Free Republic

Democrats push to end private tax collectionsWed Jul 18, 2007 3:51PM EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Wednesday moved to end a treasured Republican program that allows private debt collectors to pursue tax debts owed to the U.S. government. The House Ways and Means Committee, on a mostly party line vote of 23-18, approved a bill ending the program enacted in 2004 by the then Republican-led Congress. Democrats, who now control Congress, and unions opposed the program, saying it was a costly way to collect tax debts that could more efficiently be collected by IRS...

THE LIST Names for collectors May 23, 2007 There are a number of special names for people who collect things: Archtophilist: a person who collects teddy bears Bibliophilist: collects books Brandophilist: collects cigar bands Conchologist: collects shells Deltiologist: collects postcards Lepidopterist: collects butterflies Numismatist: collects coins Philatelist: collects stamps Philographist: collects autographs Plangonologist: collects dolls Receptarist: collects recipes Vexillologist: collects flags SOURCE: FACTMONSTER.COM

Alex Gordon has yet to play a single game in the major leagues and yet his rookie card is the hottest in all of baseball, selling for as much as $2,550 in recent weeks. Is Gordon the Kansas City Royals' next great player? Could be. But that isn't why his card, which is No. 297 in Topps' 2006 set, is worth that kind of money. The piece of cardboard is worth that much only because it never should have been produced in the first place. Last year, in part to reduce confusion in the marketplace, the Major League Baseball Players...

NEW LONDON, Conn. -- The city tax collector is ready to put a local church that has been in New London since 1835 on the auction block for payment of a $4,339 tax bill. At issue is a bill sent out last July for property that the Second Congregational Church rents to the nonprofit Drop-In Learning Center.

Divorce can uncork nasty custody battleAlmost 300 cases of the finest wine, and it evaporated like morning mist. Five-hundred-dollar bottles. Thousand-dollar bottles. The French Bordeaux from his children's birth years, which he planned to uncork at their weddings. The 1966 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild he wanted to share one day with his brother. The only vintage that remained in his ransacked office, Doug Eisinger said, was a single bottle of 1990 Dom Perignon. "I plan on drinking that on the day of my divorce," he said. Eisinger, 37, who lives in Sherwood Forest in Anne Arundel County, claims that his estranged wife,...

Agency Details Shekinah, Inc 7755 Center Avenue, Suite 1000 Huntington Beach, CA 92648 Phone: (714) 475-5460 Fax: (714) 475-5471 Web Address: NONE!     Head Debt Collectors: James Arley Trent,45, Owner Devin Molina, CEO (#1 bro in law to Trent) Cecilia Trent, wife, (controls the money) Dana Koprowski, flunkie David Vasquez, VP (#2 bro in-law to Trent) David Brown aka David Noble, gofer Joe Dorsey, fall guy Dan Durbin aka/Daniel Schiele, the liar & con man debt collector!   Luis Esteban Vasquez, Attorney, CA Bar#162798 (Rent-A-Lawyer) so they can intimidate you with calls from a "Law Office" A check of...

LACONIA — A Meredith woman in a battle with breast and brain cancer is now facing the costly reality of not having medical insurance. A Superior Court judge has ordered her and her husband, sued by Lakes Region General Hospital for non-payment of medical bills, to make payment secured by an attachment on their home. In March, the hospital filed suit against Paul Hough and his wife, Wanda, of 19 Water St., Meredith for $48,081.26 in medical bills, plus accruing interest and legal fees connected to the collection efforts. Judge Larry Smukler granted the hospital's motion for summary judgment on...

It’s fascinating what people choose to collect as a hobby. As a kid, I collected stamps. It wasn’t much of a collection. I loved the colorful triangle stamps put out by some country named, as I recall, Tanya Touva. At least I assumed it was a country. It could have just been some guy in Nova Scotia with a printing press and a clever scheme to separate 10-year-olds from their nickels and dimes. Somewhere along the way, my stamp album and I were separated. I also collected baseball cards – the kind that came wrapped in wax paper with a...

The Senate passed legislation Thursday that will make it harder for Americans to rid themselves of debt by filing for bankruptcy. The House is expected to pass the measure next month, delivering to President Bush a second victory this year on pro-business legislation he had sought. The vote was 74-25 to approve the most thorough overhaul of bankruptcy laws in a quarter-century.

A company selected to build a toll road from Dallas-Fort Worth to San Antonio has a reputation for aggressively collecting money from motorists, treating customers poorly and frequently raising tolls without public input. Those are among the complaints lodged against Cintra -- selected in December to build the first leg of the Trans-Texas Corridor -- by motorists on the company's toll roads in Toronto and Chicago. Across North America, private companies such as Cintra are spending billions of dollars to build roads in exchange for the right to collect tolls for 50 to 100 years -- relieving taxpayers of the...

<p>Imagine doing a Google search for a phone number, weather report or sports score. The results page would be filled with links to various sources of information. But what if someone typed in keywords and no results came back?</p> <p>That's the scenario critics are painting of a new bill wending its way through Congress that would let certain companies own facts, and exact a fee to access them.</p>

No one should be able to own facts about other people. Our names and numbers, and also the laws we must obey, should not be property that can be owned by corporations and policed by federal courts. But special interests, such as the Software and Information Industry Association, are seeking new powers to own facts about us and about information we need. After quietly shopping a bill to Members of Congress for several weeks, the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act was finally introduced last week as H.R. 3261. The Constitution authorizes Congress to create copyrights. But your name,...

Some lay Catholics speak with their wallets. What can ordinary Catholics do to encourage their bishop to take more serious action against priest sex-abuse? A group of Catholic laymen in Chicago think they've found the answer. They have founded a group to encourage local Catholics to boycott the parish collection plate until they've seen Francis Cardinal George get tough with sexual abusers in the priesthood and open up archdiocesan files for a full accounting of four decades of clergy abuse.,p. Members of the Ad Hoc Committee for Prevention of Sex Abuse by Clergy insist that the cardinal allow an independent...