Search Results for: wages
September 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Obamacare is a legislative prodigy. Even prior to its implementation it has achieved tremendous economic destruction. Holman Jenkins captures one aspect of the destruction in his weekend Wall Street Journal column “Rewriting the Lehman postmortem.” If the headline put readers off, they missed this: Today some complain of a “rich man’s recovery,” but isn’t this exactly the recovery our policies have selected for? The rich derive their incomes disproportionately from
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September 21, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Obamacare has been an enormous engine of economic destruction even prior to its passage, from the time it emerged on the legislative horizon. The evidence is obvious and ubiquitous. White House flack Jay Carney has responded to a question on one aspect of the damage done — the suppression of growth in full-time employment — with the usual falsehoods and non sequiturs: I would say broadly that if you look
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September 9, 2013 — Scott Johnson
There is a lot of benighted if not willfully obtuse coverage of the price of Obamacare as the state and federal exchanges are scheduled for rollout on October 1. Minnesota is all in for Obamacare with its own state exchange (dubbed MNsure) and all the accoutrements including Medicaid expansion. The Star Tribune is happy to serve as the handmaiden of Obamacare, as in Jackie Crosby’s article “MNsure claims many will
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August 29, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The uncreative destruction wrought by Obamacare on the economy commenced before it was adopted and has continued steadily through the promulgation of the regulations implementing the Rube Goldberg contraption wryly named the Affordable Care Act. Grace-Marie Turner provides an illustrative example in her Forbes column “It’s fact, not anecdote, that Obamacare is turning us into a part-time nation.” Obamacare’s mandate to provide the costly health insurance compliant with the law
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July 16, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Obama administration flack Jay Carney denies that some employers are hiring more part-time employees because of Obamacare. The Hill quotes Carney: “The data reflects that there is not support for the proposition that businesses are not hiring full-time employees because of the Affordable Care Act,” Carney told reporters. What do the data show? Carney said this: “I would say broadly that if you look at the economic data, the suggestion
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February 23, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The mandate to offer health insurance doesn’t take effect until 2014, but the “measurement period” used to determine a whether an employer has enough full-time employees to be required to offer health insurance commenced last month. Thus, as the Wall Street Journal reports, the perverse effects of Obamacare are starting to kick in. Under Obamacare, firms with 50 or more “full-time equivalent workers” must offer health plans to employees who
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June 1, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The Elizabeth Warren affair made the front page of today’s Washington Post. The story, by Chris Cillizza and David Fahrenthold, is cast in familiar Washington terms: What should have been a nothing story (a “bump”) has become a big deal (a “hurdle”) because Warren failed to deal competently with the matter when it arose. It’s “an iron law of politics,” the Post-men intone, “Bad denials make little things big.” But
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February 5, 2011 — Scott Johnson
Lee Smith is the author of the timely book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations, now out in paperback. He is also a senior editor for the Weekly Standard, where his article “The wages of weakness” appears today. I comment on the article below. I wasn’t sure if I was reading Lee’s article correctly and asked him if he would respond to my comments or
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February 5, 2011 — Scott Johnson
This past spring, when the leaders of Turkey and Brazil got together to lend a hand to the Iranian pursuit of a nuclear bomb, Charles Krauthammer adopted their perspective to explain what was happening: “As the U.S. retreats in the face of Iran, China, Russia and Venezuela, why not hedge your bets? There’s nothing to fear from Obama, and everything to gain by ingratiating yourself with America’s rising adversaries. After
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September 28, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff
A few days ago, I noted that Rep. Alan Grayson, having falsely accused his opponent Dan Webster of being a draft dodger, was now calling accusing him of Taliban tendencies. Grayson claimed, among other things, that Webster has advocated the blblical command, “wives submit to your husbands.” To support this claim, Grayson’s ad included a clip of Webster uttering those words. To the surprise of no one who has been
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September 26, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff
All over America, Democratic congressional incumbents are struggling to stave off the tide that threatens to sweep them out of office and out of power. There’s a flailing quality to their efforts, as they search for a winning message or, at least a suitable bogeyman. But Rep. Alan Grayson knows exactly how he intends to approach this election. He will stand or fall on the same kind of deranged and
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September 3, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff
Michael Oren, Israel’s stellar ambassador to the U.S., is warning that Hezbollah has amassed an arsenal of approximately 15,000 rockets in South Lebanon, near the border with Israel. That’s about four times more than Hezbollah had in 2006, when it launched constant rocket attacks deep into Northern Israel. Moreover, according to Oren, Hezbollah’s rockets can now reach every Israeli city, even Eliat in the South. To make matters worse, this
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September 11, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff
Charles Krauthammer compares two of the charges against Van Jones – his Marxism and his “trutherism.” It is only the latter that, in Krauthammer’s opinion, constituted good cause for Jones’ removal from the White House. Krauthammer considers Jones’ Marxism “a pose, not a conviction.” By contrast, his signature of a petition demanding that President Bush be investigated for deliberately allowing 9/11 to occur “takes us into the realm of political
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May 28, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Examiner has published a piece by our friend Anne Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, about Dartmouth College’s deplorable decision to sack Todd Zywicki from its board of trustees. Anne ties this move to similar, though less drastic measures taken against trustees at other colleges — she names Princeton and the University of California system — when they have questioned the status quo. She
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August 24, 2007 — Scott Johnson
Reader Dave Clemens writes: I’m a ’60s liberal academic, registered Independent voter, consumed with anger that the New Republic has forced me to cancel my decades-long subscription. The sublime film criticism of Stanley Kauffmann, Jed Perl’s art criticism, numberless fine book reviews and poems, and intelligent political commentary — gone with the wind. I endured the Glass Affair, winced through Chait’s juvenile “I hate Bush because he reminds me of
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May 16, 2007 — John Hinderaker
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Bernard Lewis, our pre-eminent scholar of the Islamic world, has a brilliant column on the view of the United States and the Soviet Union that Osama bin Laden and other terrorists formed during the Cold War, and how that conception, challenged in the aftermath of September 11, has been revived by our lack of fortitude in Iraq. An excerpt: During the Cold War, two things
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November 1, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff
The U.S. government has expressed concern over “mounting evidence” that Syria, Iran and Hezbollah are planning to topple the government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. At the same time, Walid Jumblatt, longtime leader of the minority Druze community in Lebanon, says that Syria is sending arms to Hezbollah without impediment. “As long as the Syria-Lebanon border is not being monitored effectively, the flow of weapons will continue and there
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