Free Republic

Today, the Alliance for Worker Freedom, an affiliate of Americans for Tax Reform, sent a letter to the hill explaining how implementing an "official time" policy would save the taxpayer money. You may view the full letter here.A study conducted by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for FY 2008 found that, among 61 federal departments and agencies, close to 3 million hours of official time was used in arbitration and collective bargaining. The report found that federal expenditures for these activities totaled $120,730,471, an increase of over $7 million from the previous year. Click here to see the full...

Violent, dangerous, tragic - even desperate, and utterly bizarre. Since 2005, news flashes of Uganda have been a surprising tangle of surprises. [Links coming up.]

There's a lot of buzz on Capitol Hill right now about one or more Republican "growth packages" to counter President Obama's "Stimulus 2" plan. Any GOP plan should have full business expensing of assets. What is expensing? Full business expensing allows companies who purchase business assets (computers, furniture, etc.) to deduct the full cost of those assets from their taxable income in the year of purchase. How do businesses account for assets if they can't expense them? Absent an expensing policy, medium-sized and larger businesses are required to slowly-deduct ("depreciate") the cost of these assets over several years. For example,...

Mining has, without question, seen the most growth out of any industry as of late. Pennsylvania is fortunate for being located in the wake of the oil-and-gas rich Marcellus Shale formation. In the next few years (by 2015), that wake will provide more than 12 billion cubic feet of gas per day. This boom in natural gas drilling is giving manufactures reason to hire new workers. Youngstown, Ohio, is a great example of what seemed to, for years, be a depressed town until natural gas drilling became a new means for work and economic prosperity. Employment has more than doubled...

We're just beginning to see the impact of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act with over 500 new regulations entering the pipeline. Yet, the fresh-out-of-the-gate price control on debit cards has already sparked an uproar. Dodd-Frank, following a push by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), instructed the Federal Reserve to set a price control that capped the interchange fee paid by retailers to banks in order to accept debit cards. The fee traditionally covered the cost of checking accounts, consumer card rewards, and ensured secure transactions and fraud prevention. As predicted, banks have had to cover the cost of Durbin's price control,...

The days of unbiased reporting are well behind us. What we have now are news agencies who are bent on furthering a political agenda. Proof positive comes in the form of a Reuters story with a somewhat confusing title: “Alabama immigration law decried, applauded as some flee state.” (Click here for original story) The title is somewhat ambiguous as to who is “decrying” and who is “applauding” but the article leaves little doubt as to the ideological leanings of the author(s): (Reuters) – A climate of fear and panic has taken hold in Alabama’s immigrant community since a federal judge...

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) today released a report from his Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (Homeland Security Committee). It asserts that the 2005 repatriation round was a failure. In support of this, the report gives nine conclusions. Below, each are refuted: U.S. jobs were lost, not gained. The report claims that the top 15 repatriating companies shed 21,000 jobs after the repatriation round. This is a classic case of selective reporting. From January 2005 to January 2008, the U.S.. economy created 5.4 million jobs. Since that time, the economy has shed nearly 7 million jobs. If anything, the repatriation round...

What Is Repatriation? Under U.S. tax law, a company that earns a profit overseas must, in general, pay income tax to the overseas government AND to the IRS if they bring the remaining profit back to the U.S. The company gets a credit for the foreign income tax paid, but the difference between the foreign tax and the U.S. 35 percent rate must be paid to the IRS. In practice, deferrals and other tax rules allow companies to keep foreign after-tax earnings locked overseas, but that money generally remains unavailable to be used in the United States. This is known...

I think that I may have stumbled onto a very large problem. I am working with a guy that says that he was a Marine and I am 99% sure that he isn't. He has got a really great story going and he has fooled a lot of people. I need a place to go to so that I can prove that he isn't a marine. I can already proove several of his other stories are fabrications but this is the key. I have read online that is a rather big problem, especially for the Corps and the Seals. Can...

The Marcellus Shale field in Ohio, for anybody concerned about finding employment, is creating jobs every day. Lately, the natural gas industry has experienced a boom, and that’s easy to do when finally companies can, while still profiting, be environmentally friendly. For decades, hydraulic fracturing has proved to be one of the safest methods for extracting natural gas. It’s also one of the cleanest methods for extracting natural gas. Believe it or not, Ohio’s state EPA agrees that such a method hasn’t yet proved harmful to anybody within the drilling perimeter of these sites. There are 81,000 wells in total...

Some quick talking points on the Reid surtax, up for consideration this week in the Senate: Facing a revolt from within his own party over the tax hikes contained in President Obama’s “Stimulus 2.0” plan, Harry Reid has come up with an alternative tax increase that may actually do more economic damage and kill even more jobs. Beginning in 2013, a new 5.6 percent “surtax” would apply to modified adjusted gross income which exceeds $1 million ($500,000 in the case of married filing separately returns). After 2013, this figure would be adjusted for inflation Because the top marginal tax rate...

COMPLETE TITLE: Multiple Instances Of Historical Scholarship Conclusively Establish The Supreme Court’s Holding In Minor v. Happersett As Standing Precedent On Citizenship – Obama Not Eligible ### Recently, the New York State Board of Elections was caught trying to amend the US Constitution with an eraser by listing POTUS eligibility as available to any person “born a citizen”. (Please review Pixel Patriot’s excellent analysis on this issue, “New York State BOE Web Site Cover Up“.) The Constitution states that only a “natural born Citizen” may be president, a much more stringent requirement than simply being “born a citizen”. This effort...

...Just yesterday, a judicial panel chose the D.C. Court of Appeals in a random lottery to decide where the Net Neutrality case will be held. This bodes well for opponents of these job-killing rules; the D.C. Court decided in a previous case that the FCC has no legal authority to enact Net Neutrality. Other left-leaning groups, including Free Press and Media Access Project, purport that the rules do not go far enough and filed suits decrying that the law doesn’t apply as harsh rules for wireless ISPs. Yet, other traditionally left-leaning groups disagree. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, has...

Here's what Republican Presidential candidate Governor Rick Perry said in his book, Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington,about what could be done by our States and by our Federal Congress about the problem of big government: Now, sometimes, I think people suppose that those of us who believe in a limited central government do not believe the federal government should do anything at all. ThatÂ’s not true. We simply want the federal governmentÂ’s involvement in our lives to be constitutional, paid for, effective, and as minimal as possible.(p.174) When the federal government oversteps its authority, states should...

Both the House and Senate are governed by parliamentary rules that allow for some semblance of egalitarian debate, regardless of party control. Over the past few years, we have seen these safeguards eroded, specifically under the Pelosi speakership when minority amendments were prohibited, bills were passed before being fully written and legislation was shunted through the process through "deeming" resolutions rather than with honest debate. On the other side of the hill, the Senate is normally seen to be above this kind of gerrymandered rulemaking, abiding by a more reverent parliamentary process. Usually, the majority and minority come to an...

This week, JD Foster and Curtis Dubay from the Heritage Foundation wrote an article arguing that repatriation was a bad idea right now. ATR disagrees with this (and this seems to be a departure from prior Heritage Foundation policy on this, as well). Below are our reasons why: What Is Repatriation? Under U.S. tax law, a company that earns a profit overseas must, in general, pay income tax to the overseas government AND to the IRS if they bring the remaining profit back to the U.S. The company gets a credit for the foreign income tax paid, but the difference...

The New York Times only publishes articles from conservatives when the latter is foolishly carrying water for the Left. This was true again this week, with the useful idiot role played this time by GMU professor Tyler Cowen, who we've publicly called out before for supporting a VAT.You will want to read his article first. My responses are below: Would a grand bargain with $10 in promised spending cuts for $1 in tax hikes be a good deal for conservatives? No. We have been through this before. In 1982, President Reagan was promised $3 in spending cuts for every $1...

The media has been consumed for the past week with speculation over whether New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will jump into the presidential race. The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, apparently having trouble coming up with anything of value to write about, penned a laugable column in last Friday's Washington Post alleging that Christie's weight made him unfit for the Oval Office (Flashback: remember when calling Obama skinny was considered racist by folks at Slate.) As ATR's Patrick Gleason recently responded in the Daily Caller: If the best Obama supporters can come up with against Chris Christie is “bu bu but,...

...These agreements are vital to economic growth and job creation in the U.S. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, together the agreements will increase exports by $13 billion, which by Obama’s own measurements could create more the 250,000 jobs. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates passage of the US-Korea free trade agreement would increase U.S. exports by over $10 billion and create 70,000 American jobs.Once the Colombian deal is enacted, the U.S. will have access to $4 billion in new markets and the American agricultural industry will see an estimated $1.1 billion dollar overall increase in their exports alone.While...

...While the premium spike has many in the press and professional Left baffled, they can’t say they weren’t warned. In December 2009, during the height of the health care debate on the Hill, I and ATR’s Ryan Ellis made the case in an OC Register op-ed that the increase in insurance mandates sought by President Obama and congressional Democrats would have the opposite effect of bending the cost curve: Health insurance mandates are government-imposed requirements that insurers and health care plans either cover, or offer coverage, for a condition or treatment. As recently as the 1960s, mandates were few and...