Free Republic

I know it is very early, but I want to assemble some questions, for politicians, for the next and future election cycles. I have started with three questions, please help me work on other questions and topics. Questions for Politicians How much has your Net Worth increased since you entered "public service?" Who are your biggest Contributors? Since you have been in "public service" what have you done to reduce taxation and to reduce the cost of government? Were you successful?

Pardess Mitchell is watching her community crumble. She and her husband have lived in Lake County for 16 years. They pay more in property taxes than they do on their mortgage. The tax bill is $15,000 a year on a house they bought for $227,000 in 2013. “They’re taxing us out of the neighborhood. They’re pushing us out. They’re pushing us out of our homes and communities,” she said. “If it continues this way we’ll have to leave.” A Paul Simon Public Policy Institute poll released Oct. 10 revealed nearly half of registered Illinois voters said they would leave the...

Mark Twain famously said that there were three kinds of lies — "lies, damned lies, and statistics." Since this is an election year, we can expect to hear plenty of all three kinds. Even if the statistics themselves are absolutely accurate, the words that describe what they are measuring can be grossly misleading. Household income statistics are an obvious example. When we hear about how much more income the top 20 percent of households make, compared to the bottom 20 percent of households, one key fact is usually left out. There are millions more people in the top 20 percent...

The Washington Establishment hates Trump, because he promises to put them out of business Why does The Washington Establishment hate Donald Trump? It is not because of his positions on immigration or trade. Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot advocated similar stands in 1992, and they did not generate the obsessive hatred being displayed in 2016. Trump has declared war on The Establishment itself. In his June 16, 2015 Presidential announcement he asserted: “So I’ve watched the politicians. I’ve dealt with them all my life…. They will never make America great again. They don’t even have a chance. They’re controlled fully...

You know something is a big deal when politicians start fighting for credit — and camera time. Given the "thank me" glomming going on in Baton Rouge these days, clearly news that the federal government will pony up enough cash to fix the disaster that is Interstate 10 westbound off the Mississippi River Bridge is one of those hallelujah moments. There was Gov. John Bel Edwards on Thursday (Aug. 4), at old McKinley High School with U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond by his side, telling the world Louisiana will be getting between $20 million and $25 million in FASTLANE grant money...

New Kids on the Block was an American boy band that rocked the charts in the late 80s and early 90s with songs like “Step by Step.” Today, local politicians are stepping—quickly and quietly—to power and affluence as you and I focus on the Trump-Clinton presidential race, and forget the politics on our own block. Most Americans mistakenly ignore local politics despite the fact that we as voters have far more influence on our own block than on Pennsylvania Avenue. Today, I’ll share several shocking stories of “New Thugs on the Block”—local politicians taking advantage of their constituents.Vodka, Boxers and...

PolitiFact.com has been rating the truth of political statements since 2007. We grabbed the 2000 or so pages of people who had listed affiliations of Democrat, Independent, or Republican, kept only those who had at least 20 statements rated, ran a few python scripts, and produced this list of the ten most honest and most lying politicians. The “Honesty Index” is our invention (it’s the weighted average of how many truths and lies each person told) where 1.0 means they always told the total truth, and 0.0 means they only told pants-on-fire lies. “Percent Lies” is just that: what percentage...

My Fox colleagues are in Cleveland, diligently interviewing Republicans. Next week, they'll interview Democrats. I'm glad they do it -- because I despise most politicians. There are exceptions, of course, but after years of reporting, I've concluded that most politicians have little to say that's interesting, and many are craven opportunists, desperate to rule over others. A few stand out, like former Congressman Anthony Weiner. Like many politicians, he's never held a real job. He's run for office or worked for politicians all his life. Weiner married one of Hillary Clinton's closest advisers, passionately pushed leftists' bad ideas and was...

Seeing how presidents, of both the ex and current variety, prime ministers and other ‘celebrities’ elected to public office have nothing but uncouth to put on display at Interfaith Memorial services intended to honour the dead and to comfort their bereaved, isn’t it high time to clamp down on their increasingly boorish behaviour? Was it protocol or bully pulpit privilege that allowed President Barack Obama to make a speech about racism at the Memorial for five police officers shot down at the tail end of a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas?

I just finished watching "Eye in the Sky" starring Helen Mirren, the late Alan Rickman, and some other excellent actors. The movie is notable because it clearly illustrates how the military of countries like the U.S. and Britain have to wage war with their hands tied due to political fallout. I was flabbergasted as I watched to see that every single darn move the military wanted to make on some high value, long-sought Muzzie baddies had to be cleared by ever-higher political nabobs, even when mini drone cameras showed them suiting up in suicide vests and likely to leave the...

Congressman Charles Rangel was swift-footed and savvy enough to stay ahead of demographic and geographic shifts in his district during his 46 years in the House of Representatives—but in the end, he just didn’t have enough juice to anoint an heir. Harlem Assemblyman Keith Wright lost his bid to replace his retiring 86-year-old mentor to State Senator Adriano Espaillat, who challenged Rangel in 2012 and 2014 but fell short. After a bitter Democratic primary campaign—one with heavy ethnic overtones—the Dominican Republic-born Espaillat beat the African-American Wright in the upper Manhattan-based district by approximately 1,300 votes. Former White House aide Clyde...

The left is a little touchy about the rejection of its world-changing ideas I think it basically comes down to this: Once the left establishes an institution and populates that institution with its kind, the institution can never be diminished in the slightest - let alone dismantled - because that represents a setback for the left’s march toward the power to engineer the entire social and economic order. That will not do. Think about the way they look at public schools, which are heavily staffed by unionized teachers who always toe the Democrat line: If anyone chooses to pull their...

British politicians, including strong advocates of the Leave campaign, say there’s no rush in starting the process to exit the European Union. The people had their say Thursday, voting 52 percent to 48 per cent in favor of parting ways with the EU, giving the British government the green light to begin ‘divorce’ proceedings. However, there is a sense of reluctance on the part of many, including Brexit-backer Boris Johnson, even to consider invoking Article 50 for some time yet. Johnson, who was vocal on what he called the “anti-democratic absurdities of the EU” during the campaign, says there’s no rush...

The anti-gun politimedia wasted no time at all demonizing the most common rifle in the United States as being the real villain of the Islamic terrorist attack on Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Newsweek screamed, “ORLANDO SHOOTING PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON AR-15 RIFLE.” Judd Legume of Think Progress squeaked, “The NRA’s Love Affair With The AR-15, Weapon Of Choice For Mass Murderers, In 22 Tweets.” Always wrong Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post whined, “The gun used in the Orlando shooting is becoming mass shooters’ weapon of choice.” Here’s the thing. The rifle used by the Islamist terrorist in Orlando was not...

Conservatives who are dumping on Obama and Trudeau for not attributing the Orlando terrorist attack to radical Islam, should take a real close look at their leaders. All of them Political leaders in Canada naturally reacted to the terrorist attack at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando that so far resulted in 50 dead and 53 injured. While Liberal pols reacted as expected, those political leaders who purport to be conservative also failed to mention the attack was carried out by a radical Islamist. If Donald Trump has any concerns about Canadian conservative leaders trying to emulate him, he need...

Leadership in Canada: The best way to get to know the reviled creature known as a politician is to watch their show-off antics at a press gallery dinner. CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) gleefully describe the weekend’s press gallery dinner thus: “It was a night of laughs, some trash talk, and even a mic drop. Federal party leaders had a chance to break bread with the journalists who cover them every day during this year’s Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner. (CBC., June 4, 2016)

Politicians everywhere promised too much to naive, uninformed electorates and ultimately committed everyone to debtor's prison There is an almost unanimous consensus among economists worldwide that the most worrisome disease infecting somewhat less than healthy and truly sick economies on almost all continents is low, non, or negative growth. How to correct that situation frustrates and consumes the thinking of political leaders and central bankers everywhere, regardless of which economic school provided the latters’ indoctrination. Pushing on strings has failed. Nothing seems to work. Securities markets are described as boring and directionless. It is like being in jail. You may...

The only thing that hasn’t changed and never will is not what you see on video but what you see if you take the time to look skyward How many of us yearn to get back to reality in a now YouTube and video dominated News World? How many down at heart long for a break from Facebook, Twitter and everything presented as ‘real’ on the internet? Special: Scientists Are Calling This Smart Pill "Viagra For The Brain" How many among the Election 2016 Battle Fatigued feel there is no way of getting away from it all?

This is the season of lies. We watch with fascination as candidates for the world’s most powerful job trade falsehoods and allegations of dishonesty. […] News organizations such as The Associated Press and PolitiFact dedicate enormous resources to separating candidates’ truthful wheat from their dishonest chaff. But if we’ve come to expect and even joke about office-seekers who seem truth averse (“How do you know a politician is lying? His lips are moving”), many of us have given little thought to our own fibs and to how they compare with politicians’ deceits. What if PolitiFact looked at what we say...

Occasionally I am asked if I ever considered running for political office. My response: "I did once, but I took two aspirin, lay down for a while and the feeling went away." Besides not wanting to accept a pay cut, why would I want to put myself through the agony of exposing the smallest misdeed and bad decision to political opponents and a ravenous media who could turn my public image into something no family member would recognize? Not to mention the amount of money I would have to raise that would go up exponentially the higher the office sought....