3M to Drop Retirees from Its Health Care Plan
October 5, 2010 3:39 P.M.
By Stephen Spruiell
Janet Adamy of the Wall Street Journal has become the administration’s worst nightmare — a writer for a major newspaper who calmly, straightforwardly, without spin or bias, reports on the unintended consequences of Obamacare as they unfold. Every week she drops a new payload of bad PR on the Democrats as yet another insurance company (often a non-profit one) is forced to raise premiums to cover some new “free” service that Obamacare has guaranteed, or yet another large company (last week McDonalds, this week 3M) moots the option of dropping or altering the health-care plans of its workers in response to the costs associated with the new legislation:
3M Co. confirmed it would eventually stop offering its health-insurance plan to retirees, citing the federal health overhaul as a factor.
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
The St. Paul, Minn., manufacturing conglomerate notified employees on Friday that it would change retiree benefits both for those who are too young to qualify for Medicare and for those who qualify for the Medicare program. Both groups will get an unspecified health reimbursement instead of having access to a company-sponsored health plan.
The maker of Post-it notes and Scotch tape said it made the announcement now to give retirees a chance to explore different options during this year’s benefit-enrollment period, according to a 3M memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. A 3M spokeswoman, Jacqueline Berry, confirmed the contents of the memo.
“As you know, the recently enacted health care reform law has fundamentally changed the health care insurance market,” the memo said. “Health care options in the marketplace have improved, and readily available individual insurance plans in the Medicare marketplace provide benefits more tailored to retirees’ personal needs often at lower costs than what they pay for retiree medical coverage through 3M.
“In addition, health care reform has made it more difficult for employers like 3M to provide a plan that will remain competitive,” the memo said. The White House says retiree-only plans are largely exempt from new health insurance regulations under the law.
The company didn’t specify how many workers would be impacted. It currently has 23,000 U.S. retirees.
According to a study prepared by Towers Watson, a consultancy, employer plans on average are far more generous than what is available to retirees under Medicare. The silver lining for Democrats is that senior citizens don’t tend to vote in higher percentages than their younger counterparts. Oh, wait…
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Wishful Thinking about Jihadists and Radical Islam
Andy McCarthy nails it once again:
“Defensive” Jihad Is In the Eye of the Beholder
October 5, 2010 6:04 P.M.
By Andy McCarthy
As Dan reported here earlier, would-be Times Square bomber Feisal Shahzad was sentenced to life-imprisonment earlier today. Defiant and remorseless to the end, Shahzad made a number of chilling statements, but the most interesting moment came when Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum asked him — in a “you can’t possibly be serious” sort of way — whether he really believed the Koran wanted him to kill innocent people. “The Koran gives you the right to defend,” he replied, adding, ”That’s all I’m doing.”
It would be nice if Western apologists for Islam and its sharia law would listen to that — even if the Saudis do pay them handsomely to turn a deaf ear. We constantly hear that the “true” jihad is really an internal personal struggle to become a better person (although the more honest apologists concede that this is a modern, revisionist construction that would have been rejected by Islam’s most renowned and respected scholars). To maintain some semblance of credibility, these Islamophiles concede, through clenched teeth, that while there exists a violent interpretation of Islam, it is a relic whose only conceivable legitimate invocation is in “defense” — i.e., when Islam is under attack. Thus, the argument goes, we needn’t concern ourselves with it.
Since I wrote my last book, The Grand Jihad, and participated in the recently released “Team B-II” study called “Sharia: The Threat to America,” I’ve heard a good deal of criticism along the lines of “Sharia doesn’t really say what he claims it says,” or “Some scholars offer a different, moderate interpretation,” etc. I humbly submit that this misses the point. I went out of my way in the book, and in the introduction to the study, to make clear that I do not presume (nor do my colleagues presume in the study) to pronounce on what the “true” Islam says, or on whether there even is a true Islam. Wholly apart from any jihad against the West, Muslims have been killing each other for 14 centuries, and most of the internecine warfare is over competing scriptural interpretations and claims of apostasy (a capital offense in Islam, according to the most authoritative sharia authorities). Obviously, there is plenty of internal Islamic controversy over what Islam and its law truly stand for. Americans should be very wary of people who claim to know, however well-meaning they may seem.
The point is that, whether they are right or wrong, there are millions upon millions of Muslims who believe exactly what Shahzad believes about the nature of jihad and the demands of sharia. It is of no moment to them that we do not see ourselves as at war with Islam, or that we see the victims of terrorism as “innocent.” They see things as Shahzad sees them, even if they are not willing to go the next step of commiting acts of terrorism, as Shahzad is.
From the perspective of American national security, it does not matter if those Muslims are wrong about Islam. What matters is that there are a lot of them and they constitute a mainstream current of Islamic thought. They have the support of influential Islamic scholars who tell them Islam is under siege, and they don’t care in the slightest whether Western intellectuals (at whom they scoff) or Muslim reformers (whom they regard as apostates) think they have interpreted Islam incorrectly.
Eventually there will be another Shahzad, a competent one. When he strikes, it won’t do much for our security to hear a President, a federal judge, a Homeland Security Secretary, an Attorney General, and a bunch of academics from Harvard and Georgetown tell us that a bad “extremist” has “perverted” or “hijacked” the “true Islam.” High-minded wishful thinking about how tiny the threat to us is won’t actually make it tiny.
“Defensive” Jihad Is In the Eye of the Beholder
October 5, 2010 6:04 P.M.
By Andy McCarthy
As Dan reported here earlier, would-be Times Square bomber Feisal Shahzad was sentenced to life-imprisonment earlier today. Defiant and remorseless to the end, Shahzad made a number of chilling statements, but the most interesting moment came when Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum asked him — in a “you can’t possibly be serious” sort of way — whether he really believed the Koran wanted him to kill innocent people. “The Koran gives you the right to defend,” he replied, adding, ”That’s all I’m doing.”
It would be nice if Western apologists for Islam and its sharia law would listen to that — even if the Saudis do pay them handsomely to turn a deaf ear. We constantly hear that the “true” jihad is really an internal personal struggle to become a better person (although the more honest apologists concede that this is a modern, revisionist construction that would have been rejected by Islam’s most renowned and respected scholars). To maintain some semblance of credibility, these Islamophiles concede, through clenched teeth, that while there exists a violent interpretation of Islam, it is a relic whose only conceivable legitimate invocation is in “defense” — i.e., when Islam is under attack. Thus, the argument goes, we needn’t concern ourselves with it.
Since I wrote my last book, The Grand Jihad, and participated in the recently released “Team B-II” study called “Sharia: The Threat to America,” I’ve heard a good deal of criticism along the lines of “Sharia doesn’t really say what he claims it says,” or “Some scholars offer a different, moderate interpretation,” etc. I humbly submit that this misses the point. I went out of my way in the book, and in the introduction to the study, to make clear that I do not presume (nor do my colleagues presume in the study) to pronounce on what the “true” Islam says, or on whether there even is a true Islam. Wholly apart from any jihad against the West, Muslims have been killing each other for 14 centuries, and most of the internecine warfare is over competing scriptural interpretations and claims of apostasy (a capital offense in Islam, according to the most authoritative sharia authorities). Obviously, there is plenty of internal Islamic controversy over what Islam and its law truly stand for. Americans should be very wary of people who claim to know, however well-meaning they may seem.
The point is that, whether they are right or wrong, there are millions upon millions of Muslims who believe exactly what Shahzad believes about the nature of jihad and the demands of sharia. It is of no moment to them that we do not see ourselves as at war with Islam, or that we see the victims of terrorism as “innocent.” They see things as Shahzad sees them, even if they are not willing to go the next step of commiting acts of terrorism, as Shahzad is.
From the perspective of American national security, it does not matter if those Muslims are wrong about Islam. What matters is that there are a lot of them and they constitute a mainstream current of Islamic thought. They have the support of influential Islamic scholars who tell them Islam is under siege, and they don’t care in the slightest whether Western intellectuals (at whom they scoff) or Muslim reformers (whom they regard as apostates) think they have interpreted Islam incorrectly.
Eventually there will be another Shahzad, a competent one. When he strikes, it won’t do much for our security to hear a President, a federal judge, a Homeland Security Secretary, an Attorney General, and a bunch of academics from Harvard and Georgetown tell us that a bad “extremist” has “perverted” or “hijacked” the “true Islam.” High-minded wishful thinking about how tiny the threat to us is won’t actually make it tiny.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
NY Governor's race: Are Voters Angry Enough to Elect this Guy ?
Angry Carl Paladino vs. Andrew Cuomo
This race promises to be interesting & entertaining.
Q&A: Carl Paladino Speaks
October 1, 2010
By Matthew Shaffer
On Wednesday, Carl Paladino went to Albany to accept the nomination of Bill Buckley’s old party — the Conservative Party of New York State — for governor of New York. Paladino was characteristically terse in his acceptance speech, which lasted less than a minute, but I managed to catch up with him at the bar afterwards, and we chatted about the race, Albany, and Andrew Cuomo. Here’s the conversation:
SHAFFER: How’d you like the convention?
PALADINO: I thought it was super.
SHAFFER: What does the Conservative party endorsement mean to you?
PALADINO: The endorsement means that we have another line going into the final. A party whose values I emulate is with me. Some polls say we’re only six behind. This is a competitive race.
SHAFFER: You guys are running an interesting campaign. You’ve sent stinking mail items to symbolize the trash in Albany, etc.
PALADINO: I don’t want to be polite. I don’t think campaigning is polite. That’s a disingenuous effort.
SHAFFER: What’s New York’s biggest problem?
PALADINO: Loss of hope. People are really upside down. They want a government they can trust. They want one that’s not going to raise their taxes by $15 billion and not lay off one state employee.
SHAFFER: New York isn’t doing too well economically. Jobs are leaving the state. Does your experience as a businessman inform your politics?
PALADINO: Buffalo’s problems are a poster-child for the entire state. Our state is way over-taxed. We have so many unnecessary bureaucratic burdens. Our budget was $137 billion for 19 million people. Florida’s was $74 billion for 18.2 million. Do the math.
SHAFFER: How will you bring taxes down 10 percent, as you promise?
PALADINO: I’ll cut them.
SHAFFER: Public sector unions are extremely powerful, though.
PALADINO: Are they really? Why do you say that? That’s your impression. They’ve been allowed access. When they’ve been allowed the access they’ve got, they can be powerful. They won’t have that in my administration.
SHAFFER: What will you do about corruption in Albany?
PALADINO: I’ll appoint a special prosecutor to root out corruption and prosecute them.
SHAFFER: What is Cuomo’s greatest vulnerability?
PALADINO: Lack of character and integrity. Lack of substantive values. An ego. Arrogance. Andrew’s part of the establishment. He’s part of the problem. People know that. He’s going down.
SHAFFER: What do you think the media should ask Cuomo?
PALADINO: I think he should be vetted. They ought to ask him the same questions they ask me, about my personal life. It’ll come soon enough. This will be the last time he will run for office. He’s making his own bed. So far, the press has basically just re-written his press releases and the phone calls they get from him. The press thinks it’s fair to be his bird-dog. I don’t think so.
SHAFFER: Cuomo published an editorial in the New York Daily News acting like he will be a small-government, tough-on-unions type. Is that believable?
PALADINO: Ever been to the zoo?
SHAFFER: Yes.
PALADINO: Ever seen the zebra in the zoo?
SHAFFER: Yes.
PALADINO: Ever seen the zebra change stripes?
SHAFFER: No.
PALADINO: I’ve got the same feeling about Cuomo.
SHAFFER: What’s your biggest challenge going forward?
PALADINO: I would really like Andrew to address issues with me. I would like people to see us side-by-side on each one of the issues, and compare us on each. We have 35 days left. I think we should have debates every day. He wants to hide from the press, he doesn’t want to take Q and A, and he won’t tell us what he’s going to do about Obamacare. How does he feel about it, about bringing these huge tax hikes to New York? We want to know, and he won’t answer. He just avoids the press. He knows he can because they’re on his side. They obviously are.
SHAFFER: Today some of your supporters brought up the issue of abortion.
PALADINO: I’m running on economic issues. Social issues aren’t in our interest this year. The people want to know how are we going to end this reckless spending, how are we going to get taxes down so we can expand jobs, expand our business base, give good, fulfilling jobs to our neighbors, and provide an atmosphere where people can feel grounded and tell their kids and grandkids that there’s a future for them in New York. We can avoid these peripheral issues for now.
SHAFFER: Why are so many young people leaving New York?
PALADINO: If you didn’t have a job, you’d probably leave, too.
SHAFFER: How do you think New York became one of the bluest states?
PALADINO: You’ve got Bloomberg down there saying, “America give us all your poor.” We’ve got the most lucrative and generous Medicaid and social services benefits anywhere in the country. What do you think is happening? They’re all coming here. Why are we inviting them? They’re the problem of where they’re coming from or the problem of the federal government. They’re not our problem.
This race promises to be interesting & entertaining.
Q&A: Carl Paladino Speaks
October 1, 2010
By Matthew Shaffer
On Wednesday, Carl Paladino went to Albany to accept the nomination of Bill Buckley’s old party — the Conservative Party of New York State — for governor of New York. Paladino was characteristically terse in his acceptance speech, which lasted less than a minute, but I managed to catch up with him at the bar afterwards, and we chatted about the race, Albany, and Andrew Cuomo. Here’s the conversation:
SHAFFER: How’d you like the convention?
PALADINO: I thought it was super.
SHAFFER: What does the Conservative party endorsement mean to you?
PALADINO: The endorsement means that we have another line going into the final. A party whose values I emulate is with me. Some polls say we’re only six behind. This is a competitive race.
SHAFFER: You guys are running an interesting campaign. You’ve sent stinking mail items to symbolize the trash in Albany, etc.
PALADINO: I don’t want to be polite. I don’t think campaigning is polite. That’s a disingenuous effort.
SHAFFER: What’s New York’s biggest problem?
PALADINO: Loss of hope. People are really upside down. They want a government they can trust. They want one that’s not going to raise their taxes by $15 billion and not lay off one state employee.
SHAFFER: New York isn’t doing too well economically. Jobs are leaving the state. Does your experience as a businessman inform your politics?
PALADINO: Buffalo’s problems are a poster-child for the entire state. Our state is way over-taxed. We have so many unnecessary bureaucratic burdens. Our budget was $137 billion for 19 million people. Florida’s was $74 billion for 18.2 million. Do the math.
SHAFFER: How will you bring taxes down 10 percent, as you promise?
PALADINO: I’ll cut them.
SHAFFER: Public sector unions are extremely powerful, though.
PALADINO: Are they really? Why do you say that? That’s your impression. They’ve been allowed access. When they’ve been allowed the access they’ve got, they can be powerful. They won’t have that in my administration.
SHAFFER: What will you do about corruption in Albany?
PALADINO: I’ll appoint a special prosecutor to root out corruption and prosecute them.
SHAFFER: What is Cuomo’s greatest vulnerability?
PALADINO: Lack of character and integrity. Lack of substantive values. An ego. Arrogance. Andrew’s part of the establishment. He’s part of the problem. People know that. He’s going down.
SHAFFER: What do you think the media should ask Cuomo?
PALADINO: I think he should be vetted. They ought to ask him the same questions they ask me, about my personal life. It’ll come soon enough. This will be the last time he will run for office. He’s making his own bed. So far, the press has basically just re-written his press releases and the phone calls they get from him. The press thinks it’s fair to be his bird-dog. I don’t think so.
SHAFFER: Cuomo published an editorial in the New York Daily News acting like he will be a small-government, tough-on-unions type. Is that believable?
PALADINO: Ever been to the zoo?
SHAFFER: Yes.
PALADINO: Ever seen the zebra in the zoo?
SHAFFER: Yes.
PALADINO: Ever seen the zebra change stripes?
SHAFFER: No.
PALADINO: I’ve got the same feeling about Cuomo.
SHAFFER: What’s your biggest challenge going forward?
PALADINO: I would really like Andrew to address issues with me. I would like people to see us side-by-side on each one of the issues, and compare us on each. We have 35 days left. I think we should have debates every day. He wants to hide from the press, he doesn’t want to take Q and A, and he won’t tell us what he’s going to do about Obamacare. How does he feel about it, about bringing these huge tax hikes to New York? We want to know, and he won’t answer. He just avoids the press. He knows he can because they’re on his side. They obviously are.
SHAFFER: Today some of your supporters brought up the issue of abortion.
PALADINO: I’m running on economic issues. Social issues aren’t in our interest this year. The people want to know how are we going to end this reckless spending, how are we going to get taxes down so we can expand jobs, expand our business base, give good, fulfilling jobs to our neighbors, and provide an atmosphere where people can feel grounded and tell their kids and grandkids that there’s a future for them in New York. We can avoid these peripheral issues for now.
SHAFFER: Why are so many young people leaving New York?
PALADINO: If you didn’t have a job, you’d probably leave, too.
SHAFFER: How do you think New York became one of the bluest states?
PALADINO: You’ve got Bloomberg down there saying, “America give us all your poor.” We’ve got the most lucrative and generous Medicaid and social services benefits anywhere in the country. What do you think is happening? They’re all coming here. Why are we inviting them? They’re the problem of where they’re coming from or the problem of the federal government. They’re not our problem.
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