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Cigarette taxes turn a frowned-upon habit into a popular revenue source. But a recent study found that cigarette taxes often lead to other tax hikes later. The National Taxpayers Union found a 70 percent chance that the so-called sin taxes will not produce the expected revenue, as people buy fewer packs. The taxpayer advocate organization reported that from 2007 to 2011, 25 of 37 cigarette tax increases were joined by other new tax hikes within two years.

Inside Edition: Newport Beach Lifeguards Make $200,000 and Can Retire at Age 50 The popular TV show Inside Edition does an expose on lifeguard compensation in Newport Beach, California: (Video)

Take Oakland, which is Detroit's doppelganger on the West Coast. The run-down Bay Area city, which has the highest crime rate in California, recently laid off more than 100 police to fund retirement benefits and pension-obligation bonds. Murders and robberies shot up by nearly 25% last year. To avert steeper cuts, the city borrowed an additional $210 million to finance pensions. . . Philadelphia is spending about 20% of its budget on pensions to make up for years of short-changing the system.

Ronald Zajac, of Northville, Michigan, the general counsel of Detroit’s two pension funds, and Paul Stewart, of Detroit, Michigan, a former trustee of Detroit’s Police and Fire Retirement System, were both charged today in a superseding indictment with participating in a bribery and kickback conspiracy involving over $200 million in investments before the two city of Detroit pension funds United States Attorney Barbara L. McQuade announced today. McQuade was joined in the announcement by FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert D. Foley, III. Zajac and Stewart were added as defendants in a superseding indictment that had already charged former city...

Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina ordered on Friday that Detroit’s bankruptcy be withdrawn. Aquilina said the 2012 Michigan law that allowed Gov. Rick Snyder to approve the city’s bankruptcy filing, the largest municipal bankruptcy filing ever in the United States, violates the Michigan Constitution. Specifically, Article IX Section 24, which holds that pension plans and retirement systems “shall not be diminished or impaired.” Aquilina said that she will ensure that President Barack Obama gets a copy of her order. “It’s also not honoring the president, who took [Detroit’s auto companies] out of bankruptcy.” bilde “I know he’s watching...

We’ve got another one, ya’ll. I thought Melissa Harris-Perry’s utterly illogical talking point about Detroit serving as an example of what “Republicans would impose on us” was bad, but this… Do you think that maybe he actually believes what he’s saying, or that he’s just straight-up lying through his teeth because there is literally no good way to spin Detroit’s fiscal collapse as anything other than the inevitable conclusion of a total progressive utopia without peddling outright falsehoods? Because, according to Mr. Schultz — and stay with him here, because there’s a good chance you might not have realized this...

The City of Detroit filed for bankruptcy yesterday afternoon. It owes as much as $20 billion, and there is no conceivable way that debt will ever be paid. The city offered its debtors 10 cents on the dollar, but the debtors refused. A good deal of the blame -- rightly or wrongly -- will be placed at the feet of municipal workers -- sanitation, water, sewer, cops, firefighters and so on. The pressure of ever-rising wages for no additional work, leading to ever-rising pension costs, plus ever-increasing benefits and ever more closely defined work rules will likely be found at...

Every Monday since April, thousands of North Carolina residents have gathered at the State Capitol to protest the grotesque damage that a new Republican majority has been doing to a tradition of caring for the least fortunate. Nearly 700 people have been arrested in the “Moral Monday” demonstrations, as they are known. But the bad news keeps on coming from the Legislature, and pretty soon a single day of the week may not be enough to contain the outrage. In January, after the election of Pat McCrory as governor, Republicans took control of both the executive and legislative branches for...

You know a city is in deep trouble when its mayor invites Wall Street but not the press and not private citizens to a closed meeting to discuss the future, including a sell-off of city assets. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, whose municipality has the lowest credit rating of the five most-populous U.S. cities, did just that. My translation: Philadelphia is bankrupt. However, that easily discernible fact will of course be denied until it officially happens. Please consider Philadelphia Holds Closed Meeting With Wall StreetPhiladelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, whose municipality has the lowest credit rating of the five most-populous U.S. cities,...

An extra €11.2 billion ($14.4 billion) is needed to cover unpaid bills from the EU budget, the European Commission said on Wednesday (March 27). Budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski said he tabled the amending budget in a bid to plug gaps in the 2012 and 2013 spending plans. The request for cash “cannot come as a surprise,” he said, adding that earlier postponement of payments had created a “snowballing effect of unpaid claims transferred onto the following year.” …

The first budget from Senate Democrats in four years includes nearly $1 trillion in new taxes but would not balance the budget. The blueprint unveiled by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Tuesday to her Democratic colleagues would also turn off the next nine years of the sequester and replace those spending cuts with a 50-50 mix of tax increases and spending cuts. The budget would dedicate $100 billion to economic stimulus in the form of infrastructure spending and job training. Murray argues that her budget cuts $1.85 trillion from deficits over 10 years. But once the sequester...

The first budget from Senate Democrats in four years includes nearly $1 trillion in new taxes but would not balance the budget. The blueprint unveiled by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Tuesday to her Democratic colleagues would also turn off the next nine years of the sequester and replace those spending cuts with a 50-50 mix of tax increases and spending cuts. The budget would dedicate $100 billion to economic stimulus in the form of infrastructure spending and job training.

The Obama administration denied an appeal for flexibility in lessening the sequester’s effects, with an email this week appearing to show officials in Washington that because they already had promised the cuts would be devastating, they now have to follow through on that. In the email sent Monday by Charles Brown, an official with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Brown asked “if there was any latitude” in how to spread the sequester cuts across the region to lessen the impacts on fish inspections. He said he was discouraged by officials in Washington, who...

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) urged her colleagues to reach a compromise to prevent spending cuts through sequestration, arguing that government programs are already as lean as they can be. "We're at the bone almost, and sequester, that is across-the-board cuts, will literally destroy us and put us in a recession," she said on the House floor Wednesday. She called on Republicans to meet Democrats at the negotiating table and rejected the idea that President Obama delivered a partisan State of the Union address Tuesday night. "May I ask them to take some cotton out of their ears, because in...

p>BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, right here on this program, we had a sound bite for you. It was Nancy Pelosi saying, "We don't have a spending problem." She said we have a budget deficit problem. I intended to make a point about this yesterday. As we do almost every day on this program, I had a call or I brought the subject up myself about my optimism, about how, at some point all of this is gonna bottom out and we're gonna rebound. And I've been honest with you about that optimism. I don't know what or...

Gov. Mark Dayton wants to tax the sale of food, clothing, and just about everything else you buy in the worst possible way. His budget proposes a $2.1 billion, or 20.7 percent, sales tax increase. Since everyone pays sales tax, everyone will pay Dayton's sales tax increase. But it's worse than that. Dayton's tax plan violates the basic principles of tax reform. It intensifies the pain of taxation by imposing hidden taxes on intermediate business purchases. This causes "tax pyramiding," which is a big mistake. According to non-partisan legislative researchers, "Standard tax policy principles argue that intermediate business purchases should...

Illinois’ credit rating has taken another hit. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service downgraded the state from an “A” rating to “A-minus”, making it the worst in the country.

Suddenly a handshake from David Cameron probably seems an awful lot more inviting. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy could become the next wealthy Frenchman to flee to Britain over his country’s looming tax hikes on the rich. Mr Sarkozy – who famously snubbed the Prime Minister’s attempt to shake his hand after Mr Cameron vetoed changes to the EU treaty in 2011 – is reportedly planning to move to London to set up a £800million investment fund. The 57-year-old, who was ousted from office last June, has amassed a fortune from £150,000-an-hour public speaking engagements and is now said to be...

Candy, soda, tobacco, and bottles of water and sports drinks are all in Gov. Deval Patrick's crosshairs as he announced another $2 billion tax wish list in his $34.8 billion proposed fiscal 2014 budget at the State House this afternoon. Among the tax highlights: The cigarette excise tax would be hiked by $1 to $3.51 per pack. Taxes on cigars and smokeless tobacco would also increase. The state would essentially expand the bottle bill to include water bottles and sports drinks on deposits. Candy and soda would no longer be exempt from the state sales tax. Patrick last week proposed...