Free Republic

....The Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent and other civic leaders, in a letter to the newspaper's publisher, recently asked The Times to reconsider publishing the ratings, saying in part that individual teachers' performances should be addressed in private conversations. More than 1,000 teachers responded to The Times' invitation to view their scores before publication, but few took the opportunity to write comments alongside their ratings. Instructors were strongly advised not to do so by their union, United Teachers Los Angeles, which has opposed publication of the ratings. Some of those who did comment said they saw the information as...

(CNSNews.com) – When President Obama asked former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Democrat Erskine Bowles to chair his debt commission in February, he told them to consider any and all ways to reduce the federal deficit – including new taxes, apparently. Bowles, a former chief of staff in the Clinton White House, told Fox News Sunday that “the president looked Senator Simpson and me in the eye and he said, ‘Everything is on the table.’ So we are going to look at every single way to right this fiscal ship,” Bowles said. That includes cutting “sacred cows” and raising revenue,...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days. Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in an interview with CNBC, "I want to get a better picture of what our options are."

THE GREATEST PLEASURE OF RUNNING a country (although no politician will admit it) is getting to tax people. We Republicans decry exactions and imposts and espouse minimal outlay by the sovereign power. But we control all three branches of government. This won't last forever. Let's have some fun while we can. Moreover, the federal deficit is--contrary to all Republican principles--huge. Even the most spending-averse among us wouldn't mind additional revenue. America's media and entertainment industry has a gross (as it were) revenue of $316.8 billion a year. If we subtract the income derived from worthy journalism and the publishing of...

The Concept of First Wealth Value Added Dollar Creation In Establishing a Rational, Overall Economic Policy For the United States By Alan F. Beane Part 1 of 2 This discussion is about First Wealth Value Added Dollar Creation – a concept that focuses on the value added dollars created in the economy versus those that are re-circulated; sort of a production vs. service economy distinction. A few years ago, I recall various economic studies that indicated that $1 of First Wealth Value Added Dollar Creation money ended up being multiplied some 8 to 16 times in terms of service economy...