President Barack Obama ran into the perfect ethical storm — probably due to a failure in his vetting process. ...more

February 7, 2009

Overtime pay for the many Highlands County employees who did, or still are doing, extra duty to deal with Tropical Storm Fay will be by far the biggest cost to the county. ...more

August 21, 2008

SEBRING — A low-income, senior citizen with a homestead house gets an extra tax break of $36.77 per year on property taxes under the low-income, senior exemption. That's based on Highlands County commissioners granting a $5,000 exemption under the "Save Our Seniors" tax break for low-income people age 65 and older. State law, though, allows counties to set this special exemption anywhere from zero to a maximum exemption of $50,0000 off taxable property value. At the $50,000 exemption level, the tax savings for the low-income, a senior homeowner with a homestead house would jump tenfold, up to $367.77 per year. ...more

February 23, 2008

The Bush administration and the Republican Congress of 2001 buried the economy with the Alternative Minimum Tax. The first thing they did was to ditch pay-as-you-go to make the Medicare private prescription plan seem affordable in 2003. Shortly after massive tax breaks were given to oil and pharmaceutical companies. According to OMB.org: "Those tax cuts were designed to increase the amount of taxes paid through the A.M.T. The tax policy center, which has written extensively about A.M.T., notes that tax cuts enacted between 200l-2006 have more than doubled the projected share of tax payers who will face the A.M.T. in 2010 (from 16 to 33.6 percent). ...more

January 25, 2008