Free Republic

Two years before Occupy Wall Street’s band of radical grad students set up their tents and cardboard signs in Zuccotti Park, Mayor Bloomberg warned the City Council against frivolous tax hikes. “One percent of the households that file in this city pay something like 50% of the taxes. In the city, that’s something like 40,000 people. If a handful left, any raise would make it revenue neutral.” And then the 1 percent became the target of the left’s answer to the Tea Party. It wasn’t unusual to see bus riders wearing “We Are the 99%” buttons the way they had...

A cutoff of benefits for the long-term unemployed has left more than 1.3 million Americans with a stressful decision: What now? Without their unemployment checks, many will abandon what had been a futile search and will no longer look for a job—an exodus that could dwarf the 347,000 Americans who stopped seeking work in December. Beneficiaries have been required to look for work to receive unemployment checks. Some who lost their benefits say they’ll begin an early and unplanned retirement. Others will pile on debt to pay for school and an eventual second career. Many will likely lean on family,...

After five failed years of leadership that has devastated the American soul and economy, Obama is getting desperate. ObamaCare has been a huge disaster and the situation will only get more dire as the year goes on and people start to see and feel the effects of the law, his constant lying about the Affordable Care Act has been exposed, and the public's faith in his character is plummeting. Thank goodness for the old progressive liberal standby of class warfare. Yep, Obama plans to hoodwink the low information voters yet again by whipping up class envy and hatred. In the...

I notice congressional Democrats and MSNBC hosts, their guests and contributors have been citing how unemployment comp was extended under GW Bush a few times without equivalent spending cuts, as a reason for doing it again now. They are using the same argument for raising minimum wage. ‘Bush did that too so do it again now’ So they ask : ‘Why are the current Republicans opposing what Republicans supported under GWB ?’. Forget that Pelosi and Reid took over congress in 2007 and Bush was making deals with them to get stuff he wanted passed. The answer to this seems...

As we head into the 2014 midterm elections, one thing is certain: Class warfare will be the campaign stage again — it is the only way this president knows how to win, by dividing and conquering — with the tea party, Main Street and businesses large and small cast as the villains. Income inequity will be 2014's attack line for Obama and Democrats, this election cycle's class-warfare rhetoric. The first example is their pledge to rebuild the middle class with a minimum-wage increase. Republicans always get pegged for their supposed fidelity to the rich and to Wall Street. But the...

ObamaCare is going to cost Democrats dearly in this year’s midterm elections. And if early warnings about higher costs, less access to care and disrupted coverage for the 85 percent of Americans who were covered before the law prove true, there may be little anyone can do to avoid another landslide defeat for the blue team. So while Republicans are girding for what may be the most brutal rounds of primary fighting yet, Democrats are building their bases and uniting the party around “eat the rich” politics. It worked for Obama in 2012, and if it just works a little...

<p>City Hall at today’s inauguration event. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty)During the election season, Bill de Blasio was often painted by conservatives as a leftist radical. But at his inauguration today, it was not Mr. de Blasio who dropped the most aggressive lines, but the first two speakers at the event.</p>

“Even as the economy creates jobs, too many Americans find themselves on the sidelines watching as the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle class are getting squeezed and squeezed,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Thursday. “There is no greater challenge this country has than income inequality. And we must do something about it,” he told a news conference on Capitol Hill. His solution is to keep giving taxpayer money to people who are out of work: “There are lots of things that should be done, but the first thing is to make sure...

Amid an array of “knock-out” attacks against a number of Jews in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, a city councilwoman pointed to the success of the Jewish community as triggering the aggression. Councilwoman-elect Laurie Cumbo emphasized that while she “admire[s] the Jewish community immensely” for its work ethic, black teens may see it differently. “While I personally regard this level of tenacity, I also recognize that for others, the accomplishments of the Jewish community triggers feelings of resentment, and a sense that Jewish success is not also their success,” Cumbo, who was recently elected, wrote in a letter. Chief among the...

Last weekend, at a dusty race car track in that part of New Jersey where lacrosse fields slowly give way to farmland before the landscape seems to stop altogether, Sarah Palin rallied a couple of thousand partisans on behalf of Steve Lonegan, a longshot, Tea Party-fueled candidate for the U.S. Senate. “I just told Todd,” she said to the crowd a moment after they stopped chanting her name. “‘Ooh,’ I said. ‘I can die and go to heaven now: I just shook Mark Levin’s hand.’” Levin had been out earlier, warming them up. He cuts a figure that is the...

One smart-as-a-whip sci-fi thriller does not a summer make, but "Elysium" is good enough to suggest that the cyborgs of Hollywood have not, in fact, risen up and taken over. Starring Matt Damon in extra muscles and a shaven skull, it contains enough hardware for all the Home Depots of the future, and an atmosphere of grimy oppression one can almost taste.... The year is 2154. A dusty, rusted, wasted Earth has become the despoiled home of the have-nots; the haves are in residence aboard a wagon-wheel-shaped space station named for the Elysian Fields of the ancients Greeks, the inside...

A Gallup Poll on US Payroll Employment for Age Group 18 to 29 shows Fewer Young Adults Holding Full-Time Jobs in 2013. Fewer Americans aged 18 to 29 worked full time for an employer in June 2013 (43.6%) than did so in June 2012 (47.0%), according to Gallup's Payroll to Population employment rate. The P2P rate for young adults is also down from 45.8% in June 2011 and 46.3% in June 2010. Younger Americans Less Likely to Have Full-Time Work Now, Regardless of Education Older Americans More Likely to Hold Full-Time Jobs Now Than a Year Ago The lack of...

What does “middle class” mean? President Obama is set to make a speech tomorrow where he’ll try to turn attention back to the economy and the middle class. But there’s a big problem… there’s no set definition of what the middle class is. President Obama has given his definition of the middle class from time to time–a “basic bargain” that is eroding. “You could have some confidence that if you gave it your all, you’d take enough home to raise your family and send your kids to school and have your health care covered, put a little away for retirement,”...

Thursday, June 27, 2013 Bike Lanes to Nowhere Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The streets of Manhattan are full of smiling white yuppies riding their Citibank bikes, blue lights flashing as they sail through midtown traffic. But the great rack of bike share bikes planted next to a housing project is filled with its cargo of blue vehicles. No one is checking them out here. Instead black kids sit on the locked bikes, occasionally fitfully pedaling them, going nowhere. The contrast is an apt metaphor for the city. The smiling kids who could just as easily...

More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data. The newspaper said that the exceptionally high level of taxation was due to a one-off levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million). President Francois Hollande's Socialist government imposed the tax surcharge last year, shortly after taking office, to offset the impact of a rebate scheme created by its conservative predecessor to cap an individual's overall taxation at 50 percent of income. The...

Since the 1820s America’s police have protected everyone whether they were rich or poor. Of course the wealthy got the best of what their police forces offered but the poor got reasonable services as well. Nevertheless, police services are changing, and not in a way everyone will like. The NRA rejoinder, “When seconds count the police are only minutes away” is becoming more of a reality by the day. Years of being bogged down with ancillary activities and continuing budget cuts are taking their toll on what we think police should be doing. For the “stretched to the limits” police...

Remember when Obama hoped not for a red or blue America, but a purple America? And he pledged to be a president to all of America? To me, that means he will be my advocate, my defender, my cheerleader. It sure doesn’t mean he will scoff at who I am and belittle me. But Obama does scoff at whole groups of us. First, he disparaged those of us in small Midwest towns who, according to him, are “bitter,” and “cling” to our “guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like” us to explain our “frustrations.” Next, he berated...

President Obama's approval numbers are starting to mimic Mitt Romney's. According to a new YouGov poll, it's the rich -- not the poor or middle class -- who back Obama more despite his 2012 campaign attacking the rich. The poll for the Economist found that fewer than half of those with incomes less than $100,000 per year approve of Obama's performance, while he enjoys a 54 percent approval rating among those with incomes higher than that. Those earning less than $40,000 a year disapprove of the president's performance, 51 percent to 45 percent. Those earning $40,000 to $100,000 disapprove by...

At MarketWatch this morning, Paul Farrell's hostility towards Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Milton Friedman and especially free-market capitalism boiled over. Farrell claims that capitalism “is destined to destroy the world, absent a historic paradigm shift.” The problem he describes really has nothing to do with properly practiced free-market capitalism, but is instead a combination of rampant cronyism and the abandonment of capitalism’s (and society’s) Judeo-Christian moral underpinnings. But that’s a long discussion outside the scope of this post. This post is about the opening claim Farrell makes: “Billionaires control the vast majority of the world’s wealth.” No they don’t. …...

Mitt Romney-bashing -- 5 months after the fricking election -- in an on-line pop music article.The site is called Pop Dust. And this snippet comes out of an article about the 10 richest musicians of all time: 3. Bono: $600 millionPaul Hewson is known as much for his global diplomacy and forays into venture capital as U2’s music. His investment in Facebook’s IPO—via his Elevation Partners private equity firm—didn’t make him a billionaire, but U2’s “360 Tour” grossed nearly $800 million between 2009 and 2011, making it the biggest tour ever. (2005-06’s “Vertigo” tour is fifth on that list.) Combine that with Bono’s many...