Free Republic

A mother in the Bryant School District in Arkansas -- a district using the controversial Common Core curriculum -- was surprised to learn her sixth-grade daughter was given a team assignment to revise the Bill of Rights, pruning two amendments from the Constitution while adding two others, Twitchy reported Monday, citing a report at the Digital Journal. The assignment made the assumption that the United States government has determined that the Bill of Rights “is outdated and may not remain in its current form any longer.” The children were to assume the persona of “experts on the Constitution and the...

... In short, Mr. Obama is about to hammer the American energy industry, and he's doing it for money. The real elephant in the room is the Keystone XL pipeline project intended to bring Canadian oil to American Gulf Coast refineries and the resulting products onto the international market. In fact, the title of the Bloomberg article cited above includes the words "Keystone foes." Mr. Obama has already delayed Keystone, once and a final decision is coming up. While Keystone has received a lot of press attention, there are two interrelated aspects that have not yet come to the surface....

Warren Buffett has a piece of advice for Ben Bernanke: It's easier to buy than it is to sell. Buffett, speaking on Saturday at Berkshire Hathaway's (BRKA) annual meeting in Omaha, said he is worried about what will happen when the Federal Reserve tries to wind down its recent efforts to stimulate the economy. Via a program nicknamed QE, short for quantitative easing, the Fed in recent years has bought up over $2 trillion in bonds in order to lower interest rates and promote borrowing and investment. Some have warned that when the Fed decides to sell its trove of...

Warren Buffett bemoaned Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s BRKB -0.11% failure to land a major acquisition during 2012 to use its swelling cash hoard, and in his annual letter to shareholders called his company's performance "subpar" despite a $24 billion increase in its net worth.

Interesting news for auto-watchers: Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A), the savvy conglomerate controlled by the great Warren Buffett, disclosed in an SEC filing on Thursday that it had bought 10 million shares of General Motors (NYSE: GM). That comes on top of another 15 million shares of GM Berkshire bought earlier in 2012, bringing the total value of the company's investment in the General to nearly $700 million as of Thursday's close. That's not chump change, even by Buffett's standards. What might Berkshire be thinking? Is GM a value stock? The obvious guess for anyone who knows anything about Buffett's career...

The Sierra Club has announced its approval for a "one-time" use of civil disobedience. The civil disobedience is intended to step up their efforts to oppose the Keystone pipeline. Many of the other groups opposing Keystone have been engaging in civil disobedience as a tactic, including arson-based ecoterrorism. This will be the first time in the Sierra Club's history that they have approved violating the law.

You may be sick of hearing about him again, but Warren Buffett did huge damage serving as Obama’s useful fool last year. Dupes comprise a long, dubious tradition in American history. Over 200 years ago, George Washington warned the nation about “dupes” in his historic Farewell Address. Such warnings would echo from the founding of the republic through the Cold War. During the Cold War, “dupe,” like the associated word, “useful idiot” — attributed to Vladimir Lenin — became an everyday term. Dupes were legion during the Cold War, a unique breed of (largely) left-leaning Americans who, unwittingly, allowed or...

Energy companies behind the oil boom on the Northern Plains are increasingly turning to an industrial-age workhorse - the locomotive - to move their crude to refineries across the U.S., as plans for new pipelines stall and existing lines can't keep up with demand. ... The environmental fears carry an ironic twist: Oil trains are gaining popularity in part because of a shortage of pipeline capacity - a problem that has been worsened by environmental opposition to such projects as TransCanada's stalled Keystone XL pipeline. That project would carry Bakken and Canadian crude to the Gulf of Mexico. Wayde Schafer,...

Warren Buffett, in a New York Times Op-Ed piece Monday, is proposing a minimum tax on high incomes and a higher ceiling of $500,000 on increased taxes on wealthy Americans. "I support President Obama's proposal to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for high-income taxpayers. However, I prefer a cutoff point somewhat above $250,000 - maybe $500,000 or so," the Berkshire Hathaway head wrote. "Additionally, we need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that."

In a New York Times editorial printed on Monday, Buffett suggested Congress move immediately to implement minimum taxes of 30 percent on incomes of $1 million to $10 million and 35 percent above that. "A plain and simple rule like that will block the efforts of lobbyists, lawyers and contribution-hungry legislators to keep the ultra rich paying rates well below those incurred by people with income just a tiny fraction of ours," Buffett wrote. "Only a minimum tax on very high incomes will prevent the stated tax rate from being eviscerated by these warriors for the wealthy," he added. The...

Television ads aside, Omahans might be feeling a little neglected these days as the presidential campaigns bear down with a laser focus on the remaining handful of swing states. Just across the river, Iowans have been awash in campaign rallies with the candidates themselves and top-level surrogates such as former President Bill Clinton. Ohio, seen as ground zero, has gotten special attention. Even Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., flew to the Buckeye State to stump for Republican Mitt Romney last month.

I'm looking for some advice on trying Indian (like Raj Kuthrapali Indian, not "come to our casinos" Indian) food for the first time.

The nation’s biggest bank and its largest mortgage lender, was charged by federal prosecutors with running a decade-long mortgage fraud involving recklessly underwritten US-insured home loans to fatten its bottom line.

You do realize that there actualy are some Patriotic Millionaires, don’t you? Guys like Warren Buffet and others who insist that people pay higher taxes, but don’t take the chance to pay voluntarily. Like this guy, who turned out to be a plant by a group called the Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, begging Obama to raise his taxes: **snip**Now is their chance to belly up to the Buffet(t): "The House on Wednesday passed Republicans’ own version of the Buffett Rule, which allows wealthy Americans to voluntarily pony up to reduce the deficit."

A better "Buffet, Soros, Weinstein, Spielberg, Reiner, Hanks Rule." They want one that applies to everyone else while they get "waivers" for being useful idiots. I say we "honor" them with one JUST FOR THEM.

The real Vladimir Ilyich Obama stands up As part of his fantasy "deficit reduction" plan, Barack Obama proposed a number of new taxes. One of them was the so-called "Buffett Rule." When it was initially proposed, it was part of the plan to reduce the deficit. 'Buffett rule'President Obama "Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires," he said. "It's hard to argue against that." Mr Obama suggested a "Buffett rule", which would see Americans who earn more than $1m pay the same rate of tax as those who earn less. The proposal refers to billionaire financier Warren...

you’re going to mess with the IRS, you should probably make sure you’ve paid your taxes first. That’s the moral you can extract from the tale of Warren Buffet’s private aircraft company, NetJets Inc, so far. In November 2011, NetJets, owned by Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., sued the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for $642.7 million in allegedly illegally imposed ticket taxes and penalties. Now, four months later, the IRS is suing NetJets for $366.3 million in unpaid taxes.

We should call the "Bluff" and simply pass a temporary one-year Buffet Rule tax, retroactive to January 2012. Make the case that we should give it a try, and that all taxes can be considered in 2013 after the election is over. Give Obama his biggest political victory going into 2012 election. We all know what will happen if this dumbass tax is passed. Let it happen under his watch in this year. Not in 2013 or beyond.

While our anti-petroleum president is visiting oil and pipeline country in a Potemkin photo op attempt to imply that he is what he clearly is not, here's something to ponder. Are you one of those who've wondered why billionaire, Warren Buffet, is so cozy with the Obama Administration? In an article published a couple of weeks ago by Bloomberg News, which gained little traction, author, Natalie Doss, noted that Buffet had made another one of his "pretty good bets" back in 2009 when Berkshire-Hathaway bought the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad. Doss reports: Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway's track network puts it...

Ever since Warren Buffett observed that his tax rate is unfairly low, President Obama keeps finding ways to get mileage out of his friend's lament. One of the president's recent proposals is to dramatically increase the tax rate on corporate dividends for upper-income shareholders. It may seem that Buffett has no dog in this fight, since the company he runs, Berkshire Hathaway, pays no dividends anyway. But that's not the whole story. Before 2003, when dividends were taxed at much higher rates, companies like Berkshire had a handy rationale for holding on to their shareholders' money indefinitely, claiming this was...