Free Republic

Rep. Schakowsky (D) has introduced a bill, the WORK Act, Woman's Option to Raise Kids, giving federal assistance that would supplement TANF benefits (for the first 3 years), because under current law a woman (poor or not) raising kids does not have her work raising kids counted as real "work." Dems are attempting to use Ann Romney's words against her. Ann Romney said that staying home and raising kids is "work." and Dems are countering that by saying that it shouldn't be just people like Ann Romney that should get to stay home and "work." Schakowsky believes that poor women...

If the likes of Ford Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally and Hollywood Film Producer James Cameron want tax breaks for their projects in Michigan, they may have to take a drug test to get the money if a bipartisan group of State Representatives have their way. Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, introduced House Bill 5527 on Wednesday that calls for top executives in companies to be drug tested if they receive certain tax breaks from the state. The bill currently has four co-sponsors: Pat Somerville, R-New Boston, Judson Gilbert, R-Algonac, Mike Shirkey, R-Clark Lake, and Jim Ananich, D-Flint. Rep. McMillin...

If the likes of Ford Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally and Hollywood Film Producer James Cameron want tax breaks for their projects in Michigan, they may have to take a drug test to get the money if a bipartisan group of State Representatives have their way.

A new proposal announced by state Senate Democrats would use savings generated by eliminating “ineffective tax loopholes” to pay for the college tuition of Michigan students. However, these same “ineffective tax loopholes” for particular businesses include ones that the Michigan Senate Democrats have overwhelmingly voted for over the past several years. Robert McCann, spokesman for Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing, said the plan was to shave off just 5 percent of the $35 billion in tax credits the state gives out. McCann said under the plan any new tax credit would be limited to four years and there would also...

According to the following from Zerohedge, Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times, American Spectator, Politico, Dirtdiggersdigest and others, Romney is about as big a pro-crony capitalism, taxpayer-funded corporate welfare hog/queen as you can get. He will make Obama look like an amateur. Hence, why Wall Street is lining up behind Mitt Romney. You can't have what many on Wall Street want and support free enterprise. Corporatism/crony capitalism/corporate welfare should be eschewed by conservatives. If only many in the so-called conservative media would be honest with people instead of trying to mischaracterize and pigeonhole Gingrich... Zerohedge On Mitt Romney's Defense of Bain...

According to The Detroit News, former Gov. Jennifer Granholm made a deal with a group of wealthy and politically connected individuals in Oakland County to use state pension funds to guarantee $18 million they borrowed to set up a film studio in Pontiac, essentially making the pension fund the “co-signer” on the loan. The “business model” for this studio was completely dependent on another of Gov. Granholm’s corporate welfare schemes, a subsidy program that paid up to 42 percent of film producers’ Michigan expenses. No reputable economist has ever defended these subsidies, which are pure “political development” programs, not economic...

Here's an audit Florida's professional sports franchises may not have expected -- records of housing the homeless at their facilities over the years... and if the Florida Panthers haven't been housing the homeless, the team's on the hook for more than $30.8 million in tax breaks it's gotten since 1996. A recently released legislative analysis of State Sen. Mike Bennett's Senate Bill 816 notes that a law from the '80s requires sports franchises in Florida to house the homeless in its facility on off-nights, and in exchange, the teams get $166,667 from the state every month.

In a December commentary I wrote about how Michigan Economic Development Corp. officials appeared to be seeking “massaged” research from consultants who would provide evidence of the need for more investment in MEDC programs. Specifically, the agency seemed to be seeking affirmation of a specific dollar figure — $291.5 million — that the state should “invest” to lower the unemployment rate. An astute reader steered me to a story out of Kentucky involving the MEDC’s winning bidder, a firm called AngelouEconomics. According to the article, AE was forced to give a refund to the city of Lexington after submitting a...

There’s an old story about an accountant, a mathematician and an economist being asked by a job interviewer, “What does 2 + 2 equal?” The accountant and mathematician both correctly answer “four,” but the economist responds, “What do you want it to equal?” Alas, the joke reveals a sad truth, that economists — especially ones paid for their work by government — have often been guilty of tailoring research to satisfy the self-serving demands of their political masters. A case study of such expediency triumphing over a search for the truth may be currently underway here, and it involves the...

What is Democratic Governor like Pat Quinn in a pork barrel blue state like Illinois to do? The Party's power depends upon an endless stream of government jobs with budget-busting benefits, which translates into votes. Unfortunately, the game only works if the bill can be foisted onto a deep-pocket third party. The fly in the ointment is those unreasonable, right-wing tax payers, who are tired of being played for a pocket. The Democrats' preferred solution is to sew up acquiescence and hamstring resistance by invoking fairness, responsibility, family or what-have-you. The answer is never to cut the size and scope...

Gallup finds that 82 percent of Tea Party affiliated voters deem Newt Gingrich an acceptable Republican presidential nominee in 2012. They don't seem to realize that if he wins the nod their movement is doomed, regardless of how the general election goes. The Tea Party cannot support Gingrich without betraying its core principles. But the movement also cannot disclaim him once he is the Republican nominee. Tea Partiers with a better instinct for self-preservation would see that none of the Mitt Romney alternatives still running would be as corrosive to their cause as the former Speaker of the House. Why?...

Again and again Newt Gingrich says he never lobbied. Bit by bit, more evidence surfaces that he did in fact lobby. Blog posts today by Ben Smith at Politico and Jen Rubin at the Washington Post help waterproof the case that Gingrich isn't speaking truthfully about his lobbying. Here are some of the facts of the case: I reported that Gingrich was paid by players in the drug industry to help pass the Medicare drug bill, and he visited Capitol Hill to convince lawmakers to vote for the bill. The New York Times reports that Gingrich actively worked to pass...

Just days after Newt Gingrich won the endorsement of the New Hampshire Union Leader, one of his rivals sat down with another Granite State newspaper. Rick Santorum met with the editorial board of the Nashua Telegraph Monday for an hour and was asked about Gingrich’s comments on immigration at last week’s CNN and American Enterprise Institute debate. At the debate, Gingrich voiced a moderate approach to illegal immigration saying he would not remove all illegal immigrants that are currently in the country. “I do not believe that the people of the United States are going to take people who have...

There has been a great deal of discussion over the issue of illegals and amnesty. Some have accused the majority of calling for "cattle cars" to "brutalize" the poor illegals. I never thought I`d hear such demogoguery here on Freerepublic, and simply to support a favored candidate. Be that as it may, I`d like to issue this challenge to all who claim to support Conservatism: With the e-verify system, an admitedly imperfect but very improvable system, we can begin to verify who is and who isn`t legal to work in America; Therfore, since it is a federal law (immigration) thats...

A think tank founded by GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich collected at least $37 million over the past eight years from major health-care companies and industry groups, offering special access to the former House speaker and other perks, according to records and interviews. The Center for Health Transformation, which opened in 2003, brought in dues of as much as $200,000 per year from insurers and other health-care firms, offering some of them “access to Newt Gingrich” and “direct Newt interaction,” according to promotional materials. The biggest funders, including firms such as AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Novo Nordisk, were...

His campaign has said that he did no lobbying; but his consultancy practice was centered around his ability to help big corporate interests speak the language of Republicans and navigate the corridors of Capitol Hill on issues vital to their businesses.

Since leaving office in 1999, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has spent much of his time convincing conservatives to support government subsidies for large corporations, reports the Washington Examiner. In addition to his work as a “strategic consultant” for government-sponsored mortgage lender Freddie Mac, the Examiner reports that tax filings show Gingrich received money from the ethanol lobby. Green Energy, a lobbying group that works to secure and create government subsidies for the much-criticized ethanol industry, paid the Gingrich Group more than $300,000 as recently as 2009. Unlike most conservative experts on the industry, Gingrich is a staunch advocate of...

(CNN) - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will not release more Freddie Mac-related documents, according to campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond. Though the contender for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination said Wednesday that his campaign would "do what they can" to release more information about payments he received as a consultant from the government-backed mortgage group, Hammond backtracked later in the evening. When asked via email whether the campaign would release more Freddie Mac-related documents or if a fact sheet it released in the afternoon was the last word on the issue, Hammond responded to CNN, "last word."

Link only, per FR posting rules

General Motors and Ford inflated the number of jobs their companies would retain when accepting tax incentives from the state and collected an estimated $7.7 million for “phantom” jobs from 2006 to 2008, according to an analysis done by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The analysis was based on information contained in an audit of the MEDC performed by the CPA firm Andrews Hooper & Pavlik. Every year, companies involved with the Michigan Economic Development Corp. tax credit program report how many jobs they’ve created and/or retained and then receive money from the state for each job. From 2006-2008,...

Crony capitalism thrives in Alaska, center stage held by the Alaska Native Corporations (ANC). From the pending shakedown of taxpayers through a wholesale land grab (S.730 and H.R.1408) to recent arrests of four people in one of the "most brazen federal contracting scandals in our nation's history," there seems to be no end to the scams, a consequence of an ANC system run amok. It's not enough that over $29 billion of taxpayer money has been transferred to the ANCs under the 8(a) minority no-bid federal contracting scheme. The state's seemingly permanent political class has recently orchestrated sister bills in...

The Legislature is currently debating a package of bills (Senate Bills 566 to 568) that would expand the discretion of political appointees on the board of the Michigan Strategic Fund to hand out cash subsidies up to $10 million to particular companies they select. While lawmakers are quibbling over deck-chair details, these pickers of winners-and-losers would have extremely broad latitude to give the dough to almost anyone they want. Gov. Rick Snyder is likely to have a great deal of influence in those selections, which makes the proposed program similar to a Texas “deal closer” fund that has caused political...

It's been a long while since I posted at FR, so bear with me please. There has not been sufficient discussion about Governor Palin's superb tax policy she announced in Iowa this past weekend. So, before the other campaigns try to co-opt it, I think it's necessary to put our pro-Palin stake in the ground. Current Situation - As we are all well aware, the high unemployment is plainly nasty and long-standing. Much as President Obama would like any of several of his targets to take the blame for the economic fix we are in, it is his name that...

[snip] Interviews with a dozen advisers, including those inside campaigns and those aligned with outside groups, show lines of attack likely to emerge...... While Mr. Romney’s position as an early leader in the race has been shaken by Mr. Perry, it will almost certainly not be Mr. Romney who engages Mr. Perry first. He is already the subject of criticism from other rivals, including former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who questions Mr. Perry’s credentials. “We’ll see how conservative Rick Perry really is,” Mr. Santorum said. Here in Iowa, where the caucuses start the nominating contest, Mr. Perry is placing...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry called in to Mark Levin's radio show and the two had a wide-ranging conversation. Levin ended by saying, while he is not endorsing anyone yet for the GOP Nomination, Perry is "up there with candidates acceptable to me."

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry says he opposes a fence along the U.S. border with Mexico. Speaking to hundreds of New Hampshire voters at a private reception Saturday afternoon, the Texas governor says a fence would be ineffective and take too long to build. The comments, which produced one angry shout, expose a rift with some conservative voters over Perry's immigration record. Tea party activists in Texas have been particularly upset by his steady opposition to the fence. He also signed a law giving illegal immigrants in-state tuition for Texas universities.

Rahm Emanuel may have decamped to Chicago, but Democrats in Washington still won't let a good crisis go to waste. Their current gambit is to use Hurricane Irene as a pretext to prevent spending cuts to one of Washington's most notorious boondoggles. This week the left-wing press has been attacking House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for holding disaster relief funding "hostage." A more accurate way to put this is that Senate Democrats won't approve new funding for disasters unless they get the funding they want for corporations that make electric cars.

WASHINGTON Rick Perry, like other conservatives, has lots of complaints about the Supreme Court: The justices, he says, have meddled in social policy, stepped on state power and generally run amok. One solution the governor embraces is to end lifetime tenure - a cornerstone of the Constitution, whose drafters worried far less about activist or senile judges than about meddling tyrants and political pressure. The idea isn't original, and it's not limited to conservatives. Some scholars on the left have also embraced the idea as a correction for judges serving too long. It began to percolate in the 1980s and...

The Internal Revenue Service allowed undocumented workers to collect $4.2 billion in refundable tax credits last year, a new audit says, almost quadruple the sum five years ago. Although undocumented workers are not eligible for federal benefits, the report released Thursday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration concludes that federal law is ambiguous on whether these workers qualify for a tax break based on earned income called the additional child tax credit. Taxpayers can claim this credit to reduce what they owe in taxes, often getting refunds from the government. The vagueness of federal law may have contributed...

Sure, he polls well, but can he debate? The polls keep looking better and better for Rick Perry, despite this week’s provocative headline in Politico, “Is Rick Perry Dumb?” Dumb or not, it sure seems to be working. On Monday, a CNN/ORC International poll of Republicans and independent voters who lean Republican found that Perry’s still on top, with 27 percent of Republicans nationwide supporting him for the nomination. Romney’s in second with 14 percent. A poll released Tuesday from Public Policy Polling showed Perry leading among likely Republican primary voters in South Carolina with 36 percent, a full 20...

Michele Bachmann's allies are telling South Carolina voters that Rick Perry is not an "honest conservative." A super PAC connected to Bachmann, the Republican presidential candidate and representative from Minnesota, has announced its plans to air an ad in the the second-in-the-nation primary state of South Carolina that questions the tea party credentials of Perry, the Texas governor who has upended the 2012 campaign. "Rick Perry says he's one tough hombre on spending" the narrator says in the ad, before criticizing Perry's record in Texas. "Rick Perry doubled spending in a decade. And this year, Rick Perry is spending more...

Even as Texas Gov. Rick Perry moves into the lead as Republican voters’ preferred presidential candidate, a Fox News poll released Thursday shows that voters are more likely to view him as “too extreme” than former frontrunner Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney. In addition, most American voters -- including a majority of Republicans -- think former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin should stay out of the presidential race.

Forbes magazine editor Steve Forbes says he "very impressed" with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and is leaning toward endorsing him for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. "Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, is now the front-runner. He's had a good record even though liberals are now trying to trash it, along with perhaps some of his GOP opponents," Forbes, a two-time presidential candidate, tells Newsmax. "He did some very good things in reforming their personal injury liability system, very very positive reforms. He encouraged energy production instead of states like California that discourage it, and refused to put in a...

I spoke to a group of politically active, so-called conservatives last week at a hotel here in my New Mexico hometown. One of the topics that kept coming up was whether I despised Texas Gov. Rick Perry as much as I despised most other candidates that the Republican/Democrat regime is trying to force me to pick from in the next election. Let’s think through some deep thoughts and do fact-checking on Perry and the entire Left/Right paradigm as most people seem to see it right now: You can spend about five minutes on the governor’s official website confirming that Rick...

(RALEIGH) -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been in the Presidential race for barely more than a week, but Tom Jensen with Public Policy Polling said a recent round of polling in North Carolina and Colorado already ranks Perry close to deserving front runner status. "We're already finding Perry tied for the lead in both North Carolina and Colorado and these polls were conducted before he even officially entered the race," said Jensen. In North Carolina Perry is in a three way tie with Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. Each getting 17-percent. Perry also led a poll conducted in Virginia...

The largest and most powerful financial institutions in the world all borrowed billions of dollars in emergency loans from the United States Federal Reserve during the financial crisis, totaling up to $1.2 trillion, a number that has remained secret until now. The $160 billion public bailout was "dwarfed," Bloomberg reports, by the Fed's covert lending, which included $107.3 billion to Morgan Stanley, $99.5 billion to Citigroup, and $91.4 billion to Bank of America. As one expert put it, "You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money."

I spoke to a group of politically active, so-called conservatives last week at a hotel here in my New Mexico hometown. One of the topics that kept coming up was whether I despised Texas Gov. Rick Perry as much as I despised most other candidates that the Republican/Democrat regime is trying to force me to pick from in the next election. Let’s think through some deep thoughts and do fact-checking on Perry and the entire Left/Right paradigm as most people seem to see it right now: You can spend about five minutes on the governor’s official website confirming that Rick...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, under questioning from voters in recent days, has switched positions on a 2007 executive order he issued mandating the vaccination of all young girls before they enter sixth grade to ward off cervical cancer. Mr. Perry's order that Texas school girls receive the vaccine, Gardasil, made by Merck & Co., was overturned by the state legislature and never got off the ground. But it still has roiled conservatives and Christian groups for years. After long defending the decision, Mr. Perry has apologized repeatedly for the order since launching his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. As...

Rick Perry talks treason about the Federal Reserve Board. Treason is a capital offense. Is Perry suggesting the death penalty for Federal Reserve Board members? Rick Perry says Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke will have a tough time if he goes to Texas. Is Perry threatening that violence might happen to Bernanke if he visits Texas? This is sick stuff. I can think of several nations Rick Perry is fit to lead, but the United States of America is not one of them. With his latest comments, perhaps Rick Perry wants to be the running mate of Vladimir Putin...

“Scratch him off my presidential list," wrote RoadTest on the conservative site FreeRepublic.com. "We have already seen what a Muslim enabler in the White House can do."

DES MOINES, Iowa — A man in a stars and stripes bandanna tricked Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Monday. “Governor Perry, try a corn dog,” the Iowa State Fair vendor yelled as Perry and the horde with cameras surrounding him strode down the fair’s main thoroughfare. Having already passed up a couple of food vendors, Perry grabbed the corn dog, dipped it in mustard, took a bite and gratefully looked back. ’’It’s a veggie corn dog,” the vendor said. Perry looked startled for a second but soon recovered. “As long as they make it on a farm,” he said. The...

As Gov. Rick Perry has launched his presidential campaign, he’s turned to a talking point familiar to anyone who has heard him rail against the federal government over the last two years: the perfidy of the roughly $800 billion stimulus plan orchestrated by the Obama administration in 2009. “Washington’s insatiable desire to spend our children’s inheritance on failed ‘stimulus’ plans and other misguided economic theories have given us record debt and left us with far too many unemployed,” Perry said in his announcement speech in South Carolina on Saturday. In his 2010 book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America...

Full disclosure: I don't like Rick Perry for our next president. I have my reasons that aren't worth going into here. However, when I was watching the GOP debate and pro-Perry people started bringing up Rick Perry's job numbers as a cudgel against other candidates, I looked into the BLS data on Texas jobs. Having familiarized myself with the data, I started noticing claims on the Texas jobs data that started popping up that directly contradicted what I was seeing in the data. So I wanted to clear up a couple of these common misconceptions. (see the rest in the...

Georgia Republicans are beginning to line up behind Rick Perry's bid for president after flying to Austin to meet the Texas governor. State Sen. Jeff Mullis, of Chickamauga, said he's backing Perry, praising his fiscally conservative credentials and his "regular guy" appeal. Raymon White, a well-known Republican lobbyist in Georgia for clients such as the National Rifle Association, is also supporting Perry after meeting with him. White called Perry "battle tested" and "engaging." Joel McElhannon, a Georgia political consultant, organized the Texas trip and says he plans to vote for Perry.

Reacting quietly to Texas Gov. Rick Perry's weekend entrance into the GOP Presidential Primary, New Jersey Republicans worried that Perry could beat former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney and create the potential for President Barack Obama to win re-election against a too conservative candidate from the Lone Star State.

Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard uncovered a quote from Texas Governor, Rick Perry, that distills the essence of the consistent, conservative approach that forms the basis for his efficient management of our most successful state: Government isn't difficult in theory...Don't spend all the money, keep taxes low, have a fair and predictable regulatory climate, keep frivolous lawsuits to a minimum, and fund an accountable education system so that you have a skilled work force available. Then get the hell out of the way and let the private sector do what the private sector does best.

Good friend and Texas Gov. Rick Perry should remember that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is that time, Rick. Run for president. Indeed, the other GOP candidates are good men and women. Many thoughtful Americans have confidence that each of them would set a new, critically needed, much improved and responsible direction for America - the opposite of President Obama’s course. Though it’s still very early in the campaign season, no one in the field of candidates is electrifying GOP voters. There is little buzz or excitement. Candidate...

Texas, we have a problem. Your GOP governor is running for president against Barack Obama. Yet, one of his most infamous acts as executive of the nation's second-largest state smacks of every worst habit of the Obama administration. And his newly crafted rationalizations for the atrocious decision are positively Clintonesque. In February 2007, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed a shocking executive order forcing every sixth-grade girl to submit to a three-jab regimen of the Gardasil vaccine. He also forced state health officials to make the vaccine available "free" to girls ages 9 to 18. The drug, promoted by manufacturer Merck...

If Barack Obama were prone to conspiracy theories, he might think the last couple of weeks were part of a plot orchestrated by Jimmy Carter to salvage his own legacy. First off the Democrats get the GOP to acquiesce to a debt ceiling bill that will result in the federal government raising taxes and increasing spending by over $7 trillion over the next decade. The immediate result is United States government debt being downgraded for the first time in history, something Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner stated unequivocally would not happen only the week before. Soon thereafter the Fed looked...