Free Republic

Military: The administration thanks the troops for their service by failing to comply with a law requiring that it help soldiers deployed overseas cast ballots in their home states. The administration has taken various states to court to block voter ID laws on the grounds it will disenfranchise voters. But it has no qualms about the disenfranchisement of military voters overseas through its failure to comply with and enforce the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, passed by Congress in 2009 and signed into law by President Barack Obama. The law acknowledges the difficulties caused by time and distance...

Recently, many Ann Arbor parents received a letter informing them that there was a relatively large gap between high-performing and low-performing students in their child's school. They could, the letter said, choose to transfer their child to another school with a smaller achievement gap. The twist, noted AnnArbor.com, is that the alternative schools with low achievement gaps also tended to report lower overall student performance. The letters were to communicate a new school measure created by the Michigan Department of Education in response to federal policy. Schools identified as having a larger-than-average gap between the top 30 percent of student...

State argued that it is not required to subsidize organizations that advocate elective abortions AUSTIN, Texas — A federal appeals court ruled late Tuesday that Texas can cut off funding for Planned Parenthood clinics that provide health services to low-income women before a trial over a new law that bans state money from going to organizations tied to abortion providers. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans lifted a federal judge's temporary injunction calling for the funding to continue pending an October trial on Planned Parenthood's challenge to the law. Texas officials sought to cut off funding...

Already reeling from big cutbacks in Medicare funding, hospitals in the Los Angeles metropolitan area would lose another 2.4 percent of their federal reimbursement under a new analysis ordered by Congress.

Despite highly publicized reports of 10 percent pay cuts within the West Bloomfield School District last year, a review of gross salaries of all employees who were on the payroll in 2011 and 2012 shows that there was a 1.4 percent overall salary increase. About three of every four teachers took an overall pay cut from 2011 to 2012, which averaged to be 1 percent, according to salary information of all employees for 2011 and 2012 that was requested by Capitol Confidential. However, some top administrators saw hefty increases. The top 13 people on the payroll in 2011 and 2012...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) -- PBS President Paula Kerger said Saturday she's disappointed public TV's federal funding again is under attack by lawmakers. The move is ironic, she said, given the impressive number of Emmy Award nominations earned last week by PBS programs, including the popular drama "Downton Abbey." PBS received 58 nods, second only to HBO and CBS. Public television gets 15 percent of its money from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with the rest largely contributed by viewers, Kerger told a meeting of the Television Critics Association. But some stations would lose more than half their...

Conservatives tell GOP leaders they want healthcare funding fight this yearBy Sam Baker - 07/11/12 04:34 PM ET Conservatives in the House are pushing GOP leaders to continue the campaign against President Obama's healthcare law even after Wednesday's vote to repeal the law. Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) are gathering signatures this week for a letter asking GOP leaders to defund the healthcare law this year. "We appreciate your willingness to schedule a vote on the full repeal of ObamaCare," the letter states. "We should continue efforts to repeal the law in its entirety this year, next...

Democrat State Rep. Jim Townsend said a GOP budget that does not add as much to the education budget as he would like is "atrocious." In a June 20 letter to the editor posted on the Royal Oak Patch website, Townsend, a Royal Oak resident, said he has been subjected to misleading election year robo calls. But several of Townsend’s claims in his own letter bear a closer look. Townsend's letter said: "As a result of last year's cuts, school districts around the state closed schools and cut an estimated 15,000 teacher and other school jobs." The reality: Townsend is...

New data from the state (available in this online database) show that despite constant calls from school officials and government employee union bosses for more funding, public schools in Michigan received more money in 2011 than ever before — about $13,405 per pupil. Total school spending, however, did drop from its all-time high in 2010 — by less than 1 percent. Schools spent $12,778 per pupil last year overall, with $11,561 of that spent on day-to-day operating expenses. Dissecting the data exposes interesting trends. For instance, although overall school spending was down slightly, there was one area that saw consistent...

ANNAPOLIS — The Maryland State Archives collection is among the largest in the country with nearly 400 years of history, including Colonial-era paintings, keepsakes of the state’s governors, and thousands of land, court and genealogy records. With all that history, the Archives has run out of space. The agency first filled its Annapolis headquarters to capacity in 2000, then leased and filled a warehouse. It leased a second warehouse and a third before brokering a deal to store some of its property at the Baltimore City Archives. All of the facilities are now full, and state archivists have been pushing...

Global Blood Therapeutics Inc., a San Francisco-based developer of oral medicines to treat chronic blood-based diseases, has launched with $40.7 million in Series A funding from Third Rock Ventures. www.globalbloodtx.com Invuity, a San Francisco-based developer of surgical visualization and illumination technology, has raised $25 million in Series D funding. Valence Advantage led the round, and was joined by return backers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and InterWest Partners. www.invuity.com Thismoment, a San Francisco-based provider of social content management software for brands, has raised $22 million in Series C funding led by Trident Capital. The company previously raised over $11 million...

Government officials in the Washington region, as well as nationwide, are looking increasingly to bus rapid transit for new transit options as they face tightening public purses. BRT plans are under way in Alexandria and Arlington County, where buses are planned to travel from Braddock Road to Pentagon City. Alexandria expects to begin construction in July and start running buses in dedicated lanes in December 2013, said Abi Lerner, Alexandria's deputy director of transportation. Arlington expects to complete its half of the system in spring 2014. Across the Potomac, Montgomery County officials have proposed a 160-mile system with 23 routes....

(CNSNews.com) – Two conservative lawmakers are teaming up to urge appropriation leaders in the House and Senate to defund the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB), which is asking for $445 million advance for FY 2015. This week, Sen. Jim Demint (R-S.C.) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) each sent letters to the heads of the appropriation committees, saying defunding the entity “should be one of the easiest decisions to make,” while searching for cuts in a government $15 trillion in debt. “CPB’s requested appropriation represents no reduction from its prior year appropriation level,” Demint and Lamborn write. “While so many Americans...

The House voted on a controversial funding limit amendment Wednesday evening to stop Attorney General Holder from lying to Congress. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) Comments the move to cut off Holder's DOJ allowance for 2013 unless he tells the truth about the gun walking operation known as Fast and Furious. The amendment to H.R. 5326, an appropriations bill funding Holder's agency for 2013, was in response to a February 4, 2011 letter to Congress in which DOJ officials denied any involvement in Operation Fast and Furious. Months later after damaging contradictions and discrepancies surfaced the Department was forced to rescind...

The Minnesota Senate has approved a financing plan for a new Vikings stadium. By a 36-30 vote the afternoon of Thursday, May 10, senators passed the bill to fund a new $975 million stadium. The bill now heads to Gov. Mark Dayton for his signature. Dayton has been a ardent support of the bill. The Senate vote came hours after the Minnesota House gave its support to the plan. The deal is a compromise bill after a conference committee ironed out differences between earlier versions. A key change was requiring the team to pay an additional $50 million than first...

An 11th-hour Republican Vikings stadium plan that would have paid for the state’s share with general obligation bonds was declared dead late Thursday morning, and in its wake House GOP leaders pledged to hold a long-awaited floor vote next Monday on the stadium bill authored by Rep. Morrie Lanning and Sen. Julie Rosen. House leaders said they also hope to vote on their 2012 bonding bill Monday. GOP leaders said that serious questions about using general obligation bonds to pay for the state’s portion of a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings have forced them to drop the plan, which...

Link: http://www.mydesert.com/article/20120407/BUSINESS02/204070333/JOBS-Act-speed-startups-Views-from-the-Northwest-column-Mike-Flynn

...On Wednesday, Romney had five finance events in New York and raised about $3 million, with more set for Thursday. So the news is hardly all bad... But it’s less encouraging for the campaign that the money is badly needed to refill coffers that had sunk close to their lowest levels since Romney launched his presidential effort last year. It’s unclear whether he will tap his own personal wealth...Top aide EricFehrnstrom said Romney has not loaned his campaign any new funds this cycle and has “no plans” to do so. Raising money to get through a protracted primary fight is...

ObamaCare’s Abortion Funding Rule Finalized American Center for Law and Justice We told you then that not only was an Executive Order insufficient to replace a strong statutory protection like the Pitts/Stupak Amendment, but also that the language of the Executive Order itself did nothing more than set up an accounting scheme to hide the federal subsidies that would flow to abortions. Sadly, these facts have now come to fruition. HHS, under the direction of President Obama and Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has issued its final rule for implementing the state exchanges created by the ObamaCare law. These final rules include...

......MittRomney raised slightly more than his Republican rivals in January. His campaign committee, Romney for President, brought in $6.5 million in January, according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission. By contrast, NewtGingrich raised $5.6 million, and RickSantorum and RonPaul each raised $4.5 million. But his fund-raising pace was fairly weak despite wins in New Hampshire and Florida. And Mr. Romney spent far more than his rivals in January — $18.8 million, compared with $5.9 million for his next-closest competitor, Mr. Gingrich. More worrisome, Mr. Romney spent more than he took in; his cash flow was negative $12.2...