I am not surprised... are you?
------------------------------------------------
A new survey of 400 chief financial officers in the U.S. finds that nearly half of companies plan to cut back on employment in response to Obamacare.
Despite more optimism about the U.S. economy and their own companies, the quarterly survey, conducted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and CFO Magazine found that “48% of US CFOs say their firms are considering reducing employment in response to the Affordable Care Act.”
Twenty percent of CFOs said that they may hire fewer workers in response to Obamacare. Ten percent said that layoffs were a possibility while 40 percent of CFOs said they might decrease employees’ hours to below the 30-hour-a-week threshold.
Under Obamacare, companies with more the 50 employees must offer health insurance coverage to employees who work an average of 30 or more hours per week.
Besides altering the makeup of their workforces, companies said they also plan to change the health benefit packages offered to employees.
“Two-thirds of companies will change health benefits in response to ACA,” reads the Fuqua/CFO Magazine report summary.
Forty-four percent of CFOs said they are considering reducing health benefits for employees. Thirty-eight percent said that employees and retirees may be forced to contribute more to their health plans.
“The inadequacies of the ACA website have grabbed a lot of attention, even though many of those issues have been or can be fixed,” said John Graham, Duke Fuqua School of Business finance professor and director of the survey, in a press release.
“Our survey points to a more detrimental and potentially long-lasting problem. An unintended consequence of the Affordable Care Act will be a reduction in full-time employment growth in the United States,” the study says.
Graham said that companies plan to increase full-time employment by 1.4 percent over the next year, a decrease in expectations from the previous quarter.
“CFOs indicate that full-time employment growth would be stronger in the absence of the ACA,” said Graham.
“I doubt the advocates of this legislation would have foretold the negative impact on employment,” said Campbell R. Harvey, a Fuqua finance professor and survey director, also in a press release.
“The impact on the real economy is startling. Nearly one-third of firms may either terminate employees or hire fewer people in the future as a direct result of ACA.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/12/su...#ixzz2nKMTpEIJ
- IIFFOFRDB
- 12-12-2013, 09:55 PM
- IIFFOFRDB
- 12-12-2013, 10:05 PM
The Lie of the Year....
The article:
Lie of the Year: 'If you like your health care plan, you can keep it'
By Angie Drobnic Holan
Published on Thursday, December 12th, 2013 at 4:44 p.m.
We counted dozens of times that President Barack Obama said that if people liked their health plans, they could keep them.
It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to America’s health insurance system.
"If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," President Barack Obama said -- many times -- of his landmark new law.
But the promise was impossible to keep.
So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized Obama’s breezy assurances were wrong.
Boiling down the complicated health care law to a soundbite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief. Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.
For all of these reasons, PolitiFact has named "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," the Lie of the Year for 2013. Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice. (PolitiFact first announced its selection on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper.)
For four of the past five years, PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year has revolved around the health care law, which has been subject to more erroneous attacks than any other piece of legislation PolitiFact has fact-checked.
Obama’s ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the law’s real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best.
Instead, he fought back against inaccurate attacks with his own oversimplifications, which he repeated even as it became clear his promise was too sweeping.
The debate about the health care law rages on, but friends and foes of Obamacare have found one slice of common ground: The president’s "you can keep it" claim has been a real hit to his credibility.
Why the cancellations happened
How did we get to this point?
The Affordable Care Act tried to allow existing health plans to continue under a complicated process called "grandfathering," which basically said insurance companies could keep selling plans if they followed certain rules.
The problem for insurers was that the Obamacare rules were strict. If the plans deviated even a little, they would lose their grandfathered status. In practice, that meant insurers canceled plans that didn’t meet new standards.
Obama’s team seemed to understand that likelihood. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the grandfathering rules in June 2010 and acknowledged that some plans would go away. Yet Obama repeated "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" when seeking re-election last year.
In 2009 and again in 2012, PolitiFact rated Obama’s statement Half True, which means the statement is partially correct and partially wrong. We noted that while the law took pains to leave some parts of the insurance market alone, people were not guaranteed to keep insurance through thick and thin. It was likely that some private insurers would continue to force people to switch plans, and that trend might even accelerate.
In the final months of 2013, several critical elements of the health care law were being enacted, and media attention was at its height. Healthcare.gov made its debut on Oct. 1. It didn’t take long for the media, the public and Obama’s own team to realize the website was a technological mess, freezing out customers and generally not working.
Also on Oct. 1, insurers started sending out cancellation letters for 2014.
No one knows exactly how many people got notices, because the health insurance market is largely private and highly fragmented. Analysts estimated the number at about 4 million (and potentially higher), out of a total insured population of about 262 million.
That was less than 2 percent, but there was no shortage of powerful anecdotes about canceled coverage.
One example: PBS Newshour interviewed a woman from Washington, D.C., who was a supporter of the health care law and found her policy canceled. New policies had significantly higher rates. She told Newshour that the only thing the new policy covered that her old one didn’t was maternity care and pediatric services. And she was 58.
"The chance of me having a child at this age is zero. So, you know, I ask the president, why do I have to pay an additional $5,000 a year for maternity coverage that I will never, ever need?" asked Deborah Persico.
The administration’s botched response
Initially, Obama and his team didn’t budge.
First, they tried to shift blame to insurers. "FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans," said Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to Obama, on Oct. 28.
PolitiFact rated her statement False. The restrictions on grandfathering were part of the law, and they were driving cancellations.
Then, they tried to change the subject. "It’s important to remember both before the ACA was ever even a gleam in anybody’s eye, let alone passed into law, that insurance companies were doing this all the time, especially in the individual market because it was lightly regulated and the incentives were so skewed," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
But what really set everyone off was when Obama tried to rewrite his slogan, telling political supporters on Nov. 4, "Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law, and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed."
Pants on Fire! PolitiFact counted 37 times when he’d included no caveats, such as a high-profile speech to the American Medical Association in 2009: "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."
Even Obama’s staunchest allies cried foul.
On Nov. 6, columnist Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune wrote that the public "was entitled to hear the unvarnished truth, not spin, from their president about what they were about to face. I don't feel good about calling out Obama's whopper, because I support most of his policies and programs. But in this instance, he would have to be delusional to think he was telling the truth."
The next day, Obama apologized during a lengthy interview with NBC News’ Chuck Todd.
"We weren’t as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place, and I want to do everything we can to make sure that people are finding themselves in a good position, a better position than they were before this law happened. And I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he said.
Political fist-fight
The reaction from conservative talk shows was withering. On Nov. 11, Sean Hannity put Obama’s statements up there with President Richard Nixon’s "I am not a crook," and President Bill Clinton’s "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
On the liberal network MSNBC, Joy-Ann Reid said the Obama administration’s intention was to fight off attacks like the ones that scuttled Clinton’s health proposals in the early 1990s.
"That’s why the administration boiled it down to that, if you like your health care, you can keep it. Big mistake, but it was a mistake that I think came a little bit out of the lesson" of the Clinton years, she said Nov. 12.
Two days later, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi defended Obama’s statement as accurate and blamed insurance companies. "Did I ever tell my constituents that, if they like their plan, they could keep it? I would have, if I'd ever met anybody who liked his or her plan, but that was not my experience," she said.
Obama offered an administrative fix that same day, allowing state insurance commissioners to extend current plans. But only some have chosen to do so.
In announcing the fix, Obama again conceded he had exaggerated. "There is no doubt that the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate," he said. "It was not because of my intention not to deliver on that commitment and that promise. We put a grandfather clause into the law, but it was insufficient."
It is too soon to say what the lasting impact of "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" will be.
The president’s favorability ratings have tumbled in recent weeks.
A Pew Research/USA Today poll conducted Dec. 3-8 found the percentage of people viewing Obama as "not trustworthy" has risen 15 points over the course of the year, from 30 percent to 45 percent.
Much depends on the law’s continuing implementation and other events during Obama’s final three years in office, said Larry Sabato, a political scientist who runs the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Still, Obama has work to do to win back public trust, Sabato said.
"A whole series of presidents developed credibility gaps, because people didn’t trust what they were saying anymore. And that’s Obama’s real problem," he said. "Once you lose the trust of a substantial part of the American public, how do you get it back?"
The article:
Lie of the Year: 'If you like your health care plan, you can keep it'
By Angie Drobnic Holan
Published on Thursday, December 12th, 2013 at 4:44 p.m.
We counted dozens of times that President Barack Obama said that if people liked their health plans, they could keep them.
It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to America’s health insurance system.
"If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," President Barack Obama said -- many times -- of his landmark new law.
But the promise was impossible to keep.
So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized Obama’s breezy assurances were wrong.
Boiling down the complicated health care law to a soundbite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief. Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.
For all of these reasons, PolitiFact has named "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," the Lie of the Year for 2013. Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice. (PolitiFact first announced its selection on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper.)
For four of the past five years, PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year has revolved around the health care law, which has been subject to more erroneous attacks than any other piece of legislation PolitiFact has fact-checked.
Obama’s ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the law’s real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best.
Instead, he fought back against inaccurate attacks with his own oversimplifications, which he repeated even as it became clear his promise was too sweeping.
The debate about the health care law rages on, but friends and foes of Obamacare have found one slice of common ground: The president’s "you can keep it" claim has been a real hit to his credibility.
Why the cancellations happened
How did we get to this point?
The Affordable Care Act tried to allow existing health plans to continue under a complicated process called "grandfathering," which basically said insurance companies could keep selling plans if they followed certain rules.
The problem for insurers was that the Obamacare rules were strict. If the plans deviated even a little, they would lose their grandfathered status. In practice, that meant insurers canceled plans that didn’t meet new standards.
Obama’s team seemed to understand that likelihood. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the grandfathering rules in June 2010 and acknowledged that some plans would go away. Yet Obama repeated "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" when seeking re-election last year.
In 2009 and again in 2012, PolitiFact rated Obama’s statement Half True, which means the statement is partially correct and partially wrong. We noted that while the law took pains to leave some parts of the insurance market alone, people were not guaranteed to keep insurance through thick and thin. It was likely that some private insurers would continue to force people to switch plans, and that trend might even accelerate.
In the final months of 2013, several critical elements of the health care law were being enacted, and media attention was at its height. Healthcare.gov made its debut on Oct. 1. It didn’t take long for the media, the public and Obama’s own team to realize the website was a technological mess, freezing out customers and generally not working.
Also on Oct. 1, insurers started sending out cancellation letters for 2014.
No one knows exactly how many people got notices, because the health insurance market is largely private and highly fragmented. Analysts estimated the number at about 4 million (and potentially higher), out of a total insured population of about 262 million.
That was less than 2 percent, but there was no shortage of powerful anecdotes about canceled coverage.
One example: PBS Newshour interviewed a woman from Washington, D.C., who was a supporter of the health care law and found her policy canceled. New policies had significantly higher rates. She told Newshour that the only thing the new policy covered that her old one didn’t was maternity care and pediatric services. And she was 58.
"The chance of me having a child at this age is zero. So, you know, I ask the president, why do I have to pay an additional $5,000 a year for maternity coverage that I will never, ever need?" asked Deborah Persico.
The administration’s botched response
Initially, Obama and his team didn’t budge.
First, they tried to shift blame to insurers. "FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans," said Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to Obama, on Oct. 28.
PolitiFact rated her statement False. The restrictions on grandfathering were part of the law, and they were driving cancellations.
Then, they tried to change the subject. "It’s important to remember both before the ACA was ever even a gleam in anybody’s eye, let alone passed into law, that insurance companies were doing this all the time, especially in the individual market because it was lightly regulated and the incentives were so skewed," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
But what really set everyone off was when Obama tried to rewrite his slogan, telling political supporters on Nov. 4, "Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law, and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed."
Pants on Fire! PolitiFact counted 37 times when he’d included no caveats, such as a high-profile speech to the American Medical Association in 2009: "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."
Even Obama’s staunchest allies cried foul.
On Nov. 6, columnist Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune wrote that the public "was entitled to hear the unvarnished truth, not spin, from their president about what they were about to face. I don't feel good about calling out Obama's whopper, because I support most of his policies and programs. But in this instance, he would have to be delusional to think he was telling the truth."
The next day, Obama apologized during a lengthy interview with NBC News’ Chuck Todd.
"We weren’t as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place, and I want to do everything we can to make sure that people are finding themselves in a good position, a better position than they were before this law happened. And I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he said.
Political fist-fight
The reaction from conservative talk shows was withering. On Nov. 11, Sean Hannity put Obama’s statements up there with President Richard Nixon’s "I am not a crook," and President Bill Clinton’s "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
On the liberal network MSNBC, Joy-Ann Reid said the Obama administration’s intention was to fight off attacks like the ones that scuttled Clinton’s health proposals in the early 1990s.
"That’s why the administration boiled it down to that, if you like your health care, you can keep it. Big mistake, but it was a mistake that I think came a little bit out of the lesson" of the Clinton years, she said Nov. 12.
Two days later, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi defended Obama’s statement as accurate and blamed insurance companies. "Did I ever tell my constituents that, if they like their plan, they could keep it? I would have, if I'd ever met anybody who liked his or her plan, but that was not my experience," she said.
Obama offered an administrative fix that same day, allowing state insurance commissioners to extend current plans. But only some have chosen to do so.
In announcing the fix, Obama again conceded he had exaggerated. "There is no doubt that the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate," he said. "It was not because of my intention not to deliver on that commitment and that promise. We put a grandfather clause into the law, but it was insufficient."
It is too soon to say what the lasting impact of "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" will be.
The president’s favorability ratings have tumbled in recent weeks.
A Pew Research/USA Today poll conducted Dec. 3-8 found the percentage of people viewing Obama as "not trustworthy" has risen 15 points over the course of the year, from 30 percent to 45 percent.
Much depends on the law’s continuing implementation and other events during Obama’s final three years in office, said Larry Sabato, a political scientist who runs the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Still, Obama has work to do to win back public trust, Sabato said.
"A whole series of presidents developed credibility gaps, because people didn’t trust what they were saying anymore. And that’s Obama’s real problem," he said. "Once you lose the trust of a substantial part of the American public, how do you get it back?"
- IIFFOFRDB
- 12-12-2013, 10:07 PM
^^ THE LIE OF THE DECADE^^
- IIFFOFRDB
- 12-12-2013, 10:31 PM
36%= Assy Cunt, biggen and CBJ... love this shit
by Frank Newport
PRINCETON, NJ -- More than one-third of Americans (36%) have a positive image of "socialism," while 58% have a negative image. Views differ by party and ideology, with a majority of Democrats and liberals saying they have a positive view of socialism, compared to a minority of Republicans and conservatives.
Americans' Image of Socialism
"Democrats and Republicans agree in their ratings of several of the terms, but differ significantly in their ratings of others -- in particular, capitalism, the federal government, and socialism."
"Socialism" was one of seven terms included in a Jan. 26-27 Gallup poll. Americans were asked to indicate whether their top-of-mind reactions to each were positive or negative. Respondents were not given explanations or descriptions of the terms.
Americans are almost uniformly positive in their reactions to three terms: small business, free enterprise, and entrepreneurs. They are divided on big business and the federal government, with roughly as many Americans saying their view is positive as say it is negative. Americans are more positive than negative on capitalism (61% versus 33%) and more negative than positive on socialism (36% to 58%).
Images (Positive or Negative) of Seven Entities, Among All Americans
Democrats and Republicans agree in their ratings of several of the terms, but differ significantly in their ratings of others -- in particular, capitalism, the federal government, and socialism.
Images (Positive or Negative) of Seven Entities, by Party ID
In similar fashion, there is little distinction across ideological groups -- conservatives, moderates, and liberals -- in the ratings of several of these terms, but more significant differences in response to others, such as big business, the federal government, and socialism.
Images (Positive or Negative) of Seven Entities, by Ideology
These differences will be discussed in the sections that follow.
Socialism
Socialism had the lowest percentage positive rating and the highest negative rating of any term tested. Still, more than a third of Americans say they have a positive image of socialism.
Exactly how Americans define "socialism" or what exactly they think of when they hear the word is not known. The research simply measures Americans' reactions when a survey interviewer reads the word to them -- an exercise that helps shed light on connotations associated with this frequently used term.
There are significant differences in reactions to "socialism" across ideological and partisan groups:
A majority of 53% of Democrats have a positive image of socialism, compared to 17% of Republicans.
Sixty-one percent of liberals say their image of socialism is positive, compared to 39% of moderates and 20% of conservatives.
Capitalism
"Capitalism," the word typically used to describe the United States' prevailing economic system, generates positive ratings from a majority of Americans, with a third saying their reaction is negative.
As was the case with "socialism," there are differences across population segments.
Republicans are significantly more positive than Democrats in their reactions to "capitalism," although majorities of both groups have favorable opinions.
Opinions of the word by ideology are divided in an unusual, though modest, way. Conservatives have the highest positive image, followed by liberals. Moderates have somewhat lower positive ratings than either of these groups.
One might expect those with negative attitudes toward capitalism to be more likely than others to have positive attitudes toward socialism. That is indeed the case, but the difference in positive attitudes toward socialism between those with positive and those with negative attitudes toward capitalism is fairly modest: 33% vs. 43%, respectively.
Free Enterprise
Eighty-six percent of respondents rated the term "free enterprise" positively, giving it substantially more positive ratings than "capitalism." Although in theory these two concepts are not precisely the same, they are in many ways functional equivalents. Yet, underscoring the conventional wisdom that words matter, the public clearly reacts differently to the two terms. Free enterprise as a concept rings more positively to the average American than does the term capitalism.
Strongly positive ratings of free enterprise are generally uniform across both partisan groups, and across the three ideological groups.
Small Business and Big Business
"Small business" is the most positively rated term of the seven included in the list, with a nearly universal positive rating of 95%.
In contrast, Americans were sharply divided when asked to react to the term "big business," with 49% of respondents rating the term positively and 49% negatively.
This contrast in images, based on whether the adjective "small" or "big" is placed in front of "business," confirms a number of previous Gallup findings. Americans have a strong tendency to react positively to "small" and negatively to "big" when it describes business entities.
There is remarkably little difference between Republicans and Democrats in their ratings of the images of small and big business. Both partisan groups are overwhelmingly positive about the former, and roughly half of both partisan groups rate the latter positively. The finding that Democrats and Republicans have roughly equal reactions to big business is significant given the usual assumption that Republicans are more sympathetic to large businesses and corporations than are Democrats. These data do not confirm that hypothesis at the rank-and-file level.
All three ideological groups rate small business very positively.
Big business is rated positively by 57% of conservatives. Less than half of both moderates (46%) and liberals (38%) have positive images of big business.
Entrepreneurs
Because "entrepreneurs" are usually by definition associated with start-ups of small businesses, it is not unexpected to find that the term generates nearly the same level of positive reaction as did the term small business.
And, as was the case for small business, there is little distinction in ratings of entrepreneurs across partisan or ideological groups.
The Federal Government
Americans' reactions to the term "the federal government" are similar to those for "big business," with about half rating the term positively and half negatively. However, while there are only minimal partisan differences in reactions to "big business," there are substantial differences in reactions to the federal government, which may reflect the current partisan control of the White House and Congress.
Democrats are much more positive about the federal government than are Republicans.
Liberals are over twice as likely as conservatives to have a positive image of the federal government, with reactions of moderates in between those of these two groups.
Bottom Line
As most politicians and many in business have learned, the choice of words to describe a concept or a policy can often make a substantial difference in the public's reaction. The current research confirms that assumption.
"Socialism" is not a completely negative term in today's America. About a third of Americans respond positively when they hear the term. Some of this reaction may reflect unusual or unclear understandings of what socialism means. Reaction to the term is not random, however, as attested by the finding that positive images are significantly differentiated by politics and ideology.
It is apparent that "free enterprise" evokes more positive responses than "capitalism," despite the apparent similarity between the two terms.
President Barack Obama made frequent positive references to small business in his recent State of the Union address, perhaps aware of the very positive associations Americans have with that term. In particular, this research underscores the fact that Americans' image of business can vary substantially, depending on whether it is described as small or big. Along these same lines, it is perhaps not surprising to find that entrepreneurs are held in high esteem by Americans.
The finding that Americans have mixed reactions to the term "the federal government" is not new. Much previous research has shown that at this point in history, a majority of Americans are not enamored with the federal government, particularly the legislative branch.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 972 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Jan. 26-27, 2010. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones and cellular phones.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
by Frank Newport
PRINCETON, NJ -- More than one-third of Americans (36%) have a positive image of "socialism," while 58% have a negative image. Views differ by party and ideology, with a majority of Democrats and liberals saying they have a positive view of socialism, compared to a minority of Republicans and conservatives.
Americans' Image of Socialism
"Democrats and Republicans agree in their ratings of several of the terms, but differ significantly in their ratings of others -- in particular, capitalism, the federal government, and socialism."
"Socialism" was one of seven terms included in a Jan. 26-27 Gallup poll. Americans were asked to indicate whether their top-of-mind reactions to each were positive or negative. Respondents were not given explanations or descriptions of the terms.
Americans are almost uniformly positive in their reactions to three terms: small business, free enterprise, and entrepreneurs. They are divided on big business and the federal government, with roughly as many Americans saying their view is positive as say it is negative. Americans are more positive than negative on capitalism (61% versus 33%) and more negative than positive on socialism (36% to 58%).
Images (Positive or Negative) of Seven Entities, Among All Americans
Democrats and Republicans agree in their ratings of several of the terms, but differ significantly in their ratings of others -- in particular, capitalism, the federal government, and socialism.
Images (Positive or Negative) of Seven Entities, by Party ID
In similar fashion, there is little distinction across ideological groups -- conservatives, moderates, and liberals -- in the ratings of several of these terms, but more significant differences in response to others, such as big business, the federal government, and socialism.
Images (Positive or Negative) of Seven Entities, by Ideology
These differences will be discussed in the sections that follow.
Socialism
Socialism had the lowest percentage positive rating and the highest negative rating of any term tested. Still, more than a third of Americans say they have a positive image of socialism.
Exactly how Americans define "socialism" or what exactly they think of when they hear the word is not known. The research simply measures Americans' reactions when a survey interviewer reads the word to them -- an exercise that helps shed light on connotations associated with this frequently used term.
There are significant differences in reactions to "socialism" across ideological and partisan groups:
A majority of 53% of Democrats have a positive image of socialism, compared to 17% of Republicans.
Sixty-one percent of liberals say their image of socialism is positive, compared to 39% of moderates and 20% of conservatives.
Capitalism
"Capitalism," the word typically used to describe the United States' prevailing economic system, generates positive ratings from a majority of Americans, with a third saying their reaction is negative.
As was the case with "socialism," there are differences across population segments.
Republicans are significantly more positive than Democrats in their reactions to "capitalism," although majorities of both groups have favorable opinions.
Opinions of the word by ideology are divided in an unusual, though modest, way. Conservatives have the highest positive image, followed by liberals. Moderates have somewhat lower positive ratings than either of these groups.
One might expect those with negative attitudes toward capitalism to be more likely than others to have positive attitudes toward socialism. That is indeed the case, but the difference in positive attitudes toward socialism between those with positive and those with negative attitudes toward capitalism is fairly modest: 33% vs. 43%, respectively.
Free Enterprise
Eighty-six percent of respondents rated the term "free enterprise" positively, giving it substantially more positive ratings than "capitalism." Although in theory these two concepts are not precisely the same, they are in many ways functional equivalents. Yet, underscoring the conventional wisdom that words matter, the public clearly reacts differently to the two terms. Free enterprise as a concept rings more positively to the average American than does the term capitalism.
Strongly positive ratings of free enterprise are generally uniform across both partisan groups, and across the three ideological groups.
Small Business and Big Business
"Small business" is the most positively rated term of the seven included in the list, with a nearly universal positive rating of 95%.
In contrast, Americans were sharply divided when asked to react to the term "big business," with 49% of respondents rating the term positively and 49% negatively.
This contrast in images, based on whether the adjective "small" or "big" is placed in front of "business," confirms a number of previous Gallup findings. Americans have a strong tendency to react positively to "small" and negatively to "big" when it describes business entities.
There is remarkably little difference between Republicans and Democrats in their ratings of the images of small and big business. Both partisan groups are overwhelmingly positive about the former, and roughly half of both partisan groups rate the latter positively. The finding that Democrats and Republicans have roughly equal reactions to big business is significant given the usual assumption that Republicans are more sympathetic to large businesses and corporations than are Democrats. These data do not confirm that hypothesis at the rank-and-file level.
All three ideological groups rate small business very positively.
Big business is rated positively by 57% of conservatives. Less than half of both moderates (46%) and liberals (38%) have positive images of big business.
Entrepreneurs
Because "entrepreneurs" are usually by definition associated with start-ups of small businesses, it is not unexpected to find that the term generates nearly the same level of positive reaction as did the term small business.
And, as was the case for small business, there is little distinction in ratings of entrepreneurs across partisan or ideological groups.
The Federal Government
Americans' reactions to the term "the federal government" are similar to those for "big business," with about half rating the term positively and half negatively. However, while there are only minimal partisan differences in reactions to "big business," there are substantial differences in reactions to the federal government, which may reflect the current partisan control of the White House and Congress.
Democrats are much more positive about the federal government than are Republicans.
Liberals are over twice as likely as conservatives to have a positive image of the federal government, with reactions of moderates in between those of these two groups.
Bottom Line
As most politicians and many in business have learned, the choice of words to describe a concept or a policy can often make a substantial difference in the public's reaction. The current research confirms that assumption.
"Socialism" is not a completely negative term in today's America. About a third of Americans respond positively when they hear the term. Some of this reaction may reflect unusual or unclear understandings of what socialism means. Reaction to the term is not random, however, as attested by the finding that positive images are significantly differentiated by politics and ideology.
It is apparent that "free enterprise" evokes more positive responses than "capitalism," despite the apparent similarity between the two terms.
President Barack Obama made frequent positive references to small business in his recent State of the Union address, perhaps aware of the very positive associations Americans have with that term. In particular, this research underscores the fact that Americans' image of business can vary substantially, depending on whether it is described as small or big. Along these same lines, it is perhaps not surprising to find that entrepreneurs are held in high esteem by Americans.
The finding that Americans have mixed reactions to the term "the federal government" is not new. Much previous research has shown that at this point in history, a majority of Americans are not enamored with the federal government, particularly the legislative branch.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 972 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Jan. 26-27, 2010. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones and cellular phones.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
- I B Hankering
- 12-12-2013, 10:39 PM
The Lie of the Year....+1
The article:
Lie of the Year: 'If you like your health care plan, you can keep it'
By Angie Drobnic Holan
Published on Thursday, December 12th, 2013 at 4:44 p.m.
We counted dozens of times that President Barack Obama said that if people liked their health plans, they could keep them.
It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to America’s health insurance system.
"If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," President Barack Obama said -- many times -- of his landmark new law.
But the promise was impossible to keep.
So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized Obama’s breezy assurances were wrong.
Boiling down the complicated health care law to a soundbite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief. Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.
For all of these reasons, PolitiFact has named "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," the Lie of the Year for 2013. Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice. (PolitiFact first announced its selection on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper.)
For four of the past five years, PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year has revolved around the health care law, which has been subject to more erroneous attacks than any other piece of legislation PolitiFact has fact-checked.
Obama’s ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the law’s real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best.
Instead, he fought back against inaccurate attacks with his own oversimplifications, which he repeated even as it became clear his promise was too sweeping.
The debate about the health care law rages on, but friends and foes of Obamacare have found one slice of common ground: The president’s "you can keep it" claim has been a real hit to his credibility.
Why the cancellations happened
How did we get to this point?
The Affordable Care Act tried to allow existing health plans to continue under a complicated process called "grandfathering," which basically said insurance companies could keep selling plans if they followed certain rules.
The problem for insurers was that the Obamacare rules were strict. If the plans deviated even a little, they would lose their grandfathered status. In practice, that meant insurers canceled plans that didn’t meet new standards.
Obama’s team seemed to understand that likelihood. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the grandfathering rules in June 2010 and acknowledged that some plans would go away. Yet Obama repeated "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" when seeking re-election last year.
In 2009 and again in 2012, PolitiFact rated Obama’s statement Half True, which means the statement is partially correct and partially wrong. We noted that while the law took pains to leave some parts of the insurance market alone, people were not guaranteed to keep insurance through thick and thin. It was likely that some private insurers would continue to force people to switch plans, and that trend might even accelerate.
In the final months of 2013, several critical elements of the health care law were being enacted, and media attention was at its height. Healthcare.gov made its debut on Oct. 1. It didn’t take long for the media, the public and Obama’s own team to realize the website was a technological mess, freezing out customers and generally not working.
Also on Oct. 1, insurers started sending out cancellation letters for 2014.
No one knows exactly how many people got notices, because the health insurance market is largely private and highly fragmented. Analysts estimated the number at about 4 million (and potentially higher), out of a total insured population of about 262 million.
That was less than 2 percent, but there was no shortage of powerful anecdotes about canceled coverage.
One example: PBS Newshour interviewed a woman from Washington, D.C., who was a supporter of the health care law and found her policy canceled. New policies had significantly higher rates. She told Newshour that the only thing the new policy covered that her old one didn’t was maternity care and pediatric services. And she was 58.
"The chance of me having a child at this age is zero. So, you know, I ask the president, why do I have to pay an additional $5,000 a year for maternity coverage that I will never, ever need?" asked Deborah Persico.
The administration’s botched response
Initially, Obama and his team didn’t budge.
First, they tried to shift blame to insurers. "FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans," said Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to Obama, on Oct. 28.
PolitiFact rated her statement False. The restrictions on grandfathering were part of the law, and they were driving cancellations.
Then, they tried to change the subject. "It’s important to remember both before the ACA was ever even a gleam in anybody’s eye, let alone passed into law, that insurance companies were doing this all the time, especially in the individual market because it was lightly regulated and the incentives were so skewed," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
But what really set everyone off was when Obama tried to rewrite his slogan, telling political supporters on Nov. 4, "Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law, and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed."
Pants on Fire! PolitiFact counted 37 times when he’d included no caveats, such as a high-profile speech to the American Medical Association in 2009: "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."
Even Obama’s staunchest allies cried foul.
On Nov. 6, columnist Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune wrote that the public "was entitled to hear the unvarnished truth, not spin, from their president about what they were about to face. I don't feel good about calling out Obama's whopper, because I support most of his policies and programs. But in this instance, he would have to be delusional to think he was telling the truth."
The next day, Obama apologized during a lengthy interview with NBC News’ Chuck Todd.
"We weren’t as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place, and I want to do everything we can to make sure that people are finding themselves in a good position, a better position than they were before this law happened. And I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he said.
Political fist-fight
The reaction from conservative talk shows was withering. On Nov. 11, Sean Hannity put Obama’s statements up there with President Richard Nixon’s "I am not a crook," and President Bill Clinton’s "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
On the liberal network MSNBC, Joy-Ann Reid said the Obama administration’s intention was to fight off attacks like the ones that scuttled Clinton’s health proposals in the early 1990s.
"That’s why the administration boiled it down to that, if you like your health care, you can keep it. Big mistake, but it was a mistake that I think came a little bit out of the lesson" of the Clinton years, she said Nov. 12.
Two days later, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi defended Obama’s statement as accurate and blamed insurance companies. "Did I ever tell my constituents that, if they like their plan, they could keep it? I would have, if I'd ever met anybody who liked his or her plan, but that was not my experience," she said.
Obama offered an administrative fix that same day, allowing state insurance commissioners to extend current plans. But only some have chosen to do so.
In announcing the fix, Obama again conceded he had exaggerated. "There is no doubt that the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate," he said. "It was not because of my intention not to deliver on that commitment and that promise. We put a grandfather clause into the law, but it was insufficient."
It is too soon to say what the lasting impact of "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" will be.
The president’s favorability ratings have tumbled in recent weeks.
A Pew Research/USA Today poll conducted Dec. 3-8 found the percentage of people viewing Obama as "not trustworthy" has risen 15 points over the course of the year, from 30 percent to 45 percent.
Much depends on the law’s continuing implementation and other events during Obama’s final three years in office, said Larry Sabato, a political scientist who runs the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Still, Obama has work to do to win back public trust, Sabato said.
"A whole series of presidents developed credibility gaps, because people didn’t trust what they were saying anymore. And that’s Obama’s real problem," he said. "Once you lose the trust of a substantial part of the American public, how do you get it back?" Originally Posted by IIFFOFRDB
- Yssup Rider
- 12-12-2013, 11:27 PM
bottom of the page is an ad, saying "DONT JERK OFF YET --"
Too late for you two!
hillbilly sex. Just like in the plantation days...
Too late for you two!
hillbilly sex. Just like in the plantation days...
- CuteOldGuy
- 12-12-2013, 11:54 PM
If you want AssupRidee, DEM, to understand your posts, guys, you need to make sure there are pictures. Words and stuff confuse him, which is why he repeats himself so often. Show our Dipshit EMERITUS some respect. Use small words and pictures that he can comprehend.
Thank you.
Thank you.
- nevergaveitathought
- 12-13-2013, 08:24 AM
is "you can keep your doctor and health plan, PERIOD!" his biggest lie?
it was a winning lie for as long as it worked.
we could run through some of his lies, he used some to get elected, some to push an agenda, some to just appear smart.
close guantanamo within one year, its still open, used to attack and get elected
halve the deficit by the end of 1st term, he doubled it
cash for clunkers- a great plan
shovel ready jobs- they weren't
the lie in his state of the union address the unfortunate congressman called him out on - unfortunate only because it was done at the wrong time and place
recovery because of his stimulus
"saved or created" jobs
never lived with my uncle
obamacare will save the average family $2,500 in premiums
an internet video incited otherwise good religious people in Benghazi - we will get that guy (the one statement he followed through on, slamming a guy for a minor parole violation)
taking credit for record domestic oil production - I think privately he is upset about that, the private sector keeping gasoline prices under control and lessening dependence on foreign oil has hurt his plans regarding new sources of energy and destroyed his carbon tax idiocy - but he still wasted and is wasting money on things like solyndra
the IRS scandal - it was outrageous then everything was a false scandal
banning lobbyists
Denying he had set a red line on the use of weapons of mass destruction
we don't have a spending problem
of course the famous if you like your health plan and your doctor you can keep them, period
but my favorite lie of his, its not that i like big government, I dont
it was a winning lie for as long as it worked.
we could run through some of his lies, he used some to get elected, some to push an agenda, some to just appear smart.
close guantanamo within one year, its still open, used to attack and get elected
halve the deficit by the end of 1st term, he doubled it
cash for clunkers- a great plan
shovel ready jobs- they weren't
the lie in his state of the union address the unfortunate congressman called him out on - unfortunate only because it was done at the wrong time and place
recovery because of his stimulus
"saved or created" jobs
never lived with my uncle
obamacare will save the average family $2,500 in premiums
an internet video incited otherwise good religious people in Benghazi - we will get that guy (the one statement he followed through on, slamming a guy for a minor parole violation)
taking credit for record domestic oil production - I think privately he is upset about that, the private sector keeping gasoline prices under control and lessening dependence on foreign oil has hurt his plans regarding new sources of energy and destroyed his carbon tax idiocy - but he still wasted and is wasting money on things like solyndra
the IRS scandal - it was outrageous then everything was a false scandal
banning lobbyists
Denying he had set a red line on the use of weapons of mass destruction
we don't have a spending problem
of course the famous if you like your health plan and your doctor you can keep them, period
but my favorite lie of his, its not that i like big government, I dont
- Yssup Rider
- 12-13-2013, 08:28 AM
Circle jerk
- IIFFOFRDB
- 12-13-2013, 12:36 PM
A Lying Communist is ruining our country... 
- WTF
- 12-13-2013, 12:38 PM
Politicians lying....who knew!
- Yssup Rider
- 12-13-2013, 12:49 PM
And IFFY posting Count Blackula videos... who knew?
- bambino
- 12-13-2013, 01:01 PM
Come June next year, Obamacare will be no joke to millions of Americans and the Democratic Party. It wont be funny.
- CuteOldGuy
- 12-13-2013, 03:07 PM
is "you can keep your doctor and health plan, PERIOD!" his biggest lie?You forgot:
it was a winning lie for as long as it worked.
we could run through some of his lies, he used some to get elected, some to push an agenda, some to just appear smart.
close guantanamo within one year, its still open, used to attack and get elected
halve the deficit by the end of 1st term, he doubled it
cash for clunkers- a great plan
shovel ready jobs- they weren't
the lie in his state of the union address the unfortunate congressman called him out on - unfortunate only because it was done at the wrong time and place
recovery because of his stimulus
"saved or created" jobs
never lived with my uncle
obamacare will save the average family $2,500 in premiums
an internet video incited otherwise good religious people in Benghazi - we will get that guy (the one statement he followed through on, slamming a guy for a minor parole violation)
taking credit for record domestic oil production - I think privately he is upset about that, the private sector keeping gasoline prices under control and lessening dependence on foreign oil has hurt his plans regarding new sources of energy and destroyed his carbon tax idiocy - but he still wasted and is wasting money on things like solyndra
the IRS scandal - it was outrageous then everything was a false scandal
banning lobbyists
Denying he had set a red line on the use of weapons of mass destruction
we don't have a spending problem
of course the famous if you like your health plan and your doctor you can keep them, period
but my favorite lie of his, its not that i like big government, I dont Originally Posted by nevergaveitathought
Most transparent government ever - NO
Every bill to come to his desk will be posted on the internet for 5 days before he acts on it - NO
Bi-partisan health care reform - NO
No lobbyists in government - NO
And the list goes on. The most corrupt and dishonest President EVER!
- CJ7
- 12-13-2013, 03:51 PM
You forgot:
Most transparent government ever - NO
Every bill to come to his desk will be posted on the internet for 5 days before he acts on it - NO
Bi-partisan health care reform - NO
No lobbyists in government - NO
And the list goes on. The most corrupt and dishonest President EVER!
and you forget the timeline of the lie ... is it a lie? sure as hell is. Problem being the "lie of the year" (its 2013 btw) was being told over and over when the bill was still being debated ... Obie is a moron for yammering about shit has has no answer for .... just like you do all the time.
