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We’ve been here before. The government mandates more fuel-efficient vehicles across the board, yet the American public continues to gravitate toward what’s big and powerful. Barring this era of greater responsibility and restraint, which might pass like a fleeting fancy with the recession, why not pick the bigger or more powerful car, we say? A lot of things are different this time around, though. Perhaps most remarkably, quite a few executives of automakers and major auto-supplier companies are voicing out in favor of higher fuel taxes—of more rigorous regulation of what types of vehicles can be built and sold—as a...

AIKEN, S.C. (AP) The South Carolina congressman who gained national attention for shouting "you lie" at President Obama during a speech to Congress will attend a Republican rally in Aiken. The Aiken Standard reports the Saturday rally will be held at the Republican Party headquarters in Aiken. Some have called the event a fundraiser and a show of support for Wilson. Aiken County Councilman Scott Singer called the rally awkward. He said he didn't want the rally to appear to support of Wilson's outburst. Wilson's shout at the president came after Obama said that extending health care to all Americans...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 2009 – Operation Gratitude, a troop-support group, is joining forces with Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and thousands of volunteers from across the country on Jan. 19’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday to assemble care kits for servicemembers deployed overseas. The effort, called "A Day of Service for Our Military," allows for people to show their support and express their appreciation to those in the military, organizers said. “We are thrilled to partner in this event, as this is a great way to introduce more Americans to the great work of Operation Gratitude and...

WASHINGTON -- Democrat Barack Obama raised $22 million in May for his presidential campaign, his weakest fund-raising month this year, and ended the month with $43 million cash on hand, the campaign reported Friday. Though Mr. Obama has been the fund-raising leader in the presidential contest, his May totals are just slightly above Republican rival John McCain's fund raising for the month. Overall, Mr. Obama has raised more than $287 million during the past 17 months, while Mr. McCain has raised a total of $115 million. Mr. Obama, who is bypassing the public financing system in the general election, reported...

WASHINGTON (Reuters Life!) - Middle-income families can expect to spend $204,060 on feeding, housing and schooling a child born in 2007 until his or her 18th birthday, the U.S. government reported on Monday. Child care and education costs will represent a larger share of costs for raising the '07 baby through adulthood than they have in the past, the Agriculture Department said in an annual study on child-rearing costs. "The cost of providing food decreased from 24 percent to 17 percent of total child-rearing costs, while child care and education expenses increased from 2 percent to 12 percent," the department...

REPUBLICANS MITT ROMNEY Total receipts to date (includes contributions for the primary and general elections, loans and transfers): $90.1 million, Total contributions to date: $53.9 million Total spending: $87.6 million Fourth quarter contributions: $9.1 million Fourth quarter spending: $34 million Fourth quarter transfers or loans: $18 million Cash on hand: $2.4 million Debt: $35 million Top donor states this quarter: California, $1,182,895.91, Florida, $954,869.03, New York, $597,719.00, Employees from Lehman Brothers gave $44,300, employees of Sun Capital Partners gave $34,200, employees of Olympia Asset Management gave $32,200 JOHN MCCAIN Total receipts to date: (includes contributions for the primary and general...

ARE Californians taxed too much, or not enough? Taxes are the central question of how to fund Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's massive $12 billion expansion of government-run health care with its 4 percent payroll tax, 4 percent hospital tax and 2 percent doctor tax. Ironically, Schwarzenegger lambasted Phil Angelides during last year's gubernatorial campaign for wanting to raise taxes by $7 billion to create a new government health care entitlement. Angelides argued mightily that his proposal amounted to fees, not taxes. But the governor called Angelides' "fee" a "tax," so a "tax" it was. Now that Schwarzenegger is proposing a government...

BOSTON — Mitt Romney raised $6.5 million Monday, giving the former Massachusetts governor — and his opponents — a clear indication there is strong support for him should he decide to run for the Republican presidential nomination, he said. Josh Reynolds, Associated PressMitt Romney hangs up after calling his sister as part of his "National Call Day" experiment. In a campaign fund-raising experiment, Romney's "National Call Day" at the Boston Convention Center had more than 400 supporters — including more than a dozen Utahns — work the phones, calling their own personal networks of likely donors to start funding Romney's...

WASHINGTON - The largest union in the AFL-CIO — representing state and local government workers — is beginning a multimillion-dollar effort to mobilize its members to vote, work for improved health care and organize more workers. The effort will be paid for by increases in the dues paid by workers and the fees paid by local unions. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, with 1.4 million members, voted this week in Chicago to increase the "per capita tax" it charges affiliate unions, union President Gerald McEntee said Thursday. McEntee said the union will raise $60 million from...

One of the great ironies of our time is that today’s parents, with more professional resources at their disposal than ever before, are experiencing more and greater problems in the area of discipline than their grandparents even thought possible. Once upon a not-so-very-long-ago time, children were mischievous. They tried to get away with what they thought they could when adults weren’t looking. All too many of today’s kids are surly, rude, disrespectful, ill-mannered, petulant, and openly defiant. The nature of the child has not changed in fifty years, so the problem must lie with changes in how parents are going...

WASHINGTON - Bowing to moderates and seeking to defuse a campaign issue before leaving for vacation, House GOP leaders Friday planned a vote on a bill to increase the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour within three years. The vote comes after almost 50 rank-and-file Republican lawmakers pressed House leaders — who strongly oppose the wage hike and have thus far prevented a vote — to schedule the measure for debate. Democrats have been hammering away on the wage hike issue and have public opinion behind them "We weren't going to be denied," said Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, a leader...

Homosexual storks brood on eggs (and raise young) Spent: 18 May 2006 15.29 last modified: 20 May 2006 17.10 OVERLOON - Three homosexual stork couples in Zoo Parc Overloon are busy in a very modern way. They brood on eggs and look after their young. The European storks formed the couples, two male and a lesbian, on their own. Homosexuality in the animal kingdom is not unheard of, but is usually limited to caressing and imitation fertilization. The gay couples in Overloon have hatched their eggs and are raising their young, which according to the animal parc is very rare....

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, May 11, 2006 – Losing a loved one to cancer is a hardship for anyone who goes through it, but one soldier deployed to Afghanistan learned how to turn his pain into motivation. Army 1st Lt. Michael G. Clark, Task Force Muleskinner air movement officer, does routine stretches here prior to his three-mile training run for the Komen Pittsburgh Race for the Cure. Clark and his family have been volunteering time to raise money for the race since 2001. Photo by Sgt. Michael J. Taylor, USA  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The Komen Pittsburgh...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A coalition of health organizations wants to increase the tax on a pack of cigarettes by 300 percent in California to boost funding for hospital emergency care, nursing education, cancer research and a variety of other health programs. The per-pack tax would jump by $2.60 under an initiative the coalition hopes to have on the November 2006 ballot, supporters said Tuesday. If voters approve the proposal, California's total tax on a pack of cigarettes would rise to $3.47, the highest in the nation. The initiative combines two competing tobacco tax measures that had been in circulation. One...

Raising CainsLost in the mist of time are his gold-crowned walking cane and the silver platter given to him by Adm. Raphael Semmes. But Joe Cain, the man who revived Mardi Gras in 1866, left something more tangible behind. In Bayou La Batre and elsewhere, generations of Cains live on. Sunday, February 06, 2005 By ROY HOFFMAN Staff Reporter When Norwood Cain, 75, was a boy in Bayou La Batre, his grandfather, Oliver , and paraded through Mobile streets, reviving Carnival in 1866; the next year he rode in a decorated wagon with a group of ex-Confederates, The Lost Cause...

SACRAMENTO — Polls are showing the Schwarzenegger administration and Democratic lawmakers that there is vast support among Californians for tax increases — a swift escape from chronic, multibillion-dollar deficit woes. But voters want to tax someone else, anyone else, just not themselves. That is why Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, despite continuing to explore the issue in internal polls, remains flatly opposed to increases in taxes as part of his proposed 2005-06 budget, according to aides and analysts. And that is also why majority Democrats — even Bay Area and Southern California lawmakers who just jointly and quietly introduced a major...

In a sign of California's uneven economic recovery and changing political landscape, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's vow this week that higher taxes are "out of the question" barely raised a peep in a state with a $9.1 billion deficit. With the exception of state Treasurer Phil Angelides, Democrats for now have dropped earlier calls for higher taxes to fix the budget. Instead, the Democrats, who control both houses of the Legislature, reacted to Schwarzenegger's budget proposal by talking about closing corporate tax loopholes and getting more federal dollars from Washington. "You don't see us saying we're going to raise taxes," said...

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 (US) for a middle-income family. Talk about sticker shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition. For those with kids, that figure leads to wild fantasies about all the things we could have had. WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU GET FOR YOUR $160,140? Naming rights. First, Middle and last. Glimpses of God every day. Giggles under the covers every night. More love than your heart can hold. Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs. Endless wonders over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies. A hand...

‘Water started to go funny,’ 10-year-old recalls LONDON - A 10-year-old British girl saved 100 other tourists from the Asian tsunami having warned them a giant mass of water was on its way after learning about the phenomenon weeks earlier at school, a newspaper reported. “I was on the beach and the water started to go funny,” Tilly Smith told the Sun at the weekend from Phuket, Thailand. “There were bubbles and the tide went out all of a sudden. I recognized what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami. I told mummy.”While...

Twenty-first Century Democrats, a national political action committee that was active in Minnesota this year, has received a record fine for failing to disclose its donors to state regulators. Two fines, totaling $317,950, were announced Tuesday by the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. Despite the size of the fine, the campaign finance board concluded that the reporting violations admitted by 21st Century Democrats were "inadvertent." Twenty-first Century Democrats is the PAC that drew strong criticism from Minnesota Republicans when it was revealed in early November that state House Minority Leader Matt Entenza, DFL-St. Paul, contributed $300,000 to the...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Some analysts and Democratic lawmakers predicted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's first budget would be his last without tax increases. After he and lawmakers cobbled together a plan built around borrowing, they predicted he would have to succumb to some sort of tax hike to wipe out a persistent gulf between California's revenues and spending. Not so anymore. Rising revenues, a single-digit deficit - seemingly small in contrast to the jaw-dropping $20 billion-plus gaps in past years - and the availability of $3.5 billion in voter-approved deficit bonds have cleared the way for Schwarzenegger to avoid the once-dreaded tax hike in the...

This is a photo from a recent Chinese language publication. The fellow is ID'd as a major donor. Teresa's smile -- that's less coming out of her Heinz fortune -- and the prominence of the photo op indeed indicate this guy is a big donor. The blond is said to be big donor's wife. Big donor is described as a doctor and is named Cai Zihuang in Chinese. I think he's from the Southern California area but don't know. Maybe he is just a dumb fool or maybe he is this years John Huang or Charlie Trie. Kerry is in...

Oregon Libertarian Tom Cox is following up on his promise: He said last year -- when he was chairman of the state Libertarian Party -- that Republican legislators in his state who voted to approve a tax hike would be opposed when they came up for re-election. He is now running against one of those Republicans. And his move has been noted -- and applauded -- by local media and lawmakers alike. The Salem Statesman Journal, in the capital city, pointed out that both Libertarians and some Republicans said they would do their utmost to kick those lawmakers out of...

<p>Whatever political skills Arnold Schwarzenegger has demonstrated on the road from film star to governor, add spectacular fund-raising savvy to the list.</p> <p>He's been so prolific, in fact, that many of the same critics who regularly questioned former Gov. Gray Davis' integrity for raising millions from people doing business with the state now are attacking the Republican governor, who once said he didn't "need to take money from anybody."</p>

MoveOn.org- Campaign Finance Law Violation? I received an e-mail from MoveOn.org describing a unique fund-raising campaign by MoveOn's Section 527 organization to fund ads opposing the re-election of President Bush. This in itself seemed a little sketchy to me, considering the solicitation came through MoveOn's normal 501(c) mailing list. I'm not sure if that's a violation, though. Here's what gets me, the campaign claimed that if I contributed, my contribution would be matched if I was in the first $300,000 of contributions. The wording was slightly confusing, so I asked MoveOn whether this meant they would receive a $300,000 contribution...

I received a call today from someone claiming to be from Tom Delay's office offering my wife a "National Leadership Award". It didn't sound like a Republican on the other end and so I treated it as a solicitor call and cut her off; however she asked me to give my wife a 1-800 number to call to receive her award. Since my wife does not work and hasn't really contributed anything to the Republican party I has to assume they threw a dart to select her name. I then started looking around the internet for this and found that...

Well I thought this would be an interesting discussion topic so here goes... How do you teach children the value of patience?