Free Republic

In 2008, the federal government bailed out two major automakers – General Motors and Chrysler, along with their financial groups that offered loans. At the time, it was said that these bailouts needed to happen to prevent a crisis, and that these auto companies would pay back the taxpayers in time.The companies got tens of billions of dollars to keep operating. Disaster averted? No. Chrysler and GM certainly benefited, but the taxpayers are now footing the bill. The Treasury Department has admitted that taxpayers will lose a staggering $14 billion from the bailout. At least, that was what they said...

It’s a presidential election year, and the sexiest topic this cycle is campaign finance. With the national conversation tuned to Super PACs, the staggering income disparities between major donors and the rest of America, and Wolfgang Puck’s appearance at the $15 million Obama bash headlined by George Clooney, The Braiser wanted to know: how do celebrity chefs support political candidates? With fancy dinners? With non-connected joint expenditure committees? With hundred dollar bills baked into pies and delivered to campaign headquarters? We dug through the Federal Election Commission’s individual filings, as well as POLITICO’s old trash, to find the chefs who...

I was, the other day, trying to explain the word "fair" to a friend. Suddenly it occurred to me that I was trying to explain the definition from a statistics perspective, and that was the cause of the miscommunication. In statistics, the word "fair" means that probabilities of occurrence does not change each time an action or process (trial) is conducted. If a process is "fair," then exact probabilities of occurrence can be calculated regardless of initial conditions. We statisticians (besides being weird) understand the word "fair" because it has a very precise, unchanging meaning. That is the reason why,...

The Germans must abolish themselves Eric Dor's team at the IESEG School of Management in Lille has put together a table on the direct costs to Germany and France if Greece is pushed out of the euro. These assume that relations between Europe and Greece break down in acrimony, with a full-fledged "stuff-you" default on euro liabilities. It assumes a drachma devaluation of 50pc. They conclude: The total losses could reach €66.4bn for France and €89.8bn for Germany. These are upper bounds, but even in the case of a partial default, the losses would be huge. Assuming that the new...

The three top U.S. tycoons on Forbes’s “Green” billionaires list have received billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for their clean technology companies, after they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for political campaigns and lobbying. Two of the moguls, Elon Musk and Vinod Khosla (in photo), are technology pioneers based in California with net worths of $2 billion and $1.3 billion, respectively. The third, Christy Walton, is the widow of the late John Walton who was an heir to the Walmart fortune. Forbes says she is “the world’s richest woman” is worth $24.8 billion. Significant percentages of Musk’s...

When JPM Chase reported that it had lost $2 billion recently on risky derivative trades, the predictable call came from the Obama Administration to increase regulation on banks. The hypocrisy of the politically motivated proclamations becomes evident when you compare the JPM trades to Treasury's continued gamble on its taxpayer funded stake in General Motors, which has suffered an approximate $5 billion loss in value over the past year. US taxpayers unwillingly own 500 million shares or 32% of General Motors' stock, courtesy of Team Obama. The Administration has had the ability to sell the stake for over a year...

Towards the end of the interview Bradley expresses his sadness at Lugar's loss and the dumb sheep that voted Lugar OUT.

Despite being prohibited by no less than the United States Constitution, cruel and unusual punishment is apparently in vogue at the EPA. Obviously former EPA administrator Al Almendariz meant figurative crucifixion, but his negative attitude betrays an alarming view towards oil and natural gas companies that provide over 90 percent of primary residential energy consumption. Thankfully Al Almendariz resigned when his comments recently came to light nearly two years after he made them. That’s two years of crucifying oil and natural gas companies while Obama wastes money Solyndra and other on failed green collar projects. Green energy provides less than...

Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $35,000 a plate campaign fund raising event. Only in America could people attempt to claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when we have a black President, a black Attorney General, and roughly 18% of the federal workforce is black (only 12% of the US population is black). Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code -'TurboTax Tim' Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel (who once ran the Ways and Means Committee)- BOTH...

The politicians love to wax romantic about today's kids as America's future, and apparently the current generation bodes poorly for a degenerate nation. In Columbus, NM customs officers since the start of the year "have caught six students trying to smuggle drugs into the country during the busy morning rush hour before classes" as reported by Angela Kocherga for KVUE: As many as 400 students a day use the pedestrian lanes at the Columbus port of entry on school days. The majority are U.S. citizens, but they have family ties in Mexico and live on both sides of the border....

In an attack on the bill that would allow more charter online cyber schools, the American Federation of Teachers Michigan union claims that a private company that provides curriculum for charter cyber schools made $522 million in profits in 2011. In fact, K12 Inc. had total revenues — not profits — of $522.5 million, and a net income of $12.8 million, according to MarketWatch. “They are just confusing revenues for profits,” said Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “It blows up their argument that this company is going to make hundreds of millions...

After making his "historic" remarks on same-sex unions last week, President Barack Obama led a conference call with black church pastors to explain his support for gay marriage, the New York Times reported that the call was held with "eight or so African-American ministers. "They were wrestling with their ability to get over his theological position," the Rev. Delman Coates, a Maryland pastor who was on the call, told the NY Times. The title of the article was "Obama calls pastors to explain gay marriage support; black churches ‘conflicted’ "Conflicted"? There really is no reason to be conflicted. They either...

Small Business Goals, Rewards and Incentives* By: Larry Walker, Jr. *“Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.” ~ Lewis Carroll *In his latest weekly address, Mr. Obama outlined a mirage of goals, rewards and incentives which he says Congress ‘must’ act upon immediately. But for the most part, what he proffered is just more of the same tried and failed policies, conjured from the same line of illogical reasoning we’ve heard, time and time again, over the last four years. Therefore, what Mr....

The collapse will be a cycle. Its wise to be prepared for all the angles of possibilities .It will be survival of the fittest and most aware. That's exactly what's happening. Either be aware, prepare, survive, and thrive.. or stay in denial and eventually die on your knees. People have a choice. Most choose to stick their heads in the sand while keeping their lazy fat asses in the air. Most of em enjoy the raping.Avoid big cities and crowded places ,Buy food, water, a water purifier, guns and ammo. You will need medical supplies, vitamins and ibuprofen. Power will...

The Obama Administration has become quite the expert on bankruptcy filings. The Detroit Free Press reports that the third auto bailout partaker, Ally Financial, has filed bankruptcy for its mortgage subsidiary, ResCap. The government still owns 74% of Ally, and now has an 0 for 3 record on restructuring bailed out auto-related companies outside of bankruptcy. Three years ago the Obama Administration, particularly the Auto Task Force, had a mission to restructure General Motors, Chrysler and GM's lending arm, GMAC. The stated goal was to restructure the auto industry players outside of bankruptcy. This stated goal turned out to be...

Allen Park City Manager John Zech says if a tax increase isn't approved by voters today, the city will likely have to get an emergency manager. Zech says a 4-mill, 2-year tax increase to pay for $28 million it borrowed to buy land for a failed movie studio is much needed. The city also borrowed $2 million against next year’s tax revenue and is asking for another $2 million from the state of Michigan in an emergency loan, Zech said. If the state doesn’t loan the city money, Zech said the city would try to sell “fiscal stabilization bonds” so...

For much of human history, world leaders never met each other. Oh, they might have met on the field of battle, or at the arranged weddings of their children… but for the most part, rulers didn’t meet unless they ruled neighboring countries. The world was simply too big a place, distances too great, the burdens of monarchy too demanding, to risk a three or six month voyage. You might not have a throne to return to, by the time you returned. So they invented diplomats. Nations would appoint permanent ambassadors, or at least temporary envoys, to visit other heads of...

During a three-month period ending last September, 190,661 Michigan jobs disappeared. That’s nearly one out of every 20 jobs in the state. So why weren’t there headlines about an employment apocalypse? Because during the same period 227,785 new jobs were created here. This “job churn” is typical of the dynamic U.S. economy and labor market, and it goes on continuously. Michigan’s “one-state recession” of the past decade occurred not because no new jobs were created, but because more jobs disappeared: Michigan's Job Gains and Losses Among other lessons, job-churn figures expose the absurdity of state corporate welfare schemes granting tax...

While liberal journalists continue to claim that Agenda 21 is just a “conspiracy theory” being advanced by right-wing crackpots, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the International Council for Environmental Law (ICEL) have released their fourth Draft of the International Covenant on Environment and Development. This document was designed from the beginning to convert the “soft-law” non-binding Agenda 21 into firmly binding global law — enforceable through the International Criminal Court and/or the dispute resolution features of the Convention on the Law of the Sea. Two excellent analyses of this document are available here and here....

its foreign debt, she avers, like Argentina: Argentina, which defaulted and restructured beginning in 2001, offers a point of comparison. The austerity crowd warned that Argentina would collapse if it stopped pegging the peso to the dollar and defaulted on its debt. There are many differences between Argentina and Greece. But Argentina’s default was followed by a few short months of economic crisis and then many years of steady economic growth — a dramatically different direction than the one Greece is now taking toward a potentially endless path of contraction that is destroying millions of lives and crippling the indomitable...