This is a huge story in my mind’s eye and Gateway Pundit must be thanked for bringing it to a larger audience. Here is the story as found over at Gateway, whom you should visit:
The far left radicals at the Sierra Club announced that Obama EPA officials will not allow mining at the largest mountaintop removal coal mine.
Victory for Appalachians as a Determined EPA Recommends No More Mining at Biggest Proposed Mountaintop Removal Coal Mine
Statement from Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune
Washington, D.C. — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took courageous action today to protect the people and waterways of Appalachia when Shawn Garvin, the agency’s Region 3 Administrator, recommended the withdrawal of the mining permit for America’s largest proposed mountaintop removal coal mine site, the Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia.
In response Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune issued the following statement:
“The Sierra Club praises the EPA, Lisa Jackson and Regional Administrator Shawn Garvin for staring down Big Coal and industry lobbyists and doing what’s right for Appalachians and hardworking Americans everywhere. This mother of all mountaintop removal coal mines would destroy thousands of acres of land, bury seven miles of streams and end a way of life for too many Appalachian families.
“We stand with the local grassroots heroes who have spent over a decade fighting this largest mountaintop removal coal mine, and today’s announcement is a victory for everyone who has stood up for their air, water and health. While the coal industry has been cutting jobs and cutting corners in Appalachia, clean energy and efficiency investments there could generate almost 80,000 jobs by 2030 and save consumers more than $25 billion in energy costs.*
Remember to thank Barack Obama when your electricity bills go up.
And, why do these awful leftists always lie about their green programs creating jobs?
In the above video we see Obama saying the following:
“IF you are already getting health insurance on your job, then, that doesn’t change. Health insurance reform passed was passed six months ago. I don’t know if anybody here has gotten a letter from their employer saying, ‘you have to go on government health care’….”
This statement is just false. I have posted in the past on this topic of companies dumping their plans because it will be cheaper for them just to dump their employees onto the government plan. Here is a recent example exemplified over at HotAir – 3M to dump retirees from medical coverage:
Remember when Barack Obama repeatedly promised that no one’s current coverage would have to change if Congress approved the health-care overhaul he demanded? When the ObamaCare bill passed, the Associated Press suddenly discovered that the change of tax law that would supposedly generate billions of dollars to pay for the costs of the bill would also drive companies to dump retirees from their existing drug coverage and push them into Medicare. Minnesota-based 3M became one of the first large corporations to do just that — and push retirees off of all their plans as well:
3M Co., citing new federal health laws, said Monday it won’t cover retirees with its corporate health-insurance plan starting in 2013.
Instead, the company will direct retirees to Medicare-backed insurance programs, and will provide reimbursement for that coverage. It’ll also reimburse retirees who are too young for Medicare; the company didn’t provide further details.
The company made the changes known in a memo to employees Friday; news of the move was reported in The Wall Street Journal and confirmed Monday by 3M spokeswoman Jackie Berry.
The ObamaCare bill created a fund to subsidize employers who didn’t dump their retirees, but the WSJ notes that it simply wasn’t enough to change the negative incentives created by the government interventions:
The changes won’t start to phase in until 2013. But they show how companies are beginning to respond to the new law, which should make it easier for people in their 50s and early-60s to find affordable policies on their own. While thousands of employers are tapping new funds from the law to keep retiree plans, 3M illustrates that others may not opt to retain such plans over the next few years. …
Democrats that crafted the legislation say they tried to incentivize companies to keep their retiree coverage intact, especially until 2014. The law creates a $5 billion fund for employers and unions to offset the cost of retiree health benefits. More than 2,000 entities, including many large public companies, have already been approved to submit claims for such reimbursement. 3M did not apply.
How did Democrats come up with the $5 billion figure for subsidies to protect retirees from losing their plans? From the looks of it, they simply made it up. They also didn’t do much calculation to determine whether the subsidies would actually incentivize employers into rejecting this strategy for cost savings. To some extent, they may not have been able to make that calculation, because thanks to the massive amount of ambiguity in the bill, no one can really say for sure what the future costs would be. And of course, that’s why 3M chose now to dump the retirees.
3m has 23,000 retirees, many of them likely to be living in Minnesota. They’re also likely to vote in the upcoming midterms, perhaps even more likely now than ever. That won’t be good news for House Democrats in the Minnesota delegation hoping to win a new term in four weeks.
We already know we will not know the ultimate costs… and going off of experience, we know all government programs are always more than what we are told:
This is a concern for the Dems and will be a losing issue (among the many others). Here are a couple examples of the impact this ridiculous bill has had on business:
NewsBusters has a pieceexplaining that the Dems have all but abandoned the fiscal ship (if there ever were one to begin with):
…It has now been five days since Politico’s Ben Smith published a powerpoint presentation created by an amalgamation of powerful left wing interest groups, conceding that two of the central arguments for passing ObamaCare – that it will lower the deficit and will reduce health care costs – have failed.
For a group of organizations integral to the passage of the law, that was a stunning admission. And yet, the mainstream press is nearly silent on the issue. Searches on Nexis and Google News reveal no coverage from the major television networks, the cable news channels (with the exception of Fox), the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, NPR, PBS, or Newsweek. To their credit, Time Magazine and the Washington Post published a blog post each on the revelation.
Even while discussing ObamaCare and its potential effects on the deficit and health care costs, some media outlets managed to avoid any mention of a fact Democrats now seem to be conceding: “the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed,” as Smith notes….
[….]
Byron York explains the significance of Herdon’s recommendations:
It’s a stunning about-face for a party that saw national health care as its signature accomplishment. “This is the first time we’ve seen from Democrats that they clearly understand they have a serious problem in terms of selling this legislation,” says Republican pollster David Winston.
The reluctance to defend Obamacare as a cost-cutter and deficit-reducer is particularly telling. Wasn’t that the No. 1 reason for passing the bill in the first place? “This legislation will … lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades,” President Obama said when he signed the bill into law on March 23. Now, Democrats are throwing that argument out the window…
The story might be even worse than that for Democrats. Everyone knows the public’s top issue is the economy. It has been since before Obama took office. So when the president and Democratic congressional leadership devoted a year to passing national health care, Republicans charged they were ignoring the public’s wishes. Now, when Democrats admit that Obamacare won’t cut costs or reduce deficits, they open themselves up to a more serious charge: they spent a year working on something that will actually cost jobs and make things worse.
The liberal interest group coalition’s recommendations speak volumes about the political and policy failures of the administration and the Democratic Party’s congressional leadership. And yet virtually all major media players are silent on the admission.
“…In 1994, nearly two-thirds of U.S.-born teenagers were in the summer labor force; by 2007 it was less than half. At the same time, the overall number of immigrants (legal and illegal) holding a job doubled. The evidence indicates that immigration accounts for a significant share of the decline in teen labor force participation…”
I am a native-born New Mexico Hispanic. I often write letters to newspapers on a subject which those without an Hispanic last name dare not write: the urgent need for immigration reform.
This nation’s immigration policy, begun in 1965, is a disaster. It hurts minorities, the poor, the environment – as we see dramatically here in the West on an almost daily basis – and immigrants themselves.
Because of my last name, I can call for immigration reform, although I, too, have been labeled a racist – a hurtful claim that is impossible to disprove. As Ventura, Calif., Navy Dispatch editor Samuel Francis wrote in a recent editorial, – ‘Hate’ now includes all opposition to immigration.” Yet, immigration affects us all, and we should be able to talk about it without fear of character assassination.
This trend has its roots in the national news media, where reporters almost invariably report on immigration as being good and those opposed to immigration as being bad or racist. These stories remind us that we are a nation of immigrants, while ignoring that the incredibly high rates of immigration to the United States are largely a recent phenomenon.
From 1915 to 1965, legal immigration ran about 220,000 a year – the number most immigration reform advocates want us to return to, since that number would stabilize our population. Since 1989, legal immigration has averaged about 1,063,000 a year. Another 1 million people a year immigrate illegally, according to one estimate.
[….]
On a personal level, I am concerned about over-immigration because it hurts me and others in a state where the tide of immigrants out of Mexico is crushing native-born Hispanics, flooding already stressed schools, and sharply increasing drug trafficking and violent crime.
The rumored economic boom, despite many news reports to the contrary, has left Hispanics behind. The Federal Reserve recently reported that the median Hispanic net worth fell a whopping 24 percent between 1995 and 1998 due to “an accelerating influx of poor immigrants.” Put another way, when workers ask for a raise, they are often reminded that there are many others who will do the same work for less, including for below minimum wage. We all, native-born and immigrants, know there is no “labor shortage” for many of our jobs.
For that matter, do any American workers at any level see employers clamoring to increase their pay? No, they see industry calling for the right to import more cheap workers.
While I care about the world’s poor – roughly 1.5 billion people fall into that category – I believe we cannot possibly welcome all these mostly economic (rarely political) refugees to the United States. Do advocates of high immigration believe our own slums are empty and that we no longer have citizens needing a fair chance at decent-paying jobs?
We must return immigration to traditional levels. To stop the cross-border flow and the peril the trek brings to Mexican nationals, we must impose sharp penalties for those employers who hire illegal immigrants.
Another significant reason behind this very important job loss for an important segment of our population is minimum wage hikes. First Milton Friedman then a portion of an article:
….Unfortunately, teens are also learning personal lessons about price theory and supply and demand. While America’s youth were busy downloading the latest iTunes, those running the country savaged their job prospects. In July 2009, a month distinguished by the then-highest unemployment rate among teens since at least 1948, the latest of three hikes in the minimum wage pushed through by Congress in 2007 went into effect. As a consequence, the cost to hire part-time or unskilled workers jumped to $7.25 per hour, a full 41 percent increase from the 2007 going rate of $5.15. Some considered the hike overdue; a decade had passed since the prior increase. Others argued that carrying through with such a hefty jump was ill conceived, especially in light of the recession. The bottom line: The sharp rise in the minimum wage has almost certainly contributed to an equally harsh increase in unemployment among those not yet old enough to vote.
Why? Because teens account for a disproportionate number of those paid bottom-of-the-barrel rates. In 2009, for example, teens made up 6 percent of all workers paid by the hour, but 23 percent of those paid at or below the minimum rate. Put another way, some 5 percent of the nation’s hourly workers received minimum wage or less; nearly 19 percent of teens fall into this category. At last count, nearly 26 percent of all teenagers were unemployed, up from 24 percent a year earlier. This is a decidedly worse showing than the rate for adult men, for instance. In June, unemployment for men totaled 9.9 percent, actually down slightly from 10 percent the year before.
That higher minimum wages could lead to lower employment isn’t a shocking concept.
Naturally, the recession caused millions of all ages to lose their jobs. However, the disproportionate hit taken by young people can also, according to a recent study, be laid directly at the door of the hike in minimum wage. Economists William Even of Miami University and David MacPherson of Trinity University compared teen job losses in states impacted by the minimum wage hikes with states that were not affected. (Some states had independently passed a minimum wage as high or higher than the national level, thus rendering the federal hike irrelevant.) They conclude that the increase in minimum wage raised teen unemployment by 114,000….
Now, the 40-year-old is rethinking her lifelong support for the party. She has been without steady work for two years, lost her home and car and began receiving cash assistance from the state for the first time. This year, she says, “I’m willing to take a chance on something different.” Another possibility, she says, is that she won’t vote at all.
Ms. Jones is part of an unmeasured, agitated mass: unemployed Americans who don’t believe the Obama Administration and Congress have done enough to produce jobs. With elections coming up, their unease is especially troublesome for the Democrats, who control both chambers.
A poor economy never bodes well for incumbents. Cook Report, the nonpartisan political newsletter that tracks congressional races, estimates that 73 House seats are vulnerable—including Mr. Schauer’s. This group has two things in common. Almost all (66 of 73) are held by Democrats, and most include counties that have unemployment rates exceeding the national average, according to data assembled by The Wall Street Journal.
Take note that the persons opposed to tanning altogether are the ones who got this 10% tax added. They know that even a 10% tax (just like all the taxes added to smoking) dissuades someone from that action. Similarly, all the taxes coming down the pike will do what exactly to consumers wanting to go out and spend??
In one scene, Snooki — with her impressively orange tan — broke the shocking news that she’s been staying away from her home away from home: Tanning salons.
“I don’t go tanning anymore because Obama put a 10% tax on tanning. McCain would never put a 10% tax on tanning. Because he’s pale and would probably want to be tan,” she said.
Snooki was referring to a provision in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act that mandates tanning salons impose a 10 percent tax on UV-ray sessions.
McCain and Jersey Shore team up. Why would a President who is concerned about jobs and people (supposedly) put a 10% on small business owners that would do nothing but hinder job growth. Many of his policies hinder this.
As a follow-up to my earlier post on employment and stimulus, here’s a chart of what may be the most significant data on the topic. Barack Obama claims that the unemployment rate dropping from 9.7% to 9.5% shows that we’re moving in the right direction economically — but that data doesn’t include those who have left the workforce out of discouragement. They have no jobs and have given up looking for another due to economic conditions, according to the categorization by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This chart shows the direction in which our economic policies have taken the US…. These represent the gross numbers of able-bodied workers outside the workforce and no longer looking for jobs. The red star indicated when Barack Obama’s stimulus was passed [Remember, he said that if it passed, it the jobless rate wouldn’t reach double-digits and stay at about 8%] , and we can see the effects or lack thereof on the workforce afterward. Not only has the unemployment rate gone up and the number of jobs continued to drop since February 2009, Americans are increasingly leaving the workforce instead of joining it.
