Free Republic

Ethanol Impact on Feed Prices Written By: Renewable Fuels Association Fueled by its desire for conflict, and a well-funded and organized public relations blitz by food and livestock industries, the media has spent a great deal of time in the past two years trying to portray an epic battle between America’s need for renewable alternatives to gasoline and its role as breadbasket to world. Despite unsupported and hysterical claims, the battle between ethanol production and food and feed resources is not a battle at all. In fact, it is a symbiotic relationship that promises to provide long term financial gain...

Having traveled to well over 100 countries, I have seen some pretty shocking signs of poverty around the world.In parts of Asia, it’s not uncommon for parents in poor villages to sell their children for bags of rice… or for children to be stolen outright and sold as orphans to unsuspecting foreigners.In Africa, I’ve seen people who are so destitute they intentionally mangle and gash their own bodies just to give themselves good cause to shock foreign tourists into donations.But I’d have to rank poverty in Cuba as the most extreme.Going to Cuba is like going back in time....

CHATTANOOGA (Reuters) -- The UAW said today it is withdrawing its objection claiming undue outside political interference in a February vote it lost among workers at the Volkswagen AG plant in Tennessee. UAW President Bob King, in a statement issued by the union this morning, said the process of objecting to the National Labor Relations Board could have dragged on for months if not years. King and the UAW announced the withdrawal on the morning of the scheduled start of an NLRB hearing in Chattanooga on the union's objection.

Platinum and palladium prices are dropping sharply on signs that South African mining companies are close to reaching a labor agreement that would end a four-month strike. Platinum fell $28, or 2 percent, to close at $1,400.70 an ounce. Palladium lost $29.30, or 3.6 percent, to $777.80 an ounce. …

In the present confrontation between Russia and the West over the Ukrainian crisis, the image of the Cold War inevitably comes to mind and the media are obviously fond of it. However, contrary to what it gives us to understand, it’s not Russia that seeks the return of an iron curtain but really the US. An iron curtain separating the old powers and emerging nations; the world before and the world afterwards; debtors and creditors. And this in the crazy hope of preserving the American way of life and the US’ influence over “its” camp in the absence of being...

Even as the crisis in Ukraine continues to defy easy resolution, President Obama and his national security team are looking beyond the immediate conflict to forge a new long-term approach to Russia that applies an updated version of the Cold War strategy of containment. Just as the United States resolved in the aftermath of World War II to counter the Soviet Union and its global ambitions, Mr. Obama is focused on isolating President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world, limiting its expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood and effectively making...

He may be a clown, but his actions raise a question: Who is the state to determine who gets to use what resources? Clive Bundy’s property rights dispute with the federal government appears now to be over. For those unaware, basically this rancher wanted to graze cattle on federally owned land without paying the grazing fee, due to some strange legal theory that the land was really his. The spectacle generated an obscene amount of commentary to which I am guiltily adding here. I wouldn’t be adding any commentary to it except that all of the analysis I read on...

On Friday, the day to bury unpopular news, the Obama administration announced the extension of its Keystone XL review. A final decision is unlikely before the November midterms. The administration claims it needs this delay to resolve legal complexities. But let’s be clear: This is the submission of governance to partisanship. And it comes from the president who proclaims himself the maestro of infrastructure investment. It’s impossible to overstate the absurdity of this situation. After all, the State Department recently found that Keystone XL would have no significant impact on the environment — a conclusion upheld by the department’s inspector...

The president and CEO of TransCanada had some harsh words Monday after another process delay was announced by the U.S. Department of State for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. “We are extremely disappointed and frustrated with yet another delay,” Russ Girling said in a statement released Monday. “American men and women will miss out on another construction season where they could have worked to build Keystone XL and provided for their families. “We feel for them.” The Department of State (DOS) announced last week it will seek input from eight federal agencies to determine whether the project meets National Interest...

Political scientist Matt Grossmann discussed the results of his research on federal government growth in the Washington Post last week. I combed through hundreds of history books covering American public policy since 1945, tracking the most significant domestic policy changes that made it into law and the actors that historians credit for those changes. Of the 509 most significant domestic policies passed by Congress, only one in five were conservative, in that they contracted the scope of government funding, regulation or responsibility. More than 60 percent were liberal: They clearly expanded government. The others offered a mix of liberal or...

In "Insatiable" the Economist says "The cost of stopping the Russian bear now is high—but it will only get higher if the West does nothing". Economist: Mr Putin has used the Ukrainian crisis to establish some dangerous precedents. He has claimed a duty to intervene to protect Russian-speakers wherever they are. He has staged a referendum and annexation, in defiance of Ukrainian law. And he has abrogated a commitment to respect Ukraine’s borders, which Russia signed in 1994 when Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons. Throughout, Mr Putin has shown that truth and the law are whatever happens to suit him...

It’s easy to get discouraged if you believe in small government and individual liberty. It seems that the burden of the public sector is always expanding and that politicians and bureaucrats are always figuring out new ways to restrict our freedoms. But let’s not lose hope. We still have a lot of economic liberty, particularly if you count non-fiscal policy factors. And we still have the Second Amendment. Heck, we don’t just have the right to keep and bear arms, we exercise that right in massive numbers. Take a look at this impressive graphic. We’re #1 in some bad ways,...

Doesn’t it seem odd that Obama and the Federal government are going full force after rancher Cliven Bundy and his cattle grazing issue, but they basically bend over backwards to diplomatically deal with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Crimea and now Ukraine? It seems that the Obama administration and the Democrats like Harry Reid are hell-bent on persecuting, harassing and demonizing American citizens while foreign dictators, aggressors and terrorists get little, if any pushback. Why is that? I understand the issue with rancher Bundy.Yes, he is taking a stand on what he believes to be right and perhaps he could have...

A disturbing story out of the Sooner State this week, noted by Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. Under the terms of a recently passed bill, expected to be signed by Governor Mary Fallin, homeowners who install their own private solar or wind turbine energy resources and sell some of the juice back to energy companies will be paying a fee for the privilege.

Thus marks the end of the United Auto Workers’ foray into unionizing Southern auto manufacturing. Despite cooperative management at Volkswagen, the UAW failed to convince workers in its Chattanooga facility to unionize. The union alleged interference and demanded a hearing at the National Labor Relations Board to force a revote, but unexpectedly withdrew just before the hearing was scheduled to start:

The English had the longbow. The Spanish had steel. Tawny crazy ants have their own formidable weapon—a protective acid sheath—that protects them against fire ant enemies. The revelation comes from a new study published this week. Named for their butterscotch color and erratic movements, tawny crazy ants are the newest insect invaders sprawling throughout Texas and the Gulf states, unseating the reigning imported fire ants that have infested the region. Teeming out of electrical outlets and short-circuiting electronics, the tiny reddish-brown crazy ants have been making headlines as their numbers climb in the southeastern U.S. In some locales they can...

Morgan Stanley and New York Life recently sponsored a banquet held by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest successful terrorism financing prosecution in US history. In that trial, CAIR was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group and an affiliate of HAMAS. In addition, in 2008, the FBI broke off relations with CAIR due to its ties to HAMAS, an officially-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

....Compensation $225k (for a nine month salary) + a generous array of benefits, research assistance, moving expenses, start-up support and the like...

~snip~ "Let there be light," said the Lord. And there was light and there was energy, and there was solar energy for all of us. You and I are born equal under the sun, with equal rights to the use of our sun's energy. Unless the path in the delivery of solar energy changes, some of us will be making rent payments to some of our neighbors for the use of solar electricity for the rest of our lives, making the wealth divide even more isolating. This article attempts to throw some light on this reality. The fossil fuels that...

Sure… Sunday was Easter Sunday (the most important day of the year for the world’s 2-3 billion Christians). But, c’mon! It was 4:20 dude! And while millions of Americans flocked to their churches and Cathedrals, the Denver Post thought the front-page story of the day ought to be Colorado’s annual “toke-out” at Civic Center Park in Denver. Heck… The 15 year anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting was even pushed back to accommodate the “high times” of Civic Center potheads. Living a mere handful of blocks from Denver’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, I can personally attest to...