Free Republic

New research from Sarah Arnett examines states’ abilities to meet their financial obligations in the face of state budget challenges that have far outlasted the Great Recession. Fiscal simulations by the Government Accountability Office suggest that despite recent gains in tax revenues and pension assets, the long-term outlook for states’ fiscal condition is negative (GAO 2013). These simulations predict that states will have yearly difficulties balancing revenues and expenditures due, in part, to rising health care costs and the cost of funding state and local pensions. Arnett uses four different indices to analyze state solvency using each state’s fiscal year...

Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) introduced a bill Thursday that would keep a state's definition of marriage for the legal residents of that state for the purposes of federal law. If passed, the bill would require federal agencies to look at how a person's marital status is defined in their home state when determining their marital status for federal law. If, for instance, a same-sex couple lives in a state that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman and that couple got married in a state that has redefined marriage to include same-sex couples, federal law would...

United Van Lines gave the Associated Press an early look at its annual inbound vs. outbound household move statistics for 2013 and the news for Michigan looks fantastic. For the first time in 16 years Michigan is no longer in the "high-outbound" moves category, defined by United Van Lines (UVL) as 55 percent or more of customer traffic leaving a particular state. The Great Lake State has entered what UVL calls its "Balanced" category, where in-bound and out-bound traffic are similar. That's in sharp contrast to this state's lost decade: for four years between 2006 and 2009 Michigan actually had...

Some 22 states enacted 70 new provisions to target abortion last year, the second most ever, prompting an outcry from Planned Parenthood, which accused “out-of-touch Tea Party politicians” with using “every underhanded trick in the book to get these laws passed.” A new report from the Guttmacher Institute said that the 70 provisions were second in number to the nearly 90 approved in 2011. The group said that 205 abortion restrictions were approved over the past three years, more than the 189 enacted during the previous decade. The report also noted that many states increased access to abortion, such as...

Starting January 1, minimum wage workers in 13 states and four cities will see higher paychecks. While most of the increases amount to less than 15 cents per hour, workers in places like New Jersey, Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island will see a bigger bump. Earlier this year, New Jersey residents voted to raise the state's minimum wage by $1 to $8.25 per hour. And lawmakers voted to hike the wage by between 25 cents and 75 cents per hour, to $8.70 in Connecticut and $8 in Rhode Island and New York. Residents in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana,...

(Yoo-hoo, Rick Perry...) As desperation mounts at the White House, Dear Leader -although he hasn't killed his uncle yet- is sinking to new depths of lawlessness in flailing attempts to salvage his 'signature' piece of legislation, the misnomer Affordable Care Act (and the entire Obama legacy).  The latest stunt involves all but forcing insurers to cover (cheaply or free, and at a financial loss) those without HC coverage who haven't been able to get anything out of 'state exchanges' due to the ongoing healthcare.gov debacle. But it seems South Carolinians have decided they've had their fill: If the ACA nullification bill -which has...

Published on Jun 5, 2013 If this doesn't wake you up, I don't know what will. Follow us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/StormCloudsGathering Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/collapseupdates Donate: http://StormCloudsGathering.com/donate Visit our website: http://StormCloudsGathering.com Get weekly email updates: http://tinyurl.com/naturalrightsnewsl... ------ Music is original sound track created by me. Composite animations are original. Links to get you started on your research: NDAA 2013 passes with indefinite detention still intact http://rt.com/usa/news/ndaa-indefinit... The Patriot Act http://thepage.time.com/2011/02/15/ho... http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/... Obama extends Patriot Act: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05... Widespread abuse of patriot act: http://www.aclu.org/national-security... Obama tries to hide information regarding rape and sexual abuse in Abu Ghraib: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world... Obama's kill list:...

**SNIP** CNN reports that insurers had nothing to do with it in at least three states, where the states themselves forced the cancellations in order to comply with ObamaCare: President Obama may have promised Americans that they can keep their insurance if they like it, but that’s not the case in at least three states where insurance companies are required to discontinue plans that don’t meet Obamacare’s new coverage standards. Virginia, Kentucky and Idaho have told insurance companies that they must scrap insurance plans that don’t meet the minimum coverage requirements laid out in the Affordable Care Act. Some states...

There's a big race right now to become the 51st state. Forget traditional contenders like Puerto Rico. In several existing states, residents of less populous areas are hoping to create new states of their own. Citizens in 11 northeastern Colorado counties are among them. They'll vote on Nov. 5 whether to break off and form their own state. Many are unhappy about liberal state legislation they believe reflects the values of the Denver-Boulder corridor, but not their part of the world. "We're rarely listened to when it comes to legislation," says Butch White, the mayor of Ault. "I'm sure the...

If you live in a Red State which refused to build an ObamaCare exchange and you have been divested of your doctor and your healthcare plan, don’t get mad at ObamaCare or even Barack Hussein. The reason? Here is what former DC Insurance Commissioner Lawrence H. Mirel has to say about health insurance and the states: The problem is that the federal government has no legal authority to regulate health insurance rates. Insurance, including health insurance, is regulated by the states. The McCarran-Ferguson Act, which preserves the principle of state regulation of insurance...

Mark Levin's Plan is excellent but how long do we have? Secession, civil war? Only OBAMA wants that to happen.

Nothing seems to have angered the public quite so much as the Obama administration's needless closure of our national war monuments and the forcible denial of access to those sites to the warriors whom they were erected to honor. In an absolutely shameful move, the administration has selected for particular abuse those who have given the most to preserve the democratic survival of this nation. The outrage this churlishness has provoked is so widespread and deep that even Democrats should realize it as petty spitefulness coming from a petulant president and counterproductive to their cause. Sadly, none has thus far...

(Daily Caller) President Barack Obama famously promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” He later got even more specific. “If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have,” Obama said. Read the full story › http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/28/ten-states-where-obamacare-wipes-out-existing-health-care-plans/

President Barack Obama famously promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” He later got even more specific.“If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have,” Obama said.But as Obamacare’s rollout approaches, we have learned this is not true. Here are the ten states where consumers may like their health care plans, but they won’t be able to...

For all the U-S-A, U-S-A rah rah that goes around, the United States can be a shameful place.  The below map lays out some of the statistically worst things about each state. It covers everything from health to crime to travel to drug use. Some states don't have it so bad (Ohio, the "nerdiest") but others really kind of suck (Mississippi has the highest rate of obesity at 35.3% of total population ... and ranks poorly in the most number of categories. These include highest rate of child poverty at 31.9%, highest rate of infant mortality at 10.3% lowest median household...

This weekend, the New York Times' Nick Madigan called Florida a "hothouse of corruption," reporting the Sunshine State saw the greatest number of people convicted of public corruption between 2000 and 2010.That's technically true. But it's not the full story.To get a true sense of the most corrupt state, we need to know how many convictions there have been on a population basis.So we went back to Justice Department data cited by Madigan, to see which states saw the greatest number of convictions per 100,000 (Madigan actually appears to cite slightly outdated data; the latest covers the period between 2002 and...

Vid at link

I am considering a career change and think I would be a great teacher if i could survive the political arena. I am looking for comrades in arms. Are there any groups of conservative teachers that would be willing to organize to combine efforts to promote conservative thinking at your school? Would such a group survive?

BRISTOL, Conn. — Even gun makers want to be liked. So governors and other politicians from states eager to embrace the industry have descended on places where they are not so popular — like Connecticut, Maryland, New York and Colorado — offering tax breaks and outright cash grants to persuade them to relocate. “I sensed an opportunity,” said Alan Clemmons, a South Carolina state representative, who traveled to Connecticut in the spring as part of a successful effort to lure PTR, a maker of assault rifles here. “They are not feeling loved right now in Connecticut. We’re delighted to have...

When the G8 summit met in Belfast earlier in the summer, one overriding ambition drove the grand panjandrums of international order: the imperative of squeezing more money out of people and corporations. Sure, these international Fagins—that’s the famed “receiver of stolen goods” in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist—didn't quite frame the issue that way. Instead, these officials, high-living if not entirely high-minded, spoke in more mundane terms of going after “tax havens” or the need to target “aggressive tax planning.” But the real theme of the meeting was best summed up by the lyrics of Joel Gray’s famous song in Cabaret:...