Free Republic

- New 4.3% sales tax on Uber Eats, Amazon, etc deliveries. - New sales tax on admissions to a wide variety of businesses. - Create two new higher tax brackets of 8% and 10% on people making over $600K. - A new 10% tax bracket for anyone making over $1M. - 3.8% investment tax on top of state income taxes. - Raise the hotel tax. - New personal property tax on landscaping equipment. - Ban gas powered leaf blowers. - Guarantee illegal aliens free education. - Make it illegal to approach somebody at an abortion clinic. - Extend the time...

Brussels doubles down on gender, diversity, and decarbonisation while Europe’s strategic and social problems are pushed aside. The European Commission has just made public its political priorities for 2026, and the result is hard to justify from any minimally realistic perspective. In an international context marked by war, geopolitical competition, energy insecurity, and internal social deterioration, Brussels has chosen to double down on an ideological agenda that appears utterly detached from the material reality facing Europeans. While much of the world is moving towards more pragmatic positions on foreign policy, defence, and economic sovereignty, the European Union insists on turning...

SCENARIO: COVID-19 RESPONSE (2020-2023) This demonstrates EVERY cognitive warfare technique from those documents: PHASE 1 - FEAR AMPLIFICATION: 24/7 death counters on every screen (emotional manipulation) Worst-case models presented as certainty (anchoring bias) Images of body bags, overwhelmed hospitals on loop (availability heuristic - if you see it repeatedly, you think it's common) Cognitive Technique: Amygdala hijacking - bypass rational thought with fear PHASE 2 - INFORMATION CONTROL: Dissenting doctors censored on social media (information environment control) "Fact-checkers" (narrative gatekeepers) label alternative views "misinformation" Google/YouTube algorithms suppress certain content Cognitive Technique: Controlling the information space so only approved narratives exist...

BERLIN, Jan 8 (Reuters) - German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has strongly criticised U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump and urged the world not to let the world order disintegrate into a "den of robbers" where the unscrupulous take what they want. In unusually strong remarks, which appeared to refer to actions such as the ousting of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro at the weekend, the former foreign minister said global democracy was being attacked as never before. Although the German president's role is largely ceremonial, his words carry some weight and he has more freedom to express views than politicians....

President Donald Trump told House Republicans on Tuesday, during remarks at their annual retreat, that ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro had tortured people, describing him as responsible for widespread violence and abuse. "He's a violent guy and he's killed millions of people," said Trump, in comments airing on Newsmax, while decrying Democrats' complaints about the weekend military operation that led to the capture of Maduro and his wife. "They have a torture chamber in the middle of Caracas that they're closing up. But he's tortured people," he said.

If you see a little lefty crying like a widow over the fall of Nicolás Maduro, just tell them to take a little stroll over to the Helicoide. How many horror stories and human rights violations were committed there ☠

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has promised to "defeat the decline and division offered by others" in his new year message, as he insisted 2026 would see people feel "positive change" in their lives. He acknowledged "things have been tough in Britain for a while" but said the public should now start to see improvements including lower bills, more police on the streets and new health hubs. It has been a difficult year for the PM, who has been battling slowing economic growth, poor poll ratings and speculation he could face a leadership challenge. In her own new year message,...

Instead of giving these workers additional employment benefits, the result is that they are less likely to be hired at all. The California SAC heard testimony from workers from a diverse array of industries offering their experiences with AB5, including court reporters, translators, cosmetology workers, and exotic dancers. Many of these workers were women, immigrants, people of color, and from other politically disadvantaged groups. Esther Hermida, a representative of the American Alliance of Professional Translators and Interpreters (AAPTI) testified about AB5’s impact on thousands of citizens in her industry comprised of 75 percent women. One professional translator, Ildiko Santana, reported...

ransomnote: Video at the link. I captured the text of the clip in two segments below.https://x.com/iluminatibot/status/2005237732285751723 illuminatibot@iluminatibot·14hTop 10 dark quotes from The World Economic Forum.You can't say they didn't warn you...

We often think about human-induced climate change as something that will happen in the future, but it is happening now. Ecosystems and people in the United States and around the world are affected by the ongoing process of climate change today. Climate change affects the environment in many different ways, including rising temperatures, sea level rise, drought, flooding, and more. These events affect things that we depend upon and value, like water, energy, transportation, wildlife, agriculture, ecosystems, and human health.

In 1988, if you had told anyone that the Soviet Union would cease to exist just four years later, you would have been dismissed as a crank. The institutions looked solid, the bureaucracy entrenched, and the power absolute. Yet by 1992, it was history. Today, European politicians in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris suffer from the same dangerous optimism. They believe they are so safely ensconced in their institutional frameworks that public anger can never truly throw them out of the saddle. But looking at the trajectory of the European Union, I believe we are closer to a revolutionary moment than...

One Australian politician has said the quiet part out loud It’s not often the Premier of New South Wales says something that changes the political debate in the UK and elsewhere, but so it is this week. Following the awful carnage on Bondi Beach, NSW Premier Chris Minns gave a press conference about new legal restrictions on speech, and said this: “I acknowledge that we don’t have the same free speech rules that they have in the United States and I make no apologies for that, we have got a responsibility to knit together our community, that comes from different...

Mervyn Kersh is proud of his country, and of the role he played in helping to defeat the Nazis in the Second World War. But the soon-to-be 101-year-old Jewish D-Day veteran, who also witnessed the horrors of the newly-liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, is not proud of what he sees as the current state of the nation. Speaking to the Daily Mail from his comfortable home in north London, Mervyn is despondent about modern Britain and the myriad crises it faces. He goes as far as saying that victory over Adolf Hitler was a 'waste of time', adding that...

When elections were annulled in Romania, Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner, said: "We did it in Romania, and we will do it in Germany." It’s worth remembering that quote when the same institutions now lecture others about coercion and democratic norms. ... Elon Musk .. Tyranny Breton gets his dessert

Europeans can be so stupid on this: 1. “What about the Russians?” We are not allied with Russia. We have a wide variety of sanctions against them. We have long supported Ukraine in the current war. At least Putin doesn’t whine. 2. “We are democratic!” No. Europe is bureaucratic with many layers separating voters from policy. Plus you regulate media and control information so your voters are badly misinformed. 3. “We support free speech!” No you don’t. Either you think we’re stupid enough to believe that or you’re stupid enough to believe it. This whole conflict is driven by your...

“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”Attributed to Voltaire, this quote holds great significance, even in our modern times. In the twentieth century, we saw absurd ideologies like communism and Nazism take root in modern states and drive civilized people to commit unfathomable atrocities. The popular notion of race-poisoning propelled the Nazi regime on a militant crusade to purge the European continent of inferior peoples, as the regime defined the term. In the second half of the twentieth century, the equally absurd notion of ubiquitous ecological poisoning took hold in the West, spawning a new...

DIGITAL ID CARDS: "France and Germany have digital IDs, and they have record immigration" (Dr Renee Hoenderkamp) ⛔️NO to compulsory Digital ID - not in your manifesto and not wanted A national digital ID system, pushed using the excuse of "immigration control," threatens everyone’s freedom, privacy, and safety

The prosecution of a British pro-life advocate for praying violates ‘fundamental freedoms’ and ‘the shared values that ought to underpin US-UK relations,’ a State Department official said.(LifeSiteNews) — The U.K.’s prosecuting of a British pro-life activist for standing silently within an abortion center’s buffer zone is not only “concerning” as it violates “common sense” but is an “unwelcome departure” from shared transatlantic values, said a Trump administration official. According to a Saturday report in The Telegraph, the spokesman for the U.S. State Department was addressing the case of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a Catholic pro-life activist who was charged last Wednesday for...

Nearly 30 years ago I wrote a short article for the Human Rights Defender about the ‘right’ to own guns. In those days there wasn’t much to say. Even in the gun-crazy United States of America (USA), the courts had consistently ruled that the vaunted Second Amendment to the Constitution was no obstacle to regulation of firearms; its power was psychological and political, rather than legal. My article was prompted by the emergence of rights rhetoric from the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (SSAA), part of the Australian pro-gun lobby, which had formed an alliance with the US National Rifle...

If Europe’s elites want war, they should pick up a rifle and fight. After the European Commission levied a several-hundred-million-dollar fine on Elon Musk and his social media platform X earlier this month, journalist Michael Shellenberger wrote a damning post in which he excoriated Europe’s rank censorship and state-sponsored propaganda. He accused the commission of engaging “in a deception campaign aimed at confusing” Europeans and Americans into thinking that European elites’ “goal” is anything other than “to censor the American people.” Shellenberger pointed out that Musk’s fine came while European governments are demanding backdoor access to all private text messages...