Free Republic

President Donald Trump has scrapped the tax plan he campaigned on and is going back to the drawing board in a search for Republican consensus behind legislation to overhaul the U.S. tax system. The administration's first attempt to write legislation is in its early stages and the White House has kept much of it under wraps. snip Administration officials say it's now unlikely that a tax overhaul will meet the August deadline set by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. But the ambitious pace to figure out a plan reflects Trump's haste to move quickly past a bruising failure to broker a...

futuristic video has emerged of a man flying on a hoverboard across the Atlantic Ocean. The video shows Franky Zapata, chief executive of Zapata Racing, whizzing over the sea off the coast of France on a hoverboard that is available for the public to hire. snip The Flyboard Air is a jet-powered board with four turbo engines, or an "Independent Propulsion Unit", that propel it upwards and forwards when travelling over land or sea. It stabilises itself in a similar way to a drone and can reach heights of up to 10,000 ft and speeds of 92.3mph. The board can...

I've never seen this guy before although I see some other threads on other topics by Bill Whittle. This one is on how Democrats have painted Republicans as the exact opposite of what history actually shows and the sheeple have bought it hook, line, and sinker. The deadpan sarcasm is priceless. Enjoy and do as I have -- e-mail a link to those misguided acquaintances of yours that have never given critical thought to the propaganda from the left.

Conventional thinking would say the minimum wage interferes with free markets for labor and should therefor be opposed by any right thinking capitalist conservative. However ... it occurs to me that a really LARGE increase in the minimum wage (say to $25/hr) could actually be used to screw the public employee unions and creditors of the Debt. It would have the following effects that are worth pondering: 1) It would cause prices to skyrocket and then stabilize at a new higher level, as more money chased the same amount of goods and services. Overall, prices would go up such that...

Who wants to join me in a bull session exploring why Socialists have not proposed drastic Government Hospital solutions to Medicare ? Medicare is already a socialist program so why not go whole hog ? Some facts: There are less than 800,000 hospital beds in America, patient/nurse ratios exceed 5:1, patient/doctor ratios exceed 10:1 (This is across all hospitals, not specifically Medicare). Medicare expenditures in 2010 will be roughly $500B. This covers $45M people. Proposed government hospitals: 1,000 beds, 200 doctors (5:1 ratio), 300 nurses (3.3:1), 100 orderlies, 100 lab techs, 100 non-medical support staff. All are Federal employees immune...

TALIBAN killers have blown themselves up laying booby-trap bombs, we can reveal. Up to 20 are thought to have died planting Improvised Explosive Devices. They were racing to plant the IEDs before the Allied offensive Operation Moshtarak. The triggers on the IEDs have become so sensitive the terrorists are accidentally detonating them as they hide them. Last night a highly-placed source said: "The Taliban know only too well how effective the IED has proved to be. "It is designed to take out our lads at even the slightest touch but this has backfired on Taliban blown up by the sophistication...

Does anybody know what it takes to be legal in terms of accepting political donations to funnel to a candidate or issue ? Do you need to be a PAC, or what ? It occurs to me that one could suck in donations from Dims, but have very little actually reach their candidate or cause after the fundraising expenses. Just by spending most of the funds on the overhead, salaries, advertising, etc. there might be only 10% left over to forward to the candidate. In this way, you could starve a candidate of campaign funds just by being an inefficient...

Could the flat tax come to California? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today that he would like to see such “radical” proposals come out of a commission now studying an overhaul of the state’s tax system. The governor told the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee that he hoped the commission would not be afraid to propose something like “a 15% straight tax.” “That’s the kind of radical, daring kind of a proposal that I want to see on the table so we can look at it and say, ‘Oh, let’s study this, maybe that is the way to go,’ ”...

An odd thought occurred to me today. Suppose you could wave your hand and magically make an entire mindset disappear such that nobody would ever again embrace that ideology. Suppose further the choice was either/or. Which would you choose: liberalism or terrorism ?

This is definitely a vanity post. My first, but it has been bothering me for several days and I have toget it off my chest. It does have serious social implications, however, and I hope not uninteresting to Freepers. Last Saturday night, my brother (46) and I (43) decided to go to a movie, King Fu Panda. Being an animated feature, we were wary of screaming kids so we specifically chose a showtime after 10PM. Four guys came in at the last minute and sat four seats away, with empty seats between us. Five minutes into the movie, the guy...

Quick question. I've decided to retire rather suddenly. Federal and CA State Income taxes have been withheld to date based on the calucation that I'd be working all year long. Instead, I will only have worked 3 months. So what has been withheld so far is going to be much more than the tax I'll owe for the year. Is it Kosher to change my W4 to have a huge number of allowances, like 20, to reduce the withholding for my remaining two paychecks ? (The verbage on the W4 is pretty clear I can't claim "exempt".) Otherwise, the government...

The US economy will avoid recession as the housing market begins to recover this spring, according to billionaire investor Sam Zell. Speaking on "Squawk Box" this morning, Zell attributed much of the current economic troubles to fear-mongering and politicking by Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. "Obviously what we have going on is an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy," said Zell, chairman of Equity Investments Group and owner of the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other companies. "We have two Democratic candidates who are vying with each other to describe the economic situation...

A former top Hollywood studio lawyer and his wife were on Monday sentenced by a Los Angeles judge after admitting to mistreating their Filipino maid in a case of "modern-day slavery," a court heard. US District Judge Dale Fischer ordered James Jackson, 53, a former vice-president of legal affairs at Sony Pictures to perform 200 hours of community service for admitting a charge of alien harboring. Jackson's wife Elizabeth, 54, was given a three-year jail term after pleading guilty to a charge of forced labor. In passing sentence, Fischer said Elizabeth Jackson had treated the victim, former schoolteacher Nena Ruiz,...

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s tough stance on climate change and a recent willingness to engage with Democratic rivals in the California state legislature has won praise and backing from across the US political spectrum. But a series of drastic spending cuts announced in the last few days, aimed at reducing a gaping $14.5bn (€9.9bn, £7.4bn) budget deficit has taken the sheen off the former movie star’s tenure as California governor. (snip) Mr Schwarzenegger has caused a public outcry with a series of measures aimed at curbing spending. The radical proposals include cutting the state’s education budget, closing some of its most popular...

Christopher Stern and Alison Fitzgerald of Bloomberg report that Mayor Rudy Giuliani has proposed the biggest tax cut in American history. “The plan would reduce the corporate tax rate to 25 percent and the capital-gains tax to 10 percent. The current corporate tax rate is 35 percent, and the capital-gains rate is 15 percent, set to rise to 20 percent in 2010 as President George W. Bush’s tax cuts expire.”

PRESIDENT BUSH'S RESIGNATION SPEECH Normally, I start these things out by saying "My Fellow Americans." I'm not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer. I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: there's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office. The...

Watertown, Mass. – February 26, 2007 - A123Systems of Boston, Massachusetts, developer and marketer of state-of-the-art lithium ion batteries, announced today that their CEO, David Vieau, met with President George W. Bush and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman at the White House on Friday to inspect a prototype Battery Range Extender Module that can be easily installed in the spare tire well of most hybrid vehicles, enabling these current production models to become plug-in hybrids capable of achieving 150 or more miles per gallon. Several companies are marketing such modules using A123Systems' battery cells. Testing at DOE's Argonne National Labs has...

TOKYO (AP) - Toyota, hot on the heels of General Motors to become the world's No. 1 automaker, reported a 7.3 percent jump in quarterly profit Tuesday on booming sales in North America and Europe that offset sluggish demand in Japan. Toyota Motor Corp. (TM) recorded group net profit of 426.8 billion yen ($3.6 billion) in the three months ended Dec. 31, up from 397.6 billion yen the same period the previous year. Quarterly sales climbed a solid 15.2 percent to 6.15 trillion yen ($51.2 billion) from 5.33 trillion yen a year ago, as the remodeled RAV 4 sport utility...

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is proposing to cut property taxes by roughly 5 percent and eliminate the city sales tax on clothing and footwear as New York enjoys the bounty from its booming economy and real estate market, city officials said yesterday. Mr. Bloomberg plans to outline his proposals today in his annual address to the City Council. The property tax cuts, which would be in addition to an existing $400 annual rebate for homeowners, would apply for at least the next fiscal year, aides said, while the sales tax cuts would be permanent. The entire tax relief package, which...

Democrats have long attacked President Bush for the historic tax cuts he ushered through Congress during his first term and have promised to reverse at least some of them. But among their top priorities when they take over Congress next month is passing a permanent tax cut of their own. Included in their "Six for '06" platform that they say helped them win majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats promised to: "Make college tuition deductible from taxes, permanently." Their tax cut promise is neither an election-year gimmick, Democrats say, nor a reversal in their long-standing opposition to Mr. Bush's...