Free Republic

The dramatic increase in migrants crossing the U.S. border from Mexico has pushed the city of El Paso, Texas, to “a breaking point,” with more than 2,000 people per day seeking asylum, exceeding shelter capacity and straining resources, its mayor said on Saturday. “The city of El Paso only has so many resources and we have come to … a breaking point right now,” Mayor Oscar Leeser said at a news conference.

Rental prices for single-family homes have skyrocketed to record levels across the U.S., increasing to an average of 7.8 percent in 2021. Apartment rents are up too. “Of the markets in our analysis, 97.7 percent recorded price increases for one-bedrooms and all markets saw increases for two-bedrooms [100 percent],” the report, issued last month, said. “Nationwide rent prices have increased significantly year-over-year. One- and two-bedroom rents were up 24.4 percent and 21.8 percent, respectively.”

As workers continue to return to commuting, the price of vehicles and auto parts is soaring. The price of new and used cars and trucks has skyrocketed over the past year, according to data released by the Department of Labor on Thursday.

New COVID-19 deaths and cases skyrocketed across the country over the past week as the nation continues to battle a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” White House officials said Tuesday. The latest rolling seven-day average of daily COVID-19 deaths was 739 — a 23 percent increase from the week before, said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky during a briefing. While the daily average hospitalization rate of 11,000 remained close to the previous week’s numbers, the seven-day average for new cases jumped nearly 12 percent with about 137,000 new infections reported each day, Walensky said.

The EPA claims its Clean Power Plan will end up saving lives from reducing air pollution, but a new report by a free market energy group warns the agency’s global warming rule will end up killing more than it saves. “The EPA’s climate rule has no discernible impact on climate change and may cause thousands of premature deaths in the United States,” according to a recent report by the free market Institute for Energy Research (IER). “The EPA relies on faulty data to make exaggerated claims about the benefits of a rule that will cost Americans hundreds of billions of...

The coal industry is facing its toughest challenge since The Great Depression of 1929. The collapse in coal prices and a growing weight from new regulations has claimed dozens of firms. In just recent months, three major coal producers have filed for bankruptcy. Alpha Natural Resources operates more than fifty underground and surface mines in five states. It is the nation’s largest producer of the type of coal used in steel production. In 2011, Alpha Natural Resources was worth $11 billion in stock value. The firm is now worth less than $7 million. Peabody Energy Corporation, is the largest private-sector...

Impact of EPA’s Regulatory Assault on Power Plants: New Regulations to Take More than 72 GW of Electricity Generation Offline and the Plant Closing Announcements Keep Coming…

<p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Gov. Mark Dayton challenged energy policy and business leaders Thursday to find a way for Minnesota to eliminate coal from the state's energy production.</p> <p>Dayton, who has spoken of his aim to eliminate coal before, said it's time to start talking details so that Minnesota can lead the nation.</p>

There’s nothing like the approach of a possible hurricane, such as this season's first named storm, Tropical Storm Arthur, to get everyone in its expected path thinking about generators. But for some prospective buyers, the noise and the quality of power that a portable generator supplies is a turn-off. That’s where an inverter model comes in. Using new technology, inverter generators deliver cleaner power and are typically quieter, lighter, and more energy efficient. But as Consumer Reports is learning in its ongoing generator tests, not every inverter generator is worth the 100-to-200-percent premium you’ll pay over the usual cost of...

The Bureau of Land Management wants Congress to allow it to charge new fees for inspections of natural gas and oil wells on public lands. According to BLM Director Neil Kornze,  “We have a system that’s very stretched” and could use the money. But if BLM is “very stretched” why are they adding to their workload by cooking up new regulations on hydraulic fracturing when states already do it?  This is just one more example of BLM and the Obama administration working to increase the red tape and costs of producing energy on federal lands, and another example of their...

The Environmental Protection Agency’s draft rule to limit carbon from existing power plants is just two days old, but it’s already sparked an ad war. The American Lung Association today will launch a national television ad buy featuring a sleeping baby drawing deep breaths, touting the fact that the regulation would close the “loophole” that allows industry to “pump unlimited carbon pollution into his air.”

In case you ever wonder why the debate over global warming is important, remember that the left’s pushing of this notion has nothing to do with science and has everything to do with the big government expansion for which they need a rationale. And if you want a look at the real-life effect of this agenda, you can see it right now in the form of the EPA’s proposed carbon dioxide limits on new power plants. Not that liberals will listen, but the American Coal Council is doing what it can to warn of the effects this proposal will have...

Ninety-four percent of the electricity generated in the United States in 2013 came from nuclear reactors, dams, and fossil fuels--including petroleum, natural gas, other gases, and coal--according to a new report from the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration. Only 0.2 percent of U.S. electricity during the year came from solar-power sources, and another 4.1 percent came from wind power.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules aimed at phasing out coal-fired power in favor of low-carbon fuels will come at a high cost, according to a newly released report. Over the next two decades, the EPA’s rules to fight global warming will cost the economy $2.23 trillion, raise energy prices and lower families’ incomes. Using economic models based on the federal government’s National Energy Model System, the conservative Heritage Foundation found that, by the end of 2023, EPA climate regulations will cost the U.S. nearly 600,000 jobs and reduce a family of four’s income by $1,200. EPA rules would also...

Well it appears the Department of Energy, which has long lobbied for more clean energy, is now finding that this clean energy is a lot more expensive than they thought it would be. The Obama administration’s plan to fight global warming was to limit carbon dioxide from new power plants. So in order for new coal plants to be built, they would need to spend a lot of money on carbon capture and storage technology. I guess the EPA then forgot to think about the next logical step. If the power plants have to spend more money on this technology,...

The price of electricity hit a record for the month of October, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That made October the eleventh straight month when the average price of electricity hit or matched the record level for that month. The average price of electricity in October was 13.2 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH), up from 12.8 cents per KWH in October 2012—and up from 9.3 cents per KWH in October 2003.

Over the last ten years gas prices have risen 190 percent, reports the UK Telegraph, and electricity prices have risen 120 percent over that time period. UK households now spend more than 27 percent of their earnings on “housing, water, gas, electricity and petrol.”

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here's Therese in Detroit. Therese, glad you called. Great to have you. Open Line Friday. Hi. CALLER: Hi. How are you? RUSH: Superb. How are you? CALLER: Well, our accountant came in today for a visit, and we always talk about Obamacare, and he told us that he got a letter from Blue Cross/Blue Shield. He lives in North Carolina, but he does business in both states, and for him and his wife and two kids, the premium went from $800 a month up to $1700 a month, and his deductible went from $3,000... RUSH: Whoa ho!...

In President Obama's push to crack down on the abundance of firearms in America, proposed gun-control legislation may be having the opposite effect. Updated FBI statistics show that background checks in the first three months of the year far outpace the number of checks in early 2012. The stats show that from January through March, gun owners went through 7 million background checks -- compared with just 4.8 million in the first three months of last year. The spike in checks, coupled with mounting anecdotal claims that ammunition is hard to come by, comes amid concern by gun owners that...

United States firearm sales have sky-rocketed since the Newtown school massacre, as debate over gun control rages and enthusiasts fear certain assault weapons and high-capacity magazines could be banned. President Barack Obama basically has put gun enthusiasts on warning, Larry Hyatt, owner of a gun shop in Charlotte, North Carolina, told AFP, referring to efforts to outlaw certain weapons in the wake of the Newtown shooting. A semi-automatic Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle was used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in which a disturbed local young man shot dead 20 young children, six adults and his mother before taking...