Free Republic

It could be said that the media is like the proverbial fish out of water flopping about in the throes of death desperate to disparage and malign Sarah Palin. Let's put them out of their misery, shall we, with a great big hammer of truth right between the eyes. Here's the truth. The media hasn’t always hated Sarah Palin. In fact, before she was tapped to run as John McCain’s VP, they seemed to think she was a-okay. Instead of the constant spinning and outright hatred that is now being vomited 24/7 by narcissistic journalists who wouldn’t know truth if...

...The NMB is a three-member board comprised of one Bush holdover and two Obama appointees—both of which are former union officials—tasked with overseeing union-employer relations in the transportation industry. The makeup of the board effectively gives the pro-union board members fiat to enact whatever policies or regulations they see fit. Unsurprisingly, the NMB’s first major decision was a move to facilitate unionization in the transportation industry. Overturning seventy-five years of precedent and two Supreme Court rulings, the NMB ruled that a majority of voting members were required to certify a union, not a majority of all members of a workforce....

Today, the Pentagon issued a stop-work order to General Electric (GE), requiring the company to halt production of its F-35 alternate engine program. The program, unwanted by the Pentagon and the White House and not funded in any appropriations bill that has passed either chamber of Congress this year, has already cost taxpayers billions and run over its deadlines and cost projections. That the alternate engine earmark has still received funding despite these objections illustrates all that is wrong in the Washington spending circus. While the Obama Administration issued guidance on the appropriations process that should have prevented the alternate...

“Before making a donation to any organization, be sure to review how it spends its money.”~ By: Larry Walker, Jr. ~The American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO of Madison, Wisconsin (AFT-WISC) is a tax exempt organization which is primarily funded by union dues paid by its mostly state and local government employee members. In the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009, AFT-WISC took in 91.5% of its revenue or a total of $3,358,143 from membership dues. On its latest Form 990, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, while all of the revenue reported was identified as having been related to...

I've heard so much from radio and television prophets as of late that, "The God of love certainly does not direct nature to perform catastrophic calamities such as floods, earthquakes, famines, etc." We are so ready to recognize Christ as the ultimate benevolent God, Who does nothing but direct His flock in only a Good Shepherdly way, and would never chasten, or worse, His people, or those who want nothing to do with Him, ie., unbelievers. Not knowing always when and where God meets out calamity, or exactly for what reasons, it is not hard to see through the...

Video: Sean Hannity finally broke down the Birther Barrier at Fox News. Well, for at least six minutes. Sean Hannity passionately defended Donald Trump's recent comments on Obama's early life. Hannity rightly points out that MSNBC's Chris Matthews is even asking for Obama AKA Soetoro AKA Soebarkah to produce the long-form birth certificate.

1. Did you know that . . . since Jan. 1 of this year (2011), you cannot use your flex-account at work (FSA) or health savings account (HSA) to purchase over-the-counter medicines? 2. Did you know that . . . since July 1 of last year (2010), Americans have been paying a 10 percent excise tax on all indoor tanning services? 3. Did you know that . . . starting in 2018, if your health insurance is “too good” or considered a “Cadillac” plan, then you will incur a new 40 percent tax on your health plan? 4. Did you...

A word search of the 2,409-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590) and the 150-page Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872) reveals that the term “tax” is used 255 times, “taxable” is used 208 times, and “excise tax” is used 17 times. Other terms of interest are as follows... Read more: http://www.atr.org/obamacare-uses-term-tax-times-a5968#ixzz1HSH8C4iS

...18. Employer Reporting of Insurance on W-2(Min$/Jan 2011): Preamble to taxing health benefits on individual tax returns. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,957 19. Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting($17.1 bil/Jan 2012): Requires businesses to send 1099-MISC information tax forms to corporations (currently limited to individuals), a huge compliance burden for small employers. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,960-1,961 20. “Black liquor” tax hike(Tax hike of $23.6 billion). This is a tax increase on a type of bio-fuel. Bill: Reconciliation Act; Page: 105 21. Codification of the “economic substance doctrine”(Tax hike of $4.5 billion). This provision allows the IRS to disallow completely-legal tax deductions and other...

...In particular, the President's health care law will require over forty different rulemakings to clarify and adjudicate, a process that could and will have significant economic impact. As Ellig points out, these kind of real-world effects are often ignored by the thousands of bureaucrats employed to administer the regulatory regime. In fact, the growth in executive rulemaking has been aided by the lax process; the analyses required to be undertaken and used by regulators are often signficantly deficient in detail and scope, and are largely ignored by administrators tasked with taking their findings into account. Ellig, a Senior Research Fellow...

...The IPRI uses three primary areas of property rights to create a composite score: Legal and Political Environment (LP), Physical Property Rights (PPR), and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Most importantly, the IPRI emphasizes the great economic differences between countries with strong property rights and those without. Nations falling in the first quintile enjoy an average national GDP per capita of $38,350; more than double that of the second quintile with an average of $18,701. The third, fourth, and fifth quintiles average $9,316, $5,065, and $4,785 respectively. In this year’s report, the United States fell to 18th place with a score...

...The final straw for voters, however, was Mayor Alvarez’s push for a 12% property tax hike. This tax increase would have hit Miami-Dade residents in the gut at a time when they are still suffering in an area that was one of the hardest hit by the recent recession. To top it all off, this attempted tax hike came at the same time the Mayor agreed to increase pay and unfreeze benefits for unionized public workers. Mayor Alavarez demonstrated time and again that he was more committed to securing handouts for public sector unions, shady baseball team owners, and personal...

My wife has convinced me that I should really start making plans to finally tear down my old shop and build a proper one in its place. I have in mind a 20 x 16 footprint building with a second story for storage with a barn shaped roof. I've sketched things out on paper but I need to have a proper print for the permit and for the contractors who are going to build it for me, not to mention coming up with a cost and a budget for the construction. I don't want to reinvent the wheel trying to...

1859 Official Opinion of US Admin 1859 Opinion of US Attorney General

An article in the New York Times today discusses both the call by some in Alaska to dismantle two of Governor Palin’s energy related legislative victories and the claim by others that they are responsible for Governor Palin’s great fiscal record and Alaska’s strong fiscal health. Current Alaska Governor Sean Parnell is seeking to make changes to Governor Palin’s oil tax structure–”Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share” (ACES) legislation. This legislation replaced Governor Murkowski’s corruption-tainted oil tax plan. Governor Palin’s plan primarily taxed oil company’s net profits on production, which encouraged greater capital development and investment than Murkowski’s gross tax structure....

I'm not worried about how close I am, I just found this very interesting and thought some of you freepers might like to know as well! Some of these plants I've never heard of!

In a recently released study from the Joint Economic Committee, the findings overwhelmingly show that cuts in spending grow the economy. The study outlines several key predictors for real economic growth. For instance, the study shows that private investment and private sector jobs increase or decrease in unison. The study also tracked trends from 1971 to 2007 demonstrating that every time government spending and consumptions increased, private employment sharply decreased. The reverse was also shown to be true; every time government spending and investments decreased, private employment increased. When examining government spending as a percentage of GDP, increases lead to...

As reported in today's Wall Street Journal, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) will be pursuing broad-based tax reform. Unlike other efforts (particularly potential Senate efforts) in this area, Camp is committed to implementing all three legs of the tax reform stool: Lower the rates. The Camp plan would cut the top personal and corporate rates to no higher than 25 percent. In the case of the corporate income tax, that would move us from the highest rate in the developed world to only slightly higher than our European competitors. The 25 percent personal income tax rate...

Since the SD legislature has refused to address the birthright citizernship issue, I decided to give it another go with Sen. Thune on a national level. As that "IS" the level of government in which it rightly should be addressed. In my call to his office today I inquired: Can the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” mean one thing for persons born and another for persons naturalized without it specifically separating the two in the initial language of the bill? If it does not, then that would mean that either there is no constitutional provision for anchor babies aka birthright...

There was much confusion yesterday in the tax and pro-life world courtesy of a story in Bloomberg on taxes in H.R. 3, the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." This inflammatory article incorrectly reported that there is a conflict between the pro-life movement and taxpayer advocates because H.R. 3 is a net tax hike. The facts simply don't bear that out. The official score on H.R. 3 was produced by the Congressional Budget Office. CBO says that H.R. 3 has "negligible effects on tax revenue." In budget scoring-talk, that's synonymous with saying a bill has a $0 net tax effect....