DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING "Cost of Freedom Recap" CONTAINS STRONG OPINIONS WHICH ARE NOT A REFLECTION OF THE OPINIONS OF FOX NEWS AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON AS INVESTMENT ADVICE WHEN MAKING PERSONAL INVESTMENT DECISIONS. IT IS FOX NEWS' POLICY THAT CONTRIBUTORS DISCLOSE POSITIONS THEY HOLD IN STOCKS THEY DISCUSS, THOUGH POSITIONS MAY CHANGE. READERS OF "Cost of Freedom Recap" MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN INVESTMENT DECISIONS.
LIST GROWING OF Cos CHANGING WORKERS' HEALTH PLANS, HOURS DUE TO OBAMACARE
JONATHAN HOENIG: It's not only destroying health care, but it's destroying a lot of potential employment in this country. 43 percent of small businesses say that they have delayed hiring because of ObamaCare. 20 percent have cut employees, another 20 percent have cut employee hours, because of ObamaCare. And we just mentioned a few of the companies there. Seaworld, Land's End, Trader Joe's, Circle K, CKE Restaurants, Subway franchises all over the country cutting workers' hours, cutting workers because of ObamaCare. It's force. It's force applied to health care, and also to employment, and that's why even all this intervention we've still got unemployment above 7 percent. It's going to stay there as we become a European-style socialist state under ObamaCare.
SANDRA SMITH: What bigger message can be sent to Washington than private enterprise saying "we can't afford it. We're taking it away." That's a primary concern in this country right now-jobs. What's happening now is these retailers are going to have a tough time finding cheap labor. How many people do you know that go get a job like working at Trader Joe's as a cashier just for the health benefits? That's going by the wayside. These retailers are going to have to start forking over a lot more money just to get people through the door to work. It's going to change everything.
JULIE ROGINSKY: So now Trader Joe's employees-who, by the way, no longer have health care through Trader Joe's but will be able to get them on the health care exchange for roughly the same amount of money-some will pay less, some will pay slightly more-but this allow Trader Joe's to make more money. So this is good for Trader Joe's, and it's actually also not bad for its employees. So I don't understand. Jonathan keeps talking about how this is bad for the free market, bad for businesses-it's great for Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's just opened up a ton of revenue.
WAYNE ROGERS: What's interesting about this to me is that the AFL-CIO convention that they had in Los Angeles just this last week-you had two major guys: Ed Hill of the Electrical Workers' Union, Terry O'Sullivan of the Laborers' International-they came out against this. This is not just something from the right-wing that the left can say "oh, they're against ObamaCare because they don't like Obama." This is because it's destroying jobs and the union people understand it just as well as the people who are the employers. So employers and employees and people who have a selfish best interest-this is not serving anyone's best interest.
HOW AMERICA'S ECONOMIC SUPERPOWER STATUS MAY BE IMPACTING SHOWDOWN OVER SYRIA
SANDRA SMITH: Let's focus on getting natural gas out of the ground here, liquefying it, and sending it over to China. What are we doing here? We need to find out a way to make China dependent on us again, and to get them to convert their dollars into our dollars. Until we can do something like that here we have no place to stand.
JONATHAN HOENIG: It's going to take a return to the philosophy, to the ideas that actually made us a superpower in the first place. It's not like there's a difference in the water between New York and Pyongyang, or New York and Havana Cuba. It's because this country has always exemplified capitalism, individual rights, free markets. That's what has created our superpower status. In fact it was created back before the Federal Reserve, minimum wage, any of the entitlement programs we now herald as being uniquely American. Our superpower status was established before that, so to get back to that status we need to return to those principles, return to those ideas. Unfortunately for the President, I feel we're going in the opposite direction.
WAYNE ROGERS: I'm not sure that has much to do with how you register with the rest of the world. The peace of the world was maintained from 1850 Waterloo to 1914 World War I-not by people who were superpowers, but by people who understood the balance of power. We have this problem in the Middle East right now. If we could play off one of those people against the other, if we could negotiate between one and the other, if we could recognize what our selfish best interest are and utilize that instead of using military power; the threat, yes, but not actually using it. That's what we need to do to position ourselves with the rest of the world.
JULIE ROGINSKY: I think we're a pretty capitalist society already. If you look at the countries that are number 1, 2, 3, these are not countries that were affected as much by the housing crisis as the rest of the world-as much as we were, as much as Britain was. We've slid since 2008-- since the crash-- and they haven't. Actually, Wayne makes a great point. I'll agree with him. We do need to have a more robust diplomacy. We all politique. We need to play these people off of each other. We need to do what's in our national interest. I think we need to make a very aggressive case to do that, so I'm with Wayne on that one.
AFL-CIO LAUNCHES NEW MEMBERSHIP DRIVE TO SIGN ON NON-UNION WORKERS
JONATHAN HOENIG: To the extent that they join unions it's bad. Unions are parasites, and like any parasite they need fresh blood to keep alive. They've sucked their current membership dry. Union membership is about half what it was back in the 1950s. We know what they've done to the companies in which they've been employed: Hostess most recently, or the Textile workers, the Longshoreman. They're looking for anyone that will sign up at this point, but given union membership trends I think it's likely to be pretty unsuccessful, and for a good reason.
JULIE ROGINSKY: This is a business decision for them to expand membership. God bless them if they can get away with it; I don't think they really will. Go to town! You guys are all into business decisions. This is a business decision by the AFL-CIO to bring in more members and create more money for themselves, and create more activism for their members. So go to town.
SANDRA SMITH: They're no longer representing the members. They're representing political views. At the end of the day, they are asking for a lot and giving back very little. But I don't hold them as accountable as I do the government, who has not sponsored jobs growth in this country. They're asking for all of this because they're not working. They don't have anywhere to go. Our policy in this country has not helped to create jobs. It's not a business-friendly administration.
WAYNE ROGERS: The idea is that any worker that is non-unionized will start paying dues to a union; whether or not it's a viable idea is yet to be tested. I don't think anybody is going to pay a union or union leader to represent them politically, which is essentially what they're asking, because they are not doing anything for the worker. Unions to that extent have become vestigial. We don't have that anymore. In other words the use of a union, the viability of the union is not what it used to be. As a consequence, they are vestigial. There is nothing left for them to do. So they are out to try to perpetuate themselves. Their leaders are trying to get as much money-they're just like a lobbyist; that's what they are.
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?
WAYNE ROGERS: BIOTECH STILL BOOMING; BUY (XBI) FOR HEALTHY RETURNS
JONATHAN HOENIG: AFRICA IS A HOT EMERGING MARKET NOW; BUY (AFK) TO PROFIT
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