Free Republic

They are out in force, asking each other what they plan to do to "Trump-proof" their economies. At the World Economic Forum, the usual swells and princelings were out in force. Their latest burning issue is here: WEF leaders pressed on how they will 'Trump-proof their economies' if he wins election 'I think the best defense, if that’s the way you want to look at it, is attack,' European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said They live to tell us peons how we should live and vote. But here is a small sample of questions these blowhards should be asked...

Britain’s climate watchdog has privately admitted that a number of its key net zero recommendations may have relied on insufficient data, it has been claimed. Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, who led a recent Royal Society study on future energy supply, said that the Climate Change Committee only “looked at a single year” of data showing the number of windy days in a year when it made pronouncements on the extent to which the UK could rely on wind and solar farms to meet net zero. Sir Chris’s report for the Royal Society, published in September, concluded that a vast network...

Joseph Stalin is roaring back to life in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Monuments are being built, “Stalin centers” are being constructed, and Putin’s war against Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Ukraine is being compared to Stalin’s victory over Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Given the fascist nature of Putin’s regime and the imperialist, genocidal war he’s conducting in Ukraine, Stalin’s rehabilitation makes perfect sense. More important than the political rationale behind Stalin’s “return” to Russia, however, are the moral implications of such a move. Back in 2011, Yale University historian Timothy Snyder asked, “Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse?” His answer implied that both men were...

Argentine President Javier Milei delivered an address fiercely condemning socialism at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, rejecting the “radical feminist” and “environmental” agendas fueled by socialism as well. Milei urged world leaders to embrace capitalism as an alternative. Milei, a libertarian economist, explained in a roughly 20-minute speech how socialism ultimately leads to poverty, how the state “is not the solution,” but rather “the problem itself,” and how leftism has co-opted Western government institutions to further its agendas. Wednesday’s speech was Milei’s first international address since taking office in December. “I am here today to tell...

Pope Francis says many things that, in my opinion, just regurgitate leftist talking points, so I have many questions for this supposedly religious man who is supposed to look out for the best interest of the people, especially the poor. The pope frequently denounces capitalism as some kind of enemy of the poor, but capitalism is the best system to lift poor people up through opportunity instead of making them dependent on the government, so I would ask him: Isn't it better to give people economic opportunities than to have them depend on a master, a powerful government, for their...

Lessons from Milton Friedman, Herbert Stein ... and Cloward-Piven. Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman scolded the Wall Street Journal for cheerleading an open-border immigration policy. "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state," he warned. This leads to a “transfer state,” as the Heritage Foundation describes, the government taxing the upper and middle classes, transferring money to lower economic classes via subsidies and benefits. In other words, “The transfer state redistributes funds from those with high-skill and high-income levels to those with lower skill levels.” Heritage makes the assumption, “It takes the entire net tax payments...

Introduction We are living in a time of grassroots demands to transform our built environment and our relationships with one another and the earth.2 To abolish prisons and police, rent, debt, borders, and billionaires.3 To decommodify housing and healthcare and to decolonize land.4 To exercise more collective ownership over our collectively generated wealth.5 Some of us are reimagining the state. Others are dreaming of moving beyond it.6 But these are more than dreams. These are demands for a democratic political economy. These demands increased in volume this year as the violence of policing continued, the fires burned in California and...

For decades, Americans have been told that the only humane, decent health care system is one run by the government. The oft-uttered complaint is that it’s a shame that the richest country in the world doesn’t have universal medical care. The reality is that the universal systems in other wealthy nations are cruel, cold bureaucracies. If there are any doubts that this is true, look northward, to Canada, where waiting lists for treatment are leaving “patients frozen in line,” Pacific Research Institute President and Chief Executive Officer Sally Pipes recently wrote in Forbes. “When everyone within a country is trapped...

Massachusetts is considering trust funds, aimed at reducing the racial wealth gap, for the state's poorest newborns that the recipients would be able to access when they turn 18. The "baby bonds" would be an at-birth publicly funded trust fund program for Massachusetts residents, to be used for college, buying a home or starting a business. The amount given to each eligible newborn would depend on their household income, although it doesn't give a maximum amount or specify who would qualify for the funds. "Children born into households with low income (which are disproportionately households of color) are prioritized through...

Against the enormity of climate change, it’s easy to see individual efforts as futile. But tiny acts add up. Not only do we profoundly influence friends and family, our actions and example act as billboards advertising social norms. We have the power to change what’s “normal.” Just look at why your neighbors install solar panels. Based on the response to this column over the past year, millions of you want to do more in your own life about climate change. Here are seven things I discovered in 2023 that can make a difference in your new year. Lentils are the...

BELFAST, Maine — How does it feel to be a climate scientist in 2023? Let’s set the scene. Hundreds of picnickers are sprawled across a lawn speckled with colorful blankets. Yachts bob in the bay. Guitars blare, children wrestle and dancers twirl across a concert lawn in the golden glow of a dying summer night. Off to the side, Peter Kalmus sits alone. His eyes are closed. His toes are tucked beneath his body. He’s catching an occasional side-eye from onlookers. “When I’m meditating, I don’t feel anxious,” Kalmus later says, explaining that he strives for two hours of meditation...

Far-left Axios is gushing over a new study that blames climate change for people fleeing Democrat-run cities like the “metro areas of Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Washington, D.C. (specifically, Alexandria, Va.).” “Climate migration is already taking place within American communities, new data finds, as people flee flood-prone areas, and create ‘climate abandonment’ zones,” writes an unquestioning Axios. “The study constitutes the latest warning sign of the effects of climate change,” Axios continues without skepticism. “Population shifts, and a larger reckoning for real estate, are only expected to worsen as global average surface temperatures rise.” But then the premise of the study...

If there was ever a year that called for bold global action on climate change, 2023 was it. In what will likely go down as the warmest year on record — one rife with catastrophic floods, scorching heat waves, devastating wildfires and enduring drought — leaders from nearly 200 countries gathered to chart a path forward in the fight against climate change. After more than two weeks of tense negotiations representatives from 198 countries agreed Wednesday to “transition away” from fossil fuels. It was a historic deal but one that once again fell short for many climate activists, who saw...

How the horrifying atrocities in Israel against Jewish women and children on October 7th could result in an explosion of hatred towards Jews in America makes no sense. It defies all logic, and the initial epicenter of that hate was on “safe space” college campuses. But, then, maybe it’s understandable if you consider the role of “socialist-loving ‘intellectuals’” or, anti-American academics. When assessing the hate that I encountered returning from combat in Vietnam in 1969, that group came out on top as the leading offender. Today, socialist-loving “intellectuals” are the root cause of the hatred against the Jewish people. They’ve...

When they tell you who they are, you better listen. This isn’t about Palestine. It’s about Jews. It’s not about a cease-fire. It’s about destroying Israel. The Syracuse chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Syracuse Collective for Palestinian Liberation, the Resilient Indigenous Action Collective, and the Syracuse chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation organized the “Shut It Down for Palestine protest in downtown Syracuse, NY. The anti-Israel students targeted comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s show. Seinfeld is Jewish. He signed an open letter expressing support for Israel. From The Daily Orange: Attendees called for an end to U.S....

Advocates for stronger actions to address climate change frequently invoke climate justice claims, noting that climate change’s impacts fall disproportionately on poorer, marginalized communities in America and elsewhere. Unfortunately, some of the remedies promoted by those same advocates — such as eliminating natural gas hookups in new housing — threaten to create injustices of their own by making new housing more expensive and less accessible. Natural gas is much less carbon intensive than coal and oil and, crucially, usually is a less expensive way to heat homes and power hot-water heaters. For decades, Washington’s utilities encouraged switching to gas from...

We've all heard of human rights and civil rights, but what about the rights of nature? A growing global movement is working to give plants, animals and ecosystems some of the same legal protections as humans, and in some countries, it's leading to new legislation. Panama is one of the only nations in the world with a country-wide rights of nature law. The legislation was just used to help shut down one of the largest copper mines in the world. Callie Veelenturf was the driving force behind the law. The 31-year-old Massachusetts native is a marine biologist who has been...

French Energy Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said Saturday she was "stunned" after the oil cartel OPEC urged its members to thwart any deal targeting fossil fuels at the COP28 conference. ADVERTISING "I am stunned by these statements from OPEC+. And I am angry," she said from the climate conference in Dubai, adding that "OPEC+'s position endangers the most vulnerable countries and the poorest populations who are the first victims of this situation". The minister said she was "counting on the presidency of the COP not to be influenced by these declarations, and to reach an agreement which affirms a clear objective...

College Station, Texas GHRC — For Dr. Aaron Hultgren, the wake-up call was Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when the young emergency physician returned from an overseas trip and found his hospital without power, its doors closed to the public. Dr. Lakshmi Balasubramanian, an oncologist in Austin, Texas, signed up to study climate medicine after the death of a patient who was trapped in her home during a freak winter storm two years ago. Dr. Paul Charlton, a physician with the Indian Health Service in northwest New Mexico, was motivated by 2023’s summer heat wave, when temperatures cracked 100 degrees Fahrenheit...

Paris (AFP) – The world may cross the crucial 1.5C global warming threshold in seven years as fossil fuel CO2 emissions continue to rise, scientists warned Tuesday, urging countries at the COP28 talks to "act now" on coal, oil and gas pollution. Battle lines are being drawn over the future of fossil fuels at the UN climate summit in Dubai, with big polluters trying to see off calls for an agreement to phase out the carbon-intensive energy responsible for most of human-caused greenhouse gas.