “non-profits” are anything but.
The NBA may think it has set in motion the eventual sale of the L.A. Clippers thanks to racist comments made by team owner Donald Sterling, but Sterling has a long history of launching tough lawsuits and is rumored to have told a friend that he isn’t going to just roll over in this deal.
Politics might make strange bedfellows, but this one really takes the cake. In California Elizabeth Emken is running for the 7th District U.S. House seat in an attempt to unseat Democrat Ami Bera. But even though Emken was a lobbyist for Obamacare, she is strangely running as a Republican and using Bera’s support for Obamacare as a weapon against him.
Remember how our liar in chief said that under his all powerful Obamacare law medical costs would go down? That apparently was the next lie of the year after his lie that we could all keep our doctors and insurance if we liked it as spending on healthcare exploded in the first Obamacare quarter and it’s now higher than ever.
Four restaurants, three of which are McDonald’s, have closed down on several military bases and a host of other outlets, like Pizza Huts, are also saying they will soon be closing their shops. These closures will seriously damage the quality of life for our soldiers on our military bases and it is all thanks to Barack Obama.
Why is it not a surprise that the first moves to make Chicago the home of the Barack Hussein Obama Presidential Library are born in corruption? But I suppose it is a fitting way to start a library for one of the biggest failure and most corrupt politicians ever to sit in the White House.
The city council of Seattle saw a pay-to-park lot owned by a private landowner and businesswoman and collectively thought to itself, “ya know, it would be nice to have the income from that parking lot for our own.” And so, in the typically lawless way that Democrats operate, the city council sent the woman a note telling her that they have decided that she must hand over the land to them so that they can make the money off the parking lot instead of her. The land owner, though, saw no reason to comply, and oddly enough and a court fight ensued.
Eric Kohn over at Illinois Mirror has a great piece that highlights the main difference between real capitalism and the sort of crony capitalism (which isn’t capitalism at all) that the left so dearly loves.
If you own a company and want to relocate to another part of the country, Obama wants you to know that you have no right to decide where that location will be. Obama wants you to know that only a labor union can make that decision. You have no say in the matter.
In my writing about media, I have been fascinated in the rise of Fox Business Network in the financial reporting game. Recently I noted that FBN snagged star business reporter Maria Bartiromo from CNBC, but amusingly she just went back on CNBC… in an ad for Fox Business!
Democrats in New York once again prove that their bleating against money in politics is a lie with a new law that forces more campaign finance disclosure for everyone (read Republicans) except for union. Yes, while others are being forced to more disclosure, unions are being allowed to hide more campaign expenditures.
Illinois’ millionaire Democrat Senator Dick Durbin says he’s happy to pay more for his food if workers get a hike in their minimum wage.
Politico just published one of those articles that always drives me crazy where the media takes one or two examples of something and then tries to turn that into some sort of massive wave where in truth it is no such thing. This time Politico is saying that because three people left mainstream journalism to become media critics, that must mean there is a “career path” for disaffected journalists to fame and success.
Employees, whether unionized or not, who work for companies that have government contracts make far more per hour than employees who do similar jobs in the same area, a new study finds. This fact shows that government is essentially breaking its compensation own law.
Iowa Congressman Bruce Braley is now running for the Senate in the Hawkeye State and he has a message for Iowans: Iowa farmers aren’t good enough for elected office. Iowa needs rich, lawyers like himself in office. At least, this is what he told a roomful of trial lawyers in Texas.