Free Republic

Apparently a "Global Climate Center" was hacked and the contents have been posted to the Internet. A ZIP file exceeding 60MB and containing a huge number of emails and other documents has been posted worldwide. Original speculation as to whether the files posted were legitimate or some sort of spoof appears to now be confirmed as legitimate: “It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.” I have not had time to read all of the material...

CHEYENNE — A Wyoming legislative committee on Wednesday voted against sponsoring two bills to tax wind energy development. Industry representatives and lobbyists warned members of the Joint Revenue Committee at a meeting at the state Capitol that the proposals to tax wind power would increase costs for Wyoming households and hurt the state’s fledgling wind industry. “You need to not cobble together all these tax notions into one bill,” said Larry Wolfe, a lawyer representing Duke Energy, a major wind power developer.

BERN, Switzerland -- American clients who each hid more than 1 million Swiss francs in undeclared bank accounts with UBS AG between 2001 and 2008 could have their details turned over to the U.S. government, Swiss officials said Tuesday. The Swiss Justice Department unveiled the criteria used to determine which 4,450 UBS ( UBS - news - people ) customers risk disclosure to U.S. tax authorities as part of a deal to end a major tax evasion investigation against the bank. The Internal Revenue Service had initially sought the names of some 52,000 American clients at UBS believed to be...

OAKLAND — Former state Senate President Pro Tem and 2010 Oakland mayoral candidate Don Perata joined cancer research and health advocates Monday to launch a ballot measure that would hike cigarette taxes by a dollar a pack. "This is the right measure for the right time," Corey Goodman, a UC San Francisco professor and former biotech entrepreneur, said at a news conference in the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, adding the half-billion dollars per year this measure could raise would help move scientific breakthroughs "from the bench to the bedside" to save lives. Perata said he conceived of the measure...

An aggressive White House push on jobs and deficit reduction in 2010 may be yet another sign that climate-change legislation will stay on the back burner next year. “There is a growing chorus in the party that thinks we should be doing more to spur job creation and not necessarily tackle cap and trade right now,” said a moderate Democratic Senate aide. White House officials told POLITICO on Friday that President Barack Obama plans curb new domestic spending beyond jobs programs and focus on cutting the federal deficit next year. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid has hinted that...

As mentioned here before, Huntington, Indiana had a shortfall of 1.7 million dollars in its tax revenues. This has led to layoffs of city personnel, proposed rate increases, a fight over Local Option Income Tax, and the possible trimming of city services. Herein lies the bulk of the problem. The city is short of funds and the economic climate is bad. Unemployment is high, the city has lost valuable companies, and home values are dropping because of foreclosures. On top of all of this, the federal government has seen fit to mandate a major infrastructure overhaul of the transfer systems...

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl plans to propose a 1 percent college-education privilege tax to council today, in a move that's likely to set off a fight with the city's schools of higher learning. College and university representatives met with the mayor on Wednesday and argued against the tax, which would be assessed on a college student's tuition. It technically would not be a levy on the students or their schools, but rather on the privilege of getting a higher education in Pittsburgh. "They weren't pleased to hear that this was an option we were pursuing," Mr. Ravenstahl said. But he...

Health Care has passed the house, putting the icing on the cake of Tarp Bailouts and Czars. I have decided to pull in my oars, and will no longer pull. 1. I am buying my food as locally and from small farmers. This keeps $$$ away from large agri-business who fund congressional champains. 2. I moved my money to a small local bank. They are not funding projects out of state, and are as furious as I am about what congress has done lately. 3. I have pushed my 401K up to 12.5 percent, and should have it at 20%...

The American people need to send a stronger message to Washington...we are not paying any more tax money until you stop passing laws we do not want. We need to get everyone who has withholding tax to change it to zero NOW! Stop paying any federal taxes until Congress starts listening to us. We can bankrupt them in a month if we act fast and furious.

Nov. 7, 2009, 10:29 a.m. EST Brown urges global tax to fund bank bailouts By William L. Watts, MarketWatch LONDON (MarketWatch) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Saturday urged finance officials from the world's 20 largest industrialized and developing nations to weigh a global tax on financial transactions that would be used to fund bank bailouts. "I believe we should discuss whether we need a better economic and social contract to reflect the global responsibilities of financial institutions to society," Brown told finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 nations gathered at St. Andrews in Scotland....

The August Congressional Budget Office budget forecast for the fiscal year that began last month says that Uncle Sam will take in $2.264 trillion from October 2009 through September 2010. That’s an increase of 7.6% over fiscal 2009’s intake of $2.105 trillion. Though it won’t be official until Tim Geithner’s crew releases its Monthly Treasury Statement next week, it’s virtually certain that the government’s collections will open the year in a deep hole compared to last year, and probably well behind what CBO expects. Take a look at this compilation of key items from October’s final Daily Treasury Statement, compared...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday approved a Democratic climate change bill that would require industry to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 20 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. With Republicans boycotting the committee's work saying more analysis of the legislation was needed, 10 Democrats voted to approve the legislation and one Democrat, Senator Max Baucus, voted against it. The bill will now become one of several initiatives aimed at attacking global warming. Senator John Kerry is leading an effort with some Republicans and the White House to craft...

DETROIT (Reuters) - There's a simple way to get Americans to drive fuel-efficient cars, according to auto executives, but they are not going to like it -- sharply hike the gas tax. [snip] Gradually raising gas taxes to the point where fuel costs $4 to $5 at the pump will do more to stimulate demand in next-generation vehicles like General Motors Co's forthcoming Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid than any other policy initiatives...

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...

I haven't heard this argument before by homosexuals but here it is: "Taxes have everything to do with "no taxation without representation." Why should homosexuals have to pay taxes if they are going to be treated as second class citizens? Why should their tax dollars go to the govt? But if you and I can have our benefits left to our spouses and get tax breaks for filing, then everyone in a domestic partnership should have that right. The govt should support all marriage or no marriage. It should represent all it's constituents. We can't just apply the ideals of...

Offshore tax dodgers are being warned by HMRC that they have one final chance to come clean, or face the consequences. Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7qb8Y8RvE0

Obamacare promises to make medicine cheaper by making it costlier. Case in point: The Senate Finance Committee proposes a brand-new tax on medical devices. Manufacturers of pacemakers, stents, heart valves, artificial hips, motorized wheelchairs, and other therapeutic instruments may have lobbied this tax in half. But whether they endure the $40 billion now in the Finance Committee’s bill or a $20 billion backroom bargain, Obamacare foolishly would hike taxes on companies that generate health-advancing, life-saving mechanisms. This Senate measure would slap a ten-year, $4 billion annual tax on medical implements that retail for $100 or more. “The $4 billion excise...

The Federal Stimulus Package has been distributed in many different ways around the nation, and now some people are getting an $8,000 tax credit for buying a souped up golf cart. Golf cart manufacturers have found a way to cash in by selling their carts as street legal, low speed vehicles. Under the president’s stimulus plan, those who buy one of the electric vehicles, can get a check back for up to $7,500. “I only came in because I was impressed with the fact of the rebate,” one customer said. “I could foresee using this for all our driving within...

Daily Times - Site Edition Friday, October 30, 2009 Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan: Hillary Clinton * US taxes everything, and ‘that’s not what we see in Pakistan’ * Pakistan must start planning for challenges posed by population growth * US secretary of state meets COAS LAHORE: The leadership of Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday. “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” she added. “Maybe that’s the case; maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t...

Unless they had explicitly named them, the Senate’s Kerry-Boxer and the House’s Waxman-Markey global warming bills could not have been better designed to inflict more pain on the states that swung red in the last election than on those that went blue. The American Clean Energy and Security Act in the Senate and House’s Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act both call for dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, eventually 83%. (Isn’t it curious that neither bill is titled after the impending global warming catastrophe that they are supposedly designed to avert?) When EPA’s data for carbon dioxide emissions...

AB 17 which was enacted by the California legislature and signed by Governor Schwarzenegger, requires the California Franchise Tax Board to adjust the payroll withholding table with an increase. The payroll withholding tables apply to pensions, as well as wages. AB 17 will increase payroll withholding by 10 percent, effective for wages paid after October 31, 2009. Withholding on supplemental wages increase from 6 percent to 6.6 percent effective for supplemental wages paid after October 31, 2009 and for stock options and bonus payments it will increase from 9.3 percent to 10.2 percent.

Educating For Failure Malcolm A. Kline, October 30, 2009 Every chief executive in the past 20 years has vowed to be, as one of them put it, “the education president.” All have failed for the same reason: as with most aspects of life, top-down government solutions to education just don’t work. “Between 1960 and 1990, spending on elementary and secondary education jumped from $50 billion to nearly $190 billion in inflation adjusted dollars,” Leslie Carbone writes in Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case For Tax Reform. “During the same period, per student spending more than tripled—from $1,454 to $4,622.” “Between 1973...

Vermont State Rep. Fred Maslack has read the Second Amendment to the U.S.. Constitution as well as Vermont 's own Constitution very carefully, and his strict interpretation of these documents is popping some eyeballs in New England and elsewhere. Maslack recently proposed a bill to register non-gun-owners and require them to pay a $500 fee to the state. Thus Vermont would become the first state to require a permit for the luxury of going about unarmed and assess a fee of $500 for the privilege of not owning a gun. Maslack read the "militia" phrase of the Second Amendment as...

Monday night, the citizens entered the GAR room to voice their opinions on a proposed increase in the local LOIT tax. Over the preceding week, the forum style had changed a bit. At first, any comments to be made by citizens, were to be in writing before....

After King County Superior Court Judge Gregory Canova awarded Microsoft an $8.7 million judgment in a 2008 lawsuit involving unpaid software licenses, he might have been surprised to learn that Microsoft isn’t actually in the software licensing business in Washington – or at least that’s what it reports to the state Department of Revenue. For tax purposes, Microsoft reports that it’s earned its estimated $143 billion in software licensing revenue in Nevada, where there is no licensing tax. However, for legal purposes, Microsoft executes its licensing contracts so they are governed by and rely on the protections of Washington law...

BELGRADE -- The average highest income tax rate in EU countries is almost double that of Serbia, Belgrade daily Blic writes. At the same time, a lower rate is applied only in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. According to valid legislation, a Serbian citizen will pay about EUR 146,000 to the state out of each million they earn – half the figure that a Cypriot citizen would pay in taxes. In Denmark, the number would reach over half a million euros, says the newspaper. Saša Radulović, an independent investment consultant who has worked in Germany, Canada and the...

Land of Rising Debt: Falling Tax Revenue Forces Japan to Sell More Bonds By Bob Blandeburgo Associate Editor Money Morning Japan’s government will have to sell more bonds – and grow the country’s record debt – in the face of declining tax receipts. The central government’s tax revenue may fall below $442 billion (40 trillion yen) considerably less than the $439 billion (46 trillion yen) forecast a year ago, Japanese Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii told The Wall Street Journal. “This is due to the global recession that began last year, and we will deal with this through the additional issuance...

TRENTON, N.J. — Johnson & Johnson executives said Tuesday a proposed tax on medical device makers, part of the health care reform package moving in the Senate, is too high and could cost jobs in the industry. "We think that the $4 billion tax that they're referring to is unreasonable," J&J Chief Financial Officer Dominic Caruso told The Associated Press in an interview. "We believe it's at least twice what it ought to be." Caruso spoke after New Brunswick, N.J.-based J&J reported its third-quarter earnings, which included a tiny profit increase and sales declines in every division except medical devices,...

A word search of the 1,502-page Senate health care bill (S. 1796) reveals that the term "tax" is used 124 times, "taxable" is used 158 times, and "excise tax" is used 12 times.

John Mckinnon at the WSJ reports: Home-Buyer Credit Is Focus of Inquiry The Internal Revenue Service is examining more than 100,000 suspicious claims for the first-time home-buyer tax break ... The tax credit is completely refundable, even if the homebuyer has no tax liability - and this makes it a target for fraud. From the IRS: "[The tax credit is] fully refundable, meaning the credit will be paid out to eligible taxpayers, even if they owe no tax or the credit is more than the tax owed." Also, the credit is separate from the closing, and the WSJ article suggests...

Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., understands something that continues to escape House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is radioactive, owing to multiple investigations of his serial failures to disclose millions of dollars worth of income and investments. Rangel had contributed more than $19,000 to Welch, but the Vermonter recently sent it back. That was a good decision because Welch is a member of the House Ethics Committee, which is conducting one of the investigations of Rangel. But it shouldn’t be necessary to be on the ethics panel in order to understand that Rangel’s actions disgrace...

President Bush has signed into law three tax bills in the past three years; these tax cuts amounted to $1.3 trillion in 2001, $96 billion in 2002, and $330 billion in 2003. Democratic opponents criticized the tax cuts (particularly the first one in 2001) as fiscally irresponsible and weighted primarily toward the wealthy, while Republican supporters claimed that the tax cuts would stimulate economic growth and return money to taxpayers across the board. Major Provisions of the Tax Cuts The 2001 Economic Growth and Recovery Tax Act, by far the largest of the three tax cuts, was intended to provide...

A new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation details the effect that a Value-Added Tax, recently proposed by Nancy Pelosi as a way to pay for unfunded liabilities, would have on the American economy. Very, very well done.

The nation’s unemployment rate has pushed the budget deficit to a record $1.4 trillion in 2009. The unemployment rate hit 9.8 percent in September and is widely expected to hit 10 percent before the end of the year... High unemployment means more unemployment checks and less tax revenue, costing the government roughly $100 billion annually... Those costs will persist for the next couple of years. Unemployment compensation rose from $47 billion in fiscal 2008 to $120 billion in 2009, a 156 percent jump. High unemployment has also added to the deficit by helping drive down tax revenue. Individual income taxes...

The former CBO director, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, warns today on the effect ObamaCare will have on our economy and health care. These facts should be painfully obvious to those with even one iota of common sense. This bill will lead to a huge middle class tax increase: Remember when health-care reform was supposed to make life better for the middle class? That dream began to unravel this past summer when Congress proposed a bill that failed to include any competition-based reforms that would actually bend the curve of health-care costs. It fell apart completely when Democrats began papering over the gaping...

Will Max be a tax break? Can Fido help with FICA? A bill making the rounds on Capitol Hill marries two feel-good propositions -- tax cuts and pet ownership -- to generate a novel idea: A tax break of up to $3,500 per person for pet care expenses.

Will increasing tax rates on the rich increase revenues, or hold back the economy? Mr. Hauser uncovered the means to answer these questions definitively. On this page in 1993, he stated that "No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5% of GDP." What a pity that his discovery has not been more widely disseminated. The chart nearby, updating the evidence to 2007, confirms Hauser's Law. The federal tax "yield" (revenues divided by GDP) has remained close to 19.5%, even as the top tax bracket was brought down from 91% to...

Jennifer refers to the New York Times lead article this morning on a brewing civil war among Congressional Democrats as they struggle to get a health-care reform bill through the legislative process. This, of course, is what happens when you promise, as President Obama has repeatedly, to put in place a new health-care system that covers more people, costs less money, provides more services, and allows all who like the status quo to continue with what they have...

One of the over-looked angles on the growing ACORN national scandal is how little the far-left activist group actually does with the millions it receives from taxpayers, corporations, and foundations. The group says it provide lots of services for poor people, but a recent NewsBusters post by Tom Blumer exposes the hollow facts behind the claims. Blumer compiled ACORN claims about its services from the group's web site and from various press accounts, then began applying some simple arithmetic. The results are quite revealing and raise more troubling questions about what ACORN does with its millions: “Since its inception, according...

Introduction Over the past decade and a half, Americans have been presented with two radically different visions of the role of government. The first vision, articulated and implemented by President Reagan in the 1980s, declares that government taxation and burdensome regulations are harmful to the natural market forces that generate economic growth. Since economic growth is the only way to truly create jobs and raise incomes, policies that reduce taxes and government intervention are the keys to higher living standards for all Americans. President Clinton espouses the second vision, which maintains that the expansion of government does not have harmful...

It was months ago that Obama vilified doctors and basically called them greedy: “Right now, doctors, a lot of times, are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that’s out there. So if you come in and you’ve got a bad sore throat, or your child has a bad sore throat, or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, ‘You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out.’ Now, that may be the right thing to do, but I’d rather have...

You can add House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the group of Democrats or Obama allies (John Podesta, Paul Volcker, Roget Altman) calling for a value-added tax. (I predicted all of this days ago.) Here is Pelosi (via The Hill): Pelosi, appearing on PBS’s “The Charlie Rose Show” asserted that “it’s fair to look at” the VAT as part of an overhaul of the nation’s tax code. “I would say, Put everything on the table and subject it to the scrutiny that it deserves,” Pelosi told Rose when asked if the VAT has any appeal to her. The VAT is a...

Americans need more exercise, not another tax. Obesity is a complex issue, and addressing it is important for all Americans. We at the Coca-Cola company are committed to working with government and health organizations to implement effective solutions to address this problem. But a number of public-health advocates have already come up with what they think is the solution: heavy taxes on some routine foods and beverages that they have decided are high in calories. The taxes, the advocates acknowledge, are intended to limit consumption of targeted foods and help you to accept the diet that they have determined is...

AKRON, Ohio -- FirstEnergy Corp. plans to provide nearly 4 million low-energy light bulbs to its residential electricity customers in Ohio. Akron-based FirstEnergy said Monday that distribution will begin in mid-October. Two compact fluorescent light bulbs will be mailed or hand-delivered to residential customers of Ohio Edison, Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. and Toledo Edison. The cost of the program will be underwritten by customers, who FirstEnergy said can recover three times the cost through projected energy savings. Reports indicate that there will be a 60 cent charge on customers' bills for the next three years. The program approved by state...

...I have no long-term solution, except to suggest a way to address the inherent unfairness of the situation. When your aunt sends you a pair of socks for the Federally Recognized Holiday of December 25th, you are expected to reciprocate with a thank you note. Common politeness and decency insists on this. Therefore, the half of Americans who receive the yearly (free) present of a Government with all its trappings, should be required to write those of us who paid for it a thank you note. Each free-riding citizen would receive a random name and address of a taxpayer and...

You'll recall when Obama made the rounds of the Sunday shows last week, he was asked by George Stephanopoulos why a federal requirement to either buy health insurance or pay a penalty isn't a tax. Obama scoffed at the absurdity of the question and ol' George busted out the dictionary to show our Harvard-educated president the definition of a tax. The RNC decided it would make good theater.

In a new Web video released Monday morning, the Republican National Committee included a piece of an interview on Sept. 20 in which ABC’s George Stephanopoulos cited Merriam Webster’s Dictionary as he asked Mr. Obama how requiring individuals to purchase health insurance — and fining them if they do not — wouldn’t by definition be a tax.

The latest mad scheme by the President may be an attempt to introduce a Value Added Tax in the United States. James Pethokoukis at Reuters outlines his concerns this way: So John Podesta, co-chairman of Obama’s presidential transition team, says a value-added tax is “more plausible today” than ever, adding that “there’s going to have to be revenue in this budget.” A few thoughts: 1) Podesta is also president of the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank closely allied with the White House. 2) It’s consensus among centrist economists, like those in the White House, that...

The repatriation of the Timbit was held up by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Tim Hortons executives Wednesday as a shining example of low corporate tax rates luring business to Canada. The homegrown coffee giant has not technically been a Canadian company for years, but Tim Hortons Inc. is reorganizing as a Canadian public company after 99 per cent of shareholders voted Tuesday in favour of bringing the iconic coffee company back home from the U.S. The chain so ubiquitous north of the border had been registered in Delaware for nearly 15 years as a result of its purchase by...

New York governor David Paterson, back in April, upon hearing that Rush Limbaugh was leaving the state because of new taxes: "If I knew that would be the result, I would’ve thought about the taxes earlier.” New York governor David Paterson, now: "You heard the mantra, 'Tax the rich, tax the rich' . . . We've done that. We've probably lost jobs and driven people out of the state." Don't worry, New Yorkers. Sure, you're unemployed and overtaxed, and your state government is a cesspool of bickering and corruption, but your governor chased away that scary Rush Limbaugh and all...