Free Republic

The Treasury announced late Wednesday that Social Security beneficiaries who typically do not file a tax return will automatically get the $1,200 payment. The announcement is a reversal from earlier in the week when the Internal Revenue Service said everyone would need to file some sort of tax return in order to qualify for the payments. Democrats and some Republicans criticized the IRS for requiring so many extra hurdles for this vulnerable population to get aid when the government already has their information on file. The reversal came as the Trump administration tries to rapidly get stimulus payments out to...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that Democrats will press for another wave of direct payments to Americans as Congress begins weighing the next round of emergency relief in response to the coronavirus crisis. House Democrats had proposed a $1,500 cash infusion for all Americans in their stimulus bill, up to a certain income level — a $300 increase over the Senate package, which is expected to reach the president's desk in the coming days. Pelosi suggested Wednesday that neither figure is high enough, calling for another round of checks in the next wave of stimulus — the fourth since...

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger celebrated when the California Transportation Commission voted, despite a host of warnings, to pay a contractor more than $1 billion to build two tunnels and a stretch of road outside San Francisco nine years ago. Schwarzenegger said the project’s new approach, which aimed to cap public expenses and shift responsibility to the private sector, would serve as a “shining example” of an innovative way to improve the state’s highways while saving taxpayer dollars. Now the project, known as the Presidio Parkway, is more than two years late and $208 million over budget. When the commission approved...

‘World Wire’: IBM Launches Stellar-Based Blockchain Payments Platform (Global banking) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/world-wire-ibm-launches-stellar-224015555.html September 5, 2018 David Hundeyin Computing giant IBM has launched a blockchain-based financial solution that it says has the potential to completely upend the existing status quo in global payments and remittances. The new solution called ‘IBM Blockchain World Wire‘ combines the Stellar blockchain with digital assets to make instant money transfers possible of a guaranteed value possible. In July, CCN reported that IBM backed a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Stronghold on the Stellar network.  In the same month, IBM announced that it was involved in an environmentally friendly crypto project also built on...

Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) said “there could be” a legal issue with the alleged $130,000 President Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen paid to porn star Stormy Daniels. When asked if there a legal issue with the payment Christie said, “There could be. He continued, “You’ve got to get to the bottom of the facts. You’ve got to get to the bottom of the facts. Was Michael Cohen reimbursed for this? If he was, from whom? Did he pay for himself? If he paid himself, what are the campaign implications? There’s all kinds of issues...

Imagine you open the faucet of your kitchen sink expecting water and instead out comes cash. Now imagine that it comes out at the rate of $1 million a minute. You call your plumber, who thinks you’re crazy. To get you off the phone, he opines that it is your sink and therefore must be your money. So you spend it wildly. Then you realize that the money wasn’t yours and you owe it back. Now imagine that this happens every minute of every day for the next three years. At the end of the three years, you owe back...

Stimulus program to incentivize using electronic health records 'vulnerable to abuse' An Obama administration program to encourage the use of electronic health records made over $729 million in erroneous payments, according to a new audit. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also paid dead doctors for enrolling in its program, the audit, released by the agency's inspector general Monday, revealed. "From May 2011 through June 2014, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services paid an estimated $729 million in Medicare electronic health record incentive payments to eligible professionals who did not comply with Federal requirements," the inspector general said....

President Donald Trump on Thursday lectured a group of leaders from member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization over not contributing their "fair share" in defense spending. Standing beside Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Trump blasted the nearly two-dozen member countries that have not met their "financial obligations" to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States, and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years," said as the other leaders stood in awkward silence. "We should recognize that with...

More than a year behind schedule, the massive project to add toll lanes to 11 miles of MoPac Expressway is now costing the government agency overseeing construction some of its savings. The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority is dipping into its cash reserves to repay some of the $230 million it owes to the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Austin American-Statesman reports. The agency said once the rest of the toll lanes open — which is now projected to happen June 15, per the Statesman — the revenue collected will solve such cash flow problems. The tolls are expected...

Backtracking If there’s a poster child for the implementation of a disastrous immigration policy, her name is Angela Merkel. By throwing Germany’s doors wide open, the Chancellor has become the face of a refugee free-for-all that has left her country - and much of Europe - in turmoil. Now, Merkel is facing re-election. You can tell it’s not going well for her because, after years of anything-goes rhetoric, she’s trying to backpedal. Apparently, she’s decided it’s time to get rid of a good chunk of the 1.2 million refugees who entered Germany. The problem is (go figure) they’re reluctant to...

The controversial 2006 lease of the Indiana Toll Road paved the way for highway projects funded by public-private partnerships in Indiana — including the relatively smooth and nearly finished building of a bridge over the Ohio River at Louisville and the beleaguered construction of a 21-mile stretch of Interstate 69 from Bloomington to Martinsville. Indiana’s next governor — whose road-funding agenda will likely shape discussions at next year’s budget session of the Indiana General Assembly — will have a major role in crafting future deals to fund projects and maintain the state’s infrastructure. The question is whether the state will...

The state of Indiana needs to do a better job of looking out for the interests of Hoosiers, especially Monroe County Hoosiers, when it comes to construction of Interstate 69. Section 5 of the project, the part that starts just south of Bloomington and goes north to Martinsville, has run into problems. Not for the first time. Again, the private development company the state picked to build the highway has fallen behind on payments for work that’s been done. So major contractor Crider & Crider of Bloomington has stopped working, again, until it gets paid. State officials aren’t saying so,...

<p>Iran may have received an additional $33.6 billion in secret cash and gold payments facilitated by the Obama administration between 2014 and 2016, according to testimony provided before Congress by an expert on last summer’s nuclear agreement with Iran.</p> <p>Between January 2014 and July 2015, when the Obama administration was hammering out the final details of the nuclear accord, Iran was paid $700 million every month from funds that had previously been frozen by U.S. sanctions.</p>

To get a glimpse of the future of commerce in America, look no further than Sweden. The Scandinavian country is largely a cashless society, with consumers relying on mobile phone payments or plastic. While the U.S. is still far from achieving the same level of cash-free existence, increasing numbers of restaurants and retailers are now snubbing the lowly dollar bill. Some merchants such as SweetGreen, a salad chain, refuse to open their registers for cash, telling customers they can pay only with mobile payments or cards. With some newer vending machines, only a card or mobile wallet will get that...

Hillary Clinton assures us that she's not at all biased by the $675,000 she's received from Goldman Sachs for paid speeches. An attendee of one of Clinton's Goldman Sachs speeches spoke with Politico and revealed why Clinton won't release the transcripts of the speeches. Cenk Uygur host of The Young Turks breaks down the story. more comments...

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does not have adequate procedures in place to ensure tax credit payments were properly sent to enrollees as required by federal law, according to a new report by the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG). The report marks the eighth time in less than a year that a government watchdog has raised concerns over the federal government’s ability to properly administer and monitor Obamacare. As HHS OIG noted, CMS has “sole responsibility” for ensuring that tax credits were properly distributed to paying enrollees. Following this confirmation, the IRS...

Andrew Cuomo and his Kennedy ex-wife have battled for years over child support as 'he didn't make any payments' New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his ex-wife Kerry Kennedy have been reportedly battling for years over 'substantial' child support payments for their three daughters. According to the New York Post, for the past at least two years, the former couple has been involved in 'lawyer-assisted go-rounds over substantial amounts' of child support payments, and finally reached an agreement about some of the obligations two weeks ago. Sources told the Post that Cuomo, 58, and Kennedy, 56, continued to fight over...

Most folks probably think of the State Transportation Infrastructure Bank as just that – a bank that finances major highway and bridge projects. S.C. Rep. Chip Limehouse, R-Charleston and a member of the Infrastructure Bank (STIB) Board of Directors, described the bank, created by the Legislature in 1997, as a “funding arm” in a recent (Charleston) Post & Courier story. But in addition to providing funding to the state Department of Transportation and local governments, STIB in recent years also has assumed the role of a general contractor or project manager, paying millions of dollars directly to certain companies for...

The move to a cashless society won’t happen overnight. Instead, it is being implemented very slowly and systematically in a series of incremental steps. All over the planet, governments are starting to place restrictions on the use of cash for security reasons. As citizens, we are being told that this is being done to thwart criminals, terrorists, drug runners, money launderers and tax evaders. Other forms of payment are much easier for governments to track, and so they very much prefer them. But we are rapidly getting to the point where the use of cash is considered to be a...

My friend’s succinct reaction to the amazing headline was, “How do you lose $6.6 billion?” How indeed! Despite a full decade of audits and investigations, Pentagon officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash that was intended for the Development Fund for Iraq. Apparently, it just “disappeared.” Was it just misplaced in an accounting error, or was it “stolen”? Who knows? Apparently, the Pentagon has no idea. Ah, the perils of the fog of war that covers up all sorts of foul play. It’s little wonder the money disappeared. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the...