Free Republic

President Biden on Thursday acknowledged the urgent need to lower costs for Americans, calling on Congress to pass a bipartisan innovation bill as one way to do so. Biden, speaking at North Carolina A&T University, noted the Labor Department’s inflation report that came out earlier this week showed prices continued to rise over the last month as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spiked the cost of oil and other goods.

Social Security recipients will get a raise in January — their first increase in benefits since 2009. It's expected to be about 3.5 percent. Some 55 million beneficiaries will find out for sure Wednesday when a government inflation measure that determines the annual cost-of-living adjustment is released. Congress adopted the measure in the 1970s, and since then it has resulted in annual benefit increases averaging 4.2 percent. But there was no COLA in 2010 or 2011 because inflation was too low. That was small comfort to the millions of retirees and disabled people who have seen retirement accounts dwindle and...

Tensions are rising in a neighborhood where border crossers who gather on a street corner south of Downtown to be hired for the day mix with dope dealers, alcoholics and thieves. Neighbors - including Southside Presbyterian Church, home base of the No More Deaths border activists - have complained to police about the day laborers. Those complaints culminated in the arrest of 20 illegal border crossers by U.S. Border Patrol agents at South Ninth Avenue and East 23rd Street on Monday. Such operations by the Border Patrol are rare in the area. This South Side neighborhood is a popular pickup...