Free Republic

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that a Kansas state freshman Republican representative hopes to help struggling college students burdened by the already high cost of textbooks via tax relief. Rep. Rick Hoheisel suggests that Kansas exempt all textbooks from the statewide 6.5% sales tax, thus saving students money each year they buy new books for their curriculum. Rep. Hoheisel is a recent college graduate and remembers quite well that he would have to shell out big bucks each year simply to afford required reading. While Kansas cannot control the price of textbooks directly, the state government can control the taxes imposed on said...

If you’re at the Seattle Mariners season opener Monday you might run into some folks with clipboards, gathering signatures for a newly-announced initiative for 2016 that would tax carbon emissions. The circulation of petitions to put Initiative 732 on the 2016 ballot signals a new strategy that may come into play if Gov. Jay Inslee and fellow Democrats in the Legislature are unable to pass their own carbon cap-and-trade proposal. The Initiative would phase in a $25-per-ton tax on carbon dioxide emissions from certain fossil fuels and fossil fuel-generated electricity, starting in July, 2017. The proceeds would go into the...

Each house of Congress has passed its own version of Obamacare,both the Senate and house are selling us their version of a budgetary sleight of hand. With both versions of the plan Americans are paying billions of dollars of taxes before much money is spent on building their new health care infrastructure. Why is this a bad thing? Because it is the typical Congressional cover-up. When estimating the costs of these supposedly deficit neutral plans, the CBO figured on ten years of taxes, but only 6-7 years of health plan expenses. The members of Congress are not stupid, they know...

And just when you thought the budget saga couldn't get any more bizarre. If this were the Olympics and even if you hated it, you'd have to score some style points on the acrobatic budget maneuver unveiled this afternoon. Democrats, frustrated with GOP refusals to vote for any tax increase to erase any part of the state's fiscal problems, have now decided to push forward a budget plan that includes $9.3 billion worth of new revenues... revenues they say don't require a single Republican vote. Fasten your seatbelt. Here goes: Democrats say the plan (which legislative attorneys have reportedly vetted)...