Free Republic

The head of the Nevada AFL-CIO proclaimed Tuesday that “working families are under attack” by Republican lawmakers who want to weaken collective bargaining laws and pensions now that they control the Legislature.Danny Thompson, executive-secretary treasurer of the organization, told supporters at the Teamsters Local 14 union hall that the designated GOP Assembly speaker, John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas, had sent a letter to local governments soliciting ideas for changes in public employee collective bargaining — the workers’ right to negotiate pay and benefits.Thompson, a former assemblyman, said he’s been watching the Legislature for some 35 years and he had never seen...

DENVER (CBS4) – A nationwide cellphone company distributing phones and cellphone plans in Denver as part of a massive government program says it is “outraged by the unacceptable actions” uncovered by a CBS4 undercover investigation. The response from Total Call Mobile comes nearly three months after an undercover CBS4 investigation revealed multiple examples of fraud and cheating in the phone distribution program. The Lifeline program is aimed at providing free cellphone service to the poor and needy. It handed out more than 13 million free cellphone plans in the first six months of 2014. In Colorado, the program handed out...

CARSON CITY — A retirement system official said Thursday a report showing that some public employees who retire collect more in pension benefits than they did while working was based on less than 2 percent of beneficiaries. The analysis also does not reflect changes to the retirement plan made in 1985 that reduced pension payouts, said Tina Leiss, executive officer of the system. The conclusions in the report issued by the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a conservative think tank based in Las Vegas, do not account for the vast majority of the members and retirees of the Public Employees’ Retirement...

Friday, January 23, 2015 | 2:45 am EST Grant NBC News Launches Website For Black People… Good Idea? By: Grant (Breaking911 Newsroom) January 22, 2015 | 10:06 PM Ahhh, yes. The day has come, where black folks and white folks don’t have to read news from the same website. NBC news has a new website and social media accounts geared towards the African-American community. According to a letter from the editor: “NBCBLK covers stories by, for and about the black community. Our product is meant to elevate America’s conversation about black identity, politics, and culture. We share positive, solution-based journalism...

Today I want to consider the outlook for bitcoin. 2014 was its worst year on record. It fell by 67%, from $800 to $320 a coin. In doing so, it beat the likes of the Russian rouble and the Ukrainian hryvnia, to the dubious honour of being the world’s worst-performing currency. You know what the world’s best-performing currency was by the way? Nope, not the US dollar, but the Somali shilling. Yup. It surprised me too. Anyway, back to bitcoin… The bursting of the bitcoin bubble So far, 2015 has not been any better than 2014 for bitcoin. At one...

Mitt Romney: Climate Change Is Real, Human-Induced, And We Must Tackle It

Colorado Springs, Colo. — From the liberal media’s coverage of my beautiful adopted hometown, you’d think we live in a KKK-infested hotbed where every person of color fears for his or her life. Take a look at these ominous headlines: “Bombing of NAACP headquarters harkens to bad old days” — MSNBC “Colorado Springs explosion recalls violence against NAACP” — the Washington Post “NAACP Bombing Evokes Memories of Civil Rights Strife” — Time magazine “Explosion outside NAACP office could be a hate crime, officials say” — the Los Angeles Times Let me and my brown skin assure you, America: Bull Connor...

It’s not enough for the Nevada Legislature to change retirement benefits for future public employees. The state’s pension plan provides perks and payouts so absurdly generous that some of them need to be dialed back right away. Taxpayers are on the hook for billions of dollars worth of unfunded pension benefits, when they can barely afford to save for retirement themselves. It’s bad enough that they must subsidize benefits they’ll never have. But it’s outrageous that taxpayers subsidize the cost of providing government workers, who already retire far earlier than their private-sector peers, with even earlier retirements. In Sunday’s Review-Journal,...

CARSON CITY — Most people who make the decision to retire have to figure out how to live on fewer dollars, but that is not always the case with Nevada state and local government employees, a new analysis has found. The analysis by the conservative think tank Nevada Policy Research Institute, using newly available public data provided by the Public Employees Retirement System, shows that many public sector retirees actually receive a raise upon retirement. The analysis, which looked at 10 of Nevada’s largest government agencies, including the state of Nevada, Las Vegas, Clark County and the Clark County School...

RUSH: Snerdley, I forget, did you watch this or not? (interruption) You did not. They had this woman up -- they always do, some hero sitting next to Michelle (My Belle), the first lady, or a series of people that are heroic. (interruption) What was that you said? (interruption) No, not the illegal woman. This is a woman who had a hard, tough life, and she just had overcome all kinds of obstacles. It was a testament to the American spirit. I mean, she got an excrement sandwich in her life every which way she turned. In fact, if you...

Last year, government scientists tell us, was the hottest year on record. This news is terribly — what's the word? — inconvenient. No, not for polar bears or drought victims or coastal dwellers. It's inconvenient for politicians across the country who, despite whatever data or overwhelming scientific consensus might be proffered, insist on denying global warming. In recent weeks, West Virginia has snatched national headlines for its attempts to doctor school science standards to discredit climate change. The sixth-grade science curriculum, for example, was amended so that, rather than having students "clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the...

Ritzy real estate broker Christopher White's former clients said they thought he was their friend and his smooth talk made them believe he was helping them buy their dream homes.. On Tuesday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, White had nothing to say to his victims as he was sentenced to three years and five months in prison for ripping them off in a multimillion-dollar fraud.

The NHS is ‘not fit for the future’ and unless it undergoes radical change it may be forced to abandon free healthcare for all, in the future, the service's top doctor has warned. Medical director of NHS England Professor Sir Bruce Keogh said the NHS must become far less reliant on hospitals and needed a ‘complete transformation’ of the way it operates. Sir Bruce told the Guardian: ‘If the NHS continues to function as it does now, it’s going to really struggle to cope because the model of delivery and service that we have at the moment is not fit...

Tyler Durden 06/06/2014 Two years ago, stories of fake tungsten-filled gold coins and bars began to spread; it appears, between the shortage of physical gold (after Asian central bank buying) and the increase in smuggling (courtesy of India's controls among others) that gold fraud is back on the rise. As SCMP reports, a mainland China businessman, Zhao Jingjun, discovered that HK$270 million of 998kg of gold bars he bought in Ghana had been swapped for non-precious metal bars. What is perhaps even more worrisome, given the probe into commodity-financing deals and the rehypothecation evaporation; these gold bars were shipped to...

LifeWay Christian Stores has come under fire for selling a book based on a boy who claimed he visited heaven and who is now saying that the story is false. The book, titled The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, has been available since last year and tells the story of 6-year-old Alex Malarkey who suffered a horrific car accident in 2004. The crash paralyzed Alex and it was unlikely he'd survive after slipping into a coma. He awoke two months later and claimed that angels took him through the gates of heaven to meet Jesus. Malarkey addressed the validity...

Nearly five years after it hit bestseller lists, a book that purported to be a six-year-old boy's story of visiting angels and heaven after suffering a bad car crash is being pulled from shelves. The young man at the center of The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven, Alex Malarkey, said this week that the story was all made up. "I did not die. I did not go to Heaven," Alex Malarkey wrote. He continued, "I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never...

Tyndale House, a major Christian publisher, has announced that it will stop selling “The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven,” by Alex Malarkey and his father, Kevin Malarkey. The best-selling book, first published in 2010, purports to describe what Alex experienced while he lay in a coma after a car accident when he was 6 years old. The coma lasted two months, and his injuries left him paralyzed, but the subsequent spiritual memoir – with its assuring description of “miracles, angels, and life beyond This World” – became part of a popular genre of “heavenly tourism.” Earlier this week, Alex...

It appeared to be one of archaeology's most sensational finds. The skull fragment discovered in a peat bog near Hamburg was more than 36,000 years old - and was the vital missing link between modern humans and Neanderthals. This, at least, is what Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten - a distinguished, cigar-smoking German anthropologist - told his scientific colleagues, to global acclaim, after being invited to date the extremely rare skull. However, the professor's 30-year-old academic career has now ended in disgrace after the revelation that he systematically falsified the dates on this and numerous other "stone age" relics. Yesterday...

**SNIP** At one meeting with an undercover FBI agent, Jackson allegedly told Yee that the agent knew the owner of an NFL team. Yee then told the agent about a pending law that would limit NFL players from filing workers' compensation claims in the state if they played for out of state teams. Yee told the agent that he should "convey this information to the owner of the NFL team" with an offer of help from Yee. Asked about the cost of such a vote, Yee reportedly said, "Oh no...we gotta drag it out, man. We gotta juice this thing."...

Protesters gathered outside the Clinton Foundation in New York City to complain about "missing money" from the Haiti recovery effort from the 2010 earthquake: "New Yorkers with roots in Haiti say the picture [of the Haiti recovery] isn't so rosy," said the NY1 anchor. The protesters claimed that the $10 billion meant to help rebuild Haiti did little to help the country after the devastating quake. And that much of the money went to non-Haitian companies. "[I]n Harlem, people raised their voices to call attention to the missing money," said the local New York City reporter. "This protest outside the...

Opinion: White House Obama's Paris snub wasn't an oversight By Byron York | January 12, 2015 | 4:33 pm The uproar over whether President Obama or another top administration official should have attended the massive unity rally in Paris has obscured an important point about the White House's reaction to the latest terror attacks in Europe. The administration no-shows were not a failure of optics, or a diplomatic misstep, but were instead the logical result of the president's years-long effort to downgrade the threat of terrorism and move on to other things. "The analogy we use around [the White House]...

Minneapolis Public School employees are using district credit cards for unauthorized purchases — including personal use — and have routinely failed to follow expense policies, a Star Tribune review of school expense records found. Several school district leaders — including the outgoing superintendent and the current CEO — repaid the district for expenses only after the Star Tribune inquired about them. The Star Tribune reviewed $1.5 million in credit card expenses submitted by 262 employees over the past six months. School officials spent thousands of dollars at grocery stores, Target, Wal-Mart and restaurants in Minneapolis and around the country. The...

Co-authored James Doogue and JoNovaEmpirical data withheld by key scientists shows that since 1910 ocean pH levels have not decreased in our oceans as carbon dioxide levels increased. Overall the trend is messy but more up than down, becoming less acidic. So much for those terrifying oceans of acid that were coming our way.What happened to those graphs? Scientists have had pH meters and measurements of the oceans for one hundred years. But experts decided that computer simulations in 2014 were better at measuring the pH in 1910 than the pH meters were. The red line (below) is the models...

Amrish Mahajan, former president of failed Mutual Bank of Harvey and a major fundraiser for imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, has been barred from future participation in the banking industry under a newly released regulatory order. Mr. Mahajan consented, without admitting or denying unsafe or unsound banking practices, to a May 1 order by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. prohibiting him from participating “in any manner” in the conduct of the affairs of any federally insured institution. ... Mr. Mahajan was known for his political connections, particularly to Mr. Blagojevich. Mutual Bank briefly entered the realm of national politics after...

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors have recommended bringing felony charges against retired Gen. David H. Petraeus for providing classified information to his former mistress while he was director of the C.I.A., officials said, leaving Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to decide whether to seek an indictment that could send the pre-eminent military officer of his generation to prison. The Justice Department investigation stems from an affair Mr. Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer who was writing his biography, and focuses on whether he gave her access to his C.I.A. email account and other...

TOP 2014 STORIES Special to WorldTribune.com, July 8 By Grace Vuoto There is a problem with President Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate: It’s a forgery, say multiple forensic experts who have examined it. A report detailing the evidence will soon be presented to Congress. On April 27, 2011 the White House released Mr. Obama’s long-form birth certificate in an attempt to quell a public firestorm over the validity of the shorter version he provided prior to his 2008 election. A group of concerned citizens in Arizona suspected the Certificate of Live Birth produced in 2011 by the administration was fabricated;...

Chicago Obama library bids in trouble; foundation has 'major concerns' with U. of C. proposal Posted: 12/30/2014, 12:45pm | Lynn Sweet WASHINGTON — The Barack Obama Foundation has major problems with the University of Chicago bid for the Obama presidential library and museum and is uneasy about the bid from the University of Illinois at Chicago, leaving Columbia University in New York the front-runner for the project. A source close to the foundation told me that the University of Chicago bid is in jeopardy because it does not own — and has no definite path to acquiring at present —...

Formed in 2005, the Minnesota Voters Alliance (MVA) is the only conservative organization in Minnesota, and one of a few in the nation, dedicated solely to expanding liberty through legal action, determined to strike at the liberal forces which degrade and reduce our freedoms. A critical component of that dedication is the ability to pursue an objective for as long as it takes to win. So, while we have achieved several recent victories in other cases, our commitment to changing Minnesota’s defective Election-Day Registration (EDR) laws continues in full force. Today, I am requesting your support for our impending lawsuits...

On December 23, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the Commerce Department issued its latest revision of U.S. economic growth for the third quarter period (July through September). According to the BEA, the U.S. economy grew at a 5.0% annual rate during that quarter. Unfortunately, the once honorable Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Census Bureau tweaked the quarterly GDP numbers in order to achieve the 5% growth rate. This tweaking was predicted by Tyler Durden of zerohedge.com.When Durden analyzed the final revision for the first quarter back on June 25 (Here's the reason for the total collapse in Q1...

President Obama re-enrolled in ObamaCare for the coming year in a symbolic gesture to show support for his namesake healthcare law. Obama, a few days into his annual two-week Christmas vacation to Hawaii, renewed his cheaper bronze-level health insurance plan for 2015 through a Washington, D.C., exchange, a White House official said. “As we said last year, the act of the President signing up for insurance coverage through the DC exchange is symbolic since the President’s health care will continue to be provided by the military,” the official said. “But, he was pleased to participate in a plan as a...

Fast forward to today when as every pundit is happy to report, the final estimate of Q3 GDP indeed rose by 5% (no really, just as we predicted), with a surge in personal consumption being the main driver of US growth in the June-September quarter. As noted before, between the second revision of the Q3 GDP number and its final print, Personal Consumption increased from 2.2% to 3.2% Q/Q, and ended up contributing 2.21% of the final 4.96% GDP amount, up from 1.51%. So what did Americans supposedly spend so much more on compared to the previous revision released one...

The murder of Dr. George Tiller was rightly condemned by every reputable pro-life group in America including Live Action. Dr. Tiller has been hailed as a hero and martyr by the pro-choice community. He performed third trimester abortions on women who came to him from all over the country. Tracey Jones was the former administrative director of Dr. Tiller’s clinic. She would later file suit against Tiller, claiming she was denied overtime wages for menial tasks she was instructed to do around the office. Her testimony was published in The Tiller Report, a publication by Operation Rescue which exposed disturbing...

In the end, making a political issue personal might have done in Assemblywoman Michele Fiore. The Las Vegas Republican was coming off a tumultuous week — she’d been deposed and then quickly restored as majority leader-designate and chairwoman of the Assembly Taxation Committee by Speaker-designate John Hambrick, R-Las Vegas — when she doubled down on allegations that certain Republican forces were targeting her and other conservatives. Speaking on the Alan Stock radio show on KDWN-AM 720 on Tuesday, Fiore not only repeated her rhetoric about a “war on women,” but blamed some of the alleged infantrymen in that conflict: Republican...

CARSON CITY — Las Vegas Assemblywoman Michele Fiore’s tax liens and problems with the IRS were cited in her second removal from Assembly leadership positions Thursday. Fiore’s removal could clear the way for moderate Republicans to control the Assembly in the 2015 session and eliminate any talk of a GOP-Democratic partnership challenge to the leadership. It could also smooth the way for Gov. Brian Sandoval to win more funding for public education. Assembly Speaker designate John Hambrick reversed course on Fiore for a second time in recent weeks and removed the controversial lawmaker as majority leader. She has also been...

December 17, 2014, 08:15 am Obamas say they're no strangers to racism By Justin Sink The president and the first lady chronicled a series experiences in People magazine that they say demonstrated some of the latent racism that blacks in America continue to face. "There's no black male my age, who's a professional, who hasn't come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn't hand them their car keys," the president said. The first lady said someone had asked her husband to get them coffee because he was wearing a tuxedo at a black-tie dinner,...

HARRISBURG - Philadelphia prosecutors plan to announce criminal charges Tuesday against two more elected officials ensnared in the undercover sting investigation that state Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane rejected as too flawed to prosecute. District Attorney Seth Williams is expected to announce charges against State Reps. Vanessa Lowery Brown and Ronald G. Waters, both Philadelphia Democrats, for allegedly accepting cash from an undercover operative, according to people familiar with the matter. Waters' attorney, Fortunato Perri Jr., said he was making arrangements for Waters to turn himself in Tuesday morning. Perri said he expects Waters will face felony charges of conflict...

CARSON CITY — Las Vegas Republican lawmaker Michele Fiore, a lightning rod in an ongoing Assembly GOP power struggle, said Tuesday she is fully in compliance with the Internal Revenue Service over more than $1 million in tax liens against her home health care businesses. In her first comments on the controversy, Fiore appeared on the Alan Stock radio show on KDWN in Las Vegas, saying her actual active liens total less than $200,000. Liens dating back to 2003 had previously been resolved, she said. Fiore said her lien problems stemmed from a dishonest bookkeeper, who she said is facing...

KITCHENER — A Kitchener anesthetist specializing in pain management has been charged with two counts of fraud after he billed the Ontario government for services he didn't provide. The Ontario Provincial Police Anti-Rackets branch arrested and charged Dr. Kulbir Singh Billing, 63, on Monday night. He will appear in Ontario Court in January. He faces two counts of fraud over $5,000. OPP Sgt. Peter Leon said the charges stem from billings to the Ontario government from 2010 to 2013. Leon said billings were made to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board for services that...

A Republican has joined Democrats in criticizing the inclusion of a partial repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law in legislation funding the government. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) signed on to a letter with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) that calls on congressional leaders to scrap portions of the $1.1 trillion "cromnibus" that relax restrictions on banks trading financial derivatives. The pair argued in the letter that there is "broad bipartisan support" for removing that particular language. Brown and Vitter, who have worked together in the past on bills to limit big banks, argued that the language was unfairly jammed into...

The federal government's funding authorization expires tonight at midnight, and the Republican plan to renew it bodes poorly for the GOP's leadership of Congress next year. ... Congress shouldn't let the government shut down, but Republicans should neither acquiesce to president Obama's unprecedented executive power grab, nor give up control over the budget for well into the 114th Congress. ... Republicans take control of both chambers in January, so they have no good reason to make a deal with the Senate Democratic leadership that sets spending levels until next October. ... There are, as speaker Boehner has pointed out, some...

"Citing Fear Of Torture, Obama’s Second Cousin Seeks Asylum In US8:31 PM 12/09/2014 ... Obama is 36 years old and has spent the last eight or nine months in the Rapphannock Regional Facility in Stafford, Va., according to his sister, as his appeal for withholding of removal sits before the Board of Immigration Appeals. Denied relief most recently on Nov. 6, Obama, who has been in the U.S. since 1997, hopes he can stay in the U.S., ... Obama initially applied for asylum, filing what’s called an I-589 form. But the application must be filed within a year of the...

Fear is building that Wisconsin’s Department of Health Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation of Planned Parenthood’s over billing of the state’s Medicaid program for services rendered may endanger the financial health of the organization. For example, Planned Parenthood has been billing the state twice the allowable amount for the abortifacient contraceptive Yaz. Beth Hartung, president of the Wisconsin Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, called the financial reimbursement rules “unreasonable. The mark-ups we attach to these drugs is what helps subsidize services that the state program doesn’t cover.” One of those uncovered programs is surgical abortions. “Squeezing the profit...

Jonathan Gruber, the man at the center of Obamacare’s troubled public image, apologized to Congress for “glib” and “thoughtless” comments about the stupidity of the American voters and how the health overhaul passed, arguing he is no political expert and shouldn’t have posed as one in speeches around the country. “It’s never appropriate to try to make oneself seem more important or smarter by demeaning others. I knew better. I know better. I’m embarrassed, and I’m sorry,” Mr. Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the House oversight committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican.

The Jonathan Gruber show is coming to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, with House Republicans set to grill the former ObamaCare adviser for his controversial remarks about the “stupidity” of voters who let the law pass. The hearing is likely to be a spectacle, with cable news networks planning heavy coverage, as Gruber takes the witness stand to answer questions about his ties to the Obama administration and his consulting work for the Health and Human Services Department. “Tomorrow is all about giving him the opportunity to say something stupid,” a Republican aide said. “It’s going to be a lot of...

A D.C. resident who gained healthcare coverage under ObamaCare will sit alongside the administration’s former adviser Jonathan Gruber during Tuesday’s high-profile hearing. Democrats have picked Ari Goldmann, an independent contractor who lives in D.C., to help defend ObamaCare during a hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a Democratic aide told The Hill. Goldmann will testify alongside Gruber and Marilyn Tavenner, the head of Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS), at a hearing that the GOP hopes to use to refire attacks at the president's healthcare law. His appearance goes against the Obama administration’s request that Tavenner appear...

The UVA rape story peddled by Rolling Stone has fallen apart. This is what happens when advocacy journalism pushes narratives rather than actual news. The feminist narrative these days is that we live in a country that hates women and ignores their violent rape. In order to fight back against a society that hates women, feminists have to make up stories about rape to confront society with. One wonders why, in a nation that hates women and doesn’t care about their violent rape, the left would bother making up stories when actual stories of violent rape must be so plentiful....

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is asking lawmakers not to seat ObamaCare consultant Jonathan Gruber next to Medicare's top official when the two testify on Capitol Hill next week. HHS Assistant Secretary for Legislation Jim Esquea wrote to the House Oversight Committee with the request, stating that government witnesses are "almost always afforded an opportunity" to sit alone or with other federal officials. “The accommodation of separate panels for government witnesses reflects important comity in congressional-executive relations,” Esquea wrote. “The relatively few exceptions to this practice reinforce the seriousness of this accommodation.” The Oversight panel, led by...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Advocates for sexual-assault victims say Rolling Stone's backpedaling from an explosive account of a gang rape at the University of Virginia doesn't change the fact that rape is a problem on college campuses and must be confronted — even as some expressed concern that the magazine's apology could discourage victims from coming forward. Students, state government and education leaders, meanwhile, pledged to continue ongoing efforts to adequately respond to — and prevent — sexual assaults on campus. Rolling Stone cast doubt on its story Friday of a gang rape by a woman it identified only as...

Democrats are arguing among themselves about whether to focus on the poor, who are not reliable voters, or the middle class, who have started to turn to the Republican Party.Influential Democrats who have strongly defended Obama-Care for years are now publicly questioning whether the law was worth the political fallout. Passage of the Affordable Care Act marked the start of a political unraveling for the Democratic Party, which lost huge majorities in Congress and control of a majority of state governorships in the last four and a half years. Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third-ranking member of the Senate Democratic...

I am in the process of writing a book which argues that the Sexual Revolution has been a rich person’s hobby horse from the beginning. The rich and powerful like the idea of separating sex from child-bearing. While this idea is sometimes wrapped up in a disguise of helping woman and the poor, the fact remains that the rich and powerful pioneered and implemented these ideas, quite often at the expense of women and the poor. So I wondered, when I picked up a book, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution, celebrating...