Free Republic

Your Friday IRS regulation dump: Obamacare’s job-killing medical device tax Share By Michelle Malkin • February 3, 2012 04:21 PM If it’s Friday, it’s another White House dump day. Cue the dump truck horn: Doot! Doot! Doot! While Obama sycophants are busy trumpeting deceptive jobs numbers, the administration is quietly moving forward with job-killing Obamacare regs and taxes. The IRS today released rules to impose the $20 billion Obamacare medical device tax scheduled to take effect next year. At a time when the White House is touting its government initiatives to champion “innovation,” the Obamacare innovation tax on medical device/diagnostic...

Buried within an ABC News story about today’s release of hundreds of Solyndra-related emails is a reminder of what White House Spokesman Jay Carney said at a press conference late last month after being asked about the involvement of a Department of Energy consultant and Obama fundraiser named Steve Spinner: Carney replied: “It’s my understanding, at least with regard to the gentleman you just mentioned [Steve Spinner], that he had no connection to overseeing the loan guarantee program.” After hearing Carney say that, your first instinct might have been to think, “Hey, Spinner must have a connection to overseeing the...

If Detroit has an image of a crumbling city, it doesn't help to have one of its representatives in the U.S. Congress let his home look unkempt. Charlie LeDuff pays a visit to John Conyers house. Play the video (at the link) to see for yourself

Reno, Nev. (AP) -- The latest in a string of powerful storms is dropping heavy snow and causing widespread school closures and traffic delays Friday in the Reno-Lake Tahoe area. The Alpine Meadows ski resort just north of Tahoe reports receiving up to 4 feet of snow over a 24-hour period ending Friday morning for a total of as much as 9 feet of snow since the storms began on Monday. Other Sierra resorts are reporting 4 to 7 feet of new snow this week.

Far-left radical Congressman Alan Grayson represents Central Florida in Congress, but all he does is embarrass everyone, including himself, time after time. It was Grayson who claimed, on national TV, that the Republican Health Plan was for old people to "die quickly." He is the one who called a female Washington staffer a "K-Street Whore," and much more. This is the Grayson who recently accused his opponent, Dan Webster of being in the Taliban because he advocated respecting one's marriage! All this from the Grayson who spent time locked in a DC-area mental hospital early in his legal career. Grayson...

A while back, I mentioned a secret place where true treasures can occasionally be found. Maybe this is the time to clue you all in on this place (and places like it). Most people have stuff they’d like to get rid of. And not everyone has access to a Good Will or Salvation Army drop box. And while most churches still do run thrift shops, they can be a pain about the merchandise they’ll accept as donations. But our town, here in our little slice of heaven in New England, has a dump. Only we call it a “transfer station”...

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has authorized $118 million dollars for the purchase and major improvements to the 100 year old Greenville Rail Yards in Jersey City, New Jersey. When completed, this barge-rail link will carry solid waste across New York Harbor in sealed containers between Brooklyn and Jersey City. The plan is projected to remove 360,000 garbage trucks per year from trans-Hudson River roads, bridges and tunnels. “The board just approved it so we are still working on the property acquisition. It is scheduled to be completed and open for business by 2013,” said Steve...

Imagine a world without the almighty greenback as the main reserve currency. It's not an easy thought. The U.S. dollar has long been the global currency of choice. As much as 64% of the world's currency reserves are held in greenbacks, according to the IMF. But given the manic ups and downs of the dollar in recent years, it may finally be time to diversify the world's reserves. And that's exactly what some central bankers around the globe are now doing. This comes as a growing number of economists and policymakers are calling to move away from the greenback as...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Man, oh, man is there irony and hypocrisy all throughout the news today and the news over the weekend. Great to have you here. Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-2882. The e-mail address is ElRushbo@eibnet.com. You know, we gotta be fair here, folks. We have to give Obama his proper due. Barack Obama has proved the truth of what we were all told when we were growing up. Anybody can be president. If Obama can do it, anybody can do it. They told you that in grade school. "Little Johnny, what do you want to be when you grow...

AT&T announced that it is raising its early termination fee (ETF) for smartphones (a.k.a. the iPhone) from $175 to $325 effective June 1. That gives businesses that are current AT&T subscribers, but seriously considering paying the ETF to switch--especially if the speculation is true that Verizon may soon have the iPhone as well--just one week to decide before it gets much more costly.

<p>Joe Lieberman threw a fundraiser for Harry. The Dump Dodd team threw a protest. I love these people.</p>

DIYALA PROVINCE – Iraqi Leaders and U.S. forces celebrated Earth Day with an April 22 celebration opening the Baqubah Landfill, the first environmentally safe location for its residents to dispose of solid waste."The Iraqi Director General of Municipalities, Kadim Hayder, explains the layout of the Baqubah Landfill to the Diyala Provincial Governor, Dr. Abd-al Nair, during the grand opening celebration of this first environmentally safe location for city residents to dispose of solid waste, April 22, 2010. U.S. Army photo by Capt. Meghan E. Keefe." The Baqubah Landfill was first conceived in July by the 37th Engineer Battalion- Joint Task...

SEARCHLIGHT, Nevada (AFP) – Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has urged Nevada voters to retire their Senator, Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, at a massive rally near the dusty desert outpost where Reid grew up. The "Showdown in Searchlight" was the kickoff event for a 44-city, three-week US tour of political demonstrations by the Tea Party Express, a consortium of anti-tax, anti-Democratic groups that culminates in Washington DC on April 15, the day US taxpayers' returns are due. While there were dozens of speakers from local politicians vying for Reid's job to right-wing radio talk show hosts, the main draw...

Congress passed the bill without knowing what was in it. Barack Obama signed it without reading it. Now it looks as though the Associated Press reported on ObamaCare without comprehending its content. Readers will have to scroll far down to discover that the elimination of a key tax break that kept retirees on company prescription-medication plans will mean dumping millions of seniors onto Medicare — and that the AP ignored it until now: The health care overhaul will cost U.S. companies billions and make them more likely to drop prescription drug coverage for retirees because of a change in how...

War On Terror: The recent attack on a U.S. jet in Detroit brings Yemen to the fore as the nexus of virtually every terror attack that's come from a resurgent al-Qaida. This is one hellhole in need of attention. As wearisome as the thought of a new front in the war on terror may be, the attempted destruction of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day signals loudly that terrorists are not only still out there, but in resurgence. Since 2001, according to Heritage Foundation's James Jay Carafano, there've been 28 failed attacks on U.S. targets. This year there have...

Have you heard the one about the pimp, prostitute, politician and the community organizer? Well, thanks to San Diego private investigator Derrick Roach, Californians are not laughing at what is turning into a political nightmare for California Attorney General Jerry Brown and ACORN. On Tuesday, November 24, Attorney General Brown appeared on KABC’s “Peter Tilden Show” after it was revealed that some 20,000 documents had been thrown into a National City dumpster by ACORN employees. The documents were thrown out in advance of state investigators arriving at the local ACORN office to conduct an investigation resulting from national media attention....

On Tuesday November 24th, the day after Big Government broke the story revealing tens of thousands of documents containing sensitive material had been unceremoniously dumped in a trash bin behind the San Diego ACORN office, Attorney General Jerry Brown appeared on Talk Radio KABC’s Peter Tilden Show. Considering this document dump occurred just a few days after the Attorney General had announced an investigation of this very same office, we anticipated his righteous anger at this obvious afront to the integrity of his investigation and the people of California’s right to investigate all evidence pertaining to the operations of ACORN.

SALT LAKE CITY – Despite having their own radioactive waste dump, three states have shipped millions of cubic feet of waste across the country this decade to a private Utah facility that is the only one available to 36 other states, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. Department of Energy records. The shipments are stoking concerns that waste from Connecticut, New Jersey and South Carolina is taking up needed space in Utah, unnecessarily creating potential shipping hazards and undermining the government's intent for states to dispose of their own waste on a regional basis.

Join us for an appearance by Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Joe Courtney for Health Care Forum. Find out about the health care plan. A great opportunity to show Dodd and Courtney how you feel about their performance in Washington.

WASHINGTON - After years of delay, the Bush administration will submit a formal license application on Tuesday to build a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, government officials have told the Associated Press. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will have three years to review the application, although it could extend that an additional year if needed. The agency's primary responsibility is to determine if the design as proposed will protect public health, safety and the environment. The Energy Department informed key members of Congress and the NRC of its plans on Monday. A truck is to deliver tens of...

It’s Time for Conservatives to Dump the GOP! Don Boys, Ph.D. It is time for Christians and Conservatives (not always the same) to run from the Republican Party as if their hair is on fire. How much longer will principled people pretend that the GOP takes a principled stand? Some background: Every member of my family in West Virginia was a Democrat, but when I turned 18, I wanted to vote for Ike, so I registered as a Republican and have generally voted for them most of my life—until recently. When I was administrator of a large Christian school in...

Real estate mogul Donald Trump said Wednesday he has signed a deal to take over the Meadowlands EnCap golf and housing project, bailing out the struggling development. Trump promised a “spectacular” project that would be “the finest of its kind anywhere in the world.” “I’m a miracle worker,” Trump said. Trump's talks with a bank syndicate connected to the project were first reported in Wednesday’s editions of The Record. The deal, described as a “binding term sheet,” is subject to approval by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. It calls for a luxury golf course and a combination of housing, office,...

A new blog, called "Dump Lindsey Graham," was created by a South Carolinian known only as "Fed Up in SC," who writes an open letter on behalf of "the people who elected you": We will start with a basic truth: you are not smarter than the rest of us. ... You are not intellectually superior to the folks in Central, SC, or South Carolinians in general. So, stop, STOP, telling us that we just don't understand. We DO understand. We understand very well. We understand that we elected you to represent us in Washington, and you have, so far, failed...

WASHINGTON - The Energy Department unveiled legislation Tuesday to spur construction of a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada and increase its capacity. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), D-Nev., immediately vowed to block the bill. That could spell more problems for the troubled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, already years behind schedule. The Energy Department official who heads the project warned that without new funding that's part of the bill, a 2017 goal for opening the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas could not be met. "If we don't have that we are certainly not...

Dear dismayed conservatives: I hereby make these promises to you. We will protect your lives and livelihoods. We will listen to and respect your beliefs. We will never try to force you to change your religion, sexual orientation, or first language. We will do our best to reduce the number of abortions in our country. We will have no tolerance for corruption and cronyism, even in our own party. ESPECIALLY in our own party. We will never tell you that you are unpatriotic. We will never tell you that your opinion doesn't count. We will never waste your lives for...

Segway is recalling all 23,500 of the self-balancing scooters it has shipped because of a software glitch that can make its wheels unexpectedly reverse direction, throwing off the rider -- and in at least one incident, break some teeth. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on Thursday said consumers should stop using the vehicles immediately. Segway is cooperating on the voluntary recall.

A huge fire erupted at a tire dump adjacent to the Beirut seaport Thursday, sending plumes of black smoke over large areas and burning relief supplies in a U.N. warehouse, police and a U.N. spokeswoman said.But a warehouse run by the U.N. refugee agency caught fire, and a large number of blankets, tents and mattresses inside were burned, UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid Van Genderen Stort said.

Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration’s national security and foreign policy agenda. The conservatives, who include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and leading current and former members of the Pentagon and National Security Council, have urged the president to transfer Miss Rice out of the State Department and to an advisory role. They said Miss Rice, stemming from her lack of understanding of the Middle East, has misled the president on Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict. "The president has yet to...

Today news of Ken Lay’s heart attack and unexpected death has reached me. I did not know this Mr. KennyBoy Lay person but he seemed to be a good man and like me he knew how to treat people and make money from oil and energy markets. Damn I miss manipulating the price of crude. I have been thinking that many times well known people who are connected by celebrity and a random fact seem to die in groups of three... This is not GoodSTRENGTH IS POWER

Rio de Janeiro, Apr 7 (EFE).- Brazilian authorities on Friday confiscated from a Rio de Janeiro shantytown an anti-tank rocket that members of a drug gang allegedly planned to use against police, officials said. The abandoned weapon was found on the roof of a home in Cidade de Deus, a western Rio shantytown that gained notoriety in a film by the same name about warring gangs of drug traffickers in the city's slums. The rocket was discovered by anti-drug police thanks to an anonymous tip. According to the tipster, the members of the drug-trafficking gang that controls Cidade de Deus...

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said yesterday he wouldn't fire his top staffer, Democrat Susan Kennedy, to appease Republican activists worried about his move toward the middle. "I will hire the people I want to hire because they are the best," he said. "I will keep Susan Kennedy exactly where she is." Schwarzenegger discussed a wide range of issues during his appearance at the Sacramento Press Club, saying voters should decide whether California enacts a physician-assisted suicide law and pledging to release his tax returns for the past 10 years. During his career before he became governor, Schwarzenegger said, "90...

SACRAMENTO — Republican activists disenchanted with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Thursday that they will try to strip the governor of the party's endorsement unless he fires his new chief of staff, Democrat Susan P. Kennedy. Restive Republicans said they would rally conservatives behind a resolution, to be offered at the state GOP convention in San Jose next month, that may give Schwarzenegger an ultimatum: Dump Kennedy by March 15 or the party will withdraw its backing of his reelection bid. --snip-- "We've gotten to the point where we've just had it with the guy," said Michael Schroeder, an attorney from...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking lawmakers to scrap a $9.95 billion high-speed rail bond measure already on the November ballot to clear the way for his massive, $222.6 billion public works program. "We could not afford the entire package of infrastructure (in the governor's plan) if we did the $10 billion for high-speed rail," state Finance Director Mike Genest said Friday. "We did not see it being affordable in a 10-year cycle." He called high-speed rail "a visionary idea (that's) kind of far in the future." Democratic supporters of high-speed rail said they would try to put...

Anti-nuclear and environmental activists, backed by California and three other states, asked a federal appeals court on Monday to shut down a new storage facility for nuclear waste at Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon plant until a federal agency studies the risk of a terrorist attack. "Everything has been done in secret that relates to security at Diablo Canyon,'' Diane Curran, lawyer for San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace and the Sierra Club, told a panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Referring to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's current security planning review, Curran...

Well DUmmies, your allies (Hamas) wants to irradicate you. What 'cha gonna do now? Dr Zahar condemned homosexual marriage, saying: “Are these the laws for which the Palestinian street is waiting? For us to give rights to homosexuals and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick?”

Workers at a landfill in Orange County, Calif. - as if tamping down the contents of a wastebasket - regularly pile one million cubic yards of dirt atop a football field-size section of the giant dump. Six months later, the workers scrape the dirt aside and the dump's surface has fallen 30 to 40 feet, making space for yet more trash. "It's just amazing," said Mike Giancola, deputy director of the county's waste agency. Orange County's method is part of a remarkable productivity story playing out in the trash business, quietly saving consumers, businesses and municipalities billions of dollars a...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3771802 bpilgrim (1000+ posts) Thu Jun-02-05 03:55 PM Response to Reply #19 29. the OCCUPYING INVADERS are raping TORTURING and MURDERING civilians ________________________ More gems from that same thread: _______________________ ET Awful (1000+ posts) Thu Jun-02-05 03:55 PM Response to Reply #19 26. The point my myopic little friend is that if the US forces were not there bombing the living piss out of everything that moves, there would not be an insurgency. There would be nothing for them to insurge against. Is that clear enough for you? ____________________________ Grooner Five (189 posts) Thu Jun-02-05 03:59 PM Response to Reply...

But grocery chain says stores will remain open, financing is lined up and employees will get paid. NEW YORK (Reuters) - Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. has filed for bankruptcy protection, due to stiff competition and the need to restructure to stem widening losses.

CAPITOL HILL Senate Democrats won't filibuster the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says there's a general feeling among Democrats that "this wasn't the time" to filibuster. Reid says he expects less than half the Senate Democrats to vote to confirm Gonzales. Many Democrats have been sharply critical of Gonzales, especially over his role in developing the Bush administration's policies on treating foreign detainees. Some believe he is directly linked with prisoner abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Senate...

Police in Germany are hunting pranksters who have been sticking miniature US flags into piles of dog poo in public parks. Josef Oettl, parks administrator for Bayreuth, said: "This has been going on for about a year now, and there must be 2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have been claimed during that time." The series of incidents was originally thought to be some sort of protest against the US-led invasion of Iraq. And then when it continued it was thought to be a protest against President George W. Bush's campaign for re-election. But it is still going on...

US Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who had hoped to replace George W. Bush as president yesterday, instead sat in the cold and clapped as the Republican began a second four-year term. Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin patted Senator Kerry on the back shortly before the inauguration Senator Kerry had hoped would be his. As Mr Bush delivered his inaugural address, Senator Kerry, about 10m away on the steps of the US Capitol, joined other lawmakers and the crowd in repeated applause. Senator Kerry looked relaxed, at times wistful. He frequently smiled, able to hide any disappointment over what...

Flushed ring fished out, years later By Ann Schrader Denver Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - Arvada - More than a quarter- century ago, Jerry Duran watched his 1978 Pomona High School class ring swirl around the toilet bowl and disappear. On Tuesday, the gold ring with an aquamarine stone was headed back to Duran, who now lives in Del Norte, where he builds custom bicycles and is a ski patrol member at Wolf Creek Ski Area. Duran, who said he hadn't thought about the ring in years, said its return is "much to my surprise." Arvada Wastewater...

I was browsing DU for a few moments just to check what the tin foil hat brigade was going to be up to in the runup to the inauguration (W2). link to DUmp: the DUmmie at the DUmp pledges to attack FR

GET OUT OF GOLD! Head for the exits!Commentary: Gold has likely topped By Tim W. Wood, Cycles News & Views Last Update: 1:19 PM ET Dec. 9, 2004 GULF SHORES, Ala. (Cycles) -- It's truly amazing to watch the sentiment pendulum as it swings from one extreme to the other. At the 2001 bottom, everyone everywhere was totally disgusted with gold. When I suggested buying gold I was met with rejection, "Gold is dead" to quote my critics. Here we are some four years later, gold topped $458 last week - a three year high. On Wednesday, gold fell more...

SANNERVILLE, France (AFP) - Some 150 people, backed by D-day veterans, demonstrated against plans to build a garbage dump near a site of the 1944 allied landings. AFP Photo The demonstrators, who included local politicians and former soldiers, waved banners demanding that the site, Maizeret, where parachutists and British commandos landed, be preserved as a "place of memory". The association of veterans of the 46th Royal Marine Commando also expressed their concern in a letter to the regional governor, saying that as the recent 60th anniversary of D-day commemorations showed, thousands of Normandy veterans were still alive, and would be...

Donetsk is the hub of Yanukovych support (he's the former governor of the region.) It's also the center of corruption in the country. Even the Baptist churches in that area are run like a mafia family, with some serious financial improprieties. If the Baptists are bad, you can imagine what the "former" Communists are like. Last night, Donetsk TV was talking about autonomy or secession for the Donetsk region, or possible union with Russia. A bit like the reaction in American "blue" states after the last presidential election, there isn't a serious movement for autonomy in Donetsk. But such talk...

We internet activists are famous for naming recent news scandals (e.g. RatherGate) so let's put our minds to giving a moniker the NYT's attempt at sliming Dubya right before the election

BOO!

Last week I suggested that the people Kerry hired to run his campaign were incompetent and/or probably do not want him to win. Most have strong Clinton loyalties. This week, we hear rumbles that heads are about to roll among the Kerry-Edwards campaign staff. Of course, there is no way I would believe Kerry reads my babble -- or would act on the information even if he did. But, I'll reiterate: Kerry couldn't be running a worse campaign if he tried. That's a problem for me, too, actually. Kerry is just too darn easy of a target. Look at it...

Authorities in Chicago are considering criminal charges against the Dave Matthews Band after reviewing surveillance footage of an August 8 incident in which the group's tour bus allegedly dumped human waste into the Chicago River. Police Commander Michael Chasen said he's certain that the band's bus is the culprit, thanks to the footage, which was shot from nearby buildings and shows a bus crossing the bridge as a tour boat passes below (see "Dave Matthews Band Sued For Stinking Up Chicago River"). Criminal charges could include violations of public nuisance laws and ordinances to protect public health and safety, according...