Business Owners Pay for Layoffs

At Amazon Reptile Center Inc., owner Scott Solar is paying for the pink slips he issued.

After several years of growth, the company, which has two reptile pet stores in Montclair and Covina, Calif., ran headfirst into the recession. As employees left, they weren’t replaced, but recently the company decided to let go of three workers. In three years, the staff shrunk to five from 12. Now, like many owners, Mr. Solar will be paying a higher state unemployment insurance tax as a direct result of those layoffs.

State unemployment insurance taxes are paid throughout the year, as owners pay their other payroll taxes. States typically have a base unemployment tax, which owners will pay according to the size of their payroll. But as a company lays off employees, it develops a negative history or so-called “experience rating” that can boost that tax.

“We didn’t know there were repercussions, but we had to do it,” says Mr. Solar of his thin staff. “But now we’re going to be punished for keeping the business alive.”

Adding to the burden, a number of states are running out of funds to pay for their out-of-work populations. With jobless claims swelling and coffers depleting, at least 35 states are hiking unemployment tax rates this year, according to a survey by the National Association of State Workforce Agencies conducted late last year. (Read more from online.wsj.com)

Obama uses recess appointments to fill 15 posts

An emboldened President Obama filled 15 key administration posts Saturday by bypassing the Senate, defying the GOP as he announced his first recess appointments since taking office.

Among the appointees was Craig Becker, a Chicago-based labor attorney whose nomination to the National Labor Relations Board was blocked last month in the Senate. (Read more from washingtonpost.com)

Change?

Southern Avenger: Confused Confederates

This post will likely be shocking to some of my readers who see the Civil War as the just war. For a more extensive re-examination of it, read Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln.

For anyone who thinks the Civil War is justified by the abolition of slavery, I will say that slavery was abolished peacefully everywhere else in the world (see Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia). There was no reason to kill 600,000 young men to do it here.

NY Times Obituaries for 3 Communist mass murderers, and 1 anti-Communist mass murderer

Below are the headlines of four obituaries that have run in The New York Times. The first is that of the recent obituary of the Anti-Communist Augusto Pinochet. The next three are those of the obituaries of the Communist mass murderers Mao, Stalin, and Lenin. Please be sure to note how many are described as having ruled by terror.

December 11, 2006, Augusto Pinochet, Dictator Who Ruled by Terror in Chile, Dies at 91

September 10, 1976, Friday, . . . Mao Tse-tung Dies in Peking at 82; Leader of Red China’s Revolution

March 6, 1953, Friday, Stalin Rose From Czarist Oppression to Transform Russia Into Mighty Socialist State; RUTHLESS IN MOVING TO GOALS

January 24, 1924, Thursday, ENORMOUS CROWDS VIEW LENIN’S BODY AS IT LIES IN STATE; Wait Hours in Snow and Zero Temperature Outside Moscow Nobles’ Club. COFFIN CARRIED FIVE MILES Members of Council of Commissars Stagger Under Load, Refusing Gun Caisson. LENIN CALLED A CHRISTIAN Archbishop Summons Synod to Declare Founder of Bolshevism Member of Church. ENORMOUS CROWDS VIEW LENIN’S BODY

(Read more from blog.mises.org)

Health Reform will cause some companies to STOP offering coverage

The new law seeks to limit those kinds of increases, while giving businesses incentives to cover more workers.

Here’s how:

• Businesses with fewer than 25 employees that pay an average of no more than $40,000 will get a tax credit – up to 35 percent of the company’s share of their total health care premium.

• Companies with 26-49 workers are unaffected.

• Businesses with 50 or more workers must offer coverage or pay $750 per worker. That penalty applies for every employee if even one signs up for government-subsidized insurance.

But there are potential problems. Case in point: It would be much cheaper for Dick Bus to drop the generous coverage he now offers and take the hit at $750 a head for his 120 workers. The penalty would be $90,000 a year. He’s currently spending $480,000.

Bus would save $390,000, but canceling his plan would force his workers to the health plan exchange and could cost more than they’re paying now. The Senate is considering an increase in the $750 penalty to prevent that scenario.

The law’s benefits are clearer for Fank Hesch and the four employees at his auto shop. He provides insurance for two, and pays $4,800 a year. Under the new law, he would get a tax credit of $1,680 and he says he would roll the money into health insurance for new workers as his business grows.

At the Lehigh Valley Zoo, CEO Rick Molchany pays $189,000 to insure 21 workers.

“Our health care is in excess of 10 percent of our annual operating expense,” he said.

As a non-profit, the zoo gets a smaller credit for insurance than other businesses. The savings – about $9,000.

When you add it all up, most small businesses could save up to 4 percent on what they pay for employee health insurance.

Nationally, that savings could exceed $10 billion. (Read more from cbsnews.com)

Dr. Thomas Szasz on Psychiatry: “No behavior or misbehavior is a disease!”

Wow! Great video!

– Runaway slaves in the United States were once said to suffer from a disease called “drapetomania.”
– “No behavior or misbehavior is a disease!”
– “60 years ago . . . there were no more than six or seven mental diseases. Now, there are more than 300, and new ones are “discovered” every day.”
– “Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.”
– “The child psychiatrist is one of the most dangerous enemies not only of children, but of adults . . of all of us who care about . . . children and liberty.”
– “How can parents protect their children from the therapeutic state, that is from the alliance of government and psychiatry?”

Sell-off in US Treasuries raises sovereign debt fears

The yield on 10-year Treasuries – the benchmark price of global capital – surged 30 basis points in just two days last week to over 3.9pc, the highest level since the Lehman crisis. Alan Greenspan, ex-head of the US Federal Reserve, said the abrupt move may be “the canary in the coal mine”, a warning to Washington that it can no longer borrow with impunity. He said there is a “huge overhang of federal debt, which we have never seen before”. (Read more from telegraph.co.uk)

Nearly 300 Congress members declare commitment to ‘unbreakable’ U.S.-Israel bond

Nearly 300 members of Congress have signed on to a declaration reaffirming their commitment to “the unbreakable bond that exists between [U.S.] and the State of Israel”, in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The letter was sent in the wake of the severe recent tensions between Israel and the U.S. over the prior’s decision to construct more than 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, a project it announced during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to the region. (Read more from haaretz.com)

What War with Iran Means

“Diplomacy has failed,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told AIPAC, “Iran is on the verge of becoming nuclear and we cannot afford that.”

“We have to contemplate the final option,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., “the use of force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”

War is a “terrible thing,” said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., but “sometimes it is better to go to war than to allow the Holocaust to develop a second time.”

Graham then describes the war we Americans should fight:

“If military force is ever employed, it should be done in a decisive fashion. The Iran government’s ability to wage conventional war against its neighbors and our troops in the region should not exist. They should not have one plane that can fly or one ship that can float.”

Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, Neocon Central, writes, “The only questions remaining, one Washington politico tells me, are who starts it, and how it ends.”

As to who starts it, we know the answer. Teheran has not started a war in memory and is not going to launch a suicide attack on a superpower with thousands of nuclear weapons. As with Iraq in 2003, the war will be launched by the United States against a nation that did not attack us – to strip it of weapons it does not have. (Read more from lewrockwell.com)

Few More Sources Pick Up Metal Manipulation Story

Huffington Post: It’s Ponzimonium in the Gold Market

PR Newswire: Silver Short Squeeze Could Be Imminent
JP Morgan took over the concentrated short position in silver from Bear Stearns and gained complete control over the paper price of silver. Within weeks, JP Morgan was able to manipulate the price of silver down to below $9 per ounce. NIA believes they were able to drive the price of silver down through “naked short selling,” selling paper silver that is unbacked by physical silver.