Free Republic

...By requiring the reporting of health benefits on W-2 forms it becomes incredibly easy to tax the benefits as well as income. This new tax could include everyone, since it won’t technically be considered as part of their “income.” Another possibility is that the reporting of health benefits on W-2s may be used as a pretext to claim that many more families actually make above $250,000 per year, opening up the door to this potential tax as well as many other taxes “on the wealthy”. No matter how this new provision is applied, the only logical conclusions lead to tax...

The National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint against the Boeing Company on the grounds that the company’s relocation of its second airplane production line was motivated by discrimination toward union workers. If the NLRB’s case succeeds in federal court, it will set a precedent for union control of virtually every major business decision by American corporations. Prior to October 2009, Boeing had planned to expand its production capabilities with an additional facility in the state of Washington. In recent years, the company had suffered billions in lost revenue and uncertainty of future orders due to multiple extended strikes...

You Paid How Much For Medicare?~ By: Larry Walker, Jr. ~Medicare is a social insurance program administered by the United States government, providing health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over, or who meet other special criteria. Some say that Medicare operates similar to a single-payer health care system, but with one key exception: Medicare Part A, the part that we pay for all of our working lives, only provides hospital insurance, and it doesn't kick in until after the age of 65. Thus, Medicare is more akin to an excessively expensive, mandatory, long-term health care plan...

"Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" ~ MLK, Jr.~ By: Larry Walker, Jr. ~Are Social Security Benefits an Inalienable Right? ~The Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) is codified at Title 26, Subtitle C, Chapter 21 of the United States Code. The FICA tax is a United States payroll (or employment) tax imposed by the federal government on both employees and employers to fund Social Security and Medicare —federal programs that provide benefits for retirees, the disabled, and children of deceased workers. Social Security benefits include old-age, survivors, and disability insurance (OASDI); Medicare...

The Oklahoma Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would repeal a 2004 law requiring cities with more than 35,000 people to grant collective bargaining rights to non-uniformed city employees. The bill, HB 1593, passed 29-19 in the Senate after already passing the House and now heads to Republican Governor Mary Fallin’s desk where she is expected to sign the bill into law. The bill only applies to non-uniformed personnel in 12 Oklahoma municipalities. The law would not apply to teachers, police and firefighters. Four of those cities - Muskogee, Norman, Oklahoma City and Tulsa - had collective bargaining agreements in...

For the most part, the constant upward pressure on cigarette taxes in the Northeast has subsided, as states have consistently failed to realize expected revenue gains. A number of states are even moving to cut these excise taxes to lure consumers that have begun to purchase contraband cigarettes or migrated to lower-tax jurisdictions. Credible proposals exist in New Hampshire, New Jersey and Rhode Island, while Maine Gov. Paul LePage campaigned on a promise to cut tobacco taxes. But Vermont isn't getting the memo. A proposal to raise the cigarette tax by $1 per pack has passed out of the Senate...

Late last month, I came out for spanking... As predicted, the hysterics came out of the woodwork with their hysterical talking points (one even trying to create a false link between spanking children and sexual abuse). Needless to say, I thought I’d use this post to share some more studies. Take the work of...Gunnoe, professor of psychology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan again. Her “study found that youngsters smacked up to the age of six did better at school and were more optimistic about their lives than those never hit by their parents,” reported the Telegraph UK, last...

...17. Tax on Health Insurers(Tax hike of $60.1 bil/takes effect Jan. 2014): Annual tax on the industry imposed relative to health insurance premiums collected that year. Phases in gradually until 2018. Fully-imposed on firms with $50 million in profits. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,986-1,993 18. $500,000 Annual Executive Compensation Limit for Health Insurance Executives(Tax hike of $0.6 bil/takes effect Jan 2013). Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,995-2,000 19. Employer Reporting of Insurance on W-2($min/took effect Jan. 2011): Preamble to taxing health benefits on individual tax returns. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,957 20. “Black liquor” tax hike(Tax hike of $23.6 billion/took effect immediately). This is...

...What this means is that every deduction and credit in the code (including for those making less than $250,000) will face an across-the-board “haircut” in 2014 (2013 in the commission plan). Nothing would be spared. All Americans who claim the following tax deductions and credits would see their taxes raised without even a vote in Congress: Mortgage interest deduction and the charitable deduction State and local income, sales, and property tax deduction Exclusion from wages of your employer-provided health insurance Student loan interest deduction and teacher classroom expense deduction IRAs, HSAs, and self-employed retirement plan deductions All general business credits...

"...It’s fairly easy to see what’s going on here. The President decided on about $3 trillion of deficit reduction over 10 years, maybe a little less. He wanted to claim that he was “matching” the Ryan plan in deficit reduction, but was just achieving that same goal in a better way. Matching Republican deficit reduction is a lynchpin of the President’s fiscal argument. He was short by a trillion dollars or more, so he and his team decided to measure his proposal over a different timeframe and hope no one would notice. They lengthened the window by which they would...

Consider, if you will, a method of energy exploration which has produced over 7 billion barrels of oil and 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, supports hundreds of thousands of domestic jobs, and provides billions in state and federal revenue. It should come as no surprise that something so incredibly useful has made it to the top of Big Green’s hit list. Hydraulic fracturing—or “fracking,” as it is sometimes called—is a process used to free deep reserves of oil and natural gasses which would otherwise remain inaccessible by standard drilling methods. Deposits are released by fracturing an entrapping rock...

Washington, DC - The Club for Growth assailed potential presidential candidate Donald Trump today as a tax-hiking liberal whose open flirtation with single-payer health care and warm embrace of protectionism disqualifies him from consideration by conservatives...

Not since the Rev. Terry Jones lit up the Koran have we seen such madness, but Donald Trump has managed to inflame Obama's legions of lickspittle automatons. Trump's sacrilege has the likes of Eugene Robinson, Mike Daly and Stewart Rothenberg all frothing at the mouth not unlike an unwashed mob of Afghan reprobates in Kandahar. Whether it's Trump's potential candidacy in 2012 or that he has the audacity to ask that very question that much of America is asking - Why does Obama refuse to be transparent with the American people? Someone needs to tell these pathetic little apparatchiks that...

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NOTE: I'm a longtime FR member. Some short-sighted admin who doesn't understand the importance of the work I do in uncovering the radical left (at least people tell me it's important) pulled my last post for "solicitation." I mean, seriously guys, is this any way to fight the left? Do you want to lose the fight against Obama et al.? How am I supposed to get the message out to the people who care about the subject matter the most? This time I won't link to anywhere where you can buy the book. Happy now, admin? Stop fragging the good...

Forget what the polls say. Reasonable doubt has been placed in the minds of Americans concerning the birthplace of one whose qualifications require being born in the United States. Democrats know there is a problem and on the surface, are circling the wagons. But let’s focus on the bigger issue: Why is Trump doing this?

Hi. I'm Matthew Vadum and I've been a member of Free Republic for close to five years, I think. I've been hounding ACORN for three of those years and have discovered some fascinating and disturbing things about the group, Saul Alinsky, Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven, LBJ's "War on Poverty," and ACORN founder Wade Rathke. Even if you think you know ACORN pretty well, you'll still learn new and shocking things about President Obama's favorite activist group. The book contains exclusive interviews with Newt Gingrich, Howard Phillips, David Horowitz, Eugene Genovese, Ron Radosh, and even longtime ACORN ally Noam Chomsky....

...Stopping Tax Increases on Families and Small BusinessesFirst, let's look at the level. Keeping taxes at 18-19 percent of GDP is what Americans have been paying for all of living memory. Raising this level would result in record and sustained tax hikes on families and small business owners. It should be the job of any budget to bring federal spending DOWN to the tax level, not bring the tax level UP to whatever level of spending Washington wants. Three plans that fail in this regard are the Obama budget, the Simpson-Bowles commission report, and the "Gang of Six" rumors. All...

...The Upton-Inhofe proposal was specifically tailored to pre-empt Agency overreach by returning authority over the America’s climate policy to Congress. Constitutional issues aside, an unchecked EPA is expected to lose billions in revenue and kill hundreds of thousands of jobs nationwide. Congratulations are due to the Democrat members of both chambers who had enough sense to buck their party’s Big Green Government ideology. In the senate, only four Democrats voted for the McConnell amendment: Mary Landrieu, Joe Manchin, Ben Nelson, and Mark Pryor. Apparently seeking to return the favor, Susan Collins (R-Maine) went turncoat and deprived her party of a...

The respected Irish columnist Richard Waghorne has come out against “gay marriage” again – but this time it’s more personal. In his own words: I am not a big believer in people making arguments on the back of who or what they happen to be. When I last made the case in these pages against gay marriage, about a year ago, I didn’t feel the need to mention that I am gay myself. Arguments stand on their own two feet, or don’t, but not on the strength of who happens to be making them. Nor, I don’t mind adding, did...