Free Republic

BROOKLYN, N.Y. – No one can say exactly how much money illegal immigrants spend on lottery tickets. However, the owner of a small store in Bensonhurst admitted to me that the biggest fans of the New York Lottery are Mexicans. “They earn next to nothing doing dirty work, yet they throw $20 to $30 a day to the wind,” he marveled. “Sometimes entire families play!” Vendors rarely ask their lottery customers for ID. They couldn’t care less about a person’s age, legal status, or knowledge of English. This amounts to legalized fraud because illegal immigrants who win large sums of...

House, Senate passage seem likely The careening vehicle that has been this legislative session's toll road overhaul appeared to pull into the garage about 4:35 p.m. Thursday. At that moment, Republican state Sen. Robert Nichols of Jacksonville, after spending several moments huddling on the floor with Sen. Tommy Williams, sponsor of Senate Bill 792, affixed his signature to a compromise version of the bill, and the two shook hands. "We've got a deal now," Williams, R-The Woodlands, said about an hour later. "This is really going to move transportation issues forward, particularly in large metropolitan areas." The deal was among...

LONDON: Lloyd's of London, the world's biggest insurance market, on Thursday reported a pretax profit of 3.66 billion pounds (€5.4 billion, US$7.2 billion) in 2006, a year of few global catastrophes. That reversed Lloyd's 2005 result of a loss of 103 million pounds (€152 million, US$202 million) because of hurricane damage claims. "During the year, we benefited from strong underlying conditions and an exceptionally low level of catastrophes," said Lord Levene, Lloyd's chairman. "However, it would be unrealistic to expect such a favorable claims experience this year." The 2005 season was the most destructive in recorded history, with 27 named...

Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday admitted he “really screwed up” by spending tax dollars on a leased Cadillac and high-end office furniture, but he strongly defended the hiring of a $72,000-a-year chief of staff for his wife. “Every governor has had staff to help support the work of the office, including the work of the first lady,” Patrick said during an impromptu press conference. “It’s official business.” However, a Patrick aide could recall only two events Diane Patrick has attended this year, one to promote early education initiatives in the State House and a second to appear at a reading event...

A man found dead on a Homewood street this morning was cut in half when he reached into a car and the driver took off, slamming him into a pole on Hamilton Avenue, police said Pittsburgh Police said the victim, who was identified as Antwon Williams, 45, was selling drugs to the driver of a blue Dodge Neon shortly after 6 a.m. Witnesses told police that the driver accepted crack cocaine but tried to drive away without paying. The seller then reached inside the driver's side window to try to put the car into park, but the driver drove off....

What do a gym membership, a bottle of prescription pills and a holiday gift card have in common? Each of them is a thing that is bought and then often goes unused. In their recent paper “Paying Not to Go to the Gym,” the economists Stefano DellaVigna and Ulrike Malmendier showed that people who buy an annual membership to a health club overestimate by more than 70 percent how much they’ll actually use it. Many people, therefore, would be better off buying monthly or daily passes. ...As for gift cards — well, let’s just say there is good reason that...

I've been playing bingo on-line at a popular bingo site and it appears that almost every game has the same 3-4 winners (not me) and jackpots are won over and over by the same players. Got to chatting on the bingo site and someone suggested that the company pre-determines the winners by customer ISP number. We figure the winners are those who may not play the most cards but make the most deposits. Does this sound plausible? Any software designers out there?

Cash-starved Americans, many of them serving in the U.S. military, are watching an increasing crackdown on one of their most frequent sources of last ditch credit - payday loans. Even Congress has clamped down on the practice, but a spokesman for the payday loan industry Thursday told Cybercast News Service that criticism of the loans is being led by "elitist" consumer groups whose members "never have to go paycheck to paycheck." Payday loans allow individuals to stay financially afloat between paychecks. They are short-term cash loans in which the borrower often hands over electronic access of their bank account to...

"New Mexico’s infatuation with costly rail projects will continue to burden the state’s economy with wasteful spending into the distant future. This reality was made clear earlier this year when Rep. Tom Davis (R., Va.) secured $1.5 billion in federal money for Washington’s Metro rail system, contingent on local governments raising taxes on their citizens to create a “dedicated revenue source” for that system." >Snip<

Microsoft's Zune Marketplace will sell individual songs for Windows PCs and Zune digital media players "through a system called Microsoft Points. The new Microsoft cash system will work by adding money to an account, as with a prepaid phone card. Points will then be deducted from the account with each purchase. A single song will cost 79 points, 'the equivalent of 99 cents,' according to Microsoft spokeswoman Kyrsa Dixon," Candace Lombardi reported in late September for CNET News. Lombardi reported, "The point system is already used in the Xbox Live Marketplace, and Microsoft plans to host other online stores where...

Top employees of a city-financed Bronx charity diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars for personal expenses like home renovations, furniture and the purchase of a Volvo and a BMW, a city investigation has found. The widespread fraud in recent years at the charity, the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club, which received $9 million a year in city financing to help children and the elderly, also included off-the-books bank accounts — created under the guise of supporting youth athletic programs — that were used to pay bonuses to the executive director and four other officials, according to the city’s Department...

Judge Sides With Original Supernova In 'Rock Star' Suit Ruling requires Tommy Lee's band to change name following show's finale. David has defeated Goliath. According to a Tuesday (September 12) ruling by San Diego Judge John Houston, the producers of CBS' "Rock Star" are going to have to come up with an alternate name for Supernova, the band made up of Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee, Voivod's Jason Newsted and former Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke. Last month, the original Supernova — an Orange County, California, punk trio — filed for a preliminary injunction in San Diego's U.S. District Court...

New Mexico governor and presumptive presidential candidate Bill Richardson recently joined the ranks of governors who have proposed significant changes to their state’s Medicaid systems. Starting with passage of Mitt Romney’s groundbreaking and controversial universal-coverage plan in April, states from West Virginia to Idaho and from Florida to Maine (to name just a few) are taking steps to improve care while cutting costs. Richardson, however, despite his national image as a “moderate,” has taken a different path, namely the path of least resistance. Rather than making tough decisions and prioritizing as most other states are doing, Richardson plans to leverage...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — A federal commission approved a final report on Thursday that urges a broad shake-up of American higher education. It calls for public universities to measure learning with standardized tests, federal monitoring of college quality and sweeping changes in financial aid. The panel also called on policy makers and leaders in higher education to find new ways to control costs, saying college tuition should grow no faster than median family income, although it opposed price controls. The report recommended bolstering Pell grants, the basic building block of federal student aid, by making the program cover a larger...

Cuban Communism: Fidel Castro's slide toward death's embrace is bringing closer the island-state's day of reckoning: Either it lives free or dies a tyranny. The U.S. must now push for freedom relentlessly. The ailing dictator will probably go out the way he shouldn't — in his bed. But the legacy he leaves just 90 miles from our shores is one of the worst in the world and should be destroyed. Contrary to the media's puerile awe at the 79-year-old Castro's significance — he's often reverently called "the longest-serving" Latin American ruler or "maverick leader" — he is one of the...

Recently, we met an engineer from Air Synergy Labs, Inc. who has invented and patented (U.S. and Canadian Patents) a simple device that may in fact help to increase the performance of most any internal combustion engine.  If that’s the case, then his invention (he calls it the VortexValve™) might provide us with a simple and easy way to save huge amounts of money on transportation costs (i.e., the amount of fuel we have to buy for our cars, trucks, buses, etc.).  The story behind this unique device and its almost serendipitous discovery is quite fascinating and one of these...

The documents seized in the FBI raid on the offices of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) remain unread by Justice Department investigators, pending a federal Appeals Court ruling scheduled for August 27. [snip] But we already know a bit about the charges and some of the alleged partners of Congressman Jefferson. Two people have pleaded guilty to bribing him.

/begin my translation N. Korea Holds onto  Chinese Trains Bringing Aids Japanese Media, "(N. Koreans) say that trains are part of the aid package." [2006-07-04] Outdated N. Korean trains N. Korea refuses to return (Chinese) trains which brought aid supplies from China, even after the supplies were unloaded, leaving Chinese authorities increasingly frustrated, it has been revealed. Quoting sources inside China, Jiji Press of Japan reported in its July 4th dispatch,  "China is sending materials and goods to N. Korea, but, in recent days, N. Korea frequently refuses to return these trains, raising frustration of Chinese authorities." According to Jiji, the sources speculated, "N....

Vietnamese police have foiled three Nigerians in their scams duping thousands of dollars out of Vietnamese women who lent them money to ostensibly buy chemicals to restore ‘blackened US banknotes’. A source said they had been deported from Vietnam The police refused to reveal their names or say whether the three cases were related, but they happened with different women earlier this year by different Nigerians with the same trick. In April, one Nigerian befriended a café owner in southern Vung Tau resort city and promised to give her a share in a restaurant he was about to open if...

This will be a busy week in the House -- Congress goes into summer recess Friday, but not before considering the Section 115 Reform Act of 2006 (SIRA). Never heard of SIRA? That’s the way Big Copyright and their lackey’s want it, and it's bad news for you. Simply put, SIRA fundamentally redefines copyright and fair use in the digital world. It would require all incidental copies of music to be licensed separately from the originating copy. Even copies of songs that are cached in your computer's memory or buffered over a network would need yet another license. Once again,...