Free Republic

Sen. Pat Toomey is one of the great accomplishments of the Tea Party Movement, and after supporting him in ’04 back when Bush was backing Specter, it does my heart good to see him in our dysfunctional deliberate body. For that same reason, some are very angry at him for his vote on the fiscal cliff deal. But as we go into another debt-ceiling fight, he’s one of our better communicators on this issue. So, it also does my heart good to see him go on “Morning Joe,” up against five people who disagree with him, and direct the conversation,...

... We’re back from vacation and, like many Americans, have been trying to figure out the details of the “fiscal-cliff” deal —one of those classic middle-of-the-night congressional compromises that please virtually no one. The White House, by its own accounting, ended up with $737 billion in deficit reduction, a far cry from the $2 trillion or so that it originally sought. But that hasn’t stopped President Obama from touting the deal as a victory in a campaign-style video for supporters. But a politician who highlights good news often leaves out the bad news. Let’s see what’s missing from Obama’s presentation.

A garment maker that specializes in bullet-proof goods for adults is planning to manufacture and sell a line of bullet-proof clothes exclusively for children, in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Miguel Caballero has been in the garment business in Bogota, Colombia for 22 years, but has never been able to break through the U.S. market. He hopes his new line of kid’s clothes will change that. Caballero plans to sell T-shirts, vests, and combination backpack-vests. He says the inspiration for his new business model was when he started to receive requests from worried parents after...

Light At The End Of The Tunnel For Gold By Frank Holmes 01/02/13 Intuition was telling me something was going on these past few days (of 2012) in the gold market. Our investment team was watching gold and gold stocks take a tumble for no obvious reason. It wasn’t only us who felt this way: many analysts were caught off-guard. One comment from Barclays Research indicated that the week was unusually “brutal … with quite a few confused participants with some seemingly positive aspects of the market not having an impact.” My hunch was realized only days later when Zero...

ROUBINI: America Has Yet To Wake Up To The Full Extent Of Its Fiscal Nightmare Mamta BadkarJanuary 2, 2013Last night the House of Representatives voted 257-167 to pass the fiscal cliff bill. Many have pointed out that president Obama has come out the winner, while the Republicans who signed Grover Norquist's no-tax- increase pledge have been the biggest losers. But in a new op-ed for The Financial Times, Nouriel Roubini writes that the U.S. has been let down by its leaders and that they "dysfunctional nature" of the country's political system means another crisis isn't far off. He also says...

Congressmen come and go, but the Kleptocracy goes on and on. What would have happened had the parties not reached a deal. Probably nothing much different than now. But maybe the price of gold and silver would have gone down instead of up. This was a complete PR event, stage-managed from the get go to make you believe that higher taxes and increased government spending are the answers to what ails the country and the economy. In the end, none of the changes necessary to save the US and the world from a complete and utter economic catastrophy have been...

"While I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they’ve passed..."

Are you ready for a wild 2013? It should be a very interesting year. When the calendar flips over each January, lots of people make lots of lists. They make lists of “resolutions”, but most people never follow through on them. They make lists of “predictions”, but most of those predictions always seem to end up failing. Well, I have decided to put out my own list of predictions for 2013. I openly admit that I won’t get all of these predictions right, and that is okay. Hopefully I will at least be more accurate than most of the other...

The "fiscal cliff" deal that was designed to save money actually includes $330.3 billion in new spending over the next decade, according to the official estimate the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday afternoon.CBO said the bill contains about $25.1 billion in new cuts, but those are swamped by the new spending on extended unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and other new refundable tax credits that President Obama fought for.Of those cuts, only $2 billion are scheduled to take effect in 2013.And CBO also warned that some of the cuts Congress is counting are from programs on which CBO never...

You Know How This Ends Right? This Ends Through War. Mac Slavo December 31st, 2012 In 2006, when Americans were flying high on ever-expanding credit and double digit real estate growth, hedge fund manager Kyle Bass came to the conclusion that something was very wrong. He and his investors determined that a massive real estate bubble was forming in sub-prime mortgages. But rather than just making a prediction, they put their money where their mouth was, and took a $4 billion gamble that the real estate market was about to detonate. At the time, many in the industry and within...

Douglas Graham/CQ Roll CallMcCain said he believes the president’s statement “clearly will antagonize members of the House.” With both sides on the cusp of a fiscal cliff deal, President Barack Obama vowed Monday to seek additional revenue next year alongside spending cuts. In the process, he also angered several GOP senators who said he demeaned their efforts to reach a deal.Obama said that a year-end deal to avert tax hikes for the middle class “is within sight, but it’s not done.” The emerging deal, which sources have pegged at around $600 billion in new revenue, would include permanent extensions of...

He had to break it to find out what was in it.

As it stands, I pay thousands upon thousands in federal income taxes...

President Obama is trying to push through legislation to keep broader middle class income taxes from rising by Monday night. But they may still have to pay at least 2% more in payroll taxes. That's because the government had temporarily lowered the payroll tax rate in 2011 to 4.2% from 6.2%, in an effort to keep more cash in the pockets of Americans and provide a boost to the economy. The tax cut, which applies on the first $113,700 in annual earnings, is expiring in December. Come 2013, most of the country's 160 million workers will see smaller paychecks. No...

Why Inflation is the Economy's Hidden Iceberg in 2013 Economics / InflationDec 31, 2012 - 06:35 AM By: Money Morning Martin Hutchinson writes: Even though Ben Bernanke's Fed has kept interest rates close to zero, inflation hasn't been a big problem since the 2008 financial crisis. Despite what many observers have expected inflation has remained quite tame. However in 2013, that may be about to change. One factor that might cause a surge in inflation is the fiscal cliff. That's because Bernanke is already buying $1 trillion of Treasury and housing agency bonds each year ($85 billion per month) against...

Preppers, Patriots and Pirates Politics / US PoliticsDec 31, 2012 - 08:21 AM By: BATR Now that the prospects of a second Obama administration are hitting home, the pace of a rapid deterioration are confronting all thinking Americans. The radical transformation that is centrally planned for the economy and authoritarianism administrated by the statists that are part of the most tyrannical regime in memory, is taking place before our eyes. Falling off the cliff is more like descending into the abyss of martial law contrived to eliminate the last remnants of independent citizens. Advocating for civil liberties is treated as...

For most of its existence, Bakersfield has inhabited that awkward in-between place. Not as sophisticated as Los Angeles, just over the Tehachapi Mountains to the south, not as wealthy as its longtime economic rival Fresno, equidistant to the north. Cheap land, affordable housing, proximity to Los Angeles, a location that's within a three-hour drive of 90 percent of the state's population, and a planning department that doesn't throw up roadblocks are driving the region's economic revolution, business leaders say.

Everywhere from FoxNews.com to CNBC.com, I suddenly see commentators warning of pending doom, economic collapse, and a new Great Depression. Welcome to my club. Perhaps America's politicians and economists should have paid attention to an entrepreneur and small businessman that has been warning of economic collapse and a new Great Depression publicly for over two years. More importantly, none of the current commentaries mention the "why's" of this slow motion economic collapse...beyond the obvious -- mountains of deficit and debt. None of them mention the dysfunctional structure of the current U.S. economy and the massive changes in the work ethic...

(Reuters) - France's Constitutional Council on Saturday rejected a 75 percent upper income tax rate to be introduced in 2013 in a setback to Socialist President Francois Hollande's push to make the rich contribute more to cutting the public deficit.

16 Things About 2013 That Are Really Going To Stink By Michael Snyder December 27th, 2012 The beginning of the year has traditionally been a time of optimism when we all look forward to the exciting things that are going to happen over the next 12 months. Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of things about 2013 that we already know are going to stink. Taxes are going to go up, good paying jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be destroyed, the number of Americans living in poverty will continue to soar, our infrastructure...