Free Republic

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., warned of major cuts to Medicare and large tax increases as the U.S. Senate neared its first votes this weekend on health care reform. McCain opposes health reforms pushed by Democrats and President Barack Obama that would create a public-option government system to cover the uninsured and operate alongside private insurance companies. "I don't think Americans really understand the scam that's going on here of beginning to collect taxes, tax increases and Medicare cuts of approximately $1 trillion beginning 40 days from now," McCain said Saturday. "In other words, the first of January, according to...

Via Oprah, Facebook and a bus trip that resembled a campaign swing more than a book tour, Sarah Palin reappeared on the national stage last week, minus her governorship and running-mate status, but with a new role as principled “rogue” to add to her previous credits as plain-spoken patriot and hockey mom. Party leaders weigh the benefits and risks of catering to “tea party” protesters like these, who dislike the House health care bill. Whatever else it said about America, her return brought into focus a big question for Republicans as they watched the intense reactions she generated: To what...

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker wrote the House Financial Services Committee earliy this month that they opposed a provision, backed by Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas) that would expand the congressional Government Accountability Office’s audits of the Fed. The committee, ignoring the pleas from the two, endorsed the provision Thursday. Greenspan and Volcker, in a letter sent to the committee’s chairman and ranking Republicans, warned that the provision threatened the ability of the Fed to foster price stability independent of political interference.

With all that in mind, an article in Esquire, “The 'Socialist' American Reform That Worked Long Before Health Care”, seemed timely. After all, the premise was that the past struggle for universal public education in the United States is analogous to the current struggle for universal health care.

Former presidential contender's book tour stops at ND. BY ERIN BLASKO SOUTH BEND — Bob Moore was enthusiastic about Mike Huckabee long before the Republican presidential candidate arrived on the national scene in 2007, charming his party's base with his strong commitment to conservative values and moderates and even liberals with his "aw, shucks" persona. He was quick to point that out Tuesday, shortly after meeting the former Arkansas governor at a promotional event at the Hammes Notre Dame Bookstore. "I've read all of his books except the one that just came out," the Goshen man said, adding that that...

The Republican landslide in Virginia and stunning upset in New Jersey were not the only bad news for the left in the last few months. The Social Democrats in the September German elections for the Bundestag did worse than in any election since the Second World War. Merkel's Christian Democrats lost some support as well, but the market oriented Free Democrats made major gains and a center-right coalition now governs Germany with a majority of seats in the Bundestag. Polling data one month after the German general election indicates that Germans continue to oppose a left of center government. The...

On Nov. 1, the government of the state of California began withholding from workers' paychecks 10 percent more than what it had been withholding. The Los Angeles Times described this move -- prompted by California's fiscal calamity -- as "a forced, interest-free loan" from taxpayers to the government. The Times explained to its California readers that "You'll be repaid any extra withholding in April. Those who would receive a refund anyway will receive a larger one, and those who owe taxes will owe less." The ostensible purpose of withholding is to better ensure that taxpayers actually pay the taxes they...

Liberals refuse to admit Obama's policies look a lot like Bush's. During last year's Republican National Convention, South Carolina GOP leaders were regularly calling in to talk radio station WTMA to provide event coverage. On the day they were supposed to talk to me, I was informed that Republican Party officials did not wish to speak to Jack Hunter. A denouncer of big government and all its works, I never saw any reason to make special exceptions for Republicans, and for my anti-GOP sins I had become persona non grata. Today, everyone is denouncing big government. Since Obama's election, tea...

WASHINGTON - Massachusetts officials are closely monitoring an abortion funding ban in the sweeping health care legislation before Congress to make sure that it does not restrict women’s access to abortion coverage in the state. Abortion is a covered service for low-income Massachusetts women enrolled in subsidized insurance plans available since 2006 through the state’s landmark health care law.But the bill that squeaked through the US House late Saturday would prohibit private insurance plans from covering abortion if they accept federal subsidies. It also bans abortion coverage in the new government insurance option. State officials say there are too many...

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Monday said Congress needs to provide regulators greater tools to control the risky financial behavior that helped trigger the recession and to unwind major firms on the verge of collapse. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said she supports such a winding-down process for financial institutions other than banks. But she does have reservations with a proposal now before the House, which would cover the costs for the government of dissolving troubled companies with fees charged to businesses after the firms' meltdown occurred. Bair says that fund should be...

Dr. Rand Paul, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, explained his position on taxes, government spending, the drug abuse epidemic, welfare and other government benefits during an exclusive interview with the Times-Tribune, just hours before his appearance at the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg. Initially, Dr. Paul addressed drug abuse in rural Kentucky. As a doctor, he immediately zeroed in on more vigilant policing of doctors who recklessly write prescriptions. He asked, “Are they being disciplined? I’m a doctor and occasionally I’ll get notification from the medical licensure board of people who are having their licenses suspended.” Referencing a recent...

Washington rejected royalty; Lincoln was a backwoods lawyer; any American stood up and looked foreign royalty in the eye because an American was as good as anybody. Our aristocrats paid for their privileges and lost them when the money ran out. Getting ahead wasn’t easy but your gains were yours and nobody interfered with what you did. We lived with opportunity that pulled people from everywhere. Our watchwords per Alexis de Toqueville (Democracy in America) were equality and liberty. Government paid less than industry but was secure, you didn’t work as hard and benefits were better. Smart politicians assumed public...

Just had the 218th vote, which is what they need to psas th ebill

Conservatives who are excited about Republican victories in last night's elections should read this article in the Politico and remember that the GOP has a long way to go before it has any credibility as a small government party. The piece takes a close look at the House select committee on earmark reform, which Republican leaders created among much fanfare after the Nov. 2008 election to combat pork barrel spending projects. Yet the committee still hasn't delivered a report on earmark spending that was supposed to be completed in February, and more tellingly, eight out of the 10 members of...

CHICAGO (AP) - Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say. The estimate comes from an analysis of 30 years of national data, and it bolsters other recent evidence on the pervasiveness of youngsters at economic risk. It suggests that almost everyone knows a family who has received food stamps, or will in the future, said lead author Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "Your neighbor may be...

Barney proves he has no clue how far gone he is. Here's the bill: For the whole series of Zero dollar bills, go here: " Flickr Archive of Zero Bills"

House Republicans Find 111 New 'Bureaucracies' in Health Care Bill In its latest attempt to portray Democrats' reform package as an unwieldy expansion of federal government in the health care sector, the House Republican Conference circulated what it called a list of "new boards, bureaucracies, commissions and programs" created in the House health care bill. House Republicans claimed Monday that the health care reform bill pushed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi would create a whopping 111 new "federal bureaucracies." In its latest attempt to portray the Democrats' reform package as an unwieldy expansion of federal government in the health care sector,...

There has been a lot of talk in Washington recently about senior citizens, mostly about how various healthcare reform models would help or hurt them. But there is another critical issue that has quietly devastated seniors financially over the last few decades. It concerns how the cost of living is calculated. How does the administration justify not giving a cost of living increase to Social Security recipients this year? According to the official Consumer Price Index calculation, life has gotten cheaper for the first time in decades. If the government can show statistically that the cost of living has gone...

HOLLY HILL -- The yard sale at 722 Center Ave. has been canceled. That much is clear. The rest of the story, including allegations that police threatened to arrest the 80-year-old homeowner because she didn't have a permit? Not so much. The facts are these: After 60 years in Holly Hill, Pauline Liles is moving to Tennessee to live with her daughter's family. Her husband, Jack, is already there, having suffered a stroke that has immobilized him. Pauline, an old hand at yard sales, was hoping to sell most of their stuff before joining him next week. She advertised the...

Cited by some U.S. bishops, the Catholic principle of subsidiarity is providing a new wrinkle in the health care debate The debate over health care reform is igniting another, related discussion: What is the proper role of government in the lives of a country's citizens? The Catholic Church endorses no specific political or economic system -- thus bishops and Catholic thinkers are drawing on Catholic social teaching to support sometimes conflicting solutions to find affordable health care for Americans without health insurance, who number 46.3 million according to the U.S. Census Bureau. There's little debate in the Church that some...

Fellow Hoosiers: I submit this post on behalf of a friend of my family, who works for Sallie Mae, here in Indianapolis. I am asking for your thoughtful consideration in this matter, and if you agree with what's presented in the proposal on the http://www.protectindianajobs.com website, to please sign the electronic petition. The issue is this. There is legislation before the U.S. Senate right now, that would make all student loans government-run. If this legislation is signed into law, Sallie Mae would be severly affected, and undoubtedly hundreds of jobs would be taken from this state. Let's stop this madness,...

The lies exposed.

My friend Peggy Noonan has written a powerful piece on the decline of optimism and confidence in the future among what she calls the American “leadership class” – the business and opinion-forming elites who determine the effective state of mind of the country. The present economic crisis, she says, is unlike previous recessions (in which the hard facts of economic life were sometimes worse) in that there is now a sense of defeatism and resignation which is quite new to America’s conception of itself. What she senses is that no one believes any longer in the possibility of a political...

There's been a weird talking point bubbling up that the House health-care plan makes private insurance -- sigh -- illegal. Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who breathes out crazy like the rest of us exhale carbon dioxide, warns that "on the 16th page, it says whatever health care you have now, it’s going to be gone within five years." Investor's Business Daily says, "right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal." Sigh. Not really. Shadowfax does the lord's work and explains what's actually going on here. The short version is that your insurance doesn't become illegal....

RUNNING for a second term, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine insists he's "fighting for what matters most." But for whom? Corzine's record plainly shows that the New Jersey taxpayer is among the least of his concerns. His decisions have yielded a toxic business climate, out-migration of entrepreneurs and a tax system that's falling apart. A second term would be disastrous. Perhaps Corzine's most fundamental error is to consistently try to fix public-policy problems by throwing more money at them -- funding the government largesse with tax hikes on individuals and businesses.

When is Congress going to acknowledge the real elephant in the room - how much it will cost to administer this health care program? Obviously, it is going to require an enormous new government agency, one possibly as large and powerful as the Social Security Administration or the IRS! Has anyone in Congress investigated how much it will cost taxpayers every year to administer this new bureaucracy? (Of course they have, but they are carefully not telling taxpayers about it.) Have they determined how many thousands of new government workers will have to be hired? What about buildings, office space,...

Despite George W. Bush's many failures as president, in one area he was an unqualified success: demonstrating the impossibility of big-government conservatism. For decades, clever pundits and Republican apparatchiks have been touting this self-evident oxymoron as the path to political success. After eight years in practice, it has proved to be the road to irrelevance and ruin - politically as well as financially. Ideologies that celebrate the swollen state while traveling under the name "conservative" are nothing new. As the Old Right faded into the modern American conservative movement, Eisenhower-era "Modern Republicans" preached a "dynamic conservatism" that was to be...

Former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee is deploying his grass-roots activists and raising money for the campaigns of conservative candidates in states that are key to a 2012 presidential run. The effort is run by Huck PAC, the former governor’s political action committee, which has 6,000 members spread across all 50 states, 46 of which have volunteer state coordinators.

In February of this year, I wrote a study (co-authored with Mike Flynn) about the lessons of the Japanese “Lost Decade.” At the end of the 1980s, Japan faced a very similar situation to ours: an asset bubble burst, the economy went into recession, and the financial sector stumbled. In that study we argued (as did others in separate publications) that if American didn’t properly learn the lessons of the Lost Decade, that we too would suffer a similar long night of economic malaise. Unfortunately, the warning has not been heeded. Japan spent most of the 1990s screwing around with...

Barney Frank Frank: "We Are Trying On Every Front To Increase The Role Of Government" (Video)

(snip) U.S. leadership is crucial. That is why I am encouraged by the spirit of compromise shown in the bipartisan initiative announced last week by John Kerry and Lindsey Graham. Here was a pair of U.S. senators — one Republican, the other Democratic — coming together to bridge their parties’ differences to address climate change in a spirit of genuine give-and-take. We cannot afford another period where the United States stands on the sidelines. An engaged United States can lead the world to seal a deal to combat climate change in Copenhagen. An indecisive or insufficiently engaged United States will...

In 1992, Congress intervened in corporate compensation and messed things up. Now it's the White House's turn. BY DAN MACEY Executive pay has emerged, once again, as a major issue in Washington. This week Treasury and the Federal Reserve announced new regulations designed to oversee and limit executive pay at thousands of financial institutions. This is deeply ironic, because today's pay woes are the direct result of prior government intervention.

Link only, per FR posting rules

One of the most macabre images I've ever heard de scribed came in the after math of the Asian tsunami in 2004. Before the tidal wave crashed on shore, beachgoers stood around and idly gaped as the water drastically receded. Bewildered, they didn't realize they were looking at the prelude to a calamity. The Democratic Party looks more and more like those beachgoers every day, watching popular support recede, oblivious to the Perot tsunami coming our way. In 1992, the incumbent president, George H.W. Bush, was a disappointment to his party's base and a pariah to the Democrats. Government seemed...

ACORN Scandals Grow & Grow Malcolm A. Kline, October 23, 2009 When two college students pretending to be a prostitute and her pimp sought help from ACORN employees, staffers couldn’t do enough for them as the two claimed to be importing underage girls to work as ladies of the evening. The Association for Community Organizers for Reform Now responded with a lawsuit. Documentarian Andrew Breitbart, who helped distribute the videos, disputes the claims made by ACORN. “ACORN claims this is a $100 million Fox News investigation,” Breitbart said at a press conference at the National Press Club here in Washington,...

To Democrats, there are only two categories into which fit all places, people and things. There are those inside of government and those outside. If something is inside, it needs to be nurtured, protected and subsidized. If something is outside, it needs to be regulated and taxed. (And, please, no e-mails about the US military. Liberals see it as an illegitimate appendix to government and treat it accordingly.) History’s greatest example of a world-changing system developed in an essentially unregulated environment is certainly the Internet. Despite the claims of Al Gore, the Internet was not, like the light bulb or...

VIDEO: Another ACORN "Pimp and Prostitution" video, this time from Philadelphia, has been released by BigGovernment.com, an Andrew Breitbart website, starring the dynamic due of James O'Keefe, and Hannah Giles.

We would not have to ask the above question if public education had not become the great, costly, and tragic failure that it is. It has failed the children, but in reality it has not failed the progressives. They were the ones who engineered the dumbing-down process which parents and taxpayers continue to pay for. But it is the children who suffer in terms of becoming intellectually disabled, semi-literate, disoriented, frustrated, and terribly unhappy. But what is even a bit disheartening is that many liberals still believe that government schooling has been a noble experiment. Perhaps Walter Lippmann, the great...

With a faltering economy, multiple wars, and the approaching demise of the dollar’s reserve status, there are more than enough problems to keep politicians in Washington working day and night. In between handing out cash for clunkers and nationalizing healthcare, the administration is busy sending more troops overseas, escalating existing wars, and seeking out excuses to start new wars. Congress is working on “urgent” legislation to address crises like healthcare reform and climate change. The reforms are so very urgent that legislation must pass swiftly with no time to read the bills even though the new laws wouldn’t take effect...

Charlie Crist has begun airing the first radio ads of the U.S. Senate race – blasting President Obama for his freespending of taxpayer money, some of which the governor earlier endorsed. A pair of 60-second spots have begun airing statewide – one sending a “message” to Obama that “enough is enough.” The other claims “Washington is out of control. “Yet the president has the same tired answer for every problem – to spend more of your money,” the spot begins. Crist’s approach to Obama and federal spending is a departure from just months ago. Shortly after joining Obama in Fort...

It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones — and often deliberately so. Far from viewing the past as a potential source of wisdom and insight, political regimes have a habit of employing history as an ideological weapon, to be distorted and manipulated in the service of present-day ambitions. That’s what Winston Churchill meant when he described the history of the Soviet Union as...

WASHINGTON -- Americans have historically swung between anger at big business and anger at Washington. This year their rage has targeted business and government with equal fury. Public frustration over Wall Street failures that led to the financial crisis was typified by the uproar over bonus payments to American International Group Inc. executives. Those feelings haven't dissipated, political strategists say. At the same time, Americans are equally upset at what they call overreaching by Congress and federal bureaucrats, with protesters taking to the streets to decry "socialism" and a "government takeover" of the economy. Policy makers face a quandary. With...

Living in Fort Collins, Colo., provides quick access to some of the best trout fishing in Colorado. A few nights ago I made my first outing to the Big Thompson River. I found a stretch of river with pools and pockets of easy-flowing water. After 20 minutes, I felt a strike on my line, and a brown trout surfaced in his struggle to free himself from the hook. I nearly had the trout to shore, but with one last thrash he freed himself and slipped back into the river. If you’re an angler, you know the deep disappointment that grips...

This is a link to a video of Steve Wynn (CEO of Wynn Resorts) appearing on a panel with host Chris Wallace A Portion of the trancript appears below: Chris Wallace said, "So where do you draw the line between the proper role of government in all this and the proper role of the private sector?" WYNN: Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization's history. For some reason that simple truth has evaded everybody. The only thing that creates an increased standard of living is giving someone a job, the demand for...

Cape Cod, Mass.My husband retired from IBM about a decade ago, and as we aren't old enough for Medicare we still buy our health insurance through the company. But IBM, with its typical courtesy, informed us recently that we will be fined by the state. Why? Because Massachusetts requires every resident to have health insurance, and this year, without informing us directly, the state had changed the rules in a way that made our bare-bones policy no longer acceptable. Unless we ponied up for a pricier policy we neither need nor want—or enrolled in a government-sponsored insurance plan—we would have...

David Cameron on Thursday blamed Britain’s economic crisis on a Labour-led era of “big government”, in a sombre and sometimes emotional speech aimed at convincing the nation he is a prime minister in waiting. Mr Cameron warned that he was about to turn off the tap on public spending, and caused concern to some in the City when he said that “sometime soon the country would have to stop “printing money” if it wanted to head off inflation.

A new internet game is about to be launched which allows 'super snooper' players to plug into the nation's CCTV cameras and report on members of the public committing crimes. The 'Internet Eyes' service involves players scouring thousands of CCTV cameras installed in shops, businesses and town centres across Britain looking for law-breakers. Players who help catch the most criminals each month will win cash prizes up to £1,000. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218225/Internet-game-awards-points-people-spotting-crimes-CCTV-cameras-branded-snoopers-paradise.html#ixzz0TNOMuvRg

Washington - The American dream means different things to different people. For some, it looks like a house on a leafy cul-de-sac with weekends spent mowing the lawn and planting shrubs. For others it's a rented apartment in the big city with a building engineer to handle such tasks.

The prime sponsor of a plan to audit the Federal Reserve, which oversees U.S. monetary policy, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, says his plan has reached 300 co-sponsors in the U.S. House. The legislation calls for a full and complete audit of the Federal Reserve by the Government Accountability Office, reported to Congress by the end of 2010. "I continue to be pleased that so many of my colleagues are willing to stand up for transparency and accountability in government by cosponsoring this bill," Paul said today.

Come be part of history again. Attend the TEA PARTY on Sunday, November 1, 2009 at the Ford Mansion in Morristown, NJ (George Washington's winter headquarters from December 1779 to May 1780) 30 Washington Place 11:30am to 2pm Press the picture for a larger copy Jeffrey M. Weingarten President, Morristown Tea Party Org. 973-272-3341 More details at www.NJTeaParty.com