Free Republic

Facing a growing homeless population, San Jose is ready to try a new strategy to get people off the streets: pay to put some of them up in local hotels and motels, potentially for years. ...housing prices continue to climb and landlords become pickier about renters...100 homeless people roaming San Jose streets have publicly funded vouchers for subsidized housing but cannot find a place that will accept them. "It's just a tough place to live because of how expensive it is," said Leslye Corsiglia, the city's housing director, who called it an opportunity for homeless people "to get themselves settled...

Mayor de Blasio’s SUV was caught on camera speeding through Queens and blowing through two stop signs Thursday — just two days after he announced a sweeping street-safety plan. The mayor — who was riding shotgun on the way back to City Hall from a pothole-filling photo op — was twice clocked going 15 mph over the speed limit by a WCBS/Channel 2 news crew. The two-car caravan also ran past two stop signs without even tapping the brakes and changed highway lanes without signaling, the CBS video shows. De Blasio’s wild ride came after his pledge to personally abide...

Over the course of their 60-year marriage, Bernard “Bernie” Karpinkski and his wife, Violet, took few chances when it came to their retirement. “From the time we were married, we started saving,” says Bernie, 89, who lives in Pueblo, Colorado. “We lived much more conservatively than most people. We had three cars our entire lives and drove them until they had close to 200,000 miles on them before we bought another. We didn’t buy our second home until we had enough saved to pay cash.” While their friends moved into bigger homes, took vacations and put their life on plastic,...

Cost Curve: A little-noticed problem is fast emerging in states that decided to set up their own ObamaCare exchanges. Many of them face financial crises once the federal grant money runs out. After taking nearly $4 billion in federal grants to set up and run their exchanges this year, 14 states and the District of Columbia are supposed to be self-sufficient by next year. At least that's what the ObamaCare statute says (which these days doesn't mean much). But from the looks of it, many are heading into a fiscal brick wall.

The 14 states running their own health insurance marketplaces had all their startup costs footed by the federal government, but they're supposed to pay for themselves starting next year under the new federal health care law. In several states, it's not clear whether it will work out that way. Projected enrollments are lower than expected, meaning the insurance surcharges designed to sustain the exchanges might not generate enough revenue in the years ahead without significant changes in the financing model. Officials in some states are stashing away federal grant money to continue paying for operations beyond the January 2015 target...

Folks, I am a poor boy who would like to be helped and educated by someone who knows what they're doing--what they're talking about. I have been reading some, but there are a lot of basic things I don't yet understand. How much money would I need to start the whole shebang? Can you use online stock sites to purchase shares, or do you have to go through a broker? You get the picture. My friend said that me thinking about penny stock trading is like trusting Lou Costello or Jerry Lewis to assemble an H-bomb. I'm looking for advice,...

Like Enron, Greece, and Donald Trump before us, America is about to go bankrupt. Unfortunately, our bankruptcy will probably be more Enron and less Donald Trump because we're very unlikely to come back bigger and better in the lifetime of anyone reading this column. Instead, most Americans are probably going to experience skyrocketing taxes, spiraling inflation, widespread disorder, and a dramatically reduced standard of living. This isn’t a crisis that our great-grandchildren will have to figure out one day. To the contrary, it's entirely possible it will occur within the next decade and unless we make big changes no one...

Dec 11 (Reuters) - Canada's postal service will phase out urban home delivery within five years and hike the cost of postage stamps to try to stem soaring losses, the post office said on Wednesday. Canada Post, like the U.S. Postal Service, is suffering as customers switch to digital communications. In August it said it was on track to run short of cash by the middle of 2014 unless major changes were made. The government-owned corporation - which has a mandate to be self-financing - last month reported a third-quarter loss of C$109 million ($103 million) before tax and said...

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., lost $18 million in a scheme that cheated him and about 120 other investors out of more than $35 million, according to court papers. The Virginia man who ran the scheme, William Dean Chapman, was sentenced Friday in federal court to 12 years in prison. Prosecutors say Chapman used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle including a Lamborghini, a Ferrari and a $3 million home.

At the end of September, the federal government's fiscal year was drawing to a close, the threat of a shut down was increasing, and the State Department was shopping for art. Four contracts were awarded in the last two weeks of September, including $1,000,000 for a granite sculpture by Irish-born artist Sean Scully to be installed at the new U.S. Embassy in London. Notice of the awards was posted Sunday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend on the Federal Business Opportunities website.

**SNIP** If legislators don't take a big step to unravel this crisis — an unfunded pension obligation of $100 billion that grows by millions every day — then the state that also boasts the nation's lowest credit rating, and one of the nation's worst jobless rates, will suffer even more. As will its citizens, many of whom wish pensions didn't devour more than one-fifth of the state's operating budget — money that could help educate children, care for the sick and meet other needs. It isn't just the pension crisis that should animate legislators' decisions this week — and that...

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was set up with a slush fund of one billion dollars to support the implementation of Obamacare. If we go by the department's summary of its Fiscal Year 2014 budget proposal, it would appear to have already burned through $811 million through 30 September 2013, the end of the federal government's 2013 fiscal year: That would leave the department with just $189 million left to spend. It was planning to spend $163 million in the federal government's Fiscal Year 2014, which began on 1 October 2013. Instead, the problems that...

Voters in Cincinnati last week soundly defeated a ballot initiative which would have overhauled the pension system for public workers, leaving the city without a plan to deal with $872 million in unfunded liabilities. Cincinnati is not alone. Across the nation, cities and states are finding funding for basic services being crowded out of their budgets by the rising cost of retirees’ pensions and healthcare. … More and more cities, counties, and even some states will face the harsh reality of having to fix their pension systems or deal with a Detroit-style bankruptcy. …

American incomes have tumbled over the last decade. But for many people in Washington, D.C., it’s been something of a party. The income of the typical D.C. household rose 23.3% between 2000 and 2012 to an inflation-adjusted $66,583, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, its most comprehensive snapshot of America’s demographic, social and economic trends. During this period, median household incomes for the nation as a whole dropped 6.6% — from $55,030 to $51,371. The state of Mississippi, which had one of the biggest declines, dropped 15% to $37,095: Nearly one in three people there have an income...

This story is just perfect — particularly in light of the party’s endemic debt denialism, and the personal financial straits of its chairwoman: There’s another budget crisis in Washington, and it’s unfolding inside the Democratic party. The Democratic National Committee remains so deeply in the hole from spending in the last election that it is struggling to pay its own vendors.It is a highly unusual state of affairs for a national party — especially one that can deploy the President as its fundraiser-in-chief – and it speaks to the quiet but serious organizational problems the party has yet to address...

Below is an outline of the GOP’s debt-ceiling bill obtained by National Review Online. The document originated from the House Appropriations Committee staff and is dated yesterday. A GOP-leadership aide says there are some differences between this and their latest summary, so take that for what it’s worth. As always with the House Republicans, it is subject to discussion from members, many of whom are quite vocal in providing their input on such plans.House leadership is planning to pass the bill as early as Saturday. The bill itself is expected to be released imminently. The outline is not a...

**SNIP** SCOTUS STILL GETS PAID • Supreme Court justices and federal judges will receive paychecks no matter how long the shutdown lasts, but if it carries on for more than 10 days, federal courts will handle only "essential" work and many judicial workers will not be paid on time. FLU SEASON • While the TSA and National Security Agency would likely remain open, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would likely close its door as flu season begins.

Raising the debt ceiling doesn't increase the nation's debt, Pres. Obama declared in a speech today... Obama dismissed concerns about raising the debt ceiling by noting that it'd been done so many times in the past: ... Obama went on to suggest that "the average person" mistakenly thinks that raising the debt ceiling means the U.S. is racking up more debt:

Here's my response to Commander Zer0's verbal assault on reason that took place last night. I realize that our Dear Leader's plans to provide al-Qaeda air cover may not materialize, but keep this in mind: We have a failing dictator who's willing to start world War III to distract the country from his varied scandals and Zimbabwe-like economy. Anything is still possible with this pile of human debris in the White House. Without further ado: *** For the last couple of days, we've been exposed to an endless stream of war propaganda in support of Chairman Obama's Syrian adventure. Without...

The toll-road authority of Orange County, Calif., is nearing the biggest municipal default since Detroit's record bankruptcy ... The Foothill-Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency... risks default on $2.4 billion in debt, according to a consultant to the Debt and Investment Advisory Commission of California Treasurer Bill Lockyer.