June 18, 2013

Food police now targeting your pizza

And you guys thought the picture below of how Obamacare will work was horrific? Keep reading..

Yes, we are still figuring out what is “in it” like Nancy Pelosi said..but what all of you will probably be surprised about, including myself, there is a little known tidbit that will require the pizza industry, and possibly grocery stores and convenience stores, to display the calorie count in their products for their customers. Even vending machines.

Section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act:

Section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act amends section 403(q) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA), which governs nutrition labeling requirements, and section 403A of the FFDCA, which governs federal preemption of State and local food labeling requirements.

2. What are the basic requirements of section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act for foods that are standard menu items sold in restaurants or similar retail food establishments with 20 or more locations [bolding mine] doing business under the same name and offering for sale substantially the same menu items (hereinafter “chain retail food establishments”)?

The following information must be provided for standard menu items that are sold in chain retail food establishments:

The number of calories in each standard menu item on a menu or menu board (the calorie disclosure must be “clearly associated with” and “adjacent to” the name of the standard menu item),

A statement on the menu or menu board that puts the calorie information in the context of a recommended total daily caloric intake,

Additional nutrition information for standard menu items in written form (“written nutrition information”), which must be made available to consumers upon request,

A “prominent, clear, and conspicuous” statement on the menu or menu board regarding the availability of the written nutrition information, and

The number of calories (per item or per serving) adjacent to self-service food and food on display. These foods include food sold at salad bars, buffet lines, cafeteria lines or similar self-service facilities and self-service beverages and food on display that is visible to consumers.

3. What are the basic requirements of section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act for food sold from vending machines operated by persons who own or operate 20 or more vending machines (hereinafter “chain vending machine operators”)?

For food sold from a vending machine by a chain vending machine operator, where the purchaser cannot examine the Nutrition Facts Panel of the food before buying, or where the nutrition information is not otherwise visible at the point of purchase, the operator must put a sign close to each article of food or selection button disclosing the amount of calories in a clear and conspicuous manner.

This is a “prototype” of the FDA’s *suggestions* for signage inside pizza shops:

I had the pleasure of speaking with Jenny Fouracre-Petko, the legislative director for Domino’s Pizza and a member of the trade group American Pizza Community.  Some of the other members are Godfather’s Pizza, Little Caesar’s and Papa Johns. Ms. Fouracre-Petko has done the math for the infinite combinations of pizzas Dominos can prepare, and it comes out to a whopping 34,000,000. So in reality, this is what the wall inside a Dominos would have to look like to comply with the new FDA/Obamacare regs:

Ms. Fouracre-Petko explained to me internet and phone-in orders would be exempt from the signage, but only about 10% of pizza orders come from walk-ins and the new regulations would cost EACH facility an estimated $4700 per year to comply. Coming on the heels of more taxes and regulations, the down-turn of the economy, that is really going to hurt the small mom-and-pop businesses.

This may also extend to salad bars in grocery stores. Even that hot dog you pick up on the fly at the gas station. And of course where do you expect the added costs to go? Why of course, to the consumer. It’s estimated this new regulation could cost upwards of $1 billion to the grocery and pizza industry.

But there is good news on the horizon. H.R. 6174, The Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act of 2012 has been introduced in the House.

To amend section 403 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to improve and clarify certain disclosure requirements for restaurants, similar retail food establishments, and vending machines.

Mayor “slurpie” Bloomberg, you would be proud…

The American Pizza Community has a “take action” center where one can send a letter to their Congressmen in support of more common-sense regulations.

Crossposted at Unified Patriots and Grumpy Elder

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Obama small biz chief hasn’t heard of Obamacare damaging businesses

Team Obama’s  ‘small business chief’ claims she hasn’t heard a single case of the Obamacare disaster damaging small business. Never mind report after report of the costs, tax hikes and devastation that come from its government takeover of our healthcare. Never mind the record uncertainty small business owners are feeling in the face of 4 more years of Obama’s economy. There’s really nothing to say except that the bureaucrats just don’t get it. Below are Karen Mill’s stunning remarks when questioned on “Morning Joe”:

You know, I travel all around the country, every week I go to a different part of the country. I’m with small businesses. And I’m not hearing that.

What planet is she living on? She must not count the voice of 350,000 small businesses in America as legitimate, but we already knew that. From Michael Tennant on New American:

ObamaCare’s employer mandate is supposed to guarantee that every working American is able to obtain health insurance through his employer. But according to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), an organization representing 350,000 small-business owners, the mandate may end up being the ruin of employer-sponsored health insurance and will almost certainly be detrimental to employers and employees alike.

Over a quarter of employers saying that they may drop their health insurance plans when Obamacare is fully implemented must not be damaging either. More from Tennant:

Low-wage employees, particularly those experiencing a large premium cost-share, have a powerful incentive to bolt an employer’s health plan for the newly established and heavily subsidized exchanges,” the NFIB reported last year. ‘Should employees begin to leave for an exchange, 26% of currently offering small employers are very likely to explore dropping their health insurance plans and another 31% are somewhat likely to do so.

Obamacare is piling unnecessary and difficult decisions on business owners who already face a still-stagnant economy.  Across the board uncertainty has reached such a record high, it almost makes Jimmy Carter look like a business-friendly president.  Matthew Rocco on Fox Business agrees:

Uncertainty about the direction of business conditions in six months reached 23% of respondents, easily surpassing a pre-recession record of 15% that was reported during the Jimmy Carter administration.

The small business optimism index is in recession territory and now we face (fiscal) cliff diving and Obamacare’s tax hikes. Something’s got to give.

Crossposted at Unified Patriots and Grumpy Elder

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Rep. McMorris Rodgers Discusses Doctor Shortage and Other Detriments of ObamaCare on CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report”

On the eve of the House vote to repeal ObamaCare and in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold it, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Vice Chair of the House Republican Conference, joined Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) on CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report” to debate the effects of ObamaCare on the American people. Both responded to a recent study by the Doctor Patient Medical Association, which revealed that 83 percent of doctors have considered leaving the medical profession because of ObamaCare.

“I’ve talked to enough doctors to know that they are quite concerned – and they recognize that these health care decisions belong in the hands of patients and families and doctors – not by the federal government,” said McMorris Rodgers in the interview. “And ObamaCare, unfortunately, is a ‘Big Government’ approach to one of the most personal aspects of our lives, and we need to be protecting that doctor-patient relationship. I’ve also talked to doctors who don’t even encourage their own children to go into the healthcare profession because they don’t like the direction it is taking. We have a doctor shortage in America right now, and yet many are considering quitting, retiring, or not encouraging others to go into the profession.”

The House will vote today on H.R. 6079 to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

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New RNC ad targets high cost of Obamacare

Folks, this just in as Obama AGAIN heads to Ohio, a major battleground state:

Please also take a look at Obamacare Pulse Check as costs are going up, not down as promised.

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Obama’s Betrayal of America

The promise that the Bush-McCain weary heard was that there were no red states and no blue states, but just the United States. The stimulus would arrest the recession and keep unemployment under 8%. ObamaCare would lower the deficit and you could keep your own insurance if you wanted. Foreign nations would love the anti-cowboy, and oh yes, anyone that was saddled with white guilt would have it instantly purged.

Two years later down the yellow-brick road, the curtain has been rent and revealed, not a wizard, but rather a lawless, arrogant alien in the White House that is not just presiding over American decline but actually egging it on.

He is not alien because he wasn’t born in Hawaii, but, rather because he doesn’t love America and what it is and has stood for. Rather, he loves the Obama-nation he is in the process of building in which he issues waivers to those that tickle the King’s fancy and organize communities for his Democrat like the hordes of spoiled public sector union brats in Wisconsin.

obama-wright

But what to expect from a man raised by proud Marxists; educated by those that deem Bill Ayers a colleague; and preached to for 20 years in a church that honors a racist that our President Obama always calls “Minister” Farrakhan (and with whom his Most Reverend Wright traveled to Libya to honor a tyrant that survived Reagan’s bombs and surrendered his WMD to Dubya but who recently finally found a U.S. Chief Executive he could praise in B. Hussein).

On Day One of the Obama Era, the dreams from his UK-hating Kenyan father prompted him to remove the post-911solidarity gift of Winston Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office. To make amends he gave the Queen of England a CD of his speeches, slapped her on the back and gave Russia Britain’s nuclear secrets. All before bowing until his ears hit the floor to every two-bit Muslim potentate during two Apologize for America tours.

In further efforts to secure the love of the “international community” it equates the death cult in Gaza with the building of apartment buildings in East Jerusalem and sides with Iran’s mullahs over those innocents mowed down in Teheran streets. The result? Saudi Arabia mocks him in public, Pakistan tries a diplomat for murder despite immunity, Mexican soldiers treat the Arizona as grounds for maneuvers and China plays anti-American ditties in the White House to polite applause as Attorney General Eric Holder exonerates billy club-wielding New Black Panthers and sues Mexico’s Arizona territory.

Have we discovered any High Crimes or Misdemeanors yet, because it’s about to get worse?

Reform instead of recovery

How is ObamaCare working out for the nearly 20% of Americans that are either out of work or so under-employed that they can’t pay for necessities at Fed-inflated prices, much less consume any wants greater than Le Seuer brand-peas. Things are so bad that stories of proposed municipal laws banning roosters in backyards fill newspapers.

John Maynard Keynes complained of FDR’s misplaced focus on NRA price-fixing reforms while the nation cried out for recovery, but at least he put some folks to work through the WPA.

Obama delayed public works until his second year and then claimed there never was any such thing as “shovel-ready” projects. Has he even seen Hoover’s Dam or FDR’s TVA?

As senator and president he supported and fostered a TARP for Paulson, Geithner & Company that hasn’t even protected banks when one out of every nine of those that haven’t already closed are at risk of failure. No troubled assets have been recovered and no small business loans are being made since there are no expected profits with which to pay back said loans from a stimulus that only saved state and local government jobs and created federal regulators that kill jobs.

While star-struck Americans gazed upon the underside of Obama’s skyward-pointing chin and exposed nostrils, and so missed his promises to bankrupt the coal industry and have us learn a lesson from skyrocketing oil prices, now, thanks to lawless violations of court orders denying oil-drilling moratoriums, followed by lawless EPA attacks against oil drilling on Texas fields and denials of permits for power plant construction after even a Democrat Congress refused his cap-and-trade attack on the poor and middle class; when it snows in New Mexico, we have to beg Old Mexico for heat.

The left-hand touts the Muslim Brotherhood as part of the “host of important non-secular actors” in Egypt while the right hand deems them not very religious. The MUSLIM brotherhood are not very religious? He must be referring to his own not very religious, and rare darkenings of churches or to the irreligious audacities issued from Wright’s pulpit about the CIA’s conspiracy to infect Blacks with AIDS.

Empty Promises

Restructured underwater mortgages never materialized while policies prevented the reaching of the necessary bottom to a housing market, when all the while 1000-page Dodd-Frank financial “reforms” paid off revolving door Democrat pals at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that blew the bubble up to bursting size in the first place.

Meanwhile, middle class taxpayers subsidize vanity GM cars for the rich as its stock dips below the IPO price.

He promised to end the running up of debt like Bush. He delivered on that one, as he ran up the debt at a currency-threatening rate three times the Bush rate and nearing post-WWII levels.

Promises were forthcoming that you could keep your own health insurance while attacking the very foundations of risk assessment and pricing with demands to cover “children” as old as 26 and pre-existing conditions on the day after cancer is diagnosed.

When all else fails, just take the painkiller and go home. Your life is no more precious at age 95 years than those 95+ day-old born alive infants he refused to protect from the floor of the Illinois Senate.

A Stranger in our Midst that chooses American decline

He seems a stranger in our midst that seems to get every issue not just wrong, but exactly wrong. He is no Jimmy Carter. No, Obama seems to choose American decline as a choice with no paean to “human rights” unless it is the right of humans to do right by his decrees. He takes apologize-for-America tours abroad to accept Nobel prizes while his rib-eating wife lectures the obese in a nation growing in numbers of those who will soon be able to see their own ribs if the great recession doesn’t abate.

Many of us are not surprised. We didn’t put our hands over our ears to drown out Rev. Wright or Obama’s musings on the flawed Constitution and Founders. Many of us were not so anxious to purge misplaced white guilt and give this stranger in our midst the nukes.

Must we endure two more years of this near-dictator while he continues to systematically dismantle the economy at home and our alliances over seas? While he defies court orders and “evolves” away defenses of traditional marriage?

Can he be stopped before the deluge? What will be left of America on Inauguration Day, 2013 if he remains our Chief Magistrate and Commander in Chief for another 23 months?

Democrats, have you no shame at what you foisted on this great country?

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

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