Free Republic

PORTLAND Maine (Reuters) - Maine's largest city has begun clamping down on spending as newly re-elected Republican Governor Paul LePage makes good on a campaign promise to cut funding to cities and towns that give aid to undocumented immigrants. In an internal memo released on Wednesday, Portland city officials said they had frozen hiring and cut travel and overtime spending after their requests for reimbursement from the state for assistance provided to families with children in emergencies had gone unanswered since July. The budget shortfall could grow to as much as $3 million this year, city officials said, a hefty...

I have had a fulfilling career as a pediatric neurosurgeon, which unfortunately included numerous instances where worst-case scenarios played out in the operating room. Good surgeons plan ahead for these possible events so that bad outcomes are minimized. But of course, few treatment plans will succeed if the doctor continually fails to make a proper diagnosis before surgery begins. When I look at our nation’s massive federal debt, it is clear that Washington has chronically misdiagnosed the situation, which has resulted in a seemingly never-ending cycle of borrowing and spending. Much like a life-threatening disease, if the underlying cause is...

October 27, 2014BILL CLINTON SUPPORTS TOM WOLF’S TAXING AGENDA By Jana BenscoterSound bites echoed throughout Pittsburgh on Monday as the notorious former Democratic President Bill Clinton stumped for his party’s Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf. Clinton used the same message he has used in other states for other candidates, personalizing his speech to Wolf, and keeping in step with his folksy brand.The well-known Clinton was used to try to influence voters into believing “trickle-down government” isn’t working—the use of tax breaks and other economic benefits to stimulate the economy—and that Democrats have the answers to creating, growing and sustaining middle-class...

Warren Buffett is trying to salvage his liberal credentials in the wake of his latest tax avoidance scheme. The Oracle of Omaha became BFF’s with Obama & Company during the President’s reelection campaign when he expressed support for Obama’s tax-and-spend agenda. In an effort to be among the 1 percenters who supported taxing the 1 percenters, Buffett touted the virtues of forking more money over to the Internal Revenue Service…And then the Burger King/ Tim Hortons deal happened. In the wake of news about companies using “tax inversion” deals to escape the highest corporate tax rate in the world (ours),...

San Francisco is providing health care as well as education for the unaccompanied immigrant children seeking refuge in the United States. Since last year, more than 47,000 minors have crossed the border into the country unescorted by adults. As many as 500 youth refugees from conflicts in Central America are expected to arrive in San Francisco by the end of the year, the Department of Public Health estimates. And The City is solidly committed to providing them health care via San Francisco's public options, according to a resolution The City's Health Commission is expected to pass today. Under the Healthcare...

Chris Sourovelis has never had any trouble with the law or been accused of any crime. But that hasn’t stopped the City of Philadelphia from trying to take his home. The Sourouvelis family, along with thousands of others in Philadelphia, is living a Kafkaesque nightmare: Their property is considered guilty; they must prove their innocence and the very prosecutors they’re fighting can profit from their misery. Now the Institute for Justice has filed a major class-action lawsuit to end these abuses of power. Back in March, Chris’s son was caught selling $40 worth of drugs outside of the home. With...

NIMBY, literally. “I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year.“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in...

Barack Obama declared victory this week as the deadline to avoid the penalty for the individual mandate to carry health insurance passed on Monday. “The Affordable Care Act is here to stay,” the President insisted as he announced that 7.1 million people had enrolled in private insurance through Obamacare. “The debate over repealing this law is over.” Consider that presidential wish casting in a midterm cycle in which Democrats will have to constantly defend their support for the unpopular law. As Jimmy Fallon pointed out later the same evening, the numbers were neither impressive nor reliable. “It’s amazing what you...

Governor: Colorado pot market exceeds tax hopes Denver -- Colorado’s legal marijuana market is far exceeding tax expectations, according to a budget proposal released Wednesday by Gov. John Hickenlooper that gives the first official estimate of how much the state expects to make from pot taxes. The proposal outlines plans to spend some $99 million next fiscal year on substance-abuse prevention, youth marijuana-use prevention and other priorities. The money would come from a state 12.9 percent sales tax on recreational pot. Colorado’s total pot sales next fiscal year were estimated to be about $610 million. Retail sales began Jan. 1...

Colorado’s legal marijuana market is far exceeding tax expectations, according to a budget proposal released Wednesday by Gov. John Hickenlooper that gives the first official estimate of how much the state expects to make from pot taxes. The proposal outlines plans to spend some $99 million next fiscal year on substance abuse prevention, youth marijuana use prevention and other priorities. The money would come from a statewide 12.9 percent sales tax on recreational pot. Colorado’s total pot sales next fiscal year were estimated to be about $610 million. Retail sales began Jan. 1 in Colorado. Sales have been strong, though...

How did we end up in a world where Big Gulps are being banned in New York while the welcome mat for potheads is being rolled out in Colorado? How is it that cigarette smokers are pariahs, while people smoking weed are being cheered? This is despite the fact that potheads are almost universally recognized as unmotivated, low class, degenerate – and, yes, smelly failures. Even the ones that get somewhere in life, like Barack Obama, usually turn out to be mediocrities. Moreover, we all recognize that smoking is a dirty habit that makes you die younger and while drinking...

<p>Congress gave final approval Thursday to a $1.1 trillion spending bill that eases the sharp budget cuts known at the sequester and guarantees that the nation will not endure another government shutdown until at least Oct. 1.</p> <p>After three years of politically bruising and economically damaging battles over the budget, the bipartisan agreement to fund federal agencies through the rest of the fiscal year passed with little fanfare.</p>

From New York to California, local governments are spending taxpayer dollars to sterilize female deer, but critics say the approach is a misguided, ineffective and “incredibly expensive” approach to thinning out the herds that has become a suburban scourge. While some communities have used lethal means to curb the exploding population of deer, which roam backyards, destroy gardens and wander into traffic, others have taken what they see as a more humane approach — tranquilizing female deer and removing their ovaries. Average costs are about $1,200 per deer, according to a 2011 report by the New York State Department of...

With the closure of the recent Atlantic Club Casino Hotel, rumors of the bankrupt Revel being sold to Hard Rock, Las Vegas real estate prices remaining depressed, casinos opening up all around the country and online gambling legislation underway in various states, it seems as if the reasons for the very existence of Atlantic City and Las Vegas are in serious jeopardy. Beginning in the late 1940s, Las Vegas became known as the 'adult playground of the world.' Celebrities knew they made the big time when their names graced the billboards of ‘Sin City.’ Gamblers hoping to make money would...

Get ready to be blindsided by a barrage of new taxes. $1 trillion worth... They'll be coming courtesy of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. And they won't just be affecting those who make over $250,000. The bulk of these taxes will be passed on directly to the middle class. That's because while a majority of these "stealth taxes" were designed to be taxes on businesses, they're actually transferred directly to ordinary citizens. They include the investment income surtax, a Medicare payroll tax, even a "tanning tax" on those who utilize indoor tanning services. "Many of those [hidden]...

Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Prof. Richard Vedder, the Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at Ohio University. Cincinnati and Detroit are separated by barely more than 250 miles – a five-hour drive at worst, or under an hour by plane. Despite this proximity, many Cincinnatians would prefer to believe that Detroit’s horrendous fiscal situation couldn’t possibly hit their city. Not so fast. As the largest bankrupt city in America, Detroit has seen its population drop by more than half, unemployment soar to well over double the national average, and services decline. This is what happens to a locality...

The chairman of the Democratic Town Committee has asked police to put a halt to Republican campaign signs shaped like stop signs posted along local streets. Ellery Plotkin filed a complaint with the Police Department Monday morning about the octagonal GOP signs that urge voters to "STOP Raising Taxes Vote Republican." Police Sgt. Suzanne Lussier, the department spokeswoman, said six of the GOP signs were removed by officers after their placement was deemed to violate state rules or created a traffic hazard. "From here on out, it will be referred to the (Republican Town Committee) or the (Democratic Town Committee)...

WASHINGTON — As America's road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car. The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America's major roads.

Fifteen years after tobacco companies agreed to pay billions of dollars in fines in what is still the largest civil litigation settlement in U.S. history, it's unclear how state governments are using much of that money. So far tobacco companies have paid more than $100 billion to state governments as part of the 25-year, $246 billion settlement. Among many state governments receiving money, Orange County, Calif., is an outlier. Voters mandated that 80 percent of money from tobacco companies be spent on smoking-related programs, like a cessation class taught in the basement of Anaheim Regional Medical Center. "So go ahead...

WASHINGTON — Several Republican senators said Sunday a Democratic request to increase government spending is hurting chances of a deal to end the 13-day-old shutdown. Leaders of the Democratic-led Senate were dismissive of a proposal Saturday, in part, because it kept in place for too long the automatic spending cuts that went into effect earlier this year. Another round of those decade-long cuts -- dubbed the sequester and approved by Congress and the White House in 2011 -- is expected in January. The Republican complaints came as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., spoke...