Free Republic

I feel like I keep stating the obvious.  A carbon tax is bad because it’s unnecessary and nobody wastes money better than big government, but a carbon trading scheme is worse. The latter is a fake market that feeds corruption and creates it’s own vested industry of financial brokers who profit no matter what the price and no matter who buys or sells (they just need a government mandated scheme that forces businesses to buy and sell), and no matter whether anything useful happens to the environment. Once the financial houses are set (and they are already well advanced) how...

Rising wage and production costs in China are eating into the profits of Western companies and may soonset off an exodus of multinational companies to cheaper locations. A report by Credit Suisse said the vast majority of US and European companies in China are expecting a "margin hit" over the next 12 months and fear they will not be able to pass on the costs to consumers, with the biggest worrries in electronics, clothing, and retail. The bank said Footlocker, Liz Claiborne, and Office Depot would tip into outright loss in a worst-case scenario, defined as a 20pc rise in...

BONN, Germany – British economist Nicholas Stern says a U.N. economic panel is discussing carbon taxes, add-ons to international air fares and a levy on cross-border money transfers as ways to raise $100 billion a year to fight climate change. Stern has told international climate negotiators that governments will need to create incentives for private investments in industries emitting few greenhouse gases. The Copenhagen climate summit in December determined that $100 billion is needed every year starting in 2020 to help poor countries adapt to climate change and reduce carbon emissions.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Governments must smash markets supplied by the global "superpower" of organized criminals trafficking drugs, people, arms and counterfeit goods, the U.N. crime chief said on Thursday. Criminals are reaping profits in the tens of billions of dollars, Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told Reuters about a report released by his agency. But countries are not cooperating enough with each other and the United Nations, and are too focused on traffickers. "We have to start addressing the markets, which are gigantic in size," Costa said, adding that criminals who supply...

SEX workers have rallied in Sydney to demand an end to "whore-phobic" attitudes and greater protection under anti-discrimination laws. Chanting "sex worker rights are human rights" and "no bad whores, just bad laws", dozens of protesters marched from the Opera House today in a bid to have their rights recognised. Many carried red umbrellas, a symbol of the global movement, while others made statements with T-shirts reading "whore power" and "sluts unite". "We are human beings, we are people, we do a job and we are continually vilified for that job," sex worker Julie Bates said, noting that little had...

On May 10, 2010, President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy from the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens at the end of the Supreme Court's 2009–2010 term. A significant entry in the catalog of Ms. Kagan’s remarkable achievements is her deanship of the über-prestigious Harvard Law School. In 2003, she was named, as the school’s first female dean, to succeed Robert C. Clark, who had held that post for over a decade. While manning the helm at Harvard Law, she attracted attention of alumni and observers for steering the ship away from...

The M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history. By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Published: 9:40PM BST 26 May 2010 Reverse side of a US twenty dollar bill matched up with the north side of the White House in Washington, DC The stock of money in the US fell from $14.2 trillion to $13.9 trillion in the three months to April, amounting to an annual rate of contraction of 9.6pc Photo: AFP The M3...

Haiti’s humanitarian disaster has rightfully elicited an outpouring of support from around the world. But the tragedy should also elicit outrage because the massive destruction, suffering and loss of life were largely avoidable. Natural disasters, such as hurricanes and floods that have regularly afflicted Haiti, have plagued mankind throughout history. As the world has become wealthier, the ability to cope with such calamities has grown; annual deaths due to such disasters have declined by 96 percent since the 1920s. Economic growth has made it possible for countries around the world, increasingly including developing nations, to mitigate damage done by “acts...

Before you write off the American economy, consider this remark from Nathan Myhrvold, the ex-Microsoft genius who now runs an idea factory called Intellectual Ventures: “For the last few decades I’ve bought Japanese or German cars but no Japanese or German software. Only the United States can handle the thinking speed of the software field.” We live in a country where makers of high-value-added software are hounded as antitrust outlaws, while the smoke-belching industry of making money-losing cars is lavished with government bailouts, but never mind that. US business ingenuity is so robust that not even the government can kill...

Decades ago, people had to work hard for making products for living and for fun. Outsourcing and globalization have changed it at all. If 100 million guys in China, India or Vietnam can make goods for the world, what should other guys do? One way is to limit the globolization process so that more guys are in work because the productivity is reduced; otherwise people may accept this and just do exactly nothing. Before we achieve another techonological breakthrough like nuclear power or the Internet, we must find a way to deal with the high productivity that is making troubles....

The holy water fonts at the front of Catholic churches remain empty, standing out like empty tooth sockets. The water from the fonts was removed months ago during the peak of the H1N1 pandemic scare, as hyped and promoted by the World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations. Now that the UN got its ugly bunioned foot in the door of local churches, it didn’t take long until it giddily paraded up the aisles, bearing out the old adage of the proverbial inch ready to gain its inevitable mile. Up to now it’s been the empty fonts and...

"The Europe as you know it from visiting, from your parents or friends is on the verge of collapsing," Geert Wilders said in a speech in the United States last year. The leader of the Netherlands' populist Party for Freedom added: "We are now witnessing profound changes that will forever alter Europe's destiny and might send the Continent in what Ronald Reagan called 'a thousand years of darkness.' " And not just Europe, but America as well. Been to Europe lately? Thought it was bad? You ain't seen nothing yet. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty, hailed by President Obama,...

Mysterious Group Buys Building Next to Ground Zero For Mosque Wednesday, December 16, 2009 Jim Hoft A mysterous Muslim group with unknown sponsors has purchased a building steps away from Ground Zero. Hudson New York reported: An identified group with unknown sponsors has purchased building steps away from where the WorldTrade Center once stood — to turn it into potentially one of the largest New York City mosques. At the moment the building, the old Burlington Coat Factory, already serves as a mini-mosque: an iron grill lifts every Friday afternoon for a little known Imam leading prayers a few yards...

SHANGHAI — China has overtaken the U.S. as the world's biggest market for automobiles, the first time any other country has bought more vehicles than the nation that produced Henry Ford, the Cadillac and the minivan. Now that the Chinese buy more cars and trucks than Americans, the shift could produce ripples for the environment, gas prices and even the kinds of cars automakers design. More than 12.7 million cars and trucks will be sold in China this year, up 44 percent from the previous year and surpassing the 10.3 million forecast in the U.S., according to J.D. Power and...

The visit to the U.S. of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will focus on important geo-political and economic issues. But this visit also should focus attention on the role India might play in an emerging global culture of freedom, helping both America and India. Friends of liberty should take note. Unenlightened legacy India seems an unlikely candidate to enhance the planet’s freedom. Its culture has been steeped in irrational religious beliefs, mostly unleavened by modern intellectual enlightenment. Religious violence between Hindus (80 percent of the population), Muslims (13 percent), and Sikhs (2 percent) goes back centuries. While tamped down, it...

An official announcement by the Obama administration disclosing the reality of extraterrestrial life is imminent. For several months, senior administration officials have been quietly deliberating behind closed doors how much to disclose to the world about extraterrestrial life. Dissatisfaction among powerful institutions such as the U.S. Navy over the decades-long secrecy policy has given a boost to efforts to disclose the reality of extraterrestrial life and technology. The impending disclosure announcement follows upon the secret implementation of a year long openness policy on UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Over the period February 12-14, 2008, the United Nations held closed doors discussions...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Senate committee on Tuesday launches three long days of hearings on a Democratic climate bill in a bid to further convince an international summit in December that Washington is serious about tackling global warming. The Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee will kick off Tuesday's hearing at 9:30 a.m. EDT with a panel of heavy-hitters from President Barack Obama's Cabinet: the secretaries of energy, transportation and interior and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Joining them will be the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. According to an EPA statement, the officials will focus...

American Life League 27 October 2009 CONTACT: Katie Walker540.659.4942| kwalker@all.org  Washington, DC (27 October 2009) – The Senate version of America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009 may transform the nation’s largest abortion chain into a quasi-government entity for sex education. Section 1803, page 503, creates a National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Resource Center and states: The Secretary shall award a grant to a nationally recognized, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that meets the requirements described in clause (ii) to establish and operate a national teen pregnancy prevention resource center (in this subparagraph referred to as the ‘Resource Center’) to carry out the purpose...

Halloween just got scarier – much scarier. I'm not talking about a new Hollywood slasher film or a new line of grotesque costumes, but a possible political nightmare scenario in which the White House could be positioned to sell out U.S. sovereignty, shred the Constitution and leave you and yours to the whims of foreign powers. Flying deep under Washington's radar is an upcoming (December) global climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, under the guise of the "United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change." Virtually nothing has been said about it from the White House. But then again, I'm sure...

US President Barack Obama on Friday hit out at naysayers he blamed for peddling "cynical" claims that global warming is a myth to derail a landmark climate change bill in Congress. Obama warned that the closer the Senate came to passing legislation which has already cleared the House of Representatives, the more opponents would resort to underhand tactics. "The naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized," Obama warned in a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "But I think it's important to understand that the closer we get, the harder...