Free Republic

Asked during last night’s Republican debate about whether his campaign was downplaying his health care plan, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney replied, “I love it.” While praising the plan as a model of bipartisanship — and citing support for it from both Ted Kennedy and the Heritage Foundation — Romney failed to tell viewers what was in the plan. It’s worth reminding people, therefore, that the plan Romney loves: Imposes an unprecedented individual mandate, requiring everyone in Massachusetts to purchase a government-designated insurance product or face thousands of dollars in tax penalties. Significantly increased Medicaid eligibility and provided taxpayer-funded subsidies...

Next time you run into a group of Democrats, offer to splash water on their faces. They've spent 2009 in a dream state, and it's time they wake up. They're convinced that they can subsidize health insurance for millions of people while also "bending the cost curve" of health care spending. They want to sign us up for the political equivalent of one of those three-step "eat more to lose weight" diets. Step one: Pile on the expenditures, regulations, taxes, and fees. Step two: Close your eyes. Step three: Pray it all works out in the end. Sorry, it won't....

Well, it's not quite as bad as Paul Krugman critiquing the Fox Business Network, but a little troubling because tax dollars are being spent to undertake such an effort. A Nov. 27 post by incoming White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer on the The White House Blog attempted to fact check a Nov. 27 column by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, proving the left-wing noise machine isn't the only shop in Washington, D.C. criticizing conservative voices (h/t Amanda Carpenter of The Washington Times). "In today's Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer takes great pains to paint a bleak picture of health care...

Apparently, Arnold Schwarzenegger owes the IRS a total of over $79K from 2004 and 2005.

Today Americans for Tax Reform, a non-profit taxpayer advocacy group, gave the first ever “Richard Rich Backstabber Award,” to current California State Senator and newly appointed Lt. Governor, Abel Maldonado. For those unfamiliar with Rich and why Abel Maldonado should be bestowed with an award in his name, Rich was Lord Chancellor during the reign of Henry the VI of England and Solicitor General under Henry the VIII. Rich is best known for perjuring himself in order to secure a death sentence for Saint Thomas More (who happens to be the patron saint of those who work in politics and...

This week ABC 7's Chuck Goudie aired a report made in conjunction with the Better Government Association that explored the efficacy of the Illinois Township and what they discovered is just more waste and ripoffs of the Illinois taxpayer. Townships were originally created for two main purposes: raising taxes to take care of roads in unincorporated areas and to provide temporary aid to the poor. Unfortunately the I-Team and the BGA have discovered that this extra layer of government is collecting large amounts of taxes, spending only a fraction on the two purposes for which they were created, and banking...

Brazil's president said Thursday that "gringos" should pay Amazon nations to prevent deforestation, insisting rich Western nations have caused much more past environmental destruction than the loggers and farmers who cut and burn trees in the world's largest tropical rain forest. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made the comments just before an Amazon summit in which delegates signed a declaration calling for financial help from the industrial world to halt the deforestation that causes global warming. "I don't want any gringo asking us to let an Amazon resident die of hunger under a tree," Silva said. "We want to...

Hundreds of patients may have died needlessly at an NHS hospital due to appalling standards of care, a damning report has found. Poor nursing care, filthy wards and lack of leadership ... Among the worst failings discovered by the Care Quality Commission were a lack of basic nursing skills, curtains spattered with blood on wards, mould in vital equipment and patients being left in A&E for up to ten hours. Concerns about death rates at the foundation hospital trust were first raised a year ago, but an internal investigation failed to find anything wrong and managers dismissed the concerns. But...

New Geography, the online magazine created by Joel Kotkin and others with a special focus on demographics and trends, has been tracking the implosion of California in an interesting way: by comparing it to Texas. Texas and California are America’s two most populous states, together numbering approximately 55 million people, which is only about 6 million less than the United Kingdom, where I live. California, as everyone knows, has a coolness factor that Texas cannot match. Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and wine. Say no more. But, unless one has been living in a cave, everyone knows that the cool state is...

A new poll shows that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney now has a less than 50 percent favorability rating among Republican voters. Public Policy Polling has released its monthly 2012 survey, which finds that while 65 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and 75 percent have a favorable opinion of former GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, only 48 percent view Mitt Romney favorably. Romney's popularity has fallen 19 points in the poll since May. Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling says the healthcare plan that Romney passed in Massachusetts when he was governor...

congress is proposing to fund Obamacare is by putting a cap on Flexible Spending Medical Accounts. If you are not familiar with those accounts, they allow you to take pre-tax funds from every paycheck into an account managed by your company (or your company's vendor), that you can remove on a tax free basis to pay for uncovered medical bills. This has been a particularly useful program in my family as I have two children with learning disabilities as well as chronic physical conditions (one with scoliosis the other with JRA). At various times in their lives each has required...

A new federal rewards program dishes out cash to people who turn in friends, relatives and employers for fudging their tax returns. For 24 years Vincent A. Spondello toiled away as an accountant for a group of related companies known as Monex, a large Newport Beach, Calif. precious metals dealer. A trusted employee, he prepared tax returns and was given such tasks as overseeing the destruction of old corporate documents. It turns out that some records that were supposedly destroyed he took home instead. In May Spondello sent 25 boxes of original Monex papers to the Internal Revenue Service--documents that...

Happy Thanksgiving ...!?As you finalize your Thanksgiving plans, be sure to reserve a seat at your table for an extra guest: Uncle Sam. Have you ever asked yourself how much of the cost of your Thanksgiving feast is owed to the fact that the government takes a big bite at it in hidden taxes? The Americans for Tax Reform Foundation and the Center for Fiscal Accountability have calculated just how big that government “tax bite” for Thanksgiving is, and it clocks in at a whopping 40.91 percent....

Of all of the insanity that has come out of our current democrat/communist congress, this has to really take the cake. These dangerous loons have been spending us into oblivion for quite some time. The spending has been beyond irresponsible, it borders on treason. This is a bi-partisan effort, by the way. Both parties are out of control, but the democrat/communist party is now out there where the busses don’t run. We all know the far left loons that infect Congress, and the nation as a whole, hate our military, despise it, actually. The left’s contempt for our military is...

WASHINGTON — Americans could pay billions of dollars more in new taxes for a few years before they're likely to see significant change in the nation's health care system under legislation that Congress is considering. Some analysts said that's not necessarily bad. Delaying major health care changes until at least 2013, as the pending Senate and House of Representatives bills would do, would give the government sufficient money and time to get things right.

For the first time ever, Arizona needs to borrow money to pay its bills. State Treasurer Dean Martin estimates the state will need to borrow $700 million to get it through revenue shortfalls through June 30. As of Tuesday, Martin said the state went over $500 million in IOUs .

"Does anybody have any evidence (concrete example from a period of our history) that taxes stifle development? Just one??" Saw this question posted on FB and was curious if there are concrete examples of taxes hurting development. If there are I am sure someone on FR can help. Thanks

Senate Democrats' health care bill would create a new marriage penalty by imposing a tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but hitting married couples making just $50,000 more. That's one of 17 new taxes imposed by the bill, which also creates a levy on elective plastic surgery - some call it "botax" - and places a 40 percent excise tax on those who have generous health care plans. "If you have insurance, you get taxed. If you don't have insurance, you get taxed. If you need a life-saving medical device, you get taxed. If you need prescription medicines, you...

It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact. In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. Since then the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck...

ReGaining Reagan Sarah Carlsruh, November 23, 2009 Today, there are “far too many people saying ‘let’s move beyond Reagan,’” lamented Steve Hayward, author of The Age of Reagan and keynote speaker at Accuracy in Academia’s November 5th Author’s Night. Reagan stuck to an unwavering and enduring set of ideals. Yet, liberals are trying to present a distorted picture of Reagan and make him into a proto-liberal, said Hayward. Some liberals embrace the 2nd Term Reagan as a man of peace, call his foreign policy “pretty good” while condemning the Reagan of domestic policy. In contrast, Hayward insisted that “it was...

Rep. Obey Warns President Obama He Will Ask Taxpayers to Pay for War, Should More Troops Be SentThe powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee has a stark message for President Obama about Afghanistan -- sending more troops would be a mistake that could "wipe out every initiative we have to rebuild our own economy." "There ain't going to be no money for nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan," House Appropriations Chairman David Obey told ABC News in an exclusive interview. "If they ask for an increased troop commitment in Afghanistan, I am going to ask them to...

Employers already are squeezed by tight credit, rising health care costs, wary consumers and a higher minimum wage. Now, the surging jobless rate is imposing another cost. It's forcing higher state taxes on companies to pay for unemployment insurance claims. Some employers say the extra costs make them less likely to hire. That could be a worrisome sign for the economic recovery, because small businesses create about 60 percent of new jobs. Other employers say they'll cut or freeze pay. -- Chuck Ferrar, who owns a liquor store in Annapolis, Md., expects to pay $9,000 in unemployment taxes next year,...

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., warned of major cuts to Medicare and large tax increases as the U.S. Senate neared its first votes this weekend on health care reform. McCain opposes health reforms pushed by Democrats and President Barack Obama that would create a public-option government system to cover the uninsured and operate alongside private insurance companies. "I don't think Americans really understand the scam that's going on here of beginning to collect taxes, tax increases and Medicare cuts of approximately $1 trillion beginning 40 days from now," McCain said Saturday. "In other words, the first of January, according to...

In the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, the global Environmentalists have had high hope in President Obama’s promise to sign a Treaty, in which will benefit their cause: more taxes input from America. For these Environmentalists’ America is the biggest prize for realizing their goal to redistribute America’s prosperity to other nations, thus rewarding cushy and high status jobs among themselves within the non-profit global institutions. If this money dries up what’s left to do? The “Don’t You Dare Tax Me” movement to fight this unnecessary added expense has reached its peak largely due to the Environmentalists insipidity in presenting...

Not only do liberals want to tax the so-called rich in order to fund health care for illegal aliens and other uninsured millions, now a prominent member of the U.S. Senate has proposed a tax on the well to do to pay for Obama’s quagmire in Afghanistan. As reported at Bloomberg.com, in part: “Higher-income Americans should be taxed to pay for more troops sent to Afghanistan and NATO should provide half of the new soldiers, said Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.” Levin’s un-American scheme may actually find support among leftists who hate the rich more than...

The Debt Economy...

Rangel Plans to Renew Expiring Tax BreaksBy Michael Cohn November 20, 2009 House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., intends to introduce legislation next month that would keep a variety of tax breaks from expiring before the end of the year. Instead of sending the bill through his committee, Rangel plans to dispatch the bill directly to the floor of the House, according to Bloomberg.com. There are about 73 tax provisions scheduled to expire by Dec. 31, including the credit for research and experimentation expenses, deductions for tuition and state and local taxes, film and TV production expensing...

Activists Gather To Read Mayflower Compact, Sing Songs. About 100 people are expected at the Colorado Capitol Saturday afternoon to sing traditional Thanksgiving songs and to read historic documents from the nation's founding. The sing-along and reading are sponsored by Tea Party activists, who decry federal spending and call for a return to more limited government.

Forced health insurance on shaky legal groundPosted on Fri, Nov. 20, 2009 10:15 PM PHOENIX | In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health care system, a young orthopedic surgeon walked into the Goldwater Institute with an idea. The institute, America’s most potent advocate of limited government, embraced Eric Novack’s idea for protecting Arizonans from health care coercion. In 2008, Arizonans voted on Novack’s proposed amendment to the state’s Constitution: “No law shall be passed that restricts a person’s freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any...

While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president. In 2000 and 2001, while Barack Obama served as a board member for a Chicago-based charitable foundation, he helped to fund a pioneering carbon trading exchange that is likely to fill a critical role in the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme that President Obama is now trying to push rapidly through Congress. During those two years, the Joyce Foundation gave nearly...

Small Business Tax & Toil By: Larry Walker, Jr. I have been contemplating all the blood, sweat, and tears shed by Small Business owners like me. Having been in business for the past 9 years, I have come to the realization that: I am paying a hell of a lot in Taxes (and government mandated fees), and I am feeling mighty under appreciated. The Federal Government, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, chose to give a Social Security tax cut, the Making Work Pay Credit, to workers making under $75,000 per year. That's all well and...

Senate Democrats' health care bill would create a new marriage penalty by imposing a tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but hitting married couples making just $50,000 more. "If you have insurance, you get taxed. If you don't have insurance, you get taxed. If you need a life-saving medical device, you get taxed. If you need prescription medicines, you get taxed," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, who is leading the fight against the bill.

Anxious to avoid raising taxes too much to pay for their healthcare proposals, the Obama administration and its congressional allies hit on a great new idea: Make the states raise their taxes to fund the program instead. Both the House and the Senate bills require that states cover a larger percentage of their people under Medicaid — a joint state and federally funded program. The idea was to force the states to raise their taxes to cover a big part of the healthcare bill for treating poor people. Since the Feds simply can charge any increase in spending to their...

Read the full billRead the tax revenue score from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) Read the budget and tax score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) PDF of this DocumentIndividual Mandate Tax (Page 324/Sec. 1501/$8 bil): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the following schedule (capped at 8 percent of income): ==============> Check out this important piece, at ATR.org...

One of the strongest factors promoting recovery from our 10 post-World War II recessions was an unshakable conviction that, regardless of the immediate trouble, the American economy is fundamentally strong. Based on this underlying confidence, recessions and recoveries roughly conformed to the principle of the bigger the bust, the bigger the boom, and vice versa. Thus real growth in the four quarters following postwar recessions averaged 6.6% and 4.3% over the following five years. As the chief economist for Barclays, Dean Maki, said in this newspaper on Aug. 19, "You can't find a single deep recession that has been followed...

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have been working overtime to craft a climate bill that can attract significant GOP support. But they aren’t exactly scoring points with their mutual best friend in the Senate, John McCain. “Their start has been horrendous,” McCain said Thursday. “Obviously, they’re going nowhere.” McCain has emerged as a vocal opponent of the climate bill — a major reversal for the self-proclaimed maverick who once made defying his party on global warming a signature issue of his career. (snip) Former aides are mystified by what they see as a retreat on the issue, given McCain’s...

WASHINGTON -- Mayors from four U.S. cities said they are facing a once-in-a-generation fiscal crisis and that federal stimulus funds have, so far, been largely unhelpful in helping them balance budgets hit by steep drops in nearly every source of municipal revenue. The comments, from mayors of Philadelphia, San Jose, Calif; Mesa, Ariz., and Bowling Green, Ky., at a panel discussion sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the National League of Cities, underscore how the recession for local government is far from over. Mesa's mayor, Scott Smith, said the steep drops in sales-tax revenue, the city's primary source of money,...

Reform: Only a Bernie Madoff could believe the Senate's health care bill will extend coverage to 31 million Americans while cutting deficits by $127 billion over 10 years. It would be the first profitable entitlement. But that's what Majority Leader Harry Reid, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates, tells us the 2,074-page bill — said to cost only $849 billion over a decade — would do. Like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he seems to be following Vice President Joe Biden's admonition at an AARP town hall meeting that "we've got to spend money to keep from going bankrupt." We suspect Reid's...

A man owned a small ranch near Sheridan Wyoming. The Wyoming Labor Department got a tip that he was not paying proper wages to his help and sent an investigator out to interview him. "I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them," demanded the investigator.. "Well," replied the rancher, "there's my ranch hand who's been with me for 3 years. I pay him $1200 a week plus free room and board. "The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her $1000 per week plus free room and board. "Then there's the half-wit....

Yesterday Harry Reid Proudly announced CBO had scored the Senate’s bill and that claimed that the bill would save $109 Billion during the first ten years years of the plan's Today the CBO released a letter showing that Reid's information is wrong. The Majority leader "forgot to include the "doctor’s fix“, in his scoring. Once that is done the effect of the Senate Bill is to INCREASE the the deficit by $89 billion in the first 10 years.

Reid scrambles for 60 health votes With an assist from Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scrambled Wednesday to pull together 60 votes for his health reform bill, awaiting all-important cost estimates in hopes of getting the bill to the floor by the weekend. At around 2:15 p.m., the three moderate Democratic holdouts - Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson - entered Reid's office for a briefing. "He is walking through the particulars with them," said Reid’s spokesman, Jim Manley. "We need 60 votes to get this bill to the floor." Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the...

TAMPA - Business owners in Florida are about to get hit with a big tax hike: starting January 1st, all Florida businesses will have to pay skyrocketing unemployment compensation taxes to replenish the unemployment compensation trust fund.

About that health care package that EVERYONE wants? Yeah, not so freakin' much. As Ed points out at Hot Air, this is Quinnipiac, the pollsters my lefty friends love bringing up. No Rasmussen bogeyman in the house this time. There was, however, some news from Rasmussen that further indicates the great divide between what Americans actually want and what our alleged representatives keep forcing down our throats. As the policy debate has unfolded in Washington this year, voters have consistently believed that tax cuts would do more than increased government spending to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Now that...

American Voters have an idea about how to save jobs, especially Congressional Jobs. According to the latest report from Rasmussen voters believe that to create Jobs, cut taxes and stop spending. Lets face it, it worked when Reagan did it, it worked when JFK did it. 62% of all voters believe tax cuts will "save and create" Job. Only 21% believe that a new porkulus plan will be more effective. This number is exactly the same as it was when the first stimulus package was being debated in Congress, 62% of voters wanted the plan to have more tax cuts...

Transcript of remarks made by Leo Carrington (who doesn’t exist) to a mandatory meeting of all employees of Carrington Automotive Enterprises, Inc. (which doesn’t exist either) on August 17th, 2009 at the Royal Payne Hotel (a purely imaginary place) in Norfolk, Virginia (which does, in fact, exist). The Employee Meeting: I would like to start by thanking you for attending this meeting, though it's not like you had much of a choice. After all, attendance was mandatory. I'm also glad many of you accepted my invitation to your family members to be here as well. I have a few remarks...

There are, in public policies, these inconvenient things called the “secondary effects.” These are the unintended consequences of even the best intended laws. Critics of Obama’s national health care program have questioned its intentions from day one. Few doubt the program will lead to a serious rationing of health care (adding 40 million on the system and allegedly lowering spending will have that impact) and will lead to increase taxes for millions of Americans. According to public opinion surveys, the number one issue of most voters is unemployment. This sentiment is backed up by the hard fact that unemployment recently...

Senator Harry Reid’s health care bill included an array of new provisions that are being scrutinized on Wednesday night, but one particular tax proposal in particular already has attracted a buzz — a 5 percent levy on elective cosmetic procedures that was quickly dubbed the “botax.” Hold the guffaws. For all the instant punchlines about taxing nose jobs, breast enlargements and facelifts — cynics righteously demanded to know if members of Congress had written in an exemption for themselves (they did not) — the proposed tax is both serious and controversial policy. It would raise an estimated $5 billion over...

So it might be the cynic in me or call me crazy for not trusting the government, but I cannot believe that there was not more attention paid to the state’s latest accounting gimmick to save the state’s budget. Starting Sunday you may notice a few less dollars in each paycheck, 10 percent less to be specific. While the state says that the money will be returned in April, something does not sit right with me when the government helps itself to even more of my paycheck especially when so many people are already living paycheck to paycheck. Read the...

The bonus bonanza comes just a year after Goldman was ready to go under with the rest of the Wall Street risk-takers. And were it not for extraordinary measures to prop up entities like AIG, which insured Goldman's risky assets and designated Goldman a commercial bank (meaning it was protected by the Fed) on top of a $10 billion loan, Goldman would now be in Lehman Land. Yet it survived because of the government (translation: The American Taxpayer), and now as it maintains many of those same perks, Goldman has become immensely profitable and is building a war chest of...

She sounds off on Ron Paul, health care, and, of course, liberty. BY MATT SNYDERS Michele Bachmann is a regular fixture on the cable news circuit. When it comes to print, however, she takes a more measured approach; she declined a phone interview with the New York Times last month, insisting on a Q&A via email. She gave City Pages the same deal. Here's what she had to say: City Pages: Your appearance with Rep. Ron Paul surprised some folks. At first blush, it would seem the two of you might come down on very different sides on a lot...