Author: James

More New Taxes and Fees: How You’ll Pay for Obamacare in 2014
Alyene Senger
January 2, 2014 at 6:30 am

Obamacare contains 18 specific tax hikes, mandates, or penalties that cost Americans money, and three new ones take effect in 2014. This is only the beginning—watch how two of these taxes get worse in the years to come.

1. Individual Mandate Tax. The individual mandate is designed to strong-arm individuals into purchasing government-approved health insurance or facing a tax penalty. In 2014, the penalty for not purchasing insurance will be either $95 or 1 percent of annual income (whichever is greater). Very few, if any, people will end up paying just $95, because individuals with an annual income of only $9,500 or less would likely qualify for Medicaid or a hardship exemption from the mandate. The mandate increases drastically in coming years, rising to $325 or 2 percent of income in 2015, and $695 or 2.5 percent of income in 2016—whichever is greater.

2. Health Insurer Tax. One of the largest tax increases in the law is an annual fee imposed on health insurers based on their share of the market. It is estimated to raise $8 billion in 2014 alone. The tax will more than likely be passed on to consumers through premium increases. An actuarial analysis by the consulting firm Oliver Wyman projects that in 2014, this tax will increase premiums by 1.9 percent to 2.3 percent. And the impact will be greater in later years as the tax increases.

3. Reinsurance Fee. This fee isn’t included in the list of 18 tax hikes, but it’s another one that will impact the cost of insurance. Health insurers will have to pay the temporary fee on group health plans to help spread the cost of the covering those in the individual market, inside and outside Obamacare’s exchanges. The fee begins in 2014, costing $63 per covered person and decreasing in 2015 and 2016. Like most taxes and fees, the result will likely be higher insurance premiums.

Sneak Peek at 2015: Employer Mandate. By law, the employer mandate was supposed to begin in 2014, but the Obama Administration delayed enforcing it until 2015. The employer mandate forces employers with 50 or more full-time employees (defined as those working 30 hours per week) to offer government-approved health coverage or pay a penalty. The penalty varies—either $2,000 per employee after the first 30 workers, or $3,000 per employee receiving subsidized coverage in the exchange, whichever is less.

Regardless of the delay, many businesses have already adapted by reducing hours for their employees—falling under the threshold to avoid both the cost of coverage and the penalty.

https://blog.heritage.org/2014/01/02/mb-12-new-taxes-fees-youll-pay-obamacare-2014/

Rip Van Winkle: State Senate President Steve Sweeney  Calls Economy Top Issue in 2014

What will or should be the most pressing issue for New Jersey in 2014? The top lawmaker in the legislature said this year should be all about job creationand economic growth.

“We need to fix the economy,” said State Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford). “That’s the number one issue in this state. It surpassed property taxes in all the polling and everything else. It’s the economy and that’s because we have too many of our friends who have been out of work.”

According to Sweeney, Gov. Chris Christie vetoed 30 job creation and economic growth bills between 2010 and 2012 and he never returned anything back to the legislature. Christie actually conditionally vetoed some and he later signed eight of them into law.

“We gave the governor a plan and he didn’t like it,” Sweeney said. “He needs to give us something back that’s actually going to put New Jerseyans back to work. Being 45th in employment is not a position we want to be in in the State of New Jersey.” (McArdle/NJ101.5)

https://nj1015.com/top-nj-lawmaker-calls-economy-top-issue-in-2014/

Pot advocates hope other states follow Colorado’s example

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 2014    LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY JANUARY 1, 2014, 10:29 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS

DENVER — Crowds were serenaded by live music as they waited for the nation’s first legal recreational pot shops to open. They ate doughnuts and funnel cakes as a glass-blower made smoking pipes. Some tourists even rode around in a limo, eager to try weed but not so eager to be seen buying it.

And when the sales began, those who bought the drug emerged from the stores, receipt held high and carrying sealed shopping bags, to cheers.

“I’m going to frame the receipt when I go home, to remind myself of what might be possible: Legal everywhere,” musician James Aaron Ramsey, 28. Ramsey, who did some time in jail for pot possession in Missouri, played folk tunes with his guitar for those in line.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/Pot_advocates_hope_other_states_follow_Colorados_example.html#sthash.Iutfusuw.dpuf

151 Years Ago– Republicans Freed the Slaves
by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, January 1, 2014, 5:24 PM

On New Year’s Day in 1863, the Republican Party’s Emancipation Proclamation came into effect. While Republicans rejoiced, Democrat politicians and newspapers denounced President Abraham Lincoln (R-IL) for freeing slaves.

Demonstrating their depravity, New York’s Gov. Horatio Seymour, who would be the 1868 Democrat presidential nominee, denounced the Emancipation Proclamation as “a proposal for the butchery of women and children.” The Louisville Daily Democrat called it “an outrage of all constitutional law, all human justice, all Christian feeling.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/01/151-years-ago-today-republicans-freed-the-slaves/

No, 2.1 million haven’t enrolled in Obamacare plans
BY: Philip Klein December 31, 2013 | 3:44 pm

With President Obama’s health care law scheduled to begin in earnest when the new year kicks off, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius claimed on a Tuesday conference call that as of Dec. 28, “2.1 million people have enrolled in a private insurance plan” through the program.

Later in the call, Sebelius emphasized that enrollments wouldn’t be completed until individuals paid their first month’s premiums.

But HHS officials still won’t disclose how many of the 2.1 million they claim enrolled through the federal healthcare.gov website or one of the state-based exchanges actually paid for coverage.

Though Sebelius left the call before the question-and-answer session, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokeswoman Julie Bataille declined several times to provide payment information.

“At this time we don’t have that detailed information,” Bataille said in response to one question. “What I can share with you in terms of the individuals who have paid their premiums that is something that consumers will do directly with their health plans. And as part of the outreach that we have been doing, we have reminded consumers that that is a step that they need to take to confirm enrollment and access their coverage.”

Later in the call, CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Bataille if she could at least say with confidence that a “very high percentage” of those 2.1 million had paid.

Instead of answering in the affirmative, Bataille said, “We are confident that those consumers have selected a plan and know what the next steps are for them in terms of securing coverage.”

https://m.washingtonexaminer.com/no-2.1-million-havent-enrolled-in-obamacare-plans/article/2541435

Ridgewood Council to cash in on budget proposals
TUESDAY DECEMBER 31, 2013, 9:20 AM
BY  DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS

Ridgewood Council members will incorporate into the 2014 municipal budget process each of the six short-term recommendations handed to them by the recently formed Financial Advisory Committee (FAC).

Village finance officials are already implementing some of the suggestions.

The council gave its overwhelming support earlier this month to the FAC’s list, which was first presented to the village’s governing body Nov. 13. Recommendations include combining capital and operating budget processes, reducing the budgetary process cycle time and integrating a new budget summary that is presented by individual department heads.

“Right now, they are very much separate,” Deputy Mayor Albert Pucciarelli said of the processes to formulate the capital and operating budgets. To illustrate that point, Pucciarelli, the council representative on the FAC, said Ridgewood only recently approved the capital budget despite adopting the municipal operating budget “many months ago.”

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/238234371_Ridgewood_Council_to_cash_in_on_budget_proposals.html#sthash.wfQXaGUN.dpuf

Obama To Americans: You Don’t Deserve To Be Free
Harry Binswanger

President Obama’s Kansas speech is a remarkable document. In calling for more government controls, more taxation, more collectivism, he has two paragraphs that give the show away. Take a look at them.

there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes–especially for the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/12/31/obama-to-americans-you-dont-deserve-to-be-free/

The Five Worst Op-Eds of 2013
By Gene Healy

This article appeared on The Washington Examiner on December 31, 2013.

Picking the year’s worst op-eds — an annual tradition in this space — wasn’t easy in 2013. There’s the Slate writer who announced you’re “a bad person if you send your children to private school”; the New York Times piece arguing that conservative Dallas “willed the death” of JFK (by getting a communist to shoot him?); and the fellow who worried that allowing more high-skilled immigration would exacerbate “America’s Genius Glut.”

If you’ve been losing sleep over the genius glut in American punditry, rest easy. That threat’s a long way off.

To narrow the choices and give this pudding a theme, I’ve decided that 2013’s malicious listicle will focus on the perverse affinity for executive power of our alleged “Thought Leaders.” In a year when presidential incompetence and power lust ruled the headlines — when record numbers of Americans feared big government — the leading lights of the American commentariat clamored for more presidential power. Go figure.

5. Amitai Etzioni, “Why It Should Be Harder to Impeach a President,” The Atlantic (May 16)

Early on in President Obama’s summer of scandal eruptions, communitarian honcho Amitai Etzioni was incensed that anyone dared invoke the I-word. After all, the president likely “did not know diddly squat” about IRS harassment of the Tea Party.

Only a constitutional amendment making it harder for Congress to impeach the president could save us, Etzioni insisted. But since we manage fewer than one presidential impeachment per century, how much harder could it be?

4. Maureen Dowd, “Barry’s War Within,” the New York Times (Sept. 7)

MoDo routinely uses her space at the Times to work through her daddy issues: Why can’t President Obama be “the strong father who protects the home” instead of an aloof “professorial president”?

In this column, Dowd’s father figure disappoints her once again. Instead of “hurl[ing] a few missiles, Zeus like,” at Syria, Obama had been contemptibly weak: “When it came time to act as commander in chief, he choked,” reverting to “Barry, president of the Harvard Law Review.” Apparently, only a legalistic sissy would ask Congress to authorize a war.

3. Norman Podhoretz, “Obama’s Successful Foreign Failure,” Wall Street Journal (Sept. 8)

But Obama only looks weak, according to neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz. Going to Congress was part of his sinister Kenyalinskyite plan to destroy US hegemony. Even when he golfs, he’s hellbent on the “erosion of American power.”

2. Richard Cohen, “The NSA Is Doing What Google Does,” Washington Post (June 10)

The Post’s Cohen greeted the revelation that the administration had been secretly collecting data on millions of innocent Americans with a spurt of bile against leaker Edward Snowden, that “cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood.”

“No one lied about the various programs disclosed last week,” Cohen declared. Instead of Snowden being remembered as an heroic whistleblower, “[h]istory is more likely to forget him. Soon, you can Google that.”

In his very next column, Cohen had to issue a correction. He “was not aware” that director of national intelligence James Clapper had blatantly lied to Congress about NSA spying. That column, urging the president to bomb Syria, contained yet another glaring error, praising the “NATO bombing campaign in 1999 that ended the bloodshed in Bosnia.” It was Kosovo, actually. Cohen could’ve Googled that.

1. David Brooks, “Strengthen the Presidency,” New York Times (Dec. 12)

“It’s a good idea to be tolerant of executive branch power grabs,” said David Brooks (a conservative writer for the Times) in this year’s winner. What’s more, Brooks writes, “[t]his is a good moment to advocate greater executive branch power because we’ve just seen a monumental example of executive branch incompetence: the botched Obamacare rollout.”

If that sentence confuses you, it’s OK. Not all of us have what it takes to be thought leaders.

https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/five-worst-op-eds-2013