Free Republic

President Obama thrilled liberals and Internet activists last week by calling for the "strongest possible" net-neutrality regulations to ensure that all Internet traffic is treated equally. **SNIP** "The net result is that every single American broadband customer will have to pay a new tax or taxes to access the Internet," Ajit Pai, a Republican FCC commissioner, warned in a speech last week. "That translates into less broadband adoption, especially among the millions of families that still struggle to make ends meet in this lackluster economy." Technically, the FCC does not have the authority to "tax." But the agency already collects...

Hillary Clinton continued to justify her high-dollar speaking fees on Friday, telling ABC News’ Ann Compton that all of the money she’s made from colleges over the past year and a half has been donated to her family’s foundation. “All of the fees have been donated to the Clinton Foundation for it to continue its life-changing and life-saving work. So it goes from a foundation at a university to another foundation,” Clinton said when asked about the criticism she and her husband have faced recently for their wealth. Hillary Clinton reportedly makes roughly $200,000 for each speaking engagement. And recent...

Where to find the fees charged by your 401(k) retirement funds? "Sorry to say there isn't an easy answer to where to find all expenses on retirement accounts, which is definitely part of the problem," says Jennifer Erickson, co-author of a new study of 401(k) fees by the Center for American Progress. Your quarterly statement may not show all the fees and "can be even more confusing," Erickson says. Most fees —more than 80 percent of them — are covered by a plan's "expense ratio." The expense ratio includes recurring fees you're charged when you invest in a fund. The...

If you’ve seen the occasional stories on “sex weeks” at Yale and Harvard, you might be surprised to know that many colleges and universities officially devote more than seven days to the subject. “In reality, I suspect many parents have little sense of the extent to which their son’s or daughter’s university promotes this sexual ideology—it’s not the kind of information included in university admissions packets or fact sheets,” Mary Rice Hasson wrote in an article which appeared in the winter edition of The Family in America, published by the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society. Hasson has done...

Jodi Arias was convicted of murder, but still awaits a sentence. So far, Arizona taxpayers have covered $2.1 million in legal fees for the Jodi Arias legal team and other costs associated with her case.

This reminder from the New York Post came on Christmas, when few paid attention, but it’s worth noting today. The disastrous rollout of ObamaCare is only the appetizer for Americans, the 2013 lead-in to higher costs and fees built into the so-called Affordable Care Act. What most people haven’t heard — yet — is the new fees that ObamaCare charges for access to those higher premiums: The cost of President Obama’s massive health-care law will hit Americans in 2014 as new taxes pile up on their insurance premiums and on their income-tax bills.Most insurers aren’t advertising the ObamaCare taxes that...

**SNIP** The owner of a home valued at $213,000 can expect to pay about $51 more in school property taxes next year. It's the third year in a row that Chicago property owners will get hit with higher school taxes. City property owners and suburban governments that buy city water face a 15 percent increase in water rates. In some cases, suburban utilities will pass the increases on to people who buy their water. Sewer charges, added to city property owners' bimonthly bills, will be 96 percent of their water tab, an increase of 4 percentage points. Here's a look...

Another hard lesson to learn for anyone that would trust in the myth of efficiency from a monolithic collectivism-based government to legislate any aspect of an individual’s life. Stories range from Maryland’s exchange director going on vacation (as the O-Care exchange website imploded) to dishonesty at the highest levels as Sebelius ducks questions on the “Lie of the Year.” Now this report of Washington state families who can’t pay their bills because the WA State Exchange is erroneously debiting funds from their bank accounts. ... For the second week in a row, the Washington Healthplanfinder website is down, and it’s...

the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday said a Florida property owner may be owed compensation from a government agency that declined to award him a development permit for his land.

Maryland lawmakers agreed this week to require public school teachers to pay union fees – a move that bolsters the state’s connection to organized labor as others move toward a right-to-work status. The bill passed Thursday in the General Assembly and is headed to the desk of Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley for signing after Monday, the final day of Maryland’s 2013 legislative session. The bill is also part of a larger progressive agenda put fourth this year by leaders of the Democrat-controlled Assembly that includes the approval of tax increases and one of the toughest gun-control proposals in the country.

I received a letter from Fifth Third bank stating that "to improve customer service", they are cutting back from almost two dozen types of checking accounts to only six. My checking was free, provided I maintained a $1000 balance in the account. That no longer applies. Now they want $1500 minimum balance. However, that was not where they moved my checking account to. Instead, they moved it to a checking account type that had even greater requirements to qualify for a no-fee checking account. To me, giving them an interest free loan of $1000/year was enough and I told them...

The New Year could push milk prices to $7 a gallon. With Congress spending all its time trying to avert the fiscal cliff, a slew of other legislative matters are going unattended. One of them is the agriculture bill which, if not addressed, could lead to a doubling of the price of milk early next year. ... Sky-high milk prices wouldn't necessarily be good for dairy farmers either, according to Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation, which represents over 30,000 dairy farmers. While it might provide a short term boost to profits, there's a fear that...

Obama quietly signs bill shielding airlines from carbon fees in EuropeBy Keith Laing - 11/27/12 02:02 PM ET President Obama has signed into law a bill that requires U.S. airlines be excluded from European carbon emissions fees. Environmentalists had framed the bill as the first test of the president's commitment to fighting climate change in his second term and urged him to veto it. Obama quietly signed it Tuesday over their objections. "The Obama administration is firmly committed to reducing harmful carbon pollution from civil aviation both domestically and internationally, but, as we have said on many occasions, the application...

Most travelers who are told they must pay an airline fee for some extra service just sigh, pay up and shrug their shoulders. They might complain to a friend, then forget about it. Not Donald Pevsner. Pevsner, a consumer advocate, retired attorney and former Concorde tour operator, has for decades filed petitions with the federal government challenging rules, fees and anything else that strikes him as unjust. “I like tilting windmills at the people that deserve being tilted at,” he said. “And the airline industry deserves it in spades.” Now in his sights: Delta Air Lines. Most recently, the Atlanta-based...

Monday more than 825,000 people throughout California will begin receiving bills of $150 or more from the state government, in this case to pay some of the costs of preventing wildfires. . . Opponents, such as we, say it’s a tax and that it’s imposed in violation of the state Constitution. Apparently that argument hasn’t dissuaded the tax man, er, fee man from his appointed rounds. . .

As the city of Flint has fallen upon hard economic times, the increasing cost of its government has fallen upon its residents. Three of Flint’s biggest sources of revenue have plummeted. From 2006 to 2011, the city’s property tax revenue dropped 29 percent, income tax revenue fell 27 percent and state shared revenue dropped 20 percent. Those three sources of revenue accounted for a combined loss of $19.2 million. However, thanks in part to $12.2 million in federal help, total revenue to the city went up from $105.5 million in 2006 to $108.9 million in 2011. The city also increased...

Shooters up North celebrated a rare gun-rights victory in April, when the Canadian federal government finally euthanized its expensive and useless ‘Long Gun Registry.’ The celebrations were short, however. Eager to appease suburban voters and swinging liberals, Ottowa promptly moved to ban ‘body armour.’ Then PM Stephen Harper’s ‘Conservative’ party has quietly announced that all Canadian gun owners will have to start paying a $60 fee to renew their firearm licenses. It gets better: owners of handguns and other ‘restricted’ firearms (ooh, that sounds evil, doesn’t it?) have to fork over $80 . . . These fees have actually been...

RI's unemployment card fees questionedBy DAVID KLEPPER | Associated Press – Mon, Feb 20, 2012 PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Rhonda Taylor had never been on unemployment until she was laid off from her information technology job in 2008. When she received the debit card she'd use to access her unemployment benefits from the state, she assumed it worked like any other bank card. But after a month using the card, the North Providence resident noticed she was being charged a fee every time she checked her balance at an ATM. Every time she used her PIN to make a purchase....

A federal judge in Washington has awarded attorneys who represented Dick Heller in the landmark Supreme Court case that recognized an individual right to posses arms just over $1.1 million in fees — about one-third of what they had requested.

Ganziano, a 55-year-old mother of five children, encouraged her fourth child, Daniel, 18, to set up a savings account at a nearby TCF Bank "out of convenience" due to its location. Ganziano and her son discovered that the bank offered little convenience due to the growing number of bank fees, as first reported by the Chicago Tribune. After he put money into the savings accont from his job, Daniel Ganziano's balance eventually fell to $4.85 and with such a small amount, he ignored it. However, TCF sent him a letter on Oct. 12 informing him that it had charged him...