Free Republic

Lawyer: Mueller indicted “the proverbial ham sandwich.” This week, on Wednesday May 9th, a hearing took place between the corrupt Mueller team and one of the Russian Companies they indicted for interfering with the 2016 US election, Concord Management. Concord Management and a sister company Concord Catering were charged by Mueller for defrauding the government. The Mueller crooks and far left hacks were embarrassed again! A week ago Friday at a hearing on this same case, Mueller’s team asked for the case to be delayed. The judge politely declined and the initial hearing on the case was held on Wednesday....

Connecticut’s Democratic leaders were willing Thursday to make minor changes to the business taxes that prompted some major employers to threaten to leave the state, but said they won’t roll the taxes back and expressed doubt that any of the firms would move. […] The plan includes numerous business tax changes, including higher taxes on computer and data processing services, limits on tax credits, limits on when losses can be reported, and how business income is reported. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric Co., sent an email to employees Thursday, saying he has assembled an “exploratory team” to review...

Millions of immigrants benefiting from President Barack Obama’s executive actions could get a windfall from the IRS, a reversal of fortune after years of paying taxes to help fund government programs they were banned from receiving. Armed with new Social Security numbers, many of these immigrants who were living in the U.S. illegally will now be able to claim up to four years’ worth of tax credits designed to benefit the working poor. For big families, that’s a maximum of nearly $24,000, as long as they can document their earnings during those years. Some Republicans are labeling the payments “amnesty...

President Barack Obama’s budget will propose an ambitious six-year, $478 billion public works program of highway, bridge and transit upgrades, half of it financed with a one-time mandatory tax on profits that U.S. companies have amassed overseas, White House officials said. The proposal, one of the main components of the $4 trillion spending plan for the 2016 budget year that Obama will send to Congress on Monday, attempts to tap into bipartisan support for spending on badly needed infrastructure repairs and construction. The tax on accumulated foreign profits would be set at 14 percent and due immediately. Under current law,...

Iain Duncan Smith has pledged to appeal after a judge ruled that emergency legislation introduced over a flagship back-to-work program is “incompatible” with European human rights laws. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said that it “disagrees” with Mrs. Justice Lang, who said that retrospective legislation introduced interfered with the “right to a fair trial” under the European Convention on Human Rights. Human rights lawyers said the judgment was a “damning assessment” and, if upheld on appeal, could lead to some £130 million having to be paid out to thousands of jobseeker’s allowance claimants denied benefits under the schemes....

Google cannot be broken up into smaller companies without new EU legislation, the European Commission said today (20 May), after detailing two potential new antitrust investigations into the internet giant. Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia was responding to comments made earlier this week by German’s Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who said Google may have such a dominant market position that a break-up had to be “seriously considered.” Existing competition law was not powerful enough to split up the business, Almunia said. The California-based company may yet face a separate antitrust investigation to the one ongoing since November 2012. Open Internet Project,...

European lawmakers on Thursday eased the way for cartel victims to claim compensation from companies under new rules that also shield price-fixing whistleblowers from being the main target of million-euro lawsuits. The green light from the European Parliament came nine years after the European Commission broached the idea, seeing it as an additional tool, on top of fines, to deter companies from breaking antitrust laws. According to the Commission, only one in four cartels and antitrust infringements faced damages claims in the last seven years. Its 2010 estimate put the cost of unrecovered damages of infringements at over €20 billion...

First, let’s be clear that this is about perceptions. The BLM vs. Cliven Bundy story isn’t about who’s in the right or who’s in control; it’s about who appears  to be in the right and about who appears to be in control.A little background first. Cliven Bundy is a rancher who lives outside of Mesquite, Nevada. His family has been ranching on that land since before Nevada became a State. The Bureau of Land Management, BLM, claims control of the land the Bundys graze their cattle on. Bundy’s position, in a nutshell, is “I was here first”. But like I said, the right or...

Connecticut's idiotic magazine ban and other gun control measures are taken apart in this video: What It Is Like Being A Gun Owner In ConnecticutIt won't reduce crime, it wouldn't have stopped Sandy Hook from happening, and now thousands of Connecticut gun owners are now considered felons through no fault of their own.

It’s okay, the 1 percent only pays 41 percent of California’s income taxes. And half the state pays no income tax at all. No one will even notice they’re gone. Prop. 30, approved by voters in November 2012, raised state income taxes retroactively to Jan. 1, 2012, on singles making more than $250,000 and married couples making $500,000. It raised rates by one, two or three percentage points through 2018, bringing the top rate on incomes above $1 million to 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. Bryan Goldberg, who founded the Bleacher Report sports website and sold it to...

The story of Joseph Pelleteri and others like him create one of the biggest obstacles to "commons sense" gun legislation -- the fear that otherwise law abiding citizens will be snared in a law enforcement nightmare.  It is that fear, embodied in the prosecutions of people attempting to navigate a labyrinthine system of regulations that dooms most gun control measures. Imagine winning a brand new sports car with a V8 engine in a contest hosted by your local police department.  You keep the car in your garage, never driving it, and one day while the cops are at your home...

A Miami Shores couple is taking the city to court over veggies. For 17 years they grew vegetables in their front yard. But last May, Miami Shores’ Code Enforcement officers inspected Hermine Ricketts and husband Tom Carroll’s property and informed them that they were breaking the law by having a vegetable garden in front of their home. … Miami Shores passed an ordinance that went into effect last May which banned front yard vegetable gardens. The city threatened Ricketts and Carroll with fines of $50 a day, or about $1,500 per month, if they did not uproot the garden. Unable...

In his State of the State address in January, Gov. Jerry Brown proudly proclaimed that, “Two years ago, they were writing our obituary. Well it didn’t happen. California is back, its budget is balanced, and we are on the move.” …Which is interesting, because the January unemployment numbers just came in, and California is apparently competing with Rhode Island for the worst state unemployment rate in the country. (SNIP) .... the wealthy coasts and the tech industry are helping to keep everything propped up — but it seems that the progressive state just can’t resist taking a little off the...

Congressional Research Service confirms Jefferson's pension should continueBy Bruce Alpert updated December 12, 2012 at 7:27 PM WASHINGTON - A new report by the Congressional Research Service reiterates previous legal findings -- that Congress can't deny pension benefits to former members for criminal conduct covered by a 2007 law if the illegal acts occurred before the law's enactment. That means former Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, now serving a record 13-year prison sentence, will continue to collect his pension -- estimated at $40,000-$50,000 a year. Until 2007, only crimes relating to espionage, treason or several other national security violations could...

Today, a Connecticut bill banning “large capacity” magazines will have its first public hearing. Six other states have such bans in effect, though no state has demonstrated its ban has had any effect on crime. The states disagree on what constitutes “large capacity”: 10 rounds in California, 15 in New Jersey, 20 in Maryland. Connecticut says 10 rounds; its definition of “large capacity” magazines is copied almost word for word from California law. But there is no reason outside bureaucratic whim for one definition over another. People who have such magazines haven’t necessarily gone out to buy them specially —...

Pres. Obama believes in Miranda rights and civilian trials for terrorists who have killed or seek to kill Americans. But when it comes to companies that have supplied untold quantitites of energy resources to the American economy and paid out billions in wages and supply purchases to American workers and firms, well, punitive ex post facto laws are PBO's order of the day. Under the law of the land, the Oil Pollution Act limits BP's liability for spill-related to damages to $75 million. But Pres. Obama "strongly supports" the adoption of an ex post facto law that would retroactively expand...

The definition of a citizen is one who is ruled and can rule in turn. We must have the capacity for both under the law. All citizens must be able to take the following oath of office: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on...

The Real Problem, Plain and Simple How We Got Here: Senator Chris Dodd would like you to forget that he inserted specific language recognizing AIG’s executive compensation into the $800 billion stimulus bill, which Finance Chairman Max Baucus now admits nobody read. Government Bailouts: This is the inevitable result of government bailouts, which turn private concerns (such as compensation agreements between private parties) into public business, bringing politics where it is likely to do damage. Hasty Bills Make Disastrous Policy: The very fact that this problem was created by a mega-bill that wasn’t properly reviewed before passage—and is now being...

President Barack Obama says the House's vote to slap a hefty tax on lavish employee bonuses "rightly reflects the outrage" that so many people feel about insurance giant AIG. House lawmakers voted decisively Thursday to impose a 90 percent tax on millions of dollars in employee bonuses paid by troubled insurance giant AIG and other bailed-out companies. Noting that the legislation now moves to the Senate, Obama said he looks forward to receiving a final bill. He said he wants to receive legislation that will send a strong signal to business executives "that such compensation will not be tolerated." Obama...

Fox News reports on one popular idea bouncing around Congress as the torch-and-pitchfork mob tries to figure out a way to punish AIG for honoring its executive compensation contracts:Senate and House lawmakers on Monday night returned to the idea of imposing heavy taxes to recover the bonus money. "You can write a tax provision targeted specifically at 98 percent of the taxable proceeds," Dodd said, adding that it wouldn't violate the terms of the AIG contracts. Rep. Carolyn Maloney D-N.Y, the chair of the Joint Economic Committee, also called for a 100 percent tax on bonuses not related to commissions....