Free Republic

The dire economic situation of millennials was front and center on Capitol Hill Wednesday, and a committee chairman said the executive and legislative branches were worsening it. The political failure to tackle the national debt and unfunded liabilities of entitlement programs are going to set back the generation born between 1980 and 2000 even further, Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., said at the Joint Economic Committee hearing. One member of that generation is a member of Congress now: Republican Elise Stefanik of New York, elected at age 30 last year, who testified about her generation's perspective at the hearing. Rep. Stefanik...

<p>Mona Davids, head of the reform-minded New York City Parents Union, is a major thorn in the side of the teachers unions. So the unions and their allies in the city school system are striking back.</p> <p>Most notably, Davids is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the state’s teacher tenure law. Last week, a state judge rejected (for the second time) a motion to dismiss that suit — and the union empire struck back by moving to push her and her allies off her son’s school’s Title I Parent Advisory Council, which oversees how the principal spends nearly $1 million a year in funds. The parents had been questioning use of the money to pay two teachers-union offices to be “floaters” in the school.</p>

From polio to poverty, we are winning. Well done, human race. Well done. At the end of September, the Global Commission for the Certification of Poliomyelitis Eradication convened in Bali and, after reviewing the reports of its member nations, declared poliovirus type 2 eradicated in the wild. This was really only a bureaucratic stamp on a fact: The last case of type 2 polio was identified in Aligarh, India, in 1999. Thanks in no small part to the initiative of the world’s Rotarians — one of those “little platoons” of which Edmund Burke was so fond — polio has been...

Paul Ryan has made some pretty steep demands of the House Republican caucus — and particularly the group of adamant conservatives known as the Freedom Caucus — as a condition of becoming the House speaker. The Freedom Caucus voted Wednesday night to support Ryan as speaker, but there remains a chance that Ryan could walk away from the job, just as John Boehner and Kevin McCarthy did. If he is elected speaker, Ryan may still struggle to hold the Republican caucus together, but his voting record suggests that he does have a few things going for him that neither Boehner...

To win the GOP primary and, more important, the general election, a candidate must be able to play to both grassroots supporters and the major donors. Since the dawn of the era of Internet campaigns, beginning in the 2000 election, no candidate in either party who was not, at this point in the election cycle, in the top two in grassroots fundraising has won the nomination, nor has any candidate outside the top three in major-donor funding. Candidates who cannot win the support of major donors ultimately lack the qualities to be competitive in a general election. Influential votes and...

A famous claim... is that the GOP Congress has "given Obama everything he wants." It is utter nonsense. Here is a partial list of items Mr. Obama has requested from Congress since the GOP took the House back in 2010: -- The American Jobs Act -- The Paycheck Fairness Act -- An increase in the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour -- An array of gun control measures -- Universal pre-kindergarten education -- A week's paid sick leave for all -- Higher tax rates on the rich -- A new minimum tax on multinational companies -- Overhaul and expansion of...

That’s the headline from the third quarter campaign filings, summarized here. R. J. Lehmann of R Street writes: The Trump campaign ended the third quarter with $254,772.88 of cash on-hand, which is about 48 percent less than the $487,736.16 with which it started the quarter. Trump is therefore spending money at a faster clip than he’s raising it. Moreover, the campaign also has incurred more than $1.8 million of debts and obligations – no doubt, many of them to Trump himself (he’s billed the campaign $700,000 for the use of his jet). That leaves the campaign with negative cash, which...

As the Senate voted on the hot-button issue of sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants Tuesday, New Hampshire Republicans were calling out Governor Maggie Hassan, a Democrat running to unseat incumbent Senator Kelly Ayotte, for her past efforts to safeguard sanctuary-city policies in the Granite State. The New Hampshire GOP hopes to use the issue to draw yet another marked contrast between Hassan and Ayotte, who today voted in favor of legislation to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities. The state party is pointing to 2008, when Hassan, then a state senator, voted to kill a bill that, in its pretext,...

It looks like Paul Ryan will do the job, but he’ll do it on his own terms. He laid them out at a Republican-conference meeting on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, telling his colleagues he wants the bickering to end. That means, Republicans said as they exited the meeting, he wants universal endorsements from the various caucuses, specifically from the conservative Freedom Caucus, the Republican Study Committee, and the more moderate Tuesday Group. He gave members until Friday to let him know if they could rally behind him, so that he could make preparations or give other candidates the opportunity to...

By 2055 no racial or ethnic group will constitute a majority of the American population. Non-Hispanic whites will account for less than half of the population compared with 62% today and 84% in 1965. The Pew report shows that without any immigration after the 1965 Immigration Act, America’s population today would be 75% white, 14% black, 8% Hispanic and less than 1% Asian. This shift in America’s ethnic make-up is a huge change for a country that was mainly populated by white immigrants from Europe until 1965. But as Mr Passel points out, each wave of new immigrants was initially...

Being a modern man today is no different than it was a century ago. It’s all about adhering to principle... 1. When the modern man buys shoes for his spouse, he doesn’t have to ask her sister for the size. And he knows which brands run big or small. 8. The modern man uses the proper names for things. For example, he’ll say “helicopter,” not “chopper” like some gauche simpleton. 9. Having a daughter makes the modern man more of a complete person. He learns new stuff every day. 10. The modern man makes sure the dishes on the rack...

September 16, 2015 Congressman Jim Jordan Chairman, House Freedom Caucus 1524 Longworth House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 HAND DELIVERED Dear Jim: When the House Freedom Caucus formed in January, I fervently hoped that it would provide responsible and effective leadership to advance conservative principles in the House of Representatives. I know that every member of the HFC sincerely supports these principles, but as I have expressed on many occasions during our meetings, I believe the tactics the HFC has employed have repeatedly undermined the House’s ability to advance them. Allow me to review a few examples. On February 27th,...

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced Friday he will resign from Congress -- his seat as well as his speakership -- at the end of October after more than 20 years on Capitol Hill. The resignation will likely see a throng of Republicans vie to replace Boehner, who in recent months has faced pressure to step down over internal GOP fighting on issues such as funding for disease research, an education bill and the possible renewal of the Export-Import Bank. Below is a list of the members most likely to replace him. 1. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.: McCarthy has...

To some he was an Islamist extremist, to others a radical feminist, to others a neo-Nazi. These are all online identities that seem to have belonged to Joshua Goldberg - but in reality he was none of these things. They were simply online aliases used to whip up ideological hatred, with seemingly dangerous and even violent real-world consequences. In reality he lives in Florida, spent huge amounts of time online - and has now been arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). SNIP It seems Goldberg wasn't just posing as a racist neo-Nazi. Earlier this year an Australian journalist,...

I have something in common with Ahmed Mohamed: as a youngster, I was also an electronics enthusiast. At his age and even earlier, I frequently took apart electronic devices – anything from my own toys, to broken things around the house, and even that dirty garbage-picked black and white TV my parents dragged home that they knew I’d have a blast playing with (I did.) I’d try and troubleshoot, repair, or sometimes just disassemble things and salvage components for future projects. I’d try and imagine how all those bits and pieces, lengths of wires, mazes of conductive circuit board traces...

On Thursday Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois signed HB0217, the “Youth Mental Health Protection Act,” into law. While gay advocates who push for similar legislation nationwide hail the bill as a victory for protecting minors’ rights, that is not the reality. Rather, the government has chosen to use its power to favor a political agenda that strips the rights of children and their parents as well as licensed mental health professionals. The new law states “that no mental health provider shall engage in sexual orientation change efforts with a person under the age of 18.” It is not lost...

From the 1960s to the late 1990s, John Barrett Kelly was one of the most influential advisors, writers, and commentators on the Middle East. In 1980 his book Arabia, the Gulf, and the West was prophetic in its analysis of the strategic importance of the Middle East and the need for a Western “forward policy” in the Gulf in order to protect U.S. and European interests, particularly oil and its transport, against both Soviet adventurism and the greed of Middle Eastern potentates. Like all his writing, his advice was based on an intimate knowledge of the region and its culture,...

Homeownership 1. Stricter enforcement of housing anti-discrimination laws: 2. Authorizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to reduce mortgage principal and make other loan modifications for struggling homeowners. 3. Leaving the cap on the mortgage interest tax deduction. Education 1. Investing in universal, high-quality preschool education. 2. Making K-12 education funding more equitable. 3. Recommitting to racially integrated schools, colleges and universities. 4. Establishing an affordable college compact. Labor Markets 1. Establishing a direct federal job creation program. 2. Raising the minimum wage. 3. Making it easier for workers to form unions.

Deflation has had a bad rap, largely based on the experience of the 1930's when deflation was synonymous with depression. Recent experience with declining prices in Japan and China together with the concern over deflation in Europe and the United States has led to renewed attention to the topic of deflation. In this paper we focus our attention on the deflation experience of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany in the late nineteenth century during a period characterized by low deflation, rapid productivity growth, positive output growth, and where many nations had a credible nominal anchor based on...

Governor Scott Walker's Victory SpeechHe sounds like a winner.