US Politics Mega-thread - Page 393

On August 22 2013 04:06 sam!zdat wrote:


as Engels says, the bourgeoisie can never solve its problems, it can only move them around...

Companies sweating Obamacare tax—and acting on it: Study

Mid- and large-sized companies overwhelmingly expect health-care costs to increase under Obamacare—and most are eyeing possible changes to their health insurance offerings because of a looming excise tax for pricier plans under the health-care reform law, a new survey of employers finds.

In fact, 40 percent of 420 companies surveyed by Towers Watson said they will be changing their insurance plans' designs in 2014 in light of the coming excise tax as well as to control employee-related health costs. ...

But the same study found a very strong majority of those companies—82 percent—see their ability to offer subsidized health benefits to existing workers as an "important" as part of their "employee value proposition" for 2014, according to the study.

And 98 percent of the employers have no definite plans to discontinue health-care coverage in 2014 and 2015 and direct their full-time workers to the state health insurance exchanges.

Will Obamacare destroy jobs?

... In 2010 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that it would shrink employment by 0.5%. The law’s many provisions would pull in opposite directions. Some would raise employment, the CBO predicted. For example, by expanding Medicaid (health care for the poor) to those with higher incomes, Obamacare would remove a disincentive to work. People who might have turned down extra work for fear of losing their Medicaid would now take it, ran the argument.

Other provisions would reduce employment. Partly, this would be because employers like Mr Clark will cut jobs and hours to avoid being subject to the law. (Unions publicly fret about the threat to the 40-hour week.) But mostly, the CBO thinks it would be because people will choose to work less. Obamacare’s subsidies will boost the finances of poor workers; they may therefore work fewer hours. After examining patterns of employment and subsidised insurance in Tennessee, Craig Garthwaite of Northwestern University and his colleagues estimate that Obamacare’s subsidies will prompt up to 940,000 workers to leave the labour force. Many will be older people, keen to retire early.

Another concern is that Obamacare will lower wages. For example, if firms that do not now offer insurance comply with the mandate, their costs will jump. Nearly 60% of such firms say they will offer coverage, according to Mercer. As health costs rise, they may pay their staff less. A study in Massachusetts found that, roughly speaking, every extra dollar spent on insurance comes out of wages.

The White House, however, points to various ways in which Obamacare might boost employment. By making it easier for individuals to buy health insurance, it should make it less frightening for them to switch jobs or start their own companies. Democrats claim the law will lower health costs for firms. Tax credits for small businesses will make it cheaper for them to offer health insurance. Measures to reward efficient health care will reduce the cost of treatment. If insurance becomes cheaper, firms will have more money to hire workers and raise wages. In 2010 David Cutler of Harvard University estimated that Obamacare’s cost-control measures would create up to 400,000 jobs each year. ...

On August 22 2013 09:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Hey Sam!

I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that so much as argue that one tradeoff is better than the other. At least they reduced that reserve army of the unemployed

On August 22 2013 04:24 Adila wrote:


About time. If churches want to preach politics and support candidates, they should pay taxes like everyone else.

On August 22 2013 04:24 Adila wrote:


About time. If churches want to preach politics and support candidates, they should pay taxes like everyone else.

On August 22 2013 11:19 DeepElemBlues wrote:


Paying in order to exercise your first amendment rights seems... problematic.

On August 22 2013 11:26 sam!zdat wrote:


umm.... so you want to make tax exempt every other political advocacy organization? that's not the way we do it now. i don't really know either way, but it should be consistent.

if you let my cult be tax exempt i'm happy to compromise

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the possibility of leveling criminal charges against individuals at JPMorgan Chase, an unnamed source told Bloomberg News. The FBI is working alongside the Department of Justice in its probe of the bank's energy trades, which was announced on Monday.

JPMorgan, the nation's biggest bank by assets, is also facing a criminal investigation over its actions leading up to the financial crisis. The bank is now facing at least seven ongoing investigations, according to the Wall Street Journal.

WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (Reuters) - U.S. Republican lawmakers, who staunchly oppose President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, are considering using a fall showdown over the country's borrowing limit as leverage to try to delay the law's implementation.

The idea is gaining traction among Republican leaders in the House of Representatives, aides said on Wednesday. An aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the debt limit is a "good leverage point" to try to force some action on the healthcare law known as "Obamacare."

"There are plenty of discussions ongoing but no decisions at this point," said another leadership aide.

Republicans are weighing the tactic as an alternative to another approach that would involve denying funding for the law and threatening a possible government shutdown.

The push to deny funding for Obamacare has the backing of some prominent Republican senators, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida.

But many Republicans in both the House and the Senate oppose the shutdown strategy, viewing it as a reckless move that is bound to fail. Many worry the gambit would cause a backlash against their party ahead of the 2014 congressional elections.

When lawmakers return on Sept. 9 from their five-week summer recess, they will face two fall deadlines. If Congress does not pass a measure by Oct. 1 to keep federal agencies funded, the government will shut down.

On August 22 2013 11:19 DeepElemBlues wrote:


Paying in order to exercise your first amendment rights seems... problematic.

We don't need the government having more authority over political activity, it's already too much as it is. There are numerous testimonies of people who tried to set up Tea Party groups who gave up after the IRS harassed them and put ridiculous obstacles in front of them, there was the use of various public ordinances to justify ending OWS protests (while some of the OWS camps needed to be ended many were not public nuisances or hazards and got cleared all the same), both of which are examples of the government denying the right to associate and organize for public redress of grievances.

Unless you want to organize a protest or a group with the intent of political violence or disruption of public order the government should have no power over your political group/protest and you definitely should not have to pay taxes in order to engage in political speech.

The public interest in government not being in the business of taxing religion is so much larger than the public interest in objecting to political speech because the speaker is tax-exempt that it is just crazy to me that there is an issue over it. The potential for abuse and harm to the body politic from the government taxing religion is just so much larger than any potential harm that might come from religious institutions voicing political opinions in modern society.

It's not like churches and synagogues and mosques and etc. haven't been flouting the laws that say they can't express political opinions for the entirety of American history either, somehow the country has not been ruined. But the government getting more power to pick more winners and losers... we've had enough of that crap.

On August 22 2013 11:26 sam!zdat wrote:


umm.... so you want to make tax exempt every other political advocacy organization? that's not the way we do it now. i don't really know either way, but it should be consistent.

if you let my cult be tax exempt i'm happy to compromise

On August 22 2013 11:50 DoubleReed wrote:
Uhm. Of course you should have to pay taxes in order to pay for political speech. Political organizations have to pay taxes. What is wrong with you? We shouldn't be subsidizing political speech. It's as simple as that.

Of course, I don't really understand why we subsidize religion in the first place.

If you're against government picking winners and losers, wouldn't it make the most sense to eliminate all tax exemption for churches across the board? That's the real small government solution, rather than trusting the government to determine what is or isn't a legitimate religious organization.

This is when you know the extremists have taken over:

What is wrong with me? What is wrong with you, with your perspective that not taxing something is subsidizing it? That's bullshit. The government doesn't have a superior ownership claim to my money or other property, with me only having a claim to it because of the government's benevolent decision that I do. Under your perspective the government is the source of all legitimate power and authority in society and we are all more or less serfs.

On August 23 2013 02:53 DeepElemBlues wrote:


The President, who has made demands unacceptable to Republicans knowing they are unacceptable and refusing to negotiate on them at every single debt crisis,, who has not once compromised even though the Republicans have given ground several times, he's not acting in an extreme way at all. SMH. You guys can contort yourselves to believe anything no matter how dangerous or ridiculous.

On August 23 2013 03:18 DoubleReed wrote:


What? If you don't consider it a subsidy, then why do we tax anything? Shouldn't all organizations be tax exempt by this logic? This sounds like the libertarian bullshit of "taxation is theft."

You gave a decent reason for precedent of tax-exemptions for religious organizations. But unless you're going to start railing against the separation of church and state and secularism, I fail to see how you could possibly stretch that to political organizations. I don't even think this works under your own logic.

Ummm that makes absolutely zero sense. The small government solution is... more government. Or maybe you think the government can enforce taxation on religion without having to increase the number of tax collectors and other bureaucrats and also somehow avoid abuses and mistakes.

Rest assured, Obamacare opponents: A group of Republican lawmakers meets every week to figure out how to get rid of President Barack Obama's signature health care law.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) revealed this fact on Wednesday, during a standing-room only event sponsored by the Republican Party of Harrison County in Marshall, Texas.

"Since May, there's been a group of senators and about 10 or 12 House members, we've been meeting once a week trying to figure out what's the strategy (to remedy the nation's current financial and healthcare woes) and (Senator) Mike Lee took the lead on the strategy, and the strategy is to fund every part of government including some things some of us don’t care to fund and completely defund Obamacare," he said, as reported by the Marshall News Messenger.

According to the paper, Gohmert "attributed the Affordable Care Act as the root of some of the nation's financial and healthcare issues."

When asked if Lee participates in these meetings, spokesman Brian Phillips replied, "He talks to other members all the time, but he hasn't attended regular meetings specifically about Obamacare."

Gohmert's office did not return a request for additional details.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — For the first time, nobody has bid on a federal coal tract offered for sale in Wyoming after the company that initially sought to mine the location determined that it couldn't do so profitably.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management held a coal lease sale in Cheyenne on Wednesday but received no bids.

Usually a federal coal tract offered for sale by the BLM receives exactly one bid — the one submitted by the company that applied to mine the coal. There are two competing bids very rarely.

This time, not even Gillette-based Cloud Peak Energy followed up its 7-year-old lease application for the 149 million tons of coal next to its Cordero Rojo mine. Economic analysis that accounted for market conditions and political and regulatory uncertainty showed that not all of the coal was economically recoverable, Cloud Peak President and CEO Colin Marshall said in a release.

"We were unable to construct an economic bid for this tract at this time," Marshall said.

While the coal industry and its allies warn that new greenhouse gas regulations for the power plants that burn Wyoming coal threaten the coal industry and by extension the state's economy, environmentalists jumped on the decision as a victory for their side.

the strategy is to fund every part of government including some things some of us don’t care to fund

the Affordable Care Act as the root of some of the nation's financial and healthcare issues