Government Killing Jobs Again -- This Law Effects Small Businesses and Thrift Stores (yes, even garage sales)

More Closed Door Meetings... On Cap N' Trade -- Health Care and Cap N' Trade Will Ruin This Country (Chris Horner)

The Free Lunch Myth -- Why We Should Drop The Corporate Tax Altogether

Milton Friedman & the Pencil -- Money Bringing Thousands of People Together

Video Trouble Led Me To Vimeo -- A Bloggers Paradise

I had just paid to upgrade my account from the free Motionbox account to their premium. Fine. I was happy, finally a place to host my videos officially. Then one of my videos was linked to JihadWatch.com (more specifically, HERE). At any rate I didn't know the premium package had a limit on how many views it was alotted. So after being connected to Robert Spencer's site, they shut that video down. Motionbox wanted me to upgrade to a pro membership. So I have left Motionbox.com and have joined Vimeo. Vimeo's paid account saves me $239.89 a year. Yes, you heard me correctly. In order to upgrade to pro I would have to fork over another $239.99.

So if I can encourage people to go to Vimeo and pay their $59.99 a year membership, you get all you need as a blogger for posting videos. And if they "blow up," no worries, Vimeo loves that... that means more business will come their way. It seems to me Motionbox is chasing theirs away. At any rate, I have a new account that I will be transferring my videos to. Sorry for any downtime to some videos, and let me know if one of my videos is missing, it helps. You can find me here in greener pastures -- a "bloggers heaven":

The Real Costs of Obama-Care Becoming More Apparent Day-By-Day

Welcome to ObamaCare, Part II

.... In 2003, when President Bush expanded federal coverage for elderly Americans’ prescription drugs, he also included a subsidy so businesses would keep retirees in their private drug benefit plans. The payout was about $665 per employee each year they were kept on private coverage. The goal was to keep employers from dumping retirees into the newly expanded government plan.

Last week, Obama and the Democrats in Congress removed the subsidy’s tax-free status. Because of how the Securities and Exchange Commission regulates large companies, this change in the long-term tax outlook for the businesses is sending shockwaves through their ledgers. Here's what a few companies are saying:

• AT&T announced the change would cost them $1 billion.
• Caterpillar said it would cost them $100 million.
• Prudential also said they will feel a $100 million impact.
• AK Steel put the loss at $31 million.
• Verizon warned its employees ObamaCare “may have significant implications for both retirees and employers.”
• Illinois Tool Works announced a $22 million hit.

All told, companies are reporting a new $14 billion tax liability under ObamaCare, and we’re only a week out from the signing ceremony.

Never one to let a political opportunity slip by, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is summoning the afflicted companies to a hearing on Capitol Hill. Apparently, Waxman is shocked that the health care takeover bill he just voted for is having real-life implications for businesses. Waxman is demanding internal company documents on how the companies arrived at their figures. It should provide uproarious political theater as the Beverly Hills politician tries to blame the private sector for the impacts of bad policy he just implemented.

Of course the companies could always avoid the new tax by kicking retirees off the private drug plan; I’m sure ObamaCare would be all too happy to take them in. The Employee Benefit Research Institute projects this would save employers $2,800 in future costs per beneficiary. Who could blame them for trying to avoid the huge hit to their books?...

...(read more)...

 

Big Companies Take Hit Over ObamaCare

More Hidden Agendas... This Cost Small Companies Lots of Money To Do

(click for story source and more)

Nancy Pelosi told the public that we’d have to pass ObamaCare to find out all of the surprises Democrats had loaded into it.  Since its passage, we’ve discovered a number of them, including the elimination of a tax credit that kept seniors on private medication coverage that has forced publicly-held corporations like AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere, and Verizon to take massive charges against this year’s earnings.  Earlier this week, the Associated Press discovered a new mandate, this time on chain restaurants, that is at once petty, paternalistic, and anti-growth:

A requirement tucked into the nation’s massive health care bill will make calorie counts impossible for thousands of restaurants to hide and difficult for consumers to ignore. More than 200,000 fast food and other chain restaurants will have to include calorie counts on menus, menu boards and even drive-throughs.

John Stossel Talks To Youth and Elderly About Obama-Care and Costs

More Fallout of Big Businesses and Obama-Care

 

AP: Say, guess what we just found in ObamaCare! (HotAir)

Congress passed the bill without knowing what was in it. Barack Obama signed it without reading it.  Now it looks as though the Associated Press reported on ObamaCare without comprehending its content.   Readers will have to scroll far down to discover that the elimination of a key tax break that kept retirees on company prescription-medication plans will mean dumping millions of seniors onto Medicare — and that the AP ignored it until now:

The health care overhaul will cost U.S. companies billions and make them more likely to drop prescription drug coverage for retirees because of a change in how the government subsidizes those benefits.

In the first two days after the law was signed, three major companies — Deere & Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Valero Energy — said they expect to take a total hit of $265 million to account for smaller tax deductions in the future.

With more than 3,500 companies now getting the tax break as an incentive to keep providing coverage, others are almost certain to announce similar cost increases in the weeks ahead as they sort out the impact of the change.

Figuring out what it will mean for retirees will take longer, but analysts said as many as 2 million could lose the prescription drug coverage provided by their former employers, leaving them to enroll in Medicare’s program.

 [....]

Who could have foreseen this?  Well, businesses have been trying to get attention to this problem for months, as the AP somewhat belatedly reports:

Industry groups say they lobbied hard against the change in the tax rules before it was added to the health care law over the winter.

“It was in all of our letters and communications that went up to the Hill, and the companies were heavily involved in that,” said Dena Battle, a tax specialist with the National Association of Manufacturers.

Nationwide, companies would take a $14 billion hit on their financial statements if all of the roughly 3,500 companies receiving the subsidies continued to do so, according to a study by Towers Watson, a human resources consulting firm.

For months, businesses have warned about the problem, and for months, Democrats have claimed this clause as a $5.4 billion revenue source.  One might think that the media would be interested in puncturing some bad assumptions.  Apparently not.

 

Major Companies (3,500) Taking Hit Right Now for Future Obama-Care Bills

John Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon Announce Rise in Health-Care Costs After Obamacare Passage
by Mary Katherine Ham at The Weekly Standard

If Verizon weren't in the mix, I'd be tempted to say this was a rural dudes with heavy machinery tax.

Farm equipment maker Deere & Co (DE.N) expects after-tax expenses to rise by $150 million this year as a result of the healthcare reform law President Barack Obama signed this week.

Most of the higher expense will come in Deere's second quarter, the company said on Thursday. The expense was not included in the company's earlier 2010 forecast, which called for net income of about $1.3 billion.

Earlier this week, Caterpillar announced it would take a $100 million hit:

The charge is expected to be a one-time cost, but Caterpillar has argued that higher taxes and other potential cost increases related to insurance coverage mandates in the legislation will hinder the company's recovery this year after a 75% plunge in income during 2009.

"From our point of view, a tax increase like this cannot come at a worse time," said Jim Dugan, a Caterpillar spokesman.

Although the tax doesn't take effect until 2011, the company said it is required to recognize the impact in the period in which the law was signed. Industry analysts estimated the charge at about 13 cents a share.

That ought to do wonders for the construction sector.

The National Review got its hands on an e-mail from Verizon to employees:

...due to the varying effective dates included in the legislation, we expect that Verizon’s costs will increase in the short-term. These cost increases are primarily driven by two provisions.

The first is a provision that affects the Medicare Part D subsidy for prescription drug coverage. Because Verizon offers retiree prescription drug coverage today, the government provides a 28 percent subsidy to help offset the financial burden of offering that coverage. The subsidy was intended to help employers continue to offer prescription drug coverage for retirees so that these retirees would not have to use the Government Medicare Part D program. However, changes affecting the Part D subsidy will make it less valuable to employers, like Verizon, and as a result, may have significant implications for both retirees and employers.

Some of its generous plans will also be subject to the "Cadillac" tax, which may or may not go into effect in 2018, but Verizon has to be more responsible than Congress by actually planning for it.

Rush Limbaugh Takes A Call From Stacy, An Expert In The Health Insurance Industry, Who Expresses Her Concerns About The New Obama Health Care Legislation

G.E. & Reagan - His Comeuppance

(HotAir)

New York Times CEO paid 4.9million... Didn't the NYT Write Stories on AIG and other CEOs Getting Big Bonuses?

(AP) - An analysis by The Associated Press shows that New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson got roughly $4.9 million in compensation in 2009.

Robinson's base salary fell 4 percent to $962,500. But she got a bonus of about $2.3 million, four times the size of her 2008 bonus.

Robinson also received stock options that were worth $1.6 million when they were granted. About $560,000 of that was meant to replace options that had been given in 2008 and were later voided because they exceeded a limit set by company bylaws.

The AP's executive pay calculation, based on a regulatory filing, aims to isolate the value the company's board placed on a CEO's compensation package. The figure includes salary, bonus, incentives, perks and the estimated value of stock options and awards.

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(NYT) The New York Times plans to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs — about 8 percent of the total — by year’s end, offering buyouts to union and non-union employees, and resorting to layoffs if it cannot get enough people to leave voluntarily, the paper announced on Monday.

...(read more)...

Walter Williams & Thomas Sowell Tackle Minimum Wage

Out of Control Legislation on Toys -- John Stossel

Bayh Says Democrats Have Yet To Create A Single Private-Sector Job

(HotAir h/t)

 

Revealed -- Small Business Conglomeration Behind "Miss Me Yet" Billboard

 HotAir reveals the persons behind the billboard

No, it’s not “fatcat bankers” or “teabaggers” or critics of Obama’s terror policy or whoever today’s enemy du jour is. Surprise:

Mary Teske, the general manager of Schubert & Hoey Outdoor Advertising reports, “The Bush Miss Me Yet? billboard was paid for by a group of small business owners who feel like Washington is against them. They wish to remain anonymous. They thought it was a fun way of getting out their message.”

Various people have stepped forward around the country to claim credit — the latest was a gentleman in upstate New York from what I can tell in his e-mail. But, it’s all local, folks....

Help! Our Friend Turned Into a Capitalist

(LR h/t)

Joe Scarborough Uncovers Why New Hampshire Has Low Unemployment