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In a very political move, the president has announced new rules for a specific group of illegal aliens. If your parents brought you to America when you were under 16, if you have completed high school, or served in the military, and if you are under the age of 30 now, then you are most likely going to stay in America. ... As for the policy, how can you blame kids when they are dragged to the US? It's not the child's fault that laws were broken. Thus the new policy is humane, and the President believes it will make...

Venezuela will increase taxes on luxury goods, alcohol and tobacco to help shore up the government's finances, the top tax official said, as falling oil prices threaten the OPEC member's coffers. Buyers of luxury goods, including cars worth more than $30,000, will pay an excise tax of 15 percent, up from 10 percent, tax chief Jose David Cabello said late Tuesday during a televised ceremony with President Nicolas Maduro. The measures, part of a package of 28 laws Maduro decreed to bolster the country's economy, increase tax rates on products such as wine and cigarettes while eliminating some tax benefits...

Some 63% Want Candidates Elected This Year to Broker Deals With Lawmakers From Across Aisle Americans are largely pleased with the outcome of this month's midterm elections but have little faith that Republican gains in the House and Senate will prompt the two parties to work more closely to solve the nation's problems, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds. Weeks after Republicans recaptured the Senate and tightened their grip on the House, roughly three-fourths of poll participants said this month's midterm results woul produce "just some" or "not that much" change in a country that most believe has...

The Rev. Al Sharpton is perhaps best known these days for his MSNBC show. This provides viewers with a daily diet of its host misreading his teleprompter and egregiously overusing the phrase, “I mean, what is he talking about?” But there is much more to Sharpton than his left-leaning political worldview and unimpressive TV skills. He rose to national prominence in the 1980s when he falsely accused white law enforcement officials of raping a teenage African-American girl. After that, he moved on to incite anti-Semitic violence in Brooklyn and Harlem. This was his preparation for a later bid for the...

Academics often believe they are the smartest people around, and they like to tell others how best to live their lives. Add the government’s power to control people’s lives and you have a dangerous combination. Americans got a taste of this elitism when MIT’s Jonathan Gruber mocked "the stupidity of the American voter." But American voters aren’t the only ones who make mistakes. Time after time, the “architect" of ObamaCare underestimated costs and overestimated how many people would be covered. Like so many Ivory Tower academics, Gruber doesn’t understand how the real world operates. Could it be that those “stupid”...

How do you know you are the governor of a failed state? When more residents there want to leave than want to stay. And that’s the case in New Jersey; the state’s historic high taxes are making life miserable for most and if given the chance, most would vote with their feet.

If you thought the overwhelming defeat of the Education Initiative Nov. 4 was the end of tax talk in Nevada, you couldn’t be more wrong. If anything, the election results were the start of a larger discussion. But that discussion is complicated by groups competing for primacy, differing priorities and a frustrating lack of specifics on the part of big players. And that’s even before we get to Carson City and meet the new speaker of the Assembly, who says taxes should be a last resort rather than a top priority. Let’s start with business. Starting immediately after the Education...

Under Obama, U.S. personal freedom ranking slips below France Americans' assessments of their personal freedom have significantly declined under President Obama, according to a new study from the Legatum Institute in London, and the United States now ranks below 20 other countries on this measure. The research shows that citizens of countries including France, Uruguay, and Costa Rica now feel that they enjoy more personal freedom than Americans. As the Washington Examiner reported this morning, representatives of the Legatum Institute are in the U.S. this week to promote the sixth edition of their Prosperity Index. The index aims to measure...

The head of the Federal Communications Commission unveiled a plan Monday aimed at delivering high-speed Internet to classrooms and libraries around the country. To pay for the $1.5 billion proposal, the agency is planning a substantial increase in government fees on all monthly phone bills.

Congress has voted to remove the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit and the mortgage interest deduction from the tax code starting with the 2014 fiscal year. The move is almost assured to solidify the perception of the 113rd Congress of the United States as deeply disconnected from the struggles and desires of the populace it is supposed to serve. The move, long championed by entitlement reform advocates like congressman Paul Ryan R-Wisconsin and Ted Cruz R-Texas, will cut entitlement payouts by a staggering 177 billion dollars. 54.33 billion dollars in savings will be realized from discontinuing the...

Schumer: Feds should cover Ebola costsALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Sen. Charles Schumer says the federal government should reimburse New York City and Bellevue Hospital for costs related to Ebola. The Democrat says Sunday that more than $20 million has been spent on tracking health professionals and others arriving from Ebola-stricken countries and treating Dr. Craig Spencer, a physician who recovered from the illness after receiving treatment at Bellevue.

Following excerpted from a 2012 NY Times article I found while looking for the actual amount of money (cash - non-taxed!) being sent overseas by our illegal aliens. Now, some of this money is obviously sent overseas by legal aliens, legal immigrants, and legal families. (Yeah, right sure.) Analysts expect the market for money transfers to grow. The value of cross-border transfers is expected to reach $437 billion in 2012, up from $387 billion in 2009, according to the Aite Group, a research and advisory firm. In the United States, this is led partly by a growth in transfers to...

This year, your real Christmas tree will be more expensive than it needs to be. That’s because the Department of Agriculture is imposing a fee on each fresh-cut tree sold. A few months ago, the federal government created a national marketing program to advertise the virtues of real Christmas trees. It’s funded by a 15-cent surcharge that will be added to the cost of each tree sold. It’s not a tax, Washington insists -- merely a fee that you have to pay. “The Christmas tree industry requested this initiative to fund Christmas tree research and marketing, the program will be...

Why an MIT health economist who was one of the health-care law's architects could cause its utter destruction. For five years, Republicans have been searching for the perfect messenger to speak out against Obamacare. They have finally found him. His name in Jonathan Gruber. Gruber is the MIT health economist who was one of the health-care law's architects. He also helped design the (now mostly defunct) Romneycare system in Massachusetts, which is currently being devoured by its federal progeny. He has also been single-handedly responsible for the biggest Obamacare-related gaffes since Nancy Pelosi said we'd have to pass the bill...

Next year, 35 percent of uninsured people would rather pay the upped fine for not having health insurance than buy Obamacare coverage — up 6 points from this time last year, when the penalty was hundreds of dollars lower. According to a Gallup poll released Thursday, 55 percent of the uninsured said they’re planning on getting coverage in 2015, but 35 percent are fine with just paying the individual mandate’s tax on going uninsured. In November 2013, just 29 percent of the uninsured said they were willing to pay the $95 fine in 2014 for remaining uninsured. But in 2015,...

Since Americans have become more mobile the demand for wireless access has increased. However, high tax burdens on wireless services have made it increasingly difficult for consumers to pay their cell phone bills. In a recently released report, Wireless Taxation in the United States 2014, Scott Mackey and Joseph Henchman of the Tax Foundation highlighted the tax burdens facing wireless technology consumers. These tax burdens are significantly higher than traditional sales taxes and vary vastly from state to state, city to city. Mackey and Henchman note the overall tax burden—federal, state, and local—has increased to an average of 17.05 percent...

No excerpt allowed from Bloomberg, story here

State revenue forecasters said Monday that the state can expect hundreds of millions of budget dollars less than previously thought to fund schools, social programs and highway projects. The consensus revenue estimating group lowered the official projections it made in April by $205 million. If accurate, the revised forecast means that Gov. Sam Brownback and legislators will have to raise taxes or make deep cuts in spending during the remaining seven months of the budget year to avoid a $278 million deficit. Additional cuts will be necessary to prevent a $435 million deficit in the next budget year, the analysts...

Much of the discussion of last Tuesday's election results has addressed voters' ongoing dissatisfaction with what, by the numbers, is an improving economy. Commenters like Slate's William Saletan noted that Republicans won by using liberal-sounding economic rhetoric to play on income-stagnation angst. President Obama talked about the issue in a press conference, citing the dearth of high-wage jobs amidst the recovery. Today Josh Marshall of the progressive news and commentary site Talking Points Memo and Derek Thompson of the Atlantic poke deeper into the issue. They really poke the heck out of the issue, I tell you! Marshall's piece is...

--SNIP-- "It's really bad right now. We're in real bad shape," he said, adding that the decrease in cigarette sales has had a ripple effect on the rest of his business. He has let go of four employees in the past month. "Now it's just me, my wife and my sister." Martinez isn't alone. Other store owners and distributors in the city said they have seen a dramatic drop in revenue since the tax was added, causing them to wonder what the collateral damage will be on their livelihoods. "It's detrimental all over the city. There are probably over 2,000...