Free Republic

On Tuesday’s broadcast of New York’s Power 105.1’s “The Breakfast Club,” 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris argued that her proposed down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers won’t “have an unintended effect, because that increases the demand for home ownership, which is going to have an impact, also, on supply.” And talked about parts of her plan to boost housing supply. Harris said, “$25,000 down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, let me tell you why that’s not going to have an unintended effect, because that increases the demand for home ownership, which is going to have an impact,...

Warren Buffett, the billionaire Oracle of Omaha, says that Washington will likely "take a larger percentage of what we own ... Joe Biden .. won't push to extend the Trump tax cuts next year ... if Congress fails to extend the Trump-era tax cuts, it means an average American family of four making $75,000 will get hit with a $1,500 tax increase. “Main Street businesses will face a 43.4 percent tax rate” and “working parents will suffer from a Child Tax Credit slashed in half” along with the standard deduction every taxpayer is due. Remember Biden's promise not to raise...

Mayor Eric Adams might be crying poverty over the Big Apple’s migrant crisis, but that didn’t stop him from quietly pushing through a giant $2.1 billion raise package for 10,000 bureaucrats. The salary increases, which Adams approved in February without putting out a press release, will retroactively boost salaries by 16.2% for managers and other non-union employees when compounded annually over a five-year period dating back to 2021.

The Interior Department on Friday finalized a rule making it more expensive for oil and gas producers to drill on federally owned lands. Several of the provisions in the rule — like raising the rent the government charges to oil companies for using its land and increasing the government’s share of the profits from that oil — were set out in law by the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act. The Biden administration will additionally make it more expensive for drillers to abandon their oil wells after use instead of cleaning them up. The administration argues that current bonding rates do not...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has rejected a proposal to raise the governor’s salary with a three percent increase in the 2025 budget, asserting that an increase is “appropriate for others given the persistent inflation” but not for the governor’s salary. “I’ve spoken to legislative leaders and asked that they remove a proposed 3% increase for the Governor’s salary in next year’s budget,” DeSantis said in a statement posted to X. “While this increase is appropriate for others given the persistent inflation in the US economy, it is best to leave the Governor’s salary as is,” he said, garnering praise...

President Biden informed Congress on Thursday of his intention to raise federal civilian workers’ pay by an average of 5.2 percent, taking a required step to advance the proposal outlined in his 2024 budget request earlier this year. In letters addressed to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Vice President Harris in her capacity as president of the Senate, Biden outlined his alternative pay plan for an across-the-board pay increase of 4.7 percent and locality pay increases averaging 0.5 percent, for an overall average increase of 5.2 percent.

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) argued that President Joe Biden should use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt limit unilaterally if the House — which has passed a bill to raise the debt limit — “will not act” and “refuses to do its job.” And that he believes that “if things can get done by executive order — and then let them play out in the courts. Host Andrea Mitchell asked, “In 2011, you were one of several Democrats urging then-President Obama to invoke the 14th Amendment during that debt limit crisis....

Americans are deeply divided when it comes to the debt ceiling. While politicians in Washington, D.C. meet in hopes of reaching an agreement that would allow the federal government to take on debt above the current statutory limit, nearly half of Americans say the cap should be left in place, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday. The poll found that 45 percent of respondents said they did not favor Congress lifting the debt ceiling. Forty-four percent favor lifting it.

Teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) went on a three-day strike Tuesday as negotiations fell apart and the district’s two unions walked off the job, leaving families in the lurch. Working parents scrambled to find child care options and alternate activities during the midweek strike. The first day of the strike happened to coincide with the start of yet another storm, limiting outdoor possibilities. As Breitbart News reported last week, the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) is striking in solidarity with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99, the union that is at the heart of the...

New York lawmakers are now officially the highest paid state legislators in the land after they awarded themselves a massive pay raise. Members of both houses, 63 senators and 150 Assembly members, are getting a pay boost of $32,000 for a new base salary of $142,000, under a bill Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a day before her inauguration Sunday.

Rev. Al Sharpton’s charity nearly doubled his compensation and also shelled out close to $300,000 for private jets so that he and other bigwigs could attend “important gatherings.” The National Action Network paid Sharpton $348,174 in 2021 as its president and CEO and gave him a hefty bonus of $278,503 — plus $22,117 worth of benefits for total compensation of $648,794, its latest tax filing shows. The preacher’s 2020 compensation came to $347,183, which did not include a bonus. NAN also forked over nearly $1 million on private jets and limos.

Federal government unions are going to be asking for pay raises due to the spike in fuel costs and the subsequent huge inflationary spike in goods that is going to result from that. The media will try to suppress this, not report on it, or downplay it. Meanwhile, the private sector is going to suffer horribly until the mid-term elections (where there will probably be cheating again) because the government can NOT raise interest rates very much due to resulting collapse in the housing/car/stock/other markets. Get ready.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made clear Wednesday that the Fed will begin raising interest rates this month in a high-stakes effort to restrain surging inflation. In prepared testimony he will deliver to a congressional committee, Powell cautions that the financial consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are “highly uncertain.” He says the Fed will “need to be nimble” in responding to unexpected changes resulting from the war or the sanctions that the United States and Europe have imposed in response.

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2022/02/white-house-to-propose-4-6-raise-for-feds-in-2023/

Friday night is a great night to go out with friends, drink, eat, play around, and generally goof off. It’s decidedly not a night that most Americans pay attention to the news. The government knows this, which is why they usually announce really bad news on Friday night. Such was the case this past Friday evening when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a shocking 14.5% increase in Medicare premiums for seniors. It’s OK, though, says the government. Social Security has increased its payments to seniors by 5.7%, so everything is going to be alright. Is it? Bideninflation...

Rising inflation is expected to lead to a sizeable increase in Social Security's annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for 2022. Exactly how much will be revealed Wednesday morning after a Labor Department report on inflation during September, a data point used in the final calculation. Over the last 10 years, the Social Security COLA has averaged about 1.7% annually as inflation remained low. But the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has triggered rising prices for a wide range of goods and services, and that's expected to translate to bigger checks for retirees. Policymakers say the COLA works to preserve...

WASHINGTON — The cost-of-living-adjustment for Social Security recipients next year remains on track to be the biggest in decades, according to the latest estimate from a non-partisan advocacy group for senior citizens. The annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) is announced in October by the Social Security Administration. The Senior Citizens League said Tuesday it expects COLA for 2022 to be 6% to 6.1%, based on consumer price data through August. One more month of data will be factored into the final calculation before its announced by the Biden administration. If the 6.1% estimate holds, it would be the highest...

The largest new revenue source and the most dramatic change would be establishing a tax of 8.1 cents a mile for each mile a vehicle is driven. That move — which wouldn’t begin until the third phase and would require legislative approval and a pilot period to test a collection method — is projected to generate $8.9 billion a year. A fee of $1 for every package delivered by major companies like Amazon, FedEx and UPS, as well as local groceries and restaurants, could generate $785 million in the first phase and grow to $844.2 million by the third phase....

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday signaled support for a thorough investigation into allegations of sexual harassment brought against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) by two former aides. “These stories are difficult to read, and the allegations brought forth raise serious questions that the women who have come forward and all New Yorkers deserve answers to,” Clinton, who served as a New York senator before her 2008 presidential run, said in a statement obtained by Fox News. “I’m glad to see that there will be a full, independent, and thorough investigation,” she added.

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo will be getting a $25,000 pay raise in January 2021, as the state faces a massive $63 billion budget deficit owed to revenue losses tied to the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo’s salary will jump from $225,000 to $250,000 on Jan. 1, 2021 — making him the highest paid governor in the nation. But judges and 213 state lawmakers serving in the state Senate and Assembly didn’t get the green light for their own excepted raises, which have to be approved by the Commission on Legislative, Judicial and Executive Compensation which argued the state is too broke...