Free Republic

An attorney representing former Gov. John Hickenlooper in a case being investigated by the Colorado state ethics committee has been paid $43,390 in taxpayer dollars for his work ... Denver lawyer Mark Grueskin was made a special assistant attorney general and appointed in October 2018 to handle the ethics complaint against Hickenlooper. Hickenlooper, now running for U.S. Senate to try to unseat Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, was governor until January of this year, but the ethics case is ongoing. ... Grueskin is being paid $525 an hour – totaling $43,39 for his work on the case so far. A paralegal...

Taxpayer watchdog group: Emails show sales tax revenue going toward projects that are ‘not what most voters have in mind’..[ full title] ... A Colorado Springs tax watchdog group obtained communications between city employees that show discussion of using sales tax revenue for traffic reduction and bike lane infrastructure while other city officials have denied that’s where funds would be directed. City voters approved a road improvement ballot measure called 2C in 2015, which is up for renewal in the Nov. 5 election. 2C is a 0.62 percent sales tax increase that is supposed to be dedicated to road maintenance...

A Massachusetts judge accused of helping an illegal immigrant evade ICE has had $127,000 in legal fees paid by taxpayers, . In addition, a court officer who was indicted along with the judge has benefitted from $2,500 in legal fees paid by the public, . Newton District Court Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph, ... Prosecutors claimed in court documents in April that Joseph, along with Court Officer Wesley MacGregor, 56, helped Jose Medina-Perez, a twice-deported illegal immigrant with a fugitive warrant for drunken driving in Pennsylvania, sneak out a back door – eluding agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement...

Two write-in candidates won nominations for seats on the Southmoreland School Board, ousting one incumbent and putting the current board president’s position in jeopardy this fall. Westmoreland County elections officials Monday approved a precertification of the results of the May 21 primary. Barring any court challenges, those vote totals will become official June 10. The totals included more than 4,400 write-in votes cast in the Southmoreland School Board race. Four incumbents were among the five candidates on the ballot seeking five board seats. According to the official results, about 58% of all votes cast in the Southmoreland School Board race...

Emergency room patients increasingly leave California hospitals against medical advice, and experts say crowded ERs are likely to blame.

(CNSNews.com) -- Planned Parenthood released its 2017-2018 annual report over the weekend, revealing that the organization did 332,757 abortions in the fiscal year that ran from Oct. 1, 2016 to Sept. 30, 2017. Planned Parenthood also reported that it received $563.8 million in revenue from “government health services reimbursements & grants” for the year ending June 30, 2018. The 332,757 abortions Planned Parenthood says it did in fiscal 2017 was 11,373 more than the 321,384 abortions Planned Parenthood reported doing in fiscal 2016 (Oct. 1 2015 to Sept. 30, 2016)

Illinois ranked No. 48 in an analysis of the state’s ability to pay all of its bills, including public employers’ pension benefits, according to a new ranking of the states’ fiscal health by Truth in Accounting (TIA). Illinois was found to be short $216.1 billion to pay its bills ... The amount of the state’s shortfall in funding to pay off its bills amounts to $50,800 per taxpayer

Taxpayers potentially owe almost $610 million to local government employees in Nevada’s two most populous counties for their unused paid time off, financial reports show. That liability grew 26 percent from 2007 to 2017, and it doesn’t represent compensation that will be paid exclusively for rest, relaxation, illness or personal time. Many of Nevada’s public employees can stockpile their sick and vacation hours and cash them out at retirement. Some of those payouts exceed $100,000.

American Airlines asked the federal government on Wednesday to stop using its commercial planes for “transporting children who have been separated from their families due to the current immigration policy.” The announcement, which was posted on American’s website, is the latest fallout from the Trump administration’s decision to separate parents who have arrived at the southern border illegally from their children. Several flight attendants for American, the world’s largest airline, have posted testimony on public and private social media channels in recent days, describing how they have seen groups of unaccompanied Latino children on domestic flights, accompanied not by parents...

Elimination of the State and Local Tax deduction will harm the people of high-tax California, high-tax New York, high-tax New Jersey, and high-tax Illinois Many California Republicans are excited about the federal GOP tax reform bill and anxious for tax relief, but others are warning about the negative impacts on individual taxpayers in high tax states like California and New York. I spoke with California’s Congressman Tom McClintock this week to drill down into the corporate and personal aspects of the tax reform bill, to understand the nitty-gritty.

The National Football League is now plunged into politics as players throughout the sport kneel for the national anthem and President Donald Trump continues to rebuke them publicly. Undoubtedly, the situation has left many fans and non-fans of the league conflicted or angry. This fiasco may, however, open the eyes of the public to a serious and generally unchecked issue: billionaire NFL owners sponging enormous amounts of money from taxpayers through crony capitalist schemes. The fact is that a business that raked in $14 billion in revenue in 2016 is heavily subsidized by local, state, and federal money based on...

Eleven-year-old yard services entrepreneur Frank Giaccio locked down his biggest client ever Friday morning, mowing the White House lawn on the invitation of President Trump. (excerpted)

I am now researching the rights of the American Taxpayer. Has any taxpayer fought the IRS and won? In fact, yes! The first case we will discuss is https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-139.pdf The tax code generally allows the IRS to audit three years back, and six in some cases. The U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Home Concrete & Supply, LLC has dramatically cut back on IRS reaches into six year territory. It is an absolutely positive win for the American taxpayer. The main rule is that the IRS time to audit runs three years after filing or due date. However, the IRS...

Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and a third Islamic terrorist plowed over people in a rented van before entering Borough Market and stabbing multiple victims in London on Saturday, June 3rd. The terrorists casually walked into Borough Market and began stabbing innocent pedestrians to death. Now this… Ringleader Khuram Butt was living off the taxpayer dime. British Islamist leader Anjem Choudary told his followers in February 2013 to use their welfare checks to fund the jihad.

The National Science Foundation awarded over $200,000 in taxpayer dollars to a professor who plans to research microaggressions. First reported by The Daily Caller, Mary Atwater, a professor of science and mathematics education at the University of Georgia, received $229,061 to study the implications of microaggressions and look at minority participation in science and math, according to a statement from the University of Georgia.

It’s long past time for the Nevada Supreme Court to send a clear message to the folks running the state public pension system. Last week, attorneys for the Public Employee Retirement System announced they will appeal a District Court ruling that brushed aside the agency’s effort to withhold information from the taxpayers who support the pension fund. It’s just the latest gambit in the system’s six-year effort to delay, impede and obfuscate when it comes to lawful court orders. On at least four occasions, agency arguments that retiree pension payouts should be confidential have failed in court. Yet rather than...

The Obama family has landed. In Hawaii. For their last tax-payer funded Winter Holiday (whoops! trigger warning!)The Won with Wee Won 1The entire Happy FamilyPerhaps a little vacation - well okay, you and I might consider 17 days in paradise a really BIG vacation, butt a little perspective here, people! – will renew their HOPE.And the best part about this year’s vacation: when they return they’ll only have 15 days left in the White House. That will renew our HOPE! for CHANGE!So as we all go about our Christmas shopping/baking/tree trimming/chores here’s a little something to make the time fly...

Former president Bill Clinton used taxpayer funds from cash provided to him as an ex-president to pay for employees to set up the family’s private email server, according to a new report from Politico. Clinton drew money from the General Services account to pay part of his aide Justin Cooper’s salary — the same person who helped set up a private email server in Clinton’s home. It goes deeper. Clinton used taxpayer funds to boost the salaries of ten different Clinton loyalists, despite his growing wealth from delivering paid speeches. The funds were also used to purchase equipment for the...

According to a report of the French senate, 2.800 churches across the country, many of them centuries old, will be demolished as restoration costs exceed the cost of demolitions over the next years. This church, Église Saint-Jacques d’Abbeville, a Neo-Gothic masterpiece in Abbeville, Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie dating back to 1868, was demolished for a total cost of 350,000€ in 2013. The reasoning: It was much cheaper to demolish it than it would cost to restore. As the number of Frenchmen in France continues to decline due to record-low birth rates, high emigration and Muslim immigration, so do the members of catholic faith,...

Unlike any previous major party platform, the final draft of the 2016 Democratic platform explicitly calls for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion except in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother. A press release from the Democratic Party on Saturday proudly announced, “The platform goes further than previous Democratic platforms on women’s reproductive rights. It champions Planned Parenthood health centers and commits to push back on all Republican efforts to defund it.” "The platform also vows to oppose, and seek to overturn, all federal and state laws that impede a...