Free Republic

LAKE WORTH A Bobcat construction vehicle hauled by a large tow truck hit the 10th Avenue North overpass on Interstate 95 on Wednesday morning. The crash damaged the bridge, snarled northbound traffic on the highway for hours and shut down all eastbound lanes on 10th Avenue North, authorities said. Barbara Keller, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Transportation, said a combination front-end loader and backhoe struck a beam on the overpass. The backhoe was extended upward and that’s what damaged the concrete beam, she said. No other vehicles were involved and there were no injuries in the crash, according...

The congestion and construction on Interstate 95 are frustrating enough, but navigating the dramatically uneven lanes that make your car shimmy, shake and swerve into neighboring lanes is downright dangerous. Yet as the Sun Sentinel’s Wayne Roustan reported Sunday, the Florida Department of Transportation says we’re going to have to endure this nightmare through parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties until 2024. Come on, FDOT. You’re killing us. Well, we can’t really say you’re killing us because, believe it or not, state transportation officials can’t tell us how many accidents have occurred during the construction of the I-95 express...

Stopping Brexit is a more important priority than Labour winning the next election in Britain, former British prime minister Tony Blair suggested as he criticized the party’s strategy under Jeremy Corbyn. The ex-premier said Labour was “in the same position as the Tories” on Brexit, but if it came out in opposition to leaving the European Union, it would not only “be saying what’s right”, it would also expose the divisions within the Conservative ranks. Mr. Blair said he believed that “stopping Brexit is the route to win power” for Labour, and rejected the suggestion that accepting the result of...

Connecticut has the most underfunded pension system in the nation, amassing more than $127.7 billion in liabilities.. The study entitled Unaccountable and Unaffordable showed Connecticut’s pension system dropping below Illinois and Kentucky when its pension liabilities were calculated with a “risk-free” discount rate equal to the rate of a U.S. Treasury bond. Connecticut’s unfunded pension liability rose from $99.2 billion in ALEC’s 2016 study to $127.7 billion in 2017, leaving the pension system only 19 percent funded. The debt from the public pensions amounts to $35,721 per person in Connecticut, the second highest per capita debt in the nation behind...

When it comes to website design, the Obama White House was not known for doing so efficiently or cheaply. Those with long memories of insurance exchanges can attest to this. Apparently, this kind of profligacy extends to other web portals as well. And President Trump’s administration is going to save $3,000,000 by nuking the current design of Whitehouse.gov and unveiling a new one.

This isn’t getting anywhere near the same amount of oxygen in the news cycle as the Net Neutrality story, but it certainly should be. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under the tenure of Barack Obama was busy handing out all sorts of goodies to the unions which finance most Democratic political campaigns. One particular burr under the collective, conservative saddle was a new “reinterpretation” of rules regarding the obligations of larger corporations who authorize the operation of franchises under their name. I wrote about this back in 2015 when the rule was originally finalized and it was a deplorable...

The Environmental Protection Agency has shrunk considerably since Scott Pruitt took over as administrator. In fact, the agency is back to President Reagan-era staff levels. Over 700 EPA personnel have either retired, quit, or taken voluntary buyouts since Pruitt took over...

The first great equalizer – the revolver – was invented back in the nineteenth century. The U.S. federal government, in accordance with the Second Amendment to the Constitution, as expected, withdrew from having discretionary control over revolvers. As a result, the chances of bad guys versus good guys have leveled off. And in the end, the mores of the Wild West have been replaced by a law-abiding (and armed to the teeth) America. The second great equalizer – the internet – was also invented in America. The U.S. federal government, in accordance with the First Amendment to the Constitution, as...

The final plan lowers the top tax rate for top earners. Under current law, the highest rate is 39.6 percent for married couples earning over $470,700. The GOP bill would drop that to 37 percent...A massive tax cut for corporations: Starting on Jan. 1, 2018, big businesses' tax rate would fall from 35 percent to just 21 percent...You can deduct just $10,000 in state, local and property taxes: One of the most controversial parts of the GOP tax plan is the push to greatly scale back how much state and local taxes Americans can deduct on their federal income taxes....

The nation's top labor board reversed an Obama-era decision targeting franchise businesses, but advocates and legal experts say Congress needs to take action to resolve the issue permanently. The Democrat-controlled National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections and workplace disputes, overturned decades of precedent in 2015 by holding parent businesses accountable for workplace violations committed by franchisees or subcontractors. The Obama board's decision roiled the business community, particularly franchise corporations, which allow small business owners to operate under a company umbrella but do not manage day-to-day workplace policies. A 3-2 Republican majority returned to the previous standard on Thursday...

The Trump economic boom is picking up steam as American heads into the final weeks of the president’s first year in office. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Nowcast, which attempts to estimate economic output based on the latest releases of data, now says GDP appears to be growing at a 4% annualized rate in the fourth quarter. That is the highest level on record for the Nowcast, which was launched just two years ago. The Nowcast was revised up primarily due to positive impacts of revisions of earlier data, the New York Fed’s website said Friday. A similar...

Legalizing 2 million illegal immigrant “Dreamers” would cost the government $25.9 billion over the next decade, as those now-legal people would claim more tax, education and other benefits they haven’t been able to get before, the Congressional Budget Office said Friday. The CBO also said newly legalized Dreamers would sponsor 80,000 more immigrants to enter the country as part of “chain migration.” Immigrant-rights activists have argued that legalizing Dreamers would be a financial boon to the country, but the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation suggested otherwise, saying that while they would pay somewhat higher taxes into the government,...

It’s come to this. Morgan Spurlock has issued a dramatic, guilt-fueled, angst-ridden confession entitled, “I Am Part of the Problem.’’ By his own account, the filmmaker, 47, best known for the 2004 documentary take-down of the fast-food industry, “Super Size Me,’’ was extremely, horrifically and chronically naughty. Yet as he tells it, he never sexually assaulted anyone, nor did he touch, grope or kiss any person without invitation or tacit agreement. As Spurlock tells it in an online post, he did not sexually harass, fire, spank or tickle any females over whom he exerted professional or physical power, nor did...

Liberals and most media publications have been quick to jump on the new tax reform plan, criticizing it for being bad for the middle class, or putting pressure on the American family. But what effects will the new tax plan really have on the American family? Are there going to be major changes, or have these been exaggerated by the press? Key Changes Let’s break down exactly what this plan is changing, and when it’s changing it. Consolidated tax brackets. First, the standard tax brackets we’ve been using are going to change. This year, there are seven tax brackets broken...

Hours before sunrise on a cool February night this year, a four-year-old male leopard waited behind a bush along the National Highway 8 that cuts through the Tungareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Maharasthra. As vehicles zipped passed along the high-speed motorway, it waited for a break in traffic to make it to the other side. But traffic never ceases on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway and the leopard had no other option but to take the risk. It was the big cat’s last sprint. As it reached the middle of the road, the leopard was stunned by the bright headlights of an incoming...

Late last night, while reading a stream of apocalyptic rhetoric about the repeal of net neutrality and the “end of the internet as we know it,” I reached the shattering conclusion that one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies was wrong. The movie is the 2004 Brad Bird masterpiece, The Incredibles. The line comes from the villain, Syndrome, who outlines his plan to make “everyone super,” because when “everyone is super [he chuckles maliciously] no one will be.” It’s a great line, and it seems to convey an important truth. When you make everyone or everything...

The ethanol lobby is talking tough and issuing ultimatums to the Trump White House. Its message, in brief, is “Don’t mess with our federal mandate.” If the White House wants credibility in its free-enterprise talk and promises to drain the swamp, it should tell the ethanol lobby to get lost. The fight began because refiners are finding it increasingly unaffordable to comply with the federal ethanol mandate, and if it continues it might kill independent oil companies. The office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, came to the White House on Wednesday and sought to dictate terms, telling the executive it...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been a disaster for the Republican Party and has been a totally ineffective partner for President Trump in passing critical legislation. After failing on the vitally important bill to repeal Obamacare, McConnell and his Republican colleagues face a major test in the tax reform bill. The stakes could not be higher for the GOP and President Trump. If they cannot show results to the American people, there will be a political bloodbath in the 2018 mid-term elections. The American people entrusted the GOP with full control of the White House and Congress. A mandate...

The Trump administration is preparing to unveil as soon as this week expansive offshore oil plan that would open the door to selling new drilling rights in Atlantic waters, according to people familiar with the plan… President Donald Trump his Interior Department to write the new blueprint with the aim of auctioning oil and gas drilling rights off the U.S. East Coast -- territory that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, had had had had ruled out..” Don’t get me wrong! Cheaper energy and greater energy independence for our nation are nothing to sneeze at! But many of us familiar...

Limiting the SALT deduction could affect as many as 6 million Californians—one of every three taxpaying households in the state, according to Michael Cohen, director of the state Department of Finance. The average deduction for property taxes is about $6,000, he has told the state congressional delegation, and the separate deduction for state and local income taxes comes to nearly $16,000 per return. One option that could be considered by the Legislature would be to redefine state and local taxes as charitable contributions, which remain fully deductible under the GOP tax proposals. The idea isn’t as implausible as it seems:...