New Bills Would Halt Health Law’s Employer Mandate

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photo credit: 401(k)2013House and Senate bills introduced Thursday would kill a key provision of President Obama’s healthcare law — the mandate that most employers must offer health benefits to workers.

The legislation was introduced by prominent Republicans, who called the requirement a “job killer.”

“The employer mandate is a drag on our economy, forcing too many of our nation’s job creators to stop hiring and grow their businesses in order to comply with this onerous provision in president’s health law,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) said in a statement.

“Instead of letting the federal government dictate how employers should allocate resources, let’s repeal this job-killing mandate and let businesses get back in the business of hiring,” Hatch said.

The employer mandate requires that companies of 50 or more workers provide health insurance or pay fines if more than 30 employees receive government assistance to buy coverage. The health offerings must be affordable, and they must include a variety of “essential health benefits.”

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Currency Wars: Why Is The French Industry Minister Rooting For The Devaluation Of The Euro

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Photo Credit: The BlazeFollowing his embarrassing brush with U.S. CEO Maurice Taylor, French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg has turned to the devaluation of the euro as a means of saving France’s battered economy.

No, really.

“France’s industry minister Tuesday called for a lower euro and said the European Central Bank’s [ECB] role should be reinterpreted, wading back into a currency debate that had been calmed by an agreement between the world’s top finance ministers earlier in the month to refrain from competitive devaluations of their currencies,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“I am for a less-strong euro,” Montebourg said Tuesday, adding that it is “good news” the euro has declined against other currencies.

As noted in the WSJ report, the euro has fallen about 4.6 percent against the U.S. dollar since February:

“I am very happy, [the decline] should continue,” Montebourg added.

The report continues:

Earlier this year, French officials complained about the euro being too strong and making the country’s exports less competitive. In a speech to the EU parliament in early February, French President Francois Hollande said the euro shouldn’t be left to fluctuate according to the mood of the markets and warned that a strong euro wipes out efforts to make economies more competitive.

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Cult Of Obama: List Of Journalists Throwing Woodward Under The Bus

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Photo Credit: Breitbart The media stands by its own, at least until one of its own upsets The Narrative. Not even a living legend is immune from this rule. In the case of Bob Woodward, his detailed and lengthy reporting on sequester has resulted in the possible derailing of the most crucial Narrative the White House and media are likely to launch this year. The fate of Obama’s second term and even his legacy rest on it.

The endgame of The Sequester Hustle is to blame the economy tanking on cutting less than 2% of the federal budget. Obama doesn’t want his failed first-term policies blamed for a double-dip recession, so he’s playing Chicken Little with sequester so the GOP and a lack of government largess are blamed. Naturally, the media is as all-in on this con as their Master is.

This, even though everyone knows it was Obama who suggested sequester, saw it passed, and then signed it into law.

Woodward’s reporting threatens to monkey wrench all of this. His reporting not only confirmed that sequester was Obama’s idea but that Obama moved the goal posts with his demand for tax increases. The original sequester deal did not include tax increases.

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Green Fatigue Sets In: The World Cools On Global Warming

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Photo Credit: Jonathan Kos-ReadPublic concern about environmental issues including climate change has slumped to a 20-year low since the financial crisis, a global study reveals.

Fewer people now consider issues such as CO2 emissions, air and water pollution, animal species loss, and water shortages to be “very serious” than at any time in the last two decades, according to the poll of 22,812 people in 22 countries including Britain and the US.

Despite years of studies showing the impact of global warming on the planet, only 49 per cent of people now consider climate change a very serious issue – far fewer than at the beginning of the worldwide financial crisis in 2009.

Worries about climate change first dropped in industrialised nations but they have now also fallen in developing economies including Brazil and China, according to the survey by GlobeScan Radar.

The declining interest in climate change comes amid a backlash against costly green energy investments in an age of austerity. David Nussbaum, head of WWF UK, said “sustained pressure” was required from political leaders to combat climate change. He said it was only when “real indicators” of climate change came, such as floods and droughts, that public perceptions changed.

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Harvard Crimson To Conservatives: Don’t Apply To Harvard

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Photo Credit: Joseph BarillariThe Harvard Crimson published an editorial urging conservatives not to apply to Harvard if they intend to criticize the university down the line for political points.

The editorial, titled “Warning: Do Not Enroll,” denigrates famous conservatives who graduated from Harvard and later sharply — and perhaps hypocritically — complained about the university’s liberal ideology, including former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, and Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly.

“If we could have spoken to these three men, we would have told them never to come to Cambridge,” wrote the staff of the Crimson. “We at The Crimson urge anyone who plans on one day scoring political points by maligning Harvard to neither apply, enroll, nor graduate from this fine institution.”

All three of the figures mentioned in the editorial have frequently and publicly criticized the political environment at Harvard. Cruz recently commented that during his time on campus, some members of the faculty were “Marxists who believed in … overthrowing the United States government.”

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Video: Maxine Waters – ‘Over 170 Million Jobs Could Be Lost’ Due To Sequestration

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photo credit: NESRIThe mainstream media seems to have totally ignored this bit of genius from a prominent member of the House Democrats.

Representative Maxine Waters wants us all to know just how devastating sequestration is going to be for the American worker. According to the good Representative, if the scheduled cuts are allowed to go forward, there will be 170 million jobs lost.

Perhaps it would be helpful if someone on Ms Waters’ staff could inform her that there aren’t that many gainfully employed Americans. Presumably, that would make her calculations a little bit off.

See video:

Only 6% Rate News Media As Very Trustworthy

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Photo Credit: secretlondon123Most voters still get their news from television and consider the news reported by the media generally trustworthy.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of Likely U.S. Voters say they get most of their news from TV, including 32% who get it from cable news networks and 24% who get it from traditional network news. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that another 25% use the Internet as their main source of news, while only 10% still rely on print newspapers. Seven percent (7%) get most of their news from radio. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Fifty-six percent (56%) of all voters regard the news reported by the media as at least somewhat trustworthy, but that includes just six percent who think it is Very Trustworthy. Forty-two percent (42%) don’t trust the news media, with 12% who believe the news it reports is Not At All Trustworthy.

Last September, as the final stretch of the presidential race heated up, 40% of American Adults said the Internet was the best way to get news and information in today’s world, while 37% viewed television that way. Nine percent (9%) rated radio as the best source, and seven percent (7%) chose print newspapers. TV broadcast news was considered the most reliable, followed by the Internet and newspapers.

Forty-one percent (41%) of voters think the average media reporter is more liberal than they are, down slightly from 46% in June 2011. Unchanged from the earlier survey are the 18% who feel the average reporter is more conservative than they are, while 26% think their views are about the same. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure.

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DOJ Spends Millions On ‘Nonmission’ Luxury Travel For Attorney Generals, FBI Director

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller A Government Accountability Office report reveals that the Justice Department has spent $11.4 million to fly the Attorney General and FBI director on FBI luxury jets for travel unrelated to the agency’s mission.

Iowa Republican and ranking judiciary committee member Sen. Chuck Grassley — who requested GAO look into Justice Department aircraft being used to for “nonmission” reasons — released the report Thursday.

“These luxury jets were supposedly needed for counterterrorism, but it turns out that they were used almost two-thirds of the time for jet-setting executive travel instead,” Grassley said. “Nobody disputes that the Attorney General and the FBI Director should have access to the secure communications, but, for instance, there’s no reason they can’t take a less expensive mode of transportation, or cut their personal travel.”

The GAO looked at nonmission jet use from 2007-2011. In that timeframe, the report explains, the “three individuals who served as Attorney General (AG) and the Director of the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) accounted for 95 percent (659 out of 697 flights) of all Department of Justice (DOJ) executive nonmission flights using DOJ aircraft at a total cost of $11.4 million.”

According to the report, personal flights accounted for 24 percent of nonmission flights and that the AGs and FBI director reimbursed that travel “in accordance with federal requirements.” Yet, as the report notes, that reimbursement “is generally less than the cost of operating a government aircraft” as it is largely reimbursed at the cost of a commercial rate.

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Revolving Door: Speaker Boehner’s Right-Hand Man Heads To K Street

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore Barry Jackson, a long-time senior adviser to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), is heading to K Street.

Jackson has agreed to join Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck as a strategic adviser, delivering a coup to one of the top-earning lobby firms in Washington.

The blockbuster hire brings a premier Republican name in Washington politics to the firm. In Jackson, Brownstein Hyatt will have one of the Speaker’s longest-serving and most trusted aides, giving the firm access and insight into the House GOP majority that few can match.

Jackson managed Boehner’s first House campaign in 1990 and served as the Ohio Republican’s chief of staff for 10 years. He also worked in the White House as a senior aide to former President George W. Bush during his two terms.

Jackson returned to the House in January 2010 as Boehner’s chief of staff after the lawmaker’s top aide, Paula Nowakowski, passed away. He held that position until June last year.

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Hysteria: White House Warns of Sequester Cuts For Non-Existent Agency

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Photo Credit: Examiner The administration has been warning of dire consequences if a deal is not passed to stop the cuts required by the sequestration deal. On Monday, Reason’s Mike Riggs said that the administration warned of cuts to an agency that has not existed since June 2012.

In Sept. 2012, the Office of Management and Budget sent a detailed 394-page report to Congress detailing how much would be cut from each federal agency in compliance with the Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012.

The first line item listed on page 133 of the report says that under sequestration the National Drug Intelligence Center would lose $2 million of its $20 million budget.

There’s only one problem. According to the Department of Justice, the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) closed on June 15, 2012 — three months before the report was issued.

“On June 15, 2012, the National Drug Intelligence Center will close. This web site will no longer be maintained,” a notice says at the archived site.

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