Free Republic

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Cities can't prosecute people for sleeping on the streets if they have nowhere else to go because it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, which is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court said Tuesday.

AMLO is heavily favored to win election next Sunday. He may be a left-wing nut, but he is an honest one. He is promising to fight to open the U.S. border for everybody, no bones about it. And he has pretty much made no secret of the fact that he's in the hip pocket of the drug cartels. He has a long history of friendship with the drug cartels and is making a drug amnesty provision the centerpiece of his campaign. Mexico is already on the verge of being overwhelmed by drug cartel violence, and AMLO seems ready to make...

Eight of 10 items unavailable in stores in the socialist paradise Good news: Nicolas Maduro will never be president of the United States. Bad news: It hardly matters, because neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders quite understands what’s gone wrong with the Chavista revolution in Venezuela. Things are now so bad in the socialist paradise where Maduro haplessly presides, Venezuelans have more or less given up looking for basic goods in stores. You can’t find them there. Eight out of 10 items people need are unavailable. So they’ve taken to going on social media and asking pretty much anyone who...

Some 95 percent of the 220 billion euros disbursed to Greece since the start of the financial crisis as loans from the bailout mechanism has been directed toward saving the European banks. That means about 210 billion euros was eventually channeled to the eurozone credit sector while just 5 percent ended up in state coffers, according to a study by the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin. “Europe and the International Monetary Fund have in previous years mainly saved the banks and other private creditors,” concluded the report, published yesterday in German newspaper Handelsblatt. ESMT director Jorg...

The Socialist Utopia has come to Venezuela and so has triple-digit inflation. Inflation is soaring at about 65%, murder rates are the second highest in the world, they don’t have food, chocolate,cooking oil, sugar, beer, shampoo, chicken, beef or even toilet paper. Businesses put the blame on the socialist government’s economic policies and the government blames it on everyone else. A number of U.S. movie stars have gone to Venezuela many times to applaud their regime and compare their economy to ours. Sean Penn was one. ... American leftists cheered the Socialist government and the social justice he forced on...

Monday January 12, 2015 01:40 PM Last Friday, dozens of people spent the night in the surroundings of the Andrés Bello square (north Caracas) to buy food in an outdoor market organized by the Venezuelan Ministry of Food. For taking home staples such as rice, pre-cooked corn flour, milk, oil, sugar, beef or chicken, people had to wait in line for at least twelve hours. Buyers had numbers written on their arms. With fear and anger, but with the need to buy food, they were waiting there since the day before. "No matter if I am very fond of this...

Shumlin Says State Policy Is To "Look The Other Way" POSTED: 8:27 am EDT September 16, 2011 UPDATED: 11:00 am EDT September 16, 2011 Gov. Peter Shumlin clarified his position Thursday after ordering an immediate investigation into State Police handling of a routine traffic stop on I-89 earlier in the week, one that sparked protest and the detention of two migrant farm workers from Mexico. Read more: http://www.wptz.com/video/29203802/detail.html#ixzz1Y8HQrAAS

I ran into a man I'd known for years at a supermarket the other day. He's an old San Francisco guy, so I was surprised at what he said. "I'm moving out of the city," he said. "San Francisco is not the city I grew up in anymore. I'm through with it. "Yep," he said, "I'm gonna sell my house and move to Novato. You know what? The sun shines there in the summer. I mean they have sun - that big yellow thing - sun in July and August. I'm tired of the fog - fog every night and...

San Francisco's lowered home values and high unemployment rates have created another unwelcome side effect: far less revenue coming into city coffers than expected. A report released Monday by the controller's office shows that property tax revenues will likely be $35 million less than anticipated in the 2009-10 fiscal year that began July 1. Payroll tax revenues will probably be $24.8 million less than expected, the report said. To make matters worse, some city departments are going over budget, including shortfalls of $5.1 million in the Fire Department, $4 million in the Sheriff's Department and $3.2 million in Superior Court....

The EU steel industry is terrified that Europe's new cap-and-trade system of penalizing steel-plant emissions will cost 50,000 of its 300,000 steel-industry jobs. But don't worry, if the EU gets serious about cap-and-trade, it will simply violate the rules of the World Trade Organization and start taxing imported steel for the CO2 emissions from Indian and Chinese steel plants. The problem won't be lost jobs in Europe's steel or plastics industries. The problem will be that virtually nothing new will be manufactured for Europe. No new appliances or autos. They take too much steel. No new concrete roads or brick...

Fuel shortage brings Zimbabwe to halt By Byron Dziva in Harare Last Updated: 2:03am BST 10/07/2007 Zimbabwe's economy was approaching paralysis yesterday as petrol stations across the country ran dry. President Robert Mugabe's regime has ordered all retailers to cut fuel prices by 60 per cent, a move that forces them to sell petrol at a loss. As a result, filling stations across the country have stopped selling altogether and petrol is only available on the black market, at five times the official price. Without fuel, the entire economy is steadily shutting down. "It is certainly making a bad situation...

For years, Trenton lawmakers knew property taxes were suffocating homeowners. They watched school boards and municipal councils approve spending that piled one 6.5 percent property tax increase on top of another, year after year. They bemoaned the highest-in-the-nation tax bills. But they never did anything. For them, decrying confiscatory taxes was a safer political choice than actually doing something. They realized that lowering property taxes, seemingly a good thing, would trig ger consequences -- most of them unappealing. Simply put, reducing reli ance on property taxes as the major funding source for schools and local government can be achieved only...

Some see it as an exodus. Others call it a mass migration. But it's really a financial flight. In interviews with dozens of New Jersey residents, financial advisers and estate planning attorneys, one thing becomes apparent: People are being taxed out of New Jersey. "I've always felt there's a level of taxation where people say, 'Enough is enough,'" said Curtis Dubay, an economist with the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., nonpartisan tax research group. "If any state has pushed the line, it's New Jersey." According to the foundation's 2006 State Business Tax Climate Index, New Jersey has the third highest...

  http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=82755http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=82755&page=2 Lots of good photos. Check 'em out. 2 samples ---->>> The particularity of the cities is the lack of cars. Everyone is walking, sometimes they take packed public transportatins made of tramways, trolleys and even 2 storie buses. The bicycles are rare and expensive. The pedestrian zebra is original.

CARACAS, Venezuela - In the land of beauty queens, there seems to be little justice for women. In 2001, Linda Loaiza Lopez, then 18, was tied up, tortured and raped repeatedly during a four-month captivity. In the aftermath, Lopez weathered nine surgeries to repair her damaged face and body, a legal process that went through the hands of 59 judges and six prosecutors, accusations of prostitution against her and a hunger strike to force a trial of her assailant. But despite the evidence against the man, Luis Carrera, and suggestions that he may be a repeat offender, a judge dismissed...

Canadians are losing faith in the health care system and are open to the possibility of private initiatives if their access to quick and effective treatment does not improve, according to a new survey. "If Canadians are not reassured that timely access is eventually going to happen, their support for this private option is likely to increase," said Marie Larose, vice-president of POLLARA Research, which conducted the 2005 Health Care in Canada Survey. "If politicians are not able to demonstrate that there are solutions, people are more and more going to turn to other answers." Fifty per cent of respondents...

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Monty Anderson got word that the trip was on two weeks after rushing home to California from Ukraine for emergency open-heart surgery. He didn't ask his doctor if it was OK to take another trip so soon. He told him he was going. Eighty-year-old Joan Youmans heard about it when she picked up her phone messages after a trip to Indonesia. She canceled a few doctors' appointments and booked immediately. When Joe Walker learned the trip was a go, he said he "just gave them my credit card number and told them to fill in the...

Despite hefty government spending on social benefits, Finland tops global economies. Second in a three-part series. HELSINKI, FINLAND – Fifty years ago, Finland was known for little more than the wood pulp from its endless forests. A poverty-stricken land of poorly educated loggers and farmers on the edge of the Arctic Circle, few paid it any attention. Today, this small Nordic nation boasts a thriving hi-tech economy ranked the most competitive in the world, the best educated citizenry of all the industrialized countries, and a welfare state that has created one of the globe's most egalitarian societies. Envious policymakers from...

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Yes, child care crisis is real: Mike But says city can't afford more programs By LISA L. COLANGELO and JOANNE WASSERMANDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS Leny Arriola leaves her two teen children and 10-year-old alone after school but desperately needs care for her infant. When money was cut, so was Adryanna's free care, frustrating mom Karinna Fermin. Joann Girard is seven months pregnant with twins. Because she missed an appointment with Brooklyn ACS officials when her son was in the hospital, she may be left without child care for the 4-year-old boy. Mayor Bloomberg conceded yesterday what every New York...