Free Republic

resident Biden's latest proposal to hike the top capital gains tax rate to its highest level in more than a century is facing heavy criticism from experts who warn such an action could significantly harm the U.S. economy. According to a report issued by the Treasury Department, led by Secretary Janet Yellen, the president's proposed fiscal year 2025 budget would increase the top marginal rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends to a staggering 44.6%. A capital gains tax hike of that magnitude would take the rate to its highest level since it was first introduced in the early...

If someone says, “Trust the science!” these days, it’s usually an effort to short-circuit debate over weighty policy issues. “Trust the science” has been deployed in the past five years to prevent debate over COVID school closures and mask mandates, over electric-car subsidies, and over sex changes for boys and girls. For my entire time in Washington, though, “trust the science” has been used to oppose a missile defense system for the United States. For my first 20 years as a journalist, I was told that a missile defense system simply cannot work and that anyone who disagreed was a...

It looks like Senator Rand Paul might have just dug up the emails that everyone’s been waiting for. He’s got his hands on a pile of them as part of his deep dive into how COVID started, and he spilled the beans on X. These aren’t just any old emails—they involve Peter Daszak and David Morens, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s right-hand man at the NIH. What’s the big deal? Well, they’re chatting about how samples from the Wuhan lab could unlock the genomes of over 700 coronaviruses. Here’s the kicker: Despite all the times Dr. Fauci has been grilled in Congress...

As we are approaching the end of the fourth year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed close to 7 million people worldwide and 1.2 million in just the US alone, both estimates being almost certainly significant undercounts of the true toll, I was depressed to see yet more evidence indicating significantly declining trust in science and science-based interventions to combat disease, such as vaccines. For example, earlier this month the Pew Research Center published survey results noting that Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Positive Views of Science Continue to Decline, with the blurb, “Among both Democrats and Republicans, trust in...

A pair of professors from Arizona State University wrote an essay which was published last week by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The gist of the article is that academics are overestimating the value of free speech. In fact, they come to the conclusion that free speech is a right-wing framing which ought to be rejected by colleges who, after all, have lots of experts on hand to determine what is and is not acceptable speech on a given topic. Here’s how they set up the argument:Whether and by whom free speech is under threat on campuses are hotly debated...

For the past 20 years, the best minds in Washington and Jerusalem treated Hamas as a pragmatic political operator whose leaders were satisfied living in the same world as the rest of us. Their charter, first adopted in 1988, endorsed a set of bloodcurdling millenarian goals. But despite the open madness and world-making ambitions of their public pronouncements, Hamas remained a semi-legitimate player, treated as just one unremarkable thread in the Middle East’s rich tapestry of mildly threatening, gun-toting political dreamers. Even to the most hardened Israeli security officials they were a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot whose extreme rhetoric and regrettably...

In the latter part of 2023 Americans have come to a much better understanding of the medical failures behind the COVID pandemic responses. Whether these measures were political failures remains to be seen. To consider that question, we would have to know whether any of the responsible officials had ulterior agendas behind, or in addition to, protecting public health. More than a few analysts have speculated that the most constitutionally dubious pandemic measures were pretexts to solidify and embolden an emerging authoritarianism on the part of global elites. Such concerns are not evidence of paranoia. This May, the Rockefeller Foundation...

As COVID-19 cases continue to rise nationwide, a new variant dubbed “Pirola” has experts worried. Also referred to as BA.2.86, Pirola is a highly mutated variant of the Omicron strain of the coronavirus, which emerged in 2021 and led to a frightful spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths. “When Omicron hit in the winter of 2021, there was a huge rise in COVID-19 cases because it was so different from the Delta variant, and it evaded immunity from both natural infection and vaccination,” infectious disease specialist Dr. Scott Roberts said in a Yale Medicine bulletin. The bulletin states that “there...

CNN — If you’re at high risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19, it’s time to dust off those N95 masks and place them snugly over your nose and mouth to protect yourself from a recent uptick of the virus, according to a growing number of experts. That advice should go all the way up to 80-year-old President Joe Biden, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist. “Octogenarians comprise the highest-risk group for complications following Covid infection,” Reiner said.

ransomnote: Video clip at link.https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1682110324336631813 Jul 20, 2023

The recent exodus of staff from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign appears to have shocked some with expert knowledge of political campaigns as the Republican looks to rest his drive for the White House. The Republican's campaign has cut roughly a third of its staff, or 38 people, as part of an effort aimed at getting DeSantis' presidential bid back on track but the decision has raised questions. Long-time DeSantis staffer Kyle Lamb has been revealed as one of the 38 people who've been let go by the campaign, a decision that was met with surprise by Peter Schorsch,...

House Republicans have floated launching an impeachment inquiry against President Biden amid newly surfaced allegations that suggest his involvement in the business dealings his son, Hunter. But can congressional lawmakers initiate the use of that constitutional tool for alleged treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors that transpired before holding the office of the presidency? "The answer is clear," Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Fox News Digital. "No one knows." Article II, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution states: "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment...

Experts were baffled by the Biden administration invoking the Hatch Act when asked whether President Biden or his son owned the cocaine found at the White House. The culprit behind the White House’s July snowstorm has yet to be found, and the Biden administration isn’t answering whether the president or Hunter Biden owned the Independence Day cocaine dominating the headlines this week. White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates was asked during a Thursday press gaggle whether the president can deny that he or his son owned the cocaine found at the White House – a charge leveled by former...

Gain-of-function research should continue. Such is the opinion of the Biden White House, as explained in this press conference at the end of February. It is "important to help prevent future pandemics," says communications man John Kirby.Last fall, researchers in Boston went public about creating new variants of COVID-19, while in a recent letter, over 150 prominent virologists joined together to air their concerns that new regulations might "overly restrict the ability of scientists to generate the knowledge needed to protect ourselves from these pathogens."By now, most serious people are in agreement that the 2019 coronavirus originated in a laboratory...

Multiple energy experts blasted Vice resident Kamala Harris after she claimed Wednesday that the Biden administration has successfully reduced home heating and electricity prices. "For working families, we have reduced heating and electricity bills so folks have more money in their pockets to buy things like schools supplies, replace the dishwasher or take a family vacation," the vice resident remarked during a speech in Maryland. However, experts said the comments were inaccurate and noted that utility prices for most Americans have increased since resident Biden and Harris took office in January 2021. They also slammed Harris for being "completely out...

Even from the start of the mRNA vaccine rollout, a small number of physicians were sounding an alarm about the dangers of Operation Warp Speed and the safety protocols that the mRNA vaccine development bypassed. Near the end of year three of dealing with COVID-19, much more is known about the efficacy of the new mRNA vaccines and their safety profile. This post sums up the information and concerns that multiple physicians have offered, all leading to one conclusion: the vaccine program needs to be stopped due to both safety concerns and lack of efficacy. As the experimental vaccines were...

Yesterday the New York Post reported that a former top intelligence official who had previously signed the letter that claimed the Post’s exposé on Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation is now conceding that he knew a “significant portion” of the recovered files “had to be real”The man in question is Douglas WiseWise is a former Defense Intelligence Agency deputy director and was among the 51 former intelligence officials who signed a public letter on Oct. 19, 2020, claiming the Post’s series of reports on Hunter’s shady overseas business dealing, had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”Among...

In this fourth year of Visual Capitalist's Prediction Consensus (now part of their more comprehensive 2023 Global Forecast Series), they’ve learned a few things about the universe of predictions, experts, outlooks, and forecasts.Experts are reasonably good at predicting the future one year out, though they are also in a strong position to help shape the future through their influential thought leadership and actions.Situations can and will flare up in unexpected ways, which can have knock-on effects on the whole system (e.g. COVID-19, Ukraine invasion).Experts are just as susceptible to hype as the rest of us, as evidenced by the glut...

U.S. — Medical experts are absolutely stumped as to what could be causing the recent uptick in healthy, young people everywhere that are suddenly collapsing with heart failure. Despite their uncertainty, experts do feel confident that we can rule out that one thing as the culprit. "It's too early to say what could be causing this, but it's never too early to say what isn't causing this," said local expert, Dr. Scott Rufflinger. "This could be caused by anything. But the one thing we know for certain is that it's definitely not what we're all thinking that's behind this —...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) petition for a grand jury investigation into COVID-19 vaccines, in which he decries the ongoing vaccine campaign as “propaganda” by the Biden administration, is drawing fierce criticism from health experts. Physicians and public health experts say his request betrays decades of established procedure designed to ensure the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, and only serves to stoke further immunization fears. DeSantis’s petition for a grand jury investigation was approved by the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday, clearing the way for what his office described as a probe into “wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to...