Free Republic

Early returns showed Portland residents voting to keep their city the largest in the U.S. without fluoride in the water. With more than half the expected ballots counted Tuesday night, the Multnomah County election website showed the fluoride proposal failing, 60 percent to 40 percent. Voters in Portland twice rejected fluoridation before approving it in 1978. That plan was overturned two years later, before any fluoride was ever added to the water. The City Council voted last year to add fluoride to the water supply that serves about 900,000 people. But opponents quickly gathered enough signatures to force a vote...

The studio space at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. is changing hands, Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton reports. Next month, ABC’s “This Week” will vacate the space and return to the network’s Washington bureau, and Al Jazeera America will move in. ... Al Jazeera America, which B&C reports will have both office space and editing facilities in the Newseum, is preparing for its launch later this year. The network recently hired Adam May, a local reporter from Baltimore, as a D.C.-based national correspondent.

After years of economic dysfunction, the country has gotten used to shortages of medicines and basic food items like milk and sugar but the scarcity of bathroom tissue has caused unusual alarm. "Even at my age, I've never seen this," said 70-year-old Maria Rojas. She said she had been looking for toilet paper for two weeks when she finally found it at a supermarket in downtown Caracas. Thousands of rolls flew off the store's shelves as consumers streamed in and loaded up shopping carts Thursday morning. "I bought it because it's hard to find," said Maria Perez, walking out with...

Shifting stories cast doubts on answer to core question: Did Team Obama know about IRS abuse in real time?“You and others have said that no one in the White House knew about IRS actions before getting the heads up on the inspector general's report last month,” George Stephanopoulos told senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday. “Are you absolutely sure of that?”“Yes,” Pfeiffer replied.Do you believe him?Knowing the consequences that would befall the Obama administration if the White House or Obama’s reelection campaign knew in real time that the IRS was targeting conservatives, I desperately want to believe Pfeiffer....

A 20-year-old new York man killed and set on fire a 14-year-old girl who refused his demand to have an abortion.After killing her, the man took her naked body to the beach and set it on fire. But the teen wasn’t pregnant, the city’s medical examiner confirmed, leaving her shattered family members railing against the “senseless� crime.From local reports: Christian Ferdinand, 20, admitted to killing Shaniesha Forbes Thursday, officials said. He is charged with homicide by asphyxiation. Authorities arrested him in Maine Wednesday.Despite Ferdinand’s pregnancy claims, the city’s medical examiner noted Forbes wasn’t pregnant at the time of her death....

Sharing this for those Freepers concerned about the dollar. It's actually strong compared to the euro and yen, but that's only cuz the Central Bankers there have opted to use more fire power against the weak dollar and make their currencies even WEAKER. What does this mean for those of us with real skin in the game, as in money in the markets?

Vice President Biden spoke at the Export-Import Bank’s 2013 Annual Conference. Among the topics he addressed were international trade and competition, expanding markets in Asia, domestic job creation, and intellectual property issues.

With his estimated wealth exceeding $200 million, Albert Arnold Gore has come a long way from the time he began a career in government politics. But it hasn’t all been a green path. He can thank some earlier events for paving over muddy ground, a time when his father, Al Gore Sr. met Occidental Petroleum’s CEO Armand Hammer at a cattle auction in the 1940s. When zinc was discovered on some of Gore’s land,

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: It took five minutes. Five minutes. It only took five minutes before the Democrat Party politicized the tornado in Oklahoma. They politicize everything, folks. They rub their hands together in glee when there is a natural disaster that they think they can spin in such a way as to advance their political agenda. If any of you doubt that global warming is a political issue and not a science issue, then you must open your mind and consider why in the world, ask yourself, why in the world, five minutes after the news hits of this horrible...

McClatchy Newspapers has an excellent story on immigration today, reporting on how farmers are framing the debate to their representatives: Walk the aisles of any neighborhood grocery store today and you’re as likely to find tomatoes picked in Sinaloa, Mexico, as Central California or oranges from Sao Paulo, Brazil, as Bradenton, Fla.Farmers across the country warn that shoppers will find even more imported food on their store shelves if Congress fails to pass immigration legislation that would guarantee them enough workers to milk their cows and harvest their fruits and vegetables.“The bottom line is people need to decide whether...

CARSON CITY — Perhaps nobody at the Legislature this year has been more insistent than Nevada Senate Majority Leader Mo Denis that the state must immediately put more money into Nevada’s education system. And Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval could hardly have been more clear when he said he opposes and would veto Denis’ bill to increase payroll taxes for education. But Denis will make the case today that his payroll tax hike proposal is the best way to help Nevada’s schools next school year. Noting that Nevada consistently ranks near the bottom of state-by-state education comparisons, the Las Vegas Democrat...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul went on a great rant during today's Senate subcommittee hearing on Apple's offshore tax practices, slamming his Congressional colleagues for even holding the hearing in the first place. "Frankly, I'm offended by the tone and tenor of this hearing," Paul said, laying into those who take issue with Apple's tax policies. "I'm offended by the spectacle of dragging in executives from an American company that is not doing anything illegal," he added. "If anyone should be on trial, it should be Congress." Apple CEO Tim Cook is testifying before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations this...

If there is an upside to the debate unfolding over the Gang of Eight’s immigration-reform bill, it is this: The simplistic version of the conversation — pro-immigration vs. anti-immigration — has been supplanted by a more relevant set of questions: How many new immigrants? Of what sort? On what timeline? Under what conditions? It is good that these questions are being asked — but the answers coming from Congress are anything but reassuring. One need not accept the wrongheaded dystopian views of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus to believe that there is some number that is too high, and one...

Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its latest news on the job market. The agency breaks down the jobs data six different ways and calculates six different unemployment rates. But all this data does little to answer clearly the one key question: Is it easier to get a job now than it was before? If you just looked at April’s official unemployment rate of 7.5 percent, you could easily conclude that the employment situation is at least better than it was when unemployment peaked at 10 percent in October 2009. Yet, as millions of Americans know, jobs are...

I’ve shared some nightmare stories of excessive and mindless government regulation. The Food and Drug Administration raiding a dairy for the terrible crime of selling unpasteurized milk to people who prefer unpasteurized milk.New York City imposing a $30,000 fine on a small shop because it sold a toy gun. The pinheads at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission going after Hooters for not having any male waiters in hot pants and tight t-shirts. Indiana’s Department of Natural Resources is legally attacking a family for rescuing a baby deer. An unlucky guy who is in legal hot water for releasing some heart-shaped...

Here's the question of the day: If you have a choice (and you many not for long because companies are abandoning grandfathered plans) Should you skip Obamacare and keep your old plan? Any policy in place on March 23, 2010, the day health reform was enacted, falls under the grandfather exemption. As the Obama administration put it, if you like your plan, your doctor or both, you can keep them. Last year some 60 percent of employers, large and small, offered at least one grandfathered plan during open enrollment, according to the Kaiser survey. New employees can also join a...

Beijing has threatened to contest the European Commission’s decision to impose taxes on Chinese solar panels and telecommunications equipment before the World Trade Organization. Germany, which accounts for more than half of the EU’s exports to China, has voiced its concern over the power struggle and called for an amicable settlement. …

S. 122: Fair Tax Act of 2013 Summary: A bill to promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity by repealing the income tax and other taxes, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, and enacting a national sales tax to be administered primarily by the States. More info ... http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s113-122 93% support out of 836 votes as of this post.

MADISON — Federal health bureaucrats know applying for health insurance through the federal health care exchanges won’t be easy. If it were, there wouldn’t be the need for tens of thousands of taxpaye- backed “navigators,” new positions that soon will be created to help steer consumers through the rough waters of Obamacare. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will provide Wisconsin with $829,300 in navigator grant funds as part of the $54 million HHS set aside nationally for one year’s worth of navigators. There is $1.7 million more available for community health centers through HHS. Republicans on the...

“I’m offended by a government who convenes a hearing to bully an American success story.”

Daily investment & finance thread (5-21-13 edition) ----  Freepers lets make some cash Trying to focus on the markets for today and each day and the economic news This is where you can impart some investment wisdom to your fellow freepers.  You can complain about the big one that got away.  How Obama is out to wreck American capitalism.If you see another FR economic thread you like and want to link to it here, please do Post your favorite economic site links. Your favorite economic blogs and precious metals blogs and sitesApmex.com is a solid place with good reputation to...

Slow but sure seems to be working for the supporters of the Senate’s immigration bill. With Washington distracted by scandals large and small, the Senate Judiciary Committee continued to chew its way through amendments to the bipartisan measure on Monday. With 10 Democratic supporters and two Republican authors of the bill on the 18-member panel, the committee has parried dozens of attempts to undermine the measure during the first four days of debate, such as a Republican proposal on Monday that would have allowed profiling of immigrants based on their country of origin.

Scandal Watch: Despite White House attempts to brush the IRS scandal aside as "irrelevant" or the work of rogue miscreants, huge questions remain about who ordered IRS agents to harass Tea Party groups, and why. Every day, in fact, raises new and more disturbing questions that congressional investigators must get answers to. Among them:

Over the weekend the New York Times carried a story on the front page about the IRS scandal. The subhead of the story proclaims: “Scrutiny went beyond conservative groups.� Want proof? “Overseen by a revolving cast of midlevel managers,� writes the Times, “stalled by miscommunication with I.R.S. lawyers and executives in Washington and confused about the rules they were enforcing, the Cincinnati specialists flagged virtually every application with Tea Party in its name. But their review went beyond conservative groups: more than 400 organizations came under scrutiny, including at least two dozen liberal-leaning ones and some that were seemingly apolitical.�...

Flame-resistant overalls are the latest reason to be optimistic about America’s future. The US shale boom is creating plenty of new jobs in the oil and gas industry, but it’s having a number of knock-on effects as well. Energy-intensive industries have been bolstered by the influx of cheap natural gas, for example. And a new sector has appeared to help support the rapidly growing number of oil and gas workers in America. Firms that feed, house, and, as the the WSJ reports, clothe these workers are capitalizing on this energy revolution, too. Back in 2010, a spate of refinery accidents...

Nearly two-thirds of campaign contributions from IRS employees go to Democrats.NTEU president Colleen Kelley The IRS may be “an independent enforcement agency with only two political appointees,” in the words of White House press secretary Jay Carney, but its employees are represented by a powerful, deeply partisan union whose boss has publicly disparaged the Tea Party and criticized the Republican party for having ties to it. The White House continues to insist that profound incompetence, not partisan malice, led the IRS to single out conservative groups applying for nonprofit status. If the testimony of acting commissioner Steven Miller is true,...

A tax bill that would raise revenue $2.1 billion by boosting taxes on high-wage earners, smokers and corporations is headed for debate by the Senate. The bill, which also helps support a development plan pushed by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester officials say could bring thousands of jobs to Minnesota, is expected to be on the agenda once state Senators return to chambers at 11 a.m. The bill passed the state House by a 69-65 vote early Monday morning, May 20. It is one of the last major tax and spending bills the Legislature is taking up as it finalizes...

But officials admit new program could just create more corruptionStrengthening Kenya’s county governments, at cost to U.S. taxpayers of millions of dollars, could spark the redistribution of political power across the African republic, whose national government is viewed as one of the most notoriously corrupt in the world. Efforts to bring about such decentralization, however, may inadvertently create 47 equally corrupt county systems, the Obama administration has acknowledged. Obama, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, nonetheless intends to dole out upwards of $50 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to help the Kenyans get it right, according to contracting documents...

New evidence has emerged that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez may have improperly prosecuted Wells Fargo, Bank of America and dozens of other banks for lending discrimination by using deficient mortgage data in investigations. IBD has learned the special prosecutor spearheading Perez's record number of statistics-based cases of racism against lenders told federal bank regulators in 2010 he lacked key home loan data needed to conduct the kind of iron-clad "regression analyses" that would hold up in court. Still, Perez's civil-rights division used the shaky data to force bank defendants into a record $600 million in settlements, including loan set-asides...

After years of trillion-dollar annual deficits, federal red ink is lessening – and pace of the decline now looks much quicker than forecasters thought it would be. That’s good news for American taxpayers worried about a pileup of debt – and the risk that would pose for their pocketbooks in the future. The debt problem isn’t solved, but this is progress. Here are the new numbers: The federal budget deficit will shrink this year to $642 billion, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now estimates. Just three months ago, the CBO was forecasting a deficit of $845 billion for the 2013...

Apple Inc. paid little to no corporate income tax to any national government on tens of billions of dollars in overseas income over the past four years, Senate investigators found, a revelation that fuels the debate over whether the U.S. tax code needs an overhaul. The disclosure follows a lengthy examination of the technology giant's tax practices by the U.S. Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is expected to air its findings at a hearing on Tuesday. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook is preparing to testify at the hearing, and is expected to propose changes to a tax code that...

Is Motor City getting its mojo back? After years of losing loyal customers frustrated by quality and reliability problems, domestic automakers are showing a new-found focus on customer service that is winning back skeptics – boosting sales, market share and profits.

THREE Fox News staffers were monitored by DOJ. WOW. WOW. WOW.— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) May 20, 2013 Whoa.Drip, drip, drip.Megyn Kelly is reporting that it was not just James Rosen who was targeted by Obama’s Department of Justice. @MegynKelly on @FoxNews now reporting not just Rosen targed by DoJ; 3 Fox News staffers.— Brian Faughnan (@BrianFaughnan) May 20, 2013 Not just one! Three Fox News staffers in DoJ sites reports @megynkelly #fb— johnny dollar (@johnnydollar01) May 20, 2013 Now @megynkelly reporting @JamesRosenFNC, another FNC reporter and producer were targeted by DOJ— Andy Lancaster (@andylancaster) May 20, 2013 Evidently, two...

A Fox News correspondent was accused in a Justice Department affidavit of being a possible criminal "co-conspirator" for his alleged role in publishing sensitive security information -- in a leak case that takes the highly unusual step of claiming a journalist broke the law. According to court documents, the Justice Department obtained a portfolio of information about Fox News' James Rosen's conversations and visits to the State Department. This included a search warrant for his personal emails. The effort follows that by the department to secretly obtain two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as part of a...

The federal Affordable Care Act, better known as “ObamaCare,” may provide activists and government a little-known wedge to advance their obesity agendas through regulated health-care providers — specifically America’s nearly 3,000 non-profit hospitals. One organization, The STOP Obesity Alliance, recently identified this wedge as a way to have such hospitals embrace its core convictions, including one principle which questions the role of personal responsibility as a cause and a solution to obesity.Community Health Needs Assessments. Section 9007 of the Act requires non-profit hospitals, as a condition of maintaining their tax-exempt status, to conduct Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs). These documents, which...

With new reports today that the Obama Department of Justice leaked documents intended to smear a whistleblower in the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal, it is now more obvious than ever that this administration has, in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) created a “culture of intimidation” that stretches from the White House down to myriad agencies of the executive branch. *** Department of Justice: Today’s report from the Department of Justice Inspector General, showing that former US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked documents intended to smear a whistleblower in Fast and Furious, are only the...

As gratifying as it was to see the “news” media actually do its job last week when the IRS scandal broke, it was also odd that the coverage focused exclusively on abuses of power relating to various Tea Party and anti-abortion groups. A much scarier IRS story has been virtually ignored by the establishment press. On Wednesday, it was reported that a class-action lawsuit had been filed against a group of IRS agents who, according to the complaint filed by “John Doe Company” in the Southern District of California, “stole more than 60,000,000 medical records of more than 10,000,000 Americans,...

Judge Andrew Napolitano joined FM Newstalk 97.1 morning host Jamie Allman today to discuss the widening IRS targeting scandal. Judge Napolitano told Jamie that if Obama knew his IRS was targeting conservatives during the 2012 election, and did nothing, it is an impeachable offense. "Now it has become a question of integrity. What did he know and when did he know it? Because if he knew during his campaign that the IRS was targeting his opponents and he did nothing to stop. In other words, he let the IRS do this stuff in order to help him defeat Mitt Romney,...

The US Department of Homeland Security seized a payment processing account Tuesday belonging to Mt. Gox, the largest international Bitcoin trader, claiming the monetary exchange service falsified financial documents. The American government has previously made it clear that officials are watching Bitcoin, a decentralized economic currency that international regulators have not yet been able to control. Many of those who favor Bitcoin use Dwolla, an Iowa-based startup that allows customers to transfer their dollars into Bitcoins. Unfortunately for those consumers, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warrant Tuesday effectively shutting down Dwolla’s ability to process Bitcoin payments, as reported...

A group against pornography has put Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in its cross hairs, placing him at the top of a list of national offenders at fault for furthering the X-rated industry. Morality in Media’s “Dirty Dozen List” posting on its website calls Mr. Holder the worst of its “top 12 facilitators of porn” in the entire nation. Why Mr. Holder? He closed the Justice Department's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, Morality in Media said. “Holder’s actions keep the porn industry thriving,” said Patrick A. Trueman, president of Morality in Media, in a Raw Story report. “He not only...

Over the past month there has been a statistically improbable concurrence of events that can only be explained as a conspiracy to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing (QE). Quantitative Easing is the term given to the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing 1,000 billion new dollars annually in order to finance the US budget deficit by purchasing US Treasury bonds and to keep the prices high of debt-related derivatives on the “banks too big to fail” (BTBF) balance sheets by purchasing mortgage-backed derivatives. Without QE, interest rates would be much higher, and values on the...

DD ITAR Update 1 A few have criticized how quickly I responded to the DDTC and began participating in their regulatory process. It is said I should have stood and fought if I believed in keeping the files free, instead of complying. This compliance has been viewed as some kind of ultimate one, as if I don’t intend to do anything else. “No takedowns, ever.” Was a motto I had built into my vision of DEFCAD.com, not DEFCAD.org, and it referred to a strategy for dealing with intellectual property claims and social pressure- this is NOT the strategy DD/DEFCAD.org can...

TEL AVIV, Israel, May 17 (UPI) -- Nobel Energy of Houston, which discovered Israel's big natural gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean, is pressing the government to decide on an energy export policy as the prospect of an undersea pipeline to Turkey gains credibility. Israel's deep-water Tamar field, found in 2009 and containing an estimated 9 trillion-10 trillion cubic feet of gas, began production March 31. But Nobel and Israeli partner Delek Energy, the team that discovered Tamar and other fields off Israel, is reluctant to develop the much bigger Leviathan field, found in 2010, until it the government makes...

According to recent polls, younger Americans are increasingly disillusioned with government and cynical about the political process. Maybe they will finally realize that they are being played for patsies by the Obama administration. After all, on issue after issue, President Obama has fed younger voters a steady diet of high-minded rhetoric and then delivered policies that leave them holding the bag. The most recent example is Obamacare. For one, in order for the president’s health-care law to work properly, large numbers of young people will have to buy insurance. Those young and healthy individuals, with their low claims costs, are...

According to the latest Reason-Rupe poll: The president’s health care law is losing public support… Only 32 percent of Americans say they liked the health care law when it was passed and still like it today. Seven percent liked the law when it was passed, but like it less now. Meanwhile, 45 percent disliked the health care law when it was passed and still dislike it. Four percent of Americans say they disliked the law when it passed, but like it more now. These results are consistent with the Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll, which has always reported a...

How many thousands of Americans unknowingly carry an internal death sentence, maybe an aneurysm or cancer that is beyond treating? Only the tragic time and circumstances of demise await recording. Is our nation in the same sick bed? Is Benjamin Franklin’s proud but precarious Republic, Madame, beyond saving? Grave concern is justified. If our popular, reelected president thinks—and says out loud—that the Founders’ framework of divided powers, checks and balances, and limited, decentralized control is just a big drag on “progress,” and then, the nation doesn’t toss him out forthwith, is that a critical vital sign? If our populace forgets--or...

Let's begin by stating the obvious. If government were a business, and subject to economic realities and the consequences of its ignoring them, it would have been liquidated long ago -- its remaining assets of value would have been reclaimed by its creditors and shareholders (both of which are the American taxpayer), and its market share of consumers (also the American taxpayer, and those they are gracious enough to financially support) would be sought by other, more efficient businesses. But let's pretend for a moment that it is a business. And let's pretend that this business had engaged not only...

Many commentators have wondered why the stock market has done so well during a period when the economy has been relatively weak. A common explanation has been that the Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates so low that investors have little choice but to buy stocks in hopes of returns that exceed inflation. There is some truth to that, but another reason is the gridlock on Capitol Hill. A poorly kept secret is that almost all laws are bad for business. Some regulation is necessary. Clear rules are beneficial to business. But changing regulations frequently is bad for business and...

I was very pleased to report the other day that the people of France overwhelmingly favor spending cuts, even when they were asked a biased question that presupposed that Keynesian-style spending increases would “stimulate� the economy. Now I have some polling data about British voters, though I confess I’m not sure whether to be pleased or worried. You’ll see below two slides that were presented earlier today at the Bucharest stop on the Free Market Road Show. They’re not from my presentation, but rather from the speech by Matthew Sinclair of the UK-based Taxpayers Alliance. As you can see from...

Phoenix police are in a race against time in processing guns that the city purchased at recent gun buyback events. A new Arizona law that hasn't yet taken effect bars cities and counties from destroying guns turned over to police at buyback events and instead requires that the guns be resold. The Arizona Republic reports (http://bit.ly/19QbpVe) that Phoenix's program brought in 979 weapons in two sessions earlier this month and an additional 937 guns on Saturday. The law will go into effect 90 days after the legislative session ends, which could be any day. Police are already struggling to process...