Free Republic

The news that Eastman Kodak is preparing to file for bankruptcy, after being the leading photographic company in the world for more than a hundred years, truly marks the end of an era. The skills required to use the cameras and chemicals required by the photography of the mid-19th century were far beyond those of most people — until a man named George Eastman created a company called Kodak, which made cameras that ordinary people could use. It was Kodak's humble and affordable box Brownie that put photography on the map for millions of people, who just wanted to...

Why health care competition won't workBy Amitai Etzioni, Special to CNN updated 2:08 PM EST, Tue December 27, 2011 (CNN) -- A proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Ron Wyden to allow those who retire in the future to chose between Medicare and private health care insurance for seniors is the latest addition to the drive to increase competition in health care. Mitt Romney recently released a health care proposal that would introduce vouchers, which would allow consumers to choose where to take their business, although he did not include Medicare as an option. Newt Gingrich's plan suggests a...

There was a time when Brad Engmann would gun his race car; these days he races with his gun. Like other kids in his St. Francis Woods neighborhood, the San Francisco native grew up playing American Legion baseball; in fact, the middle infielder was instrumental in launching the baseball program at International High School. At USF, however, the 2006 graduate with a double major in history and political science switched his allegiance to cars. “What I loved was the speed and precision,” Engmann said. But the associated expense and garage time needed to work on the cars began to create...

Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing’s Azzam reported that she had suffered a broken mast and had suspended racing on the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race 2011-12, which began today in Alicante.Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, skippered by Ian Walker from the UK at the start of leg 1 of the Volvo Ocean race 2011-12 from Alicante, Spain to Cape Town, South Africa. - PAUL TODD/Volvo Ocean Race Navigator Jules Salter told Volvo Ocean Race control that all the crew were unhurt and were attempting to recover what they could.“There is no panic on board and we’re planning to motor back...

Last week I posted a story about a legislative proposal that would make it legal for businesses to refuse to hire or allow them to fire people just because they have a felony conviction record. This past week the bill sailed through the Assembly Committee on Labor and Workforce Development on a 6-3 party-line vote, setting up a vote by the full Assembly. A public hearing for the Senate version of the bill is set for Monday. In the story, I talked to Linda Ketcham, executive director of Madison-area Urban Ministry, who said the proposal would make it harder for...

The globalists at the United Nations are busy preparing their agenda for the Rio + 20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which will be held on June 4 – 6, 2012. They have prepared a draft entitled “Enabling a Flourishing Earth: Challenges for the Green Economy, Opportunities for Global Governance”. It is truly amazing that this is not being devised in Dr. Evil’s hidden lair in the depths of some inactive volcano or on a deserted island. This has been made available for everyone to read. It reveals the true intent; the hopes, dreams and aspirations for this new...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (JTA) -- If there’s anything that can bring the Jews of Tennessee together, it would be barbecue. This past weekend, the 23rd annual Kosher BBQ Contest and Festival drew thousands of Jews from Tennessee and around the country. It attracted a group of Muslims, too. Turns out they're not bad at cooking kosher brisket: The Memphis Islamic Center’s team, the "Halal Smokers," won a third-place award for their brisket entry. The commingling of Jews and Muslims among tables heaped with baked beans, hamburgers and ribs provided a counterpoint to anti-Muslim protests in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and death threats aimed...

Chuck and Stephanie Fromm already have been fined $300 for holding Bible studies for their friends at their home, and they face the potential for additional fines of $500 for each study held, according to a legal team taking their case to court. The newest conflict over Bible studies in homes in America arose in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., where city officials say city code section 9-3.301 prohibits religious organizations in residential neighborhoods without a conditional-use permit, a sometimes very expensive procedure. The code cites "churches, temples, synagogues, monasteries, religious retreats, and other places of religious worship and other fraternal...

They set out to sell ice-cold lemonade, but now three Washington, D.C. protesters might need some legal aid. Capitol police arrested three people Saturday afternoon for selling lemonade on the West Lawn of the Capitol Building. They were participating in “Lemonade Freedom Day” — a national demonstration against a spate of recent lemonade stand shutdowns by police and health inspectors. According to the D.C. group’s Facebook event page, three lemonistas — Meg Mclain, K.n. Dill and Will Duffield — were taken into custody by Capitol Police. It is not known what the protesters were charged with. The Capitol Police did...

Politics: Has corruption tainted even the battle over free trade? If not, why has the White House buried its own study of a jobs "retraining" program that it insists Congress must vote for as a condition for signing three trade deals? A Labor Department study on the effectiveness of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), a $1.3 billion program for workers who claim their jobs were lost to foreign competition, has not only missed its deadline by four years, but is also being withheld until the end of the year, the Wall Street Journal reports. Based on how this White House operates,...

SEDRO-WOOLLEY, Wash. --(Ammoland.com)- Angus Hobdell, the Team CZ shooter from Tempe, Ariz., won the Production division title this past weekend at the 2011 USPSA Area 1 Regional Handgun Championship, Presented by Springfield Armory. Hobdell, who started the match in third place, behind the early leader Cody McKenna of Mesa, Ariz., moved into the lead with the first of his five stage wins on the fourth stage of the match. After moving to first place Hobdell never looked back and finished the match with a division winning score of 1159.9220 points. “Angus has long been among the top Production division shooters...

Perhaps this will feel a little counterintuitive after seeing today’s jobless numbers, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Gallup’s latest poll on soak-the-rich tax policies show that Americans are less open to redistributionism than at the peak of the pre-Great Recession economy, with a plurality rejecting “heavy taxes on the rich”: Americans break into two roughly evenly matched camps on the question of whether the government should enact heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth in the U.S. Forty-seven percent believe the government should redistribute wealth in this way, while 49% disagree, similar to views Gallup found...

After decades of increasing tobacco taxes at the federal, state, and local levels, some states are beginning to buck this fiscally burdensome and irresponsible trend. On March 17, the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a bill that would cut the state’s cigarette tax by a dime, to $1.68 per pack. Two other states with high tobacco taxes—New Jersey and Rhode Island—are also considering proposals to reduce taxes on tobacco products to make their state’s tax rates more competitive. This reversal in policy would be fiscally responsible and especially beneficial to low-income people. Many economists have noted that many states’...

Paul: Well, I think competition makes things better. You have to compete with other late-night comedians; I have to compete with other physicians. I think competition makes us better. Think if you didn’t have that guy, what’s his name, you have to compete with?

It is the ultimate accolade for a keen vegetable grower – a 73-year-old has been told not enter his village gardening competition because he is too good. David Stirzaker has been asked by the organisers of the North Cadbury and District Horticultural Society, in Somerset, not to exhibit his produce at its annual show, because his impressive record at the event is discouraging others from taking part. Mr Stirzaker – who has won 12 cups at the show in just four years, for his prize-winning carrots, parsnips and tomatoes – has pledged to take the matter to the Royal Horticultural...

'I made a mistake': Al Gore's U-turn on corn ethanol as he admits the food-vs-fuel competition is real By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 4:43 AM on 23rd November 2010 Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was 'not a good policy', weeks before tax credits are up for renewal. U.S. blending tax breaks for ethanol make it profitable for refiners to use the fuel even when it is more expensive than gasoline. The credits are up for renewal on December 31. Total U.S. ethanol subsidies reached $7.7billion last year according...

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a bill that would give the Attorney General the right to shut down websites with a court order if copyright infringement is deemed “central to the activity” of the site — regardless if the website has actually committed a crime. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) is among the most draconian laws ever considered to combat digital piracy, and contains what some have called the “nuclear option,” which would essentially allow the Attorney General to turn suspected websites “off.” COICA is the latest effort by Hollywood, the recording industry and...

What if they held an Industrial Revolution . . .and we weren't invited?

It‘s something of a stretch to compare a soccer game among eleven-year-old boys with the fate of the democratic world, but I’ve always managed to see big issues in small things. My son is playing on a local soccer team which has lost every one of its games, often by humiliating scores. The coach is a nice guy, but seems an archetype of contemporary thinking: he tells the kids not to care about whether they win, puts players at any positions they want, and doesn’t listen to their suggestions. He never criticizes a player or suggests how a player could...

The average U.S. household has to pay an exorbitant amount of money for an Internet connection that the rest of the industrial world would find mediocre. According to a recent report by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, broadband Internet service in the U.S. is not just slower and more expensive than it is in tech-savvy nations such as South Korea and Japan; the U.S. has fallen behind infrastructure-challenged countries such as Portugal and Italy as well.... Phone companies have to compete for your business. Even though there may be just one telephone jack in your...

Meet Ian Gilyeat, a Conservative candidate that puts Principles over Party!

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee chairman Wednesday accused freight railroads of increasingly charging excessive rates for the shipment of goods and indicated he would renew a push for legislation to re-regulate the industry. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.), frustrated by the industry's lobbying against a bill that would give new powers to regulators to police prices, released a report showing the four major freight railroads registered a nearly 13% profit margin over the past decade. Meanwhile, the companies have increased shipping rates an average of 5% annually, above inflation, since 2004, the report states. Rockefeller, speaking at...

Sweden has overtaken the United States and Singapore in a new ranking of the world’s most competitive economies published by the World Economic Forum. Sweden best in EU for competition: ranking (9 May 10) Many foreign-born in Sweden lack work: study (26 Jan 10) Employers concerned by union pay raise demands (2 Nov 09) Sweden climbed two spots in the Geneva-based organisation’s annual Global Competitiveness Report, landing in second place behind Switzerland, which topped the rankings for the second year in a row. The United States, which held the number two spot last year, moved down to the fourth position,...

The World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report finds the United States has fallen to fourth position behind top-ranked Switzerland, Sweden and Singapore in its competitiveness rankings of 139 countries. The report notes China has moved up in the rankings and sub-Saharan African countries continue to hold the bottom. The report finds the recent economic crisis is having an impact on its competitiveness rankings. It notes the United States is continuing its decline. After being toppled from first to second position last year, it now has fallen two more places to fourth position. Despite this, co-author of the Global Competitiveness Report,...

Parents of middle school aged children may want to be aware that the national MathCounts Foundation has changed the rules for homeschoolers this year. MathCounts provides an opportunity for 6th through 8th grade students to compete in academic problem solving and mathematical competitions which may be of particular interest to gifted middle schoolers.

Henry Abbott of ESPN’s excellent True Hoop blog has a great post today about why stadium food is so lousy: If you open a mom-and-pop restaurant out there in the real world, and you treat your customers so shoddily, you’ll lose money and eventually go out of business. It’s almost guaranteed. With that idea simmering around the clock, day in and day out, as the owner you’d hire very carefully, obsess about things like hand washing procedures and pitch a fit if you found employees blending insects into the frozen drinks

Last year, Zhao Bowen was part of a team that cracked the genetic code of the cucumber. These days, he's probing the genetic basis for human IQ. Zhao is 17. Centuries after it led the world in technological prowess -- think gunpowder, irrigation and the printed word -- China has barged back into the ranks of the great powers in science. With the brashness of a teenager, in some cases literally, China's scientists and inventors are driving a resurgence in potentially world-changing research. Unburdened by social and legal constraints common in the West, China's trailblazing scientists are also pushing the...

Licensing Madness My show tonight tonight asks, why do so many occupations need a license? Requiring permission from the state to do everything from flower arranging to practicing law paralyzes competition and protects entrenched special interests.Our most outrageous example of licensing madness is the plight of David Price, a man who learned the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished, especially when messing with lawyers. Price made the mistake of helping Eldon Ray, a fellow Kansan who was fined for practicing architecture without a license. Price didn’t represent Ray in court; he just helped Ray by writing a letter...

We hear people speak of “business” and “capitalism” as being somehow evil, including comments about capitalists victimizing employees and customers in pursuit of the goal of “maximizing profits”. In conversations with supposedly educated people who lean to the left, the concept is an accepted axiom, that maximizing profits – at the expense of everything good in the world – is the one and only purpose of business. It is the socialist rallying cry these days.

March 4, 2010 Everyone hates each other — it’s Hollywood Kathryn Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker, during filming. A producer has been banned from the Oscars Chris Ayres, Los Angeles It is a night of glittering statues, pristine red carpets and gracious speeches. But behind the air-kisses, smiles and displays of magnanimity at the annual Oscars ceremony, dirty, though often expensive, battles go on, with competitors more than willing to knife each other if it means taking home a trophy. After all, winning means more business at the box office and higher fees in the future. Not to mention...

President Obama's new "health reform" plan boasts that it "sets up a new com petitive health-insurance market giving tens of millions of Americans the exact same insurance choices that members of Congress will have." It does no such thing. Yet one of the "small ideas" that Republicans will offer at today's "summit" really would vastly expand Americans' choice -- and let about 11 million people go on the insurance rolls at no cost to the taxpayers. First, the Obama idea: It's actually puny compared to the federal employees' plan, because the "exchange" that would offer the new policies would plainly...

Some changes to the contract pricing structure of the KC-X program will be announced later today by the Defense Dept., according to slides of a tanker presentation obtained by Aviation Week. Both Boeing and Northrop Grumman/EADS North America, the two would-be competitors, complained that the fixed-price demand by the Pentagon for the production lots placed too much risk in the contractor’s lap. Based on the draft request for proposals (RFP) from September 2009, the first five lots would have been locked in at a fixed price. Now, however, the pricing structure allows for fixed price for only Lots 1-2....

If you would like a graphic (literal and figurative) demonstration of our nation's greatest failing, sit in front of your television set and watch NBC cover an international sports event, the Winter Olympics, as if only Americans were participating. Every time the Today show's Meredith Vieira stumbles over the name of the Russian figure skater Yevgeny Plushenko (it's pronounced exactly as it's spelled, Meredith, with the accent on the second syllables) and giggles to show that it's OK to be ignorant, I think about all of the announcers from Canada and Europe who pronounce everyone's name correctly. Their employers care...

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/February/10-at-182.html NOTE: The following text SNIPPET is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, February 23, 2010 Department of Justice and USDA Workshops to Explore Competition and Regulatory Issues in the Agriculture Industry to Begin March 12 in Iowa Initial Workshop to Be Held in Ankeny, Iowa, at Des Moines Area Community College, FFA Enrichment Center WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced today the agenda and panelists for the first joint public workshop, which will be held on March 12, 2010, in Ankeny, Iowa, to explore competition and regulatory issues in the agriculture...

...To see how much these items cost, shoppers must add the merchandise to their shopping carts — in effect, taking it up to the virtual register for a price check... In many cases that freedom stems from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS. The ruling gave manufacturers considerably more leeway to dictate retail prices, once considered a violation of antitrust law, and it set a high legal hurdle for retailers to prove that this is bad for consumers. ...retailers say manufacturers have become increasingly aggressive with one tool in particular: forbidding...

Australia is in the midst of a battle over standardized tests and school rankings that is similar to B.C.'s, but with a few important differences. The Australian government is about to launch a website called My School, which will give the public access to student results, school-by-school, in reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation and numeracy. The website will also provide additional information about the 10,000 schools in its data base - such as size, number of indigenous students, number of teachers - and will include a statement about each school written by school staff. Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard is...

WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - The United States has set preliminary anti-dumping duties ranging from 90 to nearly 175 percent on about $30 million worth of electric blankets from China, the U.S. Commerce Department said on Wednesday. The ruling is a victory for Jarden Consumer Solutions, a Florida-based subsidiary of consumer products company Jarden Corp (JAH.N). It filed a petition earlier this year asking for protection against its Chinese competitors. The relatively small case is of one several ongoing U.S. investigations into charges that Chinese companies are selling their goods in the United States at unfairly low prices and benefit...

As airlines struggle, Amtrak is trying and take a bit of their market share. Business travelers who routinely fly the shuttle -- mildly affordable, and as comfortable as can be expected -- have enjoyed wi-fi access on some airlines, but not all. Amtrak sees an opening here: It's announced plans to offer wi-fi access on Acela trains between Boston, New York, and Washington, starting in March. Amtrak's Wi-Fi will be free at first, but the carrier may impose a fee in the future. While one reason for introducing the wi-fi perk is to compete with the likes of Delta and...

NO SPACE FOR COMPLETE EXPLANATION, CAN ONLY POST EXCERPTS. READ ENTIRE ARTICLE BY CLICKING ABOVE LINK : Potentially fatal flaws come in many forms. But three crop up the most when you talk to experts: excessive debt, superior competitors and the inability to keep up with technological change. 1. Palm With the Treo, Palm (PALM, news, msgs) was an early pioneer of the move to smart phones. So it doesn't seem right that stronger competitors such as Apple (AAPL, news, msgs) and Research In Motion (RIMM, news, msgs) are now going to crush it. But that seems to be Palm's...

The $116 billion business of selling cell phone calls in the U.S. faces a long, ugly decline. That petrifies just about everyone in the industry except Roger Linquist.With his gray hair and grandfatherly demeanor, Roger Linquist hardly seems like the kind of guy to kneecap a $116 billion industry. Yet the 71- year-old chief executive of MetroPCS cheerfully and brazenly promises to do just that. He aims to bring down the lucrative business of selling cellular phone calls, a business that for four decades has grown bigger and richer with every passing year. MetroPCS, which Linquist founded 15 years ago,...

The lies exposed.

Many Democrats in the House and Senate have shown concern over the public distaste for a “public option” in health care, with most eyeing their upcoming campaigns in 2010 and the questions that will come their way regarding their support for the government takeover. To the rescue has come the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who apparently believes that a change in the terminology will change public opinion. According to a Breitbart story published October 26, Pelosi met with a focus group of senior citizens and used the term “competitive option” instead of “public option.” It appears as though...

Study Backs Open Access to Broadband Networks Stephen Lawson, IDG News ServiceWednesday, October 14, 2009 5:50 PM PDT Almost all of the most successful countries in broadband deployment have opened up the networks of their main carriers to competing service providers, according to a draft report put out for comment on Wednesday by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.The report (PDF) by Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society analyzes findings from a range of market-oriented democracies in an effort to understand what approaches have worked best in making sure citizens have adequate high-speed Internet access. The FCC is seeking...

“Bishop to d3. . . . Black bishop takes White knight . . . Ooh . . .” The commentator draws in his breath: “Black’s probably going to regret that move.” Black probably does for, moments later, White’s fist swings into his nose, covering Black in blood. Black, keen to avenge both knight and nose, starts pummelling White about the ears. A klaxon blares. The crowd roars: “Do it for the bishop!” Chess matches are not usually so lively. Or bloody. Yet this was the scene on Saturday at the Boston Dome, in Tufnell Park, northwest London, where players contested...

If the public option will create competition and lower medical costs, then why does the US Postal Service raise its rates every year? The USPS is the public option. Right? Why does it lose money and FedEx and UPS make money?

This summer's health care debate has centered around the creation of a government-run insurance program to compete with those offered by private insurers. President Barack Obama says "public option" isn't intended to end private health insurance, repeatedly telling us that if we like our private plans, we'll be able to keep them. A government plan, he and congressional Democrats insist, will simply provide needed competition for private insurers. And this will be a good thing, of course, because competition leads to better service, lower costs, and more consumer choice. Now a cynic might question the sincerity of the president's newfound...

There’s a debate about whether a government-mandated health care system would be cheaper for America.‭ ‬I thought this was obvious.‭ It’s understandably becoming hard to get to the bottom of this issue because of the words the administration uses‬.‭ ‬The administration calls it‭ “‬universal health care,‭” ‬veiling what it actually is,‭ ‬a government monopolized health care system.‭ ‬When you’re determining whether or not government ought to take over an industry,‭ ‬think of it this way:‭ ‬Which one is cheaper and provides more value‭? ‬A‭ ‬competitive free market or a monopoly‭? Everything the government has taken over has turned out wrecked,‭...

Send me a FR Mail and I will start the process to hook you up to be on the Free Republic Team to send goodies to the Troops fighting for our safety and freedom!Check out this thread: Free Republic Joins The Troopathon BLOGGER SHOOTOUT Competition! Friday, June 19, 2009 6:04:32 PM · by Syncro · 4 replies · 101+ views Troopathon BLOGGER SHOOTOUT ^ | June 19, 2009 | "Captain" Syncro And this one LIVE From Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Thursday, June 11, 2009 10:51:36 PM · by Syncro · 15 replies · 316+ views Move America Forward ^ |...

NEW YORK – Twitter, the Web site that asks what everybody's doing, says it wants to be doing a TV series. The social-networking site has teamed with Reveille productions and Brillstein Entertainment Partners to develop an unscripted series based on the popular site, which invites 140-character postings from members around the world. The show would harness Twitter to put players on the trail of celebrities in an interactive, competitive format, the show's producers announced Monday.

Companies See Unlikely Competitors in Changing Market MAY 20, 2009 03:05 Song Min-cheol, brand manager of Jinro’s Chamiseul soju, a Korean traditional liquor, feels nervous whenever he hears about the introduction of a new TV. He says he closely checks the price of the new model as well as picture quality. “As the picture quality of a TV set, including LCD, improves every day, office workers who used to go drinking together after work return home right away to watch dramas or movies,” he said. “As more LCD TVs are put in households, soju consumption will continue to decline.” Korea’s...