Free Republic

The increase marks the latest in a slew of new taxes and fees Chicago residents have had to swallow over the past three years to shore up dire financial conditions in the city, its schools system and Cook County caused largely by government officials skipping payments into pension funds. The Chicago Sun-Times has reported for months that the mayor is considering raising taxes on downtown businesses, high net-worth individuals or both to preserve his vaunted longer school day and school year. Though Chicago homeowners are still reeling from the $588 million property tax increase he pushed through the City Council...

Police have a tough and dangerous job. Armored military vehicles and military-grade body armor aren’t just useful for soldiers, they make it possible for police to protect Americans. During his address Monday to the annual meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union with 330,000 members, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that President Trump is overturning Obama’s ban on supplying surplus military equipment to police. It is an issue that the Fraternal Order of Police and other police organizations cared about deeply during the campaign last year. Indeed, they based their endorsement of Trump during the...

You can see it at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. Illinois is falling apart and politicians don’t care. The Coliseum, the most popular fair attraction, is closed. I noticed how dirty it was inside. No maintenance, not even a power washing of the dirty concrete. Water leaks from the roof during storms. Last year, there were puddles in the aisles. A steel beam fell last October and the building was closed. The state had from last October until this August to repair it. It remains closed and could be closed for years until lawmakers decide to come up with the money...

<p>A warehouse maintained by contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency contained secret rooms full of exercise equipment, televisions and couches, according to an internal audit.</p> <p>EPA’s inspector general found contractors used partitions, screens and piled up boxes to hide the rooms from security cameras in the 70,000 square-foot building located in Landover, Md. The warehouse -- used for inventory storage -- is owned by the General Services Administration and leased to the EPA for about $750,000 per year.</p>

The three new Zumwalt-class destroyers are in trouble. Originally envisioned as a fleet of more nearly three dozen destroyers, and the weapons that justified them, the Zumwalts have faced delays, cuts and staggering cost increases. As the ships teeter on the verge of white elephant status, could they become relevant again by taking on a new role, that of a stealthy ship killer? The Zumwalt-class destroyers were originally envisioned as a fleet of thirty-two destroyers designed to attack targets far inland with precision-guided howitzer shells. Designed in part to support amphibious landings by the U.S. Marine Corps, the Zumwalts were...

[snip] With so many different materials now in play, how are you supposed to know what needs to be thrown into a landfill and what can be reused? Luckily, while humans might not be the best at practicing the Three R’s (reduce, reuse, and recycle, of course), another “R” is here to save us. It’s a robot, and it’s been affectionately named Clarke. Developed by AMP Robotics, this robot makes use of artificial intelligence to recognize and sort various food and beverage containers.

The annual ‘Pig Book’ turns a spotlight on congressional earmarks! Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to eliminate governmental waste and fraud, just released its “2017 Congressional Pig Book,” an annual publication highlighting wasteful government spending that should embarrass each and every member of Congress. While it is true that most government spending is for “entitlements” and other fixed costs, the “Pig Book” properly ridicules politicians who waste significant amounts of money on questionable programs. In 2011, Congress promised to go on the wagon when it came to pork. That didn’t last long because pork to...

after 8 long years of solar energy businesses being promoted by the U.S. government, hard numbers and real work experiences are causing people to reassess just how “green” solar energy is. To begin with, it appears that solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of electricity generated than nuclear power plants.... And while nuclear energy production does generate radioactive wastes, the sheer volume difference shows that the nuclear energy is more efficient at energy production. And while “toxic” may seem less hazardous than “radioactives”, heavy metals are forever whereas radioactive particles decay over time. Chronic exposures to...

Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it. Neither does California, a world leader in deploying solar panels. Only Europe requires solar panel makers to collect and dispose of solar waste at the end of their lives. All of which begs the question: just how big of a problem is solar waste? Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue...

State of California says they have to cut state budget, but only possible cuts are in Police and Fire services. According to the Dems who control California, no cuts are even remotely possible in any of these agencies: California Academic Performance Index (API) * California Access for Infants and Mothers * California Acupuncture Board * California Administrative Office of the Courts * California Adoptions Branch * California African American Museum * California Agricultural Export Program * California Agricultural Labor Relations Board * California Agricultural Statistics Service * California Air Resources Board (CARB) * California Allocation Board * California Alternative Energy...

Guess what everyone? The MBTA transit system in Boston is going to close down most of its commuter lines this summer thanks to stupid government projects and leftist regulations stemming from Obama's last days that will close down vital transit lines to most of Massachusetts and its all happening during tourist season! The purple line is Boston's metro commuter rail that connects the Boston metro to surrounding areas of Eastern Massachusetts. Its our equivilent to Southern California's Metrolink in Los Angeles, the Sounder in Everett, Seattle and Tacoma, New York's Metrorail and Miami Tri-rail. Now I'm not here to argue...

The Republican dominated Kansas Legislature that has soured on Gov. Sam Brownback’s vision for the state voted late Tuesday to roll back the governor’s signature tax cuts. Lawmakers voted to override Brownback’s veto of a tax plan estimated to bring the state more than $1.2 billion over a two-year span. The Senate vote was 27 to 13, and the House followed by agreeing 88 to 31 to supersede the Republican governor’s wishes on the tax plan and force the changes into law. Lawmakers marshaled together a coalition of moderate Republicans, conservatives and Democrats to overcome the governor’s opposition to seeing...

U.S. aid for international family planning would be eliminated. Programs to combat HIV/AIDS in the world's poorest countries would be slashed by 17 percent. Efforts to fight malaria would be chopped by 11 percent. Those are just some of the cuts to global health spending called for by President Trump in the proposed budget he unveiled this week. On one level the reductions did not come as a surprise. Trump had already made clear in his "skinny budget" proposal, released in March, that he wanted to lower spending on foreign assistance by more than a third. Yet advocates for global...

The budget proposed by President Trump, set for release Tuesday, is clear from coast to coast to coast: Don't clean up the water. The budget not only zeroes out the Puget Sound cleanup, but programs from Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain to New England's Lake Champlain to the Great Lakes. The information on axing of cleanup money was obtained by the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, and comes directly from an administration document. Overall, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency budget would be slashed from $8.2 billion to $5.6 billion, a 30 percent-plus cut.

Microsoft won a patent for augmented reality glasses that would provide a guiding voice at mealtime – whispering for you to consider grabbing a salad for lunch, rather than a greasy burger. The patent claims a device with image data would use a sensor to detect foods – and then provide feedback information to the user on the food's nutritional information. “A see-through, head mounted display and sensing devices cooperating to provide feedback on food items detected in the device field of view,” the patent abstract reads. “Feedback can include warnings based on personal wearer needs, general nutrition information, food...

A U.S. district judge last week ordered California state prison officials to provide free chest-flattening underwear, also known as compression tops, to transgender inmates at women's prisons and feminine accessories to transgender inmates at men's prisons. Requiring inmates to buy compression tops "effectively" denies those items to individuals who cannot afford them, according to U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, who issued the order on Friday. Taxpayers, therefore, must foot the bill.

Patricia Brennan, a visiting lecturer at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, who spent nearly $400,000 of taxpayer dollars studying duck penises has become a spokesperson in opposition to Trump’s proposed cuts to funding studies like hers. One of the research topics likely to be cut off from tax-funding is her current project to study whale penises. She is eager to examine a recently acquired an orca penis. “It’s enormous!” she exclaimed. “It takes up an entire lab sink. The very idea that Congress might not fund a thorough investigation of this extraordinary specimen is criminal. In order for us to...

A leading researcher on a ridiculed taxpayer-funded study of duck penises is now using her expertise on orca whales and is going to the "March for Science" to protest budget cuts. Patricia Brennan, a visiting lecturer at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, worked on the duck penis study that received $384,949 from the National Science Foundation, a grant that was funded through the 2009 stimulus package. The study looked at the differences in the corkscrew-shaped penises of ducks.

The White House proposed a $5.7 billion budget for EPA in fiscal 2018. That’s a 31 percent cut from 2017 numbers. A 31 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget would force it to eliminate at least 50 individual programs and nearly 4,000 full-time equivalents in 2018, according to internal EPA documents that describe funding levels and policy decisions that support the President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget request.

Taxpayers spent $162.5 million on federal employees performing union activities in 2014, according to the Office of Personnel Management's most recent data. The Competitive Enterprise Institute used official budget documents and Freedom of Information Act requests to validate how many federal employees worked under such conditions . . . The union workers included "nurses, therapists, pharmacists, a physician, and even a prosthetic limb specialist," according to Hice. "Rather than helping our heroes, these individuals spend all their time engaging in union activities such as collective bargaining, filing complaints or grievances, and even grassroots lobbying," Hice said. "This is unacceptable and...