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Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed into law a package of tax increases Tuesday targeting six-figure earners, tobacco users and companies engaged in real estate transactions to cover record spending on education. In a two-hour ceremony, it was easily the most recognizable measure O’Malley (D) signed but hardly the most popular. Rather, union members, minorities and interest groups crowded the State House to celebrate more than 200 lesser-known and often narrowly tailored bills. They passed the General Assembly with little fanfare but, taken together, will color the state’s social and political identity a slightly deeper shade of blue. The bills included...

Move over, $5 a gallon gas — America’s new household budget buster may soon be the $200 a month cable bill. While wages for US workers have remained stagnant, cable bills have quietly climbed 6 percent a year and will pass $200 a month by 2020, according to an alarming industry forecast released yesterday.

ANNAPOLIS — With just a week left in the 2012 General Assembly session, lawmakers have hundreds of bills left to consider. But only a handful of proposals will get most of their attention. The House and Senate still must approve a joint version of the state budget, which they are required to do before adjourning Monday. Legislators also will consider bills that would implement offshore-wind energy and set up a referendum on whether to allow table games and a new casino in Prince George’s County. A conference committee of House and Senate representatives got to work Monday on hashing out...

Wash. Bills Would Implement Occupy DemandsAzusa Uchikura | Feb. 2, 2012 1:51 p.m. OLYMPIA, Wash. – Washington lawmakers are introducing several proposals that echo the demands of the Occupy protesters. In fact, the formal title of one proposal introduced Thursday says it is aimed at "Guaranteeing that the top one percent pay too." The chief sponsor, Democratic Representative Marko Liias , says the Occupy movement wasn't the only thing that prompted this idea. **SNIP** Liias's proposal isn't complete yet, but it would impose a 2 percent tax on incomes over $1 million. The money would help fund education from Kindergarten...

Springfield Secret Santas Pay Off Layaway Bills for Needy FamiliesDecember 17, 2011 | Mary Moloney, KSPR News Reporter SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Good Samaritans have found a way to help needy Springfield families this holiday season. About a dozen people walked into the South Campbell Kmart and paid for the presents of strangers whose gifts sat on layaway. "One young man came in who had gotten a $500 bonus from work. He just thought it was a great thing. He's even posted it online challenging his friends to do the same thing and he's come in and paid off several people's...

Updated as amendment, must read both for complete bill: Original "Boehner Bill": Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute — Budget Control Act of 2011 (Acrobat PDF) Revised Amendment to the Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute (Acrobat PDF) Source, House Committee on Rules, S. 627 Faster FOIA Act of 2011 (Budget Control Act of 2011)

The public was in the dark on many of the measures. When the session started, only seven of the 12 bills scheduled for votes were posted on the Legislature's website. When lawmakers returned to the House and Senate floors shortly after 6 p.m., they quickly passed six of the 10 tax and spending bills that make up the budget. Most bills sailed through largely on party-line votes with little debate. Still to come were three highly contentious spending bills to fund K-12 education, health and human services and state agencies. The House passed a controversial tax bill late Tuesday night....

You're pretty close to being toast. Nerves are frazzled, homes are being evacuated, jobs lost and families are torn apart. Oh, the rookie Hussein has performed magic, all right. Kinda nuts. But it's what Barry King planned all along. This is his vision. Wealth distribution. And it's only getting started. How do you make it? Old money, new money, food stamps, living with the folks, moving in with the neighbor? How are you doing it? Are there any really good tips to make it through the Hussein years? And don't give me any guff on that '$40k on the credit...

*** Among the 2,323 bills introduced by lawmakers this year are ones to revise the definition of olive oil and enact 'Spay Day' to encourage spaying of animals. But Gov. Jerry Brown and others say that's too many as the state grapples with fiscal crisis. *** Reporting from Sacramento — In addition to addressing the state's $25-billion deficit this year, the Legislature is making time for some other less pressing matters: Caffeinated beer. Spaceships. How to properly describe a dog pound. Proposals on those subjects are among the 2,323 bills lawmakers have introduced this year. Others would revise the definition...

Establish smart spending habits. Live like you're poor. How do you do that? Drive your cars into the ground, don't eat out very much, avoid expensive and potentially unhealthy processed foods, buy food in bulk, buy just enough clothes to fit your needs, and use public transportation. ... Use credit cards only as a convenience to avoid carrying cash; limit your credit card spending so that you can easily pay off the balance each month. Make every dollar count with your spending, so you can free up money to invest in the future. Get healthy. One of the best things...

Boehner, Pro-Life Advocates Launch Bills to Ban Tax-Funded Abortions Washington, DC -- House Speaker John Boehner and a bipartisan group of pro-life members of Congress held a press conference this morning to launch two bills prohibiting government funding for abortion. The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act and the Protect Life Act were officially introduced today. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/01/20/boehner-pro-life-advocates-launch-bills-to-ban-tax-funded-abortions/

As metro Atlanta's temperatures grow colder, the demand for heat is, well, heating up. A day after hundreds of people queued up outside a Marietta community center to apply for assistance with heat and power bills, hopeful applicants began lining up again around midnight, waiting in the sub-freezing temperatures for the doors to open Thursday morning. This time, however, officials let those in line come into the Mansour Center on Roswell Street an hour early at 7:30 and get relief from temperatures that dropped to 27 degrees. “We’re freezing,” said Lecher Eady, a Marietta mother who arrived at midnight seeking...

Two GOP state representatives say they are routinely asked to vote on bills that they haven't had a chance to read, a practice they say they want to stop. Reps. Justin Amash, R-Cascade, and Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, co-sponsored a joint resolution requiring a 72-hour review period before any bill can be put up for a vote. "It happens all the time," said Rep. Dave Agema, R-Grandville, of the policy of quick votes with no time to read the legislation. "Everybody is looking at themselves and thinking, 'What in the world is this?' " The bill requiring a three-day waiting...

Say family does not have insurance to pay cost of precautionary check-upThe family of a 17-year-old Zion teen credited with saving a drowning boy on Monday in Kenosha, Wis., say the good deed has unfairly saddled them with more than $2,000 in medical bills. “He did what the lifeguard should have done — Trevor saved the boy,” Nicole Bollinger said Tuesday of her cousin, Trevor Hall. “Now the hospital phones me this morning to say that they’re sending off the bill for Trevor being taken to hospital as a precaution afterwards.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed into law one of the more controversial bills from the recent legislative session, one allowing guns to be carried into houses of worship. Jindal's office said Tuesday the governor acted on the bill in the past few days after receiving it June 20. Including the "gun-in-church" bill, House Bill 1272 by Rep. Henry Burns, R-Haughton, Jindal has signed into law 940 of the 1,067 bills the Legislature sent him, vetoed 12, and used his pen to line-item spending measures in four different budget bills.

Illinois Has Stopped Paying Bills Even For Essential Services Vincent Fernando, CFA Jul. 5, 2010, 12:56 AM Image: The White House If California was America's Greece, then Illinois is America's Spain. California's horrid financial situation initially jolted Americans with the notion that a state could fail, and now Illinois is making people realize that California's problems aren't a one-state fluke. New York Times via MSNBC: Even by the standards of this deficit-ridden state, Illinois’s comptroller, Daniel W. Hynes, faces an ugly balance sheet. Precisely how ugly becomes clear when he beckons you into his office to examine his daily briefing...

WASHINGTON — Here are the effective dates of major provisions of the health care overhaul legislation approved Sunday: WITHIN A YEAR - Would provide a $250 rebate this year to Medicare prescription drug beneficiaries whose initial benefits run out. 90 days after enactment: - Would provide immediate access to high-risk pools for people with no insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Six months after enactment: - Would bar insurers from denying people coverage when they get sick. - Would bar insurers from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. - Would bar insurers from imposing lifetime caps on coverage. - Would...

The White House declined on Thursday to rule out that President Barack Obama might sign future legislation, such as an immigration reform measure, that has not been put to a recorded yea-or-nay vote in both houses of Congress. CNSNews.com asked White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs about the possibility of the president doing so because of a prospective lawsuit that Landmark Legal Foundation President Mark Levin has prepared to file against the president if he signs a health care bill that has not been passed by a direct recorded yea-or-nay vote in the House of Representatives. The prospective lawsuit argues that...

Cowher to meet with Bills Staff Zorn to be fired

Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants could receive health care coverage from their employers under the bills winding their way through Congress, despite President Obama's explicit pledge that illegal immigrants would not benefit. The House bill mandates, and the Senate bill strongly encourages, businesses to extend health care coverage to all employees. But the bills do not have exemptions to screen out illegal immigrants, who usually obtain jobs by using false identities and are indistinguishable from legal workers.