And yet...I've enjoyed reading this exchange

on James Fallows' blog:"Is there any 'Reasoned' defense of the Atlas Shrugged Guy?"

Hearing both sides of an argument (even though most of the responses have been overwhelmingly on the progressive side) has encouraged me to re-examine my own assumptions about business owners and taxes.

The discussion began on November 5th with this installment: "What if the GOP Loses? 'Atlas Shrugged' vs. 'The Fire Next Time."  James Fallows then posted responses to the 'Atlas Shrugged' business owner, "No Love for the 'Atlas Shrugged' Guy." The 'Atlas Shrugged' business owner re-entered the fray here, "The 'Atlas Shrugged' Guy Pushes Back!" And Fallows provided a wrap-up here, "By Popular Demand: One Last Immersion in the World of the 'Atlas Shrugged' Guy," but then continued the discussion here, "Let's Get Back to the Atlas Shrugged Guy."

Misplaced Bitterness over Business

I'm getting all kinds of stories in my news feed of employers laying off people because they think the Affordable Care Act is going to destroy business--or, rather, they're using that assumption as an excuse to fire people who don't agree with them. An anonymous caller to C-Span--he said he was "Stu," from Williamson, Georgia, where he owns a "relatively small aviation service company"--described how he reduced the hours of his part-time workers so that he would not have to comply with what he claims he would be required to do under the Affordable Care Act, offer health care to part-time employees who work 30 hours a week. And he says that he fired two people whom he suspected had voted for Obama!

Where do people like this come from? Mordor?

According to a government information flyer for small businesses:

the health care law does not require businesses to provide insurance. For businesses with fewer than 50 full-time and full-time equivalent employees, there are no consequences for not providing health insurance. (quotes here and below from "Small Businesses and the Affordable Care Act," a link to which can be found on the Health.gov website: Newsroom: Brochures, Posters, and Outreach")

In addition, the on-line brochure calms the small business owner's fear of higher taxes associated with the Affordable Care Act:

There are no new taxes on small employers in the law. The health care law does not require any business to provide health insurance for their employees. However, starting in 2014, a large employer may have to pay an assessment if it does not offer affordable insurance and one of its employees gets tax credits to purchase insurance in the Exchange. These assessments do not apply to businesses with less than 50 employees. Large employers that do not offer health benefits coverage at all may be required to pay an assessment of $2,000 per year for each full- time employee, excluding the first 30 full-time employees.  Larger employers that do offer health benefits coverage that is unaffordable or lacks minimum value may be assessed a payment of $3,000 per year for each full-time employee receiving federal financial assistance. However, this payment cannot exceed the assessment the business would pay if it did not offer health care coverage. 

Note: the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that fewer than 2% of large American employers will have to pay these assessments.

Small business owners can also find more information here-- "Small Business and the Affordable Care Act," or on the IRS website, here-- "Small Business Health Care Tax Credit for Small Employers."

But, no, instead, small business owners such as Stu, who are disappointed that their presidential candidate did not win, would rather respond in ignorance and take out their bitterness on other people than face facts: the re-election of Barack Obama is not going to cause businesses to fail. The bone-headedness of business owners might, though.

These kinds of bitter, malicious, and vindictive responses to the re-election of President Barack Obama astound me.  

More on Business Owners from Mordor:
"Coal CEO Prays for Deliverance from Obama, Fires Workers," by Mark Joseph Stern, in Slate, 9 November 2012.

This is Bitterness

The owner of a coal company with headquarters in Utah who made it mandatory for his employees to attend a Romney rally in August and docked their pay for the same day because he closed the mine for the rally, has now layed off 102 miners. (h/t Think Progress--more on the coal mine owner's strong-arm techniques here: "Coal Miner's Donor, by Alec McGillis, in The New Republic, 4 October 2012)

Maybe James Fallows will follow up with news of the writer to his blog who said he would shut down his business if Barack Obama were re-elected.
 

The Day After

This is how my world looks the day after the 2012 presidential election. The only difference is that the sun is shining; yesterday was cloudy.

I do not get television reception here, and I don't subscribe to cable, so I missed the up-to-the-second updates on the polls. Instead, I would periodically check online to see how the numbers were adding up for President Barack Obama. So I didn't get that euphoric feeling one gets when news outlets first flash their announcements of the predictive winner. About forty minutes after Fox News called President Obama the predictive winner and Karl Rove argued to wait until more numbers came in, I checked Facebook, where my daughter had posted that now she could finally go to bed and another young friend posted "Obama ++." I sighed with relief.

I spent this historic occasion alone, crocheting, drinking a little wine and, later, hot chocolate, and watching Miss Marple Mysteries on Netflix, with two cats curled at my feet, a perfect picture of womanish old age. Tom, my husband, was at a meeting out-of-state, at a location where he could get no cell phone or internet connection. He has yet to respond to the celebratory message I e-mailed him last night.

Life goes on, as it would have done had Romney won, except that Mitt Romney was unable to move his party away from the lunatic fringe toward a more sane center, and thus all of President Barack Obama's achievements--most notably,  the Affordable Care Act--would have been lost. Now Obama's legacy will remain, and, according to Steve Kornacki, on Salon,  even Mitt Romney will benefit from this election, going down in history as the man who made Obamacare possible with the prior health care system he enacted in Massachusetts that served as the pattern for the Affordable Care Act.  History might well forget that Romney was pressured to disavow his healthcare program in order to maintain support of that radical fringe in his party.

Yes, I voted for Barack Obama, but I also voted against a recalcitrant Republican Party. I voted against obstructionism. I voted against torture.  I voted against all those radicals who showed up at rallies screaming that Barack Obama was a socialist or Hitler or the Anti-Christ. I voted against whoever put up that huge roadside sign along I-12 in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, advertising "Satan as Barack Obama." I voted against hate. I voted against racism. 

I sure hope the Republican Party can see that a lot of people voted against the far-right wing of their party as much as for Barack Obama. But I don't hold out much hope in the short term. No, the Republican Party needs to be cast out into the wilderness for a while, and that would mean losing Congress as well as the White House, and that didn't happen this election cycle. It needs to happen. 

I don't believe in the permanent ascendency of one political party because I think when one party governs for too long, that party loses its edge and falls into corruption. We need at least two parties, and I wish we could have a viable third party. But those parties should put the needs of the country ahead of partisan politics. Sure, they do and should have different views of governing, but they need to hammer out their differences in compromise. In that respect, the Republican Party failed miserably, as its leaders were far more determined to obstruct anything a Democratic president tried to achieve than they were determined to govern. And in their obstructionism, they pandered to racism.

 As Jacob Weisberg says, Mitt Romney lost because he had to cast himself as a right-wing extremist in order to win the nomination of his party.  Romney

had to pass muster with his party’s right-wing base on taxes, immigration, climate change, abortion, and gay rights. Many of his statements on these issues were patently insincere, but that was hardly reassuring. Romney’s very insincerity and flexibility made it improbable that he would stand up to the GOP’s hyper-partisan congressional wing once elected any more than he had during the primaries. [Jacob Weisberg, "Why Mitt Lost," in Slate, 7 November 2012]

I hope that leaders of the Republican Party realize this and do some soul-searching.

Meanwhile, we've got some serious issues to address in the four years ahead, and at the top of the list should be climate change, civil rights, and economic opportunity for those who have suffered the most from the financial crisis.