Category Archives: Business

Administration Hits Gov.Con’s Tiny Target. Or So It Claims.

Business, Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Internet, Technology

CNN cracks me up. Reports of “continued problems with the 2010 Affordable Care Act” they call “anecdotal.” The writer also chortles that the “website deadline” has been met. The administration promised to fix Gov.Con by November 30.

Although insurance companies dispute that the fix is in—as the latest claims-making has it, the site is working for the “vast majority” of users. It is said to “now handle its original intended volume of 50,000 concurrent users.”

(“Insurers are still getting enrollment files that are duplicative and have missing or inaccurate information,” Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for health insurance industry trade association group America’s Health Insurance Plans, said in a statement to CNN. “In some cases they are not getting the enrollments at all.”)

Imagine worrying whether you’ll be able to purchase an item on Amazon or eBay when you want to, because you could be the 50,001th customer. Such commercial sites handle millions upon millions of customers all at once.

Seattle Fool Foments Violence Against Business

Business, Capitalism, Glenn Beck, Government, Political Philosophy, Socialism

“They did it. Seattle voters elected a socialist candidate to the city council,” reported The Blaze, on Nov. 15.

Seattle City Councilor Kshama Sawant has since delivered a screed tying economic freedom to all social ills. Real original, isn’t she? A true intellectual too. She’s a professional academic, what else?

We need to recognize what is at the root of racism, this hatred and fear of black people, of people of color, of poor people,” Sawant said. “The root cause of these blatantly unjust laws is the capitalist system itself … this system does not work for us. Racism is necessary for this oppressive system to exist.

Nov. 21, the socialist councilwoman “accused aerospace and defense giant Boeing on Monday of ‘economic terrorism’ and told Boeing machinists they should consider taking ‘over the factories.'”

“The workers should … shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Kshama Sawant told a group of activists in the city’s Westlake Park.
Sawant’s comments were made at a rally organized by machinists after they rejected a deal that would reduce pensions for union members in return for guaranteed jobs in Everett, Wash., building 777X Boeing airliners for eight years.
Now Boeing is considering taking those jobs elsewhere.

Go ahead, Boeing. Take the leap and move major operations from “The Evergreen State” to a right-to-work state. South Carolina residents will be only too happy to work rather than wreck stuff.

The Warmongers: Not Looking Out For Us

Business, Economy, EU, Free Markets, Iran, Media, Russia, The State

“The Warmongers: Not Looking Out For Us” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

To listen to U.S. government officials there is only an upside to the punitive sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and a reluctant European Union. Consequently, the emphasis is forever on how to toughen the punishment; never on whether to lift economic sanctions on the long-suffering people of Iran.

But what about the effects of trade boycotts on American businesses?

Chris Harmer of The Institute for the Study of War estimates that the Boeing Company alone forfeits a minimum of $25 billion in business every year because of U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran, a niche market that is filled by the Russians. Overall, Harmer puts the value to U.S. business of trade lost due to the economic embargo on Iran at approximately $50 billion per annum.

For example, Iran imports $1.5 billion worth of cars a year, the beneficiaries of which are companies like Nissan, Toyota and Peugeot (when they might have been General Motors and Chrysler). Peugeot does an added half a billion dollars’ worth of commerce with Iran just in car parts.

The Iranian economy, moreover, has diversified and is adapting to life without the U.S. The rest of the world—pockets in Europe and most of Asia—has not isolated Iran, with the result that the country has many trading partners other than the U.S. And while Iran has lost petroleum revenue due to sanctions, the trend will not endure. China, Japan and South Korea are hungry for the country’s crude.

Not to be overlooked are the costs to Americans of sanction enforcement, avers Harmer. In addition to the opportunity costs—the missed business aforementioned—there are “direct costs.” The Office of Foreign Asset Control in the U.S. Treasury Department squanders around $1 billion a year in developing lists of “financial institutions that are subject to sanctions,” and then infringing on the rights of individuals and companies to freely exchange privately owned property.

“Indirect costs” are incurred in the course of cultivating a massive U.S. intelligent infrastructure—a veritable alphabet soup of agencies—upon which the Treasury draws in enforcing a regimen of sanctions.

So too are the “deterrent costs” borne by the American taxpayer who pays for patrolling the Persian Gulf, the Northern Arabian Sea, and the Strait of Hormuz. …

… As a general rule, state-enforced boycotts harm honest, hard-working Americans who use the economic means to earn their keep. …”

Read the entire column. “The Warmongers: Not Looking Out For Us” is now on WND.

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Rubio’s Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream

Business, Classical Liberalism, Democrats, Government, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, The State

“Rubio’s Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“The ‘Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S.744)’ is statist through-and-through.

This is one thing one can state unequivocally about the Gang of Eight’s immigration Bill. The same goes for those who support it. The ‘libertarian’ Independent Institute, for one, whose scholars claim that the ‘Positive Aspects of Immigration Bill Outweigh Its Flaws.’

This is nonsense on stilts—true only if an expansion in the size and power of the federal government is a net positive.

If you’ve enjoyed the ‘work’ of Department of Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano, you’ll love her successor (rumored to be the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk Ray Kelly). The Marco Rubio immigration Bill concentrates even more power in the office Kelly may inherit. Such power includes the ability to adjust the status of a ‘registered provisional immigrant’ (RPI) to that of ‘an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence’ on satisfying a few ridiculous conditions, one of which is the RPI’s ‘continuous physical presence.’ In other words, for being in the country illegally, the RPI may get his illegal status reversed at the pleasure of The Secretary.

Is this not Kafkaesque? It is for any American who imagines that government ought to, at the very least, stand sentinel against unsolicited and unjustified trespass.

Almost all powers specified in the Bill are the prerogative of the Secretary of DOHS, although DOJ will get a chance to bolster its banana-republic credentials. Eric Holder’s Department of Justice gets bigger and badder under the Gang of Eight’s plot to reel-in more ‘undocumented Democrats.’

For instance, were an employer to hire, fire or verify an RPI’s employment eligibility in a manner that might be construed as a discriminating ‘immigration-related employment practice,’ the proprietor is in hot water. In defending their rights of private property, ‘foreign labor contractors’ will be, moreover, going up against tax-paid litigators, to whom the amnestied will have access.

You’d think that an expansion of the frivolous and counter-intuitive grounds upon which private-property owners may be prosecuted goes against libertarian sensibilities.

Another burden business will bear is …”

Read the complete column. “Rubio’s Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream” is now on WND.

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