Free Republic

...The tax reform package, which will pave the way for the forthcoming budget, builds off Gov. Snyder’s tax reform proposal. The reforms eliminate the Michigan Business Tax and replace it with a 6 percent flat corporate rate, while eliminating credits and deductions. Eighteen members of the Michigan House have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, promising their constituents to “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes.” Since the reform package amounts to a $712 million net tax cut, it is consistent with the Pledge... Read more: http://www.atr.org/michigan-house-passes-tax-cut-reform-a6106#ixzz1Kwth7nqv

"...The Committee on Reduction of Nonessential Federal Programs is not a new idea – in fact, the committee existed first in the 77th Congress after it was proposed by Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. (D-Va.). Named after its creator, the “Byrd Committee” was tasked solely with cutting unnecessary and redundant federal programs and was able to enact real reform to that end – the Committee netted over $38 billion in savings (in adjusted dollars) in just its first few years of existence. Created in 1941, the Committee was integral in dialing back some of the exponential New Deal growth in...

You'll see Ben Bernanke in the video below, in his own words, being wrong time after time in the years leading up to the housing bubble bursting, the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, unemployment and the overall state of the economy...

In most plans to reduce the deficit “tax expenditures” is a phrase that comes up often. We have to “reduce tax expenditures” or “get rid of spending in the tax code”. This is a popular way politicians try to sell their plans to eliminate credits and deductions that families or businesses count on when filing tax returns. The idea of reducing tax expenditures is central to the plans proposed by President Obama, the Senate Gang of Six, and the Simpson-Bowles debt commission. The popularity of this phrase and idea is nothing short of astounding, considering the fact that, in the...

Freepers: Due to last night's storms in Central Arkansas, our family found out the HARD WAY just how important communications (commo) is when the power goes out, telephone lines get blown down, the cell towers are destroyed, and we are left in the dark with multiple tornados inbound.Anyways, I wanted to solicit Freepers help on unconventional communications with family such as Citizen Band (CB), FRS, GMRS, etc. I am going to attend our Central Arkansas Ham Radio meeting next month and see about going "one step further" to get my ham radio license. Please read below for my situational needs.

...In scoring the Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act, Entin acknowledges that a static score reveals a substantial loss in tax revenues over ten years. A static score refers to the method in which changes to current law assume the exact same behavior, often ignoring even commonsense changes that would take place as a result of changes in law. If the Act is scored on a static model $460 billion is lost in revenues from 2011-2021. The majority of the report however, demonstrates that if the law were repealed many changes in behavior would take place. By raising wages, capital investment,...

We are rightly concerned with the poor, who always will be with us and to whom we owe our support and aid. Of course, it’s quite another thing for the government to take from you to give to the poor. The presumption that the government can be compassionate with someone else’s money is absurd on the face of it. Robin Hood was a thief first, and the ends don’t justify the means. Every theft does someone some good. But that doesn’t justify theft. But being poor is quite another thing in itself. What is poverty? . . .

...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...