The Newspapers: 150,000 Massachusetts Folks Will Need To Re-Enroll Due To ObamaCare Rules

Government shutdown: day 2. "Capital digs in for long haul." 800,000 folks packing up and heading home.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which sent home more than 90% of its 16,000 workers, emailed employees a short checklist: First, check email and read the bad news. Second, program voice mail and email to say: "I am out of the office for the duration of the government shutdown. I will not be checking messages, but will return your call upon my return to the office." Third, be sure sensitive work documents aren't left in the open. Fourth, shut off government computers and smartphones; and fifth, fill out a final timecard, with no more than four hours of work on shutdown day.

I'm trying to find the downside to this, which The Dickinson Press is reporting:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will take one of the biggest hits of any federal agency if the government shuts down this week, operating with under 7 percent of its employees, according to guidance issued by the agency.

Among those furloughed would be most workers at the Office of Air and Radiation, which is in charge of writing and implementing most of the EPA's major air pollution rules. The clock would also stop, for now, on the EPA's eagerly-awaited proposal on renewable fuel volume standards for 2014.

The EPA said its plan for dealing with a shutdown would classify 1,069 employees, out of 16,205, as essential. These employees would continue to work if Congress fails to secure a budget deal by midnight Monday to avoid disruption to federal funding.
Taking the air and radiation unit off the grid will tighten timelines to meet certain court-imposed deadlines, said one expert.

"People are not going to be able to be working on these rules at home," said Dina Kruger, an environmental regulation consultant and former climate change director at the EPA, who worked at the agency when the government shut down in 1996.

In their guidance to employees, agencies have been clear: government-issued equipment should be returned to home base and work cellphones are not to be used.

The Fed probably won't take a sanguine view of the shutdown.

Investors are using the back-to-back U.S. government shutdowns of the mid-1990s as a guide to how markets and the economy will behave this time around. The Federal Reserve isn't.

The Fed's decision against reducing bond purchases when it met two weeks ago hinged on a variety of factors. But the now-realized potential of a shutdown over funding the 2010 health-care law, as well as the coming battle over raising the nation's borrowing limit, clearly played a role.

"I think that a government shutdown—and perhaps, even more so, a failure to raise the debt limit—could have very serious consequences for the financial markets and for the economy, and the Federal Reserve's policy is to do whatever we can to keep the economy on course," Chairman Ben Bernanke said at his post-meeting news conference in mid-September.

Contrast that to the Fed's behavior around the two government shutdowns that occurred in late 1995 through early 1996. Not only did the Fed refrain from commenting on these publicly, transcripts from its December 1995 and January 1996 minutes show policy makers weren't at all worried that the budget standoff between then-President Bill Clinton and Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrichmight hurt the economy. That stock market wasn't worried, either; the S&P 500 gained 4% during the period spanning the shutdowns.

Health exchanges couldn't handle 1 million "hits" spread across fifty states and one federal government. Apple sells 9 million iPhones in a weekend. One company.

Maybe the best story in The WSJ today:

Sue Cobey sums up the local dating scene in a single word: brutal.

The entomologist is speaking of honeybees, bee mating being her specialty, and she knows the dauntingly steep odds drones, the males, face in fulfilling their urge to spawn.
"There can be something like 25,000 drones out there waiting for virgin queens to fly by," says the 59-year-old scientist, known to local bee folk as "The Queen of Queen Bees" and "The Bee Whisperer."

Her life's work has been to improve the success rate—and thereby the viability—of North America's fragile honeybee stock. She brings queens and drones together where romance has the best chance: under a microscope.

In a laboratory behind her husband's tool room, she knocks a queen out with a blast of carbon dioxide, then works the sedated patient into a plastic tube. She injects the queen with a syringe bearing germplasm, or sperm, that comes from donor drones raised from colonies Ms. Cobey has nurtured for many years.

***********************

Florida sues Georgia over water use. Case goes to Supreme Court.

*********************** 

Massachusetts officials try to keep new ObamaCare rules from curbing enrollment: folks may leave Massachusetts health care system to seek Federal sites. 

As open enrollment for the U.S. health law kicks off nationwide, the state that helped inspire the law is trying to avoid a potential pitfall: watching its own coverage numbers slip.

Massachusetts, where a 2006 law created a marketplace where uninsured people could shop for coverage, sometimes with state subsidies, estimates 97% of its 6.6 million residents have insurance. But because of different federal rules, roughly 150,000 people who got coverage through the state's exchange marketplace will have to re-enroll to avoid losing coverage next year, state officials said. Until now, their coverage automatically carried over.

One word: trainwreck.

***********************  

Starbucks: evolution of a food menu.

Starbucks is beginning to kick some regulars out of its coffee shops.

In recent months, Starbucks has replaced pastries it used to carry with baked goods made from recipes from La Boulange, a San Francisco bakery Starbucks acquired last year.
The company also has been swapping out Kind granola bars, Peeled fruit snacks and Naked Juice in favor of products made by Evolution Fresh, a juice brand that Starbucks acquired in 2011. Under Starbucks, Evolution Fresh branched out and now produces Evolution Harvest snack bars and freeze-dried snacks.

Starbucks has long paired its coffee offerings with food from outside suppliers. But the resulting experience was inconsistent, turning some customers off, analysts said. Starbucks says just 30% of transactions at its stores include food purchases.

At one time I couldn't stand the food choices at Starbucks, but their menu is now surprisingly good.

*********************** 

 September US auto sales fall 24% but Ford has a good month: Ford Motor posted a nearly 6% rise in its U.S. sales last month while other auto makers including General Motors, Toyota, Nissan and VW posted declines in part due to holiday shift and fewer selling days.

*********************** 

Some say the government shutdown could be the tipping point for JC Penney and Blackberry: 

BlackBerry Ltd. announced last month that it signed a preliminary $4.7 billion deal to go private. But for now, the company is still public and is still facing the grim realities of its shrinking smartphone business.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission published Tuesday that expands on the company's second-quarter earnings report issued last week, BlackBerry sharply revised already bleak restructuring charges and acknowledged in more depth the challenges it is facing, even in areas it still professes to dominate.

BlackBerry said it expects to incur charges of $400 million through the rest of the fiscal year, up from $100 million, as part of a broad cost-cutting initiative that includes the reduction of 40% of its workforce and a nearly $1 billion write-down in unsold phone inventory. Those charges could increase as the company looks to cut even more costs this year and next, it acknowledged in the filing. 

Might it file for bankruptcy before it files to go private?

**********************