Free Republic

Take-a-knee protests spark conversation on whether public investment in teams pays off for communitiesThe Cincinnati Bengals threatened the unthinkable in 1995. Team owner Mike Brown vowed the team would move to Baltimore unless a new stadium was built. Taxpayers in Hamilton County, Ohio, where Cincinnati is located, feared something greater than wounded civic pride if their football team left. They worried that the Bengals’ departure would spur an economic crisis throughout the region. A University of Cincinnati study released at the time estimated that the Bengals added $77 million to the local economy. Hamilton County residents could avert disaster, however....

In the past four years, you and I gave Planned Parenthood $1,900,000,000. Good thing the economy, job situation, and small business development is so stable in America, because I'm positive we didn't need any of that cash did we? You know... that we actually earned... and then gave to Planned Parenthood. The silver lining over those four years? 1,200,000 children executed in the wombs of their mothers, mostly at the behest of irresponsible men in the lives of the women pregnant with them. And before you get all "rape and incest" on me, let's excuse the 1% of those nearly...

Stephen Ross, the billionaire owner of the Miami Dolphins, is recruiting tax-and-spend puppet candidates to challenge fiscally conservative Florida Republican state legislators in the 2014 Republican primaries. The New York real estate investor’s actions are the latest in his campaign of personal destruction against fiscal conservatives who voted against massive taxpayer subsidies for Ross’ Sun Life Stadium. Ross, a real estate investor from Michigan who now lives in New York, owns 95 percent of the Miami Dolphins and Sun Life Stadium. Ross sought funding this year from Florida state and local taxpayers to cover much of the expenses for $350...

<p>In a frontal assault on one of the most contentious federal subsidies in the West, eight environmental groups sued the U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday for failing to complete a plan in the mid-1990s to increase fees that ranchers pay to graze livestock on public lands.</p>