Free Republic

Here in Texas we produce a variety of products and services, notably energy, agricultural, and technology related, but also across many sectors (including my own construction industry). We also create and produce jobs. In fact, we do it as well if not better than any other state. Part of the right formula for job creation here in Texas has been lower taxes and less regulations. We have no state income tax and our legislature meets infrequently, denying them opportunity to do much meddling. These simple principles has led many companies to set up in this State, and in return many...

The “R” or “D” after a politician’s name often does little to help voters understand the governing philosophy of their elected representative. The way many of their bills read, one might just as well replace those letters with a generic “S” for Statist or “PC” for Political Careerist. Occasionally, however, a legislator does the right thing and deserves recognition. Based on a new bill to strike a blow against overly intrusive big government on behalf of the home repair tradesmen and entrepreneurs, Rep. Ray Franz, R-Onekama, is one of them. Here’s how MichiganVotes.org described the legislation Rep. Franz introduced last...

Participants in a recent shale gas energy conference held in Hobbs, New Mexico, referred to a whirlwind trip to Lea County, NM, as “exhausting” but “enlightening.” Bradford County Commissioners Doug McLinko, Mark Smith, and Daryl Miller, Susquehanna County Commissioner Mary Ann Warren and Pennsylvania state Rep. Tina Pickett were among local elected officials to partake in discussions and serve as guests on informative panels.

MADISON — For regulation reform crusaders, a key battle in the red tape war was fought at the home of a name-brand furniture manufacturer in western Wisconsin. Ashley Furniture went through what some critics describe as an unnecessary regulation dance over wetlands as it moved to complete a massive factory expansion in Arcardia. “When they moved forward to get a permit to build a warehouse, they were told (the 13.5 acres) was a wetland,” recalled Dick Granchalek, president of the La Crosse Area Chamber of Commerce. “For an extended period of years, they were parking their semis on this property,...

The difficulty of creating new and better medicines has been the subject of extensive – at times excessive – soul searching, a process that’s intensified as high-profile patents expire, along with their associated revenue streams, traditionally relied upon to support future R&D. As a result, both biopharma companies and patients awaiting new treatments find themselves struggling for viable solutions. Predictably, industry (where I obviously reside) attributes excessive regulation, regulators say “don’t blame us,” and considered reporters and observers typically try to split the different – maybe everyone is a little bit at fault. The problem with this resolution is that...

It isn't so great living in the USA anymore. This is just one example of what obastard keeps on bringing to us. Is the reporting requirement for any purchase over $600 to any single vendor causing any of you as much distress as it is me? This requirement means you have to track down the tax ID number for each and every vendor for such things that small businesses and farms and owners of rental property pay for all the time. Things like, air conditioning repairmen and replacement, fertilizer application, welder repairs, truck repairs (that is an easy one to...

Arlington, Va.—May the government force entrepreneurs to do useless things, like build extra rooms in their stores that they do not need and will never use, just to prove they are serious about their business? That issue is at the center of a major lawsuit filed today, January 19, 2012, in Minnesota State District Court by the Institute for Justice (IJ) on behalf of Verlin Stoll, the 27-year-old owner of Crescent Tide Funeral Home in Saint Paul.

Ayn Rand told me that there’d be days like this. In a chapter straight out of Atlas Shrugged, the mammoth Los Angeles Porn Industry is facing its biggest challenge yet. The City of Los Angeles is set to pass a law requiring all adult actors to wear condoms while producing pornographic movies. The industry is up in arms and is threatening to vacate the LA Valley for more libertarian climes. Putting aside what methods the City will use to enforce such intrusive regulation and who the lucky enforcers will be, one must wonder what the Mayor and his minions are...

A pending bill would establish the California Healthcare System, administered by another new band of bureaucrats, the California Healthcare Agency. Demagogues know how to exploit our weaknesses. To gain control over us they slyly appeal to our genuine yearnings. They promise to relieve our universal sufferings. Too often they succeed in persuading many of us who should know better, and too many of us who have yet to learn better. Universal health care is a particularly vile form of this demagoguery...

Pepsi Beverages Co. has agreed to pay $3.1 million to settle federal charges of race discrimination for using criminal background checks to screen out job applicants even if they weren't convicted of a crime. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is working to crackdown on hiring policies that can hurt blacks and Hispanics, said Wednesday that the company's policy of not hiring workers with arrest records disproportionately excluded more than 300 black applicants. The policy barred applicants with arrest records even if they had never been convicted of a crime, and denied employment to those arrested or convicted of minor...

At a campaign stop this weekend, in-the-spotlight GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said he supports increased Internet regulation. According to Santorum, our rights aren’t “absolute” and stop at whatever point their exercise begins to infringe on the rights of others. Piracy represents an abuse of intellectual property rights — and that abuse should have consequences, Santorum says.So far, so good. Everybody agrees that piracy is a problem.But Santorum seems too ready to look to regulation for the solution to the piracy problem, suggesting that government interference might be an effective way to thwart piraters. That, to me, seems short-sighted, given...

MIAMI (AP) — Seven central Florida teenagers were arrested after authorities said they punched and kicked a 13-year-old until she was unconscious while on a school bus. The victim told authorities that Friday was her first time riding the bus and no one would let her sit down. About 75 children were riding the bus bound for a middle school in Ocala, a rural city north of Orlando. The victim said someone threw a shoe at her and she threw one back, according to an arrest report. One girl allegedly asked students if they wanted to hit the victim, then...

...Army regulations require that medevac helicopters follow the Geneva Convention, which specifies that they must be unarmed and display prominent Red Cross markings. Furthermore, Army regulation forbids medevac choppers from entering a combat zone without armed helicopter escort. If armed escort is not immediately available, medevac helicopters remain grounded, regardless the emergency. Once they do go in, they become a conspicuous target for enemy forces, most of whom have never read the Geneva Convention, and would laugh it out of existence if they had.

From laws banning happy hour in Utah and shark fin sales in Oregon to tougher voter identification requirements in at least four states, a wide range of new legislation is set to ring in the new year. According to The National Conference of State Legislatures, which earlier this week issued its annual list of new laws, the legislation will cover education, drug and alcohol policy, criminal justice and human trafficking, among other areas. In some cases, the laws could add to the cost of doing business. Other new rules will regulate what Americans eat and drink. California, for example, will...

MARK STEYN DECEMBER 24, 2011 Elisabeth’s Barrenness and Ours Who celebrates a birth nowadays? Our lesson today comes from the Gospel according to Luke. No, no, not the manger, the shepherds, the wise men, any of that stuff, but the other birth: “But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.” That bit of the Christmas story doesn’t get a lot of attention, but it’s in there — Luke 1:13, part of what he’d have called the backstory, if...

The EPA thinks it's worth spending billions of dollars each year to reduce already minuscule amounts of mercury in the outside air. So why is it trying to shove mercury-laced fluorescent bulbs into everyone's homes?

When Republicans suspended the 100-watt-light-bulb ban, they said they were trying to protect consumer choice. But they also managed to show how regulations help big business at the expense of the little guy.

Jeb Bush has penned a minifesto concerning economic opportunity that is worth giving a good think. He argues that while freedom entails the risk of failure, statism ensures the certainty of stagnation. In his opinion, the opportunity to succeed, even with the attendant downside of possible failure, is preferable to the certitude of gradual but inevitable demise. Noman adds that earthly hope lies in freedom and the growth--personal, moral and economic--that derives from its exercise. Hope cannot lie in a certitude destined to elude temporal, contingent beings in a world marked by limitation, or in false promises that no society...

Power Plant Closures Due to Environmental Regulations to Take Toll on TownsPublished December 20, 2011 | Associated Press For more than 90 years, the coal-fired power plant in Glen Lyn, Va., has been churning out electricity and contributing to local prosperity. Of late, it has generated nearly a quarter of the revenue for the $1 million budget of the town. Yet when the plant ultimately shuts down to comply with new federal air pollution regulations by the end of 2014, says Town Manager Howard Spencer, so too might the community of 200. "If the town lost all of that revenue,"...

Rebel Chinese villagers demand elections, test Communist Party authority Published: 10:21AM Monday December 19, 2011 Protesting Chinese villagers today demanded that central leaders defuse grievances about what they called crooked land deals and a suspicious death, as a revolt that has tested Communist Party authority in this semi-rural area neared its second week. Residents of Wukan Village in Guangdong province have driven off officials, erected makeshift barricades to deter police, and held protest gatherings and marches daily after the death in custody last weekend of Xue Jinbo, one of the organisers of a months-long campaign over former farmland that residents...