Free Republic

Two interesting infographics were published recently that make it so easy to see the decline of the West, even a caveman can do it.The first is from the Brookings Institute, which has released an interactive map showing economic growth data for the largest 300 metropolitan areas in the world– from New York and London to Okayama, Japan and Wulumuqi, China.The Brookings map ranks each of these cities based on economic performance over three distinct periods, measuring both GDP growth and employment trends.The first time period is the last full year of data, 2011-2012. The second time period is that particular...

(March 1) -- When it comes to mass public shootings, the decade doesn't seem to be starting out too well. Just two months in and already there was a shooting rampage in rural Virginia (which claimed eight lives), one at the University of Alabama (three dead) and other in Denver, near Columbine High School, in which two middle school students were injured. But the fact is that, while mass public shootings always tend to galvanize massive media coverage, they are becoming increasingly less common, falling sharply in the last decade compared with the previous two. And understanding this decline is...

The federal government will likely be involved in running the ObamaCare exchange in at least 30 states, 26 of which expressly declined to establish state exchanges. One health-policy expert refers to it as an "administrative nightmare" for the Department of Health and Human Services. Friday was the deadline for a state to let HHS know if it planned to establish a state exchange. Thus far only 18 states and the District of Columbia are planning on doing so. As of right now only Utah and Florida remain undecided. Utah may still decide to set up a state exchange, but few...

On Saturday, I touched on some of the sources of Mitt Romney's failure on 6 November, noting his almost willful alienation of Hispanic voters and his incompetence in executing a get-out-the-vote effort, but emphasizing, above all else, his decision -- most evident in his contentless acceptance speech at the Republican convention -- to eschew an appeal to first principles, to treat Barack Obama as a decent fellow with decent principles who is merely out of his depth, and to present himself to the voters as a more competent manager. Of necessity, in that post, I ignored aspects of the situation...

If a man sits on the bank of some great river and looks across to the other side, so tranquil does the current appear that it might seem to him as though the water isn’t really moving at all. Only when he looks closely will he see that the river is running steadily, ever so steadily, to the sea. And so it is with the course on which the city of Los Angeles finds itself. Visitors to the city will still find it to be a vibrant and interesting place to spend a week or two, with its pleasant climate...

While the fiscal cliff problem has absorbed almost all of the financial media comment since the election, there's a lot more to the stock market decline that has virtually gotten lost in the discussion. The market actually topped on September 14th and has trended down ever since. Most importantly, the U.S. economy was a lot weaker than the consensus believes before Hurricane Sandy became a factor. In addition Fed policy is becoming increasingly ineffectual, earnings forecasts are coming down, Europe is officially in recession and China, as well as the other BRIC nations, is slowing down. Although nobody knows the...

Via Lance Roberts of Street Talk Live,This weekend I had my first opportunity to watch "Newsroom," an HBO series, and I was struck by the opening sequence of the show as Jeff Daniels, aka Will McAvoy, discusses why America WAS the greatest country in the world - but no longer is.   Here are the stats as he breaks them down:The U.S. is: 7th in literacy27th in math 22nd in science49th in life expectancy178th in infant mortality3rd in median household income4th in labor force4th in exports But here are some other stats where the U.S. ranks as well: 19th is...

Republicans are having a bad day. But it’s going to get a lot worse when they look beyond the White House and U.S. Senate and fully absorb what just happened in California. The future of American politics — a majority-minority coalition handing complete political power over all branches of government to Democrats — is written here for anyone to see, in big, bold, rainbow colored letters. California, reports the San Francisco Chronicle, may have delivered the most unexpected news in a night full of surprises: California Democrats appear to have picked up a supermajority in both houses of the state...

According to a recent study, religion is dying in America. And it’s a trend that has grave implications for our politics, culture, and the fate of our civilization. Ben Fearnow of CBS News reports on the story, writing: ...The study also posits some theories for this burgeoning irreligiosity, which, writes Fearnow, “run the gamut from a backlash against the entanglement of religion and politics to a global relationship between economic development and secularization.” Now, I don’t know if that “gamut” includes the obvious, but these two theories miss the mark. Question: Do we wonder why Pakistan is spawning jihadists when...

Americans must be wondering how much more of this “recovery” they can afford. New figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the typical American household’s real (inflation-adjusted) income has actually dropped 5.7 percent during the Obama “recovery.” Using constant 2012 dollars (to adjust for inflation), the median annual income of American households was $53,718 as of June 2009, the last month of the recession. Now, after 38 months of this “recovery,” it has fallen to $50,678 — a drop of $3,040 per household. Yet it gets worse. Amazingly, incomes have dropped even more...

The median income of American households dropped to its lowest level since 1995 last year, extending its decline during President Barack Obama’s tenure and highlighting the depth of the damage to the middle class inflicted by the recession and weak recovery. According to annual data from the Census Bureau, median income adjusted for inflation – a closely watched measure of the financial health of average Americans – fell to $50,054 in 2011, or 1.5 per cent below its 2010 level and 4.1 per cent below its score when Mr Obama took office in 2009.

This is why Pew found that "85% of self-described middle-class adults say it is more difficult now than it was a decade ago for middle-class people to maintain their standard of living." We're working just as hard as in years past, but we're behind the 8-ball because for most of the country, wages are not even set to meet the cost of living. Indeed, some of us are closer to being poor than middle class and don't know it. The 2011 middle class median income started at $39,418 for a family of three. Yet Pew found some families making less...

The middle class in America is being systematically destroyed. Once upon a time the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world. The rest of the globe looked at us in envy and wondered what we were doing right. But now everything seems to be going wrong for the middle class. Millions of our jobs have been shipped out of the country and competition for the remaining jobs is keeping wages at depressed levels. Meanwhile, the cost of living just keeps going up and up and middle class budgets are being stretched...

San Bernardino, California – On the front door of the San Bernardino city hall is a sign that reads: “Out of Order.” Broke city, broken door: There’s a certain pleasing symmetry in the fact that the San Bernardino city council meets behind a door that, like the city government itself, does not work and is in need of replacement. On this particular evening in late July, the council has met to make public what everybody already knows: Intellectually bankrupt, morally bankrupt — the city is under criminal investigation for sundry financial shenanigans — San Bernardino is above all old-fashioned bankrupt...

Last week on June 14, President Obama announced his economic plan to finally bring economic recovery and growth to the U.S. in a much ballyhooed address in Cleveland. He threw down the gauntlet to Mitt Romney on the issue, saying “more than anything else, this election presents a choice between two fundamentally different visions of how to create strong sustained growth; how to pay down our long term debt; and most of all, how to generate good, middle-class jobs….” Truer words have never been spoken by the President. So let’s examine the two fundamentally different visions and see which can...

RICHARD RUSSELL: This Is Going To Be A Nasty Decline, And I'm Afraid It Has A Long Way To Go Matthew Boesler Jun. 5, 2012, 8:17 AM Richard Russell, the bearish author of the Dow Theory Letters, recently warned that a major primary bear market signal had been confirmed and that stocks were headed lower as a result. In his latest Dow Theory Letter, he warns that equities could have quite a distance to fall from here. Via King World News, Richard Russell: “How far will the bear market carry? No one knows. Already all of 2012's gains have been...

When the situation gets so ridiculous not even TheOnion is fit to describe it, in walks Sasha Baron Cohen and puts everything back into perspective.

The weekend produced a spate of dang-this-is-bad articles on the economic situation in California. Steven Greenhut’s for the Orange County Register is entitled “California to middle class: drop dead.” At The Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin laments that “As California Collapses, Obama Follows its Lead.” (H/t – and a “Read it, people!” shout-out – to Ed Driscoll at PJM.)But what does all this look like in terms of numbers? What’s the how much and where and whom of the Golden State collapse? Perhaps the most interesting and telling thing is that it really is as bad as it looks. And the...

A number of Civil War & History bloggers, academics, and "me too, me too" types have jumped on the "enemy of American Exceptionalism" bandwagon. Why? It's chic, hip, cool, sophisticated. You know, it's rad man. It's also the current ruling political philosophy in that cesspool we call Washington D.C. It gets you better gigs, it makes one look better (so they think) in the eyes of the world (like I care), and it also gets you noticed - an important thing for the insecure and self-absorbed (most politicians). And, of course, its also misguided and embarrassingly non-thinking. But anti-American Exceptionalism...

With Obama ruling against the Keystone XL pipeline, he continues a direction which he has maintained from the very beginning, and will only accelerate should he win again in November. Think about some of the major actions of this administration: 1. A huge “stimulus” bill, most of which went to his supporters. If you look at where most of the money from the bill went, it went to businesses which supported his campaign, it went to businesses with union employees, it went to businesses which were ideologically aligned to his vision – during the auto bailouts, there were underreported reports...