Free Republic

Every year, the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation and the Cost of Government Center calculate the Cost of Government Day. This is the day on which the average American has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government at the federal, state, and local levels. In 2012, Cost of Government Day falls on July 15. Working people must toil 197 days out of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government. 2012 marks the fourth consecutive year COGD has fallen in July. From a different perspective,...

A USAF chaplain and the promise of God “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12 ESV)By Julio Severo In 1987, Dr. Arthur Vincent, a Lutheran minister and theology professor, visited Brazil for a ministers’ meeting. Even with his advanced age, he traveled the whole world, from Nigeria to Philippines, to encourage and build the people of God in the important mission of taking the Gospel to a lost world. He even participated in the Lausanne Congress for World Evangelization. His passion...

Over the last couple of months, Americans for Tax Reform has highlighted the 20 new or higher taxes on American families and employers created by Obamacare. The significance of these tax increases is that they are a direct violation of candidate Obama’s promise not to raise “any form” of taxes on these families. In an attempt to justify this widely unpopular piece of legislation, the Obama campaign released their own sort of “Fact Check” today. The response, however, missed the mark by ignoring hard numbers and common sense. They chose 5 of the 20 overall new or higher taxes to...

Current Law Flexible Savings Accounts (FSAs) are tax-privileged accounts available to employees through an employer “cafeteria” health plan. Employees agree to make a fixed annual contribution to the account which will be deducted from their pre-tax salary. This exempts the contribution from income and payroll taxes. That money can then be used to pay for “qualified medical expenses” incurred by the account holder, his or her spouse, and any other dependents under the age of 27. The contribution amount is currently unlimited, but money left in the account is forfeited every calendar year under the so-called “use it or lose...

Secret Message in Lincoln’s Pocketwatch, 1861 ‘In 2009 the Smithsonian found a “secret” message engraved in Abraham Lincoln’s watch by a watchmaker who was repairing it in 1861 when news of the attack on Fort Sumter reached Washington, D.C. ‘In an interview with The New York Times April 30, 1906, 84-year-old Jonathan Dillon recalled he was working for M.W. Galt and Co. on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, where he was repairing Lincoln’s watch. The owner of the shop announced that the first shot of the Civil War had been fired. Dillon reported that he unscrewed the dial of the watch,...

On Friday, the Washington Post ran a fact check in which they found that the President's healthcare law was a net tax cut for the middle class. That was a big surprise to us, since we have been highlighting the 20 new or higher taxes in Obamacare for years, especially those which fall directly on families making less than $250,000. Senator Jim Demint (R-S.C.) and staff were also apparently not amused. If you read that analysis, they make the excellent point that 78% of the value of the "tax relief" in the bill comes in the form of spending ("outlays")...

Long-term unemployment is one of the hardest-hitting aspects of a recession. Workers who are jobless for extended periods of time find it difficult to pay their bills and support their families. It is imperative that those who are laid off be able to quickly find new jobs and get back to work. Under President Reagan, long-term unemployment was limited in scope. The average number of weeks that a jobless worker spent unemployed reached its highest point at 21.2 in July 1983. For most of Reagan’s presidency, the figure hovered around 15 weeks. Similarly, the number of workers unable to find...

Anti-Prostitution Posters, World War II Emphasizing the relationship between patriotism, morality, health preservation, and disease prevention, images of the infected soldier and disease-carrying prostitute in posters during the First and Second World Wars came to symbolize both moral failure and social decay. The following posters use images of "loose" women, patriotic iconography, and frightening symbols to grab the attention of the viewer and inspire behavior modification. These images not only reflected attitudes, values, and beliefs about the causes and consequences of venereal disease but also affected responses to the problem. (Note: Most these photos link back to Retronaut; added are...

Incredible 3D Stereoscopic Civil War Photos Stereoscopic images basically involve taking 2 or more static images, from slightly different angles, to create a 3D effect that tricks the eye into noticing the depth of field, angles and perspective of the image. Thus, it’s possible to take a flat image and create 3D depth to it. When applied to older photographs, it’s an amazing technique, because it brings life to history. Take for example, these Civil War photographs that use a stereoscopic effect!

When the massive ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) stimulus bill was being debated, President Obama’s economic advisors Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein infamously authored a report in which they predicted that passing the stimulus would keep the unemployment rate below eight percent. The events of the past three and a half years have proven that estimate to have been far from correct. What Romer and Bernstein were forecasting was something akin to another Reagan recovery, a phenomenon that is unlikely to occur as long as the current administration continues to meddle in the economy. The recession of the early...

As poet James Whitcomb Riley wrote, if it looks "like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, call that bird a duck." The individual mandate upheld by SCOTUS last week not only looks like a tax, functions like a tax, but it is also enforced like a tax. Any cleverly veiled description of the individual mandate as a "penalty" and thus not a tax, blatantly overlooks the fact that it is a tax. Thanks to Congress' legal contortions of our system of jurisprudence, the individual mandate has been allowed to limbo under the bar of judicial...

Show Summary Adapted from David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, this lavish seven-part miniseries chronicles the life of Founding Father John Adams, starting with the Boston Massacre of 1770 through his years as an ambassador in Europe, then his terms as vice president and president of the United States, up to his death on July 4, 1826. HBO - John Adams movie info

Now that the Supreme Court has said that the 20 new or higher taxes in Obamacare can take effect as scheduled, it’s important to remind taxpayers that those aren’t the only tax hikes they will see in the near future. Just six months from now, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2013: First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax ReliefIn 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for small business owners, families, and investors (later re-upped...

In the aftermath of a recession in the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan presided over a robust recovery that restarted the engines of the nation’s economic growth. Productivity picked up rapidly as policies were put in place to boost output. Under President Obama, the recovery from the latest recession has languished. Despite the efforts of the administration to solve the problem by throwing money at it in the form of the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) bailout and $787 billion stimulus, the economy has grown at a remarkably slow rate given historical precedent. The best indicator of output is real...

This year on the Fourth of July, Americans will have a hard time celebrating their independence, as so much of the celebration is consumed by government. Between traveling over the extended weekend and stocking up on food and drinks for cookouts, Americans will spend a minimum of $2.6 billion. However, make sure there’s room for Uncle Sam on your picnic blanket: this year, 34.77 percent of the cost of celebrating the Fourth of July is made up of government taxes and fees. Fourth of July spending is subject to income taxes, payroll taxes, corporate income taxes and other taxes on...

On Sunday, White House chief of staff Jacob Lew and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi took to the morning shows to claim that the Obamacare individual mandate tax is not a tax. The plain language of the law says otherwise. The Obamacare law employs several terms to describe the tax Americans will pay if they choose not to purchase “qualifying” health insurance (as defined by Obama-appointed HHS bureaucrats). These terms include "payment," "assessment," and "individual responsibility." All of these terms are describing the same Obamacare provision, which is undoubtedly a tax: This tax is variously referred to as a "penalty,"...

On the eve of the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare, taxpayers are reminded that the President’s healthcare law is one of the largest tax increases in American history. Obamacare contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and small businesses. On Thursday, Americans for Tax Reform will do a full analysis of the tax implications of the Court’s decision. Arranged by their respective effective dates, below is the total list of all $500 billion-plus in tax hikes (over the next ten years) in Obamacare, where to find them in the bill, and how much your taxes are scheduled to...

Current Law & Expiration The current income tax rate structure was put in place by Title I of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA). EGTRRA is scheduled to sunset on January 1, 2013. The rate structure will then revert to its much higher, pre-2001 levels. Taxable Income 2012 Marginal Tax Rate 2013 Marginal Tax Rate Up to $8,700 for single filers Up to $17,400 for joint filers 10% 15% Between $8,700 and $35,350 for single filers Between $17,500 and $70,700 for joint filers 15% 15% Between $35,350 and $85,650 for single filers Between $70,700 and...

While President Obama travels the nation touting the success of his green energy jobs programs, new evidence from the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee suggests that not only has the “stimulus” failed to fulfill its stated goal, but that job creation was never more than an afterthought. Despite chronically high unemployment, over $11 billion has been spent thus far on the Section 1603 renewable energy subsidy program. Testimony from key administration officials and agencies shows that in reality, not only have very few jobs actually been created, but job creation was never the program’s priority: Treasury: In administering the...

Brutality and Injustice Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, defends the freedoms and liberties of Western society against "stealth jihad," a campaign by Islamists to slowly and methodically implement a Sharia-compliant theocracy in the West. Sharia is Islamic law, based on the Koran and the teachings and personal actions of Mohammad (known as The Sunnah, noted and reported in Hadiths). Below, very personal examples of life under Sharia in Islamist societies. The intolerance, the brutality, the inhumanity. The extreme lack of religious pluralism, women's rights, free speech and equality under the law. 1. Sudanese Woman Lashed (Video)...