Free Republic

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) deemed the United States’ economy as the world’s largest in 2021, producing an estimated $22.94 trillion or 24.4% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The number is especially impressive when considering the population of the United States is just over 333 million and it has a per capita GDP of roughly $68,700. Many public policy concerns While many public policy issues are greatly concerning – from COVID-19 to the crisis at our southern border to education gaps relative to our ability to compete economically – in our opinion, the following three are paramount for the...

“He’s got a pass!” said the dad sitting across from me at the airport in Bismarck, North Dakota, where we were both stranded due to flight delays. He gestured to his 5-year-old son.“Had a slight fever and tested positive for COVID. We had to keep him home from school for a couple weeks. Then, he tested negative and was good to go. I got the vaccine. My wife did, too. But he can travel anywhere without any testing, and there’s no vaccine for his age anyway.”In Germany Natural Immunity CountsSince the beginning of July in Germany, where that family lives,...

In virtually every realm of public policy, Americans embrace policies which they know will kill people, sometimes large numbers of people. They do so not because they are psychopaths but because they are rational: they assess that those deaths that will inevitably result from the policies they support are worth it in exchange for the benefits those policies provide. This rational cost-benefit analysis, even when not expressed in such explicit or crude terms, is foundational to public policy debates — except when it comes to COVID, where it has been bizarrely declared off-limits. The quickest and most guaranteed way to...

The Supreme Court returned Monday for oral arguments after a lengthy holiday break. During the court’s January sitting, the justices will hear arguments in eight cases, including ones dealing with school choice and the “Bridgegate” scandal. The justices already have heard arguments in cases involving the Second Amendment, Obamacare, and whether federal law covers claims of discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Later in the term, the court will take up cases involving the president’s ability to fire the head of an “independent” agency, regulation of abortion providers, and the dispute over a subpoena for President Donald Trump’s...

California’s policymakers have condemned Californians to endure contrived scarcity, unaffordability, and inconvenience in all of the basic necessities of life. This is a crime, but it’s not a conspiracy. Rather, it is caused by a collection of powerful special interests whose political agendas align.

EVELETH, Minn. – Workers in a call center on Minnesota’s Iron Range don headsets each day knowing their employer’s core business: Get Democrats elected. For years, prominent Democratic candidates and political groups have used the obscure center tucked among hills and pines to canvass and raise money from small donors. DFL organizations, state and national, have paid the phone bank’s current and former owners about $80 million over the last decade, campaign records show. The call center relocated to Eveleth in 2006 thanks in part to a $625,000 loan from a unique state agency called the Iron Range Resources and...

And it’s getting drafty in here. The Overton Window theory postulates that for a particular area of public policy, at any given time only a narrow range of policy options are acceptable. The acceptable policy positions aren’t just those currently in effect but also those that might be considered tolerable. Outside of the range of the “window” are those policies which are considered unacceptable; policies that even though a politician may wish to promote, would likely lead to his downfall because they are considered unthinkable or radical. But, with a shift in societal attitudes towards those policies, choices which were...

President Barack Obama recently announced plans to spend $50 billion for transportation infrastructure. The plan would rebuild 150,000 miles or roads, construct and maintain 4,000 miles of rail and rehabilitate or reconstruct 150 miles of runway. Is this good policy?

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/February/10-at-182.html NOTE: The following text SNIPPET is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, February 23, 2010 Department of Justice and USDA Workshops to Explore Competition and Regulatory Issues in the Agriculture Industry to Begin March 12 in Iowa Initial Workshop to Be Held in Ankeny, Iowa, at Des Moines Area Community College, FFA Enrichment Center WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced today the agenda and panelists for the first joint public workshop, which will be held on March 12, 2010, in Ankeny, Iowa, to explore competition and regulatory issues in the agriculture...

Note from Daniel Zanoza, RFFM.org's Executive Director and a member of the Illinois Forum's Board of Governors: I strongly urge Illinois citizens who care about good government to attend the Illinois Forum's next meeting. The Illinois Forum is a public policy group and is highly respected for its support of conservative principles regarding local and state government. Americans must become both informed and involved in the fight against big government, higher taxation and the assault on pro-family values. Attending the meeting and/or joining the Illinois Forum as an official member will provide you access to information about how you can...

Massachusetts lawmakers are considering what is commonly referred to now as a "bathroom bill." Activists want to add transgender to the Bay State's existing "hate crimes" bill. Evelyn Reilly, director of public policy for the Massachusetts Family Institute, tells OneNewsNow that lawmakers who support the measure are bowing to a fraction of the population -- and in that process, are endangering women and children. "[For example] if...a man believes or pretends to believe that he is actually a woman, then you could not question, challenge, or stop him from entering a woman's bathroom, shower, locker room, fitness facility, or whatever,"...

On September 11 this year I attended a late-afternoon training session for my employer’s 401K program. The session was conducted by a representative of the company that manages the 401K accounts, a major financial institution that did not become a federal asset in the following week. The representative was a tall, blonde, perky woman in her late twenties. She talked very fast as she scampered about the splendid picture-window conference room just around the block from Wall Street. Sometimes she paused to hand out pamphlets or change the images on the PowerPoint screen that illustrated her presentation. The burden of...

American Dream Revisited by: Bethany Stotts, June 18, 2008 The pursuit of happiness is an American “birthright” and should be at the center of American policy, argues Professor Arthur C. Brooks in his new book, Gross National Happiness. Drawn from international data, studies, and the General Social Survey (GSS), Brooks attempts to show that mainstream family values and morality cause Americans happiness. “I am confident in the findings in this book because multiple data sources told more or less the same story,” writes the Syracuse University professor. “The lesson in every chapter of this book is that our gross national...

WASHINGTON – California, which once lured Americans from near and far, is now driving out millions of the most productive residents – including high percentages of the most affluent. "When California faced a Mount Everest-sized $14 billion deficit in 2003, one of the major causes for the red ink was the stampede of millionaire households from the state," says a report called "Rich States, Poor States" by economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore. "Out of the 25,000 or so seven-figure-income families, more than 5,000 left in the early 2000s, and the loss of their tax payments accounted for about half...

In an emergency room in Arkansas, the patient exhibits dark red boils, her skin numb. Another case of leprosy in America. Not far away, a tuberculosis-infected illegal immigrant coughs while on break at the local chicken processing plant – spreading his infectious germs across the break room table. His children, also carrying the disease, which had been all but eradicated from the United States years ago, join hundreds of children at the local public school. Crossing the Mexican border, in a pickup truck filled with “migrant workers” coming to “do the jobs Americans don’t do” in our fields and food...

Roe v. Wade Goes Global by: Jeremy Hempel, February 01, 2008 There is a trend visible in the international community as the right to abortion slowly becomes international law, a report issued last fall by the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (CFHRI) shows. This all started in 1996 when a conference of agencies, treaty bodies, and organizations was held in Glen Cove, New York, according to Rights By Stealth: The Role of UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies in the Campaign for an International Right to Abortion. The official name for this meeting was the “Roundtable of Human Rights Treaty...

A lawyer who was acquitted by a federal court trial jury of Internal Revenue Service accusations he failed to filed income tax returns for two years now is suing several IRS agents over their alleged improper disclosure of his personal information in the case. A spokeswoman in the office of lawyer Tom Cryer told WND the case was assembled and filed by Cryer between Christmas Day and the end of 2007 and is expected to be placed on the docket in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. Last summer in federal court a jury voted 12-0...

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Wall Street loves to talk about letting financial markets weed out the weak. But when the Street itself gets in trouble, it sticks out its little tin cup, asking for help. And gets it. The subprime-mortgage-market meltdown is a classic example of the way small fry get devoured, but the whales of Wall Street get rescued. Here's the deal: People with crummy credit who took out mortgages are being allowed to fail in record numbers. The mortgage companies that made those loans are being allowed to fail. More from FORTUNE Crisis counsel The escape of the...

There is a saying in the broadcast media, “If it bleeds, it leads.” That supposedly explains the ghoulish nature of TV news especially. But the wall-to-wall, anchors on the scene, coverage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, belies that theory. Five people are known dead, eight are missing. If all the missing are dead, that means 13 people have died in Minnesota. Let’s make some quick comparisons. The Iraq War in five years is 310 times that total. But the number of Americans killed by illegal aliens here in the US, is even more than that. That is a relatively small...

Dear prospective congressman or incumbent representative having poll troubles, If you are reading this, it is because your campaign sorely lacks good policy ideas, and the public and/or your constituency is starting to take notice. Even your political opponent is likely noticing, but the fact that he has no good ideas himself is no solace for you. (Perhaps your television ads tarring him as a terrorist sympathizer aren't quite working out as planned.) So you are coming to PI for the advice to actually win over the public with a brilliant and fresh campaign platform. Good news, squire, you came...