Free Republic

Breaking news: some of America’s largest corporations have begun to report declining profits. For those that are offended by highly profitable corporations, this should be really great news. But nobody is celebrating. In fact, the sagging profits reports are thought to be such a bad thing that some believe they sent the Dow sliding downward last week, for fear that a global recession has arrived. If profits are such a terrible thing, why aren’t we relieved by their decline? For the record, I have no idea whether or not a recession is eminent. And to the extent that economic activity...

Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that agents for the Internal Revenue Service are bypassing warrants and sifting through the email and other electronic communications of American citizens. Those documents disclosed that "agents were told they didn't need a warrant to root through emails, texts or Facebook pages of people (the IRS) is investigating," according to Fox News. Despite the fact that IRS email surveillance is a clear affront to privacy and civil liberties, last week, the IRS categorically stated that it has done nothing wrong. The agency denies countrywide accusations that it is violating the...

What happens when the U.S. Secretary of Labor visits a church in Charlotte? If an incident earlier this month is any indication, faulty political promises and destructive economic policies continue to spread. It took place on April 3rd. Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Seth Harris made an appearance at a Baptist Church in North Carolina’s largest city, along with Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx. He was visiting to promote President Obama’s proposal of elevating the federal minimum wage requirement from the current $7.25 to $9.00 an hour. Harris and Foxx gathered in a large room within a Baptist church building. They sat...

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's failed job policies are facing bitter criticism from African-American leaders who say black unemployment has grown worse under his presidency. After four years of holding their tongues and remaining quiet in the face of sharply rising black unemployment and record poverty, political leaders from the Congressional Black Caucus to the NAACP have begun to open fire on the White House. Obama won 96 percent of the black vote in 2008 and about the same percentage in 2012, despite a worsening jobless crisis among African-Americans. At 14 percent for adults and 43.1 percent for 16-to-19-year-old teenagers, blacks...

What parts of America have been growing during these years of sluggish economic growth? Answers come from comparing the Census Bureau's just-released estimates of metropolitan area populations in July 2012 with the results of the Census conducted in 2010. The focus here is on the 51 metro areas with populations of more than 1 million where 55 percent of Americans live, most of them of course not in central cities but in suburbs and exurbs. Two growth champs stick out -- Austin and Raleigh. A half-century ago, neither of them amounted to much. The counties now in metro Austin had...

Republicans don't care. Or at least that's the perception of us. President Barack Obama's convincing re-election in November despite a climate of high unemployment, stagnant economic growth and waning American influence around the globe has caused a great deal of soul-searching for the Republican Party. One of the conclusions some of us have come to is that our problem is not the message or the messengers but our own detachment from the needs of struggling working families and our lack of vision and policies that address them. I was struck reading a recent article in which our presidential nominee, after...

There are three major factors that stand in the way of entitlement reform and the other responsible budgetary measures that must be taken to avert an eventual national financial catastrophe, and they have a common source. The first is that too many American people remain, amazingly, in the fog about the scope of the problem. The second is that a certain political ideology refuses to substitute a designated driver for the intoxicated entitlement state, which is driving the American bankruptcy bus. The third is that the leader of this noxious ideology has a further conflict of interest precluding a solution...

There's a secret lurking behind all that weeping and wailing over those across-the-board cuts in federal spending now going into effect -- and beginning to filter through the economy: They're working. The emphasis in the news continues to be on the economic repercussions of Washington's meat-ax approach to reining in the federal debt. "But lost in the talk of Washington's dysfunction," to quote a story from the New York Times over the weekend, "is this fact: On paper at least, President Barack Obama and Congress have reduced projected deficits by nearly $4 trillion over a decade -- the widely embraced...

Sequester cuts had barely gone into effect last week when the uber-liberal MoveOn.org started shrilly whining that conservative barbarians were destroying the country. “Tea Party and austerity-obsessed billionaires have finally gone too far,” screamed the organization that was launched in 1998 with heavy-duty financial support from one of the Left’s own billionaires -- George Soros. The group electronically wailed that “Tea Parties” in cahoots with “billionaires,” were holding “kids” and “poor families” politically hostage in the battle over government spending. In a sense, MoveOn.org is correct. There definitely are “hostages” being held captive in the very real debt crisis in...

Let's work through an example. Suppose 100 yards of fence could be built using one of two techniques. You could hire three low-skilled workers for $15 each, or you could hire one high-skilled worker for $40. Either way, you get the same 100 yards of fence built. If you sought maximum profits, which production technique would you employ? I'm guessing that you'd hire one high-skilled worker and pay him $40 rather than hire three low-skilled workers for $15 each. Your labor costs would be $40 rather than $45. Suppose the high-skilled worker came into your office and demanded $55 a...

Remember back in 2011 when radio broadcaster and end-of-the-world prognosticator Harold Camping predicted the world’s end on October 21 yet the day passed with nary a sign of Armageddon? Last year, the ancient Mayans and a few North American self-proclaimed prophets like Warren Jeffs had various dates in December pegged for the end. Imagine the surprise of their true believers when the sun came up the next day. Did they feel relief? Disappointment? Skepticism (somewhat overdue) toward their leaders? Some no doubt have left the cult while others wait in trepidation for their prophet to predict a new date of...

The Pentagon’s budget occupies center stage in the sequestration drama. Defense spending comprises approximately 18 percent of the 2013 federal budget, but it accounts for 50 percent of federal spending cuts stipulated in the sequestration agreement. Why is there such a disproportionate impact on the defense budget? The primary reason is that neither party has the stomach to address the elephants in the federal budget—the three entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) that together account for 48 percent of FY 2013’s federal expenditures. Is there waste and inefficiency in the Pentagon budget? Of course there is, but this is...

Last week, Conservative pundit Ann Coulter told me and a thousand young libertarians that we libertarians are puss- -- well, she used slang for a female body part. We were in Washington, D.C., at the Students for Liberty conference, taping my TV show, and she didn't like my questions about her opposition to gay marriage and drug legalization. "We're living in a country that is 70 percent socialist," she says. "The government takes 60 percent of your money. They take care of your health care, your pensions ... who you can hire ... and you (libertarians) want to suck up...

Here's the latest example of head-splitting cognitive dissonance in Washington: President Obama used his State of the Union address to crusade for a revitalized U.S. manufacturing sector. But while he pays lip service to supporting businesses that build their products on American soil, Obama and his left-wing operatives are hell-bent on driving a key sector of the U.S. manufacturing industry six feet under: the American firearms and ammunition industry. The White House is pushing new government spending to "spur economic growth," protect manufacturing plants and "create good-paying jobs" to help America's middle class. Yet across the country, with aggressive...

Of course President Obama does not hate poor people, nor does the most avid tea partier. Few (if any) policies are intended to harm the poor; in fact, most policies are intended help the poor. Unfortunately, good intentions do not always equal good results; such is the case with minimum wage. Obama claims simply raising the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour “could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank, rent or eviction, scraping by or finally getting ahead.” It’s not that simple, though. “In the real world, setting a floor under the price of labor creates...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama's second term wish-list -- his ideas for jump-starting the job-starved economy -- looked a lot like his warmed-over, half-baked proposals of the past. With rare exceptions, Obama's fifth State of the Union address was a costly laundry list of more big government programs aimed at his party's political base. More job-training programs? There are 47 different federal job-training programs right now, costing $18 billion a year, according to the General Accountability Office. And 51 other programs offer job-training assistance. With the unemployment rate rising last month to nearly 8 percent and likely heading higher, and economic...

It seems the liberal media are more concerned about Sen. Marco Rubio's midspeech sip of water than about President Obama's State of the Union commitment to double down on his disastrous policies. What will it take for once-reasonable people to become alarmed at the state of this nation's fiscal condition, its stagnant economy and its egregious unemployment? Is there no number of irresponsible liberal policies from an extremist liberal president that will exceed their willingness to tolerate? Do liberal media -- and rank-and-file Democrats, for that matter -- believe that this recklessness can go on forever? Knowing President Obama's capacity...

“We need a balanced approach.” How many times have you heard that poll-tested line from Obama? Unfortunately, the President’s rhetoric doesn’t match his actions. Only four weeks after raising taxes on the majority of Americans, the President wants to raise taxes again. Predictably, his definition of balance means more taxes right now in exchange for soaring rhetoric about cutting spending that is backed only by accounting gimmicks and broken promises. No issue is a greater threat to our economic prosperity than government overspending – a lopsided imbalance that has led to over $146,000 in debt per American taxpayer. In the...

We've heard another State of the Union speech, and my president said grand things like: "Think about ... a future where we're in control of our own energy ... I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China ... I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury poisoning ..." Actually, he said that in 2012. I write before this year's speech, but he says basically the same thing every year: With more spending, government can fix everything. But I have this dream -- one where my president walks to the podium, and he...

I haven't been able to pilfer an advance copy of the president's State of the Union address, but I hereby offer some guesses as to what he'll say tonight. The president will assert, against the evidence, that the state of our union is strong. He will boast that during his first term, we averted another great depression, achieved history-making reforms of health care and banking, saved the auto industry and began to conclude two wars. He will caution though, that we face great challenges. Obama will acknowledge that our economy is not as vibrant as it could be and will...