STUDY: OBAMACARE MEDICAL DEVICE TAX KILLED 33,000 JOBS

A new study finds that the Obamacare tax on medical devices killed 33,000 jobs.

The study, conducted by the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), said the Obamacare tax slashed 14,000 industry worker jobs and quashed the hiring of 19,000 more. 

"During a time when there is bipartisan support for growing high-technology manufacturing jobs, these results should serve as a wake-up call," said AdvaMed CEO and President Stephen J. Ubl. "The findings of the report underscore the need to repeal this tax." 

Even some Democrats like Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) have conceded that the Obamacare medical device tax is a "job-killing tax." 

The study's findings are just the latest round of job-killing news for Obamacare. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that Obamacare will reduce the U.S. workforce by 2.3 million full-time workers over the next seven years. 

However, embattled Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebeliusclaimed last week that "There is absolutely no evidence, and every economist will tell you this, that there is any job loss related to the Affordable Care Act."

According to the latest Investor's Business Daily Obamacare jobs scorecard, 401 employers have now slashed tens of thousands of worker hours and jobs due to Obamacare.

Via: Breitbart

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Destroying the GOP: How Immigration Turned California Blue

Republicans won California in every presidential election of the '50s, '60s, '70s, and '80s, except for the '64 Goldwater loss.  Now California has a third-world economy with one-party dominance.

The pro-amnesty Republicans should think clearly about what happened to the Golden State.

Today, California's GOP has withered to a small fraction of the state's registered voters.  Since the state began tracking party affiliation in 1922, Republicans have never had such a low share.  Republicans are now 29 percent of voters; Democrats are 44 percent.

But California did not go quietly.  In 1994, California voters, and governor Pete Wilson, tried to eliminate the incentives for illegal immigration with Proposition 187.  Prop 187 sought to prevent people from receiving social services or public education until they were verified as U.S. citizens.  Law enforcement agencies were to report illegals to state and federal authorities.

The proposition passed by a stunning 59%-to-41% margin in 1994.  However, by 1999, Prop 187 was invalidated by court rulings pushed by liberal organizations.  California is now known as Mexifornia.

How could the state that passed Prop 187 and had been a stalwart for Republican presidents have fallen so far?

As the graphs below show, demography was electoral destiny for California.  The top chart shows California's demographic changes (from 1960 to 2010), compared to the state's Electoral College votes.  The state's Electoral College votes went blue in tandem with the rising Hispanic population.

Sources: WSJ, 270towin.com

Via: American Thinker

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AZ Gov. Brewer Prevaricates on ‘Anti-LGBT’ Bill: ‘I’ll Do the Right Thing for Arizona’

CNN’s Dana Bash pressed Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Monday night as to her plans for SB 1062, a bill that would allow businesses to refuse service to members of the LGBT community, and one that many, including the state’s two Republicans senators and some of the lawmakers who voted for the bill, have urged the governor to veto.

“We have been following it,” Brewer said. “I will make my decision in the near future. I have until Friday or Saturday morning to determine that.”

Bash asked if the pressure from Arizona’s business community, concerned about the economic impact of the bill, would have any effect on her decision.

“I have a history of deliberating and having open dialogue on bills that are controversial, to listen to both sides of those issues,” Brewer said. “I welcome the input and information that they can provide to me. And certainly I am pro-business. That is what’s turning our economy around. So I appreciate their input, as I appreciate the other side.”

RELATED: Anderson Cooper Tears into AZ Pol over ‘Anti-Gay’ Law: ‘You’re Seriously Blaming the Media?!’

Bash tried another tack, asking if Brewer had any gut feeling, not as a governor but “as a person, as a woman,” what she would do about the bill.

“You know, I am a woman,” Brewer said. “I don’t rely a whole lot on my gut. I have to look at what it says and what the law says and take that information and do the right thing. I can assure you as always I will do the right thing for the state of Arizona.”

Via: Mediaite.com

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Tax Dodge: Panel Urges Public to Thwart IRS Effort to Torpedo Conservative Groups

The Internal Revenue Service has overstepped its legal boundaries and expertise to assault the free speech rights of nonprofit advocacy groups, but the public can put the IRS in its place by commenting in the next few days, campaign finance experts and journalists assembled at The Heritage Foundation said.

The IRS’s proposed rule changes to reclassify town hall meetings, legislative scorecards and other regular activities of such groups as “political,” the panel agreed, threaten the groups’ tax-exempt status and thus their existence.

“This is a scandal as bad as they get,” panelist Kimberley Strassel of The Wall Street Journalsaid of IRS actions at one point. “This is an agency that has abused its power grievously against the American people.”

Speaking at the February 21 event, dubbed “Taxing the First Amendment,” were Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer representing conservative groups targeted by the IRS in a scandal that erupted last spring; Bradley A. Smith, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and a law professor who heads the Center for Competitive Politics in Alexandria, Va.; and two journalists who have covered the unfolding IRS story  – Eliana Johnson,  media editor for National Review, and Strassel, a Washington-based columnist and editorial writer for The Journal.

Mitchell said the secretly developed rule changes would stifle the free speech of organizations across the political spectrum, from the Sierra Club on the left to the National Rifle Association on the right. Johnson noted, however, that “Republicans have more to lose” because 20 of the 28 advocacy groups that recently spent more than $1 million lean to the right.

Via: The Foundry

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Sebelius: Administration Never Set 7 Million ACA Enrollment Goal – CBO Did

(CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday dismissed the goal of 7 million Obamacare enrollees by the end of March as something that the Congressional Budget Office made up.

 “First of all, 7 million was not the administration. That was a CBO Congressional Budget Office prediction when the bill was first signed. I’m not quite sure where they even got their numbers. Their number’s all over the board, and the vice president has looked and said it may be closer to 5 to 6,” Sebelius told HuffPost Live host Marc Lamont Hill.

Hill asked if she agreed with Vice President Joe Biden’s statement that 5.6 million Americans enrolled by the end of March would be a good start.

“We may not get to seven million, we may get to five or six, but that's a hell of a start," Biden admitted last week on his way to a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Minneapolis, according to a pool report of his meeting, Reuters reported.

Despite her insistence that the CBO made up the 7 million enrollees number, as CNSNews.com previously reported, Sebelius told NBC News on Sept. 30, 2013, that "success," in her opinion, would be having 7 million Americans enrolled in the Obamacare exchanges by the end of March.

"I think success looks like at least 7 million people having signed up by the end of March 2014," Sebelius told NBC's Nancy Snyderman.

Meanwhile, the CBO predicted in May 2013 that by 2023, the Affordable Care Act will reduce the number of uninsured by 25 million, “leaving 31 million uninsured.”

“In our current projections for 2023, the ACA reduces the number of people without health insurance by 25 million, leaving 31 million uninsured (compared with 30 million in our February estimate),” the CBO reported.

Via: CNS News

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The ‘Before Obama’ and ‘After Obama’ history lesson for school children

Teaching your children well is your best defense against the anti-American Barack Hussein Obama

With Common Core spoon-feeding school children a steady school-day diet of anti-American propaganda, it’s prime time for parents to school their own children in the true chronicled History of the one nation the rest of the world still cherishes as the escape hatch to freedom and liberty.

Only yesterday, it was revealed that the Obama administration is planning on gutting the U.S. military to pre-World War II levels.

Parents should turn the tables by using this latest Obama move as the impetus to teach their children how America can legitimately claim guardian of world freedom status.

Make a homemade ledger marking it under just two simple categories: ‘Before Obama’ (BO) and ‘After Obama’ (AO).

America detractors repeat ad nauseum that America was late coming into World War II. While this is true, were it not for the Americans knowledge of the full horror of the evil of the Nazis may have been late in coming, too.

Via: Canada Free Press

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ObamaCare stars fade

The Obama administration is short of star power as it begins its last public relations blitz for ObamaCare.

President Obama’s celebrity supporters are not in the forefront as they were during the star-studded campaign-style videos that hogged the airwaves in 2008.

Contrary to expectations, the White House’s A-list backers have mainly stuck to Twitter to voice support for ObamaCare, while others have appeared in inexpensive online videos, or chosen to promote California’s insurance marketplace instead of HealthCare.gov, the notoriously troubled website for the federal exchanges.

It seems that not even the president’s most fervent and committed supporters want to get too close to ObamaCare. Some of Obama’s most powerful allies — figures including Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Springsteen and Beyoncé — have stayed in the wings for the enrollment push.

Less than a year ago, Jennifer Hudson, Amy Poehler, and representatives for Winfrey and Alicia Keys were guests at the White House to discuss a strategy to promote the healthcare law.

Many expected this would lead to an advertising blitz full of famous faces. But, with limited exceptions, stars have largely failed to participate in a substantial ad campaign to promote Obama-Care’s new coverage options.

To date, the only noteworthy celebrities appearing on behalf of ObamaCare in national ads are retired NBA players Magic Johnson and Alonzo Mourning, who left professional basketball in 1991 and 2009, respectively.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sought to leverage the National Football League’s massive outreach, but that effort was scuttled by Republicans, who pressured the league to stay out of it.

Via: The Hill
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‘The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive action’: Rahm Emanuel backs Obama’s executive overreach ‘one thousand percent’

Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel went to bat for his former boss Monday, claiming he supports President Obama’s strategy of bypassing Congress “one thousand percent” and comparing Obama’s executive orders on healthcare to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Emanuel — the former White House chief of staff in Washington DC on Monday to receive federal money for a new “manufacturing hub” in Chicago — spoke with CNN’s Jim Acosta. The reporter asked if he thought Obama’s plan to use executive actions to ignore an unwilling Congress is the right approach.

“One thousand percent,” he declared. “He can’t allow America’s future to be held hostage by a Congress that won’t do anything.”

And what about worries over an imperial presidency? “So? Well, I dunno,” he began. “These are not equal, but the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive action. Integrating the armed forces was an executive action.”

“There are times which, if Congress would step up, the president would work with them,” he added. “But he has a responsibility not to let the future slip from our hands.”

Emanuel also waved away concerns about a looming Democratic defeat in midterm elections this November. “The one thing I know about politics,” he claimed, “is that anybody who tells you they know what’s gonna happen ten months from now doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

And he provided valuable insight into how a stateside Democratic politician views Washington DC. “I like coming here when I can take money back home,” he said, laughing. “And this is one of those opportunities.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Update: DOD aims to scrap A-10 to keep F-35 alive in new budget

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is unveiling the Pentagon’s proposed budget today—a budget that will dramatically scale back the size of the military. But in order to save the most sacred of cows in its ongoing modernization efforts, the Pentagon is proposing the elimination of what has arguably been the most effective combat aircraft in the Air Force’s inventory: the A-10 Thunderbolt II.

Known for its survivability, the A-10 is capable of flying with half a wing, one tail fin, one elevator, and one engine torn off. It’s also cheaper to fly and can fly more frequent missions than the aircraft that the Air Force proposes to replace it with: the F-35. But because of its low glamor and low-tech nature, the A-10 is assigned largely to Air National Guard squadrons these days. So with the Department of Defense now planning to re-shuffle the roles of reserve and Guard units in a shrinking fighting force, the A-10s are an easy target for the budget knife. The Air Force announced in January that it would eliminate a third of the existing A-10s in its inventory—102 aircraft—with the remainder to go when the F-35 finally arrives for service. The new plan will retire the entire A-10 fleet.

The A-10 was originally built in the early 1970s, and it was designed to combat Soviet tank columns with its enormous seven-barrel 30-millimeter Gatling-gun cannon. Known for its pugnacious looks as the “Warthog,” the A-10 could also carry a variety of guided and unguided weapons, and it proved its usefulness against a wide range of enemies while flying close air support for troops in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force reported that the 60 A-10s that flew in Iraq had an 86 percent mission success rate.

Today, there are two arguments for cutting the A-10. The first argument from the Air Force is that in an era of shrinking budgets and pared-down ambitions, the military needs a more flexible, multi-role aircraft to do more jobs—not an airplane that's perfect for a smaller number of them. But considering the troubles that the F-35 has faced and the fact that not a single squadron of any of the variants of the F-35 has yet to be fielded, the wisdom of the Pentagon’s aircraft calculus is open to debate.

Via: ARS Technica

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Holder: You Don't Have to Enforce Laws You Disagree With

Attorney General Eric Holder has given the nod to his state counterparts that they do not have to defend laws they consider discriminatory -- effectively giving the green light for states to stop defending bans on gay marriage.

Holder addressed the issue during a gathering of state attorneys general on Tuesday, after detailing his position in a New York Times interview.

Speaking to the National Association of Attorneys General, Holder said that any decision not to defend individual laws must be "exceedingly rare" and reserved for "exceptional circumstances." He indicated that legal challenges to gay marriage bans would qualify as such a circumstance.

"In general, I believe that we must be suspicious of legal classifications based solely on sexual orientation," he said.

His remarks, while already generating backlash from conservatives, could fuel a wave of legal challenges at the state level. In the wake of the federal Defense of Marriage Act being struck down by the Supreme Court last year, several Democratic state attorneys general have taken the unusual step of abandoning their defense of state gay marriage bans.

Among the most recent is Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who stood by as a U.S. District Court ruled against his state's prohibition on same-sex marriage. However, his office said Monday that it would appeal that ruling -- in the interest of expediting the appeals process.

The U.S. attorney general's comments could encourage other state officials to follow in Herring's footsteps.

Holder, in the Times interview, reportedly said that attorneys general should apply a high level of scrutiny on whether to defend a state law when constitutional issues are at stake.

Via: Fox News

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The Next Shoe To Drop: Obamacare Will Increase The Cost Of Employer-Sponsored Insurance

Yesterday, the Obama Administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a six-page report predicting that Obamacare could cause premiums to increase for nearly two-thirds of small- to medium-sized businesses. “This results in roughly 11 million individuals whose premiums are estimated to be higher as a result of the ACA and about 6 million individuals who are estimated to have lower premiums,” CMS writes. But CMS’ projections almost certainly understate the problem, one that will begin to affect millions of workers in the second half of 2014.

CMS: 11 million will see increased premiums

The CMS premium report was a requirement imposed by Congress on the administration under the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act of 2011. That law mandated that CMS “provide an estimate of the number individuals and families who will experience a premium increase and the number who will see a decrease” as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

But CMS only looked at one cost-increasing Obamacare provision:community rating. And they only looked at it for individuals employed by businesses with less than 100 employees: what’s called the “small group market.”

Here’s the background. Under Obamacare, all regulated insurance plans are required to charge people the same premium, regardless of health status. Insurers can charge different rates based on age (but only within a narrow range); tobacco use (smokers can be charged 50 percent more than non-smokers); geographic area (insurers can charge people different rates based on regional demographic variation); and whether the plan is for a single individual or a family.

Via: Forbes

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[CARTOON] Snowballing Voter Fury

Via: California Political Review

Why Obama is Uneducated

A few years ago I participated in a radio debate on "white privilege" with a certain man, whose name is unimportant, who had a Ph.D. in "ethnic studies." At one point he introduced an argument by saying, "If whites are 80 percent of the population...," which prompted me to interject and point out that whites (non-Hispanic) are now only 63 percent of America. Of course, you might think that someone with a doctorate in "ethnic studies" would know what the ethnic and racial composition of the country is.

While no one wants to be a real-life Cliff Clavin (of Cheers fame), mistaking trivia for intellectualism, facts matter because they're small snippets of reality. They're little pictures - and, as with a jigsaw puzzle - if you have enough of them, assembled properly, you can see the big picture. This is otherwise known as being in touch with reality.

This is why a certain trend in that liberal bastion called education is quite interesting. Educators will often say today, "We don't just teach kids facts [uttered dripping with derision]; we teach them how to think." This is quite convenient. After all, it's easy to test knowledge of facts; thus, such measures can reveal modern education as a fraudulent enterprise. But "how to think" is a bit more nebulous, and, if you define the expression of feelings-derived folderol as reason, your students cannot fail.

Yet there is a deeper reason why liberals eschew facts: they refute fiction. And since leftist agendas have no basis in reality, exposure to snippets of it is deadly; for, just as one small pin can pop a balloon, one little fact can shatter a rationalization.

This brings us back to Dr. Ethnic Studies. His field of expertise isn't about anything as old-fashioned as facts, but he can expound at length on oppression, white privilege, critical-race theory and "micro-aggressions." These things, you see, are the stuff of sophisticated modern men. Nev

Via: American Thinker

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