Free Republic

House Budget Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) has announced that the forthcoming budget blueprint will call for a 33 percent corporate income tax rate by hiking the rate from 21 percent to 28 percent. This would make the U.S. a less competitive place to do business and make the U.S. statutory rate higher than many developed competitors. State corporate taxes average 6 percent across the U.S, so this planned tax hike would give the U.S. an average top corporate rate of 34 percent. The current combined corporate rate across the 36 member Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) is currently...

1) Polls show that, by a large margin, Americans feel we're on the wrong track, both economically and as to foreign policy. Yet none of you offers any criticism of President Barack Obama, who has been in charge for the last seven years. Why, then, should Americans believe that four more years, under your leadership, would be any different from the last seven? 2) Sen. Sanders, you've called for a $15-per-hour minimum wage. But even Vice President Joe Biden's economist, Jared Bernstein, considers a $15 hourly rate so high that it would cause an unacceptable loss of jobs. Is he...

The minimum wage is to rise by 3 percent to £6.50, adding an extra £370 a year to the pay packets of millions of workers. The inflation-busting rise is the first for five years and follows George Osborne’s call for workers to be rewarded as the economic recovery gains momentum. And the Low Pay Commission said it was just the start of a “new phase” which would take the rate to new record highs. Ministers claim the £6.31 hourly rate for adult workers has been outstripped by the rising cost of living and is now worth the same in real...

In early November, the Albany County legislature voted 24-12 to forbid the use of styrofoam containers by county businesses with more than 15 locations nationally and at least one locally. Yesterday, it was signed into law. This bill thus allows the continued usage of styrofoam by the majority of Albany businesses, but responds to an apparent wave of Albany County citizen displeasure with the menace of local corporations with at least 14 locations nationally and at least one locally that maybe sell soup. […] Of course, New York State will suffer an immediate economic hit. In addition to the extra...

230.9. (a) It shall be unlawful for a large employer, as defined in Section 14199.1 of the Welfare and Institutions Code, to designate an employee as an independent contractor or temporary employee, reduce an employee's hours of work, or terminate an employee if the purpose of the action is to avoid the employer's obligations under Article 7 (commencing with Section 14199) of Chapter 7 of Part 3 of Division 9 of the Welfare and Institutions Code.

California is struggling to emerge from the worst recession since the Great Depression and has more than 2 million unemployed workers, plus countless others who have given up seeking work out of frustration and/or have fled to other states. Clearly the state needs many billions of dollars in job-creating investment. But its attractiveness to that investment is, to say the least, problematic, given its relatively high tax burden, its dense regulatory structure, its deficiencies in education, transportation and water supply, and its tangled government finances. Chief Executive magazine's most recent survey of corporate leaders finds that California ranks dead last...

The American Petroleum Institute Director of Regulatory and Scientific Affairs Howard Feldman warned of a "veritable tsunami" of new EPA air regulations for refineries that could "put some refineries out of business, diminish U.S. fuel manufacturing capacity, and increase our reliance on imported fuels" recently in a conference call with reporters: "The president himself has called on federal agencies to take into account the impact of regulations on jobs and the economy," Feldman said. "EPA should follow through by ensuring that their regulatory proposals are necessary, practical, and fair." Four U.S. refineries closed last year, according to Feldman. He said...

Yet again, evidence of impropriety surrounds the issuance of federal Department of Energy “green” loan guarantees — in this instance, loans were granted to a foreign company with Democratic Party ties. Over the last two years, DOE Secretary Steven Chu has awarded Spain-based Abengoa — a sprawling, multi-national industrial firm operating in 70 countries — loan guarantees worth a staggering $2.78 billion for solar and ethanol plants. Abengoa is a Madrid-based conglomerate that operates throughout Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. It is not starved for cash: according to its 2009 annual report, the firm was valued at...

It's the economy, stupid. Those words, coined by James Carville as he was managing Bill Clinton's campaign for the presidency in 1992, encapsulate a basic axiom of practical politics, to wit: When the economy is hurting, it preoccupies voters, and politicians ignore it at their peril. And that, in a nutshell, is why California's Democratic politicians are suddenly and publicly pledging concrete steps to improve the state's business climate. California remains mired in its worst recession since the Great Depression, with its 12 percent unemployment the second highest in the nation, with well over 2 million idled workers, and with...

Friday’s job numbers from the Department of Labortold a grim tale about the first 30 months of the Obama administration. As President Barack Obama reminds voters constantly, the economy did not originally deteriorate on his watch, and that’s true. Yet the rise in the unemployment rate once again to 9.2 percent should put the final nail in the coffin of Obama’s economic stimulus strategy. Having thrown nearly a trillion dollars at the economic mess, nearly every penny of which is spent, the president now finds himself facing continued deterioration with no end in sight. Having run up an unsustainable debt...

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, lawmakers and California business leaders are on Day Two of their mission to find out how Texas creates jobs. On Thursday, they heard from Donna Arduin, who Alert readers may remember as the first finance director for former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. They also had a 20-minute private meeting with Gov. Rick Perry and lunch with a group that included Carl's Jr. chief Andrew Puzder, who is considering moving his headquarters to Texas. No burgers were served. Then they took a tour of the Capitol, where they were recognized as honored guests on the legislative floor. One...

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Gov. Dannel Malloy proposed one of the largest tax increases in state history on Wednesday. Malloy said he was seeking $1.5 billion in new annual revenue from income tax hikes on the wealthy and middle class, and new sales tax on clothing and other long-exempt products and services. Malloy's revenue-raising plan involves overhauling the largely flat state income tax, replacing its three rates with eight. But most of the changes, in terms of detail, occur at the middle-income levels.

A few headlines from the Article: ... a slew of volatile federal rule making has hit power producers. Perhaps the most pressing challenge facing electric utilities involves U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation of carbon dioxide... On Jan. 2, EPA began restricting the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuel burning power plants... This action will significantly impact electricity production... "Clearly, EPA is weilding the Clean Air Act as a bludgeon,...because the outgoing Congress was unable to agree on how to curb greenhouse gas emissions blamed for contributing to climate change," Notes Glenn English, CEO of the National Rural...

Very few offshore oil and natural gas drilling rigs will actually resume activity within the first month the deepwater drilling moratorium is lifted in the Gulf of Mexico, a top Interior Department official said Monday. "Even when the moratorium is lifted, you won't see drilling going on the next day or even the next week," Michael Bromwich, head of the Interior Department's new Bureau of Ocean Management, Regulation, and Enforcement said during testimony in front of the Oil Spill Commission on Monday. He said it would be difficult for the oil and gas industry to comply with new safety requirements,...

The U.S. Labor Department report last week on December unemployment included still more grim news for California. The state had the nation’s biggest losses, with a net decline of 38,800 positions. Yet its unemployment rate stayed steady at 12.4 percent for a perverse reason: 106,000 state residents gave up looking for work. Contemplating the depth of the recession, California’s most popular politician last week had the common sense to change her mind on a related big issue: how to regulate the emissions believed to cause global warming. A proposed federal law would set limits on these emissions and charge the...

Shedding jobs that once reliably attracted new residents, California grew at a slower pace this year than all but two other years since 1900, according to state Department of Finance figures released Thursday. The number of new births dropped. The number of new immigrants dropped. And more residents left California for other states than came here. The end result: Statewide growth from July 2008 to July 2009 was 350,000 people, or less than 1 percent. During the rest of the decade, California averaged 525,000 new residents each year. The four-county Sacramento region posted even more striking numbers, adding just 21,000...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Peterbilt plant in Madison is shutting down for good on Tuesday. The truck manufacturer is consolidating production with its other plant in north Texas, leaving about 390 Tennessee workers out of a job. The plan temporary shut down in February, when Plant manager Larry Vessels told News 2 the plant would not resume production until the economy improves. Hourly workers at the plant had been locked out since June 2008 because of a labor dispute.

"The level of unemployment is unacceptably high. And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years." Who do you suppose said that? A Republican political operative? A Fox News political analyst? One of those several hundred thousand Tea Partiers who assembled in Washington on Sept. 12? No, it was Lawrence Summers, the director of Barack Obama's National Economic Council and, by common consent, one of the world's leading economists Summers made this gloomy forecast in the course of arguing that our economy is headed to "sustained recovery." And while it sounds like self-protective political rhetoric, it...