Free Republic

On Thursday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said President Donald Trump is not sophisticated enough in terms of the intelligence community to understand what is happening when they comply with his executive orders. Pelosi said, “We are very proud of Hakeem Jeffries, our leader; he has given us guidance on our priorities of what we’re here to fight for, but also how we counter the Trump administration with litigation in the courts, legislation on the floor of the House, as well as communication and mobilization at the grassroots level. Our focus has largely been on domestic;...

Add the Teacher Retirement System of Texas to the cogs of state government that are turning anew in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s gay-marriage decision. The system, which provides benefits to public school employees, announced late Tuesday that it would extend those benefits to employees’ same-sex spouses. That change is effective Wednesday, the system explained on its website.

Taxpayers on hook for millions in retirement benefits unrelated to teaching . Thanks to a loophole created by the Illinois legislature, retired teacher union leaders are getting pension credit for the years they did union work after leaving the classroom. The arrangement has put taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in retirement benefits unrelated to teaching, and further drained an already overburdened state pension fund. ... The union bosses collecting the payouts had jobs at the National Education Association (NEA), the Illinois Education Association (IEA) and the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) after their teaching careers. Most got...

The Internal Revenue Service wrote to the Richmond Tea Party last year demanding to know the names of all its financial donors and volunteers, as part of a 55-question inquisition into its application for tax-exempt status, MailOnline has learned. The agency wanted to know 'the names of the donors, contributors, and grantors' for every year 'from inception to the present.' It also demanded 'the amounts of each of the donations, contributions, and grants and the dates you received them.' 'How did you use these donations, contributions, and grants?' the IRS asked. 'Provide the details

61% Underfunded Illinois Teachers Pension Fund Goes For Broke, Becomes Next AIG-In-Waiting By Selling Billions In CDS Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/14/2010 14:47 -0500 “If you were to have faxed me this balance sheet and asked me to guess who it belonged to, I would have guessed, Citadel, Magnetar or even a proprietary trading desk at a bank.” So begins a story by Alexandra Harris of the Medill Journalism school at Northwestern, which, however, does not focus on some exotic product-specialized hedge fund, or some discount window (taxpayer capital) backed prop desk (hedge fund) at a TBTF bank, but...