Free Republic

High property taxes, the state tax on gasoline and Gov. J.B. Pritzker's handling of COVID-19 are all factors in the state's lack of job growth, according to an analyst. A report by Wirepoints looks at Illinois' overall economic performance since Pritzker took office in 2019. The report shows 70,000 fewer jobs in that time frame and that its real GDP growth was 3.2% from 2019 to 2022, which ranked 10th worse in the country. Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski told The Center Square that many factors have contributed to the lack of growth in jobs. "We will never have the most...

Two Sydneysiders challenged fines for Covid Public Health Order breaches. Case was run by Redfern Legal Centre in New South Wales Supreme Court. Hearing did not go ahead when the government conceded fines were invalid. Commissioner of Fines Administration then withdrew 33,121 penalty notices . Thousands more such fines across NSW could now be found to be invalid. ... More than 33,000 people who were fined for Covid breaches will get refunds after two Sydneysiders won a landmark test case and the NSW government admitted the fines were invalid. NSW Revenue's Commissioner of Fines Administration Scott Johnson said on Tuesday...

More than half a million Angelenos stand to get a raise this weekend, making the city the latest testing ground in the drive to boost incomes of bottom-rung workers. Some businesses, facing a labor crunch, didn’t even wait for the new, $12 minimum wage to officially kick in. Josh Loeb started doling out pay bumps among the 400 employees of his six mostly upscale restaurants about a month ago. He paid for it by inching up prices at those Santa Monica haunts, adding a dollar to an organic chicken, and 50 cents to a sandwich or salad. “It’s got to...

Ten U.S. states still have not regained all the jobs they lost in the Great Recession, even after six and a half years of recovery, while many more have seen only modest gains. […] Wyoming had 3 percent fewer jobs last month than it did in December 2007, when the recession began, the Labor Department said Friday. That is the biggest percentage decline among the states. Alabama's job total trails its pre-recession level by 2.7 percent, followed by New Mexico, where job totals are 2.6 percent lower. Some larger states are also still behind. New Jersey has nearly 1 percent...

The EPA’s regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants highlights the job-killing transition proposed by the administration. This carbon agenda, which the administration’s public relations team calls the “Clean Power Plan”, threatens to tear down the existing electricity generation infrastructure in the name of carbon dioxide emissions. This carbon agenda will magnify the market-distorting subsidies from the PTC—contributing to an estimated peak of one million job losses—will drain hundreds of billions of dollars from American families through increased energy bills, and will threaten the electric grid by rapidly switching from reliable to intermittent sources of electricity. Further, electricity from...

President Obama promised the American people that under the Affordable Care Act (sometimes called ObamaCare), “If you like your health care plan, you can keep you health care plan, period.” He also promised that "the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less than you are spending now.” Now that the reality is unfolding, it turns out both those promises have been broken in a way that has impacted many people. The Civitas Institute asked real North Carolinians to share how they have been...

WASHINGTON — On Dec. 31, just hours before a New Year's Eve celebration, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. Section 1245 of the law contains language providing authority to impose economic sanctions on Iran in order to deter the ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons. White House efforts to have the sanctions provision stripped from the bill failed, and the measure became law with a quiet flourish of the presidential pen. Ever since, Washington and Tehran have been waging a war of words. None of this works to the advantage of the American...

We’ve been told that President Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. Anybody who gets into Columbia and Harvard has to have some smarts. Then please tell me why he often sounds so stupid.At a stop in Atkinson, Illinois, the President spoke about the need for education at an agricultural company named Wyffels Hybrids, Inc. He said that America is no longer a place where you can just “work hard” and thereby find a good job. Actually, just working hard has never been the ticket to...

Laboratory Corp. of America reportedly plans to lay off 169 Westboro workers at a Genzyme unit it bought last December, transferring the work to North Carolina. Genzyme Genetics, which LabCorp bought from Genzyme last December for $925 million, plans to cut 146 jobs on its reimbursement team and 23 on its information technology team between now and next February, according to a company memo obtained by The Worcester Business Journal.

Paul Hooper of Framingham found a good job at the Breyers factory on Old Connecticut Path 10 years ago, where he kept the ice cream production line supplied with fruit and nuts. Norfolk resident Tom Abdou brought his electrician skills to the plant, while Franklin's Marie Ouellette enjoyed her spot on the production line. All three became part of a large team of close-knit employees who churned out as many as 1 million gallons of ice cream a day. But workers had to say their goodbyes this week when the production plant, which opened as a Sealtest factory in 1964,...

Electric and natural gas utility National Grid is announcing a major reorganization of its U.S. operations that will cost 1,200 jobs, but which the company says will improve service and save $200 million.

State Street Corp.’s employees face an ugly holiday-season reality as the massive Boston money manager moves to slash 1,400 jobs by the end of the year to bolster its bottom line. Even though State Street was thought to be one of the stronger financial firms in the country, the custodial bank unexpectedly announced yesterday it was reducing its 29,000-strong global work force by about 5 percent. About 400 of the job cuts will be in Massachusetts, where it now employs about 12,600 workers - making it one of the top employers in the Bay State. The cuts will begin this...

The stimulus is frequently derided for not doing enough to fight unemployment, but one program that did nothing but create jobs is coming to an end. According to NYT, a subsidized jobs program is coming to an end. The program allowed employers at the government, non-profit, and small business levels to get direct help paying worker salaries. It was modeled after a New Deal jobs program, and even GOP Governor Haley Barbour supported it. But 26,000 jobs could be lost in Illinois alone. Another 12,000 will go in Philadelphia. The problem with stimulus was that unless it created an actual...

None of our political leaders are discussing these root causes to the problems of our economy: 1. The percent of people between 40 and 55 years old is decreasing. 2. The purchase of foreign oil is draining 5% of our economy each year. 3. Manufacturing is decreasing as a percent of GDP. The negative impact of each of these is documented in my book, Save America Now. Our politicians are not addressing these root causes to our economic problems. Instead, they are implementing programs that waste money with no results at creating jobs. ......Instead of tackling the problems of a...

Hoping to lift sagging confidence in President Barack Obama's economic leadership, the White House will make the case on Wednesday that his policies are creating jobs and spurring private investment. A report to be unveiled at 11 a.m. EDT will estimate that Obama's $862 billion economic stimulus package, which passed last year, has saved or created 3 million jobs and is on track to meet its goal of 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year. The analysis from the White House Council of Economic Advisers will say that government funding of clean energy, economic development, construction projects and...

As many as 698,000 jobs could be lost if the health care reform plan being pushed hard by liberal Democrats becomes law, according to a study released today.

Over 4.1 million Americans have lost their jobs during Obama's first year in office. The unemployment rate is over 10 percent or 17.3 percent if those who have given up on finding a job are counted.

California: While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger worries about rising seas, his state sinks below the waves. Don't mess with Texas, they say. But California and the nation could follow its lead. Last Wednesday, Gov. Schwarzenegger released a new report based on research compiled by the California Energy Commission claiming that by 2100 San Francisco Bay would be more bay than San Francisco, with Fisherman's Wharf and Treasure Island under the rising waters of climate change. His show-and-tell, which included a new Google Earth application the commission spent $150,000 to help develop, goes a long way toward explaining the once-Golden State's slide...

THE experts are very confident that Friday's report on the employment market for November will show the least number of job losses in quite a while, perhaps as few as 114,000. I hope that's true. But I don't think it will be. As you know, these monthly job figures are very important to traders on Wall Street who can make money when the financial markets are confronted with surprises. And with all that's going on in the world -- Dubai's problems, America's economic crisis and the US stock market's seeming indifference to both -- a bad report Friday will just...

WASHINGTON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday the jump in the unemployment rate to 10.2 percent in October was a "sobering" figure that underscored the economic challenges ahead. Obama, speaking after the U.S. jobless rate unexpectedly rose to a 26 1/2-year high, also said he had signed a bill that extended jobless benefits and homebuyer tax credits. "I just signed into law a bill that will help grow our economy, save and create new jobs and provide relief to struggling families and businesses," Obama said in a statement delivered in the White House Rose Garden. "The...