Free Republic

The name “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” is well known as Mike Bloomberg’s gun-control arm, which he spends his personal fortune through on ads. Yet the group’s website is registered to, and handled by, official city government servers and staffers. Domain names for MAIG were registered in 2006 by the New York City Department of Information and Technology, and have remained on official city web servers ever since.Yet the group’s “action fund,” through which he has piped at least $14 million of his own money in ads over gun control this year alone, is registered as a 501c4, a nonprofit “social...

<p>Shulman rallied for Rangel: Jason Furman, Media Matters, Fox News, Jarrett and a job.</p> <p>And the Liberal Dog Whistle Blows.</p> <p>Congressman Charles Rangel of New York.</p> <p>Ex-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.</p> <p>The new chairman of the president’s Council on Economic Advisors, Jason Furman.</p>

Before responding to a May 2012 interview request from conservative news organization Media Trackers Ohio, an employee of Columbus, Ohio Mayor Michael Coleman forwarded the request to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office and a liberal D.C. consultant, who immediately alerted liberal organization Media Matters for America. The Coleman staffer, R. Lee Roberts, is the Ohio chairman of Mayor Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), a pro-gun control lobbying group. Coleman, a Democrat, receives a salary from MAIG but works from Coleman’s office and participates in a taxpayer-funded retirement plan. Media Trackers has since used public records to prove Roberts...

LAS VEGAS — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid again deflected questions Monday about releasing his tax returns, even as he continued to pound the demand for Mitt Romney to make more of his own public. Instead, Reid pointed to the financial disclosure forms he files as a member of Congress, which provide different information. “I’m a member of Congress now, I don’t make too much money,” said Reid, whose net worth was estimated at $10 million in 2010. “But it’s all listed every year.” Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson told POLITICO last week that the majority leader will not release his...

It's unlikely that President Barack Obama will be naming any tax proposals after George B. Kaiser. An investment by the Tulsa billionaire's family foundation in Solyndra, whose bankruptcy may leave taxpayers on the hook for $535 million in federal loans, has raised speculation that the administration acted in part to aid a financial supporter. But the impact on taxpayers of Kaiser's career goes far beyond the $535 million loss. Kaiser has built his fortune in part through shrewdly playing the Internal Revenue Code. In one six year period, during which he increased his net worth enough to land him on...

Yesterday, the Senate narrowly voted (51-48) to raise taxes on 1.2 million small businesses, which will likely kill more than 700,000 jobs at a time when nearly 13 million Americans are out of work. Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jim Webb (D-VA) joined all Republicans in bipartisan opposition to the tax hike. This is President Obama’s economic plan. This is what he asked Congress to do. And he recently told a fundraising crowd that his economic plan has been working. “Just like we’ve tried [Republicans'] plan, we tried our plan—and it worked,” he said. But Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner,...

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign team have been waging a coordinated effort against Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney by repeatedly casting aspersion on the length of his tenure at Bain Capital as well as the limited disclosure of his past personal income tax returns...But now the Shark Tank has come into possession of information that has never been publicly disclosed which completely undermines Wasserman Schultz’ credibility as it pertains to her calls for transparency or the claim that she qualifies as “middle class.” ...on the mainland, Newbury, New Hampshire is a quaint little town...

-Songwriter also has Austrian citizenship through her late father -Former husband Marc Rich fled the country when indicted on charges of tax evasion - but was pardoned by President Clinton in 2001 -House of Representatives committee later found Denise Rich had swayed the decision through donations to Clinton campaign -Comes as the latest wealthy American to denounce citizenship Denise Rich, the wealthy socialite and former wife of pardoned billionaire trader Marc Rich, has given up her U.S. citizenship - and, with it, much of her U.S. tax bill. Rich, 68, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, top Democratic donor and glamorous figure in...

Unable to reach a deal with its lenders, upstart wireless carrier LightSquared will file for bankruptcy Monday, according to two sources with knowledge of the company's plans. The move has been widely expected, since the company's options for appeasing its creditors were running out. LightSquare's lenders claim that it has been in default on its debt since its $9 billion partnership with Sprint Nextel

Madison, Wisc...] After refining the dataset created by Verify the Recall, a Wisconsin man began running it against other public records and discovered 571 tax delinquents signed Recall petitions. His findings? The total in back taxes owed by petitioners is more than $17 million. The list of individuals can be found through the website, www.putwisconsinfirst.com The creator of the site told the MacIver News Service, his databases should be considered to be tools and not definitive source documents. The source documents are from the State of Wisconsin and the Verify the Recall effort and can be found through links on...

For the eighth year in a row California is ranked at the absolute bottom of 50 states for business, according to Chief Executive magazine. What do they know? The esteemed Gov. Jerry Brown says California’s just swell for business. Well, OK, Jerry isn’t and hasn’t been a CEO and this is an annual poll of chief executive officers who run actual businesses. He’s a politician and a “progressive.” Did we mention it’s been eight years in a row that California finished dead last? ...

(Loophole.)(4 Billion a year)(video)(Illegal Aliens Getting Bigger Tax Refund Checks?)

With the state budget mired in deficits, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators, especially his fellow Democrats, are searching under every fiscal rock for money to spend. That search has spawned an odd syndrome involving what could be three big pots of money – a competition among liberals over how they should be spent if, indeed, they materialize. The pots: • What could be several billion dollars a year in "cap-and-trade" fees that industries must pay as part of the state's anti-greenhouse gas crusade. • Another billion-plus bucks that it's believed would appear were the state to change taxation of multi-state...

A top campaign adviser to President Obama made clear Sunday that the president has no plans to chip in extra money from his own income to defray the deficit -- and would insist that the tax system itself be changed so that the wealthy pay more. Campaign strategist David Axelrod was asked on "Fox News Sunday" whether the president might contribute more to the U.S. Treasury after the release of his tax returns showed Obama paid a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. The president and first lady Michelle Obama paid an effective rate of 20.5 percent on gross...

President Obama and his wife, Michelle, reported adjusted gross income of $789,674 in 2011 and paid just over 20 percent of it to the federal government in taxes. Their income declined nearly $1 million from the previous year, when the president was reaping larger amounts from sales of his bestselling books. The numbers were disclosed in the Obamas’ federal income tax return and gift-tax return, released Friday by the White House, along with those of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Obama paid $162,074 in income taxes, an effective tax rate of 20.5 percent. In a statement,...

On Sunday, Japan’s corporate tax reform kicks in and the United States will have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Including average state taxes the corporate tax rate in the United States reaches an astounding 39.2 percent, much higher than the OECD international average marginal tax rate of 25.5 percent. Obama’s own former Council of Economic Advisers chairman, Austan Goolsbee, documented firm sensitivity to taxation. Goolsbee’s paper, published at the University of Chicago, highlighted increased deadweight loss as a significant adverse consequence of corporate taxation. Simply put, taxes create inefficiencies while giving governments more money to spend. Businesses,...

I discovered an interesting fact while reviewing the 2011 IRS form 8936 used for the $7500 EV tax credit. While under most circumstances it is the wealthy purchasers of Chevy Volts and other high priced plug-in vehicles that get the taxpayer-funded handout, it appears that General Motors' dealerships that sell the vehicles to government entities are benefiting by being able to claim the credits. These dealers are able to double-dip into the seemingly endless pool of taxpayer funds designated for cronies of the Obama Administration under the guise of green initiatives. Not only do taxpayers pay for Chevy Volts...

Corporate tax reform has long been an opportunity for a win-win bipartisan effort in Washington. Everyone agrees that the corporate code needs significant changes, if not a complete overhaul; it's too complicated, too costly, and rewards the larger companies that can afford to analyze it for every possible benefit. Both parties have made corporate tax reform part of their plartforms, Democrats arguing that we need to close loopholes, Republicans that we need simplification and lower rates.The White House decided to go first on corporate tax reform: The Obama administration Wednesday will unveil a framework for reforming the corporate tax code...

President Obama released his FY 2013 budget [Monday] morning. By his own numbers, his budget raises net taxes over the next decade by $1.56 trillion (Table S-9, page 225). As a percentage of the economy, tax revenues would rise all the way to 20.1% of GDP in 2022, far higher than the historical tax revenue average of 18.3% of GDP (Table S-1, page 205). Here are some of the tax lowlights: All 20 of the new or higher taxes in Obamacare are assumed to take place. That means that there will be a 3.8 percentage point surtax on investment income....

President Obama's proposed 2013 budget contains a decade-long surge of tax hikes that, if approved, would affect everything from income to investment to inheritance. The budget blueprint contains roughly $2 trillion in new taxes and fees. When other tax cuts and credits are counted, the net impact from the proposals is still about $1.5 trillion. Though Republicans already are mounting a vigorous campaign against the proposal, many of the tax provisions still could become law unless Congress takes action to stop them. ,,,, But the budget also imposes various fees, such as a hike in the airline "security fee," as...