Free Republic

Starting today, the District of Columbia becomes the first major city in the nation to impose a surcharge on disposable paper and plastic bags commonly used at grocery and retail stores everywhere. Customers who tote their food or liquor purchases home in the ubiquitous bags will now be required to pay 5 cents for each one they use. The fees will go to a fund for cleaning up the city's Anacostia River. "I signed this law in July to cut down on the disposable bags that foul our waterways," D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty said last month. "We want everyone to...

A spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service said the agency is investigating an effigy of President Barack Obama found hanging from a building in the Georgia hometown of former President Jimmy Carter. Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told The Associated Press that the large black doll was found Saturday morning along Main Street in the small town of Plains. According to footage from WALB-TV, the doll was hanging by a noose in front of a red, white and blue sign that says "Plains, Georgia. Home of Jimmy Carter, our 39th President." A witness told the television station that the doll...

In separate rulings, one in California and the other in Minnesota, judges ordered those states’ governors to restore spending that they had reduced because of soaring deficits. In Minnesota, District Judge Kathleen Gearin directed state Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) to reinstate cuts he had made to a food distribution program, calling the Governor’s actions “callous and immoral.” “At a time of high unemployment it is exceedingly cruel for a state official to be denying people access to the food they need to live,” Gearin said. “This is especially the case when it is obvious that the government has not maximized...

More than eight years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, New York City authorities are demanding that developer Larry Silverstein fork over almost $35m in commercial rent taxes on the Twin Towers and two other buildings that no longer exist. The city's reasoning is that Silverstein continued to pay rent to the Port Authority after the towers fell. That, city officials claim, subjects his transactions to the 3.9 percent commercial rent tax ... On May 27, 2007, the city's finance department sent Silverstein a bill for $34,866,549 - including penalties and interest - on his four trade center buildings. City...

Most experts state that there are essentially three ways to get out of the US Government’s financial dilemma which consists of over $12 trillion debt, almost $2 trillion annual deficits, over $1.4 trillion in printed money in the last year, and over $100 trillion in unfunded Medicare and Social Security liabilities. The three scenarios most cited are: 1. Keep printing money 2. Raise interest rates 3. Default on some of the debt All three of these choices have serious downsides. Printing money could lead to hyperinflation of over 1000 percent per year destroying all savings. Raising interest rates could bankrupt...

The Government believes there can be an "age of aspiration" despite taxes going up, Gordon Brown says as the battle lines are drawn ahead of a General Election later this year. The Conservative Party believes only in an "age of austerity", the Prime Minister added. Labour has pledged to halve Britain's deficit in four years but Mr Brown warned that reducing it faster could put the economic recovery at risk. "We're raising your taxes to do it," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr. "You will have to pay more on the top rate of tax." He said Labour was the...

The lesson to be learned from Sweden of today (a nation lead by a - predominantely - Conservative government) is that during a global finacial crises, a government brave enough to sell off some formerly nationalized businesses to the free market could finance tax cuts and pay off national debt. I guess this is preferable to one striving to take on hefty loans in order to try and save unhealthy companies and launch costly health care reforms. But, it's not for me to say in the case of America, as I'm not a citizen of that country (although I sure...

As you start to read all this, you'll laugh at how incestuous it all gets. Let's start with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which as I've noted in the past is tied in with the Soros foundation. Together, the two worked on something called The Project on Death in America.(PDIA) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2341083/posts And speaking of Mr Soros, he himself(his foundations) have given directly to NPR. Compared to some of the other numbers I'm seeing, it's a small amount of $250,000. But it doesn't matter. Soros money is soros money in my book. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2396058/posts Additional information about RWJF can be found here....

And so the solstice passes and a new year dawns, leaving “newsmen” everywhere with a dearth of “news” to report (since the government bureaus close down, issuing no new edicts for the “newsmen” to interpret and praise, which should give you some indication of what really passes for “news,” these days.) Traditionally, those in the “news” business respond by taking a stab at predicting noteworthy events of the year to come. We can predict the future quite accurately. Unfortunately, accurate predictions are a bore. The sun will rise 363 more times this year. When I ask for extra salt and...

I'm a Defense Department retiree and received my annual annuity statement from OPM the other day. We didn't get a cost of living adjustment this year, but I noticed my monthly payment went up. Upon closer examination, I saw that OPM had arbitrarily reduced my monthly withholding. Evidently, the administration wants us all to think we got a raise, only to find out we will owe the extra money back in 2011 (after the elections, of course). I did a quick survey of my former co-workers and the same thing happened to them. This is very unusual, since withholding amounts...

Well, 2010 has arrived -- and because Congress devoted so much effort toward health care reform, we may have ourselves some death panels after all. While critics have dismissed Sarah Palin's "death panels" to dole out medical care as fiction, a tax loophole may in fact give the heirs of some wealthy people a financial incentive to make this new year their loved one's last. In 2001, then-President George W. Bush signed a law designed to phase out the estate tax -- a tax on the assets a deceased individual leaves behind. The law reduced the amount wealthy families were...

On Christmas day, a cousin of mine, in his 20s, an affable, liberal-minded guy who works in the movie industry and voted for Zero, stunningly admitted: “I get more conservative every time I look at what the government takes from my paycheck.”My young cousin, and many more like him, are about to become even more self-aware this year … as they watch their paychecks evaporate like a drop of water spilled in the Sahara. That’s because the rats crawling around the District of Criminals didn’t renew the Bush tax cuts, effectively making Monday the first business day of The Year...

In their zeal to impose a health care “reform” package built around demonization of insurance companies and the massive transfer of new enrollees onto various government programs, many of our lefty friends have been conspicuously silent whenever asked about how the expansion of these entitlements will be paid for. It is, however, not possible to extend their calculated “silent treatment” to the actual text of the bills. The current crop of proposals draw funding from two primary sources: (1) a tax imposed on “Cadillac” health care insurance plans, and, (2) cuts in payments to doctors under Medicare. When one looks...

You can bet that getting finances in order is the top resolution for the State of Arizona. It will get an early test this month. A massive education payment is expected to drain state resources down to zero. What happens next will affect anyone who works for or with state government. It's what happens when you run out of money. You can't pay your bills. Arizona legislators have not been able to resolve the budget crisis, and our state could be weeks away from running out of money. That means having to issue IOU's to everyone. And it's not only...

Heating no longer free for couple Dave Chidley, the Canadian Press Forced to close family gas well after 78 years December 31, 2009 The Canadian Press SOUTHWEST MIDDLESEX, Ont. (Dec 31, 2009) For decades, the Murray family of southern Ontario has lived on a rare luxury -- they've heated their household for free. But a government order is now demanding that the couple in their 70s shut down a 1931 natural gas well on their property, and the two will have to cough up tens of thousands of dollars to cap the historic well. "We got something we're not paying...

Take mileage deductions on your taxes? In 2010 you may be taking a hit in 2010 as the IRS lowers business mileage deduction. For outside salespeople, pizza delivery people, and others who spend a lot of time on the road for work, it’s huge, and it adds up fast; with 2009 rates at 55 cents per mile for business travel (anything done for pay — going on appointments, taking your boss to the airport, going to the post office, etc. — except your commute) an average employee who drove 10,000 miles for work could save $1,000 in taxes. The deduction...

State Sales Tax Numbers: The Truth AppearsWednesday, December 30, 2009 Posted by Karl Denninger in Macro Economics at 10:44 Leave it to the WSJ to report the truth - and then try to paper over it: Sales taxes declined 9% to $70 billion in the third quarter compared with the year-ago period, the Census Bureau said. Income taxes plunged 12% to about $58 billion. Together, sales and income taxes make up roughly half of state and local tax revenue. The WSJ then goes on to opine: State and local tax revenues tend to lag behind the downturns as well as...

Electric carmaker plans to keep gallery in Boulder. Nate Hukill was not in the market for a new car -- he said Tuesday he's not even really a "car person." But on his way back from lunch ... Now Hukill's owned his high-performance, all-electric, thunder-gray Tesla Roadster for three weeks. ... which has a $100,000 price tag. But it was the $42,000 tax credit offered by the state of Colorado that really sealed the deal. Embarrassingly, the tax incentive was so shocking... Within 30 seconds, he was hooked. The incredibly liberal tax incentive...

There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s effort to reform health care. The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care. Which is exactly what the tax is designed to do. The tax would kick in on...

Christmas vacation has not softened America's opposition to Obamacare, in fact according to Rasmussen voter opposition to the Health Care legislation making its way through congress is is now at its highest point 58%. Despite what the Obamacare apologists suggest, votes have a decent understanding of the bills and voter attitudes towards them have hardened. While several individual components of the plan are popular, reminding voters of what’s included in the plan has virtually no impact on support for the overall legislation. This suggests that there are not major surprises in the legislation that will cause people to change their...

If you work in Washington long enough, there are some things you get used to. One of them is the tradition of burying news by releasing it on a Friday afternoon. Or even better: on Christmas Eve. That's when the House Ethics Committee quietly announced the launch of an ethics probe into California Congressman Fortney 'Pete' Stark: The Chair and Ranking Republican Member of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (the Committee) have jointly decided to extend a matter regarding Representative Pete Stark, which was transmitted to the Committee by the Office of Congressional Ethics, for a 45-day period......

Typical of the morons in Congress, the delegate from American Samoa believes that HE is the one sending funds to help his people when indeed it is the American TAXPAYERS. The man, who is Samoan, is also taking a shot at one of his targets in American Samoa simply because he wants to introduce the Samoan people to other opportunities besides packing tuna. It is time to send ALL of Congress home regardless of party affiliation!

Investors and financial advisers are preparing to take advantage of a new tax law that makes it easier to gain access to Roth IRAs—even if it means breaking a sacrosanct rule about Roth conversions. Starting, Jan. 1, the $100,000 income limit disappears for converting traditional individual retirement accounts and employer-sponsored retirement plans to Roth IRAs, one of the biggest changes on the IRA landscape in years. Roths, of course, have long been viewed as one of the best deals in retirement planning; after investors meet holding requirements, virtually all withdrawals are tax-free. Just how many investors will make the leap...

I ought to make two comments before beginning this set of ideas: First of all, I entitled this How to Fix the United States, despite the fact that I hate the phrase _____ is broken, whether that is a reference to the economy, healthcare, Congress, or whatever. I despise that phrase because it is overly simplistic and it appears to give carte blanc to the repairing of whatever is broken to the person making this simplistic observation. Just because there are problems with this or that aspect of America, does not mean that we need to tear down all that...

Senate Democrats will face a problem when they return in January every bit as tough as crafting the healthcare bill: Assembling a climate and energy package that can be shoehorned into the election-year calendar. Imposing limits on greenhouse gases is a White House and Democratic priority, but it’s stuck in line behind health care, Wall Street reform and jobs legislation. It’s also become increasingly apparent since the Copenhagen climate summit that the Senate will go forward in a dramatically different direction than the House, which approved its own climate bill last summer. Environmentalists familiar with Democratic plans say party leaders...

After signing a $787 billion economic stimulus and embracing two annual blowout budgets that will double the national debt over 10 years even before ObamaCare, President Obama is poised to pivot next (election) year and denounce the horrors of deficit spending. So the White House is now floating a bipartisan commission to reduce federal borrowing, and much of the political class is all for it. We only hope Republicans aren't foolish enough to fall down this trap door, though some are already tempted. A budget deficit commission is nothing more than a time-tested ploy to get Republicans to raise taxes....

There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s effort to reform health care. The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare [...] would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care. Which is exactly what the tax is designed to do. The tax would kick in on plans exceeding...

AUSTIN — If you don't like gasoline taxes, here's an alternative: a tax on the number of miles you drive in a year. The Texas Transportation Commission has directed a fresh study of the idea, and it's not alone. There are pilot projects in other states and nationally to gauge how such a tax would work. Texas transportation officials suggest it's meant to help give lawmakers information on funding options before their next regular session in 2011, when they confront a funding squeeze that's expected to drain the highway fund of money for new construction contracts by 2012. “We need...

Sunday, December 27, 2009 Rough sea for yachtsmen under Maine use-tax law 30 days in port triggers levy on boats ‘from away’ Tom Toye poses at a marina in Portland, Maine. Toye has sued the state over a $60,000 “use tax” bill for a 72-foot yacht he bought in Florida and brought to Maine. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS) By Clarke Canfield THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 3 comments | Add a comment PORTLAND, Maine —  A retired Maine businessman thought he was helping the local economy in 2005 when he spent more than $100,000 in Portland on repairs to his 72-foot luxury yacht, newly...

It's the end of 2009, the "aughts" are over, and we are about to embark on a new year -- and what else are they but the "aughts"? Well, besides mostly a horrible and thankfully passed decade. In any case, we are at the end of the year and that means two things: lists about this year and predictions for the next. I've chosen the prognosticator's art for this piece with the subject of what will likely be our biggest failure or mistake in 2010: the Tea Party movement. We all know that just saying the words "Tea Party" is...

There is class warfare going on in this country -- but it's not against the established rich. It's against those who are trying to become wealthy. President Obama has declared that those who make over $200,000 will pay higher income taxes. Caps on payroll taxes are supposed to come off as well for the upper class. Envisioned estate taxes will take 45 percent of individual inheritances valued over $3.5 million. Many states have also hiked their income taxes on the upper brackets. Again, most of those targeted are not the already rich - a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates -...

A Progressive Call Center in NY placed an Ad on Craigs List that is brutally honest about Obama, taxes and what D.C. is doing to force them to lower salaries of new hires. Goes into the Fake Health Care Reform and has links supporting it. We need honest business people to step forward like this and I applause them. They even use links from this site that I posted about yesterday, that 2011 Obama Coup Game. The ad on Craigslist has the links active I don't know how to do that here.

Frustration with a dysfunctional California government has spurred a movement to have the people, by initiative, call a state constitutional convention to rewrite the state's basic laws. But not all the laws. Advocates of the constitutional convention initiative hope to reduce opposition to the measure by declaring Proposition 13 off-limits from convention delegates' deliberations. Prop. 13 should not be taken off the table if and when a constitutional convention is called. How can it be, when the groundbreaking property tax reform measure is the central piece of the whole state and local governmental budget discussion? How many times has Prop....

On November 7, 2009, the House passed H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The bill would expand Medicaid, grant subsidies to moderate-income households buying health insurance on newly established exchanges, and provide health insurance tax credits to some small businesses. These expenditures would be financed, in part, by a new 5.4 percent surtax on households with very high incomes, including married couples with incomes above $1 million. The proposed millionaire surtax is politically attractive because its direct burden would fall on a very small group, roughly 0.3 percent of the population. Moreover, this group is extremely wealthy...

Last night’s cloture vote on the Obama-Reid Big Government Healthcare Bill brought an end to any discussion of fiscal conservative or “moderate” Democrats. Two so-called moderate Democrats Ben Nelson and Arlen Specter betrayed taxpayers by violating their Taxpayer Protection Pledges and voting along with 58 other Democrats in support of the healthcare bill. (For a comprehensive list of all the tax hikes in this bill, click here.) They were the only remaining Democrat Pledge Signers not to have violated their Pledges on at least one occasion. House Democrats including Brad Ellsworth, Ben Chandler, Rob Andrews, and Gene Taylor have all...

Explosive ramifications result from new evidence revealing the Muslim holy book has undergone a textual evolution Frontpage Interview’s guests today are Robert Spencer and Moorthy Muthuswamy. Moorthy Muthuswamy is an expert on terrorism in India. He grew up in India, where he had firsthand experience with political Islam and jihad. He moved to America in 1984 to pursue graduate studies. In 1992, he received a doctorate in nuclear physics from Stony Brook University, New York. Since 1999 he has extensively published ideas on neutralizing political Islam’s terror war as it is imposed on unbelievers. He is the author of the...

GOPer sets new push to oust tax-challenged RangelBy ISABEL VINCENT Last Updated: 2:54 PM, December 20, 2009 Where are Charlie Rangel's tax returns? That's the question Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) is asking as he threatens next month to lead a second attempt to strip the Harlem Democrat of his powerful post as Ways and Means Committee chairman. "Every tax attorney in the country will tell you that if a normal taxpayer committed the violations of Chairman Rangel, they would be assessed serious penalties and interest, if not charged with criminal tax evasion," Carter said. "This is about defending the rule...

When the Senate and House agree on a health care bill and if our tax money pays for ana portion directly or indirectly, I will revolt by not paying my personal taxes. I will prefer going to prison than have even one cent of my income pay for an abortion. I have been praying about this and other issues that affect my pro-life principles. If I call myself pro-life, then I must act on these principles in a way that will change my comfort level to the point of suffering. How many of us have fought with money and time...

As with many giants, it’s hard to cut Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac down to size. The government, which controls the mortgage behemoths, planned to shrink them by 10 percent in 2010. Don’t count on it. Failure is unthinkable, even though both companies still rely on a $400 billion equity life-line from taxpayers. These are institutions with a combined $1.5 trillion portfolio of mortgage-related investments. Without their supply of financing for home borrowers with good credit, house prices would be lower – and more banks would be in trouble. Yet in theory, Fannie and Freddie could still be allowed to...

The government has handed its ATM card to beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Treasury Department said Thursday it removed the $400 billion financial cap on the money it will provide to keep the companies afloat. Already, taxpayers have shelled out $111 billion to the pair, and a senior Treasury official said losses are not expected to exceed the government's estimate this summer of $170 billion over 10 years. Treasury Department officials said it will now use a flexible formula to ensure the two agencies can stand behind the billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities they sell...

[You may have to play around a bit to get the video to operate. Make sure you click "Full Program" or you might just get a 2-minute clip.] This 30 minute video (including about 17 minutes of Q & A) from several months ago is Richard Epstein's analysis of the bill proposed by the House. But the main regulatory features of that bill are the same as the one just passed by the Senate. The gist of Epstein's lecture is that the total effect of these insurance regulations is to kill private health insurance, so we will eventually all end...

The two chief executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could get paid as much as $6 million each for 2009, despite the companies’ dismal performance this year which cost taxpayers more than $100 billion. Fannie’s CEO, Michael Williams, and Freddie CEO Charles “Ed” Haldeman Jr. each will receive $900,000 in salary, $3.1 million in deferred payments next year and another $2 million if they meet certain performance goals, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The pay packages were approved by the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie

Any legislation that passes is bound to be costly -- but no one knows how costly it will be. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the Senate version will cost $1 trillion over the next decade. But then, when Medicare was originally passed in 1967, it was estimated that the hospital insurance (Part A) would cost about $9 billion annually by 1990. By 1990 the actual cost to the government was $67 billion! Since then, Medicare has been expanded to include catastrophic coverage and also Part D, prescription drug benefits. The point is simply that it's impossible to estimate future...

WHEELING -- Local tanning salon operators are upset over a last minute tax on their business in the health care reform bill. If the legislation passes in its current form, artificial sun worshipers would pay 10 percent more for a trip to the tanning beds.

Here are a few stories to bring holiday cheer for taxpayers. First, we have an Associated Press report that several hundred thousand federal bureaucrats have serious tax delinquencies. The Department of Housing and Urban Development always ranks high on the list of government entities that should be abolished, so it’s interesting to see that HUD bureaucrats are most likely to be dodging their taxes: More than 276,000 federal employees and retirees owed back income taxes as of Sept. 30, 2008, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service. The $3.04 billion owed was up from $2.7 billion owed by federal...

The purpose of the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution was only to limit the tax power of the Government. The words "General" and "Welfare" were not placed there to give the Government authority to spend on whatever they want (ie healthcare), they're there to simply make it known that the Government has to always spend for the country as a whole, not for some single group. The clause doesn't give the Government authority, it limits it!

RICHMOND | Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said Wednesday that a 1 percentage point increase in the state's income tax that he has proposed in his final weeks in office is the most responsible way to make up a nearly $2 billion shortfall in the state's finances. "I think the only other alternatives are draconian cuts that would squander Virginia's leadership position or kind of gimmicky 'Let's take a bunch of money out of the retirement fund' or 'Let's pull out the credit card and borrow a bunch of money.' But I think that would threaten our AAA bond rating," Mr....

WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats are poised to pass a landmark health care bill that could define President Barack Obama's legacy and usher in near-universal medical coverage for the first time in U.S. history. Ahead lie complex talks with the House to reach final legislation in the new year. "We stand on the doorstep of history," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. "We recognize that, but much more importantly, we stand so close to making so many individual lives better." The vote Thursday on the bill extending health care coverage to some 31 million uninsured Americans brings Obama...

Do employers currently list the healthcare benefits paid to an employee on their W2s? Trying to clarify an arguement. Thank you in advance. PS, I hope I put this thread in the right place.

There is a lot of confusion out there today over how the first time home buyer tax credit extension figures into the Commerce Department's report on sales of new construction. "New Home Sales," as we call it, plummeted 11 percent, quite unexpectedly, after another rise in "Existing Home Sales" yesterday. Let's look at timing, shall we?