Free Republic

Senate lawmakers on Wednesday approved a $10 million financial bailout for Delaware’s three gambling casinos. The Senate voted 14-5 to pass legislation to help the casinos, which say they are struggling with increased competition from neighboring states and have to share too much of their gambling revenue with the state. [...] The change would take effect in July 2015, at an estimated cost to the state of about $10 million annually. To help the casinos until then, lawmakers cobbled together a similar amount of taxpayer money, mostly from unspent funds that are supposed to be used for economic development projects....

Bailouts: Last Friday, the Obama administration quietly expanded an insurance industry bailout program that it publicly insisted never existed. In exchange, Obama wants a big political favor from insurers. Last week, the administration promised insurers it would use "other sources of funding" to protect their profits "in the unlikely event" that ObamaCare costs more than expected. The language was buried in a 435-page regulatory filing that only the industry would normally care about. But it caught the eye of the Washington Examiner's Philip Klein on Friday. The bailout story got legs this week when the Los Angeles Times followed suit,...

At the Heritage Foundation, professors Charles Calomiris and Mark Flannery provided insights on the ramifications of the U.S. government’s bank bailouts after the 2007 financial crisis. Calomiris is the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business and Flannery is the BankAmerica Eminent Scholar in Finance at the University of Florida. The major issue with Dodd-Frank, said Calomiris, was how none of these problems were adequately fixed. Regarding the promise to liquidate and not bail banks out, Calomiris said, “Unfortunately, and I think now there’s a clear consensus across the board in terms of economists...

Another politico is claiming that he got “Christied.” This time it’s Jersey City mayor, Steven Fulop, who said that after he declined to endorse the Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, meetings with the governor were cancelled and money for hurricane relief dried up. I guess in this Alice-in-TV-Land world we live in, this counts as news. This comes on the heels of a federal investigation into Christie’s use of federal hurricane relief funds, which Obama is sure were used for nefarious purposes; presumably that means purposes that didn’t include electing Democrats. While Barack Obama didn’t invent the “Christie”...

Among the many legitimate criticisms of the 2008–09 Wall Street bailout was that it created a situation in which profits are private but losses are public, being borne by taxpayers who extended liberal loans and outright subsidies to various firms in order to head off total paralysis in the credit markets. Critics right and left regarded the combination of private profits and public losses as inherently objectionable — but Barack Obama and congressional Democrats apparently saw in the Wall Street bailout a model for health-insurance reform. And, surprise: Buried deep within the Affordable Care Act are not one but two...

They’re nervous. “We are becoming increasingly concerned about momentum that is quickly building among some leading conservatives for elimination of the risk corridor and reinsurance programs,” [Blue Cross Blue Shield Association CEO Scott] Serota wrote…“Their efforts, along with growing support for repealing the risk corridor and reinsurance programs, could combine to create a perfect storm to, at a minimum, dissuade the Administration from modifying risk corridor program rules to provide increased funding in light of the recent ‘transitional policy’ allowing insurers to offer consumers the option to renew their 2013 health plans for 2014,” Serota wrote.In attached talking points, seemingly...

Krauthammer: Insurance Companies Ruined By ObamaCare Will Need a Bailout Next Year By Noel Sheppard Created 12/22/2013 - 12:00pm Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer made a dire prediction Sunday. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Krauthammer said that all the exemptions the President has given to ObamaCare will ruin insurance companies thereby necessitating the White House to ask for a huge government bailout of these companies next year that Republicans in Congress should prevent (video follows with transcript and commentary): CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: I want to go back to this point that George was talking about, because the President in his news...

I am sick to death of these so-call Black “intellectuals” spending so much time criticizing President Obama – not because I don’t feel that EVERY politician’s feet should be held to the fire, I do, but because most of the nonsense they’re spewing is pure, unmitigated, ignorance. And what makes it worse is it’s either purposeful ignorance, or ignorance due to a lazy-mindedness that could be corrected with less than ten minutes of objective research. The irony is, people like Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, the entire GOP, and a lot of other uninformed haters are severely criticizing the President, while...

Should higher-education be subsidized? Friedman: 'You have a case in which you are imposing taxes on relatively low-income people to confer very large benefits on upper-income people...' Brooks: 'I think as soon as you start offering people economic incentives to get educated -or to use the education that they get for economic means- in other words when you put a price-tag on knowledge, I think that you're gonna be... Friedman: 'What are you talking about? You mean to say that the graduates of colleges and universities don't use their capacities in a direction influenced by the money they can earn...?...

Obamacare's federal website is a mess, creating massive obstacles to enrollment in the law's health insurance exchange plans. Those taking President Obama's advice to apply by phone or by mail will fare little better, as their information must still be fed through the same glitchy computer system that is holding up everyone else. The website isn't the only problem, as things are only slightly better in the states that run their own websites. In Kentucky, less than 20 percent of the newly insured (or 4,832) have actually purchased plans – the rest will enter the taxpayer-funded Medicaid program. In Maryland,...

The short version? Obamacare contains a partial bailout for insurers with losses greater than 3 percent in any of the first three years...

when it comes to public employee benefits and the damage they wreak on local governments, scoundrels have another refuge: blaming racism for concerns about lavish, unaffordable benefits and broken governments. ”Public-sector workers are disproportionately black. In 2011, about 19 percent of black workers were employed by the government, compared with 14 percent of whites and 10 percent of Hispanics. The upshot is pretty clear: Reducing the value of public pensions and other benefits wouldn’t just hurt blacks disproportionately; it would do so at a time when other economic trends have already hurt them more than most. So the question isn’t...

Link only.

A new national poll from Quinnipiac University shows that a majority Democrats believe the federal government should bail out Detroit, but an even larger majority of Americans oppose such a move. Fifty-one percent of Democrats support Washington providing federal assistance to Detroit, which last month became the largest American city ever to seek bankruptcy protection. Not surprisingly, there is a strong partisan divide on the question of a federal bailout for the Motor City. Seventy-three percent of Republicans oppose a bailout, while only 18 percent support the idea. Independents are nearly of the same mind as Republicans on the issue:...

Detroit could be looking to ObamaCare for a bailout as city leaders try to cut back on retiree health costs as they enter bankruptcy proceedings. The New York Times reported Monday that the city is proposing a plan aimed at reducing its $5.7 billion in outstanding retiree health costs. In short, they want to take those retirees too young to qualify for Medicare and send them into the ObamaCare insurance markets -- which are scheduled to launch next year. Doing so would ease the burden on the Detroit coffers by taking them off city coverage. But it would inevitably increase...

Before I tell you of all the new developments at government motors, I’d like to inform you of the true cost of the GM bailout. The “official” tally is ten billion, but the actual total cost to taxpayers is over 50 billion dollars. GM has a market cap (Net worth) of 28 billion. The paybacks we received from GM are the true, but kind. Read this for the true costs.

Making The Most Of Borrowed Time (Central Banks Have Had Enough?)Jaime Caruana, General Manager of the BIS on the occasion of the Bank’s Annual General Meeting in Basel on 23 June 2013Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Since the beginning of the financial crisis almost six years ago, central banks and fiscal authorities have supported the global economy with unprecedented measures. Policy rates have been kept near zero in the largest advanced economies. Central bank balance sheets have doubled from $10 trillion to more than $20 trillion. And fiscal authorities almost everywhere have been piling up debt, which has risen by...

Two members of Congress are asking if the Treasury Department disproportionately targeted more Republican or conservative owned auto dealerships during the government-lead restructuring of General Motors in 2009. Breitbart.com reported today that Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Jim Renacci (R-OH) released a letter asking Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to release documents regarding the process and methodology that determined which GM dealerships were closed.

While hindsight may always be 20/20, foresight should be pretty clear in many instances as well. The Fisker failure was one of these times. Many saw the folly in spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to support the green debacle. In fact, the Associated Press has reported that even the Obama Administration had warning of the Fisker loan risks back in April of 2010 when the Energy Department began emailing their concerns. Congress will be holding hearings starting today to address the scandalous waste of taxpayer money on Fisker. Reuters states one of the goals of the hearing, "'The...

I can just imagine Jay Leno taking to the streets in order to ask the average American citizen, “What do you think about Cyprus?” More than likely, the answer would be, “I really prefer oak or maple for my flooring, I never really thought about cypress.”  Jay would reply with, “No, the country Cyprus.  The IMF, EU, and ECB, the “troika,” just put a tax on bank accounts.  Well, no.  Actually, they just stole a portion and froze the rest of the money in spite of the increased guarantees.”  The average American would then respond, “There’s a country named Cyprus? ...