Free Republic

"The Christian Democrats are pointing out that continuing encroachment by government into school admissions is an unwelcome move that approaches nationalization. The party says that if pursued, it would be a grave violation of parental rights as primary educators of their children." Our president is so enamored of the British health care system, could this move be tried in the U.S. soon, too??

One of the nation's largest labor unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is promoting a plan that will centralize all retirement plans for American workers, including private 401(k) plans, under one new "retirement system" for the United States. In effect, government pensions for everyone, not unlike the European system and regardless of personal choice. The SEIU, which was integral to the election of Barack Obama as president, is working with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, on SEIU's plan, called "the Retirement USA Initiative." Claiming that the retirement system...

As a citizen of the United States, I hereby declare that the Federal Government is in violation of the Constitution, and my rights as an individual, with their pursuit of the Health Care Reform Bill, and, therefore, I refuse to be subject to any of the “requirements” or “obligations” imposed by the legislation. I refuse to purchase health insurance under the threat of fine or imprisonment. I refuse to pay any increased taxes associated with this bill. I refuse to have my tax payments be diverted to handpicked states and constituencies who were promised special “deals” during this fraudulent process....

A blizzard of safety concerns surrounding Toyota has put the Obama ­administration in a delicate position as it seeks to avoid the temptation of boosting the fortunes of Detroit's struggling US carmakers by bullying the Japanese manufacturer too aggressively. Toyota has swiftly become the butt of jokes in the US. The talkshow host Jon Stewart this week dubbed the firm's pedal problems "the Toyotathon of death". Speculating on the reaction of the bosses of General Motors and Chrysler, Stewart said: "Boys, we're back in the game! All we had to do was have the leading competition become a death trap."...

(CNSNews.com) – A bill currently before the Senate would empower the Obama administration to nationalize the student lending industry, eliminating the federally subsidized private loans millions of university students rely on to finance their educations. The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act – currently being considered by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee – would eliminate the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL)program.

CARACAS (Dow Jones)--President Hugo Chavez ordered Sunday the seizure of a French-owned retail chain on accusations that it raised prices after Venezuela devalued the currency by half. "Until when are we going to allow this to happen?" Chavez asked during his Sunday television program in reference to the alleged price hike by Almacenes Exito, headquartered in Colombia and controlled by French retailer Casino Guichard-Perrachon S.A. (CO.FR). The Venezuelan leader said that new law may need to be approved to carry out the nationalization. "I'm waiting for the new law to begin the expropriation process," he said. "There's no going back,"...

There's a scary couple of paragraphs in a WaPo editorial today: The Obama administration has promised to roll out its ideas for fixing Fannie and Freddie early this year. Anticipating that, the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank with ties to the administration, has proposed new entities called chartered mortgage-backed securities issuers (CMIs): privately owned firms that would package mortgages into securities and sell them with an explicit federal guarantee. Securitization fees would go into an insurance fund to protect taxpayers against defaults. Profits and product lines would be tightly limited by federal regulators The CAP proposal...

'Breathtaking CCTV footage of a meteor lighting up the night sky over South Africa has been posted online.'

CLAIRE BERLINSKI Government Motors 1975 America should learn from Britain’s disastrous takeover of its biggest auto company. PETER MARLOW/MAGNUM PHOTOS Striking became a way of life for British Leyland autoworkers during the seventies. After the Second World War, the United Kingdom’s newly elected Labour government resolved to build of Britain a New Jerusalem. It nationalized the commanding heights of the economy and inaugurated the cradle-to-grave welfare state. By the 1970s, the UK faced an economic crisis unrivaled since the Great Depression. Shabby and hopeless, Britain had become, in Henry Kissinger’s words, a “tragedy” of a nation, reduced to “begging, borrowing,...

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Monday said Congress needs to provide regulators greater tools to control the risky financial behavior that helped trigger the recession and to unwind major firms on the verge of collapse. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said she supports such a winding-down process for financial institutions other than banks. But she does have reservations with a proposal now before the House, which would cover the costs for the government of dissolving troubled companies with fees charged to businesses after the firms' meltdown occurred. Bair says that fund should be...

President Hugo Chavez has ordered the "acquisition by force" of a landmark Hilton Hotel on Venezuela's Margarita island, the government's Official Gazette announced Tuesday. The facility, on the Caribbean resort island of Margarita in Nueva Esparta state, was targeted for state takeover less than a month after it was used to host the Africa-South America Summit. It is not the first time Chavez's government has checked into a Hilton and stayed for good. Caracas has already seized the Hotel Hilton in Caracas, rechristening it the Hotel Alba, a reference to the Venezuelan-led leftist regional alliance Alianza Bolivariana para las Americas...

If Barack Obama had campaigned on what he has actually done in his first 300 days in office, would he have been elected? That's the question so many are asking today. If Obama had told us he would appoint 34 czars, reporting only to himself and not vetted or confirmed in the constitutional way, building a powerful unitary executive branch of government, would he have been elected? What if he had told us that his green jobs czar had been a Communist, that the science czar wrote in a college textbook that compulsory "green abortions" are an acceptable way to...

CARACAS, Venezuela -- President Hugo Chavez's government is preparing to nationalize the nation's largest coffee producers, claiming the companies have refused to comply with federal price controls. Commerce Minister Eduardo Saman said he is recommending the nationalization of coffee plants belonging to Caracas-based companies Fama de America and Cafe Madrid. He did not say when the nationalizations could take place But Chavez told journalists that his government has not made a final decision on the nationalization of the plants. "If they give me an excuse, I'll nationalize them," he said. Saman said the measure had been encouraged by workers displeased...

Money from pharmaceutical firms and health care companies is dirty, evil, and corrupting – except when key members of Team Obama are pocketing it. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs derides grass-roots opponents of socialized health care as industry-funded lackeys with questionable motives and conflicts of interest. But what about the corporate shills at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Two weeks ago, the White House embraced $150 million in drug industry ads supporting Obamacare. This week, Bloomberg News reported that White House senior adviser and chief campaign strategist David Axelrod’s former public relations firm, AKPD Message and Media, has raked in some $24...

Cape Town - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is stockpiling arms and ammunition and preparing for war, the Democratic Alliance warned on Thursday.... ..."Mugabe is [also] talking to Venezuela, Cuba and Korea to fund a war-chest in preparation for the referendum and election, following the implementation of the global political agreement (GPA) brokered by former president Thabo Mbeki on behalf of SADC."... ...James said Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party appeared to be "mobilising for war against their own citizens"....

enezuelan President Hugo Chavez is taking over private companies in order to deal with the economic crisis that has affected both his country and the United States, and the Obama administration is trying to do roughly the same thing, Venezuelan political analyst Dr. Luis Vicente León told CNSNews.com Monday. “I don’t like to make comparisons (between the U.S. and Venezuela) because you can only compare concepts,” León, a noted political analyst and pollster in Venezuela said in Spanish. “But conceptually, one can say that in order to solve the crisis, President Obama has had to overtake private companies.” He added:...

DETROIT – General Motors completed an unusually quick exit from bankruptcy protection on Friday with ambitions of making money and building cars people are eager to buy. Once the world's largest and most powerful automaker, new GM is now leaner, cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without federal loans. But GM, whose 40 days under court supervision was far shorter than anyone predicted, faces the worst auto sales slump in a quarter-century. At a news conference, CEO Fritz Henderson said the revamped automaker will be faster and more responsive to customers than the old...

Here are the major news stories from the past two days you've just GOT to read and Digg! http://diggsandburies.blogspot.com/

We don’t have to work too hard to envision what Obama’s Post-Capitalist America will look like, because it’s here already. The basic ingredients bureaucratization and overregulation have already destroyed sizable chunks of American industry and business over a number of decades. Now with nationalization on the table, we’re getting the first glimpses of what the American auto industry and medicine will look like, nationalized.

NET LOSSES Steyn on America Monday, 22 June 2009 A mere year ago the notion that the government would take over General Motors would have seemed incredible. Yet here we are, with the president of the United States firing the CEO and personally calling the mayor of Detroit to assure him he has no plans to move the head office out of the city. Not literally, not yet. But in any practical sense it’s now headquartered in Washington. In another twelve months, I wonder what currently unthinkable scenarios will have become faits accomplis.