Report: Obamacare to Blame as Job Opportunities Slip in Michigan (+video)

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Were it not for Obamacare, there would be at least 1,000 more workers in West Michigan, according to a new report.

The report, released Thursday by researchers at Grand Valley State University, found that companies are opting out of hiring and cutting hours due to President Obama’s signature health-care law.

“Firms are choosing not to hire more workers in reaction to the Affordable Care Act,” said Grand Valley economics professor Leslie Muller, who conducted the research with colleague Paul Isely, in a statement.

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Housing Activists Fear Obama Will Choke Mortgages, Add $1,400 in Fees

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Top administration aides are pushing for President Obama to endorse a new mortgage scheme in his State of the Union address that housing advocates fear would kill mortgages to low income Americans and add up to $1,400 in fees to every new loan.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Obama economic aide Gene Sperling urged a key senator to press the president to support the plan that would replace mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with another organization, according to the activists.

The legislation, dubbed Corker-Warner, after sponsors Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Mark Warner, R-Va., would replace the two mortgage outfits with a privately capitalized system. The duo believe that it would protect taxpayers from future economic downturns.

Sources say that Donovan and Sperling asked Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, to help get the president to back the Corker-Warner plan and mention it in his State of the Union address to Congress. Johnson has been skeptical of the Corker-Warner bill, saying he wants changes in it. A Republican House member has a dueling plan.

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Up to 21, Mostly Foreigners, Killed in Kabul Suicide Attack

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/OMAR SOBHANI

Photo Credit: REUTERS/OMAR SOBHANI

Up to 21 people were killed in Friday’s attack on a restaurant popular with foreigners in the Afghan capital, after a suicide bomber blew himself up near the entrance and gunmen burst in to spray diners with bullets.

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) representative in Afghanistan and four United Nations staff were among the dead, who included 13 foreign nationals, police said.

Islamist Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack on a Lebanese restaurant in the capital’s central Wazir Akbar Khan district, which hosts many embassies and restaurants catering for expatriates.

“Such targeted attacks against civilians are completely unacceptable and are in flagrant breach of international humanitarian law,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said. “They must stop immediately.”

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Al Jazeera Host Asks Why Can’t Arab Armies Be More Humane, Like Israel? (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

An Al Jazeera Arabic anchor recently asked his audience why Arab armies, and, in particular, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, in Syria, can’t behave more humanely towards civilians, like the Israeli and French armies do?

In a clip uploaded to YouTube this week and flagged by Mideast Media Analyst Tom Gross, the anchor asks, “Why don’t they learn from the Israeli army which tries, through great efforts, to avoid shelling areas populated by civilians in Lebanon and Palestine? Didn’t Hezbollah take shelter in areas populated by civilians because it knows that Israeli Air Force doesn’t bomb those areas? Why doesn’t the Syrian army respect premises of universities, schools or inhabited neighborhoods? Why does it shell even the areas of its supporters?”

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NSA Collects Millions of Text Messages Daily in ‘Untargeted’ Global Sweep

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Photo Credit: Dave Thompson/PA

Photo Credit: Dave Thompson/PA

The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents.

The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages – including their contacts – is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to people in the UK.

The NSA program, codenamed Dishfire, collects “pretty much everything it can”, according to GCHQ documents, rather than merely storing the communications of existing surveillance targets.

The NSA has made extensive use of its vast text message database to extract information on people’s travel plans, contact books, financial transactions and more – including of individuals under no suspicion of illegal activity.

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Harvey Weinstein: I’m Working on Movie With Meryl Streep to Destroy the NRA

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Famed Hollywood producer and top Obama donor Harvey Weinstein has revealed that his next project is specifically designed to take down the National Rifle Association.

“I shouldn’t say this, but I’ll tell it to you, Howard,” he said on the Howard Stern Show.

“I’m going to make a movie with Meryl Streep, and we’re going to take this head-on. And they’re going to wish they weren’t alive after I’m done with them.”

He went on to say that he doesn’t believe “we need guns in this country,” and hopes that after people see the planned feature film they will never again want to invest in gun stocks.

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Who Read 1,582-Page $1.1T Spending Bill? Congressman: ‘Nobody Did’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

When asked whether he read the 1,528-page, $1.1 trillion government spending bill before he voted for it yesterday, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said, “Nobody did!”

On Capitol Hill on Thursday, CNSNews.com asked Blumenauer: “The omnibus bill yesterday, it was 1,582 pages, did you have a chance to read all the pages before voting on it?”

Blumenauer laughed and said: “Nobody did!”

“Nobody did?” said the CNSNews.com reporter.

“Nope,” said Blumenauer.

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Fed Owns 64% More U.S. Government Debt Than China (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Federal Reserve owned 64 percent more U.S. government debt than entities in the People’s Republic of China did as of the end of November, which is the latest period for which the Treasury has reported on the foreign ownership of U.S. government debt.

The $1,316,700,000,000 in U.S. Treasury securities that entities in mainland China owned as of the end of November set a record for China, but it was still $846,966,000,000 less than the $2,163,666,000,000 in U.S. Treasury securities the Federal Reserve owned as of Nov. 27, according the Fed’s weekly balance sheets.

As of January 9, the latest day on the Fed’s last weekly accounting sheet, the Fed had increased its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities to $2,212,924,000,000.

The Fed also owns $1,490,167,000,000 in mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae.

At the end of January 2009, the month President Barack Obama was first inaugurated, mainland China owned $744.2 billion in U.S. government debt and the Fed owned $475.129 billion.

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Doubts Over Common Core

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Photo Credit: abdulrahman.stock

Photo Credit: abdulrahman.stock

Viewed from Washington, which often is the last to learn about important developments, opposition to the Common Core State Standards Initiative still seems as small as the biblical cloud that ariseth out of the sea, no larger than a man’s hand. Soon, however, this education policy will fill a significant portion of the political sky.

The Common Core represents the ideas of several national organizations (of governors and school officials) about what and how children should learn. It is the thin end of an enormous wedge. It is designed to advance in primary and secondary education the general progressive agenda of centralization and uniformity.

Understandably, proponents of the Common Core want its nature and purpose to remain as cloudy as possible for as long as possible. Hence they say it is a “state-led,” “voluntary” initiative to merely guide education with “standards” that are neither written nor approved nor mandated by Washington, which would never, ever “prescribe” a national curriculum. Proponents talk warily when describing it because a candid characterization would reveal yet another Obama administration indifference to legality.

The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the original federal intrusion into this state and local responsibility, said “nothing in this act” shall authorize any federal official to “mandate, direct, or control” schools’ curriculums. The 1970 General Education Provisions Act stipulates that “no provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any” federal agency or official “to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction” or selection of “instructional materials by any” school system. The 1979 law creating the Education Department forbids it from exercising “any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum” or “program of instruction” of any school system. The ESEA as amended says no Education Department funds “may be used . . . to endorse, approve, or sanction any curriculum designed to be used in” grades K-12.

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China Now Owns a Record $1.317T of U.S. Government Debt

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chinese-flag-nationalChina stepped up its purchases of U.S. government debt late last year, increasing its holdings of Treasurys to an all-time record of $1.317 trillion in November, government data released this week revealed.

The statistics underscore how reliant the U.S. and Chinese economies are on one another even as political tensions occasionally emerge.

According to figures inadvertently released Wednesday evening on the U.S. Treasury Department website, China’s holdings of Treasurys increased by 0.9% in November to $1.317 trillion, up from $1.305 trillion in October. Year-over-year, China’s holdings rose 11.3% from $1.183 trillion.

The $1.317 trillion figure exceeds China’s previous record high in July 2011 of $1.315 trillion, according to the government data.

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