Free Republic

House Democrats have a plethora of initiatives in the new Congress. One of the top priorities for the Congressional Black Caucus and incoming Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters is corporate boardroom diversity. Waters proposed creating a House subcommittee on diversity and inclusion that would force companies to quantify their board members by race and gender. By targeting publicly traded companies, this creates a vacuum that would ultimately harm employees of all racial and economic backgrounds, especially the further down the chain you go. The government should foster diversity through individual success, not through federal coercion. You can hear it...

Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif), chairperson of the 55-member Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the most numerous in our nation’s history, has set the Caucus’ sights on “reversing the trauma inflicted on people of color by the Trump Administration over the past two years. We will use our tremendous power and influence to undo Trump’s evil plan to force millions of voters off of welfare and into the labor economy.” “The notion that a job is the answer to curing poverty and improving one’s life is a myth,” Bass contended. “Curing poverty has been the task of government since the 1960s’ Great...

Like an island bathed in sunshine but surrounded by stormy seas, General Electric Aviation’s River Works plant is hiring at record levels and shouldering big aviation contracts even as GE works its way out of a corporate slide. Company executives hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony a month ago to inaugurate the River Works assembly and shipping area for the new T408 helicopter engine. The ceremony capped off GE Aviation’s success in landing a $143 million initial production contract in 2017 to build 22 engines to power a new Marine Corps heavy-lift helicopter. State Rep. Peter Capano retired from a 29-year career...

President Trump is gaining the advantage over China in his long-term trade strategy, proving the naysayers wrong with his decision to use tariffs as leverage. When Donald Trump first introduced his aggressive trade policy and imposed targeted counter-tariffs to push back against China’s rampant trade manipulation, most of the so-called experts remained skeptical. President Trump’s strategy was deemed too dangerous by commentators, who also predicted that it would be powerless to contain China’s economic aspirations. The president never wavered, though—and his commitment has paid off faster than anyone could have predicted. Beijing last month announced it would cut tariffs on...

(LATEST INFORMATION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST) And here we are early in the morning in the USA, already a winter's morning in France with a late sunrise and as the day progresses we will see what kind of protest activity will emerge. A week of intense government propaganda with government media and "private" media of the big coroporations aligned with the regime, if you will, of banker turned politician Emmanuel Macron........

After plans were laid for a Yellow Vests protest in Boruges, France, a city of some 66-thousand about a 150 miles from Paris, the prefect of the area called Cher has announced a protest ban for tomorrow. Catherine Ferrier told BFM-TV this morning that she is signing a decree to ban demonstrations in the historic city center and will only allow protest on the periphery of the city. Metro stations are being closed in Paris and an exclusion zone including part of the Champs-Elysees, the Palace de la Concorde, the Elysee Palace and the Ministry of the Interior is established...

As we enter the Friday-Saturday news window when things happen to avoid publicity about them one wonders what might be next in the dispute between President Trump and Democrats over funding a barrier on the southern border.... The Battle of Brexit. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn on the attack ahead of next Tuesday's expected vote rejecting Prime Minister Theresa May's proposal for withdrawal from the European Union..... To France where a cabinet minister in the government of President Emmanuel Macron says she is looking into foreign power giving support to the Yellow Vests protests..... US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talking...

Sunconomy, a U.S. construction company, has received permits to build its first 3D printed geopolymer additively manufactured house in Lago Vista, Texas. Larry Haines, the founder of Sunconomy, stated, “We will be able to build the structure for a single family house in a day with virtually no waste, and built super strong and providing very low utility costs. Now that’s Sustainable!” Sustainable, 3D printed homes Sunconomy plans to manufacture 3D printed concrete homes under the name the “Genesis model” using its own additive manufacturing system. These homes will include three bedrooms, and two bathrooms with a detached garage, solar,...

In the 2015 General Election in the UK Nigel Farage was making a bid to be elected to the House of Commons when he led the United Kingdom Independence Party. When the results were counted election night in the South Thanet constituency it took all night as many postal ballots (absentee ballots) were counted. In the end Conservative Party candidate Craig Mackinlay won but there was the smell of wrong doing by the Tories in this race and dozens of others across the UK. Cases were brought against the Conservatives under British electoral laws and finally Wednesday a jury made...

Wisconsin got a bold new leader on Monday; a young, dynamic, charismatic figure who is as innovative as he is likeable and who promises fundamental change through sheer force of will. Wisconsin’s new governor was also sworn in. To say that the Packers hiring Matt LaFleur to be their new head coach overshadowed Tony Evers’ inauguration would be the understatement of the new year. After news broke late Monday afternoon that the former Tennessee Titans’ offensive coordinator would be Green Bay’s coach, Evers’ inauguration became an afterthought. That’s not a dig at a state or a media far too obsessed...

Parent PLUS is not typically the loan program making headlines when student loans are in the news. But over the past several years, it has become a central part of America’s higher-education financing system. Under Parent PLUS, parents can borrow freely—with no limit—from the federal government to support their children’s education. Government programs without significant guardrails rarely turn out well, and Parent PLUS is no exception. New research from Adam Looney and Vivien Lee of the Brookings Institution illustrates just how out-of-control the parental loan program has grown. In 2014, the average parent borrower held $38,812 in Parent PLUS debt...

President Trump making his case for a barrier on the nation's southern border in a speech Tuesday night, describing a crisis with illegal immigration that includes the deaths of thousands of Americans..... The co-leader of the anti-mass immigration Alternative for Germany party, Alice Weidel, says that the brutal attack on AfD parliament member Frank Magnitz was an attempted assassination. Weidel added that: "the hatred against the AfD and the media coverage against this democratically elected party is bearing fruit" At least three masked men beat Magnitz unconscious using a piece of wood Monday in the city of Bremen. He was...

After the United States pulled out of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed and added to sanctions last year, the Trump administration granted waivers to eight countries who were already established buyers to continue buying specified amounts of Iranian oil for 180 days. Now, however, a senior Iranian energy official in Tehran says that these countries are not making use of the waivers and are instead complying fully with the strict zero-oil sanctions. According to Iran's deputy oil minister for trade and international affairs Amir Hossein Zamaninia, "China, India, Japan, South Korea and other countries that were granted waivers...

Most of this was previously posted. Some of the links may no longer work.]. Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute, has reported that Enron played a major role in pushing the global warming scam, including establishing the Kyoto Protocals. Enron had already profited from trading sulfur dioxide credits and saw the potential for even greater profits from trading what would become known as "carbon credits". The article is the first in a series of articles about those who seek to profit from what Weather Channel founder John Coleman calls "the greatest scam in history." It's...

The message from President Emmanuel Macron's government communicated through the media is that "thugs" and "violence" must addressed in France following the predominately peaceful resurgence of the Yellow Vests protesters last weekend. French President Emmanuel Macron's Prime Minister Edouard Philippe appeared on the TF 1 news Monday night to announce 80-thousand police will be deployed next Saturday including 5-thousand in Paris. The government is proposing new laws that would punish protesters who's protests are not approved by the government, would ban people designated as "troublemakers" from protests and ban the wearing of masks during protests. Meanwhile government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux...

"The mistake many in our industry make is to attribute the success of indoor farming solely to LED. LED makes indoor farming viable. But if you want to make indoor farming scalable, you have to think in trends that are happening in robotics, automation, computer vision and machine learning." So says Irving Fain, CEO with Bowery Farming. Yesterday the company announced a $90 million funding round, led by GV (formerly Google Ventures). Additional investors in this round include Temasek (the global investment company headquartered in Singapore), Dara Khosrowshahi (CEO of Uber), David Barber’s fund Almanac, First Round Capital, GGV Capital...

ewly elected socialist firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “if we want economic growth and a fairer distribution of wealth the rich will have to pay more in taxes.” She cited history to back her claim. “In the 1960s, before President Kennedy’s tax cut, both economic growth and taxes in this country were higher than today,” the first-term congresswoman observed. “In more progressive countries like the Soviet Union and Communist China economic growth was even faster with the government essentially controlling all the investment and distribution decisions.” “My ‘Green New Deal’ is a moderate first step...

Goldman Sachs reduced its outlook for oil prices this year citing abundant supply, Bloomberg reports, quoting a note to clients. The investment bank’s analysts now expect Brent crude to average US$62.50 a barrel this year, down from an earlier projection of US$70 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate, according to Goldman Sachs, will average US$55.50 a barrel, compared with an earlier estimate of US$64.50 a barrel. The price outlook revision was motivated by expectations of another glut despite the OPEC+ production cuts aimed at removing 1.2 million bpd from the global market and continued growth in U.S. shale oil production, as...

Lee Oui-ryuk was on the verge of dying of starvation when he stole a block of tofu in a market in North Korea at the height of a nationwide famine. Too weak to run away after he swiped the food, Lee continued eating as the seller cried and beat him with a metal rod, staining the white tofu red with his blood. At nine years old he knew the theft would end in violence, but in his head he repeated over and over: “Even if you are beaten, keep eating.” He eventually passed out and when he awoke, took a...

At year-end 2018, how is President Donald Trump’s regulatory reform project going? Better than Obama, Bush II, and Clinton in terms of fewer regulations; but not as good as Trump’s own first year. Let’s look at it. Monday, December 31, 2018, is the last federal workday of the year. That would seem obvious, but a partial federal shutdown on December 22 made clock-out earlier for some. Nonetheless, a preliminary tally for Federal Register page and rule counts for Trump’s 2nd calendar year has appeared, even though “[d]uring the funding lapse, Federalregister.gov is not being supported." The Number of Pages in...