Finding out what’s in it: City governments nationwide are cutting employees’ hours to below 30 hours per week to avoid Obamacare.
Healthcare premiums have climbed almost $3,000 since 2009.
The important point however is this:
And while annual premium increases have moderated over the past two years, that’s due to trends in the insurance market largely unrelated to ObamaCare, and trends the law could actually reverse.
To save money on insurance people had been shifting to plans with high deductibles. Obamacare however has outlawed such plans, thus requiring health insurance coverage in cases where people really don’t need it or can’t afford it.
The totalitarian instincts of the gay rights movement and its enablers on the left reveal themselves.
Finding out what’s in it: The University of Virginia is cutting health insurance coverage for spouses in order to avoid the cost of Obamacare.
Though the article doesn’t say, I would not be surprised if the university is also cutting the work hours of some teachers to make them part-timers as well, for the same reasons. And as Moe Lane notes, it is almost certain that this is what these university people voted for, as almost every single academic in the country is a partisan Democrat. I wonder how they will spin this disaster to blame it on conservatives.
Does this make you feel safer? A Homeland Security employee openly calls for the mass murder of whites on his own website.
How one man saved $17,000 on the cost of a surgery.
Finding out what’s in it: UPS announced today that it is dropping the spousal coverage for 15,000 employees because of the cost of Obamacare.
To the Obama administration and the Democrats, this is proof that Obamacare works. According to a spokeswoman for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “The health care law will make health insurance more affordable, strengthen small businesses and make it easier for employers to provide coverage to their workers.” Well, obviously!
Orwell called this kind of thinking doublethink, the ability to hold two completely contradictory statements in your brain and see nothing contradictory about it.
On Tuesday NASA released what it calls a new “space exploration roadmap,” outlining the agency’s goals for the human exploration of space over the next few decades.
Normally I’d say, who cares? The space agency puts these kinds of PR roadmaps together periodically. None of them really ever mean that much. And in truth, this particular report doesn’t mean that much either. However, what makes this “Global Plan” interesting and worth mentioning is the participants who wrote it. It seems that NASA and the Obama administration didn’t do it alone.
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The competition heats up: Japan’s unveiled its new Epsilon rocket yesterday, scheduled for its first launch next week.
Epsilon is a low-cost, high-performance, solid-fuel rocket co-developed by JAXA and IHI AEROSPACE Co.,Ltd. and designed to launch scientific satellites. Epsilon features the world’s first innovative launch system called “Mobile Launch Control” which allows for built-in checks to be conducted autonomously within the rocket’s system. This allows staff to focus on high-level monitoring, making overall performance very smooth. A spokesman joked that it is so easy to control that staff could monitor the rocket on their laptops while at Starbucks.
In the past Japan has not been very good at building cheap and efficient rockets. We shall see how this one does.
A draft of the next IPCC climate report has arrived, and it is more of the same: We are all gonna die!
An international panel of scientists has found with near certainty that human activity is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades, and warns that sea levels could conceivably rise by more than three feet by the end of the century if emissions continue at a runaway pace. The scientists, whose findings are reported in a draft summary of the next big United Nations climate report, largely dismiss a recent slowdown in the pace of warming, which is often cited by climate change doubters, attributing it most likely to short-term factors. The report emphasizes that the basic facts about future climate change are more established than ever, justifying the rise in global concern. It also reiterates that the consequences of escalating emissions are likely to be profound.
I love the way the journalist here uses the term “climate change doubters.” Throughout the story it is applied to skeptical scientists in such a way as to imply that any doubt about these conclusions is obviously something to snicker at and to ignore.
As for the claim that the seas will rise three feet in the next 90 years, note that the level of sea rise has been consistently between 2 and 3 millimeters per year for the past half century, even as we have been pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the climate has supposedly warmed. At 3mm per year, the seas will only rise 270 millimeters by the end of the century, or just under 11 inches, not three feet as claimed by this new IPCC report.
A Michigan school board has refused to fire the teachers who publicly supported another teacher who had molested a student for three years.
It appears now that a very large number of parents are pulling their kids from this public school system and putting them in a new charter school in the area.
The fuel leak that scrubbed yesterday’s launch of India’s GSLV rocket will likely cause at least a week’s delay before another launch attempt.
Freedom in today’s America: “Impeach Obama” protesters arrested for peaceably assembling.
With video, which is definitely worth watching. I would have done exactly as these protesters did, been arrested, and would be on the phone with my lawyers this instant putting together a lawsuit. The cop who made the arrest in this case broke the law and should pay for that.
And I agree with one of the comments at the website: If the protesters had labeled themselves “Occupy Wall Street” the cops would have probably brought them donuts instead while allowing them to shut down traffic illegally.
Ignoring what’s in it: The Obama administration has failed to meet more than half of the deadlines mandated by Obamacare.
Meanwhile, here’s another example of a company switching all of its workers to part-time to avoid Obamacare. The result is that those employees will not only earn less, they will lose their company health insurance. So much for Obama’s promise, “If you like your healthplan you keep your healthplan.”
More SWAT team abuse by the government: The Great Organic Blueberry Raid.
Read the story and weep. Also, make sure you read the other examples of government/police overkill listed at the start of the article.
It appears there is some “dissatisfaction” among Kazakhstan officials over the cleanup from July’s spectacular Proton rocket crash.
I think the Russians are probably rushing the clean-up in order to begin launch operations as soon as possible, and this is what Kazakhstan finds objectionable.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: Despite a congressional ban against providing ACORN or any of its affiliates money, HUD handed the organization $200k.
It also appears that this is not the first time the Obama administration has ignored the ban and illegally given ACORN or its affiliates money.
For the first time since 1975 the Navy and NASA have teamed up to practice the ocean recovery of a manned capsule.
This practice was with an Orion capsule mockup.
If it ain’t working then the solution is to change the name! The Obama administration is now insisting that the proper term for climate change is “carbon pollution.”
First it was “global warming.” Then it was “climate change.” Then it was “global climate disruption.” Now, “carbon pollution,” which is the most ridiculous term of all, since all life on the planet is made from carbon. Moreover, all animal life exhales carbon dioxide, which means (assuming the “carbon” in this silly term refers to CO2) we are therefore all polluters. Off with our heads! And the plant life that we all depend on breathes carbon dioxide and could not exist without it.
Ten examples of protest images mocking George Bush that were far more offensive and violent than that harmless rodeo clown whose life is now being destroyed.
Take a look. Though many conservatives did complain about the violence and inappropriateness of these signs, no one on the right ever demanded that the freedom of these protesters should be squelched. Also, there’s this important detail:
These were not just fringe pieces. Some appeared in art galleries and at major film festivals. Left-wing assassination chic means never having to say you’re sorry.
Of course, having noted these facts and thereby defended the constitutional freedom of a rodeo clown to make fun of a leftwing black politician, I (and Michelle Malkin who wrote the post above) therefore must be racists. It’s the only explanation!
Russia has concluded its investigation into last month’s Proton launch failure and now says its next launch will be on September 15.
While the investigation pinpointed the problem — the installation of sensors upside down — none of the news reports about this investigation have mentioned what any corrective actions the Russians are taking. Meanwhile, at least one unnamed Russian engineer is questioning the schedule and the thoroughness of the investigation.
The effort by the local government in Rochester, New York, to destroy the fourth amendment rights of renters.
These warrants are generated without suspicion of a crime and do not specify things to be searched. They remain valid for 45 days, permit multiple entries by code officers, and allow officers to film their inspections, which are later publicly available. The whole neighborhood is able to see the letters on a coffee table and the contents of a medicine cabinet. Inspectors are permitted to look through every aspect of a house, wherever there may be violations of “federal, state, county, or city law, ordinance, rule or regulation relating to the construction, alteration, maintenance, repair, operation, use, condition or occupancy of a premises.” Inspectors may look inside “interior surfaces” of closets and drawers to determine if they are “clean and sanitary.”
And then there’s this suspicious fact:
But David Ahl, a board member of the New York State Coalition of Property Owners and Businesses, alleges that the city is engaging in punitive action meant to chill the exercise of the right to deny consent. Through Freedom of Information Law requests he has discovered that city has filed 50 administrative search warrants since 2003, every single one of which target properties owned and managed by members of his organization.
Why is the Rochester government specifically only getting these broad search warrants against members of this particular organization?
“Liberals have targeted this man for personal destruction to create a climate of fear.”
It is beyond disgusting the number of recent witch hunts being instigated by the left against individuals who have merely said things they didn’t like. Unfortunately, what’s worse is the willingness of too many Americans to pay no attention, or make believe it isn’t happening, or to make excuses for this totalitarian behavior merely because of partisan favoritism.
Oppression is oppression, and should not be tolerated by anyone, not matter what the politics.
And then there is the media, which has joined in the effort to target the weak and innocent while protecting the powerful who do commit acts of bigotry and hate.
What racists! True the Vote has found 173 cases of voter fraud in Florida.
These are examples where someone has registered and voted in two different states. According to modern Democratic Party dogma, trying to stop such behavior is clearly racist and an attempt to suppress the vote, which is probably why the IRS as well as other federal agencies aggressively harassed True the Vote for several years.
Working for the Democratic Party: New evidence suggests that IRS official Lois Lerner attempted to hide her work from scrutiny when the IRS began its harassment of conservatives.
Rodeo clown forces decimated and on the run!
As every Constitutional scholar knows, the First Amendment includes a clause that strictly forbids mockery of the President of the United States, depending on who it is, and which party he belongs to. It’s in one of the penumbras of the Constitution, or maybe it’s an emanation. I always get those two mixed up.
Once again, the thugs of the Democratic Party are working to destroy someone, merely because that person happened to express a negative opinion about their Democratic president.
Fraud: The federal treasury had a $98 Billion deficit in July, yet the total debt was left unchanged at $16,699,396,000,000.
At the static $16,699,396,000,000 level that the Treasury reported for every day of July, the debt was just $25 million below the legal limit of $16,699,421,000,000 that was set in a law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama.
The total debt has remained unchanged now for almost three months, despite continuing month deficits. In other words, someone is lying and committing outright fraud.
Today I have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, entitled “No liftoff for these space flights of fancy.” It is essentially a more detailed reworking of my rant on the John Batchelor Show on July 30.
My point is that the federal space program mandated by Congress, the Space Launch System (SLS), is never going to go anywhere, and is nothing but pork that should be cut as fast as possible. (See my essay from November 2011 on how NASA and the federal government can better use this money to get more accomplished in space, for less.)
The comments to the article have generally been positive and in agreement. Those who disagree mostly question the $14 billion cost per launch that I claim SLS will cost. That number comes from John Strickland’s very detailed analysis of what it will cost to build, complete, and operate SLS. However, it doesn’t require much thoughtful analysis to realize that this number is not unreasonable.
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