Free Republic

While the American people are being hit with new ObamaCare taxes, and the ObamaDeficit is climbing through the roof and will pass 20 trillion dollars before long, there’s always plenty of sweetheart deals and pork to be found. 1. Hollywood. Celebrities flocked to Obama and the industry poured millions into his campaign. Payday comes in the form of an extension of the Special Expensing Rules which allow Hollywood productions to deduct 15 to 20 million dollars. That’s pretty generous considering that companies that manufacture medical devices are being hit with a tax. But who really needs pacemakers anyway when you’ve...

House Republican leaders will assess support within their conference for two options on the Senate's "fiscal cliff" compromise before deciding whether to try to amend the legislation and send it back to the upper chamber, lawmakers and aides said. The two choices: amend the bill with spending cuts - likely killing it for the 112th Congress - or voting to adopt the Senate measure and sending it to President Obama for his signature. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told his conference he was flatly opposed to the Senate bill without more spending cuts, members said as they emerged from...

We are being played; it's time we learned the game. Conservatives have their Constitution. Progressives have their Narrative. The current battle for America is between these two concepts, and each side uses different rules to fight it. One set of rules is consistent with an unchanging objective: limited government and individual freedoms. The other side's rules are as fickle as their goals, which are never fully disclosed beyond the equivocal references to fairness and hyphenated forms of justice. They will have to remain vague and deny their true allegiances until a time when American voters will no longer squirm at...

Emergency legislation to avoid the economy-threatening fiscal cliff ran into vehement New Year's Day opposition from House Republicans, casting doubt on the divided government's ability to prevent widespread tax increases and painful, across-the-board federal spending cuts. "I do not support the bill. We are looking, though, for the best path forward," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., declared after a closed-door meeting of his party's rank and file. While Speaker John Boehner took no public position, an attempt to add spending cuts was all but certain before the leadership called for a final House vote on the measure that cleared...

One of the first items on the agenda for Congress in January 2013, if not the first, will be the new and even more Draconian “assault weapons and magazine ban” long since drafted by Dianne Feinstein, Democrat Senator from California. Here, in 1995, Dianne Feinstein explains why she would ban all private ownership of firearms if she could: ---- Moreover, THE TRANSFER TAX (“REGISTRATION TAX”) PER ITEM IS $200 APIECE FOR NFA ITEMS! Only, this would be a transfer “from you to yourself,” an extortionistic demand that you pay to keep something you have already legally purchased and responsibly owned....

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably had a conversation with someone in the last few days who asked, “Why do ordinary law-abiding people need those semiautomatic firearms with magazines that can hold more than ten cartridges?” There are lots of sound answers. For one thing, defensive firearms are meant to be “equalizers,” force multipliers that can allow one good person to defend against multiple evil people. To allow one good person to defend against a single evil person so much stronger and/or bigger and/or more violent than he or she, that the attacker’s potentially lethal assault can be stopped. History...

This year has been quite a storm. Three hundred sixty-five days in a cyclone with fierce weather on all fronts: an economy tossing around in fits and starts; politics stalled by fog and precipitation, with heavy rains arriving in the fall to wash away Republican hopes of winning the White House and both houses of Congress. What about the coming year? No doubt we will again find ourselves at year’s end shaking our heads and contemplating what has happened, especially the unexpected. Here are a few of my educated guesses — and a bit of speculation — about what 2013...

The more the media covers the "fiscal cliff" fiasco, the more perspective is lost. It is really quite simple. Because the Republicans unilaterally jettisoned their trademark anti-tax stance, they will get nothing in return. The Democrats are not going to cut spending. In fact, the new tax revenues will fuel new spending, that will be leveraged into even more debt. The pre-emptive Republican capitulation decoupled the tax issue from the spending issue, precluding any "Grand Bargain'" or even token spending cuts. The Democrats trademark stance of protecting social programs like Medicare and Social Security from cuts is intact. Thus, Obama...

The Cuomo administration is preparing to shove thousands of mentally ill New Yorkers out of supervised settings — where they can be forced to take their medication — into far less restrictive, far more dangerous “community housing.” Albany, under pressure from the Obama administration, recently ordered psychiatric facilities not to place any discharged patients in adult homes, where staff can ensure they take their meds. Instead, they’ll be placed in “community housing,” without full-time supervision. This is part of the state’s plan to essentially empty adult homes into community-based “supportive” apartments, leaving up to 6,000 people — including those with...

The US Senate passed a bill last night to avoid the fiscal abyss. Actually, it just bypasses it and does nothing about putting our disastrous fiscal house in order. Here is the actual bill in all its gory details: 118551686-Mat-12564 The Senate bill raises income tax rates for those taxpayers with incomes more than $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. These higher income taxpayers will also pay higher rates on investment income, with rates on dividends and capital gains rising from 15 percent to 20 percent. Add the 3.8 percent Obamacare surcharge on...

The White House issued a "fact sheet" statement Tuesday declaring the fiscal cliff agreement a victory, though the House has yet to vote on the measure. "At this make or break moment for the middle class, the President achieved a bipartisan solution that keeps income taxes low for the middle class and grows the economy," the statement says. "For the first time in 20 years, Congress will have acted on a bipartisan basis to vote for significant new revenue.

The White House issued a "fact sheet" statement Tuesday declaring the fiscal cliff agreement a victory, though the House has yet to vote on the measure. "At this make or break moment for the middle class, the President achieved a bipartisan solution that keeps income taxes low for the middle class and grows the economy," the statement says. "For the first time in 20 years, Congress will have acted on a bipartisan basis to vote for significant new revenue.

Obamacare contains twenty new or higher taxes. Five of the taxes hit for the first time on January 1. In total, Americans face a net $1 trillion tax hike for the years 2013-2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The five major Obamacare taxes taking effect on January 1 are as follows: The Obamacare Medical Device Tax: Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. In addition to killing small business...

...How can we be “walking” towards Socialism/Communism? This cannot happen in the United States. Our nation has fought battles to stop this from happening in the world. Many of those fights have been undercover jobs and yet, here we are today, just a step or two from becoming a huge third world Socialist/Communist nation. All one has to do is go back and look at what the Communist Party of the United States laid out at their conference back on April 2012. This conference was attended by none other than a host of those in the Democratic “Progressive” Caucus, along...

Happy New Year everyone! We’ve made it through one Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year and are on to a new one.   (snip)I turn back the hands of time and wrap up my year in review with my Best of, July-December edition(snip)July: Pay for Play In which MOTUS learns that both the Big White Calligrapher and the staff “Ethics Advisor” earn more than she does. How can that be ethical?     August: It’s Half Time in America: Are You Feeling Lucky? In which we assess Big Guy’s ability to move the ball downfield (hint: pretty good, as...

“We’re extremely disappointed. There was no need for this drama on New Year’s Ever because the House completed its work last August,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) “[This] is a cynical attempt on the part of the President to ensure that he has complete Democrat control, House of Representatives and Senate, in the final term.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the last-minute fiscal cliff deal reached by congressional leaders and President Barack Obama cuts only $15 billion in spending while increasing tax revenues by $620 billion—a 41:1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts. When Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush increased taxes in return for spending cuts—cuts that never ultimately came—they did so at ratios of 3:1 and 2:1. “In 1982, President Reagan was promised $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes,” Americans for Tax Reform says of those two incidents...

Right now the political landscape is grim for Republicans–and in the short term, thanks to the so-called fiscal cliff, things may get grimmer still. But moments like these can pass, often quicker than we think. And next year may turn out to be one in which the pernicious effects of the Affordable Care Act–aka ObamaCare–really begin to kick in, from higher premiums to the loss of employer-based health insurance to the start of enrollment in insurance exchanges. It will become more and more clear to the public what a nightmarish law the Affordable Care Act actually is. “The administration is...

Douglas Graham/CQ Roll CallMcCain said he believes the president’s statement “clearly will antagonize members of the House.” With both sides on the cusp of a fiscal cliff deal, President Barack Obama vowed Monday to seek additional revenue next year alongside spending cuts. In the process, he also angered several GOP senators who said he demeaned their efforts to reach a deal.Obama said that a year-end deal to avert tax hikes for the middle class “is within sight, but it’s not done.” The emerging deal, which sources have pegged at around $600 billion in new revenue, would include permanent extensions of...

As one of the litigants in Attorney Orly Taitz's upcoming Barry Soetoro (aka BHO) eligibility case (Jan 3, 2013), I have doubts that Judge Morrison C. England, Jr can be objective about removing the Usurper-in-Chief from office. England will be incapable of being fair and honest in this "Soetoro eligibility" matter. I will admit that England was nominated by George W. Bush (on March 21, 2002) for the seat on the Federal bench but I can hardly believe that England is a stalwart GOPer. I have been unhappy with England in the past. He was the "conservative turncoat" who decided...