Category Archives: Freedom

Freedom Partners, a pro-free market advocacy group affiliated with the industrialist Koch brothers, is launching a series of digital ads on Thursday intended to pressure members of the House Ways and Means Committee to drop a controversial tax on imports from the GOPs broader tax reform efforts.

The digital ads target close to two dozen Republican panel members, including Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the committee chairman, and Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois, who chairs a tax policy subcommittee, and will run in the members home districts.

The [tax] is bad policy, its dead-on-arrival in the Senate, and its undermining efforts to unify Americans behind a positive vision for bold tax reform, said Freedom Partners spokesman Bill Riggs.

The tax on imports, known as a border adjustment, is a central feature of House Republicans tax reform blueprint, and Mr. Brady has been one of its leading advocates.

Proponents say taxing imports, while exempting exports, would encourage manufacturing to stay in the U.S. The measure is also projected to raise about $1 trillion, which Republicans could use to pay for lowering other rates for individuals and businesses.

Opponents, though, say the tax would ultimately get passed onto consumers through higher prices on retail goods.

The new Freedom Partners campaign, part of a broader multimillion effort, will also target a handful of Democratic senators up for re-election in 2018 in states carried by President Trump. Those ads, which target senators like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, urge viewers to tell them to un-rig the economy and support tax reform.

The group also released a new letter addressed to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch warning Mr. Hatch against pursuing the border tax as part of broader tax reform efforts.

Though the Senate has been focused on health care this week, work on tax reform efforts is also proceeding in both Houses of Congress.

Mr. Roskams subcommittee is scheduled to hear from business executives on Thursday in a hearing on how tax reform will affect small businesses.

Mr. Hatch has also scheduled a hearing before his committee on tax reform next week and has invited top tax policy officials from the Obama, George W. Bush, and Clinton administrations to testify.

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Freedom Partners ramps up campaign against border tax - Washington Times

At their Tuesday evening meeting, the Carroll County Planning and Zoning Commission discussed comments on, but did not vote on whether to approve the Freedom Plan.

The Freedom Plan creates a guide for future long-term growth in the South Carroll area, in terms of roads, resources and future land use designations, which can then guide future zoning changes. State guidelines require the plan be updated every 10 years, but the Freedom Plan was last updated in 2001 the planning commission spent the past year drafting a new plan, which it accepted in April.

Public comment was accepted by the commission throughout the planning process and during the 60-day review period after the commission voted to accept the draft plan in April. Those comments, from the public and state agencies, are now available online.

The commission and county planning staff noted that there were more positive comments about the plan than they had expected, but also noted a familiar thread in many of the negative comments a concern that development envisioned as possible in the plan with a 25-plus-year scope will happen all at once.

"The concern is that all of this will happen all in one year," said County Director of Planning Phil Hager. "You don't just hold out a sign that says open season and every available lot gets developed at the same time."

At the same time, members of the commission expressed concern about the impact on traffic and congestion some of the land use designation changed proposed in the Freedom Plan could lead to. The group decided to wait until at least Tuesday, July 18, their next meeting, before voting on the plan, to give themselves time to consider all of the issues.

Hager, who will leave office at the end of July to become head of the Anne Arundel County Office of Planning and Zoning, advised the commission members to think carefully about what criteria they would use to approve or deny any requested changes to the plan, noting that opinion alone is not enough.

"You need to base it on something that will stand the test of a court case," he said. Otherwise, someone challenging the plan in court would only have to prove that the change they disliked was not fairly arrived at and then "you could end up with something very, very different than anything you discussed."

Once the commission does vote, and presuming the plan is approved, the next step will be for the Carroll Board of County Commissioners to take up the plan, a process that will include more opportunities for public comment. The commissioners can either alter the plan, reject it or adopt it, the latter of which would lead to its implementation.

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Planning Commission discusses Freedom Plan comments - Carroll County Times

Sean Halton was 1 for 5 in Wednesday nights Atlantic League All-Star Game, but that one hit was fairly significant. After all, it kickstarted the Freedom Divisions offense for the night.

In the top of the second at at TD Bank Ballpark in Bridgewater, New Jersey, Halton one of five All-Star selections from the Lancaster Barnstormers sent an offering from Bridgeport righty Rainy Lara over the wall for a home run. Haltons solo shot was immediately followed by another from Sugar Lands Kevin Ahrens, himself a former Stormer. The homers forged an early tie and led to an eventual 10-3 victory for the Freedom Division team.

New Britains Jovan Rosa had belted a two-run homer to put the Liberty squad up 2-0 after one inning, but the home team managed just one more run, in the fourth inning, the rest of the way.

The Freedom Division really asserted itself in the top of the third, as Southern Maryland's Zach Wilson touched losing pitcher John Brownell of the Long Island Ducks for a three-run homer. Wilson eventually earned the games MVP honors just hours after he collected the leagues Home Run Derby title as well.

Four other Lancaster players played for the Freedom Division team Wednesday: pitcher Scott Shuman, catcher Anderson De La Rosa, and infielders Vladimir Frias and Garrett Weber. De La Rosa connected for a pair of singles in his two at-bats. Weber went 1 for 5 in the game, and Frias was 0 for 2.

Weber and Frias turned a 4-6-3 double play in the bottom of the ninth, and De La Rosa cut down Somerset's Justin Pacchioli on a steal attempt in the seventh inning.

Shuman, meanwhile, was one of four pitchers out of the 18 used in the game to throw a perfect inning. He got the side in order in the bottom of the sixth, striking out one.

Former Lancaster starter Brian Grening, now of Southern Maryland, picked up the pitching win for the Freedom side, working a flawless second inning.

In other Atlantic League news Wednesday, Bethpage Ballpark and the Long Island Ducks were selected as the host of 2018 All-Star Game.

Its a great honor to host the All-Star Game and festivities, Ducks president/GM Michael Pfaff said via a league release. We are looking forward to creating a special event that will be memorable for all that attend in 2018.

The Ducks have hosted the event twice before, in 2002 and 2010.

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Stormers' Halton homers as Freedom All-Stars earn 10-3 win - LancasterOnline

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ObamaCare Freedom and Failure Options - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

The website of the municipal committee in Uttar Pradeshs Rampur district was hacked by a person, who called himself a Kashmiri and posted messages demanding freedom on it on Wednesday, an official said on Thursday.

The message started with Hacked by NABEEL that flashed in place of the usual homepage of the Rampur municipal committee.

A single BEE is ignored but when millions come together the bravest RUN IN FEAR. The one thing the government fear is the day we stand together, it said.

The alleged hacker wrote GO INDIA GO BACK WE WANT FREEDOM, below it and followed it an extended note regarding Kashmiris and Muslims. The message ended with, i am a Kashmiri, it is my crime? But I am proud committing the crime.

The hacking was first noticed by municipal officials while uploading new tenders.

The message was being flashed each time we visited the website and unlike floating advertisements, it was blocking the entire homepage, said Ashwini Tripathi, an IT specialist who handles the website.

According to Tripathi, the website was developed two years ago by a Noida-based company which was informed about the messages.

The experts from the company cleared it hours after we informed them about it, said Tripathi adding, No harm was done to the website or any other data attached to it by the hack.

The website lacked security features and was easily hacked into. But the hacker apparently was only an amateur and was able to alter only the homepage, said Faizan Alam, principal programmer of the company.

We have cleared the glitch and advised the municipal committee to buy additional security features for the website, he added.

The officials of the municipal committee decided not to register a police complaint regarding the matter.

Police officials said they were not aware of the hacking.

An investigation will be ordered regarding the matter once a formal police complaint is filed by the municipal committee, they said.

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'Kashmiri' hacks municipal committee's website in UP, demands freedom - Hindustan Times

The first-place Florence Freedom, presented by Titan Mechanical Solutions, return from the Frontier League All-Star Break with a weekend home series at UC Health Stadium, Friday through Sunday.

The weekend is filled with promotions for the series against the Normal Cornbelters, beginning Friday with Superhero Night and fireworks.

FRIDAY, JULY 14 SUPERHERO NIGHT AND FIREWORKS (GAME TIME 7:05 PM)

Superheroes from the DC Comics collection, including Superman, Batman and The Flash, will be at the ballpark available for photos and interactions with fans throughout the evening. There will also be a Girl Scouts campout on the field after the game.

Additionally, Elite Pyrotechnics will once again put on a spectacular post-game fireworks show, presented by Arlinghaus Heating and Air Conditioning.

SATURDAY, JULY 15 MARTIAL ARTS NIGHT AND POSTGAME CONCERT (6:05 PM)

The team will wear special Freedom Ranger jerseys that will be auctioned off after the game. Mike Dominach will also lead a Taekwondo lesson on the field post-game.

Also after the game, the Freedoms Kerry Toyota Rockin Saturday series continues with a post-game concert by What She Said, presented by Hudy Delight. During the concert, kids 12 and under can participate in a game of kickball on the field, supervised by Freedom interns.

SUNDAY, JULY 16 YOUTH SPORTS DAY AND FAMILY SUNDAY (6:05 PM)

The Freedom will celebrate all local youth sports teams and organizations by giving back 30% of all ticket sales for the evening to family, friends and neighbors.

Kids will be able to run the bases after the game, and as the kids come off the field, they will be greeted by the entire Freedom team for a post-game autograph session presented by Cornerstone Lillie Insurance.

The Florence Freedom are members of the independent Frontier League and play all home games at UC Health Stadium located at 7950 Freedom Way in Florence, KY.The Freedom can be found online at FlorenceFreedom.com, or by phone at 859-594-4487.

Florence Freedom

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Superhero Night, fireworks kick off weekend of promos as Freedom return from All-Star break Friday - User-generated content (press release)...

BILLINGS -

History took to the skies over Billings on Tuesdayas the "Wings of Freedom Tour" entertained from the sky and tarmac.

Theevent honors veterans of World War II and featuresvintageaircraft that requires upkeep 365 days a year..

The tour provided an experience to ride inand even take lessons in operating aircraft over 70 years old.

The experience was unbelievable," said Steve Olson, who is the nephew of a WWII tech sergeant. "My Uncle Fred worked on the B-17s over in England, he flew across the pond in it. I cannot imagine, but he did it and he loved it. Ive been living the memory ever since.

Fred Groff, who was alongside Olson for the tour,recalled the experience of repairing combat damaged aircraft.

Wed get them back in about a day and ready to start bombing again," Groff said.So it had to be an atomic bomb, that was small enough to put in those, and they thought that it would start exploding, they thought that it possibly go around the earth, and destroy all of our Earth.

The experience of standing next to the aircraft in which they defended our countrys freedom proved to be emotional for some.

It was such a treat to be able to fly for him today. Even at my old age, its pretty cool to be able to do something like that with him," Olson said.

Sights and sounds that most of us can only imagine, from history books, and movies.

Twice, I almost had to jump, because I came off the bomb run, and Im the nose, and I was looking straight at the ground. When I went in it, I remembered it all, said Kenneth Hall, a WWII gunner.

Families got to witness the camaraderie rekindled by the tour -- machineryand memories from a long time ago.

Its kinda nice that theyre still up and moving around arent they?

Yeah, its kinda nice that we are too.

For many, they are experiencing these planes as flying museums. But for a handful of men, it has been a trip down memory lane.

That was some ride, Hall said.

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WWII veterans recall memories during Wings of Freedom Tour in Billings - KTVQ Billings News

The House Freedom Caucus plans to lay out three ways members would support raising the debt ceiling this month, including overhauling the debt limit and payment system or making deep cuts to mandatory spending.

The roughly 40-member group of hard-line conservatives will ask GOP leaders to raise the debt ceiling in July alongside other legislative provisions to win their support, as first reported by Axios and confirmed by CQ Roll Call.

One option is a bill from Freedom Caucus member David Schweikert, R-Ariz., that would call on the Treasury Department to rescind unobligated federal funds from agencies; sell off certain government assets; and issue bonds linked to gross domestic product, to pay down the public debt when Treasury estimates the debt limit will soon be reached.

The legislation was introduced by Schweikert last week and lists Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., as a co-sponsor.

Congress needs to suspend or raise the debt limit by early-to-mid October, according to recent estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Top lawmakers like Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the Republican whip, have said they want to address the debt ceiling before the August recess but a concrete plan for doing so has yet to emerge.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California declined to set a similar deadline for his chamber. He said that the House will wait to take up a debt limit vote until after Congress repeals and replaces the 2010 health care law.

I want to get it done in advance, but there is no set [decision] that we have to do it in July, McCarthy said before the Independence Day recess.

I think health is going to have to get done first, he continued.

The debt limit suspension expired on March 15 and since then, the Treasury Department has been using extraordinary measures to continue paying the nations bills.

Other options the Freedom Caucus will propose are tagging the debt limit increase to $250 billion in mandatory spending cuts over an unspecified time period or a full repeal of the 2010 health care law, a Freedom Caucus aide confirmed.

The three options are highly ambitious and would face certain resistance in the Senate if passed by the House.

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House Freedom Caucus to Air Debt Ceiling Demands - Roll Call

President Carter kisses Coretta Scott King, widow of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the White House, July 12, 1977, after he presented the Medal of Freedom to her on behalf of her late husband. John DurickaAP

When the civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, he was already a national icon. But it would take nearly a decade more before he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. He was given the posthumous medal by President Jimmy Carter on July 11, 1977 precisely 40 years ago Tuesday for being, in Carter's words, the "conscience of a generation" who "made our nation stronger because he made it better."

Carter's decision to give King the medal came nearly a decade after the activist's death, but the timing made sense in the context of American politics at the time. The award was part of Carter's first round of Presidential Medal of Freedom selections, and many saw it as one way for Carter who had won more than 80% of the African-American vote in 1976 to acknowledge the voters who put him in office in the first place.

Not that his outreach to African Americans started with the election. He had become famous for declaring that "quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over" during his inaugural address as the governor of Georgia in 1971, and unveiled a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Georgia state capitol building in 1974. He was also the first Georgia Governor to appoint African Americans to many prominent state posts. "Nowhere can the promise and the serious problems of the emerging South be seen as readily as in Jimmy Carter 's state of Georgia," TIME declared in a cover story on how Carter represented change in the region.

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When Carter ran for president, he was predicted to easily win the black vote, thanks in part to ties to King's life and legacy. Andrew Young, the Georgia Congressman and former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., became a key liaison to black leaders, regaling church-goers with stories about how Carter lived next door to a black bishop whom he prayed with. The Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. delivered invocations at the Democratic National Convention. And, as now-Rep. John Lewis, who then ran the Atlanta-based Voter Education Project, pointed out to TIME, black support for Carter was a vote against one of his primary challengers, the segregationist former Alabama Governor George Wallace.

So it was no surprise that when Carter won the election, black leaders and the press were quick to look to the work of Martin Luther King Jr. "I wish Lord, how I wish Martin were alive today," Lewis said afterward. "He would be very, very happy. Through it all, the lunch-counter sit-ins, the bus strike, the marches and everything, the bottom line was voting."

And Carter acknowledged on myriad occasions, including upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, that his political career was made possible by the work of civil-rights leaders like King.

But the Presidential Medal of Freedom wasn't just about acknowledging work that had been done in the past. Accepting the award, the activist's widow Coretta Scott King pointed out that the decision to give her late husband the medal was symbolic of a national shift that, she hoped, would continue into the future. "It is highly significant," she said , "that you, Mr. President, a white Southerner, would become the first American President to recognize the importance of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s contributions to the human rights movement in this country."

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Martin Luther King Jr Gets Medal of Freedom 40 Years Ago | Time.com - TIME

A view of Dutchman Creek in Outagamie County July 11, 2017. (WLUK image)

OUTAGAMIE COUNTY (WLUK) -- A manure spill killed a high percentage of the fish in a section of creek near Freedom, the state Department of Natural Resources says.

DNR officials say the manure spilled from Neighborhood Dairy into a mile-and-a-half-long stretch of Dutchman Creek. The spill apparently resulted from a valve malfunction, causing manure from a full manure pit to run out of the farm's runoff collection system, according to Ben Uvaas, a DNR wastewater and runoff specialist. The manure then flowed through a grassy swale and into the creek. It flowed northeast, under Section Line and Vans roads, where it stopped at a berm built north of Vans Road. Much of the affected area is in the Oneida Indian Reservation.

The DNR says farm workers responded quickly when the spill was discovered Monday morning, pumping manure from the pit and transferring it to another manure storage facility. They also started excavating berms and called in vacuum trucks to remove contaminated water from the creek. The DNR and Outagamie County Land and Conservation Department also helped.

Farm managers told the DNR their initial estimate was that 20,000 gallons of manure spilled.

Groundwater may not be affected, the DNR says, because of the thick clay soil. However, DNR groundwater specialists are monitoring the situation.

DNR officials say the farm operates under a CAFO, or concentrated animal feeding operation, permit and has a good record of compliance. According to the farm's latest annual report, 950 cows are milked there.

Cleanup is expected to continue for several days.

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Manure spill kills fish in creek near Freedom - Fox11online.com