It looks like there will be more jobs next year as the American economy struggles free of the recession; it’s just that half of them won’t be full-time. Or come with a retirement plan. Or offer health coverage. Or even sick days. But hey; it’s work!
In a sobering report, Eve Tahmincioglu – herself an independent contractor – writes about the emergence of the “contingent workforce,” an umbrella term for freelancers, temps, and pay-for-project workers. According to a study released by Littler Mendelson, a leading employment law firm, up to 50% of the new jobs in the next economy will be contract work. The benefit to the company is payroll flexibility. The benefit to the worker is a job, or more likely, multiple jobs for less pay than a full-time equivalent position.
A bit surprising is the projection that managers and professionals like engineers, scientists, and attorneys are joining the ranks of the temporarily employed. So, what does all this mean for public policy? Plenty. With millions of workers on the hook for their own health care, retirement, and payroll taxes don’t be surprised if many of them default into “public options” like ObamaCare; especially if the government offers it at a lower price than the private sector. Just what The One wants: more jobs, more dependency on government!
What better way to celebrate the Iranian President’s visit to America than for Comedy Central to announce plans to develop a half-hour show about Jesus Christ “wanting to escape the shadow of his ‘powerful but apathetic father’ and live a regular life in New York City”?
As CFIF Senior Fellow Troy Senik pointed out last week, this is the same network that heavily censored a “South Park” episode lampooning the Prophet Mohammed for fear of offending radical jihadists. When asked whether there was a double standard in making fun of the founder of Christianity, the network’s head of original programming says, “In general, comedy in purist form always makes some people uncomfortable.”
Good to see Comedy Central getting back to its roots: attacking the pillars of Western civilization while making a buck.
With apologies to Bob Dole, where’s the outrage over President Barack Obama’s mishandling of the Gulf Coast Oil Spill?
If reports are true that the spill could be worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster, why on earth is the Sierra Club confining its commentary to calling on President Barack Obama to “engage every resource available to address the immediate cleanup and recovery needs of Gulf Coast residents, businesses, wildlife, and marine life.”
The very next sentence then demands a commitment to “end offshore oil drilling.” So we’ve got vague concern about the spill followed by concrete prohibitions on an entire field of energy development.
At least the Sierra Club knows its priorities.
This, amid reporting form the New York Times that 10 days after 210,000 gallons of oil a day began flooding the Gulf, the Obama White House is just now starting to take a leadership role in managing the situation. Looking at its website, apparently PETA can’t be bothered even to feign outrage over a supposedly Environmentalist President’s failure to spring into action on behalf of higher life forms like river otters and nesting pelicans.
How telling that for an issue that really is an emergency in need of comprehensive federal intervention, the Left can’t seem to wrest its attention away from comparatively academic discussions about cap-and-trade, and reasonably suspicious immigrants.
The end of George Bush’s presidency began when his advisors misread the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the national consciousness. Now, it looks like Obama is getting another pass from allies whilst he reprises his role as Ditherer-in-Chief.
Unfortunately, red flag waving organizations won’t be trying to disrupt local economies by staging walk-outs and marches on a work day. This year, Communism’s “May Day” celebration falls on a Saturday, meaning that instead of counter-demonstrators shopping en masse to keep business profits high, the only reason to venture outside tomorrow will be to enjoy the virtual shutdown of urban life.
The Los Angeles Police Department is planning for up to 100,000 people to turn the annual march for grievance solidarity into a traffic congesting protest of Arizona’s new immigration law. One wonders what organizers hope to accomplish since the LAPD has an illegal immigrant policy called Special 40 “which prohibits officers from initiating action against people solely to discover their legal status.” Moreover, L.A. was the first to proclaim itself a “sanctuary city,” further complicating the logic for protesting another state’s law in a town that totally disagrees with it.
Since the only discernable economic winner in tomorrow’s L.A. area protests is the LAPD police union members who must be activated in order to monitor the participants, maybe this year’s “May Day” is serving a purpose after all: enriching a public employee union on the weekend.
It can take years for big campaign committees — particularly presidential ones — to wind down operations, settle outstanding bills and deal with sometimes costly legal issues, all of which requires committees to keep cash in the bank. Clinton’s campaign finished the presidential race in bad shape, carrying an embarrassing $7.6 million in debt that could have hampered any future political maneuverings.
But a report filed this month with the FEC shows that at the end of March, Clinton’s presidential campaign had paid back all but $771,000 of that debt (which is still owed to her presidential campaign pollster Mark Penn), and had an impressive $624,000 in the bank, thanks mostly to hefty rental fees paid by No Limits and other groups to rent Clinton’s e-mail list since she became the nation’s top diplomat last year.
No doubt Clinton’s name recognition and multi-decade career in the national spotlight give her loyalists access to financial resources that few other politicians could tap. Too bad the donors eliminating Clinton’s debt aren’t matching those contributions with extra donations to the Treasury Department to help soften the impact of her boss’s spending spree.
Apparently, that’s the case since the current version of ObamaCare doesn’t allow the IRS to exercise its usual methods of coercing compliance, like imposing tax liens or levies, seizing property or seeking jail time against delinquent taxpayers. But don’t rest too easy. Since health care is now a federal “right,” you can bet on the good folks in Washington, D.C., conjuring up amendments to guarantee that you and every other American citizen will enjoy it to the fullest extent the law requires.
On May 18th, voters in Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district will select someone other than the late John Murtha to represent them in Washington, D.C. According to Newt Gingrich, it should be Republican businessman Tim Burns. Burns and his Democratic opponent Mark Critz are subjects in a profile I wrote for CFIF here. Though I discuss a different aspect of the campaign than Gingrich, I agree with his analysis that a center-left Democrat like Critz will find it nearly impossible to balance the need for far Left campaign cash with his district’s moderate-to-conservative leanings. This will be a very bad year for Blue Dog Democrats.
When General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, saw this slide in a PowerPoint presentation he said, “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.” No wonder this is called “the long war”!
Though this is an extreme version of the business school mentality infecting military strategy, some members of the top brass are banning PowerPoint.
‘It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,’ he told the New York Times. ‘Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.’
There is growing concern about the insiduous spread of PowerPoint which has come to dominate the lives of many junior officers.
Dubbed the PowerPoint Rangers, they spend hours slaving away on slides to illustrate every Afghan scenario.
Lieutenant Sam Nuxoll, a platoon leader posted in Iraq, told military website Company Command how he spent most of his time making PowerPoint presentations.
‘I have to make a storyboard complete with digital pictures, diagrams and text summaries on just about anything that happens,’ he added.
‘Conduct a key leader engagement? Make a storyboard. Award a microgrant? Make a storyboard.’
At least Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is signaling an overall legislative strategy: Get (Me) Reelected! According to Byron York’s reporting, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was “fuming” when he was double-crossed by Reid’s decision to gin up the Hispanic vote in Nevada to increase their turnout for his ailing reelection campaign. The move had the consequence of booting Graham’s carefully crafted energy bill off the Senate’s table for the foreseeable future.
Hopefully, after the health care deem-and-scheme travesty and now this personal affront, Senator Graham will learn something the rest of us surmised about Washington’s Democratic leadership from the beginning: there are no honest brokers leading the party today. Forget that at your peril.
It’s hard to believe that Florida Governor Charlie Crist is on the precipice of being a one term chief executive with only a new wife to show for it. Haled as the difference maker for John McCain’s struggling presidential campaign, he single-handedly decided which Republican candidate would win the 2008 GOP Florida primary. Yes, he was that popular in a state where he now trails his Republican challenger for the open Senate seat, Marco Rubio, by 20 points.
Aside from doing little more in office than unwind many of Jeb Bush’s conservative accomplishments, Crist is likely to leave office in November without having ever fully concentrated on being the most powerful politician in a crucial swing state. In stark contrast to New Jersey’s recently elected governor, Chris Christie, whose budget balancing is a model for skillful public policy in action, Crist will be remembered as a politician who couldn’t be satisfied with his current job. Very soon, Florida voters will relieve him of the burden.
This is rich. On Thursday, attorneys for ex-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich filed a motion to subpoena President Barack Obama as a witness in Blago’s upcoming corruption trial. You may remember ole’ Rod was arrested and impeached for trying to parlay Obama’s vacant Senate seat into cash or a job. Apparently, one of the government’s key witnesses against Blago will offer testimony that is directly contradicted by the president’s public statements. Blago’s attorneys want to rebut the prosecution’s witness with testimony from someone who knows how Illinois politics are played.
Reason Magazine’s Damon Root pens a spirited argument for ridding judicial nomination hearings of their pretended denials of litmus tests.
It’s time for both sides to come clean about the importance of judicial philosophy. That means no more grandstanding about “open minds” and double standards. If Constitutional interpretation matters—and it most certainly does—then senators have an obligation to query each and every nominee about it and vote accordingly. That’s the only way we’ll ever have a real debate about the Constitution and the courts.
Indeed. Now, if we could only get a few Senate Judiciary Committee members able to articulate a substantive, coherent judicial philosophy themselves we’ll be on to something.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, now being celebrated in 190 countries by an estimated 1 billion people. To put that in perspective, that number is roughly the amount of adherents claimed by the Roman Catholic Church. And as Robert Nelson points out in the Detroit News, the environmentalism movement that birthed Earth Day has turned into its own religion.
America’s leading environmental historian, William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin, calls environmentalism a new religion because it offers “a complex series of moral imperatives for ethical action, and judges human conduct accordingly.”
In other words, issues such as climate change are now much more than about “science.”
And this places a greater burden on environmental theology than it is often able to handle. Success in stirring powerful religious feelings about the environment does not automatically lead to wise and effective policies.
Americans don’t need to pay more for less energy, Chairman Waxman. Pass this bill and we’ll see if your eco-gods can deliver you from the voters’ wrath this November.
Maybe White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel isn’t the only senior administration official who’s on uncertain terms with President Obama. In the span of a few minutes, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs reminded reporters that imposing a national value added tax (VAT) “wasn’t something that the president had under consideration,” and a deputy of his reiterated that point after Obama appeared on CNBC.
The problem is the president himself told CNBC that the VAT is still on the table. What to make of the press office’s bookend statements denying the substance of the chief’s own words? Exactly what it is: denying the truth that one of the most destructive taxes available is being considered to pay for the explosion in government spending. We were warned – sort of.
One of the measures of successful politicians is how much legislation they author, sponsor, and pass. Since the activities can be counted, the more a legislator does, the more he can claim to be “doing something” to justify his reelection.
So it must be frustrating for all the Senators who desperately want to “do something” when colleagues in their own party insist on larding unpopular policies into bills that would otherwise sail through the process. Though the main energy bill claims enough support to pass, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) are blocking it because its centrist supporters refuse to include the Environmental Left’s demands for cap-and-trade. When asked to present the cap-and-tax language as a stand-alone amendment, Kerry and Boxer balked because they don’t have the 60 votes to attach it.
Who can blame them? After the large scale corruption of the legislative process to pass ObamaCare, why wouldn’t a Democratic lawmaker think that rules only apply to Republicans?
Happily, adding text to the United States Code isn’t everyone’s definition of a good legislator. Senators like Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) pride themselves on reducing the word count of the nation’s legal regime. Less law means less room for bureaucrats to expand their reach. Let’s hope the Democrats’ insatiable demand for more government continues to be an obstacle to passing any new laws.
Thank heaven for the Salt Institute! Surely the Framers of the First Amendment and America’s first sociologist, Alexis de Tocqueville, would appreciate collections of individuals banding together to inform the public – and the government – of the benefits of salt. With today’s headlines proclaiming an FDA crackdown on sodium in food, now is the time to read about salt, its uses and benefits and the current issues in focus.
True, the assault on individual freedom and responsibility by the Obama Administration is startling, as evidenced by this quote from one of its friends in academe:
Most salt eaten by Americans — 77 percent — comes from processed foods, making it difficult for consumers to limit salt to healthy levels, experts say.
“We can’t just rely on the individual to do something,” said Cheryl Anderson, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who served on the Institute of Medicine committee. “Food manufacturers have to reduce the amount of sodium in foods.”
Of course what she really means is making food manufacturers reduce the amount of sodium in foods by federal fiat. This kind of bureaucratic paternalism will only be made easier with implementation of ObamaCare. But as long as there are industries willing to energetically (and stylishly) present consumers and policy makers with resources from organizations like the Salt Institute, the Republic – and sanity – stands a chance.
Reading Joe Conason’s column today makes one wonder if the author takes seriously the words of the Constitution, or just its “spirit” – whatever that means. In a piece that identifies the growing constitutionalist movement as fringe, Conason equates adherence to the words in the text as preferring a primitive, pre-enlightened society.
What exactly do they mean by “constitutional”? On the increasingly powerful fringes of the Republican right, a category that includes some Tea Party activists, the Constitution is interpreted as prohibiting every social and political advance since before the Civil War. They would outlaw the Federal Reserve System, the progressive income tax, Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection, consumer regulation and every other important federal initiative of the past century.
What Conason misses is that arguing for a textually-based, limited federal government of enumerated powers says next to nothing about the ability of state governments to weigh in on the institutions he wants so much to preserve. Experience shows that states like California and New York will bankrupt their treasuries to provide the kind of all-providing government Conason likes. Seemingly, the fact that other states wouldn’t if the feds weren’t allowed is what really bothers him.
Too bad. The genius of federalism is that it affords the greatest amount of people the greatest amount of choices in the scope and scale of their government. Once again, liberals like Conason show that when it comes to public policy choices, there’s really only one they care to defend.
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