Free Republic

A public trustee appointed by President Obama to oversee Medicare and Social Security has issued an extensive research report finding that ObamaCare will increase government spending by far more than a trillion dollars while adding hundreds of billions of new debt.  The report by Charles Blahous completely refutes the claim by Obama and the Democrats that the legislation would magically increase access and quality of care for millions of Americans while reducing the size of the deficit.  The opening paragraph of the report is damning: "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) signed into law by President Obama in...

Coca Cola executives who recently decided to stop supporting the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) did so in response to demands from an obscure left-wing activist group, Color of Change (COC). So were executives of giant candy-maker Mars, Inc. when they announced a similar decision earlier today. That is why Color of Change may be the most powerful group in America you've never heard about.

Few prominent economists have a worse record predicting the impact of Obama’s economic policies than Paul Krugman. Writing for the New York Times and touting his close “genuine contact” with the “smart” economists and others in the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership, Krugman has been, and remains, Obama’s most important champion. Not only has he been defending Obama’s Keynesian-type deficit-spending, but he has been advocating still more of these same failed policies. The economy just can’t gain ground. Thirty-four months since the "recovery" started in June 2009 and the actual number of jobs have increased by just 0.4%....

President Obama and Democrats have been talking up the Buffett Rule (a minimum 30% tax on people making over $1 million per year) for some time now. So what kind of difference does the Buffett Rule make? I've seen revenue estimates between $30 billion and $40 billion over 10 years, but what kind of difference would that make in the scope of government finances? Not too much.

In an exclusive interview to Breitbart News, Sarah Palin discussed energy policy and her Fox News Special (with Eric Bolling) "Paying at the Pump," which airs tonight on FNC at 10pm ET. The program will re-air on Saturday and Sunday. She also touched on some other topics of the day...

(Video of entire presentation at link) Who’s really to blame for America’s catastrophic financial meltdown and devastating national recession? Contrary to what the “Occupy Movement” might tell you, it’s not greedy Wall Street executives. No, as one of America’s top financial professionals Kevin Freeman reveals in his new book, the real culprit is economic warfare, with our foreign enemies exploiting our lurking financial weaknesses. In Secret Weapon, Freeman unveils how all the evidence – including motive, means, and opportunity – points to America’s foreign enemies as deliberately pushing our economy over the brink. He argues that our financial system is...

The most dangerous trend for the country over the last several years isn’t the GDP trendline or the unemployment rate. No.It’s rather how liberals- especially Obama- have devalued and degraded words into having different meanings than their original intent.In fact, they have perverted some of our best and most innocent words in a way not unlike someone who seeks to corrupt a virgin. Words like “justice,” “fairness,” “racism,” “reform” and “equality” no longer can be used to support liberty and tear down barriers to success. Instead they are erected like armed forts in the midst of an occupied population.   Liberals...

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — China’s first-quarter economic growth cooled to its slowest pace in 11 quarters amid weak export growth and sluggish construction activity, though analysts viewed the figures as pointing to a gradual slowing rather than a replay of downturn during the global crisis. Gross domestic product grew 8.1% in the January to March period, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, below analysts’ expectations of an 8.3% expansion.

<p>In 2008, a mostly unknown Barack Obama ran for president on an inclusive agenda of “hope and change.” That upbeat message was supposed to translate into millions of green jobs, fiscal sobriety, universal health care, a resetting of Bush foreign policy, and racial unity.</p>

The eurozone is not equipped to bail out Spain, the country's prime minister Mariano Rajoy has admitted, as global traders continued to punish the nation's stocks and bonds. Mr Rajoy said it was "not possible to rescue Spain" but insisted his country did not need a Greek-style international bail-out anyway. "To talk about a bail-out for Spain at the moment makes no sense," he told reporters. "Spain is not going to be rescued; it's not possible to rescue Spain, there's no intention to, it's not necessary and therefore it's not going to be rescued." Despite his comments, the Madrid bourse...

Spain has been accused of planning “draconian” new laws against street protests by curbing the use of social networking. Jorge Fernandez Diaz, the Spanish interior minister announced in Congress on Wednesday that a reform of the penal code was planned to criminalise those involved in organising street protests that "seriously disturb the public peace". Under the laws, a minimum jail term of two years could be imposed on those found guilty of instigating and carrying out violent acts of protest under a new package of measures unveiled on Wednesday. But it has raised fears that the new measures could be...

Christie Speaks for the Bush Institute Economic Growth Team.

Why High Oil Prices Even At $200 Won't Cause A Recession Commodities / Crude Oil Apr 12, 2012 - 07:43 AM By: Money Morning Martin Hutchinson writes: Last Friday's weak unemployment numbers, with only 120,000 jobs created, brought renewed wails that high oil prices were causing a recession. Having heard this refrain so many times, I thought I'd dig a little deeper. After all, a peak of $145 per barrel in the West Texas Intermediate oil price pretty well coincided with the onset of the 2008 recession. The question is whether or not high oil prices are always correlated with...

Here is an example of an irresponsible federal judge if there ever was one. Abdi Mahdi Hussein attempted to help Mohamud Abdi Yusuf send $21,000 to the Jihadist terrorist group Al Shabaab. Now he says (of course) that he had no idea where the money was supposed to go, and besides it didn’t get there. U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey bought that story and essentially let Hussein go free, with three years probation.

Theresa Brown, a United Steelworkers (USW) member at Cooper Tire's Findlay, Ohio, plant says in this election year, “Everybody is in the same fight. It doesn’t matter if you are a union member or not, this is about saving the middle class.”Brown was speaking at a press conference at AFL-CIO headquarters today where plans were announced to activate and energize networks of working families—both online and offline—around political campaigns, legislative issues and holding elected officials accountable.The new Workers’ Voice initiative will “build an independent voice for the working and middle class,” says AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Shuler.For too long, our political...

Six years ago today, at a majestic ceremony in Boston’s Faneuil Hall, then-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney signed into law “An Act Providing Access to Affordable, Quality, Accountable Health Care.” But the bipartisan bliss didn’t last very long. Just prior to the ceremony, Romney’s aides had announced that the Governor would be vetoing several key provisions of the bill, including its employer mandate that forced all companies in the state, employing more than 10 people, to provide health coverage for their workers or pay a $295-per-person fine. Romney vetoed several other provisions of the law, including one that extended dental benefits...

Turn your head and cough: President Barack Obama's reelection campaign on Thursday marked the 6th anniversary of Mitt Romney's health overhaul in Massachusetts with an online ad touting it as the inspiration for "Obamacare." Never mind that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has vowed to kill Obamacare on "Day One" if he wins the White House. The three-minute spot aims to blunt Romney's attacks on Obama's signature domestic policy achievement as well as paint him as a hypocrite or a flip-flopper. It could serve to remind conservatives who loathe Obamacare's requirement that Americans have insurance (or pay a penalty) that...

The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045 billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009. “In October 2009, an ecologist identified a plant growing in a concrete-bound median strip along Doyle Drive in the Presidio as Arctostaphylos franciscana,” the U.S. Department of Interior reported in the Aug. 10, 2010 edition of the Federal Register. The bush—a Franciscan manzanita—was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT Now, one of the stories going around -- and it's been going around awhile -- is all of the disparity in income, the gap between the rich and the poor. And depending on what story you read, the middle class is about to be wiped out. There isn't going to be one much longer. Because the middle-class people are not moving north and upward, out of the middle class. They are moving south, and they're getting closer to poverty and near-poverty. And while that's happening, the rich are getting richer, and it's just not fair. James Pethokoukis, the...

There are powerful men in Venezuela who are far worse than Hugo Chávez. And if Obama keeps "leading from behind" in Latin America, that's who we very well might get.Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez has tried for 10 months to conceal the fact that he is losing his bout with cancer, determined to appear in command of his revolutionary regime and the nation's future. This past Holy Week, however, television cameras captured him pleading for his life before a crucifix in his hometown church, his mother looking on without the slightest glint of hope on her face. Chávez's raw emotion startled...