"We have an administration today that is taking alarming steps to infringe upon our rights in the name of consolidating their power," Perry told about 200 activists who gathered in San Antonio for the organization's national convention.
Not everyone is an entrepreneur. Still, everyone should try—if only once—to start a business. After all, it is small and medium enterprises that are the key to job creation. There is also something uniquely educational about sitting at the desk where the buck stops, in a dreary office you've just rented, working day and night with a handful of employees just to break even.As an academic, I'm just an amateur capitalist. Still, over the past 15 years I've started small ventures in both the U.S. and the U.K. In the process I've learned something surprising: It's much easier to do in the U.K....
The secrecy shrouding the National Security Agency's collection of electronic data is coming under attack, with major Silicon Valley companies seeking to make public more information about the programs and the American Civil Liberties Union filing a lawsuit aimed at halting some of the efforts.Google Inc. said Tuesday it had asked the U.S. government for permission to publicly report on the volume and scope of secret federal court orders that require it to hand over information about its users to federal authorities.Google's request, made in a public letter from its chief legal officer,...
The woman who helped expose IRS abuse of conservative activists has more news to share: The abuse continues, and she sees no evidence that the White House, the IRS or the Justice Department is doing anything to end it. "This is not in the past tense. This is still going on," says Cleta Mitchell, perhaps the country's pre-eminent expert on campaign-finance and political tax law.In 2012, Ms. Mitchell worked to persuade members of Congress that reports of IRS harassment of conservative groups were credible. GOP lawmakers demanded information from the IRS and triggered the internal audit that...
Perhaps the only useful part of the inspector general's audit of the IRS was its timeline. We know that it was August 2010 when the IRS issued its first "Be On the Lookout" list, flagging applications containing key conservative words and issues. The criteria would expand in the months to come.What else was happening in the summer and fall of 2010? The Obama administration and its allies continue to suggest the IRS was working in some political vacuum. What they'd rather everyone forget is that the IRS's first BOLO list coincided with their own attack against "shadowy" or "front"...
Comptroller Susan Combs has been a trailblazer in Texas.The state’s chief financial officer announced recently that she would not run for re-election nor would she seek another office. That is Texas’ loss.
It has been a busy few weeks for the Securities and Exchange Commission. In May, the SEC charged two cities—Harrisburg, Pa., and South Miami, Fla.—with securities fraud for allegedly deceiving investors in their municipal bonds.This follows similar fraud charges against states, New Jersey in 2010 and Illinois in March, after SEC investigators uncovered what they called "material omissions" and "false statements" in bond documents related to those state's pension funds.With Harrisburg, however, the SEC has gone further and charged the city government with "securities fraud for its...
Illinois had its credit rating cut one level after lawmakers failed to restructure state pensions saddled with almost $100 billion in unfunded liabilities.Fitch Ratings cut the state’s $27.5 billion in general-obligation bonds to A- from A today, citing the inaction in the legislative session that ended May 31.Lawmakers adjourned without taking final votes on proposals to reduce an unfunded pension liability that grows by $17 million a day. As they left the capitol in...
The Government Code has been amended after the governor signed a bill into law that requires public retirement systems to post annual financial reports on their public websites to increase transparency.House Bill 13, authored by State Rep....
