Free Republic

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called Wednesday for tax-free learning savings accounts for every student in the country as part of an ambitious package of anti-poverty initiatives developed by a mayors task force he chaired. The plan was to be formally unveiled Thursday at the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, but Villaraigosa gave a preview during a speech at the National Press Club. "This is a downpayment on America's future we can no longer afford to postpone," said Villaraigosa. The main points of the plan included: -A tax-free learning account for every student, with the government chipping...

American workers have been getting the short end of the stick since 1943. That's when the United States Congress, in response to the costs of World War II, passed the Current Tax Payment Act. The act requires employers to withhold taxes from their employees' paychecks, overturning the previous system in which workers were paid first and settled their tab with the government later. The Current Tax Payment Act is why so many people look at their paychecks and wonder where all their money has gone. My poor dad -- who also happened to be my real dad -- often said...

The United Nations With World War II still being fought, delegates from the United States and twenty-five other nations met and issued a "Declarations of the United Nations," the first official use of the term "United Nations." In 1943 representatives of the USSR, Great Britain, Nationalist China, and the United States met in Cairo, Egypt where plans were laid for the creation of a world organization. Another high level conference was held in Tehran, where Joseph Stalin was brought into the planning. In 1944 the initial drafts of the UN Charter was drafted at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC. Finally,...

ADLAI STEVENSON once argued that a politician is a statesman who “approaches every question with an open mouth”. If the performance of Jan Egeland, of the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, is an indication, the same is true of those paid by the United Nations. A week ago, despite just one day having passed since the Asian tsunami, with the reported death toll one tenth of what it is now believed to be, and ignoring the fact that public holidays are never the easiest times to start organising an aid effort, Mr Egeland saw fit to dismiss...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - An extraordinarily high percentage of California public safety workers retire with special disability retirement benefits, qualifying them for half their last annual salary for life, tax-free. Two out of three retirees in the California Highway Patrol receive the medical pensions, as do nearly half of retirees from local police and fire departments. Among recipients are a state nurse who suffers anxiety about sick people; a prison guard who hurt his knee carrying a large coffeepot upstairs; and a Department of Motor Vehicles investigator who qualified for two consecutive disability pensions, both for the same heart condition, found...

truthout.org is a tax free org that trashes republicans and pushes denocRATs for office. Donations to them are writeoffs and it just seems wrong. How can we report them to the authorites to get them audited and/or lose their bogus tax-free status?

Inside his little Western wear store tucked in a corner on East Riverside Drive, Francisco Javier Aceves can't help but feel a kinship with the angular young men who come in to buy jeans, cowboy boots, phone cards and cell phones. As sure as a regular payday, they come in also to wire money to their families back home in Mexico, in places such as Veracruz, Tabasco, Chiapas and Oaxaca. "Sometimes they come three or four in a car," Aceves said about his customers. "Sometimes they just start lining up to wire money." The young men live and work in...

So I heeded a suggestion made by a peacepuke to listen to 90.7 KPFK here in Los Angeles. I encourage everyone else within earshot to do the same. And I urge you to call. Here was my experience. Their one host explicitly stated that he does not think people should support the troops because they are doing the wrong thing, and why would you support someone like that. The next host named Don claimed after a call about supporting our troops that he assures the audience that the entire staff supports the troops. Obviously, nobody there listens to their own...

Treasury officials portrayed the proposal as a streamlining move, but a wide range of analysts said it could represent a significant retreat from a central tenet of the nation's tax system: that the rich should pay a greater share of their income in taxes than those who make less. But even some conservative analysts said that, together with President Bush's recent call for a dividend tax cut and the administration's already-enacted income tax rate cuts, the new proposal would undermine the progressiveness of the tax system by placing a substantial share of the money made on savings and investment --...

Tax-free weekend welcome, but tricky By SAMANTHA THOMPSON SMITH, Staff Writer Thursday, August 1, 2002 8:41AM EDT Funny thing about the state's tax-free weekend: Shoppers can buy a $99 wedding dress without paying taxes, but not a bike helmet. They won't pay sales tax on ballet shoes that cost less than $50, but they will be taxed on handbags and watches. The state's first tax-free weekend, which starts Friday morning and ends Sunday night, is expected to be as confusing as it will be busy. The tax exemption has been promoted as a tax cut to parents during the back-to-school...

Indian kiosks put tax-free cigarettes online DENNIS C. ENSER/Buffalo News This kiosk in a Yellow Goose market - used by Sue Medina links to an Oneida Indian Nation Web site. An Indian nation from Central New York is placing tobacco kiosks in some Buffalo-area convenience stores that will allow the electronic mail ordering of tax-free cigarettes at a savings of up to $20 a carton. The move, a first according to industry officials, came Tuesday, the day before today's 39-cents-per-pack state tax increase. That increase brings the total state tax on a pack of smokes to $1.50, the highest in...