Free Republic

This week, Republicans and Democrats got together to avert a government shutdown. Too bad. There’s so much that ought to be shut down. Useless Cabinet departments, for example, like Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and Agriculture. Agriculture employs almost 100,000 people. Why? Independent farmers grow our food. They don’t need a giant department. Let’s get rid of the Department of Education, too. Why does it even exist? Education is a local responsibility and none of the federal government’s business. Yet its spending is up 300% over the past 10 years. The department didn’t even exist before 1979. Has education improved...

There's a socialist wave in Latin America. Mexico, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil recently elected leftists. These politicians at least distance themselves from thugs like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, but all propose socialism-lite policies giving government more control over more people. Why don't people in Latin America learn from the mistakes of the past? Gloria Alvarez, a social media star from Guatemala, is running for president of her country to try to educate people about the damage socialism does. People do need educating. "It's like Stockholm syndrome," says Alvarez in my new video. "When you ask people, 'Who should...

As we have previously reported, journalist John Stossel is suing Facebook after Facebook’s ‘fact checkers’ labeled climate change information that Stossel posted as “false and misleading”. In the middle of all this is the nefarious website “Climate Feedback” which has a bunch of climate zealots that write up what they claim are “fact checks” for articles, videos, and news stories they disagree with. Facebook just blew the “fact check” claim right out of the water in court.

Happy Thanksgiving! But beware the "tragedy of the commons." It almost killed off the pilgrims. Now, via Washington, D.C., it's probably coming for us. Tragedy of the commons is a concept from an essay by ecologist Garrett Hardin. He wrote how cattle ranchers sharing a common parcel of land soon destroy that land. That's because each rancher has an incentive to put cattle on the common. Soon, the extra animals eat all the grass. Shared grazing space is destroyed because no rancher has an incentive to conserve. If the ranchers put up a few fences and divide the land, each...

I just sued Facebook. I didn’t want to sue. I hate lawsuits. I tried for a year to reach someone at Facebook to fix things, but Facebook wouldn’t. Here’s the problem: Facebook uses “independent fact-checkers” to try to reduce fake news on their site. That’s a noble goal. Unfortunately, at least one Facebook “fact-checker” is a climate-alarmist group that cleverly uses its Facebook connections to stop debate. Facebook is a private company. It has every right to cut me off. But Facebook does not have the right to just lie about me, yet that’s exactly what Facebook and its “fact-checker”...

I just sued Facebook. I didn’t want to sue. I hate lawsuits. I tried for a year to reach someone at Facebook to fix things, but Facebook wouldn’t. Here’s the problem: Facebook uses “independent fact-checkers” to try to reduce fake news on its site. That’s a noble goal. Unfortunately, at least one Facebook “fact-checker” is a climate-alarmist group that cleverly uses its Facebook connections to stop debate. Facebook is a private company. It has every right to cut me off. But Facebook does not have the right to just lie about me, yet that’s exactly what Facebook and its “fact-checker”...

@JohnStosselSenator @RandPaul is censored—his YouTube channel frozen for a week. Why? We SHOULD listen to Paul. He got much right about #Covid19: Video...

@JohnStossel “Trans people should be allowed to experience sports,” says trans athlete/scientist Joanna Harper. Ok. But how can that be done fairly? Clip...

Coronavirus is frightening. I'm working from home, practicing "social distancing." Experts say it'll help "flatten the curve" so fewer people will be infected simultaneously. Then hospitals won't be overwhelmed. But the infection rate grows. Doctors and hospitals may yet be overwhelmed. It didn't have to get to this point. Coronavirus deaths leveled off in South Korea. That's because people in Korea could easily find out if they had the disease. There are hundreds of testing locations -- even pop-up drive-thru testing centers. Because Koreans got tested, Korean doctors knew who needed to be isolated and who didn't. As a result,...

Bernie Sanders leads the race for the Democratic nomination. He may become America's first self-described "democratic socialist" president. What does that mean? Today, when Sanders talks about socialism, he says: "I'm not looking at Cuba. I'm looking at countries like Denmark and Sweden." But Denmark and Sweden are not socialist. Denmark's prime minister even came to America to refute Sanders' claims, pointing out that "Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy." Both Denmark and Sweden do give citizens government-run health care and have bigger welfare programs than America has. However, recently, they've moved away from socialism. Because their socialist...

Hollywood is now obsessing about increasing ethnic and gender diversity. Good. There's been nasty racial and gender discrimination in the movie business. Unfortunately, Hollywood has no interest in one type of diversity: diversity of thought. In most every movie, capitalism is evil. Greedy miners want to kill nature-loving aliens in "Avatar." Director James Cameron says: "The mining company boss will be the villain again in several sequels. ... Same guy. Same mother----er through all four movies." One reviewer calls a scene in the recent "Star Wars" movie "a beautiful critique of unregulated capitalism." "Unregulated capitalism" is such a stupid cliche....

President Donald Trump promised he'd get rid of bad rules. "Remove the anchor dragging us down!" he said when campaigning for president. "We're going to cancel every needless job-killing regulation!" Trump was a developer, so he knew that the thicket of rules government imposes often makes it impossible to get things done. But would he keep his deregulation promise? I was skeptical. Republicans often talk deregulation but then add rules. People called President George W. Bush an "anti-regulator." But once he was president, he hired 90,000 new regulators! Trump has been different. When he took office, he hired regulation skeptics....

The city of Dunedin, Florida, wants Jim Ficken's home.Ficken's mom died, so he went to South Carolina to take care of her estate. He asked a friend to look after his house.But then the friend died, and no one cut Ficken's grass. When it grew to 10 inches, Dunedin officials started fining him $500 a day.The fine is now about $30,000."I was shocked," Ficken says in my latest video. City officials say they will foreclose on his home if he doesn't pay the fine, and Ficken doesn't have that much money."Do you have $30,000 lying around?!" he asked me."The city...

Are you very afraid? 3D-printed guns are coming. "Virtually undetectable!" shrieked CNN. "This changes the safety of Americans forever!" shrieked MSNBC. Does it? Six years ago, a company called Defense Distributed posted blueprints for 3D-printed guns on the web. The Obama State Department said that violated the Arms Control Act because allowing foreigners to see them is equivalent to exporting a missile launcher, and that's illegal. Defense Distributed withdrew the blueprints. Gun control advocates were relieved. "We have enough guns in this country already," Massachusetts legislator David Linsky tells me in my new video about 3D-printed guns. But this debate...

Republicans held the Senate! Democrats took the House but by a narrower margin! Did I just embarrass myself? I write this Election Day morning, before most polling places even opened. I don't know the actual results, of course. But I'll pretend I do because I trust the betting odds. As of Tuesday morning, ElectionBettingOdds.com, a site I co-founded, says Republicans have an 84 percent chance to hold the Senate and Democrats a 71 percent chance to retake the House. Why trust a bunch of gamblers? Because they have the best track record! Polls have flaws. Some people lie to pollsters...

"Libertarians believe that you should be as conservative or as liberal as you want to be as long as you don't want to force yourself on others," says Larry Sharpe, Libertarian candidate for governor of New York.Sharpe is an unusual Libertarian candidate because he's doing well in some polls.One found Sharpe getting 13 percent, and after people heard his campaign pitch, 25 percent. That would put him in second place, ahead of the Republican.So of course the establishment shuts him out -- he and other third-party candidates weren't allowed in the one gubernatorial debate.Sharpe wins fans by arguing that it...

Social Security is running out of money. You may not believe that, but it's a fact. That FICA money taken from your paycheck was not saved for you in a "trust fund." Politicians misled us. They spent every penny the moment it came in. This started as soon as they created Social Security. They assumed that FICA payments from young workers would cover the cost of sending checks to older people. After all, at the time, most Americans died before they reached 65. Now, however, people keep living longer. There just aren't enough young people to cover my Social Security...

Union protestors and celebrity advocates have decided that waiters' tips aren't big enough... As usual, those who want the government to decide that workers must be paid more insist that "women and minorities" are hurt by the market. But waitress Alcieli Felipe is a minority and a woman. She says the celebrities and politicians should butt out. Thanks to tips, Felipe says in my new internet video, she makes "$25 an hour. By the end of the year, $48,000 to $50,000." She understands that if government raises the minimum, "It'll be harder for restaurants to keep the same amount of...

Today, all Americans are told, "Go to college!" President Obama said, "College graduation has never been more valuable." But economist Bryan Caplan says that most people shouldn't go. "How many thousands of hours did you spend in classes studying subjects that you never thought about again?" he asks. Lots, in my case. At Princeton, I learned to live with strangers, play cards and chase women, but I slept through boring lectures, which were most of them. At least tuition was only $2,000. Now it's almost $50,000. "People usually just want to talk about the tuition, which is a big deal,...

Maybe Donald Trump is such a powerful communicator and pot-stirrer that other countries, embarrassed by their own trade barriers, will eliminate them. Then I will thank the president for the wonderful thing he did. Genuine free trade will be a recipe for wonderful economic growth. But I fear the opposite: a trade war and stagnation -- because much of what Trump and his followers say is economically absurd. "(If) you don't have steel, you don't have a country!" announced the president. Lots of things are essential to America -- and international trade is the best way to make sure we...