Free Republic

(NEXSTAR) – Tax season isn’t really fun for anyone, but some states’ residents have it harder than others this time of year. As families around the country collect their paperwork and get ready to file, people in Illinois may find themselves with a heftier tax bill than their neighbors in other states. An updated analysis by MoneyGeek, a personal finance site, evaluates how “tax friendly” each state is by calculating the tax burden on the average citizen. States with low tax burdens earned an A, while those with the highest tax burden earned Fs. The state that scored worst overall...

A wave of inflationary signals means that the Federal Reserve's next move could be a rate hike, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said. "There's a meaningful chance, maybe it's 15%, that the next move is going to be upwards in rates, not downwards," Summers said during an interview on Bloomberg TV on Friday, adding that the Fed has to be "very careful." His read on recent key inflation indicators in January, including a 3.1% year-over-year increase in the consumer price index and a 0.9% rise in the producer price index, formed the basis of his rationale. He added that the...

Sun-soaked San Diego is home to the least affordable metro housing market in America. The city surpassed its northern California neighbor, the notoriously pricey San Francisco, earlier this year, according to a report by real-estate analytics company OJO Labs.

President Joe Biden has received the least negative news coverage from the establishment media of any president in the last 30 years. According to the Pew Research Center, Biden received in his first 60 days 19 percent negative news coverage, ranking him the most favored of presidents in the last three decades.

How miserly is The Donald? From 1990 through 2009, Trump has personally donated a total of just $3.7 million to his foundation, which was incorporated in 1987. In fact, the billionaire is not even the largest contributor to his own charitable organization. Tax returns show that World Wrestling Entertainment has given Trump’s foundation a total of $5 million in return for the developer’s assistance in working a couple of televised angles along with WWE boss Vince McMahon. The WWE gave Trump’s foundation $4 million in 2007 for his help in promoting that year’s WrestleMania festivities, and another $1 million in...

The least luxurious cruise in the world: North Korea launches its first liner (where cabins are shared and the ship is rusty) The liner is rusty, the cabins are cramped and the Captain's Table is a help yourself buffet. But though the surroundings are less than glamorous, North Korea hopes to launch itself into the world of cruising with ageing liner the Mangyongbong. The former cargo ship set sail on its maiden tour yesterday carrying about 130 passengers from the rundown port of Rajin, near the China-Russia border. Some 500 North Koreans, about half dressed in dark workers clothes and...

Reporting from Washington — Freshman Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte is often asked what surprises her most about serving in the esteemed upper chamber of Congress. The earnest, 43-year-old conservative from New Hampshire has come up with an uncomplicated reply: "I thought that we would vote on a lot more bills." She most recently offered this answer from her Senate office at 3:45 on a Thursday afternoon. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had just announced that the Senate was done voting for the week. Senators wouldn't be needed until the following Tuesday. In the lobby outside Ayotte's office, a television...

The US is negotiating the future borders of the Palestinian state with Israel, according to a report released by Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat on Friday. One option is reportedly that Israel would lease land in east Jerusalem from the Palestinian state for 40-99 years. Palestinian sources confirmed to the paper that the US and Israel are discussing borders and settlements, but PA President Mahmoud Abbas does not yet know the details. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office refused to confirm or deny the reports, and State Department sources told the paper that Israel and the US are discussing matters "as a

Jon Stewart's Comedy Central show has the most white people, fewest women. Comedy Central's Daily Show is the least diverse late-night show on television, according to a graphic put together by an artist that examined the race and sex of guests compared to the general population over a six-week period this past August and September. The artist, Bard Edlund, admits his study is imperfect, and numbers may be skewed because Jon Stewart typically only has one guest on per night. Plus, guests who didn't fall into the categories of white, Hispanic, black or Asian were left off altogether. The graphic...

Politico: “Stimulus tour” “52 of the 66 events were in states that backed Obama.” The other 14 events were in states that Obama lost only narrowly. A new study released by USA Today also finds that counties that voted for Obama received about twice as much stimulus money per capita as those that voted for McCain. "The stimulus bill is designed to help those who have been hurt by the economic downturn.... Do you see disparity out there in where the money is going? Certainly," a Democratic congressional staffer knowledgeable about the process told FOXNews.com. "The people to talk to...

At least 14,000 mostly Hispanic students stormed out of school classes across Los Angeles in a snowballing protest against Washington's plans for a draconian crackdown on illegal immigration. Local news reports said that "tens of thousands of students" were taking part in the protest that was spreading through schools across the country's second largest city ahead of a US Senate debate on a divisive immigration reform bill. "At least 14,000 students are protesting in the streets in Los Angeles city alone," Monica Carazo, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District told AFP. The latest protest came after one...

Residents of Hawaii, Wyoming and Connecticut shoulder the heaviest state tax burdens in the nation. The least state taxes per person are paid by those living in Texas, South Dakota or Colorado, U.S. Census figures for 2004 show. The tax burden is important because it helps determine a state's business climate, carves a hole into taxpayers' wallets and influences individual decisions on where to live. The tax burden weighs so heavily in some states that people have called the moving van to escape to a lower-tax state.

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Dominican, Haiti Floods Kill at Least 360 2 hours, 51 minutes ago By PETER PRENGAMAN, Associated Press Writer JIMANI, Dominican Republic - The caskets of dozens of children lined this town's streets after floods swept away whole villages and sent desperate families into the darkness and mud in a frantic search for loved ones. At least 360 were dead and hundreds missing. Trucks dumped more than 100 bodies into a mass grave outside of Jimani, a town of about 10,000 on the Haitian border, on Tuesday. Sobbing families, meanwhile, waited for the tiny caskets of their children to be buried...

The Least Harm Principle Suggests that Humans Should Eat Beef, Lamb, Dairy, not a Vegan Diet. The following abstract and the aforementioned title were written by S.L. Davis, Department of Animal Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331.Wildlife Damage Control has received permission to reprint this abstract in its entirety which was "Previously published in the Proceedings of the Third Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics, 2001, pp 449-450." Again, this article was NOT written by Stephen Vantassel. See my version of this principle written long before this article at Uneasy Conscience of the Animal Rights...

Detonators have been found on a rail track near Mumbai after at least 50 people were killed and more than 100 injured when two large car bombs rocked the Indian city. Several sleepers had also been removed and used to block the tracks on a line being used by millions of pilgrims headed to a major Hindu festival, railway police have said. A trainload of pilgrims was halted after the detonators were found. Officials initially said there had been four blasts in the city, also known as Bombay, but it was later confirmed there had been two - one at...