Free Republic

The private homes New London, Conn., took through eminent domain from Suzette Kelo and others, are torn down now, but Pfizer has just announced that it closing up shop at the research facility that led to the condemnation. Leading drugmakers Pfizer and Wyeth have merged, and as a result, are trimming some jobs. That includes axing the 1,400 jobs at their sparkling new research & development facility in New London, and moving some across the river to Groton. To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to...

The National Education Association has made a glowing assessment of radical socialist community organizer Saul Alinsky and is enthusiastically recommending American public school teachers read two of his books, including one dedicated to Satan. On its website, the NEA dubs Alinsky "an inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer!" It recommends Alinsky's "Reveille for Radicals," a 1946 book about the principles and tactics of "community organizing," and "Rules for Radicals," a 1971 text that articulated a socialist strategy for gaining political power to redistribute wealth from the "haves" to the "have-nots." The NEA, the largest...

By Jeff Harding The Daily Capitalist Check out this report on the Obama Administration's latest gift: free golf cart! This is from the Wall Street Journal. I really can't add much to this. We thought cash for clunkers was the ultimate waste of taxpayer money, but as usual we were too optimistic. Thanks to the federal tax credit to buy high-mileage cars that was part of President Obama's stimulus plan, Uncle Sam is now paying Americans to buy that great necessity of modern life, the golf cart. The federal credit provides from $4,200 to $5,500 for the purchase of an...

With just two days to go, the New Jersey gubernatorial election has turned into a horse race among three candidates, a remarkable development considering that the incumbent, Democrat Jon Corzine, has huge unfavorable ratings. As one radio talk-show host put it: “Who is voting for Corzine?” The answer is simple: people who benefit from big government. In a high-tax, big-spending place like Jersey, much of the burden of funding government falls on a narrow slice of residents who pay steeply progressive taxes, while the benefits of expanding government are enjoyed by those who receive more in services than they pay...

Bill Gates took on the Famine Lobby while addressing a forum on the world food supply in Iowa. Speaking at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines, Gates took aim at the chorus of environmental leftists and organic food advocates who believe Africans should starve rather than eat genetically modified (GM) foods. “Some voices are instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity. They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on earth, population is growing faster than productivity,” he said.

Bill and Melinda Gates will make a personal appeal to Washington officials Tuesday, asking them to continue funding global health initiatives despite the recession and to commit to nearly halve the number of child deaths worldwide by 2025...The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the world. But Gates said that even with its great wealth, the fund is focused on being a catalyst for much larger government-funded projects..."We have put about $11.9 billion in global health since the inception of this," she said..."Our money is tiny." The U.S. government's annual contribution to global health initiatives...

On October 14, Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted climate change expert, gave a presentation at Bethel College in St. Paul, MN in which he issued a dire warning regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty which is scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009. .. Video 4:11 min

August and September were the weakest months in Obama's presidency, at least as measured by his job approval numbers. However, in October Obama seems to be making a comeback even as the economy takes a turn for the worse and as Democrats try to cram through Congress a deeply unpopular Health Care reform. Despite the embarrassment of losing the Olympics to Rio and winning the Nobel Peace Prize though nominated only eleven days into his presidency, Obama's approval rating have stabilized and even begun to tick up. This is happening even though 57% of the American public believes that the...

PROPONENTS of compul sory, government-designed health insurance can't seem to understand why others disagree. Perhaps the public is realizing that these proposals are fundamentally about redistributing health? Health-care "reform," that is, aims to shift costs and benefits of health insurance from some groups to others. And the losers are turning out to be less docile than politicians had hoped. All the leading proposals involve massive redistribution from people with healthy lifestyles to those who take more risks. As the Congressional Budget Office explained, "Premiums in the new insurance exchanges would tend to be higher than the average premiums in the...

JERUSALEM – The U.S. should move in the direction of socialism but the country's "white majority" opposes welfare since such programs largely would benefit minorities, especially blacks and Hispanics, argued President Obama's newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein. "The absence of a European-style social welfare state is certainly connected with the widespread perception among the white majority that the relevant programs would disproportionately benefit African Americans (and more recently Hispanics)," wrote Sunstein. The Obama czar's controversial comments were made in his 2004 book "The Second Bill of Rights," which was obtained and reviewed by WND. A prominent theme throughout Sunstein's...

President Obama stressed the need for Wealth Redistribution before and after his campaign; it is a nebulous phrase that needs to be analyzed. We might consider why there is the need to redistribute wealth, other than the obvious reason to consolidate constituency strength among the poor and disaffected. Progressive Socialists build their power base among the poor, the workers (Union type), and at the Universities, there are few honest Liberals that will argue this point. Why does the need exist for Wealth Redistribution? The underlying cause is poverty. Jesus said the poor will always be with us, yet the Communist...

President Obama is doing his best to implement what he told Joe the Plumber during the campaign, "When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." As he continues to do his best to redistribute income, through projects such as the stimulus bill or the Auto Bailout, we are quickly learning that it is not good for everybody. Unemployment is actually worse with the stimulus that the POTUS said it would be if there was no stimulus, and despite the major distribution of the auto makers worth from primary investors to the unions, the company's fortunes have not improved....

Are your kids in school singing about our "glorious leader"? Here's something to help you counter the indoctrination tactics the left uses in schools. NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and please refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread. Thanks!

New reports from the Tax Foundation show that President Obama's policy proposals will increase the financial dependence of middle-income Americans on the federal government. "Attempts to put 'price tags' on health care and cap-and-trade proposals vary among government agencies and think tanks," said Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge, "but one vital question has been left unanswered: Counting all federal taxes and spending, how would these policies affect American families' financial ties to the government? The foundation's new 'fiscal incidence model' answers that question." "Currently the bottom 60 percent of the income spectrum receives more in federal spending than they pay...

Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s regulatory “czar,” contends that “most Americans are too wealthy for their own good. They are hogging more than a fair share of the world’s resources and becoming fat and lazy in the process.” Sunstein suggested that “penalties for this country’s contribution to global warming would be an effective and efficient mechanism for achieving the transfer. Who can argue against saving the planet? And if it means American families couldn’t afford that second car or have to eat less meat, they’ll learn to walk more and eat their vegetables—boosting their own health along the way.” The...

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent. A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

The World Health Organization has carried out the first ever analysis of the world’s health systems. Using five performance indicators to measure health systems in 191 member states, it finds that France provides the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan. The findings are published today, 21 June, in The World Health Report 2000 – Health systems: Improving performance. The U. S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The...

Just how many communists are there holed up in the Obama White House anyway? John Holdren, Obama's biggest radical and Science Czar, slammed the idea of American exceptionalism and explicitly said that we need to redistribute energy and material resources during the Bali Conference on global warming on July 12, 2007. John Holdren says the US should redistribute the wealth with green policies:

"A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.” President Obama State of Union Speech The distribution of income is central to one of the most enduring issues in political economics. On one extreme are those who argue that all incomes should be the same, or as nearly so as possible, and that a principal function of government should be to redistribute income from the haves to the have-nots. On the other extreme are those who argue that any income redistribution by government is bad… Alabama Constitution: “That the...

Speaking at a conference in Delhi, India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh urged Western nations to leave population out of climate talks, The Guardian reports. Ramesh said, "Influential American think tanks are asking why should we reward profligate reproduction behavior" in the developing world. Then Ramesh really laid out bare the gap between rich and poor nations in the world when it comes to climate change: For us this is about survival. We need to put electricity into people's homes and do it cleanly. You in the West need to live with only one car rather than three. For you it's...

Interview of Barack Hussein Obama explaining how to achieve redistributive change. Click on link to hear him in his own words.

Link only is posted. The IRS code has been pledged by 0bama to be rewritten. From the article: "Obama said he's renewing his administration's commitment to a simpler tax code, which he defined as one that rewards work and the pursuit of the American dream." (video link) "For too long, we've seen taxes used as a wedge to scare people into supporting policies that increased the burden on working people instead of helping them live their dreams," Obama said. "That has to change, and that's the work that we've begun."

Forget the recession and the "uninsured." Obama has bigger fish to fry.If we believe that Obama is trying to end the recession or fix the health-care system, we’ll miss his real agenda. The first seven months of the Obama administration seemingly make no sense. Why squander public approval by running up astronomical deficits in a time of pre-existing staggering national debt? Why polarize opponents after promising bipartisan transcendence? Why create vast new programs when the efficacy of big government is already seen as dubious? But that is exactly the wrong way to look at these first seven months of...

... Under US regulations, a citizen who fails to report by the end of September 2009 any account worth more than $10,000 held in a non-US bank, a savings program or a fund, will be liable for a fine of $10,000 for each offence, even without criminal intent. ...

New analysis of President Obama's Budget finds that he is targeting the nation's highest earners for greater income redistributions. By 2012, the federal government is scheduled to be redistributing an extra $79 billion from the top-earning 5 percent of American families, and $71 billion of that will be paid by the top-earning 1 percent of families. "That's an additional $64,000 per family redistributed from the top-earning 1 percent," said the Tax Foundation's president Scott Hodge, "on top of the already substantial $368,000 that would have been redistributed from each family even without President Obama's new policies." "Part of that change...

WASHINGTON – Hours after the House passed landmark legislation meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions and create an energy-efficient economy, President Barack Obama on Saturday urged senators to show courage and follow suit. The sharply debated bill's fate is unclear in the Senate, and Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address to ratchet up pressure on the 100-seat chamber. "My call to every senator, as well as to every American, is this," he said. "We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past. Don't believe the misinformation out there that suggests there...

"Wealthy nations should establish a fund that could spend $100 billion a year helping the world's poorest countries to tackle climate change, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday. Calling for the fund to be in place by 2020, Brown said that wealthier nations would be able to raise funds through the expansion of international carbon trading market - in which carbon reductions achieved by one company can be sold to another - and existing development aid. Environment ministers from industrialized nations first discussed proposals for the creation of such a fund at a conference in Denmark last month. Campaigners...

From 'The Economist' print edition Attitudes towards redistribution have a strong cultural component ARGUMENTS over economic policy are often heated. Debates about the extent to which tax and welfare policy should redistribute wealth from rich to poor tend to be particularly fractious. Understanding why people hold different opinions on the topic interests economists, not least because citizens’ attitudes towards such matters are likely to influence the governments they elect. Some of the evidence from individual countries conforms to standard economic reasoning. Richer people, who have least to gain from redistribution, are usually less keen on it than their poorer compatriots....

General Motors (GM) has agreed to finance private equity firm Platinum Equity’s buyout of Delphi Corp. GM will provide more than $2 billion to Platinum Equity for purchasing most of the assets of Delphi.Troy, Michigan-based Delphi, which has been operating under ban kruptcy protection, is a former GM subsidiary and the auto-maker’s largest supplier. Under the deal, Platinum Equity will acquire most of Delphi's global operations, including its Troy headquarters. GM is also acquiring some troubled assets of Delphi. Further, the company is providing $250 million to help Delphi emerge from bankruptcy protection....

Word that the Obama Administration may have used its power over Chrysler’s restructuring process to shut down dealerships whose owners donated to Republican candidates, while leaving open dealerships that donated to Obama is spreading across conservative blogs. But while this kind of abuse of government power is shocking, it really shouldn’t be.

While most of the US population — at least those who voted for him — continue their somnambulant activities, Supreme Leader Obama has been methodically and without much-if-any reportage from his mainstream media been setting up his personal police state. While existence continues to become more and more tenuous with each passing day for We-the-People, Obama and his minions (AKA the Political Power Elite Class) are living the best days of their lives. And they are paying for their excesses with what were formerly OUR monies and OUR wealth.

I have changed my mind about participating in the carbon credit program. And have resolved to give the money I received to St Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Here is why. Recently I sat in the fire hall with a few dozen farmers. We had been invited to hear how we can get paid for carbon credits. The speaker explained how their satellites can measure the carbon in our land individually and how much money we could get. Then asked for questions. I asked “what is the source of this money”? The presenter said it comes from big companies that pollute. I...

By Sher Zieve In order for global (AKA "one world") government (AKA "rule") to come into being, the United States of America must be destroyed. The USA and its Constitution are far too dangerous to the totalitarian Left for it to allow the country to continue its existence. For many years now, I have included in my Bio "if Leftists ran the country (and left to their own inane devices), it would be the end of the United States as a sovereign nation." Unfortunately and tragically, I was — and still am — correct.

From Art Laffer, economist and inventor of the Laffer Curve, comes an excellent and timely piece explaining why we should all care about the death tax, its effect on society and on people's behavior: Spend it in Vegas or Die Paying Taxes President Barack Obama has proposed prolonging the federal estate tax rather than ending it in 2010, as is scheduled under current law. The president's plan would extend this year's $3.5 million exemption level and the 45% top rate. But will this really help America recover from recession and reduce our growing deficits? In order to assess the pros...

“In the words of Scripture,” Barack Obama announced at his inauguration, “the time has come to set aside childish things.” So why does the President of the United States embrace the most childish interpretation of political discourse ever put forward on a national stage? Politics is about making choices. We either cut spending or we grow spending. We either have less regulation or more regulation. We either strengthen defense or we weaken it. Obama seemingly understands this. He has repeatedly referred to the “hard choices” we face as a nation. Yet despite his “hard choices” rhetoric, Barack Obama’s favorite political...

The nation needs to face the fact that income will be redistributed and health care rationed under a federal budget plan being moved through Congress at the behest of President Obama, according to an official who served under President Clinton. The plan, according to Lawrence J. Haas, former communications director for Vice President Al Gore, said Obama "wants to make permanent all the tax cuts from those years [2001 and 2003] for people making up to $250,000 a year and frankly to redistribute income a bit in a fair way so he would raise taxes on those above $250,000." His...

Print ShareThisA United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body. Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations "information note" on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the...

Illinois politics seems to be everywhere this year -- and now it may be headed to the Supreme Court in the form of a lawsuit brought against the state. The case, which has ties to impeached Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, could have an important impact on the definition of a "taking" under the Fifth Amendment -- as well as implications for the state's power of taxation. In Empress Casino v. Giannoulias, the question involves the passage of a state law that took money from four riverboat casinos and gave it to five horse-racing tracks to use as purse money, among...

Obama will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of 'sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation', NY TIMES reporting Sunday, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE... Developing... REGULATE

THIS IS a must read piece from Investors Business Daily. Barack Obama seems to have spent a lifetime pining for the father who abandoned him at age 2. His first autobiography (and what 47 year old doesn't need two?) was dedicated to the man. Now he has issued the essential blueprint for the Obama Tax Code, and we find that it too is part of dad's legacy. Naturally, candidate Obama Jr. wishes to raise taxes on the productive and the married, (especially two-income professional families — which will chase educated women from the work force, as the NY Sun discussed...

The audio of a Barack Obama radio interview below is stunning. Unfortunately, it will probably stun few. For once the word "Constitution" is mentioned, electoral eyes roll into the backs of voters' heads as memories of a boring high school history class in a hot, dusty classroom emerge in the place of contemplation of the founding principles of this nation. Speaking of the Warren Court its interpretation of the Constitution during the Civil Rights movement, Obama said, "It wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. At...

Freep this poll......

We had a phenomenally successful "Find Your Dream Home Weekend" this past Saturday and Sunday. Over 200 homes participated and for some, there were 20 to 30 people through during a two-hour span. Talk about a revolving door! This activity is both encouraging and critical. Buyers are energized! Also important this past week was the Treasury Department's announcement (March 4th) of the program guidelines that are expected to become standard industry practice in pursuing affordable and sustainable mortgage modifications. The immediate concern for consumers is how they can get access to the funds. So the question becomes, what's in it...

Clearly the Obama administration has not brought comfort to the markets in its initial weeks in office. The President and his team have also failed to bring clarity or coherence. Their massive agenda is not only ambitious, bold, and expensive, it is contradictory. Take the President's new budget proposal, for instance. In order to pay for the massive expansion of government spending, including $634 billion for health-care reform, Obama proposes to resort to the time honored populist tradition of "taxing the rich," meaning families making in excess of $250,000. Despite the administration's incessant cry that the government should prop up...

I thought that by now President Obama had fixed the Immigration problem. After all he has done for the economy, you would think that most illegal immigrants had left the country to go look for a job, but apparently not. The Center for Immigration Studies believes that up to 15% of the new federally funded construction Jobs called for in the massive stimulus signed by President Obama, will be filled by people who are in the country illegally. $104 billion for construction projects [in the bill] should create construction-related jobs for about 2.04 million workers over several years. The Center...

President Obama on Saturday struck back aggressively at critics of his $3.6 trillion budget proposal, casting himself as a populist crusader whose "sweeping change" has angered Washington's entrenched special interests, and promised to fight them. "I realize that passing this budget won't be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington," Mr. Obama said in his weekly video and radio address. Mr. Obama's language was combative and confrontational, as he promised to fight for "American families." "I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists...

Similarly, on healthcare, Obama has decided to put cost control above expanding coverage... There's also a shift in investment priorities in the healthcare proposal. The fastest-growing part of the federal budget is spending for Medicare, a program that provides healthcare for the elderly. It is paid for by payroll taxes from people still in the workforce. In essence, Medicare amounts to a resource shift from younger workers to older retirees. And the population of older retirees is rapidly growing relative to the workforce. "The more we spend on the elderly, the less we can spend on other things, including education,"...

There was one line in Obama's Address to the Nation last night that just floored me. It came near the beginning of the speech where he lays out the causes for our economic troubles: "A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future." Wow. I don't think there is a more telling statement of the Obama administration's philosophy than that single statement. What did we learn? According to Obama: 1. Wealth is not earned. 2. Wealth is a commodity that governments can transfer from one segment of the population...

WASHINGTON – President Obama will propose further tax increases on the affluent to help pay for his promise to make health care more accessible and affordable, administration officials said on Wednesday. [snip] Mr. Obama will also propose in the budget outline he releases on Thursday to use revenues from the centerpiece of his environmental policy — a plan under which companies will have to purchase permits to exceed pollution emission caps — to pay for an extension of a two-year tax credit that benefits low and middle-income people. The combined effect of the two proposals, on top of Mr. Obama’s...