Free Republic

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recently signed into law a $220 billion budget riddled with wasteful spending, including $220 million for free Medicaid for illegal immigrants and a $600 million subsidy for a new Buffalo Bills stadium, according to the New York Post. Federal law prohibits federal tax dollars from going toward Medicaid for illegal immigrants, so New York taxpayers will pick up the tab for healthcare for up to 20,000 illegal immigrants living in the Empire State. Those making less than $18,754 would qualify for the program, though many other details regarding eligibility have yet to be announced. Hochul,...

The Air Force raised some eyebrows on Monday when it announced upcoming changes to its physical training test that would allow airmen to choose their own adventure for demonstrating physical prowess. The new test, which the service will begin to experiment with in January 2022, will allow airmen to choose between running, shuttle run sprints, and walking for the aerobic portion of the test. Shuttle run sprints involve sprinting back and forth between two markers about 25 meters apart. They could then choose between planks and sit-ups for the core strength measure. And for the final portion of the test...

While Illinoisans will be paying higher taxes, Gov. J.B. Pritzker says he’s going to give state lawmakers at least a $1,600 pay increase because they’re hard workers. Pritzker said he’ll sign the budget bills being sent his way, despite the ire from taxpayers that lawmakers gave themselves a raise while doubling the state’s gas tax. Pritzker was asked multiple times in Chicago Tuesday if he’d line-item veto more than $280,000 in lawmaker pay increases when he gets the budget that was passed in overtime session. “Look, this was a highly negotiated budget,” Pritzker said. “We had the Republicans and Democrats...

The non-stop push by the American left to dismantle existing American time-honored and time-tested institutions is how they will force socialism and central control on the American people. They’ll continue to destroy the bedrock institutions of Western culture, such as religion, schools, family, capitalism, businesses, law and order, the Constitution including the First and Second Amendment, and the rule of law. When those pushing back surrender at the ballot box, the scales will tip, and the left will achieve their ultimate plan to destroy America. Has anybody noticed the ideology of the Progressive movement has significant similarities to the psychology...

On paper, "liberal intolerance" is something of an oxymoron, like "jumbo shrimp," "loyal opposition" or "conspicuous absence." But what makes oxymorons funny is that they are real things. There are jumbo shrimp. Absences can be conspicuous, opponents can be loyal, and liberals can be staggeringly and myopically intolerant. Last Friday, in a public radio interview, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo offered the sort of potted analysis of the national Republican Party one would expect from an MSNBC talk show. But he went a bit further. After nodding to the fact that, historically, the New York state Republican Party has been...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Barack Obama and the Bad Ideas of ProgressivismPosted By Bruce Thornton On October 17, 2013 @ 12:52 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 4 Comments Barack Obama’s serial gross incompetence has elicited all sorts of explanatory theories. He’s a closet socialist, an Alinskyite radical, a secret Muslim, or an anti-American internationalist. Though some of Obama’s words and deeds give support to all these speculations, I prefer a simpler explanation. Obama is a Progressive––not a vague “progressive,” the elastic moniker liberals started using when the word “liberal” became politically toxic. I mean a Progressive of the...

Ann Coulter’s support for Mitt Romney entered a new stage today with a column offering an all out embrace of Romneycare. In the process, she insults the intelligence of conservative critics of the law and doesn’t address their actual arguments against it. Her first defense of the law is to name other conservatives who supported it at the time. So what? Many of us were opposed to it all along. For instance, in August 2006, before Barack Obama even announced he was seeking the presidency, I fretted that Romney’s support for universal health care made him the natural heir to...

Election Day is tomorrow, Tuesday. Today, urge your friends to vote for Tim Kaine. Email them using the sample text below. Information on where to vote follows. Pres. Bush is holding a rally for Kilgore tonight. Tim Kaine is holding his own rallies tonight with Gov. Mark Warner and Kaine needs your help: find a rally Dear Virginia MoveOn member, As you know, Virginia MoveOn members overwhelmingly urged us to support Tim Kaine, who would, as governor, "lead Virginia forward by building on the progress made working with Gov. Mark Warner." Soon the ads will end, there will be no...

It can be thought of as a sort of natural law that every government will increase taxation until it hurts. Once the burden of taxation has become sufficiently painful to a sufficient number of people, a tax revolt will begin – either at the ballot box, or at the palace gates-- and taxation will be rolled back to a less painful level, often by a new government. One way to avoid this danger is for government officials to learn to live with a relatively low tax rate. This option, of course, is similar to the idea that an alcoholic would...

L.A. forces are present in the Garden State At a time when the Democratic Party establishment counsels a move to the "center" as the cure for a defeated and demoralized Democratic Party, a new path is emerging. On May 17, Antonio Villaraigosa, a progressive politician won a landslide mayoral victory in Los Angeles, defeating incumbent James Hahn, a moderate Democrat. The grassroots chemistry that gave rise to Villaraigosa's win may be present in the Garden State.Days before the Los Angeles election, on May 5 and 6, Mark Murphy, of the Fund for New Jersey, brought together leaders of more than...

It is the billionaire's folly to think that because something is not successful more money should be spent on the idea. Thus it is with liberal ideas and George Soros's money. The Hill reports that Soros and a few others of the mega-rich elite are raising money to form "progressive" think tanks. Progressive, remember, is code for lefty. George Soros told a carefully vetted gathering of 70 likeminded millionaires and billionaires last weekend that they must be patient if they want to realize long-term political and ideological yields from an expected massive investment in “startup” progressive think tanks. The Scottsdale,...

Some Would Write Off a South That Loves GOP Re Ronald Brownstein's "In the South, GOP Rides the Wave of Bush's Popularity," Nov. 16: [Snip] However, as a true blue-state, big-city liberal, I am tired of having to kowtow politically to the most regressive part of the nation (the South) and defer to its most conservative constituency (white evangelical Christians). [snip] ...it's that the retrograde mind-set embraced by the GOP and those voters does so well. As always, the South is an anchor dragging the rest of the country down. Paul Giorgi Culver City

Ask Auntie Pinko- Corporate Income Taxation DodgeRyan- TastyManatees.com As an interesting side project, I thought I'd take a look at the Democratic Underground's "Ask Auntie Pinko" column. Auntie Pinko serves as a sort of Democratic "Dear Abby", answering questions every week from readers on issues and ideas. Invariably, very complex and interesting ideas are bludgeoned into conformity with the party line, yet sometimes Auntie Pinko presents valid arguments that should be addressed. As an exercise in critical thinking, I will publish a weekly comment on the "Ask Auntie Pinko" column here beginning this week.This week, a reader asks Auntie Pinko,...

<p>California's property tax could well be the most regressive tax on the planet. The passage of Proposition 13 and the subsequent large increase in real-estate values provide a tax system in which the wealthier pay, even on an absolute basis, considerably less tax.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats allied with Republican moderates tried rounding up enough votes on Wednesday to halve President Bush's plan for $726 billion in new tax cuts as a Senate showdown neared over the pillar of his proposal for reinvigorating the economy. Despite cautious predictions of victory on both sides, it was unclear whether opponents would be able to chop the price tag of Bush's tax cut proposal to $350 billion through 2013. In a chamber Republicans control by 51-48, plus a Democratic-leaning independent, every vote counted. Democrats said moderate GOP Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island would vote with...

The Claremont Institute This is the print version of http://www.claremont.org/writings/precepts/20020415hinderakerjohnson.html. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regressive Thoughts on a Progressive Tax By John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson Posted April 15, 2002 We all know the income tax can be complicated, burdensome, even infuriating. But how does it square with the principles of the Constitution? The founders of the United States were profound students of politics and history. They saw the protection of property rights, in the words of the most famous of the Federalist papers, as "the first object of government." Yet they saw that history had shown all known democracies to...