Free Republic

This week, Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John McCain (R-AZ) released a report titled “Summertime Blues: 100 Stimulus Projects that Give Taxpayers the Blues.” As the title suggests, it is a laundry list of projects funded by the “stimulus” bill. This is the third report in the series that highlights stimulus projects that are wasteful, mismanaged, and have been unsuccessful. The Center for Fiscal Accountability warned Senators that voting for this spending package under the guise of a stimulus was a huge mistake. These series of reports are only confirming our fears that this “stimulus” bill would be an enormous...

This constantly regurgitated false narrative goes just like this recent e-mail that was received:"But If Israel wants to keep the West bank it has to extend citizenship to all its legal residents." "Remember what the US did to Milosevic for trying to put people on buses and ship them out?"[ Now that is the usual 'ethnic-cleansing' false charge propaganda][In actuallity it is the Fatah Palestinian Authority leadership that wants the ethnic-cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Israelis from their own land of Judea and Samaria.]  "Conquered land comes with its subjects.  Land comes with people.  If you want to keep the land, you have...

...As the Cato Institute indicates in its analysis, “thirty percent of respondents said their single most important problem is “Poor Sales.” “Taxes” and “Government Regulations and Red Tape” come in second and third place at 22 percent and 13 percent respectively. Combining the two, the biggest problem facing small businesses according to respondents is government. [In his recent op-ed about the survey, Paul] Krugman waves the government problem away by pointing out that taxes and regulations ranked higher in the 1990s when the economy was strong. However, he ignores the trend. Concern about taxes and regulations trended lower as the...

...Unfortunately for the Secretary, however, the Congressional Budget Office has on numerous occasions confirmed that any claims the law will improve Medicare’s solvency revolve around notional double-counting under federal budgetary conventions. A January CBO letter found that “the majority of the [Medicare] trust fund savings…would be used to pay for other spending and therefore would not enhance the ability of the government to pay for future Medicare benefits.” And in a March letter, CBO quantified the amount of that double-counting, estimating that, if the law’s Medicare savings were actually set aside to improve the solvency of the Medicare trust fund...

Although independent scholars generally agree that the death toll from communism in the Twentieth Century runs a staggering 100 million, that sad historical milestone has yet to gain widespread acknowledgement in America’s public schools let alone in her universities. The McDougal Littell Classzone claims that “an estimated 8-20 million people were killed in Stalinist Russia.” Most scholars put the number closer to 40 million. Classzone goes on to assert that from 1924 to 1939, “historians estimate that during this time he was responsible for 8 million to 13 million deaths.” Classzone does not include Mao Tse Tung in its rogue’s...

The prominent “progressive” historian Howard Zinn, whose books are force-fed to young people on many college campuses, was not only a member of the Moscow-controlled and Soviet-funded Communist Party USA (CPUSA) but lied about it, according to an FBI file released on Friday. The file, consisting of three sections totaling 423 pages, was made available on the FBI’s website and released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from this writer. Zinn taught in the political science department of Boston University for 24 years, from 1964 to 1988, and has been a major influence on the modern-day...

blog: "Revolution Muslim Member Abu Muhammed Al-Maqsud Suddenly Finds Kafir Shut Down His YouTube Channel" SNIPPET: "So Abu Muhammed Al Maqsud, gonna tell your buds about it at Revolution Muslim? Like do a post or something? You did have 38 uploads, 276 subscribers, 298 friends."

July 30, 2010 "Islamic Jihadi aka Ibn Ali al-Turki Makes Dua For All Zionists To Be Executed (Updated)" SNIPPET: "Generic dua death threat? What a twit he/she is First, Islamic Jihadi aka Ibn Ali al-Turki tweeted to make dua for execution of Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugs. Next he/she makes dua for execution of StarCMC. Lastly, he tweeted a reminder to make dua for execution of Atlas Shrugs"

Nearly two months after Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) sent a letter to FCC Chairman Genachowski questioning the FCC's proposed Internet regulations, a response was finally returned on Monday. It took two letters from the Representative to elicit a response from the Chairman, which really is just another case of Genachowski ignoring Congress. In the original letter, Dingell urged Genachowski to abandon his attempts at reclassifying broadband, effectively giving the FCC authority over the internet. Dingell believes this is a Congressional issue, and that FCC is overstepping its authority in these attempts. Last week Dingell sent Genachowski a second letter, again...

...One of the over two dozen tax hikes in Obamacare, this provision would require that every small business in America issue a 1099-MISC to any person or company it pays an aggregate $600 or more over the course of the year. That would loop in every restaurant, airline, supplier, office supply store, etc. The number of forms that would be generated is staggering. Even the IRS says they can't handle the flood of paper-filed 1099s that will come in. If President Obama and Congressional Democrats really want to help small business owners, one big step in the right direction would...

A very large fraction of the respectable names of the climate science that you know - Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, Fred Singer, Henrik Svensmark, Willie Soon, Will Happer, Bob Carter, Craig Idso, Paul Reiter but also folks such as Lord Christopher Monckton, Joanne Nova, Anthony Watts, or your humble correspondent, among many and many others - have helped Aeris Systems - a truly professional and well-educated firm - to build the state-of-the-art application that explains and studies the science of climate change.

...The Boehner amendments bring to light the wasteful spending that Congress continues to push. This is the kind of scrutiny we have been calling on Congress to enact and, if applied in broad strokes, could represent significant savings for taxpayers. The Boehner amendments would: Terminate a HUD program for doctoral dissertations by cutting $300,000 from HUD and prohibiting the activity, since funds to study the work taxpayers are already paying thousands of people to do fall outside the scope of HUD’s mission.Cut $1.6 million from DOT’s Office of the Secretary, Salaries, and Expenses. This would expand the budgets and increase...

...[A]n increasing trend in these type of antics on the hill when leadership started debating appropriations bills under a closed rule last year – they are traditionally debated under open rules, meaning amendments can be offered at any time. As midterms loom, Democrats are hesitant to shine more light on their profligacy, and are instead manipulating the rules of the House to keep their earmarks safe. This, of course, from the most honest, open and ethical Congress in history...

Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO Mike Allen - POLITICO Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation Ryan Avent - Economist Dean Baker - The American Prospect Nick Baumann - Mother Jones Josh Bearman - LA Weekly Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report Ari Berman - The Nation Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University Brian Beutler - The Media...

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs seems to have forgotten that his boss has already broken his central campaign promise – a “firm pledge” that “no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” Responding to a question during his daily press briefing today, Gibbs said, “The President believes raising taxes on the middle class during this economic time would not make a lot of economic sense.” But President Obama has already broken his “firm pledge” at...

Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO Mike Allen - POLITICO Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation Ryan Avent - Economist Dean Baker - The American Prospect Nick Baumann - Mother Jones Josh Bearman - LA Weekly Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report Ari Berman - The Nation Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University Brian Beutler - The Media...

CAUGHT IN THE ACT: HAWAII HEALTH DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEES SANCTION VIOLATING U.S. CODE AND THEIR OWN OPEN RECORDS LAW...Ms. Gotto’s... coriginal request was: “If amendments are made to a Hawaiian Cert of Birth and a late birth certificate is issued in lieu thereof, is it reasonable to assume it is called a Late Hawaiian Cert of Birth?”...I just want to know what an amended Hawaiian Cert of Birth is called after it is amended. Is it then called a “late birth certificate”, late Hawaiian Certificate of Birth or something else? The amending of Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian birth certificates appear to be...

SNIPPET: "The new agency, therefore, will focus on ways of more effectively de-radicalizing captured terrorists. Meantime, Special Detachment 88, part of the Indonesian National Police, will continue to be the country’s primary counter-terrorism strike force."

A year after Congress passed President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package the U.S. unemployment rate remains a staggering 9.5 percent, while the economy continues to shed jobs. Although the unemployment rate dropped from 9.7 percent to 9.5 percent last month, this was largely due to more people dropping out of the labor force. 650,000 people left the labor force – when they re-enter, unemployment will rise...

...Income taxes as a portion of a person’s total tax liability is 7.9 times larger for the top 20 percent of taxpayers as opposed to the bottom 20 percent, while payroll taxes as a portion of a person’s total tax liability remains relatively constant across the entire population.Many low-income individuals who owe no taxes because of the standard exemption, the personal exemption, the child credit, and the earned income credit end up making a profit off of filling out a return through “refundable” credits, of which the earned income credit is the most common. Moreover, one can collect these...