Free Republic

When it comes to wasting stupefying sums of money, few government-funded projects in American history can rival California’s so-called “High-Speed Rail.” After nearly two decades since California’s voters were conned into approving the project, and after already spending an estimated $11.2 billion, there is still not a single mile of installed track. Proponents originally estimated the total system cost at $33 billion; today, that cost estimate has ballooned to $128 billion. Everything about California High-Speed Rail is misguided. The money being spent to build it could instead be used to add lanes to every major freeway in the state, upgrade...

In March 31 of this year, the center-right Pulitzer-winning journalist Kathleen Parker opened a piece in The Washington Post with the following: Christine Blasey Ford is promoting her new memoir to acclaim from certain quarters, including a glowing review by the New York Times. Meanwhile, the man she accused of being a witness to her alleged sexual assault by now-Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh more than 40 years ago can’t get his own book reviewed or even mentioned by mainstream newspapers.The man Parker describes who couldn’t get his book mentioned is me. I am the person Christine Blasey Ford...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1422705/china-quarterly-value-of-foreign-direct-investment-inflows-according-to-bop/

In October, Mark Garber decided he had had enough. After nearly two years of appeals, he cut a $1,000 check to cover a fine for keeping his brewpub open in late December 2020 in violation of former Gov. Tom Wolf’s emergency orders meant to limit the spread of COVID-19. “We finally bit the bullet even though we didn’t agree with it so we could just move on,” said Garber, co-owner of Big Dog Craft Brewing in Manheim Township. With the citation cleared, Garber said he was able to complete an online renewal for the brewpub’s liquor license, something that had...

Chiquita Brands was ordered Monday by a Florida jury to pay $38.3 million to the families of eight people killed by a right-wing paramilitary group in Colombia, which the banana grower had funded for years during that country's violent civil war. Chiquita had previously acknowledged funding the paramilitary group, pleading guilty in 2007 after the U.S. Department of Justice charged the company with providing payments to what the agency labeled a "terrorist organization." The group, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC, received payments from Chiquita from about 1997 through 2004, which the company had described as "security payments" during...

The majority of job growth in the United States since 2019 has gone to newly arrived migrants as working-class American men continue to fall out of the labor force, an analysis shows. The analysis, published by Steven Camarota at the Center for Immigration Studies, shows the extent to which President Joe Biden’s agenda to grow the labor market with mass immigration — rather than enticing Americans on the sidelines back into work — has been largely executed.

The Washington Post is celebrating a man from the African country of Mauritania who is helping more poor Muslim migrants crowd into Cincinnati apartments and houses, straining the town’s resources and apparently breaking occupancy laws. Even this man, who is working to facilitate the flood of illegals into the U.S., says that the federal government is just letting too many people come to the U.S. all at once. The Washington Post is celebrating a man from the African country of Mauritania who is helping more poor Muslim migrants crowd into Cincinnati apartments and houses, straining the town’s resources and apparently...

In a speech Tuesday afternoon to activists at a gun control event, President Biden asked, “Who in God’s name needs a magazine that holds 200 shells?” He asked this question during a speech given just hours after his son, Hunter, was convicted on three gun charges. During his speech, Biden continued his push for an “assault weapons” ban, then asked, “Who in God’s Name Needs a Magazine That Holds 200 Shells?” The crowd answered by screaming, “Nobody!” Biden responded, “Nobody, that’s right.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Monday that unruly airline passenger incidents remain high, and the agency vowed to maintain a zero-tolerance policy. There were 915 cases of unruly passengers reported in 2024 through June 9, including 106 cases of passenger disturbances due to intoxication, the FAA said. The number of unruly passengers spiked in 2021 to nearly 6,000 during the COVID-19 pandemic with the introduction of mask mandates -- including 4,290 mask-related incidents -- but still remain about twice that of 2020 or earlier levels. Unruly passenger incidents fell last year by 15% to...

The higher-education industry is having a bad decade. Some problems are obvious: With wokeness and campus unrest, colleges and universities have lost some of their mystique. They’ll tell you to “follow the science,” right before they tell you that men can get pregnant. Violent antisemitic riots haven’t done much to burnish their image, nor have the limp responses to those riots from many university administrations. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous. Mission accomplished! Then there’s the economics of it: The reward of college was supposed to be a good job at the end. [snip] Younger people are...

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is paying a visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a closed-door transcribed interview with the House select subcommittee investigating the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo's handling of the pandemic as governor has been a significant focus of the panel's – in particular, a March 25, 2020, executive order by the then-governor that restricted nursing homes from refusing to admit or readmit residents "solely based on confirmed or suspect[ed] diagnosis of COVID-19." "We want to uncover the circumstances that led to this. There has to be some kind of process where this was written up and...

(NewsNation) — The first quarter of 2024 recorded the country’s highest-ever number of ongoing drug shortages, American Society of Health-System Pharmacists data shows. A total of 323 drugs — including life-saving medicines like oxytocin, Rho(D) immune globulin and chemotherapy — were in a deficit during the first three months of the year. The January-March numbers were the highest number of shortages recorded since the ASHP began recording them in 2001. The University of Utah Drug Information Service collects data from pharmacists nationwide and compiles them into statistics on the ASHP’s website.

Millions of Americans are struggling to afford necessities like food, rent, insurance, and a car payment. But if you’re one of them, don’t expect any understanding from the White House and its sycophants in the media. They say your financial pain is all in your head. As an MSNBC host put it, Americans need “an economic explainer,” since “people are confused” about their financial situation. They’re actually “doing quite well,” she laughably asserted. That will surprise the half of Americans who are struggling to make their rent or mortgage payments on time, especially the one-fifth of renters who are skipping...

Popular smartphone apps used to track people’s location and provide weather reports may hand over driving data to a firm that sells the information to insurance companies for the purposes of setting rates for unsuspecting motorists... apps Life360, MyRadar and Gas Buddy are providing user data to an Allstate-owned company, Arity, which computes the numbers to create a “driving score” that takes into account any risky behavior behind the wheel... That information is then sold to other insurance firms — with user consent — which set rates for their customers ... Life360, which is used by parents to keep track...

New Jersey officials are “reviewing” how former President Donald Trump’s liquor licenses for several golf clubs may be impacted by his recent conviction. Officials within the New Jersey Attorney General’s Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control are “reviewing the impact of President Trump’s conviction” on his liquor licenses for the Trump National Golf Club in Colts Neck, Lamington Farm Club, and Trump National Golf Club Philadelphia in Pine Hill, a spokesperson from the state’s attorney general’s office confirmed to the Hill. The spokesperson added that each of the liquor licenses for the former president’s golf clubs are still active.

New Zealand is scrapping a scheme to price gas emissions from livestock — squelching a so-called burp and fart tax initiated under the previous left-wing government led by now departed authoritarian Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. New legislation will be introduced to parliament this month by the ruling conservative coalition to remove the agriculture sector from a new emissions pricing plan, thus responding to farmer pressure that the plan would make their business unprofitable. “The government is committed to meeting our climate change obligations without shutting down Kiwi farms,” said Agriculture Minister Todd McClay.

"The first step is putting a stop to any new borrowing and working together to reduce the deficit. Our fiscal house is barreling down an unsustainable path and we must act fast before tomorrow's problems become today’s," said the head of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget... The U.S. government is borrowing $4.9 billion each day on average, driving the deficit for the first 8 months of this current fiscal year to $1.2 trillion, according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office. "With little surprise, our economic challenges have continued to mount with our debt only four...

The battle for labor unions’ support in the presidential race wages on as the leader of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters reportedly seeks a platform at the Democrat and Republican national conventions this summer. The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported Monday that Teamster President Sean O’Brien has requested to speak at both nominating events. This is a promising sign for former President Donald Trump and a worrying sign for President Joe Biden, given that the union has regularly endorsed Democrats for president dating back decades, according to the outlet.

Maggie Robbins lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights. Because she has no air conditioning, dishwasher, washer or dryer, she uses little electricity. As a result, the net amount she pays Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to deliver electricity to her home could go up by about $20 a month in early 2026, when the big utility implements a new rate structure for some costs of distributing electricity to homes. Under the new scheme, PG&E’s residential customers will pay a fixed monthly charge based on income, but pay a bit less for each kilowatt-hour used. The...

The pro-Trump MAGA Inc. super PAC pointed out that Bidenomics is not a joke, referring to how food prices at restaurants have increased under President Joe Biden’s administration. In a press release from MAGA Inc. on Monday, the super PAC referenced a viral parody post on X which shows photos of former President Donald Trump at his rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, reading and criticizing the prices and items off of a Cheesecake menu. “This viral post might be a parody, but Bidenomics is no joke,” Alex Pfeiffer, the spokesman for MAGA Inc. wrote in the press release. “Prices at...