BloggeRhythms

More bad news for the incumbent’s health care tax today. As should have been foreseen by the drafters of the tax, but obviously wasn’t, real world circumstances continue to undermine the tax itself, as innumerable flaws and misjudgments become disclosed at an alarming rate. 

 

The Hill reports today that, “Wal-Mart on Thursday blamed a recent profit slump on rising U.S. healthcare costs. The company lowered its guidance estimate for earnings per share from a range between $5.10 and $5.45 to a new range of $4.90 to $5.15 during a conference call with investors.

 

Charles Holley, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, said that's because of ‘headwinds from higher healthcare costs in the U.S. than previously estimated.’ Wal-Mart said its healthcare costs have increased $180 million, compared with last fiscal year. In 2014, Wal-Mart predicted its healthcare costs would be $500 million.”

 

Therefore, although Wal-Mart’s only one company, it must be assumed that similar results will occur throughout corporate America in varying degrees, curbing profits, lowering income, and in turn harming stockholders, employees and eventually customers via higher prices and/or diminishing services to offset rising healthcare costs.

 

Furthermore, the latest Fox News poll finds 52 percent oppose ObamaCare while 41 percent support it, which means that it’s not just big businesses disliking the tax and its ramifications.

 

Regarding another festering subject, while the IRS scandal may no longer be front page news every day, it by no means has gone away.

 

A federal judge, Emmet G. Sullivan,  is now demanding the IRS provide a more detailed explanation of what happened to the potentially thousands of missing emails of former agency official Lois Lerner.

 

As part of a case brought against the agency by a conservative watchdog group, the judge said the IRS must provide the declaration from an official with the “authority to speak under oath for the agency” by August 22. 

 

Which means that the odds are that, sooner or later, the diligence of the watch dog groups will result in uncovering the truth of what really occurred when the agency sought to curtail the activities of organizations opposed to the administration. Something the administration thought would be long-forgotten by now.

 

On another ongoing issue, it looks like global-warming isn’t the only subject AlGore was quite wrong about.

 

Eriq Gardner of The Hollywood Reporter, writes that “Current TV co-founders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt have launched a fraud and breach-of-contract lawsuit claiming that Al Jazeera is withholding money from its $500 million purchase of the cable news network.”

 

Delving further into the subject reveals that since the deal was made, Al Jazeera America has faced litigation from AT&T and DirecTV, although Al Jazeera has fought hard to keep details of the lawsuits under wraps. Additionally, Al Jazeera America also was dropped by Time Warner Cable for a time, but eventually returned to that service.

 

And finally, but extremely important, “when launching, Al Jazeera America went on an aggressive hiring spree. However, its ambitions have been dampened by weak ratings, sometimes falling below Current's.”

 

All of which means that for a lot of reasons, especially low viewership, this deal is nowhere as promising as it was when originally made. And, just like the weather, AlGore couldn’t predict accurately what would happen in the future. Which means he’s likely going to have collection problems and wind up simply blowing in the wind. 

 

Which brings us to today’s item regarding Bill Clinton’s wife.

 

Jamie Weinstein, Senior Editor of the Daily Caller writes that, “Ben Carson’s latest book has just overtaken Hillary Clinton’s new memoir in total book sales.

 

According to Nielsen BookScan numbers provided to The Daily Caller, as of Aug. 10, Carson’s “One Nation” has sold 225,000 copies, compared to 223,000 copies for Clinton’s “Hard Choices”

 

Nielsen BookScan’s survey “currently covers approximately 85 percent of the print book market,” according to the company.”

 

So, while readers apparently have far less interest in Bill’s wife’s book than they anticipated, the publisher, nonetheless, provided her a huge advance. Which means that she may have an opportunity to validate her much disputed comment about being “broke.” Because, after the publisher demands the advance she received to be returned, and the likely lawsuit to follow, maybe she will wind up destitute after all. 

 

That’s it for today folks.

 

Adios