Free Republic

Dive Brief: Three workers were injured Feb. 15 while working on the $2.3 billion, 21-mile I-4 Ultimate project in Orlando, Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reported. The three individuals, all reportedly employees of general contractor SGL (Skanska, Granite and Lane) Constructors, sustained minor injuries when they fell 15 feet from an elevated platform while pouring concrete. Emergency responders told WFTV 9 that the trio fell after a section of formwork gave way. SGL Constructors told WFTV that work was halted temporarily at similar platforms along the project so that they could be inspected. Construction on the I-4 project had restarted just...

Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday that he will propose an increase in the gasoline tax — and it could be a sizable one — to fix and improve Ohio’s crumbling roads and bridges. The first-year Republican would not reveal the size of the proposed hike. DeWine told reporters the recommended increase would maintain the status quo of highway maintenance and some major projects. That would require another $600 million per year, or an additional 14 cents a gallon — a 50 percent increase in the 28-cent tax — based on figures from the Department of Transportation. The elevation will be...

Illinois is on track to be the first state in the Midwest to push its base wage to $15. The pay jump increases from $8.25 by $1 on Jan. 1, and jumps to $10 on July 1, 2020. Then, it increases $1 each Jan. 1 until 2025.

NEW YORK - U.S. oil output from seven major shale formations is expected to rise 84,000 barrels per day (bpd) in March to a record of about 8.4 million bpd, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a monthly report on Tuesday. The largest change is forecast in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, where output is expected to climb by 43,000 bpd to a record 4.024 million bpd in March. A shale revolution has helped boost the United States to the position of world's biggest crude oil producer, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia. Overall crude production...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., recently moved into a luxury apartment complex in Washington, D.C. that does not offer the affordable housing units that were a key plank in the New York congresswoman’s campaign platform. Ocasio-Cortez, 29, who said in November that she was concerned about being able to afford rent in D.C., now earns a $174,000 annual salary and is living in a newly built high-rise in the city’s Navy Yard area, the Washington Free Beacon reported last week. The freshman congresswoman, a self-described socialist, campaigned on a platform to expand affordable housing, and her controversial Green New Deal proposal...

This is a topic we’ve covered at length here previously, but in New York State the story is taking an odd twist. The subject is the Fight for 15 and the successful efforts of Democrats to jack up the minimum wage faster than market forces would normally have allowed. It seems to have come as a great shock to almost nobody that this resulted in layoffs, particularly among lower-skill, entry-level workers in the fast food industry. This has some of the newly unemployed understandably upset and they’ve been taking their complaints to their elected representatives. But what are they...

Wait, I owe the IRS? The first tax filing season under the new federal tax law is proving to be surprising, confusing - and occasionally frightening - for some Americans, especially those accustomed to getting money back from the government. Take Andy Kraft and Amy Elias of Portland, Oregon. The couple had grown comfortable getting a small refund each year, a few hundred dollars or more. Then they found out they owe $10,160 this year. "I will never forget the moment, I thought 'We look good' and then we added in the next W-2 and my jaw hit the floor,"...

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Tito Brown can't imagine driving a perfectly good thing out of a town that hasn't had a perfectly good thing come its way in a very long time. At least, a perfectly good thing the size and scope of the Amazon headquarters that ideological politics drove out of Long Island City on Thursday, when Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, danced on the grave of the deal as Amazon walked away from the New York project. Brown doesn't really get that. He governs a city with a declining population and a 40 percent poverty rate, and he would...

The "fight for 15" -- a minimum wage of $15 an hour -- has been a rallying cry on the left for a while now, and they've succeeded in implementing it in various blue states. And look what's -- so utterly predictably -- happening: Its workers were the first to stage rallies demanding a minimum wage of $15 an hour. Then, they pressed for changes in the way national restaurant chains set their work schedules. Now, they are asking the City Council to shield them from being fired without a valid reason. That protection, the sort of job security...

WASHINGTON – Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) responded to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates criticizing her call for a 60-70 percent top income tax rate, saying she is “all ears” if he wants to propose other ways to tax the rich. Ocasio-Cortez has floated the 60-70 percent tax rate as a way to fund investments included in her Green New Deal proposal to combat climate change. In a recent interview, Gates said the Ocasio-Cortez tax plan is “missing the picture” and too “extreme.” “We can be more progressive without really threatening income generation,” Gates said. PJM asked Ocasio-Cortez for her reaction to...

Celebrity activist Alyssa Milano is apparently having a hard time believing that Jussie Smollett would actually fake a hate crime attack, wondering who “could be that hurtful.” “If that man staged his own attack he is wrong in so many ways. No one could be that hurtful? To stage this? Right?” Alyssa Milano pleaded. “To f--k with all of us by playing into our weaknesses & make it even harder for victims to come forward?! No one could choose to be that hurtful? Right?! RIGHT?”

Europe stepped up preparations for a no-deal Brexit on Monday after giving key parts of the City of London temporary access to EU customers in the event of a cliff-edge departure. The European Securities and Markets Authority, the EU financial regulator, has granted three UK-based clearing houses — LCH, ICE Clear Europe and LME Clear — licences to carry on doing business with European-based customers over the next 12 months even if politicians fail to strike an agreement. London dominates clearing for derivatives traded by European customers and clears nearly all over-the-counter derivatives, mainly interest-rates swaps, traded in euros. Clearing...

Thousands of people who pass over the Golden Gate Bridge likely didn’t notice the four new metal protrusions on its western and eastern flanks. Kymberlyrenee Gamboa did. For the Fair Oaks resident, the four support beams were evidence that the bridge’s ambitious suicide barrier was actually beginning to take form — a project Gamboa and her family had wished was already completed before her 18-year-old son, Kyle, jumped off the bridge five years ago and died. “It was pretty emotional for everybody that has been involved to actually physically see something out there,” Kymberlyrenee Gamboa said. “Because it does take...

Camila worked for Ristretto Roasters, my husband Din’s coffee roasting company in Portland, Oregon, for five years. She received regular promotions and by 2016 was earning a mid-five figure salary. In October of last year, Camila resigned. The end. Or, the end until last month, when she sent an email to more than two dozen former and current Ristretto Roasters employees, alerting them to the YouTube series, #MeNeither Show, that fellow journalist Leah McSweeney and I launched in December 2018. In three half-hour episodes, we had discussed, among other topics, celebrities who have exploited the #MeToo movement, and the difference...

A scientist who raised early alarms about climate change and popularized the term "global warming" has died. Wallace Smith Broecker was 87. The longtime Columbia University professor and researcher died Monday at a New York City hospital, according to a spokesman for the university's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Kevin Krajick said Broecker had been ailing in recent months.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared victory when Amazon announced Thursday that it would not build a second headquarters (known as HQ2) in Queens, New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo called it a “lost economic opportunity” and blamed “a small group [of] politicians [who] put their own narrow political interests above their community.”The dispute between the two Democrats lays bare a divide over the plan to offer $2.8 billion in tax breaks for Amazon to establish a major presence in New York City. On one side, old hands like Cuomo; on the other, the newly insurgent, left-leaning wing represented by Ocasio-Cortez.“Today was the...

Senator Marco Rubio’s plan to tax stock buybacks in the hopes of spurring investment (based at least partially on a 1969 Yale Law Journal article) is heavily flawed for multiple reasons. Respectfully, the senator seems to be operating under the incorrect belief that buybacks are tax-advantaged, when in fact buybacks are already taxed in the form of capital-gains taxes. Since 2003, when the dividend-tax rate was lowered to remove the tax advantage then afforded buybacks, the tax rates on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains have been the same. In theory, buybacks are only tax-advantaged over dividends under today’s tax...

Boston startup, wants deliver high-speed 5G internet in major cities at a reasonable price. Today, it announced it is expanding service from its initial launch in Boston to New York City. The company also announced a deal with Related Companies, a large national affordable housing owner, to host Starry equipment on its buildings and offer Starry service to its tenants. The Starry solution consists of three parts: The beam sits on a high roof. The point sits on a lower roof and the consumer gets a Starry Station, which acts as a modem of sorts to deliver the internet service...

Britain’s richest man Sir Jim Ratcliffe (worth £21 billion) is leaving the United Kingdom and the European Union for tax exile in Monaco, depriving the Treasury of up to £4 billion in tax. This is more tax than the entire bottom 40 percent of the British population pay: that’s because none of them pays any tax at all. To understand why Ratcliffe is leaving, you need only glance at the reaction on social media.

Capitalism is far more popular than socialism, according to a Fox News Poll of registered voters. The poll also finds economic optimism high, and the number wanting help from the government the lowest in years. The new poll, released Wednesday, asks what message voters want to send to the federal government. Over half would say “leave me alone.” About a third would ask Uncle Sam to “lend me a hand.” The 34 percent saying “lend me a hand” is down from 41 percent last year and 39 percent in 2016. The 55 percent who would tell the government “leave me...