Free Republic

I had to pick up one of my kids today, and as luck would have it, I was getting my fill of Rush Limbaugh while we were in the car. She doesn't see the value of the information that Rush produces, and was eager to change the station to something more palatable to teenage ears. She almost lost her fingers. But it got me thinking a little bit about what teens think about today's topics. I first talked about a bill filed in the Iowa House to make it legal for dairy farmers to sell unpasteurized milk. It seems that...

Link only - New York Times

JEFF GUNDLACH: These 3 Charts On Government Jobs Should Make You FuriousFebuarary 15,2012 Sam Ro Jeff Gundlach, the brains behind the $30 billion DoubleLine Capital, hosted a webcast with clients on Tuesday. The title of his presentation: "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." He drew parallels between the U.S. and Rome, highlighting excessive government spending. Gundlach noted that one of the major problems with U.S. federal deficits is federal government employee pay. He was appalled to see that these employees made "so much more than the private workers, who pay the taxes, that pay the salaries of the...

Early voting begins today at four sites in Hamilton County, and local officials remind those headed to the polls to remember their photo IDs. The early voting ballot will be for the March 6 primaries, including the U.S. presidential race, two county special elections -- one for commission District 3 and another for county mayor -- and county property assessor. "Early voting offers a convenient way for voters to cast their ballots without worrying about making it to the polls on Election Day," said Hamilton County Elections Administrator Charlotte Mullis-Morgan. "The added flexibility allows individuals to work voting into their...

It was yet another embarrassing spectacle of Republicans squabbling over who was for big government first. Jim Talent, a former senator from Missouri acting as a surrogate for Mitt Romney, took Rick Santorum to task for voting for Medicare Part D while in the Senate in 2003. Medicare Part D was indeed an egregious example of federal government growth. It added at least $7 trillion to the already substantial unfunded liabilities of the Medicare system. The deficit-financed prescription drug benefit was also the biggest new entitlement program since the Great Society. On a media conference call, Talent described it as...

...........Mr.Obama's insincerity on tax reform has been a giant missed opportunity. Mr. Romney is the get-it-done candidate. He could not only point to Mr. Obama's failure to act, but explain why—because it would conflict with the campaign of class resentment that he and his surrogates are so busy denying they intend to run on in the fall. Mr.Romney needs to do something. Mr.Santorum's rise is a telling rebuke—a "conservative" who hails from a blue state and yet who succeeded because he found a natural way to bridge the gap, thanks to his affiliation with unions and hard-hat workers. Yes, his...

NASHVILLE — Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has scheduled a trip to Tennessee next week while a poll indicates Rick Santorum is now leading in the state despite his lack of a campaign organization within the state. The American Research Group Inc. poll, involving 600 "likely" Republican voters contacted by telephone Feb. 8-9, found Santorum favored by 34 percent, followed by Mitt Romney (27 percent), Gingrich (16 percent) and Ron Paul (13 percent). The former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania recruited no committed delegates to appear on the Tennessee's March 6 ballot, though if he wins the state primary, he will...

ART CASHIN: The Unemployed Are Now Going On Disability And It's Costing The Government Billions Sam RoFebuary 14, 2012 In this morning's Cashin's Comments, Art Cashin points to some disturbing research regarding the recent bump in disability benefit applications: I’m Sick Of Being Unemployed - A couple of strange and rather disquieting reports circulated among the Friends of Fermentation yesterday. The topic was unemployment or, more specifically, where do those people go who have stopped looking for work. Their absence is credited with distorting the unemployment rate and making it lower than most expect or believe. The reports I allude...

Republican candidates listed on my local ballot Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Charles Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum

I won't pretend that there has been any one, single event or occurrence of late that has prompted this discussion. Suffice it to say that I'm absolutely, positively fed up as a Christian, a veteran, and as an American. I'm well into my 50's now, and in my lifetime I have never seen a more open, blatant attack on not only our freedoms as Americans but also our beliefs (e.g. Christianity in all of its forms), our sensibilities, and even our intelligence. There are multitudinous examples of enemies out there who loathe our country, our faith, our founding principles, our...

President Barack Obama has proved his adeptness at exploiting the vote pump: Dependence on government has increased by 23 percent under his administration, according to the Heritage Foundation 2012 Index of Dependence on Government.More people than ever before — 67.3 million Americans — depend on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid or other assistance. Consider: The nation committed more than 15 times the resources in 2010 than in 1962 to pay for people who depend on the government. More than 70 percent of the nation’s spending goes to dependence programs, up from 28.3 percent in 1962 and...

Let's think about the kind of mess that we're in. Federal 2010 Medicare and Medicaid expenditures totaled $800 billion. The projected annual growth of both programs is about 7 percent. Social Security expenditures are more than $700 billion a year. According to the 2009 Social Security and Medicare trustees reports, by 2030, 49 percent of federal revenues will go for Social Security and Medicare payments. The unfunded liability of both programs is already $106 trillion.But not to worry. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it's possible to sustain today's level of federal spending and even achieve a balanced budget. All...

Government dependence index values Americans are more dependent on the government than ever, according to the Heritage Foundation.Heritage's index, which looks at government disbursements from health and welfare to farm subsidies, jumped 8.1 percent in 2011.The share of Americans who pay no taxes rose to a record 49.5 percent.A record 70.5 percent of government spending went to dependence programs. Heritage Heritage Heritage Heritage

The American public's dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation.

The average government worker now receives hourly pay and benefits that are 44 percent higher than the average private sector worker’s. Those high costs are bankrupting state and local governments—and taxpayers—across the nation.But it doesn't have to be this way. A package of bills being considered by the Arizona legislature would reform this unfair spoils system, protecting workplace freedom, the state's economy, and all Arizona taxpayers.​Scroll down for the latest videos, research and articles on reforming Arizona.Click image to the right for the full-size infographic.

Etta Pettijohn Sierra County Sheriff Joe Baca has joined a growing number of elected sheriffs from across the West by sending a message to federal officials about undermining state and local rights regarding law enforcement. Baca, a former lieutenant in the New Mexico Army National Guard and an Afghanistan veteran, told Sierra County Commissioners earlier this month his office will not renew an annual $16,000 contract with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). The ongoing cooperative agreement between the two agencies to compensate the sheriffÂ’s department for patrolling and enforcing laws in the Gila National Forest was due for renewal this...

The media's "improving economy" this election year exists only in Democrats' talking points. A new congressional report shows that joblessness is underestimated, while debt skyrockets. Thirty-six pages into the Congressional Budget Office's "Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022," released Tuesday, is the news that "the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2011 would have been about 1 1/4 percentage points higher than the actual rate of 8.7%" once the "unusually large decline over so short a time" in labor force participation is factored out. This means that, contrary to the claims of a media rooting for...

The U.S. Department of Commerce hinted on Monday that American solar panel manufacturers might prevail in their case against subsidized Chinese imports. Led by SolarWorld of Hillsboro, a group of U.S. solar panel manufacturers have asked the federal government to add a 50 to 250 percent tariff to imported solar panels from China to make up for 30 Chinese government subsidy programs that artificially reduce the panel prices Chinese manufacturers can offer. Chinese-made solar panels already represent half the American market, according to this story in the New York Times.

Um..... Lord, grant me the intelligence liberals have to better understand how tax-funded jobs can pay more than tax-providing jobs, and be sustainable......why does my head suddenly feel so empty? See the original chart, sans visual aides, at PowerLine

For all of his talk about jobs and the economy, President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech was not an economic policy blueprint. This was a speech about power — about increasing the scale and scope of government and the power of those who govern over the American people. If this claim seems over the top, consider the following: The President begins his speech by lauding the “courage, selflessness, and teamwork of America’s armed forces…They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. “Imagine what we...

Despite libertarians' and liberals' pathetic attempt to cast their weak-defense-plus-isolationism policies as "conservatism" by calling themselves "paleoconservatives" (take for example Murray Rothbard), the fact is that they didn't found the conservative movemenet and were never conservatives; they are and always have been libertarians, period. They were shunned by the fathers of the conservative movement, and, consequently, some of them, like Felix Morley, quit Human Events.

[...]All of British society’s important power centers agreed that union with Europe would be a jolly good thing and that opening the country to floods of Jamaicans and Pakistanis would be culturally and economically invigorating. Both things were disastrous. The European project yoked Britain to a mercantilist bureaucracy tasked with “harmonizing” countries that had spent centuries developing widely differing approaches to public affairs. Mass immigration frontally assaulted Britain’s tolerant insularity, turned sleepy old working-class neighborhoods into hotbeds of crime, and introduced an aggressively hostile religion into one of the world’s least-religious nations.

New Plant Hardiness Zone Map Illustrates a Hotter 21st Century The U.S. Department of Agriculture unveiled a new “Plant Hardiness Zone Map” at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. The map — a vital tool for gardeners, farmers, researchers and policy makers — has changed in part to reflect changing climate patterns across the United States. The color-coded map of planting zones, often seen on the back of seed packets, has been updated by the government, illustrating a hotter 21st century. Global warming is hitting not just home, but garden.

I’m pretty sure Karl Marx said the same thing. Via Fox News: “We know what they’re going to say, the opposition. They’re going to say– I found Mitch Daniels, who I don’t know, but seems like a reasonable guy– Daniels talked about trickle down government. I started thinking about that and how they keep talking about us, how we’re big government, trickle down government and they’re free enterprise. I started thinking. Remember Nancy? I don’t know whether it was you or us or who came up with the idea. We said, you know we’re paying banks 60 billion dollars next...

Hillsdale College will host an online town hall entitled, “Our Choice Today: Bureaucratic Despotism or the Constitution,” on Saturday, January 28, 2012, beginning at 11 a.m. EST. It will be broadcast from the College’s Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., and can be viewed for free at constitutiontownhall.com. The purpose of the town hall, according to Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn, is “to make clear to Americans that they still have a choice how they will be governed—that the powerful federal bureaucracy which stifles freedom is of relatively recent construction, and remains for now capable...

Do I have to respond to the American Community Survey / Puerto Rico Community Survey? Yes. Respondents are required to answer all questions on the American Community Survey (ACS) to the best of their ability. Response to this and other Census surveys is required by law (Section 221 of Title 13, Chapter 7, United States Code). This chapter also contains information regarding offenses and possible penalties. According to Section 221, persons who do not respond shall be fined not more than $100. Title 18 U.S.C. Section 3571 and Section 3559, in effect amends Title 13 U.S.C. Section 221 by changing...

…and there was much (UNANIMOUS!) rejoicing: Justices say GPS tracker violated privacy rights: The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously ruled that the police violated the Constitution when they placed a Global Positioning System tracking device on a suspect’s car and monitored its movements for 28 days. But the justices divided 5-to-4 on the rationale for the decision, with the majority saying that the problem was the placement of the device on private property. That ruling avoided many difficult questions, including how to treat information gathered from devices installed by the manufacturer and how to treat information held by third parties...

Is Obama turning the country into a welfare society and away from one focused on opportunity? While it's true that the country has been headed in this direction for many years — with the explosion in entitlements since the 1960s and the aging of the population — Obama has, in fact, greatly accelerated the trend. Examples:

The head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is telling Congress the agency "pulled no punches" in its investigation into Chevy Volt batteries that caught fire last year. Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform repeatedly raised questions about whether the government's partial ownership in General Motors created a conflict of interest as it investigated the electric car. Republicans also challenged why the agency took several months to inform the public about last June's fire.

Blaise Ingoglia, producer of the website “Government Gone Wild!”, was our speaker at the Manatee Tea Party last night. He has produced several short videos to explain the political mess we are in. Click on the link, watch the videos, and forward this message. http://governmentgonewild.org/ Some of the titles of his videos are: Brother, Can You Spare a Trillion? “Land of the Freebies, Home of the Enslaved” Special Interests…Exposed! Welcome To The United “Waste” of America

The CSIRO has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element is Governmentium (Gv). It has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lefton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons or protons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction normally taking less than a...

Republicans have good reason to believe that when President Obama delivers the State of the Union address on Tuesday night, his goals are more partisan than presidential. Where Republicans stand on shakier ground is in their assessment of Mr. Obama’s ultimate destination. On the principal conflict between the two parties this past year — over paring long-term debt and deficits — the president can still stake a stronger claim to the political center than his Republican antagonists.

This is a song parody of the "Candy Man"

A host of newspapers up and down the state have run an extremely long article that we guess is supposed to make a case for California’s boondoggle express, AKA high-speed rail. Did it occur to anyone what the bottom line is? It was 1,413 words into this epic, written by a Fresno Bee reporter and published in our paper, when the reader is given what we find to be the most pertinent of information: “There is no question whether (Spain’s system) can cover its costs. It cannot,” ...

Legislation has been introduced that would pave the way for Suffolk County Regional Off-Track Betting to declare bankruptcy and potentially avoid bailing on its debts, which might include money for the New York Racing Association. In December, a federal judge ruled Suffolk OTB could not declare bankruptcy without approval from the state Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Suffolk OTB had filed for bankruptcy last spring and faced opposition from Churchill Downs, the Kentucky race course that is one of its largest creditors, even though the bankruptcy plan included a framework to pay all debts in full. Last spring, NYRA President...

On January 11th, a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled on the side of Jessica Ahlquist, a 16-year-old who sought to remove a prayer banner from her school’s auditorium. Ahlquist argued that the “School Prayer” sign, which started with the words “Our Heavenly Father” and concluded with “Amen” violated her First Amendment rights. According to the 16-year-old, the removal of the banner represents “what true American values are.” However, in an attempt to ensure freedom “from” religion and religious influence, Ahlquist and her liberal supporters actually rejected her own possession of freedom at the same time. Perhaps this is best...

President Obama will use his election-year State of the Union address on Tuesday to define an activist role for government in promoting a prosperous and equitable society, hoping to draw a stark contrast between the parties in a time of deep economic uncertainty. ...Mr. Obama will call for changing the corporate and individual income-tax codes so the wealthy pay more, both to finance government investments and to alleviate the rise in income inequality in recent years. Republican presidential candidates have countered that government should get out of the way.

Seven executives charged as filesharing site shut down over accusations they cheated copyright holders out of $500m

Ayn Rand told me that there’d be days like this. In a chapter straight out of Atlas Shrugged, the mammoth Los Angeles Porn Industry is facing its biggest challenge yet. The City of Los Angeles is set to pass a law requiring all adult actors to wear condoms while producing pornographic movies. The industry is up in arms and is threatening to vacate the LA Valley for more libertarian climes. Putting aside what methods the City will use to enforce such intrusive regulation and who the lucky enforcers will be, one must wonder what the Mayor and his minions are...

Americans are unusually dissatisfied with big government and big business. There is irony in that, because many of the solutions to major problems in the U.S. will have to come from these two sectors. Americans must rely on the organizations with which they are most unhappy, if the current economic and deficit troubles are to be resolved.A new Gallup poll shows that: Americans’ satisfaction with the size and power of the federal government is at a record-low 29% and their satisfaction with the size and influence of major corporations remains near the all-time low at 30% — making both highly...

After having exhausted the indignant possibilities of protesting the extinction of whales, pelicans and polar bears, the left has found a new endangered species to be outraged about. Iranian nuclear scientists. It's one thing to hug a polar bear or a tree, but it's another to embrace an Iranian nuclear scientist, who may well be a jolly and colorful fellow with a family and a paint by numbers coloring kit of an atom, but also happens to be a participant in a plot to kill millions of people. The left which has all the moral sense of a squashed peanut...

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My recent excursion into the welfare system has left me scratching my head. Prior to writing and researching this project, my only impression of food stamps and similar welfare programs was that the credit only worked for certain items at certain stores and that an individual had to be in a particularly dire financial situation to receive such aid. I was wrong. An EBT card works and looks like a debit card, but instead of the user withdrawing money from a checking account, the government prepays an amount of money it deems necessary for the user’s food expenditures. Several of...

A Las Vegas attorney will launch a legal and political effort this week aimed at establishing and funding a parallel state budget, beyond the reach of the Legislature and governor. Kermitt Waters seeks to place on the November ballot a proposed constitutional amendment calling for a sweeping overhaul of Nevada’s tax system — abolishing property taxes on single-family homes among other things while identifying and allocating new tax revenue. Waters said last week his proposal is borne of frustration with the status quo in Carson City. The state’s 63 lawmakers represent the powerful interests who fund their campaigns, he said,...

Answer--Very gently. Chris Duane and Kerry Lutz sit down for a discussion of psychopaths and what to do about them. We've all probably encountered them at work, in government, in friendships or perhaps even had a relationship with one. Chris explains how to identify them and what you can do. Sometimes it's best to flee. Other times confrontation works and then perhaps the most effective method is simply ignoring them. It all depends upon the situation you find yourself in. But whatever you do, you must get away from them if at all possible. The history of politics and government...

Pepsi Beverages Co. has agreed to pay $3.1 million to settle federal charges of race discrimination for using criminal background checks to screen out job applicants even if they weren't convicted of a crime. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is working to crackdown on hiring policies that can hurt blacks and Hispanics, said Wednesday that the company's policy of not hiring workers with arrest records disproportionately excluded more than 300 black applicants. The policy barred applicants with arrest records even if they had never been convicted of a crime, and denied employment to those arrested or convicted of minor...

<p>President Obama is putting plans in motion to give the Commerce Department authority to create an Internet ID for all Americans, a White House official told CNET.com.</p> <p>White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt told the website it is "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet.</p>

When Nobel laureate Paul Krugman began a recent New York Times column by showing concern about “disastrously high unemployment,” we could sympathize with his assertion that too much attention is focused on “the allegedly urgent issue of reducing the budget deficit.” After all, there are many other factors that prevent us from employing our resources in the most productive uses. We are overregulated, overtaxed, overinflated, and the government spends wastefully and too much. If we were to prioritize any of those policies, such as cutting tax rates, then we could justify tolerating high deficits a little longer. The brighter prospects...

Carbon dioxide emissions from man-made sources are causing the acidity level of the world’s oceans to rise at what is probably the fastest rate in 65 million years, threatening global fisheries that serve as an essential food source for billions of people, according to a new United Nations report.

How could a contracting scam avoid detection for so long?By Del Quentin Wilber and Robert O’Harrow The private contractors and government employees skimmed millions from the Army Corps of Engineers in what authorities have described as one of the most brazen contracting scams in federal government history. From 2007 through September, the contractors and two program managers at the Army Corps inflated $25 million in contract orders by $20 million — pocketing the proceeds to buy cars, flat-screen televisions and expensive jewelry, federal prosecutors allege. So where was the oversight? And how did the scam go on for so long?...