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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (33628)	3/25/2010 9:15:13 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Job Creation Here We Come By: Jonah Goldberg The Corner Press release: <<< DEERE SAYS NEW HEALTH CARE REFORM LAW WILL INCREASE 2010 EXPENSE BY $150 MILLION AFTER-TAX MOLINE, Illinois (March 25, 2010) — Deere & Company announced today that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law this week will adversely impact its expenses for fiscal 2010. As a result of the legislation, the company's expenses are expected to be about $150 million higher on an after-tax basis, primarily in the second quarter. This impact was not included in the 2010 outlook for net income attributable to Deere & Company of approximately $1.3 billion disclosed in the company's first-quarter earnings report on February 17th. >>>

To: Sully- who wrote (33628)	3/26/2010 5:03:05 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

If you want to reduce unemployment, stop passing legislation that kicks the snot out of employers. Mortgage Plan Tries to Mitigate an Unemployment Problem That the Administration Just Worsened Jim Geraghty THE CAMPAIGN SPOT An early point about the Obama administration's new plan to help homeowners by forcing banks and lenders to reduce monthly mortgage payments to 31 percent of income, usually unemployment insurance: <<< The new push, which the White House is scheduled to announce Friday, takes direct aim at the major cause of the current wave of foreclosures: the spike in unemployment. >>> As noted in several places, the new health-care bill has already made the cost of employees more expensive and taken away capital that could otherwise have been used to hire workers. Farm-equipment manufacturer John Deere "said it expects its expenses to rise by around $150 million on an after-tax basis, mainly in the second quarter, as a result of the legislation." Verizon "told employees in an email Tuesday that Verizon's costs will go up in the near term, pinpointing a tax-subsidy reduction for retiree health benefits." Heavy-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar "said that its first-quarter earnings will be hit with a $100 million after-tax charge under tax law changes attached to the new health care reform legislation." AK Steele Holding Corp., "the third largest U.S. steelmaker by sales, said it will record a non-cash charge of about $31 million resulting from the health-care overhaul signed into law by President Barack Obama. The charge will be recorded in the first quarter of 2010." Valero Energy "will take a $15 million to $20 million charge to second-quarter earnings for the same reason." Medical-device maker Medtronic "warned that new taxes on its products could force it to lay off a thousand workers." If you want to reduce unemployment, stop passing legislation that kicks the snot out of employers. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33628)	3/26/2010 8:30:14 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

AT&T Joins Growing List of Firms That Say Health Care Law Will Cut Into Their Profits FOXNews.com AT&T said Friday that it is preparing for President Obama's health care overhaul to cost the telecommunications giant an additional $1 billion in expenses in the first quarter, possibly forcing the company to cut benefits it offers to current and retired workers. AT&T is the latest and biggest company to account for the financial impact that the health care overhaul will have on its bottom line. It said the tax ramifications related to the legislation that Obama signed Tuesday will force it to take a non-cash charge -- an expense that does not require cash to be paid out but has to be charged against the company's earnings. Earlier this week, AK Steel Corp., Caterpillar, Deere and Valero Energy announced similar accounting charges, saying the health care law will raise their expenses. On Friday, 3M said it will also take a charge of $85 million to $90 million. But AT&T's charge is the largest disclosed so far. The other five's combined charges are less than half of the $1 billion that AT&T is planning. And the $1 billion is a third of AT&T's most recent quarterly profit. In the fourth quarter of 2009, the company earned $3 billion on revenue of $30.9 billion. The sweeping health care legislation that Obama signed into law Tuesday requires companies of a certain size to provide health care coverage to their workers in an effort to expand insurance to some 32 million Americans. Taxes on some companies are being raised to help defray the cost of the legislation. AT&T said Friday that the charge reflects changes to how Medicare subsidies are taxed. Companies say the health care overhaul will require them to start paying taxes next year on a subsidy they receive for retiree drug coverage. Business organizations, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have slammed the new law, arguing it will hurt companies by adding new costs and additional tax burdens. Chamber spokesman Blair Latoff said Friday in an e-mail that altering the tax law "will have a negative impact" on companies' cash flows, particularly in the first year of the law's enactment. Latoff added, "the government will quickly find out that by raising the costs for employers to provide retiree drug plans, they are incenting employers to drop these plans and send their employees to the Medicare program; in other words, the government will no longer pay a portion of their costs…it will pay all of their costs." Karl Rove, a senior aide to former President Bush and a Fox News contributor, also predicted that more companies will drop their retiree drug plans and "put the entire cost on the federal taxpayer." "There's no incentive any longer for them to continue to have a cordial relationship with their retirees by continuing to pay most of the cost of their drugs," he told Fox News. An Obama administration official did not respond to a request for comment on AT&T's announcement but the White House in the past has suggested that companies are exaggerating the impact of the loss because they oppose the new law. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the tax law closed a loophole. Under the 2003 Medicare prescription drug program, companies that provide prescription drug benefits for retirees have been able to receive subsidies covering 28 percent of eligible costs. But they could deduct the entire amount they spent on these drug benefits -- including the subsidies -- from their taxable income. The new law allows companies to only deduct the 72 percent they spent. The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress argue that under the old law, companies were in effect getting two deductions, not one, because they were able to deduct from the taxes they pay each year the amount of the subsidy the government was giving these companies to help them out. AT&T also said Friday that it is looking into changing the health care benefits it offers because of the new law. Analysts say retirees could lose the prescription drug coverage provided by their former employers as a result of the overhaul. Changes to benefits are unlikely to take effect immediately. Rather, the issue would most likely come up as part of contract negotiations between the company and unions representing its employees and retirees. AT&T is the largest private employer of union workers in the U.S. Candice Johnson, spokeswoman for the Communications Workers of America, which represents more than 160,000 AT&T workers, said these employees have contracts in place until 2012. An agreement covering retirees also runs through 2012. AT&T rival Verizon Communications Inc. was among 10 companies that sent a letter to congressional leaders in December warning that their costs would increase with the health care changes. Verizon spokesman Peter Thonis said the company had no comment. Fox Business' Dunstan Prial, Fox News' James Rosen and The Associated Press contributed to this repot. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33628)	3/27/2010 9:49:07 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Thugocracy Whipsaws Capitalism By: Andy McCarthy The Corner The notion that the pain of Obamacare would not really be felt for a few years has always been silly. It won't be fully felt, but he economy is dynamic. Corporations have to plan today for the conditions of tomorrow. More to the point, public corporations with disclosure obligations under the securities laws have to disclose today when developments change their outlook for tomorrow. Hence, AT&T's announcement that Obamacare will force it to take a $1 billion dollar charge -- the most alarming (but entirely predictable) bad news in a parade that, the Wall Street Journal's editors note, "includes Deere & Co., $150 million; Caterpillar, $100 million; AK Steel, $31 million; 3M, $90 million; and Valero Energy, up to $20 million." But here is the most frightful news yet about our new reality: People's Commissar Henry Waxman is now planning to haul the companies before his committee because their disclosures fail to play along with the our Leftist rulers' script that Obamacare "will expand coverage and bring down costs." As the Journal's editors observe: <<< Black-letter financial accounting rules require that corporations immediately restate their earnings to reflect the present value of their long-term health liabilities, including a higher tax burden. Should these companies have played chicken with the Securities and Exchange Commission to avoid this politically inconvenient reality? Democrats don't like what their bill is doing in the real world, so they now want to intimidate CEOs into keeping quiet. >>> Let me echo that. I worked for many years in the U.S. Attorney's Office in whose backyard was Wall Street. If a company like AT&T failed to make a legally mandated restatement of its financial position while continuing to participate in the capital markets, it would be investigated and the responsible management officials would likely find themselves prosecuted while the SEC, concurrently, went after the company and its officiallys in civil enforcement suits. There are prosecutors and investigators who would salivate at the prospect of doing such a career-making case. If we are now under a system where disclosure gets you a public whipping and other threats by the Powers That Be while nondisclosure promises the ruinous expenses of defending against criminal investigations and civil enforcement, this is no longer anything but a thugocracy. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33628)	3/31/2010 2:22:10 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Obamacare Costs Illinois Manufacturer $22 Million By: Jim Geraghty Campaign Spot Obamacare forces another company to change its financial outlook, this one in the president's old backyard. <<<< Illinois Tool Works Inc. (NYSE: ITW) today announced that as a result of certain provisions in the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care program, future Medicare prescription drug subsidies received by the Company for retiree prescription drug coverage will now be taxable. As a result, the Company expects to record a discrete tax adjustment of $22 million, or 4 cents of diluted income per share from continuing operations, in its 2010 first quarter results to reflect this change in tax treatment. This discrete tax adjustment was not included in the Company's March 15, 2010 revised earnings forecast. >>> At least the congressman who represents the district that includes their headquarters, Republican Mark Kirk, voted against the bill.

To: Sully- who wrote (33628)	3/31/2010 2:48:43 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Mind The GAAP By: Andrew Stuttaford The Corner Megan McArdle: <<< Accounting basics: when a company experiences what accountants call "a material adverse impact" on its expected future earnings, and those changes affect an item that is already on the balance sheet, the company is required to record the negative impact -- "to take the charge against earnings" -- as soon as it knows that the change is reasonably likely to occur. This makes good accounting sense. The asset on the balance sheet is now less valuable, so you should record a charge. Otherwise, you'd be misleading investors. The Democrats, however, seem to believe that Generally Accepted Accounting Principles are some sort of conspiracy against Obamacare, and all that is good and right in America. Here's the story: one of the provisions in the new health care law forces companies to treat the current subsidies for retiree health benefits as taxable income. This strikes me as dumb policy; there's not much point in giving someone a subsidy, and then taxing it back, unless you just like doing extra paperwork. And since the total cost of the subsidy, and any implied tax subsidy, is still less than we pay for an average Medicare Part D beneficiary, we may simply be encouraging companies to dump their retiree benefits and put everyone into Part D, costing us taxpayers extra money. But this is neither here nor there, because Congress already did it. And now a bunch of companies with generous retiree drug benefits have announced that they are taking large charges to reflect the cost of the change in the tax law. Henry Waxman thinks that's mean, and he's summoning the heads of those companies to Washington to explain themselves. It's not clear what they're supposed to explain. What they did is required by GAAP. And I've watched congressional hearings. There's no chance that four CEO's are going to explain the accounting code to the fine folks in Congress; explaining how to boil water would challenge the format. .