Free Republic

Home cultivation has emerged as a clear sticking point in cannabis reform across many states.While it faces pushback, including from several cannabis brands, home grow is making incremental progress in medical and adult use markets, and ushering in a variety of parameters to meet state needs. The issue has made more progress than other key advocate issues, such as social equity. Yet, industry professionals say more could be done to improve access and curb industry greed.Those supporting home grow believe that it is a way to provide affordable cannabis to low income individuals, as well as to those customers who...

The QuadrigaCX cryptocurrency exchange says it can't access some $190 million in bitcoin and other funds after its founder and CEO, Gerald Cotten, died at age 30 — without sharing the password for his encrypted laptop. Cotten was "the sole officer and director" of the Canadian cryptocurrency exchange when he died, said his widow, Jennifer Robertson, in an affidavit that is part of the company's request for court assistance as it seeks protection from its creditors. The debt filing comes weeks after Robertson announced that Cotten had died — an event she described as "a shock to all of us."...

The growing underground economy may be helping to prevent the real economy from sinking further, according to analysts. The shadow economy is a system composed of those who can't find a full-time or regular job. Workers turn to anything that pays them under the table, with no income reported and no taxes paid — especially with an uneven job picture. "I think the underground economy is quite big in the U.S.," said Alexandre Padilla, associate professor of economics at Metropolitan State University of Denver. "Whether it's using undocumented workers or those here legally, it's pretty large." "You normally see underground...

Now, Social Security is sucking money out of the Treasury. This year, it will add a projected $46 billion to the nation’s budget problems, according to projections by system trustees. Replacing cash lost to a one-year payroll tax holiday will require an additional $105 billion. If the payroll tax break is expanded next year, as President Obama has proposed, Social Security will need an extra $267 billion to pay promised benefits.

Cold hard cash. It's good everywhere you go, right? You can use it to pay for anything. But that's not the case here in Louisiana now. It's a law that was passed during this year's busy legislative session. House bill 195 basically says those who buy and sell second hand goods cannot use cash to make those transactions, and it flew so far under the radar most businesses don't even know about it. "We're gonna lose a lot of business," says Danny Guidry, who owns the Pioneer Trading Post in Lafayette. He deals in buying and selling unique second hand...

Per Foxnews, a local affiliate is reporting Rangel has struck a deal. FNC is working to confirm...

Evil political wizard Karl Rove seems to be tasting blood. His analyzes the president's stuff for Obamacare in the Wall Street Journal and concludes that the pitcher is in a jam. There are no polling data or focus groups on earth that can help Mr. Obama out of this jam. He has set in motion events he appears unable to control and commitments he cannot keep. It can't be that bad. With his stratospheric intelligence (especially compared to the notoriously deficient President Bush) the president's supporters can still be confident that he'll pull a rabbit out of a hat. The...

I once had a minor medical procedure done in Mexico. The doc wanted to be paid in cash, and I obliged. Then I asked for a receipt. What followed was Keystone Cops. It took a while for me to realize I was being stupid. By asking for a receipt in the double economy of Mexico I was asking the doc to sign a confession to the tax police. He was right, I was wrong, and I learned something about the underground economy in socialized medicine. Welcome to Mexico, friends, where the people are warm and wonderful, the drug gangs ruthless...

A former exotic dancer who allegedly made about $80,000 in tips during one year is now facing multiple felony charges for failing to report the money as income. Stephanie Antes, 28, of Albertville, is charged with five felony counts and one gross misdemeanor count of failing to file and pay income taxes and filing a false income tax return, according to the Minnesota Department of Revenue. Antes worked as an exotic dancer and waitress at Rick's Cabaret in Minneapolis between 2004 and 2006. A tipster called the Department of Revenue to report that Antes had made around $80,000 per year...

Casselberry, FL The Winter Springs Civic Center 400 N. Edgemon Ave Winter Springs, FL. 32708 We will meet this month at The Winter Springs Civic Center. There will be a presentation of the FairTax followed by a Q&A and a discussion of recent volunteer activities. For more information, please contact Larry Walters at 407-949-2959. Date: Thursday, August 14, 2008 Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM This event does not require an RSVP. Registered users can request event reminders. Register

According to an IRS spokesperson in an article about anti-war tax resistance, 16.3% of Americans are in non-compliance with their taxes according to the Associated Press.That isn't fudging the numbers or coming up with creative tax deductions; it's simply evading taxes outright. While the story about the anti-war movement calling on people to not pay taxes to protest the war is interesting, the fact that a growing number of Americans are simply evading taxes is startling. According to IRS estimates, that means there is $345 billion in uncollected taxes per year or roughly 2.6% of the national GDP. As a...

Shortly after dawn, the day laborers began gathering beneath a San Diego Freeway overpass in West Los Angeles. A house painter pulled up in a pickup, looking for an assistant. He offered $12 an hour. A worker jumped in. The work is undertaken by men from Mexico and Central America. Most are in this country illegally. The jobs, which last only a day or two and pay cash, are all but invisible to the state and federal governments. No one has to fill out paperwork, follow safety regulations or pay taxes. Yet what happens here is far from marginal. The...

With not that many jobs to be had, many workers in Orange say they'd rather risk arrest seeking employment on their own. When Orange police recently arrested undocumented day laborers in a Home Depot parking lot, the incident touched off the usual reprimands and praises from different sides of the illegal immigration debate. But it also raised a question:

Thousands of illegals are marching in Chicago insisting Americans do it their way.

Incomes and population were underestimated by census, says a study that could make retailers and bankers take note. A study of central Santa Ana released Monday found that it is home to more people, with more money, than previously documented. It shows the neighborhoods surrounding downtown are home to 9.5 percent more people and 32 percent more household income than U.S. Census projections. Santa Ana city leaders, who requested the study, hope these findings will help it attract more retailers and banks to the area. The study was done by Social Compact, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research group that gets...

The opening of a formal center for day laborers in Herndon on Wednesday brought a new fervor to a debate that has raged since August, drawing roughly as many demonstrators as laborers to the site. Even before sunrise, demonstrators had installed themselves at the perimeters of the Herndon Official Workers Center at 1481 Sterling Road. Two ideologically opposed groups stood intermingled: those protesting the center, and those protesting the protesters. The demonstrators, bracing themselves against temperatures in the low teens, did not at first verbally confront each other, letting the battle play out in the air above them. “Change Your...

Los Angeles County's underground cash economy is expanding rapidly, eroding the work force and sapping an estimated $2 billion a year from city, state and federal coffers, according to a key finding in a major regional report scheduled to be released today. Driven by what the report authors call economic desperation, the region's cash-only work force has grown about 5 percent in the past four years to nearly 680,000 workers - nearly half of them in the city of Los Angeles alone. They account for about 15 percent of the total Los Angeles County work force, according to the report...

JOBS AMERICANS CAN'T WORK Not WON'T Work We hear it every other day--America needs the Mexicans to do the jobs that Americans won't do anymore. It is just another lie meant to malign, degrade, and paint Americans as lazy, spoiled, and too high falutin' to do "real" work anymore. And, yes, I said it's a lie. The jobs we work today have nothing to do with "won't" and everything to do with "can't." After all, we're the real Americans... that means we have to pay for things that immigrants--including/especially illegals--get for free so long as they have a pulse and...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, SEPT. 3, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Around 200 million people have used drugs at some point in the last 12 months. This was one of the findings presented June 29 in the 2005 World Drug Report, issued by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. The UNODC report, which covers data up to 2003, estimates that there are 160 million marijuana users. The number of those using amphetamines and ecstasy, termed as ATS users by the report, is 26 million and 8 million, respectively. The number of opiate users is estimated to be around 16 million. Cocaine users number almost...

Going Underground: America's Shadow Economy By Jim McTague Baron's | January 6, 2005 America has two economies, and one is flourishing at the expense of the other. First, there's the legitimate economy, in which craftsmen are licensed and employers and employees pay taxes. Then there's the fast-growing underground economy, where millions of nannies, construction workers and others are paid off-the-books, their incomes largely untaxed. The best guess as to the size of the output of this shadow economy is about $970 billion, or nearly 9% that of the real economy. It should soon pass $1 trillion. What is largely fueling...