Free Republic

At a hearing Thursday on the Keystone oil pipeline, James Hansen, former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified before Congress that 100 percent of the proceeds from a proposed carbon tax should go to the public, because liberals will try to use part of it to “make the government bigger.” “An important point is that such legislation I think needs to be introduced by conservatives, because I’m afraid liberals will try to take part of the money to make the government bigger. Not one dime should go to the government. 100 percent should go to the public,”...

Feds To End Controversial Secret Alcohol Testing At Roadblocks After drawing considerable ire from the public over a program that tested drivers for drug and alcohol use — the latter secretly and without their consent — federal transportation officials today said they will no longer surreptitiously collect breath samples from drivers at roadblocks. The Associated Press reports that a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration official said roadblock testers will now get motorists' permission before using a passive alcohol sensor, which previously gathered breath samples before drivers could consent to the study. NHTSA has been conducting their National Roadside Survey of...

WASHINGTON - The federal government has grown obscenely fat over the years, and under President Obama it's gotten much fatter, eating into our economy and the very foundations that made America great. It has outgrown our incomes and now threatens us with suffocating debt, costly regulations, punishing mandates, and a punitive tax code that's invaded every nook and cranny of our society and our daily lives. You don't hear much about this growing crisis, certainly not in the national news media which never saw a federal domestic program it didn't like. Even a lot less in Congress which enacts our...

President Barack Obama says he’s hearing from business owners across the country who are voluntarily paying their workers more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama says those actions show that change comes to Washington, not from it. …

Tuesday, February 25, 2014 Government Power is an Economic Inequality Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The liberal defenders of government power attack concentrations of wealth, but in the true concentration of wealth is not found in the hands of a few billionaires, but in the hands of the government. The editorialists talk about income inequality and the 1 percent, but they focus on individuals rather than institutions,  and it is the concentration of wealth and power in institutions that threaten civil liberties. The top 10 wealthiest men and women in America barely have 250 billion dollars...

The President’s new budget has been unveiled. There are lots of provisions that deserve detailed attention, but I always look first at the overall trends. Most specifically, I want to see what’s happening with the burden of government spending. And you probably won’t be surprised to see that Obama isn’t imposing any fiscal restraint. He wants spending to increase more than twice as fast as needed to keep pace with inflation. What makes these numbers so disappointing is that we learned last month that even a modest bit of spending discipline is all that’s needed to balance the budget. By...

No matter how much I pontificate about Washington corruption, there’s no way I can get across the true extent of the DC establishment’s self-serving behavior. Washington is rich because government is big and the beneficiaries of this system are enjoying their status as America’s new gilded class. It’s even gotten to the point where children and other family members also put their hands in the cookie jar. I guess we can call this a system of hereditary corruption. Heck, maybe we can even create hereditary titles for this new elite. The Duke of Pork. The Earl of Sleaze. The Marquise...

There seems to be a rising chorus—even among some on the right—that marriage is over and we need to give up on the civil institution of marriage. I’m reminded of the blonde starlet, Mae West. This Hollywood celebrity was asked why she didn’t marry one of the handsome young men who always followed her around. “Marriage is a great institution,” said Mae, “but I’m not ready for an institution.” Married or not, Mae West understood marriage better than some federal judges and some policy analysts. When we hear them say “let’s privatize marriage,” what they are really saying is...

What is a leftist supposed to do when history doesn’t perfectly fit their ideological narrative? Well… If you’re in charge of creating textbooks for college students, you just write your own version of historical events. And while you’re at it, throw in a few editorial comments cleverly disguised as “facts”. Apparently, the end result should look something like the textbook that a University of South Carolina student was required to read. In a nutshell, it explained that Ronald Reagan was a sexist, that Conservatives hate people, and that the “rich” like to exploit the lower classes because they don’t want...

Ever wonder what a "Loss Prevention Manager" of a "Risk Management Division" of Arlington County, Va does for a living? You didn't? That's what I thought. Well apparently, he dresses up in a suit, tie and overcoat, puts on his ear muffs and then tells us how to shovel snow. Yes, that's right, how to shovel snow. Oh, you think you already know how to shovel snow and don't need a high salaried public employee to tell you how to do it "properly?". . well, think again. His knowledge of how to shovel snow properly is impressive; probably representing hours...

The Bible says that “the wages of sin is death,” but the same can’t be said of Washington, DC. The bureaucrats, lobbyists, politicians, contractors, insiders, cronyists, and influence peddlers have rigged the system so that they get rich by diverting money from people in the productive sector of the economy. How bad is the disconnect between Washington and real America? Well, according to Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index, people in every state have a negative outlook. But there is one outpost of giddy prosperity, and that’s the District of Columbia, where residents have a 20-point gap compared to the most optimistic...

… Unemployment didn’t just fall to a five-year low of 6.6 percent; it fell for the right reasons. Nearly 500,000 Americans poured into the job market last month, and 616,000 more people said they had jobs. Previous drops in the unemployment rate had occurred partly because many Americans gave up looking for work and therefore were no longer counted as unemployed. Factories, mines and construction firms hired at a healthy pace. These so-called goods-producing industries added 76,000 jobs in January, the most since January 2006. Hiring by goods producers is typically seen as a harbinger of an improved job market....

When CVS Caremark Corp. Chief Executive and President Larry Merlo announced that his drugstore chain would stop selling tobacco products , one of the first to respond was the president of the United States. The speed of the president’s statement indicates that CVS’s decision was likely coordinated with the White House. Every day, countless business decisions are made without any comment from the White House. Something unusual was going on. This is troubling. It gives the appearance of preference for those who curry favor with the powerful, and it squeezes out smaller entrants who can supply innovative products and services...

The Food and Drug Administration is laying out new requirements to ensure the safety of infant formula. The rules announced Thursday are designed to make sure that formula manufacturers test their products for salmonella and other pathogens before they are distributed. They would also require formula companies to include specific nutrients, including proteins, fats and vitamins.

<p>Governments could slow or even reverse the growing obesity epidemic if they introduced more regulation into the global market for fast foods such as burgers, chips and fizzy drinks, researchers said on Monday.</p> <p>A study published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO) suggested that if governments took firmer action, they could start to prevent people becoming overweight and obese - conditions with serious long-term consequences such as diabetes, heart diseases and cancer.</p>

<p>A North Dakota farmer convicted of terrorizing law officers two years ago is the first American to be sentenced to prison with the help of a Predator drone, Forbes reported.</p> <p>Rodney Brossart, who was accused at the time of stealing six cows from a neighbor, was arrested after a summer-long standoff in 2011. Authorities say Brossart family members refused to allow deputies on their farmstead and didn't show up for court hearings.</p>

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the Senate Democrats’ political guru, has a plan to poison the Tea Party by driving a wedge between its rich funders and its blue-collar rank and file. Schumer, one of the Democrats’ most influential strategists, will argue in a major speech on Thursday that super-wealthy Tea Party donors have hijacked the grassroots movement that grew out of the economic anxiety of the 2008 financial collapse to suit their pro-big business agenda. He’ll lay out a blueprint for how Democrats can exploit what he argues is a weakness in the opposition in the address at the Center...

Switzerland and Singapore achieve universal coverage while spending a fraction of what we spend, and they ensure broad access to high-quality doctors and the latest technology. Switzerland has a system of universal, subsidized private insurance exchanges that look much like Paul Ryan'sMedicare-reform plan and Obamacare's exchanges. Unlike Obamacare, however, the Swiss exchanges actually work. In Switzerland, there are no public options or government insurers like Medicare or Medicaid. Everyone is in the private system. The poor get a premium support subsidy that covers the cost of their premium; as one moves up the income ladder, the size of the subsidy decreases. Wealthy and...

More bad news for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. As he tries to survive an explosive corruption scandal and stave off a federal audit on use of Hurricane Sandy funds, a new study ranks New Jersey the least economically solvent state in the nation.

(CNSNews.com) - The Energy Department on Tuesday is rolling out new, improved software to help Americans measure the energy efficiency of their homes. DOE says its energy-scoring software -- called the Home Energy Scoring Tool -- is like a vehicle's mile-per-gallon rating because it allows homeowners to compare the energy performance of their homes to other homes nationwide. It also provides homeowners with suggestions for improving their homes' efficiency. The software is part of the government's effort to reduce the nation's energy consumption; but it's also billed as a way to keep home-retrofitting going, at a time when stimulus funds...