Quickies: the Elections Have Consequences Edition

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A round-up of articles, news items, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.





Time to pay the piper, gang:

Shortly after Nov. 6, Zane Tankel, who runs 40 Applebee’s restaurants in the New York City area, announced that his company was freezing employment and would not build any new restaurants. President Obama’s re-election, Tankel explained, meant that ObamaCare was likely to be fully implemented, costing his company millions of dollars and significantly raising the cost of hiring a worker.

Tankel’s statement prompted outrage and threats of a boycott, but he was far from alone. Already John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John’s Pizza, has announced that he would likely lay off some workers. Earlier, Schnatter said that ObamaCare would cost his business $5 billion to $8 billion annually, forcing him to increase the price of pizzas.

Meanwhile, two other restaurant chains, Olive Garden and Red Lobster, are moving many of their employees from full- to part-time work in order to avoid the law’s mandate that anyone working more than 30 hours must have insurance. An owner of 40 Denny’s in Florida, meanwhile, says he’ll add a 5% surcharge to customer bills in 2014 to cover his increased costs.

Restaurants which employ many low-wage employees will simply not be able to afford ObamaCare's expanded coverage mandates beyoned the mini-med plans they currently provide their employees.

And for the outrageously outraged lefties who think that these layoffs and hiring freezes are some sort of "revenge" against employees who supposedly voted for Obama and have vowed to boycott places like Applebee's: that revenge boycott list is going to keep growing and growing. You all have fun with that.








So, this is what smart power and leading from behind will get you:

Egypt's president on Thursday issued constitutional amendments that placed him above judicial oversight and ordered the retrial of Hosni Mubarak for the killing of protesters in last year's uprising.

Mohammed Morsi also decreed immunity for the Islamist-dominated panel drafting a new constitution from any possible court decisions to dissolve it, a threat that had been hanging over the controversial assembly.

Liberal and Christian members withdrew from the assembly during the past week to protest what they say is the hijacking of the process by Morsi's allies, who they saw are trying to push through a document that will have an Islamist slant marginalizing women and minority Christians and infringing on personal liberties. Several courts have been looking into cases demanding the dissolution of the panel.

The Egyptian leader also decreed that all decisions he has made since taking office in June and until a new constitution is adopted and a new parliament is elected — which is not expected before next spring — are not subject to appeal in court or by any other authority. He also barred any court from dissolving the Islamist-led upper house of parliament, a largely toothless body that has also faced court cases.

The moves effectively remove any oversight on Morsi, the longtime Muslim Brotherhood figure who became Egypt's first freely elected president last summer after the Feb. 11, 2011 fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak. They come as Morsi is riding high on lavish praise from President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for mediating an end to eight days of fighting between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers.

It's good to be the King!


And let's not forget our little gun-running operation in Benghazi, Libya which ultimately resulted in the deaths of 4 Americans and a cover-up as to what happened on 9/11 at our consulate there.








Time to pay the piper pt. II

Want to know what we see here?

Blue

Top Five Tax Increases Tax Increases as % of Income

#1 – New Jersey $6,933 6.82%

#2 – Maryland $7,194 6.74%

#3 – Connecticut $6,653 6.62%

#4 – Massachusetts $6,632 6.53%

#5 – New Hampshire $5,660 5.81%








And nearly 4 years on, more waste, fraud and abuse from Porkulus:

President Obama sought to fund “shovel ready” projects with the 2009 stimulus, so the federal government spent $29 million in taxpayer money to dig a port in Alaska that has no roads connecting it to other towns.

“It’s not normal,” Steve Boardman of the Army Corps of Engineers civil projects division told KUCB (Alaska) . “And it has prevented the construction of harbors in the past, when that supporting infrastructure is not there.” Boardman explained that they were able to build the port in part because “the project was ‘shovel-ready’ when $29 million of federal stimulus money became available in 2009,” as KUCB put it.

Construction of a road to connect the “port” to the nearest town two miles away won’t begin for years, but the federal government is now committed either to losing the money spent already or having to lay out even more cash to build that road.

That's how it is with these massive public works boondoggles. We've seen it played out here in California with high-speed choo-choos. Once you cross the Rubicon, there is no turning back.

Once you have aligned the political forces behind a project and that project has wetted its beak at the trough, you quickly have a tax-payer funded black hole if the project was ill-conceived and not well-planned from the start.








This is Sarah sez- worthy:

By now you've heard the outrageous quote from Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on his doubts about the origins of planet Earth. When asked to give its age, he replied: "I'm not a scientist, man. … Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries."

He's not a scientist—no, indeed—and his comments have brought on a slew of finger wags and face-palms from the godless left. The answer was "so confused and error-riddled," wrote Phil Plait in Slate, "it's difficult to know where to start." We all should understand the age of Earth is not a matter of opinion, but a scientific fact: Our planet formed 4.54 billion years ago. If Rubio suggested otherwise, it's because he's uninformed or stupid.

But take a wild guess as to what Bible-thumping former Illinois back-bencher's view on creation and the age of the world sounds an awful like that of Rubio's. Check it out, here.







Here's Kobe Bryant:

“I’m not working too hard, to be honest with you. The shots that I made were all jumpers. It doesn’t take much energy to knock those jumpers down,” he said. “Bringing the ball up and having me kind of initiate the offense and score and stuff like that, it’s making me work a little more than I will when Gatsby gets back.

“When Gatsby gets back, I don’t have to do that. The game’s going to become even more easy for me.”

Gatsby?




But of course...

OK, gang, that's it for today. We'll see you tomorrow.