Free Republic

Is it me or are we really going to hell in a hand basket? I'm sick of of all the BS and why don't we all do TAKE BACK AMERICA rally in the the October 2012 time frame? Seriously.. We had the Tea Party, we had gathering of Eagles, we had the Glen Beck, rally, why noy a SERIOUS TAKE BACK AMERICA RALLY in October 2012? Bring the silent majority to the front, HAMMER the opposition just before the elections?

Employees may not realize it, but they are getting more expensive. It isn't that their paychecks have suddenly started bulging. It's that other employment costs—like health and retirement benefits—continue to rise. Benefit costs in the private sector were up 4% year-on-year in the second quarter, more than double the 1.7% increase in wages and salaries. On Friday, the Labor Department's employment-cost index for the third quarter is likely to show this trend continuing. The trouble is, this means employers are paying more for workers without actually paying their workers more. Higher benefit costs eat into profits without directly raising a...

The SEC alleges that Citigroup Global Markets structured and marketed a CDO called Class V Funding III and exercised significant influence over the selection of $500 million of the assets included in the CDO portfolio. Citigroup then took a proprietary short position against those mortgage-related assets from which it would profit if the assets declined in value. Citigroup did not disclose to investors its role in the asset selection process or that it took a short position against the assets it helped select. Citigroup has agreed to settle the SEC’s charges by paying a total of $285 million, which will...

Even Goldman Sachs Secretly Believes That An Economic Collapse Is ComingSeptember 1, 2011 Even Goldman Sachs is doing it again. Goldman is telling the public that everything is going to be just fine, but meanwhile they are advising their top clients to bet on a huge financial collapse. On August 16th, a 54 page report authored by Goldman strategist Alan Brazil was distributed to institutional clients. The general public was not intended to see this report. Fortunately, some folks over at the Wall Street Journal got their hands on a copy and they have filled us in on some of...

Reporting from Ogallala, Neb.— On the edge of the Nebraska sand hills is Lake McConaughy, a 22-mile-long reservoir that in summer becomes a magnet for Winnebagos, fishermen and kite sailors. But officials here in Keith County, population 8,370, imagined this scene: an Al Qaeda sleeper cell hitching explosives onto a ski boat and plowing into the dam at the head of the lake. The federal Department of Homeland Security gave the county $42,000 to buy state-of-the-art dive gear, including full-face masks, underwater lights and radios, and a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar capable of mapping wide areas of the lake...

LAS VEGAS — While religious service attendance has decreased for all white Americans since the early 1970s, the rate of decline has been more than twice as high for those without college degrees compared to those who graduated from college, according to new research to be presented at the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. "Our study suggests that the less educated are dropping out of the American religious sector, similarly to the way in which they have dropped out of the American labor market," said lead researcher W. Bradford Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University...

Rick Perry may just be the guy. The country's longest tenured governor, from its second-largest state, is generating a lot of buzz in conservative circles as he contemplates entering the wide open Republican presidential primary. There are plenty of reasons that Perry is an attractive option: he is a no-nonsense decision-maker with solid conservative credentials. A man who not only speaks about family values, but lives them, Perry's power to persuade voters to see things his way is proven -- battle-tested in a state known for independent-minded citizens. But what serious political analysts on both sides of the aisle will...

Politics: Three days after Congress was told that stalled free-trade pacts were headed to a vote soon, the White House demanded new concessions before that would happen. How many times must the goal posts be moved? Nearly five years have passed since free-trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama have awaited just a vote in Congress. Some $10 billion in exports for American companies is awaiting, while about 380,000 American jobs stand to be lost if the pacts don't go through. Canada enacts its pact with Colombia on July 1, meaning the U.S. will lose a big chunk of...

The idea of One Man, One Vote is one of my favorite parts of the Myth of Democracy. I'm a pretty avid history student. I wouldn't pretend to teach it like Glenn Beck does but I've read all eleven volumes of Durant's The Story of Civilization. Not once in this magnificently rendered and detailed saga of Mankind's antics do I remember an example of a true democracy. It's an ideal, like communism or true love, which has never existed but in imperfect approximation. We suppose that Athens had a democracy and if you don't count slaves and women it was...

When the political world arrives at the point where even the Japanese rise up to toss a party from office after almost 54 years in power, it's time to see something's happening here, Mr. Jones. The ever-entertaining Karl Marx described a society's least politically engaged people as the lumpen proletariat. Well, it's beginning to look as if the globe's lumpen proletariat has decided they've had about enough of the lumpen bureaucratariat. It could be a revolution under way, though not the one predicted by the boys at the barricades. To Mr. Marx, the lumpen proletariat (often slurred into a single...

President Bush's top intelligence aide has confirmed that Iraqi terrorists have been captured coming into the United States from Mexico. The confirmation comes from National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, who talked about the situation in an interview with the El Paso Times recently. "Coming up through the Mexican border is a path," McConnell said. "Now, are they doing it in great numbers? No, because we're finding them and we're identifying them and we've got watch lists and we're keeping them at bay." But, he said, "There are numerous situations where people are alive today because we caught them (terrorists)." Intelligence...

Dear Rush: Pardon my French, but you’re full of s***! As I listened to your show last week, you chose to criticize and attack conservative Americans like myself who feel the Republican Party does not deserve to win in November. Rush, since when did you become such a shill for the GOP? Choosing the party over the base is a very disappointing move to this long time listener. I’m very disappointed in you, Rush Limbaugh, you’ve lost touch with the reality that is life for the common man in America. I heartily recommend you take pause and reconsider your programming...

Everybody talks about globalization; nobody ever does anything about it. The world labor market looms over every horizon with its promise of cheaper goods and lower pay. The public is skeptical, rightly, about the benefits of globalization, but the process of harnessing it, of writing enforceable rules that would benefit not just investors but most of our citizens, is hard to even conceive. And so globalization is experienced by many Americans as a loss of control. Manufacturing moves to China, engineering to India; que sera, sera . Except on our borders. With the number of immigrants illegally in the United...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. It began in 1994. All the attention was focused on the new WTO, emerging from the Uruguay round of GATT negotiations. Little attention was paid to the Summit of the Americas meeting in Miami. The assembled ministers agreed to create a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, and that it would be completed by January, 2005, and would enter into force by December, 2005. For ten years, 34 governments have been conducting negotiating sessions throughout the Americas, fashioning a new trade agreement that will swallow up both NAFTA and CAFTA, and,...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. The proposed trade pact is fatally flawed in its present form A current radio commercial urges Alabamians to oppose CAFTA "because CAFTA rhymes with NAFTA" and references the opposition to NAFTA of H. Ross Perot, the erstwhile presidential candidate who once claimed President George H.W. Bush was plotting to disrupt Perot's daughter's wedding. No, that ad doesn't give you much meat to chew on. Anyone who would oppose the Central American Free Trade Agreement (or CAFTA-DR, now that leaders in the Dominican Republic have come aboard) on the basis of that...

June 21, 2005 Dear Mr. President: We the undersigned represent companies and industries that have made an outsized contribution to America’s national security and prosperity. We are a critical part of America’s domestic manufacturing base. Our enterprises support a large segment of the broad middle class, one of America’s singular economic and political achievements. Today our companies in particular and the nation’s middle class in general are under constant attack from predatory foreign trade practices. Our companies and industries still make most of their products in the United States, ensuring that our revenues flow to American working families in the...

U.S. Supreme Court says cities have broad powers to take property.

Back in 2002, two die-hard social conservatives fought for Minnesota's Republican gubernatorial nomination. Brian Sullivan was a successful entrepreneur backed by the Freedom Club, a group of "pro-growth" millionaires lifted straight from Central Casting. With his zeal for tax cuts and his privileged background, Sullivan was a Bush Republican down to his wingtips. His opponent was Tim Pawlenty, a state representative born on the wrong side of the tracks. Pawlenty embraced the state's populist tradition, insisting that Republicans "need to be the party of Sam's Club, not just the country club." And it was Pawlenty who ended up winning the...

The Economic Agenda at the American Economic Association Meeting Thank you. I am delighted to be here. I would like to take this opportunity to talk about three of the initiatives the President has made high priorities for his second term: tax reform, reducing the budget deficit, and Social Security reform. Tax Reform I will start with tax reform. The current tax code is a drag on the economy, discouraging saving and investment, and requiring individuals and businesses to spend billions of dollars and millions of hours each year to comply with the system. The President has stated that his...

Kevin Phillips's new book, "Wealth and Democracy," is a 422-page doorstopper, but much of the book's message is contained in one stunning table. That table, in the middle of a chapter titled "Millennial Plutographics," reports the compensation of America's 10 most highly paid C.E.O.'s in 1981, 1988 and 2000. In 1981 those captains of industry were paid an average of $3.5 million, which seemed like a lot at the time. By 1988 the average had soared to $19.3 million, which seemed outrageous. But by 2000 the average annual pay of the top 10 was $154 million. It's true that wages...