Free Republic

Since President Barack Obama assumed office the First Family has racked up a total of 17 vacations. This is nearly five times the number of excursions taken by a typical American family over that time span. Costs are also a sore point. One trip to Spain hit up taxpayers for almost $500,000. The high costs are not really the Obamas’ fault explained First Lady Michelle. “It’s only because Barack is the President that the cost is so high,” she argued. “We are hostages to the office. Everywhere we go we have to be accompanied by an entourage of bodyguards and...

Students drowning in their own student loan debt has caused massive amounts of public outcry because graduates have no way to pay off the cost of their education. Even though sometimes it is the student’s fault for pursuing and graduating with a worthless degree, the problem of the student debt cannot be ignored. The true source of the problem is government intervention in (what should be) a free market education system. As it stands right now, the Federal government is guaranteeing student loans so it looks like Old Uncle Sam is trying to invest in American students and the future...

The Bill: S. 1769, Rebuild America Jobs Act Annualized Cost: $8.1 billion ($40.7 billion over five years) Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) sponsored the Rebuild America Jobs Act to rebuild and improve the nation’s infrastructure. The bill establishes short- and long-term national development priorities through new construction programs.

The Obamas' summer break in Martha's Vineyard has already been branded a PR disaster after the couple arrived four hours apart on separate government jets. But according to new reports, this is the least of their extravagances. White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers' money on vacations alone in the past year. Branding her 'disgusting' and 'a vacation junkie', they say the 47-year-old mother-of-two has been indulging in five-star hotels, where she splashes out on expensive massages and alcohol. The 'top source' told the National Enquirer: 'It's disgusting. Michelle is taking advantage...

President and Mrs. Obama hosted a decidedly more subtle state dinner for German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House Tuesday evening. Though Mr. Obama presented Merkel with his highest honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the dinner otherwise lacked the glitz and glamour of the Obama administration-- with one noticeable exception. First Lady Michelle Obama wore a shimmery ivory sleeveless gown by Naeem Khan, a designer she favors and also donned at the president's first state dinner in 2009. Naeem Khan gowns retail from $5,000-$15,000. Khan told the Wall Street Journal the first dress he made for Mrs. Obama...

Since 2002, California's utilities have committed to spend about $6 billion more on renewable power contracts than they would have paid to buy the electricity from new power plants burning natural gas, .. The report, from a division of the California Public Utilities Commission, examines the costs of a state law that required the utilities to get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources such as the sun and the wind by the end of 2010. Since the law was passed, 59 percent of the contracts the utilities have signed with renewable power developers have been more expensive than...

Cape Wind has outlasted a decade of government review, a slew of court brawls and fierce opposition from mariners, fishermen, Indian tribes and Kennedys just to win the right to sell its wind-fueled electricity. Now, all it needs are customers.

What is the most expensive car in the world? The 1931 Bugatti Royale Kellner Coupe was sold for $8,700,000 in 1987. However, that car and many alike will not be included in this list because it is not available on the market today. It is hard to imagine someone would actually spend 8 million dollars on a car instead of using it for something more productive. However, if you have the money and the opportunity, you will definitely spend a small fraction of it to place a few of these supercars in your garage. Here are the 10 most expensive...

(CNSNews.com) - The R.I. Public Utilities Commission on Tuesday rejected a contract that would have allowed Rhode Island’s largest electric utility to buy power from a wind farm that's planned for the waters off the R.I. coast. It would have been the first project of its kind in the United States, the Providence Journal reported. The three-member commission voted unanimously against the power-purchase agreement, saying the price of power agreed to by the two sides was too high and that the overall deal was not “commercially reasonable.”

As I continue to watch the far left bash Oil companies, health insurers and bankers I was alerted to the fact that $29 for a Bluray disc and $12-$15 for one movie pass seemed absurd. I thought to myself the Healthcare and their evil 2.8% profit is the best Healthcare in the WORLD....end of story. Then the EVIL banks... Ummm, their job is to lend and make money. My evil bank has lent me money at 0.9% interest and never a penalty when I was late... can't say that for the IRS. Then on to Hollywood... I was given a...

There’s just one thing wrong with Barack Obama’s $8 billion economic stimulus plan to build high speed railroad lines he claims will create lots of jobs, move millions of people, curb traffic, clean the air and make intercity travel more cost-efficient and fast. It won’t. It will create relatively few high paying jobs because the companies who build high speed trains are mostly in Europe and Asia. It will not be truly high speed like Japan’s Bullet train, because U.S. roadbeds can’t handle such speeds safely. It will have little or no effect on traffic because most of it is...

Metro link, Southern California's commuter rail for the Greater Los Angeles areas is in tough times in this recession, unfortunately, they are controlled by unionized taxpayer funded liberals. Just like other liberals, they don't learn a damn thing. In every scenario where funding is down and profits are low, they do the worst thing. In this case, raising rates. All while the worst recession in 70 years is taking place. Metro links problems are largely connected to the economy. With people out of work or earning less, they are not able to afford tickets to commute to LA, San Bernardino...

A state senator wants to know what security risks justified the installation of two security doors valued at $15,000 in the attorney general's office. Sen. David Hann, R-Eden Prairie, sent a letter Thursday asking the legislative auditor to look into why Attorney General Lori Swanson should be concerned about security in her office and what recommendations a 2007 security assessment had made. Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles said the questions are likely to be part of a larger audit of the attorney general's office scheduled to begin in May. Hann's letter followed reports that Swanson, a DFLer, sought a security assessment...

Wind turbine plan scrapped by University of Illinois By Christine Des Garennes The University of Illinois has canceled its plans to build wind turbines on campus, citing the university's "deteriorating fiscal condition."A contract for GE to build and deliver a 1.5-megawatt wind turbine for the South Farms was sent last week to the university from GE, but university officials did not sign it.Chancellor Richard Herman on Thursday notified GE and student leaders of the university's decision to halt the project. ..... "In the fiscal situation we're in, we need to be looking for things that have immediate cost savings," Warner...

The Five Most Expensive Colleges * George Washington University * Kenyon College * Bucknell University * Vassar College * Sarah Lawrence College This may surprise you: The world’s most expensive universities are not haute institutions in the Swiss Alps or on the balmy shores of the Persian Gulf. Nor are they the Ivy League citadels of America’s elite like Harvard or Princeton, or ancient halls of learning like Cambridge or Oxford in the United Kingdom. No, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the most expensive four-year university in the U.S. (and most likely the world) is Washington, D.C.’s George...

Expensive trainers 'a waste of cash' By Stewart Payne Last Updated: 6:31am BST 11/10/2007 Expensive trainers do not give more protection to runners' feet than cheaper ones and are not worth the money, according to research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The study will come as unwelcome news to the 1.5 million runners in the UK who deliberate long and hard over their choice of footwear, believing that the more they pay the better protection they will get. Worth their weight in gold? Researchers examined nine commonly available trainers, ranging in price from £40 to £75, and...

After painstakingly analyzing the costs of U.S. nuclear power plants built decades ago, energy experts caution that a resurrection of nuclear power could bring along some financial risk and surprisingly high electricity costs. Researchers reporting in the most recent edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that construction costs varied by as much as 500 percent before the last U.S. nuclear power station was built almost 30 years ago. "There is no other (energy) technology we're looking at where the range in cost is a factor of five," said Dan Kammen, professor of energy and resources and of...

We have watched the news cover the Jessica Lunsford trial and to know that a child suffered at the hands of a sex offender, when it could have been prevented should be galvanizing our law makers, to enact. This could have been your daughter, just imagine the anguish any parent would have to live with, if this happened to them. John Couey, who was convicted, had a record as a sex offender and was just released from prison, at the time of her murder. There are many John Couey types and one could be living next to you. Often, administration...

Welcome to Green Home, a nice place to buy environmental products. "Going Green" is an endless process, but you have begun it by coming to this Website. We're an on line resource for green products (including green gift giving) as well as your home on the Web for advice and information on greening in general. "Unbelievable customer service, lowest prices on the Internet and best of all, I now feel like I'm part of the solution, not the problem. Thanks for helping me understand how protecting my health and the planet's health are the same thing." - Maxwell Dolane -...

Okay, here it is: Girlfriend is a budding pastry chef, who made a subtle hint yesterday about wanting a Mixmaster. I'm thinking "thats no big deal, what the hell?" So, I go up to Amazon, and theres all these colors, and all these freakin attachments, and DAMN that thing is expensive!! I thought I was going to get away cheap on this deal, ya know? So, you owners of these things, what is so great about them anyway, and what attachments should I buy with the thing, and what freaking COLOR and, and, and, by the time I'm ready...

SACRAMENTO In any other year, a $60 million opposition campaign fueled by a deep-pockets industry would spell nearly certain doom for a California ballot initiative. It still might. But the fight over Proposition 87, the oil-production tax, could be different. The infusion of $40 million by a Hollywood producer has given environmentalists pushing the initiative the financial firepower to respond punch-for-punch to the global petroleum companies that oppose it. The battle over the so-called oil tax has become the costliest initiative campaign in California history and has led to a flood of television advertising throughout the state. The campaigns for...

Parents shell out big bucks for tutors By Lisa Kassenaar BLOOMBERG NEWS Published September 2, 2006 When Casey Ravitz graduated in June from Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, she had spent 14 years in three private schools in New York City. For eight of those years, she had kept weekly appointments with $100-an-hour Manhattan tutors. "I had a lot of friends who were being tutored, too," says Miss Ravitz, 18, an investment banker's daughter who moved to Chicago last month to attend DePaul University. "My last tutor wouldn't let me get away with anything. She was the most...

The biggest fiction behind James Bond is that the fantasy master spy and world-class heartbreaker lived past 40-something. It’s not just the death traps and vodka martinis, or even the three packs of cigarettes a day, that would have shortened his life. His naked ring finger would have too. Because real men need wives. Consider the data: Married men—regardless of age, sex, race, income or education—consistently have been found to be healthier than men who are single, divorced or widowed. This so-called “marriage benefit” begins to kick in right after the wedding, then builds. Husbands ages 18 to 44 are...

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, May 22 (EFE).- The local government of Spain's Canary Islands on Monday requested economic aid from the European Union and the intervention of the Spanish navy to stop a wave of boat-borne undocumented immigrants from West Africa. The regional parliament on Monday held a plenary session to discuss the crisis confronting the archipelago for the past two weeks due to the arrival of some 2,000 immigrants, a wave that has swamped the local centers set up to temporarily house migrants, as well as the centers providing them with medical care and other assistance. The autonomonous...

Water, water everywhere and we are duped into buying it bottled. Consumers spend a collective $100 billion every year on bottled water in the belief--often mistaken, as it happens--that this is better for us than what flows from our taps, according to environmental think tank the Earth Policy Institute (EPI). For a fraction of that sum, everyone on the planet could have safe drinking water and proper sanitation, the Washington, D.C.-based organization said this week.

Enviro-Elitist Poses As Gas-Pump Populist By Jeffrey, Terence P Sen. Biliary Clinton (D.-N.Y.) sometimes talks as if she wants oil and gas to be cheap and abundant, but she never stops working to make them expensive and scarce. But there's a key to predicting when she will start gushing about America's need for inexpensive fossil fuels. Call it Hillary's hurricane rule: When a storm interrupts oil and gas supplies from the Gulf Coast, she becomes an instant gas-pump populist. Flash back to Sept. 28, 2004. A headline in that day's New York Times read: "Oil Nears $50 As Gulf Storms...

STREATOR, Ill. -- Gary Simko is helping bikers take their last ride. The retired Illinois detective has a specially built hearse that's pulled by a three-wheeled Harley Davidson. Simko said the hearse is modeled after the carriage that carried outlaw Jesse James to his Missouri grave in 1882. Simko usually wears a tuxedo shirt, blue jeans, black leather vest and boots when he is on the job. Sometimes he also puts a single spur on his boots, an old tradition honoring fallen cavalry soldiers.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran is seeking to revive its carpet industry by weaving the world's biggest rug, weighing in at 35 tonnes. The mammoth rug from the spiritual homeland of Persian carpets will cover almost 6,000 square metres and will fetch some $8.2 million, its makers told Reuters on Saturday. "We will have two working shifts of 1,000 weavers working for 14 months non-stop to deliver the carpet on time," said Karam Reza Haseli, a deputy manager at the state-supported Iranian carpet company. Work is due to start in three months. The carpet has been ordered by the Sheikh Zayed...

Don't look now, but the next time the arrow on your gas gauge hovers near the ominous letter E, your wallet may have the privilege of making history at the pump. Gas prices on Martha’s Vineyard topped $3 per gallon this weekend. (Staff photo by Tim Correira) For the first time in Bay State history, gas prices have soared above the astronomical $3 mark - at gas stations on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. "I think I'll get a moped," said Nantucket resident Edward Hickey, 77, who will shell out $94.50 the next time he fills the 30-gallon tank on his...

1. 94027 - Atherton, California - Median home price - $2496553 2. 93108 - Montecito, California - $21706251 3. 92067 - Rancho Santa Fe, California - $2144454 4. 92662 - Newport Beach, California - $2046557 5. 11765 - Millneck, New York - $1948636 6. 94957 - Ross, California - $1910263 7. 89402 - Crystal Bay, Nevada - $1806962 8. 07620 - Alpine, New Jersey - $1773880 9. 89413 - Glenbrook, Nevada - $1765000 10. 07976 - New Vernon, New Jersey - 1760000 11. 11568 - Old Westbury, New York - 1759206 12. 90402 - Santa Monica, California - 1749834 13....

Thank you for soliciting my testimony on the science of climate change as it pertains to the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Nearly ten years ago, I first testified on climate change in the U.S. House of Representatives. At that time, I argued that forecasts of dramatic and deleterious global warming were likely to be in error because of the very modest climate changes that had been observed to that date. Further, it would eventually be recognized that this more moderate climate change would be inordinately directed into the winter and night, rather than...

It sounded like a pretty good deal to Ken Doerflinger: a government study offering to examine him from head to toe for signs of cancer. But those free tests wound up costing a lot. The results, which turned out to be a "false positive," led Mr. Doerflinger, 75, of suburban Detroit, to undergo thousands of dollars of tests just to prove that he did not have cancer after all. A new study found that people spent an extra $1,000 or so on health care in the year after a test raised suspicions that later proved unfounded. "The key here is...

One newcomer to the list is a $70 million Manhattan penthouse. The apartment takes up the top three floors of five-star The Pierre hotel, and it has what is considered one of the largest salons in private ownership--a 43-by-75-foot grand ballroom and 23-foot high ceilings. The apartment has a 360 degree view of the city, five wood-burning fireplaces, four terraces, five bedrooms, three powder rooms, a wood-paneled library and a reception room. And if you put down a $14 million down payment, and obtained a 30-year mortgage at 7% on the apartment, your monthly mortgage payments would only be $372,569.40.

"President Bush's plans for expanding health care would provide coverage to fewer than 2.5 million uninsured Americans at a cost of $90 billion, a far more modest approach than Democrat John F. Kerry's $653 billion package that would insure 27 million people, according to an analysis released yesterday," the Washington Post reports. "The 10-year cost projections by Emory University health economist Kenneth E. Thorpe illustrate the widely divergent views of the two presidential candidates on an issue that continues to be high on the list of voter concerns." Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies, analyzed Kerry's health care...

After String of Delays, Gravity Probe B Problems Continue By BRIAN BERGER Space News Staff Writer WASHINGTON — Gravity Probe B, a space-based physics experiment some 40 years in the making, is facing another potentially lengthy delay. The spacecraft was three days from rolling out to the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. when NASA decided Nov. 15 to replace an improperly wired component that threatened to interfere with the sensitive experiment. Replacing the component will entail some disassembly of the spacecraft and additional testing. The resulting delay, which could stretch into June, is expected to cost NASA...

TOKYO - A magnetically levitated Japanese train raced to a new record Tuesday, topping its own record set just last month. The experimental maglev set the world's top speed for a train, clocking 361 mph in a test run in Yamanashi Prefecture (state), west of Tokyo, Central Japan Railway Co., which is carrying out the experiments, said in a statement. Maglev trains differ from conventional trains in that magnets lift them slightly off the track, eliminating speed-reducing friction and reducing noise. (they also cost about 100 times as much) The maglev is part of a government-financed project to develop faster...

Bush's spending binges George Bush is a big-government conservative. You don't hear this very often because big-government liberals do most of the reporting on budget and economics stuff and, well, they like government spending. Conceding that a Republican president is spending money like Uday Hussein on a Paris shopping trip would seem like a compliment to these people. Meanwhile, conservatives are loathe to criticize a popular and good president during a time of national emergency. So, the only time Bush's spending binges really come up for criticism are when liberals want to criticize Bush's alleged "hypocrisy" for spending money like...

Lameduck President's Continuing Globetrotting Forays Latest Trip Pegged at $50 Million -- Most Expensive Presidential Trip Ever March 30, 2000 There he goes again. Our globe-trotting president was flying high this month, traveling to Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Oman, and Switzerland. That brings the total out-of-country days for President Clinton, the Traveler-in-Chief, to 212. He's racked up visits to 66 countries -- some more than once -- and 2 territories not recognized as countries. He is, by any measure, the most traveled U.S. president ever. And just how much is this latest foray estimated to cost the American taxpayer? ABC News,...

This is just a screed praising those cheap cookies one buys in the grocery that cost next to nothing.Anybody can buy or make cookies with delightful, wonderful texture, delicate flavors and sophisticated recipes, but for sheer, brute force artificial flavors, lard and sugar, the cheap ones have the expensive ones beat, hands down.Resume your regular freeping.

State Officials Order Expensive New Vehicles Officials Order $47,000 SUV, $41,000 Cadillac POSTED: 4:22 p.m. PST December 12, 2002 UPDATED: 6:03 p.m. PST December 12, 2002 SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- With the state in the middle of a budget crisis of historic proportions, lawmakers are cutting costs, affecting thousands of jobs, salaries and programs. But KCRA 3 has learned that two newly-elected officials are ordering costly cars at taxpayers' expense. Facing thousands of layoffs and a severe budget crisis, state employees are starting to catch wind that two top government officials hope to land in the driver's seat of luxury vehicles...