Free Republic

The 2019 Oregon Legislature established a new tax affecting all firms that do business in Oregon. While it is called by its misnomer the “Corporate Activity Tax,” the CAT actually applies to most types of organizational entities such as partnerships, individuals, limited liability companies, and trusts that have commercial activity generated in Oregon in the regular course of their trade or business. It is a tax paid annually for the privilege of doing business in Oregon. Initial expectations are that it will raise about $1 billion in new revenue annually. These funds are to be set aside for exclusive use...

Peek went on to major in international politics at Princeton, study Persian, and pursue a master's in international relations at Harvard before heading to D.C. as a foreign policy researcher for the conservative Heritage Foundation. He then became a foreign policy adviser to Oregon Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican. When Smith lost his next election, Peek went on to work for another Republican senator, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, on Syria and Lebanon policy, helping to draft a bill expanding sanctions on Hezbollah. In 2008, he enlisted as a reserve officer in the Army and spent a year in Afghanistan at...

The Trump administration plans to release guidance as soon as this month for granting states waivers to convert Medicaid funding to block grants, according to two people familiar with the matter, paving the way for a transformation of the 55-year-old program that is likely to reignite a partisan feud. The impending release comes as a surprise after the Office of Management and Budget, which reviews regulatory actions, indicated in November that block-grant instructions had been withdrawn. Lawmakers and legal advisers speculated that the guidance may have been shelved or significantly delayed. Approving state waivers to change Medicaid funding to block...

“The goal is ensuring the green economy benefits folks who are hurt first and worst by global warming,” says Oriana Magnera. In just a few months, the city of Portland will begin investing the proceeds from a groundbreaking new tax on large companies. No other city in the U.S. has such a tax. The Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund, or PCEF, will raise as much as $60 million a year from a new tax on big retailers. The money is supposed to supply clean, efficient energy and jobs to people the city has long slighted. The overarching goals:...

A Portland U.S. Bank employee said she was fired after giving $20 of her own money to a customer who was broke and stranded at a gas station on Christmas Eve. The man she helped called her firing “ridiculous.” “I was a customer of U.S. Bank, I needed help, and she went above and beyond,” said Marc Eugenio of Clackamas. “I felt so bad. She was the only one helping me.” On Dec. 23, Emily James, a senior banker at a U.S. Bank call center in Portland, said she spent more than an hour trying to help Eugenio, a bank...

For nearly 40 years, American students have been taught about their country’s history with communist disinformation by a historian who was a onetime Communist Party U.S.A. member and a lifelong promoter of communism. This is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which has sold over 2.6 million copies since its publication in 1980. It is the textbook of choice for Advanced Placement U.S. history courses in high schools, is used in college history and education courses, is packaged into free, downloadable lessons for K-12 teachers by the Zinn Education Project, is quoted extensively in school books, and...

The daughter of a Democrat county commissioner in Ohio was among three people arrested on disorderly conduct charges outside President Trump's rally in Toledo on Thursday night, police say. Laura Gerken, 36, engaged in a physical fight with another person outside the Huntington Center, said Toledo police, adding that she was yelling obscenities and resisted when officers placed her under arrest. Lindsey Rowland, 29, of Oregon, also was arrested outside the rally. Police said she was reportedly unsteady on her feet and punched an officer. She was charged with disorderly conduct and public intoxication, according to the outlet. Police said...

A Christian school that meets at a church has filed a lawsuit against an Oregon county after officials told the congregation that the school could not use the property.Skopos Christian School, which has around 30 students, began to hold classes at Faith on Hill Church in Milwaukie last year after they had to leave their former building. Skopos and Faith on Hill are both being represented by the Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative law firm based in Sacramento, California.PJI explained in a statement released last week that they're filing the suit under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons...

They use it to call it "voting with their feet" or something like that.  Indeed, people are voting with their feet by trading in their old blue shoes for shining red shoes. This is from Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas: According to an Election Data Services analysis of the Census Bureau report, "The population projections point toward a ten [congressional] seat change over 17 states across the nation by year 2020." Seven states are projected to gain one or more congressional seats after the 2020 election; 10 states are projected lose one...

Referring to it with happy little buzzwords such as “climate justice,” the city of Portland will soon be implementing the first (and hopefully only) “green new deal” carbon tax in the nation, which city “leaders” estimate will suck $60 million out of the economy. The money will allegedly be going toward “creating” “green energy” jobs. They say the tax will only affect The Evil Corporations™ specifically referring to Walmart. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/portland-passes-green-new-deal-carbon-tax-first-of-its-kind/

Four years ago, I wrote about my decision to live as a woman in The New York Times, writing that I had wanted to live “authentically as the woman that I have always been,” and had “effectively traded my white male privilege to become one of America’s most hated minorities.” Three years ago, I decided that I was neither male nor female, but nonbinary—and made headlines after an Oregon judge agreed to let me identify as a third sex, not male or female. Now, I want to live again as the man that I am. I’m one of the lucky...

The city of brotherly love has a new police commissioner in Danielle Outlaw. If her name doesn’t sound familiar, she was the police chief for Portland. It marks a first in the city’s history: a black female police chief. Outlaw is tapped for the job at a time when the city is experiencing an uptick in violent crime. According to the numbers crunched by the Philadelphia Inquirer, homicides and shootings spiked in 2019. The city was left with 351 murders this year. In all, violent crime reached its worse levels in nearly a decade. According to reports, the hiring process...

Philadelphia’s new police commissioner is aware of what she represents in being the first black woman named to head the force. But she said she was also the first black woman to do the last job she held, and for a long time, “it was a distraction.” “I’ve been a black woman all my life, and I’ve chosen the career of law enforcement," said Danielle Outlaw, the Portland, Ore., police chief named Monday to lead the Philadelphia Police Department. She added: “I do not take lightly the fact that I am the first here … I understand who opened doors...

Police Chief Danielle Outlaw has accepted a job to become Philadelphia’s police commissioner after only two years and two months leading Portland’s 1,000-member force during a time of mass political protests and community mistrust. But Outlaw said she’s ready to jump into leading Philadelphia’s troubled police department. She was chosen out of 31 candidates, including 18 from within the department. She starts Feb. 10. “While I am new to Philadelphia, I am not new to the challenges of big-city, 21st century policing," she said before she was introduced to her new city at an afternoon news conference at Philadelphia City...

GLADSTONE, Ore. (KGW) — A grandfather in Oregon wanted to do something special for his grandkids this Christmas, and his idea makes for a pretty unique gift that can be used for years to come. "Every year, we make a big deal and every week coming into Christmas, advent, every week we give them a gift,' explained Doug Hayes, who is a grandfather to 10 grandchildren. However, this year’s gift is not the kind you can fit under a tree. Instead, Hayes wanted to do something a little different. A family member shot cell phone video as Hayes presented the...

The nation’s foremost leftist legislators are lending their voice to a new piece of legislation that is being heralded as the “first step” toward legalizing prostitution in America. The SAFE SEX Workers Study Act, introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), would toss taxpayer money into an in-depth study on the effects of two anti-sex trafficking bills that became law last year, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (SESTA/FOSTA). The bill is co-sponsored in the House by Rep. Barbara Lee of California and in...

The Swiss firm Allseas has suspended its pipeline laying operations for the Nord Stream 2 project that would export Russian natural gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany. Allseas studying the ramificiations of the sanctions signed into law Friday night by President Trump..... The top Russian general in Syria says some 200 members of the jihadist opposition forces were killed or wounded..... On Friday evening the British government announced approval of the takeover of defense and aerospace firm Cobham by the US private equity firm Advent International..... Hating Russia Is Good For American Business Well here we are the...

When Mario Arreola-Botello was pulled over, he didn't understand much of what the Oregon police officer was telling him. Botello, a Latino, non-native English speaker, was stopped for failing to signal a turn and a lane change, his attorney, Josh Crowther told CNN. What happened next sparked a years-long court battle that landed at the state's supreme court. In a November ruling, the court decided officers in the state were no longer allowed to ask questions that were irrelevant to the reason of the traffic stop. It's an issue that's often been tackled in courts across the country, but a...

New analysis of projected provincial gas tax revenues in Ontario has revealed that that source of provincial funding will fall much more dramatically than predicted just five years ago due to increased use of electric vehicles and other factors. And so, concludes Trent University professor emeritus Harry Kitchen in a new report titled Ontario’s Downward Trend for Fuel Revenue: Will Road Pricing Fill the Gap?, the provincial government must look for other sources of revenues to build transportation infrastructure. Kitchen recommends road pricing, such as tolls and HOT lanes, with funds raised earmarked for future transportation improvements, and dynamic parking...

At a time when momentum and political pundits seem to favor Barack Obama winning the Democratic presidential nomination, other indicators suggest the LGBT community's support is still largely behind Hillary Clinton, except in Texas. And Texas is one of three large primary states remaining that pundits say Clinton must win in order to stay even with Obama in the contest to secure enough delegates to win the nomination. The latest poll in Texas, conducted by CNN February 15-17 among 529 likely primary voters, found Clinton just two points ahead of Obama. A poll just a few days earlier, by the...