Free Republic

Every year since 2011, the White House has used tax time to post a "Federal Taxpayer Receipt" showing taxpayers how their federal tax dollars are being spent. President Obama introduced the concept in his 2011 State of the Union address, and Wednesday the White House posted the fifth installment so taxpayers can see how "tax dollars are being spent on priorities like education, veterans benefits, and health care." While users can punch in their own tax liability and see dollar amounts assigned to each category, the figures are based on percentages from the prior fiscal year budget. Comparing those percentages...

Military Arms Channel takes a look at the ZQI ammunition factory in Turkey. How their 5.56 is made. It’s very tedious and it’s apparent that it’s very good quality ammo.

“Everything’s stolen out of this home right by us. Mold all over the wall in the kitchen. There’s absolutely nothing in the house,” said neighbor Bill Carpenter. “But no one’s doing anything.” It’s not the only home that’s had problems. Around the corner at 10323 Dunbar NW, there’s a vacant home that once had a collection of beehives in the backyard. It’s been in the foreclosure process for a few years, but is not yet bank-owned, according to court records. Around the corner from that home is 10335 Durham Street NW, a home that’s been tied up in the foreclosure...

Billionaire Paul Allen has formed a new company to help make spaceflight more affordable and efficient. Vulcan Aerospace, which was unveiled Monday (April 13), will spearhead the space projects of Vulcan, Inc., a company Allen and his sister Jody formed in 1986. "Vulcan Aerospace is the company within Vulcan that plans and executes projects to shift how the world conceptualizes space travel through cost reduction and on‐demand access," Vulcan Aerospace president Chuck Beames and his colleague Kyu Hwang wrote in a paper describing the company that was presented at the 31 st Space Symposium in Colorado Springs this week. "Vulcan...

New claims for US unemployment insurance benefits rose more than expected last week to their highest level in six weeks, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Initial jobless claims, a sign of the pace of layoffs, climbed to 294,000 in the week ending April 11, an increase of 12,000 from the prior week's slightly upwardly revised number. Analysts had expected claims would hold steady from the previous week. The four-week moving average, which helps to smooth week-over-week volatility, inched up by 250 to 282,750. A year ago the average was 316,000.

It’s undoubtedly too soon to begin getting your hopes up yet, but there are signs that the new GOP controlled Congress may finally be getting down to some of the regular business we were promised during the election. Plenty of fire and brimstone has been flying around both chambers over matters of foreign policy and big ticket items, but some mundane issues of importance to conservatives are still waiting on the back burner. Today, one of these should be moving forward. We’re going to have yet another vote on repealing the death tax and it’s got both teams pretty...

A woman was left covered in blood after she was injured in the latest violent anti-immigrant protests in South Africa. So far six people are believed to have been killed in the violent protests which started two weeks ago in Durban, a key port on South Africa's Indian Ocean coast, spreading to Johannesburg. In the latest show of violence around 200 protesters, shouting that they wanted immigrants to leave the country, pelted passing vehicles and the police with rocks.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) intends to solicit offers to Request for Proposal (RFP) HSBP1015R0025 for .223 Remington (.223 Rem) Caliber Training Ammunition for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) locations nationwide, including those in the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, the Northern Marianna Islands, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands. HSBP1015R0025 is scheduled to be issued on, or about, April 30, 2015.

No, that is not the number of hits his blog posts got, neither is that what Ben Bernanke will make as the most recent employee of Citadel (at least not for a few years until the the eponymously named helicopter makes a landing and hyperinflation runs wild).It is also not the assets under management held by HFT titan, and Bernanke's new employer, Citadel. As Citadel reminds us in its regulatory filing with the SEC, "as of December 31, 2014, in Funds managed on a discretionary basis, we had approximately $23,804,000,000 in net assets under management."Only.So what does the number...

Gov. Scott Walker's likely 2016 presidential campaign got a boost Thursday when two of his longtime campaign managers formed a political group that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, The Associated Press reports. They are calling the group Unintimidated PAC, a reference to [Governor Scott] Walker's 2013 book, "Unintimidated: A Governor's Story and a Nation's Challenge." The AP reports that the super PAC will be led by Keith Gilkes, a longtime Walker aide who ran Walker's 2010 gubernatorial campaign and previously served as his chief of staff. Gilkes also ran Walker's successful 2012 recall election, which was triggered...

As they rush to file their taxes by April 15, Americans are rightfully frustrated with the complexity of the 74,608-page-long federal tax code. The federal tax code is 187 times longer than it was a century ago, according to Wolters Kluwer, CCH, which has analyzed the federal tax code since 1913. Amazingly, in the first 26 years of the federal income tax, the tax code only grew from 400 to 504 pages. Even through President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the tax code was well under 1,000 pages. Changes during World War II made the length of the tax code balloon...

In his State-of-the-Union address, president Obama again confirmed that “saving the climate” remains one of his top priorities. Yet an official December 2014 confab in Lima, Peru didn't really conclude anything -- certainly no binding Protocol to limit emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) -- but it "kicked the can down the road" to the next international gabfest in Paris, scheduled for 2015.

Hillary Clinton seeks $2B to end big money politics [WTH?] The Clinton Foundation said late Wednesday that it will continue to accept donations from foreign governments during Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, despite concerns that such gifts will create a conflict of interest for the Democratic front-runner. The foundation's board said that donations directly to the foundation would only be allowed from six governments — Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom. However, other governments could continue to participate in the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), a subsidiary program that encourages donors to match contributions from others to tackle...

Wednesday marks Tax Day in the United States, the day when Americans are obligated to turn in their taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and five of their likely rivals for the Republican presidential nomination including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be speaking at an economic summit hosted at Walt Disney World in June by Gov. Rick Scott and his campaign fund Let's Get To Work. Brecht Heuchan of Let's Get To Work said Rubio, Bush, Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry all have accepted invitations to speak at the June 2 summit at Disney's Yacht and Beach...

Has nobody looked at the latest financials from Angie's List (NASDAQ:ANGI)? They issued financials and a quarterly report this week that appear to be an utter catastrophe, yet the stock rose 25% from $9 to about $11.50 in response. Angie's List runs a website with reviews of dentists and plumbers. The reviews are "crowd sourced" which means they come from actual customers who contribute to the site. Yelp.com, Wikipedia.com and YouTube are other sites that are crowd sourced. Angie's list is different from most sites of this type because they charge an annual fee. Despite continuing losses, Angie's List management...

What Is the State of the U.S. Gun Business? By Marcelo Prince and Carlos A. Tovar After several years of strong sales to civilians worried about new regulations, big U.S. firearms makers have recently reported lower sales. The overall number of American households with guns is declining..

The jumbo jet, for many years the workhorse of modern air travel, could be close to running out of runway. Last year, there were zero orders placed by commercial airlines for new Boeing 747s or Airbus A380s, reflecting a fundamental shift in the industry toward smaller, twin-engine planes. Smaller planes cost less to fly than the stately, four-engine jumbos, which can carry as many as 525 passengers.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, after winning reelection, pronounced Chicago "the greatest city in America." Run by Democrats for more than eight decades, Chicago should serve as a showplace that reflects the wonderful world of "progressive policies." Public schools are a mess, and the city's finances place their bonds at near junk level. In 2013, the city averaged 36 homicides a month, with the majority of them unsolved. CNN aired a series on Chicago called "Chicagoland," starring the city's dynamic mayor. Presumably, Emanuel thought it would show off the mayor as he tackled the city's problems. Why, if the man his...

These days behind every great man is a great think tank. And Scott Walker is no exception. The 2011 protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s collective bargaining overhaul made for an emotionally challenging day for one intern. The intern in question was working for a conservative think tank called the MacIver Institute, and his superiors sent him up to the capitol with a video camera to tape the protesters at their wackiest. When one protester spotted him and realized who he was with, he gave chase, yelling profanity. “I felt bad,” said Brett Healey, the president of the MacIver institute, who...