Free Republic

Both Senate and House versions of the farm bill that Congress is looking to pass, preferably in short order and definitely before the current bill expires this September, are little better than deliberately gigantic messes full of an impressively convoluted combination of food stamps, corporate pork, tricky amendments, and completely unnecessary federal special treatment that agribusiness lobby claims agriculture for some reason deserves above all other economic sectors. The Hill has a useful rundown of some of the major battles that still need to be fought within Congress before they can agree upon a final bill, but one of the...

In the economic history of our time, June 6, 2013, ought to occupy a special place. That’s the day the Federal Reserve disclosed that the net worth of American households — the value of what they own minus what they owe — hit $70 trillion, a record that exceeded the previous peak before the 2007-09 financial crisis. Higher stock prices and a long-awaited housing recovery are slowly restoring Americans’ lost wealth. By all rights, this symbolic crossing ought to improve confidence, prompt consumers to spend more freely and increase the economy’s growth. Maybe it will. But don’t hold your breath....

U.S. consumer sentiment retreated this month after reaching its highest in nearly six years in May, a survey released on Friday showed, as household optimism about employment and housing faded slightly. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's preliminary reading on the overall index on consumer sentiment fell to 82.7 in June, below a near six-year high of 84.5 in May. Economists polled by Reuters had expected it to hold at 84.5 this month. June's reading, however, was the second highest in the last eight months, suggesting Americans were far from gloomy about their long-term prospects. While the barometer of current economic...

Consider the following recent activities: • In April, AmeriCorps recruits in Tuscumbia, Mo., released 70 blue balloons outside the county courthouse to draw attention to the plight of abused children. • In March, Providence, R.I., AmeriCorps members at the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence hosted a hip hop/poetry competition. • Members of a Nevada AmeriCorps program busy themselves these days by encouraging local residents to drink tap water and watch out for bears ("bear awareness"). • AmeriCorps members in Austin, Texas, hosted a trivia night in April at a local bar called Cheer Up Charlie's to whip...

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel whether he recommended the president veto a defense spending bill. Hagel answered by saying he hasn't been consulted on the legislation:

MADISON – What possesses someone to commit a crime and then brag about it online? Is it hubris? Is it chutzpah? Cojones? If those are words for stupidity, then, yes. Case in point, the five Marathon County kids arrested in an alleged gang initiation case. Know how police caught up with these crafty accused gang bangers? They watched a video on Facebook showing a 16-year-old boy allowing a group of teens to pummel him, according to the Wausau Daily Herald. Investigators told the newspaper the teen was trying to join the gang, which is “not affiliated with a widely known...

LIVE THREAD House Oversight Committee on IRS Spending Practices Witness list http://oversight.house.gov/hearing/collected-and-wasted-the-irs-spending-culture-and-conference-abuses/

The White House sought to pressure House Republicans into a budget conference with the Senate on Monday, warning President Obama would veto any 2014 spending bills based on the House GOP budget. In Statements of Administration Policy, the White House said Obama would veto all spending bills unless they pass Congress "in the context of an overall budget framework that supports our recovery and enables sufficient investments in education, infrastructure, innovation and national security for our economy to compete in the future." That language suggests the administration, like congressional Democrats, wants to use the conference to turn off the automatic...

US Real GDP for Q1 2013 was released this morning and printed at 2.4%. Analysts were expecting 2.5%. On the other hand, Q1 personal consumption expenditures (PCE) rose 3.4%, HIGHER than analysts forecast at 3.3%. While PCE increased, it came at the expense of personal saving. The saving rate dropped to 2.3 percent in the first quarter, compared with an initial estimate of 2.6 percent. It followed a 5.3 percent rate in the fourth quarter of 2012. So, The Fed’s zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) is helping consumers borrow more to consume and save less. On the corporate side, earnings...

Though the Highland Park School District spent $19,634 per pupil in 2010-11, which was the highest in the state, district schools were so mismanaged that they had rodents in the classrooms, holes in the ceilings and walls, and horrendous filth in the bathrooms. "I [saw] it in the media center," DeCarlos, a junior at Highland Park Community High School, said of a mouse he saw running along the floor from a nearby room. He wasn't alone. "It was terrible," said Delshon, a senior at HPCHS. "We had to worry if something was going to crawl on us; worry if the...

Bidding wars are breaking out. Foreign buyers are moving in. A new wave of contemporary architecture is taking hold. And a growing class of tech executives is helping to fuel the boom. All this is happening in Washington, D.C., a town known for its relative affordability compared with cities such as New York and San Francisco, and for architecture about as exciting as its fashion sense. Today, home prices in Washington and its surrounding suburbs are rapidly rising to new levels. As other American cities have been buffeted by an uneven economy, Washington's property market has been buoyed two forces...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday defended the Obama administration’s move to solicit private donations to implement ObamaCare, arguing that the government has a responsibility to help beneficiaries enroll under the law. Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, has come under fire from Republicans for asking some prominent healthcare groups for financial help in executing the central elements of President Obama's healthcare reform law, which are slated to take effect within the next year. But Pelosi, who shepherded the proposal through the House, said educating the public on the intricacies of the complex law...

Although sequestration’s spending cuts grab headlines, the tax hikes are having greater fiscal effect. Unlike the much-mentioned March 1, sequester, the tax hikes began January 1, and are permanent. The disparate impacts and disproportional reaction have everything to do with Washington’s entitlement culture – that Washington feels entitled to tax and spend. Washington began this year by definitively breaking with its recession mindset. Until then, the ostensible focus had been on protecting the economic recovery, regardless of budgetary impact. For this reason, the Bush tax cuts, which liberals had always vehemently opposed, had been extended and a 2% payroll tax...

One of the problems with positive rights though, which conservatives and libertarians tend to point out, is that in order for them to mean anything in practice, someone else will inherently have to provide the means by which they are given. For example, if you have the right to health-care, then a doctor or nurse will have to at some point, render that care. Either the medical practitioner will have to be paid for his or her rendering of care, or he or she will have to be compelled to render it. This is manifestly different from a negative right...

Play is serious business for Tom Evers, as serious as a million dollars. His idea to make play more meaningful is one of 30 semifinalists in the St. Paul Forever Challenge contest to use $1 million to make St. Paul a better city. "We teach how to lead games and diffuse conflict," said Evers, who hopes to enhance play for children and adults. On Thursday, May 9, the St. Paul Foundation announced the semifinalists. The foundation's idea competition has been operating for years, but interest exploded when the prize was jacked up to $1 million this year. More than 900...

Despite the Obama administration’s generous support for green energy, job creation in the sector has both lagged and come at a hefty cost to taxpayers, according to a new report. According to the Institute for Energy Research, the Department of Energy has spent nearly $26 billion since 2009 on its Section 1703 and 1705 loan programs. However, these two programs only yielded 2,308 permanent jobs — meaning the cost to taxpayers was $11.25 million per job.

Paul Krugman has never been shy about proclaiming that he is right and everyone else is wrong — and not just wrong, but “knaves and fools.” Lately, however, one begins to worry that he might actually hurt himself, so vigorously has he been patting himself on the back for his opposition to “austerity” (defined as any cut in government spending, anytime, anywhere). On his latest victory lap, Krugman is celebrating two things. First, a group of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst discovered a small error in a widely cited paper by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff that showed...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded more than $400,000 to a research project involving underwear that can detect when a person smokes cigarettes. The University of Alabama has received two grants totaling $402,721 for the project, which so far has produced a “very early prototype” of the monitoring system, which -- in its current state -- fits like a vest. The goal of the three-year study is to “develop a wearable sensor system comprised of a breathing sensor integrated into conventional underwear.” The Personal Automatic Cigarette Tracker (PACT for short) is intended to accurately measure when and...

The state would set up a "school climate center" and individual districts would face additional reporting, training and other requirements to reduce school bullying under a bill passed by the Minnesota House on Monday, May 6. The bill passed 72-57, with all the support from Democratic-Farmer-Laborers and all the opposition from Republicans. The companion bill is scheduled for a hearing in the Senate E-12 finance subcommittee Tuesday. Bill sponsor Jim Davnie, DFL-Minneapolis, said the measure would take Minnesota from having one of the weakest anti-bullying laws in the country to "instead being a leader in building safe and supportive school...

It was reported the other day on an inside page of the Pioneer Press, and without nearly enough fanfare, that more than six out of 10 women who give birth in their early 20s are unmarried. That is census data, from census demographers, from the very government that then becomes responsible for many, if not most, of those unmarried women and children. If that isn't an astonishing statistic, it should be. Why, to any logical person's way of thinking, it explains everything in terms of government at all levels bloating out of control. Supposing that even angels might fear to...

Even after a hard-fought deficit-cutting deal in 2011 and a tax-increase measure in January, Washington still has a considerable way to go to wrestle intractable budget deficits under control. The Congressional Budget Office estimates cumulative deficits of roughly $7 trillion over the coming decade and warns "such high and rising debt would have serious consequences," including higher interest costs for the government, reduced national savings and investment and a potential fiscal crisis. ——— The campaign promise: "I've put forward a specific $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan."—President Barack Obama, Oct. 3, 2012, presidential debate. ——— The prospects: Obama based the $4 trillion...

The Obama administration spent between $2.52 million and $2.77 million for hotel rooms and rental cars during the president's 2012 trip to Mexico for a G-20 summit, MailOnline has learned. Government travel documents available online show that the State Department contracted with a travel agency to spend between $1,889,383 and $2,078,327 on hotel rooms alone, for the President, the Secret Service, and the rest of the State Department and White House staff and VIPs. And rental cars for the trip cost between $630,760 and $693,836, according to a separate contract document. That paperwork disclosed that on previous visits to Mexico,...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says he shares colleagues’ concerns that the Affordable Care Act could become a “train wreck” if it’s not implemented properly. Reid warned that people will not be able to choose health insurance plans on government health exchanges if federal authorities lack the resources to set them up and educate the public.

Sen. Diane Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum won a construction contract for California’s high-speed rail project, reports the California Political Review. Author Laer Pearce says Perini-Zachary-Parsons, a construction group partially owned by Blum’s investment firm, Blum Capital, and their investors, bagged the nearly billion dollar contract:

Pending home sales rose more than expected while real personal income continues to struggle. And the personal savings rate remains low. Looks like a zero interest rate, leveraged recovery to me! April 29 (Bloomberg) — More Americans than forecast signed contracts in March to buy previously owned homes, another indication of progress in the housing market. The index of pending home sales increased 1.5 percent after a revised 1 percent decline the prior month. Excluding the April 2010 first time homeowner tax credit, this is the highest print since 2007. In related news, consumer spending in the U.S. rose more...

Obama's sales pitch is coming - and you're paying for it. The Obama administration has inked an $8 million public relations contract to promote the health insurance exchange, which Sen. Max Baucus calls "the single most important provision of the ACA." According to an HHS official, PR firm Weber Shandwick will use "a range of communications tactics, with a emphasis on paid media and digital outreach" to raise public awareness of the exchanges. Politico says they'll be targeting "the young and healthy" for enrollment. HHS spent even more last year. In 2012, HHS signed a $3.1 million contract with the...

Fresno's shaky finances are not only hurting the city's reputation in U.S. capital markets. They're hurting Fresno County's, too, according to some financial experts. Analysts say while Fresno County has maintained a credit-worthy balance sheet, overcoming such hurdles as recession, soaring pension costs and slow economic growth, the county can't shake its association with the famously broke city when it comes to getting financing. The shared name -- and investor confusion about who is who -- cast a shadow over at least two county debt sales last year, analysts say. And future county sales, such as a planned short-term debt...

Even as the mandated sequester bites into U.S. federal spending -- and newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry boasts that he is cutting his budget by 6 percent -- the State Department is planning to boost spending on the United Nations in 2014 by more than 4 percent to at least $3.6 billion

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Bankrupt San Bernardino will resume paying into the state pension fund on July 1, but the California city will continue to renege on other debts including payments to bondholders, according to a new budget released late Thursday. Nearly a year after it halted contributions to America's biggest pension fund, San Bernardino will resume payments to Calpers at the start of the new fiscal year - but continue to not pay other creditors, according to the budget. San Bernardino will not make interest and principal payments on $50 million in pension bonds issued in 2005, according to...

The Obama administration has taken great pains to cultivate the impression in the media that the president’s 2014 budget plan is a genuine effort at compromise. According to the president’s team, if the GOP were to reject this offer, it would be a sure sign that Republicans were not interested in budget-cutting, or entitlement reform, or preventing a debt crisis — because that’s what the president’s 2014 budget would supposedly deliver. The budget’s numbers betray a far different reality. Consistent with Obama’s prior budget submissions, this one embodies the president’s statist governing philosophy and his indifference to the urgent need...

Setting up insurance exchanges — the centerpiece of President Obama's healthcare reform law — is costing the Health and Human Services Department a whole lot more than it originally expected. According to budget documents released Wednesday, the department expects to spend $4.4 billion on exchange grants to the states by the end of this year — double its estimates a year ago. The HHS is also asking Congress for another $1.5 billion to set up a federal exchange in 26 states. The department has cobbled together money from other programs to get started, but officials said they need another $800...

Fiscal Policy: Shorn of its accounting gimmicks, the president's budget isn't a "balanced" plan to get the debt crisis under control. It's a monument to fiscal irresponsibility. With much fanfare and a lot of media hype, President Obama unveiled his latest budget plan — two months late. An IBD review of Obama's budget finds that, among other things, it: • Boosts spending and deficits over the next two years. Obama's own budget numbers show that he wants to hike spending over the next two years by $247 billion compared with the "baseline," ...

General Electric Co. GE +0.35%plans to cut 950 jobs at its unionized locomotive plant in Pennsylvania and shift one-sixth of the employment to a newer facility in Texas, citing weaker North American locomotive demand due to falling coal prices. The job cuts will begin in October pending a 60-day period of talks with union leaders. GE met with representatives from the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers union Tuesday. The company plans to add 160 jobs in Texas. GE's factory in Fort Worth, Texas—which isn't unionized and began locomotive production in January—is 20% more productive per employee than the more-than-100-year-old...

What is Tax Freedom Day? Tax Freedom Day is the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year. A vivid, calendar based illustration of the cost of government, Tax Freedom Day divides all federal, state, and local taxes by the nation’s income. In 2013, Americans will pay $2.76 trillion in federal taxes and $1.45 trillion in state taxes, for a total tax bill of $4.22 trillion, or 29.4 percent of income. April 18 is 29.4 percent, or 108 days, into the year. Why is Tax Freedom Day later...

The citation of $400,000 of taxpayer dollars being spent on a study of duck genitalia as an example of waste was assailed by National Science Foundation spokeswoman Deborah Wing. “I would say that the poll showing nearly 90% of respondents disapproving of this kind of outlay by the federal government bolsters my confidence that we are on the right track in our funding decisions,” Wing contended. “To the average person, this looks like a poor use of money. This is why expert opinion must overrule an uninformed general public.” “Lost in the rush to ridicule how federal funds are disbursed...

Several European countries, including Cyprus, have been mired in economic stagnation or decline for five years or more. Yet other countries in Asia and Latin America have flourished. What are the weakest economies doing wrong? What are the strongest doing right? Economist Jim O’Neill coined the acronym BRIC in 2001 to refer to four economies which showed great potential then and now — Brazil, Russia, India and China. More recently, he added four more promising MIST economies — Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey. In mid-2008, The Economist magazine drew a sharp contrast between the booming BRIC economies and four...

Edward C. Prescott, the 2004 Nobel Laureate in economics, says the U.S. economy is “slowly becoming more depressed” and that the spending being pursued by politicians in Washington will “create more poverty.”

Tens of thousands of health care professionals, union workers and community activists hired as "navigators" to help Americans choose Obamacare options starting Oct. 1 will be paid up to $48 an hour, more than six times the federal minimum wage of $7.25, according to new regulations issued Wednesday. The 63-page rule covering navigators, drawn up by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, also said the government will provide free translators for those not fluent in English -- no matter what their native language is. It is still not clear how many navigators will be required. California, however, provides a...

This week marks the one-month anniversary of one of the most terrifying events in American history: the sequester. So, with great trepidation, I have climbed out of my bunker to survey the devastation and send off this column. I was shocked to discover that somehow mankind had survived. Government spending had been cut, or at least the rate of growth had been slowed, yet everywhere I looked people were going about their daily lives as if nothing had happened. There has been no outbreak of diseases from tainted, uninspected meat. Airplanes have not fallen from the sky; indeed, they continue...

President Obama on Tuesday outlined a government-sponsored initiative to map the human brain, casting the proposal as a way to discover new cures for neurological disease and strengthen the economy. “Ideas are what power our economy,” Obama said in announcing the proposal from the White House East Room. “When we invest in the best ideas before anyone else does, our businesses and our workers can make the best products and deliver the best services before anyone else does.” The project would use about $100 million in federal money over the next fiscal year

The top watchdog for the U.S. Energy Department has found repeated examples of the agency overpaying contractors at national labs – with the most recent being a decision to approve exorbitant executive salaries at a cost to taxpayers of up to $3.45 million. The March 22 Office of Inspector General report found the agency awarded the salaries to 10 executives as part of a $2.2 billion environmental cleanup contract in 2011 at the East Tennessee Technology Park, in the city of Oak Ridge. The investigation found a senior management official at the Oak Ridge Office approved the salaries -- which...

EditorÂ’s Note: Graphic descriptions follow (You were warned). WhatÂ’s that you say about sequestration and consequences of it? Apparently Barack Obama talks about sequestration pains, while he and his family is indulging in vacations at our expense, but thereÂ’s more. In light of the current cases concerning sodomites at the Federal lever seeking to undermine and redefine marriage, the Obama administration is spending $350 million to indoctrinate children sexually. While the White House says sequestration has eliminated funds for children touring the White House, President Obama has no problem spending $350 million federal tax dollars for sexual indoctrination programs starting...

Sun Valley, Idaho ( KMVT-TV / KTWT-TV ) Sun Valley is known to be a getaway for celebrities and the First Family is no different. In an exclusive photo obtained by Idaho's First News, you can see the First Daughters, Malia and Sasha Obama skiing at River Run Thursday. The Sun Valley Ski Patrol confirms the girls were enjoying the wonders of the mountain. We also received unconfirmed reports the daughters were staying at Thunder Spring in Sun Valley.

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will press Congress to pass new tax incentives and other flexibility measures aimed at attracting more private sector investment in infrastructure projects around the country, a senior administration official said.</p> <p>The president will flesh out the details of his proposals during a speech Friday at a Miami port that is undergoing $2 billion in upgrades, funded by public and private money. In his quick trip to South Florida, Obama will try to show the public that the economy remains his top priority in the midst of high-profile campaigns on immigration reform and gun control.</p>

Working for the public good has also worked well for one California county administrator’s bank account. According to reports by several newspapers, Alameda County, in the San Francisco Bay Area, is paying its County Administrator Susan Muranishi, north of $400,000—for life. This includes a generous base salary of $301,000, plus taxpayer-funded deferred pension plans paid for by the county. The pension accounts are set by a formula that multiplies years of service by 2 to 3 percent of the top salary to calculate the benefit, the San Jose Mercury News reports. With 38 years of service under her belt, the...

Dem Strategist Hillary Rosen on CNN: "This sequester has belt-tightening all over the place and I think you could argue, for appearance sake, 'Let's do this, let's do that.' There are a hundred things. I don't know that the Republican members of Congress have cancelled all of their Spring Break 'codels,' as they call them, the boondoggle trips that they take. That would also be an appearance thing.

A new poll for the Hill newspaper finds that “more voters trust the Democratic Party than the Republican Party on budgetary issues . . . even though a strong majority actually prefer Republican fiscal policies.” The poll of 1,000 likely voters was taken last week by Pulse Opinion Research. It asked respondents to choose between two different budget approaches without their being identified with a particular party. A total of 55 percent picked a plan similar to the one offered by House budget chairman Paul Ryan: Trimming federal spending by $5 trillion, not raising taxes, and reaching a balanced budget...

A tearful Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla) blamed “heartless Republicans” for the “severe hardships” the sequester is imposing on members of her staff. “Nearly half of my office staff has been forced to forgo lunch on a daily basis because of the cruel budget cuts that have been forced down our throats by the GOP,” the Congresswoman claimed. The “toll of suffering” has been less than half because “some have been able to make do with sack lunches of leftovers or peanut butter sandwiches they bring from home,” she explained. “This is not a solution that can be applied across-the-board, though....

Minnesota taxpayers paid for trips to places like Bora Bora, Costa Rica and New Zealand and all of the trips were for artists. State records show the Minnesota Arts Board dished out 114 grants under the Artists' Initiative program between 2009 and 2013. The money went to artists who traveled to 40 countries and 20 different states. The program spent $5.6 million in that time with 15 percent of the trips overseas. The Arts Board tells 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS the money is not from the voter-approved Legacy Fund. The Arts Board says it comes from the state's general fund because...