Free Republic

Recently, oil industry insiders have stated that gas prices throughout the country are going to drop as low as $2.50 a gallon due to a drop in demand and high supply. Surely this is good news for drivers in the short run, but if the federal government continues to block domestic production, we will see prices continue on an upward trend. What makes these price increases worse is that a significant portion of what people pay for gas is taxes. The federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents per gallon and the average state gas tax is 26 cents per gallon....

[Yester]day the Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 decision that the SEIU was violating nonmembers’ rights to decide whether or not they want to pay unexpected fee increases or special assessments, known as Beck rights. Members of the SEIU’s local 1000 were not given proper notice of a dues increase that would fund a $12 million special assessment for political campaigning. The union, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said the annual notice that the union gives was enough notice, but SCOTUS disagreed. Obviously workers’ rights prevailed in this case and the Court saw the violation of First...

Has Obama failed to advance leftism in America?By Julio Severo Roberto Unger, a prominent Brazilian politician and an adviser to Obama in 2008, said that “President Obama must be defeated in the coming election” because “he has failed to advance the progressive cause in the United States,” according to a Daily Mail report. Roberto Unger: Obama “failed” in the progressive cause He also said that, “despite their fierce rivalry, the Democrats’ agenda is little different to that of the Republicans”. In this point, he just confirmed my suspicion: the leftist agenda was advanced in different degrees, by Democrats and...

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Following his recent remarks endorsing a hypothetical 10-1 promised-spending-cuts-to-tax-hikes deal, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has been cheered by left-of-center editorial pages across the land as well as Democrat elected officials including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Meanwhile, Bush’s tax increase position has been rebuked by, among others, Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and the Wall Street Journal editorial board. RUBIO: On Wednesday, BloombergBusinessweek reported: Florida Senator Marco Rubio said he wouldn’t accept revenue increases as part of a deficit deal that also cut spending to prevent a U.S. fiscal crisis, saying it’s a “different...

In a recent interview with an independent watchdog group, Nebraska Watchdog, Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Bob Kerrey confirmed that he’s ready to raise taxes on Nebraska taxpayers. It’s a rare occasion that a politician gives a straightforward answer to a simple question but Kerrey made an exception to confirm what many people have known for a long time: Bob Kerry is ready to raise taxes. Kerrey was asked a direct question from the Watchdog reporter: “Are you ready to vote for a tax increase?” Kerrey barely hesitated to give the following answer: “Oh yeah!” This should not surprise anyone familiar...

I know what you’re thinking: what does a piece of legislation guiding American agriculture programs have to do with broadband access? And you’re right to be asking that question since the answer should be: nothing. As we’ve frequently written, the USDA has long run a program to hand out taxpayer-subsidized loans to rural broadband companies. This time, however, some lawmakers are finally questioning the program’s value. Little positive can be said about USDA’s Rural Utilities Service broadband loans. With a budget that hovers around $800 million, the program has a long history of waste, fraud, and abuse. The USDA’s Inspector...

In a press release Monday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) likened the U.S. tax code to Hydra, the "mythical Greek beast." While the complicated U.S. tax code is reminiscent of an ancient multi-headed water beast, Senator Baucus' suggested methods of slaying such beast will prove ineffective. Senator Baucus' goals for tax reform suggest measures of increased spending and revenue. While in line with the tax reform measures of the Obama Administration, Baucus' means of achieving such goals run contrary to the budget proposed by the House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. As stated in the Ryan Budget, "Washington...

Nanny State regulators went into overdrive this week, passing bans on everything from tanning beds to nurses at kids’ summer camps. Regulators don’t even want you to care for your dog without their approval first. Meanwhile federal regulations continued their inexorable increase as 1,198 pages were added to the federal register along with 65 new rules on everything from fire suppression systems on commercial ships to quotas in the spearmint oil market. Chicago Takes up Parenting: Following in the footsteps of New Jersey’s legislature, the windy city took up the parental baton on Wednesday as the City Council passed a...

We have often heard Valerie Jarrett is the de-facto President. That might not be far from the truth. Our team has been exhaustively researching this woman,...again. We went back over notes, articles and saved links, as well digging deeper into new documents that we've gotten a hold of. Valerie Jarret is very powerful. I am hoping to keep our article brief, but there is an awful lot to share. As you may know, Valerie Jarrett is Obama,'s closest cabinet member. That is no coincidence. She is one who helped get him where he is. Sure, he knew all the street...

Following close on the heels of the latest dismal jobs report this week is a House vote to repeal the Medical Device Tax. The Protect Medical Innovation Act, or H.R. 436, was introduced by Representative Erik Paulsen (R-MN) and thanks to bipartisan support, including 233 co-sponsors, was approved by the Ways & Means Committee by a vote of 23-11 last week. H.R. 436 will now go to the House floor for a vote sometime this week. H.R. 436 seeks to repeal the Medical Device Excise Tax included as part of Obamacare legislation. As part of the Obamacare bill, a 2.3...

What is ALEC? The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is dedicated to promoting Jeffersonian, free market principles. At ALEC, bi-partisan state legislators from every state come together to develop and share pro-growth, pro-jobs policies. Why Stand With ALEC? Obama's former "green jobs" czar and self-proclaimed communist, Van Jones, has partnered with George Soros and Big Labor to put pressure on state legislators and supportive companies to stop supporting ALEC and their free market agenda. How Can I Help? The left has already been successful in persuading several large corporations to leave the ALEC Private Enterprise Members. Send them, the remaining...

There are ongoing debates over tax hikes and cuts in the United States domestic front, which makes it extremely frightening to imagine a world in which third-party, international organizations could impose taxes on countries. Global taxes would give the power to tax overseas to organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN). The Center for Freedom and Prosperity released a study titled “Global Taxes Threaten Fiscal Sovereignty and Democratic Accountability” which can be viewed here. If these organizations succeed in passing their proposed global taxes, they would be applied in a "one size fits all"...

Green Lantern: the homosexualized hero DC Comics falls down before the powerful gay agenda in American cultureBy Julio Severo Green Lantern, hero of comics, has no choice: he will be gay. By the DC Comics bosses’ decision, the hero has to adapt himself to the predominant trends in the American media, whose goal has been to portrait homosexuals in a positive and nice way. Besides, the homosexual way attracts immediate and infallible acclamation from the shamelessly pro-sodomy American media. But the hero doesn’t need to get anguished about his fate. Because he is fiction, he doesn’t have feelings, and...

My two grand daughters, due to no fault of their own, have been put in foster care in Bulloch County, GA. Could anyone from that area please give me a heads up on what to expect from the social workers there? I am trying to get them transferred here, to Israel, where we can take care of them.

Gay porn star kills and eats lover Homosexual with a story of animal cruelty kills and eats partner’s parts, makes sex with the corpse and sends its foot to Canadian Conservative PartyBy Julio Severo Canada, famous for its aggressive homosexualist laws threatening its population and Christians preaching the Bible view on sodomy, has made international headlines this week for another homosexual reason: gay porn star Luka Rocco Magnotta, 29, tortured, killed and dismembered his gay lover Jun Lin, 21. Luka Rocco Magnotta According to the Canadian police, Magnotta tied Jun in a bed while his camera filmed him torturing,...

Just wondering ... Do you plan to support Mitt Romney, hold out for a Ron Paul candidacy, or is there a third alternative that attracts you? I am not an American resident or voter, but I share your concerns about Obama's potential for enhanced trouble-making in a second term. Romney has obvious "RINO" or "CINO" flaws, but could be as much as a considerable improvement on Obama, at least almost guaranteed to be a less dangerous president. Or is it worse to have a so-called conservative running a globalist administration? Now with Ron Paul, I feel you could expect better...

When prominent Democrats maintain the philosophy that government should never let a serious crisis go to waste it’s no surprise that they assume government has to react to every market hiccup, particularly after the Great Recession. What they don’t think about is perhaps doing nothing is as good as, if not better than drafting expansionist policies. JP Morgan’s much maligned $3 billion hedging failure is the crisis of the day and there hasn’t been a shortage of pundits and Democratic policymakers who urge action in the face of this “crisis.” Paul “Blame Bush” Krugman wrote that the situation means reform...

Earlier [last] week, MarketWatch’s Rex Nutting claimed President Obama has not increased federal spending dramatically. Despite four years of evidence to the contrary, Nutting posits that the whole “misunderstanding” comes from widespread naiveté of the federal budgeting process—in fact, federal spending has grown 27 percent in just the last four years alone. To start, Nutting claims that since the 2009 Fiscal Year began in October of 2008, President Bush is responsible for the “major spending decisions in the 2009 fiscal year.” Really? For someone who spent an entire article bloviating on his budget acuity, Nutting has evidently not been paying...

Unlike most normal people, we closely follow Twitter wars between competing economists. On Wednesday, AEI economist James Pethokoukis took issue with Rex Nutting of MarketWatch.com who claimed Obama is not a big spender because spending rose 1.4 percent during his Presidency. First of all, Nutting doesn’t give credit to Tea Party conservatives for preventing rapid spending growth of the kind President Obama’s budget proposes. Secondly, Pethokoukis points at two overlapping metrics which accurately show Obama’s big spending tendencies—baseline spending and spending as GDP. Nutting’s baseline is FY2009 part of which fell under Bush’s final budget and represented the initial injection...

* By: Larry Walker, Jr. *“In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.” ~ Oscar Wilde *According to Barack Obama, the job of the President of the United States is to “make sure everyone has a fair shot." However, according to Article II (Sections 1 – 3) of the United States Constitution, in which the job of the President is officially and clearly outlined, nowhere do we find such 'verbage'. Therefore, it is unnecessary to try to figure out who’s included or excluded in 'everyone', and how fair a shot must be – before...