Free Republic

What has lifted more people out of poverty, charity or economic freedom? It's not even close. Charity is wonderful, and I'll be the first to say we have an obligation to share our gifts, be they material, intellectual, or talent oriented. Yet whether our redistributionist endeavor is charity -- and charity is voluntary redistribution -- or the less noble, coercive outsourcing of charity known as government programs, there first must be wealth to redistribute. But where does wealth come from? If we go back to biblical times and beyond, a man might be considered wealthy if he had 70 goats....

ObamaCare has become big business for an elite network of Washington lobbyists and consultants who helped shape the law from the inside. More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010. Major lobbying firms such as Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, The Glover Park Group, Alston & Bird, BGR Group and Akin Gump can all boast an Affordable Care Act insider on their lobbying roster — putting them in a prime position to land coveted clients. “When [Vice President] Biden leaned over [during the signing...

Weighing the economics of Abraham Lincoln isn’t easy to do in today’s terms. Lincoln was pro-subsidy and pro-tariff, both of which stances tend to be assigned to the interventionist left in today’s discussions. But Lincoln’s infrastructurally and financially primitive economy was not ours, and it’s worth thinking about how he might govern today given that in his words there is an unshakeable faith in free enterprise. Lincoln was pro-business, laudatory of wealth creation (and the inequality that goes with it), against class warfare and in favor of exploiting natural resources. “Property,” he said in 1864, “is the fruit of labor...

Gun maker Smith & Wesson hit a revenue record during their last fiscal year, which ended April 30. Preliminary numbers show that sales were up 43% over the previous year and hit $580 million. CNN Money reports that, "Earnings were a record $1.22 a share, up from 40 cents a share in the prior fiscal year." It is hard to judge who Smith & Wesson should thank most: Gun-grabber President Obama, murdered-child-exploiter Piers Morgan, or insufferable-sell-out Joe Scarborough.

NEW YORK (AP) -- U.S. airlines collected more than $6 billion in baggage and reservation change fees from passengers last year - the highest amount since the fees became common five years ago. Passengers shouldn't expect a break anytime soon. Those fees - along with extra charges for boarding early or picking prime seats - have helped return the industry to profitability. Airlines started charging for a first checked suitcase in 2008 and the fees have climbed since. Airlines typically charge $25 each way for the first checked bag, $35 for the second bag and then various extra amounts for...

This Friday, at precisely 8:30 a.m., everyone will be asking the same question: Why aren’t companies hiring more workers? That’s the same question America has been asking for the past six years. And the simple answer hasn’t changed: Because corporate executives don’t want to. The reasons behind that curt answer are a lot more complex. Some data might help explain it a bit. As of yesterday, a little more than half of the companies represented in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index had reported first-quarter results. And 69 percent of those companies came in with profits that were better than...

State Farm, the nationally knowninsurance chain headquartered in Bloomington Illinois, has apparently had its fill of “The Land of Lincoln’s” confiscatory taxes. The 800 million dollar company is reported to have purchased “substantial workspace” in the Dallas, Texas area. The giant insurance firm’s workers are being kept in the dark reportedly to avoid “alarming them” but is it their workers or the State of Illinois they would like to keep in the dark about this move? If this doesn’t signal State Farm’s coming dash out of Illinois’s clutches what could it mean? A knowledgeable Dallas real estate insider has called...

A proposed federal rule to cap profit margins for certain health insurance plans and prescription drug benefit programs is now available for review. The latest in a raft of rules required by President Obama’s landmark healthcare law, the proposed rule was drafted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and sent to Pennsylvania Avenue on Thursday. The White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is moving quickly to issue the proposal, which will hit the Federal Register on Tuesday. That begins a 60-day comment period. CMS will consider all comments before finalizing the rule. The 116-page...

The Michigan Association of School Administrators has been one of the most vocal organizations against what it calls “for profit” charter schools. In an op-ed, MASA Executive Director William Mayes rails against “profiteers who will be allowed to take taxpayer dollars … ” While Mayes complains about "profiteers" he has been paid on average a total compensation of $205,000 the past three years, according to records MASA submitted to the Internal Revenue Service. MASA makes a significant amount of its money due to its relationship with public schools. MASA made $3.3 million on its “program service revenue” that involves two...

Vickie Markavitch has been one of the leading voices among the public school superintendents warning parents about education reform legislation that she says will have "public tax dollars profiting Wall Street." She has been traveling around the state speaking out against the legislation all the while her school district houses a non-profit that uses school resources to advocate against school choice bills. Markavitch and some other superintendents across the state are saying House Bills 6004 and 5923 and Senate Bill 1358 will lead to “for-profit” schools opening in Michigan. As Markavitch rails against "for profit" schools, it is interesting to...

<p>WASHINGTON -- The Treasury Department said Monday that it would sell its remaining ownership stake in insurance giant American International Group, effectively ending one of the largest bailouts of the financial crisis and turning a profit for taxpayers.</p> <p>The sale of the Treasury's remaining 234 million shares -- 15.9% of the company -- would add to the $15.1 billion in profit the government already has made on the bailout. The Treasury would still hold warrants in AIG after the stock sale.</p>

From the Twitchy staff:

In these tough economic times, millions of Americans have leaned heavily on food stamps. This government assistance program also has done well by some of the country’s biggest banks and corporations.   An investigation by the advocacy group Eat Drink Politics found banks and businesses have reaped multi-million-dollar contracts from the government to administer food stamp programs at the state level. Yet, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), doesn’t make public how much profit the banks and other businesses earn by acting as government agents for the program.   One significant beneficiary...

Blasphemy!

Elizabeth Warren, who has railed against predatory banks and heartless foreclosures, took part in about a dozen Oklahoma real estate deals that netted her and her family hefty profits through maneuvers such as “flipping” properties, records show. A Herald review has found that the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate rapidly bought and sold homes herself, loaned money at high interest rates to relatives and purchased foreclosed properties at bargain prices.

DES MOINES, Iowa – President Obama celebrated the role Iowa played in his campaign in 2008 and took aim once again at Mitt Romney’s business background at a campaign rally on the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Thursday. “The last time he visited these same fairgrounds, he famously declared that corporations are people,” Obama told a crowd of roughly 2,500 packed into an exhibit space. “Human beings, my friends.” The president maintained that the private equity industry is a welcome part of the economy – risk-takers and investors should be rewarded, he said. But their motives are not job creation. “The...

Put the worst possible construction on Mitt Romney's career as a venture capitalist and it still looks much better than Barack Obama's. Pecking at the entrails of a limping economy, Obama is the vulture socialist. A president who promised to bankrupt the coal industry is in no position to gainsay Romney's record of job creation at Bain Capital. Romney created at least 100,000 jobs in private life; Obama created none. Then Obama entered office and racked up a record of job destruction that would give even the most reckless corporate raiders pause. The vulture socialists feed off an economy that...

Last week's column started off asking: "What human motivation gets the most wonderful things done?" The answer is that human greed is what gets wonderful things done. I wasn't talking about fraud, theft, dishonesty, special privileges from government or other forms of despicable behavior. I was talking about people trying to get as much as they can for themselves. Think about greed and racial discrimination. In 1947, when the Brooklyn Dodgers hired Jackie Robinson, why did racial discrimination by major league teams begin to drop like a hot potato? It wasn't feelings of guilt by white owners, affirmative action or...

Is MSNBC merely a lost leader for the National Debocrat Party? If the Debtocrats stopped their financial support, could the leading talking heads at MSNBC find another anchor job? At a time when jobs, jobs, jobs, are so important, important, important, one needs to fear, fear, fear! Consider Chrissy "Shout-down-all-of-your-guests-who-disagree-with-you" Matthews. Not a lot of hope for a change in him. Maybe as a reporter on labor activities? Hope, and Change, Hope and Change, Hope and Change has just GOT to work someday - - - ? And then there is the gal infected, (terminally, I'm told), with the horrifying...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Corporate America's strong earnings have been pushing stocks higher for more than two years now, but there are early signs that the momentum many companies have had in this miserable economy is beginning to fade away. Seventy six companies in the S&P 500 have issued warnings that third-quarter earnings were going to be lower than previously expected, according to data compiled from Thomson Reuters. That's up modestly from the same period a year ago. Meanwhile, stocks have fallen to levels where Wall Street is pricing in little-to-no earnings growth for the rest of the year. The...