Free Republic

Most of us can remember feeling that someone had done us a great injustice. On those occasions, we want nothing more than to exact revenge. I remember being unfairly treated as a lowly ROTC cadet by one of the sergeants who resented the fact that my brother had been promoted to captain and company commander over him. I was ambitious and worked extremely hard, resulting in my promotion in record time to the rank of colonel and city executive officer. This individual was now firmly under my command, and I could have wreaked havoc in his life. Instead, I chose...

It seems as if everywhere you turn these days there are studies claiming to show that America has lost its upward mobility for people born in the lower socioeconomic levels. But there is a sharp difference between upward mobility, defined as an opportunity to rise, and actually having risen. That distinction is seldom even mentioned in most of the studies. It is as if everybody is chomping at the bit to get ahead and the ones who don’t rise have been stopped by “barriers” created by “society.” When statistics show that sons of high-school dropouts don’t become doctors or scientists...

It seems as if, everywhere you turn these days, there are studies claiming to show that America has lost its upward mobility for people born in the lower socioeconomic levels. But there is a sharp difference between upward "mobility," defined as an opportunity to rise, and mobility defined as actually having risen. That distinction is seldom even mentioned in most of the studies. It is as if everybody is chomping at the bit to get ahead, and the ones that don't rise have been stopped by "barriers" created by "society." When statistics show that sons of high school dropouts don't...

Through the course of thirty-five years of practicing psychology, I have come to believe that the key to happiness and success in life resides in the power of valuation. True valuation is the ability to recognize the most important value in every circumstance and to behave in order to actualize that value. The happiest people automatically recognize and act upon true values. Applied psychology has not fulfilled its potential to make the world a better place because it has not focused on the powers of valuation. America's happiness and success as a nation have resulted from the one-pointed emphasis on...

If there is one thing President Obama is good at, it is changing the subject from what we should really be discussing. Since October 2013, he has been beset by all manner of troubling press about the disastrous roll out of his signature health care reform law. To say it has been a disaster and a train wreck is the ultimate of understatements. But, as we witnessed in the presidential election of 2012, Obama is adept at getting the press and certain segments of the American people to focus on issues that he prefers, effectively changing the subject from his...

If we are to achieve President Obama's fantasy of more income equality, let's  start with our CongressCritters.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwqPBlSxb-0&w=640&h=390] Video linkMovement toward income equality -- for those who work productively and for those who don't -- is generally a bad idea. The result would likely be to reduce the benefits the economy derives from those who work productively and thereby earn more than their lazy, incompetent and/or disabled fellow humans, as well as more than some who work for the joy of working rather than to earn money. However, if we are to have more equality why not start at top: with...

(CNSNews.com) - The top 40 percent of households by before-tax income actually paid 106.2 percent of the nation’s net income taxes in 2010, according to a new study by the Congressional Budget Office.At the same time, households in the bottom 40 percent took in an average of $18,950 in what the CBO called “government transfers” in 2010.Taxpayers in the top 40percent of households were able to pay more than 100 percent of net federal income taxes in 2010 because Americans in the bottom 40 percent actually paid negative income taxes, according to the CBO study entitled, “The Distribution of Household...

When presidents give speeches, the affair is choreographed like a Broadway production. The message is not just the words of the speech, but where it is given and who happens to be the chosen audience. So it was not by accident that President Obama chose a theater in a poor black neighborhood in Washington, DC, where the average income is barely half the national average, to speak this week about economic opportunity and fairness. What exactly was the President trying to achieve by sharing with a low-income black audience that “today’s CEO now makes 273 times more” than the average...

Fox News columnist rips Pope Francis, loses Catholic News Service gig Adam Shaw, an editor for the Fox News website, has been taking a lot of heat, even from some conservatives, for a rip-roaring assessment of the pope’s recent apostolic exhortation. His column is titled: “Pope Francis is the Catholic Church’s Obama – God help us,” which gives you a sense of where Shaw was coming from. But if Shaw’s Fox job is safe — hey, when Rush Limbaugh is blasting the pontiff anyone else looks tame — his other gig, as a film and video game reviewer for Catholic...

It has long been my opinion that all notions of human equality, other than that of formal equality before the law, are destructive of human intelligence and sensibility. My opinion was confirmed recently when I read an editorial in the Lancet, one of the two most important general medical journals in the world.The title of the editorial was “Equity in Child Survival.” I could have written the editorial myself from the title alone, so utterly predictable was its drift: Although Indonesia has reduced child mortality by 40% during the past decade, data from 2007 show that children in rural...

JONATHAN GRUBER, M.I.T.: Let’s start with understanding that we're not talking about the vast majority of Americans. This law is really leaving those with employer insurance, those with government insurance alone. We’re talking about a small minority of Americans that buy insurance on their own through the individual market. CHUCK TODD: Still millions of people. GRUBER: Exactly. It's 12 million people, about a third of which will end up paying more under this law. And that as you said in the introductions sort of the idea. We currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you’re sick, if you’ve been...

House Republicans on Tuesday narrowed their attack on Obamacare to the issue of fairness, insisting that President Obama and his top political appointees all have to buy their insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges as part of a new bill to end the government shutdown and extend the federal debt ceiling. GOP leaders hope to put the bill on their chamber’s floor for a vote later Tuesday, with little time to spare before the Thursday deadline the Treasury Department has set for when it will run out of maneuvering room under the current $16.7 trillion debt ceiling. The new...

Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité! is the national motto of France. Liberty, equality and brotherhood were first employed as watchwords for the French Revolution, during which very little of these virtuous ideals were employed by the revolutionaries toward any group but themselves. Here in the U.S., our Revolution used similarly noble words to express our national identity: 'Live Free or Die,' 'No Taxation Without Representation,' 'Don't Tread on Me' and later, 'All men are created Equal.' And to be sure, for most of its history, America has embodied those sentiments, when unrestrained by a government originally instituted to support them. Sadly, it...

This week, thanks to a groundswell of opposition from conservative activists, the House Republican leadership decided to delay voting on their continuing resolution. Leadership would never admit it, but they canceled Thursday’s scheduled vote because they did not have enough support from Republican members. Using tactics that only Washington insiders could dream of, House leadership attempted a questionable parliamentary scheme which is known as "deem and pass." The goal was to give Republicans a chance to say they voted to defund Obamacare while simultaneously passing a bill out of the House that funds it. If that sounds confusing, that’s because...

Mapping the way to a more fair wait for new livers Aug 20, 12:36 PM (ET) By LAURAN NEERGAARD (AP) WASHINGTON (AP) - Where you live can affect your chances of getting a liver transplant, and your risk of dying while waiting. The nation's transplant network says it's time to make the system fairer - and it may take a cue from how politicians redraw voting maps. "Gerrymandering for the public good" is how Johns Hopkins University transplant surgeon Dr. Dorry Segev describes a proposal to change the map that governs how donated livers are distributed around the country. The...

"The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?" -- Thomas Sowell "Long ago, I realized that success leaves clues, and that people who produce outstanding results do specific things to create those results." -- Tony Robbins Not only does success leave clues, failure leaves clues as well. That's how the...

<p>The Obamacare disaster is coming. Sure, the president is delaying or dismissing parts of it because they’ve proved either unmanageable or unworkable in the legally allotted time to set them up, but the most invasive and damaging aspects are still coming. But there is a chance to stop them in their tracks, IF Republicans have the courage to do it.</p>

This isn’t breaking news or anything, but it never ceases to amaze how swiftly politicians will throw much-maligned, greeedy big-oil companies and market speculators under the bus whenever gas prices begin a precipitous rise. Although the Obama administration is momentarily occupied with their headlining policy agenda (immigration, his umpteenth “pivot” to jobs and the economy, the healthcare rollout), there were several pointed provisions about energy in Obama’s budget proposal, and I have no doubt we’ll hear about the many supposed sins of oil companies and the need to forcibly wean ourselves off of fossil fuels with renewed vigor before long,...

WASHINGTON—Wealthier households benefit significantly more than lower earners from big tax breaks such as deductions for mortgage interest and charitable giving, the government said in a study Wednesday. More than half the benefits of 10 major tax breaks go to the one-fifth of U.S. households at the top of the income scale, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The top 1 percent of earners reaps 17 percent of these tax breaks, which also include preferential treatment of investment income and the deduction for sales and income taxes paid to state and local governments. Other breaks, such as the per-child tax...

One of the most seductive parts of President Barack Obama's political message (and the message of progressive Democrats in general) is sympathy for the poor and a willingness to talk about the disparities of capitalism -- about the rich being too rich and the poor being screwed. In some ways, it's the predominant message of the Obama era. And though it's reasonable to contend that Republicans need to display more compassion -- if for nothing else than their own political survival -- isn't it also reasonable to take stock of how things have gone for the poor under four-plus years...