Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – Once again acting without Congress, President Obama has unilaterally changed his signature health insurance law, delaying its employer mandate – the second time he’s done this -- to 2016, after the mid-term elections. BUT: To be eligible for the additional delay, the Obama administration says an employer “may not reduce the size of its workforce or the overall hours of service of its employees” unless it can justify those reductions to the Internal Revenue Service. On Monday, the administration issued new regulations saying that employers with 50 to 99 workers don’t need to provide minimum essential coverage until...

There are any number of reasons a person might consider giving up their U.S. citizenship, ranging from the familial to the professional to the financial, but for me at least, it would take a heck of a lot for me to even think about it. And by “a heck of a lot,” I mean that I have difficulty fathoming a situation in which I would actually want to give up my citizenship and/or live anywhere permanently other than the United States, because from where I’m sitting, the mere suggestion sounds pretty ghastly — which is precisely why our spiking expatriation...

With all this talk in Washington about income inequality, why isn't Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi — or anyone in the greed-and-envy lobby — going after the grotesquely unfair farm bill? This near-$200 billion bill is one of the biggest giveaways to the rich and politically powerful in recent history. Usually, in Washington Congress doles out taxpayer subsidies to industries that are in severe financial trouble — think of bailouts to autos, banks and steel. That's bad enough. But the farm economy isn't in distress. It's booming, and agribusiness still walked away with $20 billion a year in direct payments,...

Unless you are exceptionally coldblooded, it's hard not to be disturbed by today's huge economic inequality. The gap between the rich and the poor is enormous, wider than most Americans would (almost certainly) wish. But this incontestable reality has made economic inequality a misleading intellectual fad, blamed for many of our problems. Actually, the reverse is true: Economic inequality is usually a consequence of our problems and not a cause. For starters, the poor are not poor because the rich are rich. The two conditions are generally unrelated. Mostly, the rich got rich by running profitable small businesses (car dealerships,...

This year President Barack Obama and his party will begin their campaign against “the rich” while emphasizing the “gap” in wages between those on top and those on the bottom. Their solution will be to increase the minimum wage, raise taxes on “the rich” and increase government spending. They will exploit ignorance and envy to maintain power. Their solution will make the gap larger and create an endless recession. Unless reversed, the result is likely to be a financial collapse, wiping out savings, retirement accounts and putting almost everyone in the country into the category we now call the "working...

It is always in poor taste for modern Americans to liken their ideological critics to Nazis. So when venture capitalist Tom Perkins wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal that equated "the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich,'" with "fascist Nazi Germany," he opened his double doors to the cable TV umbrage-fest that followed. I have a teensy bit of advice for Perkins: When your reported worth is somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 billion, you don't need to wrap quotes around the word "rich." In three paragraphs, Perkins, 82, lambasted the San Francisco Chronicle...

New York’s new Occupy mayor, Bill de Blasio, took office this month with a stern, if hazy, vow to right the imbalances of economic inequality in New York City, which other speakers at his inauguration called “Dickensian” (Harry Belafonte) and a “plantation” (Brooklyn pastor the Rev. Fred Lucas Jr., delivering an invocation).But he can’t fix income inequality, nor should he. Given that there will always be some who are just starting out or lack the wherewithal to succeed, it’s the wealthy who are responsible for the gap between rich and poor. And it’s those same wealthy whom de Blasio will need to...

If you brought back either of the Roosevelts—Teddy or Franklin—from the grave, the most astonishing thing they would find is that the “malefactors of great wealth” have become the benefactors of today’s liberalism, and Democrats have become the party of the rich. In the economic crisis of the 1930s, the rich hated FDR. Most of today’s rich love Barack Obama—so much so that Washington D.C. area airports ran out of space to handle all of the private jets flying in the well-heeled for both of his inaugurals. Forget the “limousine liberals” of the 1960s and 1970s, sending their own kids...

Tonight’s TopClip shows a side of ‘Duck Commander’ Phil Robertson that many don’t know: when he was teammates with future NFL Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw…

I AM your Lord, God and Savior for you were constructed in my likeness and created in my way, You hear the Voice of your Master say, Whom shall I turn to, to do my will?! Where are the vessels that listen, abide and fulfill, For you are my handiwork, a tool in my shed, Always ready and waiting, ready to be led, I AM your inheritance all that you see, No looking to the left or right for I set you free, From all obstacles and entanglements and now you reside, In Zion with your Lord and "I AM"...

Lawyer’s for 16-year-old Ethan Couch were able to pawn off on a doe-eyed court that “affluenza” was to blame for his stealing beer at WalMart, getting wasted and then plowing his out of control Ford F-350 into a group of folks, killing four. Affluenza? Please. For those who’re not hip to “affluenza“, allow me to help you add another word to that ever growing list of PC terms spun by blame-shifting therapists in order to explain away criminal behavior by little Ethans who need to go to prison instead of a luxury rehab in Newport Beach: Affluenza is a portmanteau...

The rich are paying even more in taxes than you think.According to a Congressional Budget Office report this week, America’s top 40 percent of earners pay 106 percent of the taxes and the bottom 40 percent pay negative 9 percent, reports CNBC.How can one group pay more than 100 percent and another group pay less than zero? The formula that the CBO uses offsets taxes that are paid with refundable tax credits. These include money the government transfers back to the taxpayer for food stamps and social programs.Some low-income Americans received very generous subsidies. The report shows that Americans who...

Income Gap: As President Obama laments America's growing income inequality, a new government report shows the futility of his calls for ever-more wealth redistribution. To deflect attention from ObamaCare's failures, the president this month trotted out his income inequality chestnut. "A dangerous and growing inequality," he intoned, "has jeopardized middle-class America's basic bargain." He argued, "as a trickle-down ideology became more prominent, taxes were slashed for the wealthiest, while investments in things that make us all richer, like schools and infrastructure, were allowed to wither." Apparently, nobody bothered to brief the president before he delivered this speech. Fact is, federal...

Economic equality will never be possible because some people are too stupid to get ahead in the modern world, said Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, in a speech that is igniting a wave of criticism. Nick Clegg, Britain’s deputy prime minister, accused Mr. Johnson of “unpleasant elitism.” In the speech honouring the work of former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Mr. Johnson said natural differences between humans will always mean some will succeed and others fail. “I am afraid that violent economic centrifuge is operating on human beings who are already very far from equal in raw ability, if...

In the interest of transparency, Gov. Mark Dayton has released his tax returns for every year since 2009, back when he was just a candidate for the governor's office. He dropped his 2012 returns yesterday afternoon, and they reveal that last year was a prosperous one for our governor: Dayton took home his state salary of $116,125, as well as $92,381 from the family trust, and $130,291 in capital gains, for a total income of $343,234. That income puts Dayton among Minnesota's highest earners. Yet, according to his records, Dayton donated just $1,000 to charity in 2012.

Every year, new estimates of the incomes of the “top 1 percent” are reported with the requisite fanfare from Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley. And every year the press gets the numbers all wrong. “Worry Over Inequality Occupies Wall Street,” writes Justin Lahart of the Wall Street Journal. An odd worry, when stocks keep hitting record highs. In reality, top income shares always rise and fall with the stock market because of capital gains, stock options, and bonuses and fees tied to stocks. “Messrs. Piketty and Saez,”...

Talk about expensive real estate: A House seat can easily cost millions. Every cycle, a few wealthy candidates dig into their deep pockets to fund their own campaigns. This cycle is on track to be no different — except that Republicans dominate the ranks of potentially self-funding congressional candidates. Democrats constituted some of the richest candidates of 2012, including Reps. John Delaney of Maryland, Suzan DelBene of Washington and Scott Peters of California. All three made Roll Call’s 50 Richest list this year. But in 2014, Republicans boast far more self-funders among their recruits — at least nine so far....

Our sense of the force currently paralyzing the government is full of misconceptions -- including what to call it. To judge from the commentary inspired by the shutdown, most progressives and centrists, and even many non-Tea Party conservatives, do not understand the radical force that has captured the Republican Party and paralyzed the federal government. Having grown up in what is rapidly becoming a Tea Party heartland–Texas–I think I do understand it. Allow me to clear away a few misconceptions about what really should be called, not the Tea Party Right, but the Newest Right. The first misconception that is...

As we continue to knock down individual members from the long list of liberal talking points, another we can add to the scrap heap of history is that Republicans are the "party of the rich." In polling data during the 2012 election campaign, two and a half times more registered voters said that the Republicans' policies favor the rich versus those of the Democrats. Twice as many voters thought the Democrats' policies favored the middle class compared to those of the Republicans. And twelve times as many voters indicated that the Democrats' policies favored the poor over those of the...

Ninety years ago — in 1921 — federal income-tax policies reached an absurdity that many people today seem to want to repeat. Those who believe in high taxes on “the rich” got their way. The tax rate on people in the top income bracket was 73 percent in 1921. On the other hand, the rich also got their way: They didn’t actually pay those taxes. The number of people with taxable incomes of $300,000 a year or more — equivalent to far more than $1 million in today’s money — declined from over 1,000 people in 1916 to fewer than...