Free Republic

Suffolk OTB will break ground on a $210 million expansion of Jake’s 58 Casino Hotel ahead of its competitors vying for the coveted NYC casino licenses. “We’re not vying for one of the licenses, and as a matter of fact, I think that wherever those casinos are located, we are going to be able to compete very well,” Suffolk OTB CEO Phil Boyle told the Post. The expansion — the first since the casino opened in 2017 — is expected to increase annual revenue by as much as 42% and double terminals to 2,000 and increase parking from 600 spaces...

U.S. innovation fuels our economic strength and is vital for our national security. Released last earlier this month, the National Science Board’s congressionally mandated State of U.S. Science and Engineering Indicators report shows that an accelerating science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) talent crisis is imperiling America’s economy and security.Let’s start with a bit of perspective. The U.S. STEM workforce is now one quarter of the total U.S. workforce – 38 million people at all degree levels who use STEM skills in their jobs, including 19 million skilled technical workers without a bachelor’s degree. That number will only rise as...

Log onto Facebook. Before you know it, you’ll see ads from Temu or Wish, pitching cheap products. Or open your old email account, the one that you’ve had for years, so it gets the most spam. Every other message is an offer from some unknown store, selling the sort of thing in which a person like you just might be interested. Or log onto Amazon and look for something, anything at all. Twenty percent of the hits, maybe more, will be “sponsored” items, often from a brand you’ve never heard of. Of course, you can shut down the internet, close...

A Vermont-based baking company is under fire for hosting a competition that barred white contestants from participating, an attempt to “foster greater inclusivity” in the world of baking. The 2024 Baking Pitchfest, hosted by King Arthur Baking, says it will provide “equitable opportunities for People of Color entrepreneurs,” gracing the winners with “financial support, brand exposure, and mentorship to help accelerate their businesses.” The competition is billed as an “accelerator program,” and will consist of two parts, a product edition and a bakery edition, which are limited to those defined as a “person of color led business” and a “person...

The King Arthur Baking Company is hosting a competition for bakeries and the winner gets a lot of dough. It’s called “Baking Pitchfest 2024.” Winners get mentorship from other bakers and financial support for their bakeries. It sounds like a great opportunity for the pastry and pie crowd. But there’s just one catch. *No white people are allowed to enter the competition.* Only bakeries that are owned by persons of color are allowed to participate.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster unceremoniously signed a measure to repeal the state’s certificate of need regulations for most health care facilities. The measure, S.164, establishes a three-year sunset of the CON requirement for hospitals except in counties that do not have one, where the mandate is repealed immediately. Observers say eight Palmetto State counties do not have a hospital. "South Carolinians will have greater access to affordable health care services with the repeal of the certificate of need laws," McMaster said in a statement. "Everyone benefits when the proven power of the free market is unleashed in our state."...

Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww5Lf97hXQMMNot so long ago, a left-wing pressure campaign forced Harry’s Razors to cut ties with a couple of right-wing podcasts. Little did they know, that decision would create a thriving competitor in the men’s shaving niche. In a real-world example of punching back twice as hard, Jeremy Boering, the ‘lower-case g lower-case k’ ‘god-king’ of the Daily Wire started a rival company as an elaborate middle finger at Harry’s for pulling ad revenue. (Pay attention business-minded Conservatives sick of the left’s bully tactics, there’s a potentially thriving business model in here for you.) His rival razor company turned...

I have seen a huge rising of so called veterans support groups, from service dogs to PTSD groups. What can we trust on the interwbs to be actually sincere or just a hoax to gain money and change the business name after honest people have given funds too? In August I am planning my final professional race, but I want 100% of any winnings or sponsorship money to go to true veteran charaties where help is needed not tied up. Is Mission 22 or Veteran service dogs a proper place to donate to?

It’s not every day you find a government document calling for Cato Institute employees to be charged with treason, but as a new article in The Dispatch details, here we are: "In March 2020, a maritime shipping advisory panel offered a simple suggestion to the government: Charge all past and current members of two libertarian think tanks with treason. "It is certainly not the first time a bunch of libertarians angered members of a bureaucratic panel. But this backlash stemmed from criticism of the Jones Act, a century‐​old law that imposes requirements for shipping between American ports." Haley Byrd Wilt’s...

The top Democrat and Republican on the Senate’s antitrust committee led a grilling of the CEOs of Kroger and Albertsons on Tuesday over their planned $25 billion grocery megamerger, which comes after months of rising inflation that has hit consumers hard. “The companies assure us that this is the merger that will make everything better,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights.

CASPER, Wyo. — The record for the world’s longest uninterrupted chain of beard has been broken by at least 80 feet. Facial hair enthusiasts gathered at Gaslight Social, a bar in Casper, Wyoming, to see if they could beat the Guinness World Record set in 2007. With the required minimum 8-inch beard, the competitors stood side by side at the bar with beards attached. The completed beard chain measured 150 feet long,..

Cherry Creek School District will no longer highlight valedictorians at graduation because ‘learning is not a competition’

Last week the corrupt media’s penchant for spinning all things conservative caused a near-fatal case of whiplash. The left began by chastising conservatives for supposedly building “its own echo chamber,” but by the next day, when news broke that Devin Nunes was resigning from Congress to serve as the CEO of Donald Trump’s new media company, the complained-of conservative ecosystem merely represented grift. Both narratives are false, however, which is precisely why leftists peddled them so hard. Axios launched the “echo chamber” accusation with its article titled, “Right wing builds its own echo chamber.” “Conservatives are aggressively building their own...

Chinese regulators summoned Didi, Geely’s Caocao, and nine other ride-hailing firms on Sept. 1, and accused them of vicious competition, illegal operations, and disrupting the market order.This is the latest action of the Chinese Communist Party’s multi-pronged crackdown on its tech companies, and the second summons after the regulators ordered 10 ride-hailing firms to set up an organization CCP members will lead on May 14.In recent months, Chinese regulators have launched new rules on online video games, tech companies who seek to list on foreign stock exchanges, cloud computing businesses, e-commerce companies, online financing businesses, education, celebrity fan clubs, Bitcoin,...

While driving around yesterday I heard the presumed Presidential Whiz-kid on the radio saying how important competition is. His carefully prepared remarks were made prior to signing an executive order targeting “anticompetitive” practices in tech, health care and other parts of the economy. Emphasis on other parts of the economy whereas that is anything we say it it.The sweeping order includes 72 actions and recommendations that Biden said would lower prices for families, increase wages for workers and promote innovation and faster economic growth.Ha! That’s a good one – let’s give agencies and bureaucrats even more power to create regulations...

On Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and three medical experts took a blowtorch to Google for banning from YouTube a video of them discussing COVID-19 science.“They say it’s misinformation even though Google and YouTube routinely host conspiracy theory videos ranging from the cause of the 9/11 attacks to the role that 5G networks play in causing COVID-19,” DeSantis said in a press conference. “You can pretty much find any misinformation under the sun on Google/YouTube.” He blasted them for acting as a “big tech council of censors in service of the ruling elite.”Last week, Google pulled a video of DeSantis...

The internet upstart GAB , which is threatening the entire big tech eco-system,just announced they are planning on launchinga new gab phone!

Well, this is unexpected. While I knew Fox News was losing viewers (at least during the times when Tucker Carlson and the rest of the prime time lineup aren’t saving them), I didn’t expect a competing, right-leaning network to do this well, this soon against the conservative news giant. Newsmax broke 1 million viewers for the first time ever. ‘Greg Kelly Reports’ was the happy recipient of what appears to be a wave of Republican viewers changing the channel. Another record night for @Newsmax: For the first time, one of its shows topped the 1 million viewer mark, according to...

Right now, Americans are deciding between red and blue…or orange and black. No, I’m not talking about the election, but rather online holiday shopping and the current sales events being held this week by Target, Walmart, Amazon, and undoubtedly many other retailers. In any given year, there isn’t anything particularly noteworthy to the average American consumer about retailers looking to juice sales headed into the holiday season. However, in the latest great example of Washington being totally out of touch, many politicians are acting like these sales events don’t exist, pushing policy changes that threaten to upend the retail sector...

Distance running with an upper-body amputation is a war against instability. Muscles can strain so much to compensate for the missing limb that they contort your spine, misalign your shoulders, and worsen your imbalance. In 2017, Ashley Jones—then 15 years old—faced a punishing return to high school sports following the amputation of her right arm. On the soccer field, she had collisions so violent that the pain would bring her to the brink of blackout. Later, during cross-country runs, the jostling of the amputation site intensified her phantom pain—which she’d already rated 7 out of 10 on normal days—to as...