Free Republic

Why is so much perfectly good milk draining into pits instead of replenishing empty dairy aisles? Frustrated shoppers have reason to cry over spilled milk. Dairy farmers are dumping millions of gallons of the stuff. Meanwhile, some dairy products are sold out at many grocery stores across the country, due to intense demand for basic household goods amid the coronavirus crisis. USA Today reports on one farm in Wisconsin: “About 7 o’clock Tuesday night, Golden E Dairy got the call that any dairy farmer would dread. They were being asked to dump 25,000 gallons of fresh milk a day because...

Federal agencies spent $100 billion on “use-it-or-lose-it” spending in September, a practice that occurs every year, according to Washington-D.C.-based nonprofit OpentheBooks.com. Instead of returning unused taxpayer funds to the Treasury Department, “savvy bureaucrats know that if they don’t use up the rest of their allotted budget, they may not receive the same bloated funding the following year,” OpentheBooks.com argues. Federal spending in fiscal year 2018 equated to a 16-percent increase from fiscal year 2017, and a 39-percent increase from fiscal year 2015, ... On average, the federal government spent $3.2 billion per day on contracts throughout the month of September,...

Explanation: The majestic Lagoon Nebula is filled with hot gas and the home for many young stars. Spanning 100 light years across while lying only about 5000 light years distant, the Lagoon Nebula is so big and bright that it can be seen without a telescope toward the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius). Many bright stars are visible from NGC 6530, an open cluster that formed in the nebula only several million years ago. The greater nebula, also known as M8 and NGC 6523, is named "Lagoon" for the band of dust seen to the right of the open cluster's...

Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer has had a really bad year. He failed to get other left-wing donors to join his crusade to make climate change the No. 1 election issue. Then he wasted nearly $75 million backing liberal candidates. Four out of the seven politicians he and his NextGen Climate Action group backed lost. And the few races where liberals won owed little or nothing to Steyer’s bizarre and sometimes inaccurate campaign ads.

Environmentalists have switched their assault on the world economy to a new frontier, previously unaffected by their agenda – peaks, Mount Everest to be more specific, located between China and Nepal in the Himalayas. The 29,029 feet mountain is in danger. What is the crisis? According to the National Geographic team, the mountain is “overcrowded with inexperienced climbers and polluted with waste.” The nature of the pollution includes human corpses, human excrement, garbage leaking from glaciers, abandoned equipment, and overcrowding. How crowded could it be? Mark Jenkins described at 26,000 feet the dangerous inconvenience of more than 100 climbers moving...

With the roll out of Obamacare being as disastrous as possible for the Obama administration, one group was given a $1 million grant to help lead a rebranding effort with hopes of salvaging the law in the eyes of the American people. Families USA (FUSA) — an organization that describes itself as a “national nonprofit, non-partisan organization dedicated to the achievement of high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans” — was given a $1.1 million grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on October 4, 2013, to gather “success stories” of Americans dealing with Obamacare and distribute them to the...

<p>Congress will shut down on Thursday, and leaders have told lawmakers the Defense Department will fly them to Florida for the funeral of Rep. C.W. Bill Young, who died late last week.</p> <p>Mr. Young was the senior Republican in the chamber, and the move to close down business is a mark of respect for him — though it also means that there will be no floor votes and that many committee meetings have been canceled, cutting short what was already a mostly empty week. The House’s hearing examining the health exchange rollout will continue as planned, however.</p>

HONOLULU, Hawaii — President Obama is golfing at Mamala Bay Golf Course at Hickam Air Force Base in a group that includes White House travel director Marvin Nicholson and Hawaiian pal Robert “Bobby” Titcomb, who was arrested in April on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute. In April, Titcomb was one of four men arrested in an undercover prostitution sting operation, according to Honolulu police. Titcomb, an airline employee and commercial fisherman, has been friends with the president since they attended Honolulu’s elite Punahou School together in the 1970s.

A stunning collection of 70 facts about the U.S. economy just posted on the web is probably not going to make it into the next campaign ad from the folks at Obama for America. However, you might want to read it. TheBlaze has culled 10 from the list of 70 here: The price of gas – When Obama took office, a gallon of gas cost you $1.85. Today, it’s up to $3.59 per gallon (July’s rise was 17 cents a gallon). 71% of small business owners believe we’re still in a recession — Despite government claims that the recession actually ended...

Created for OMG! For America

By: Mark Joppa (Mark is a tea party enthusiast in the Hudson Valley, New York) The United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) in fiscal year 2010 had a combined budget of $134 billion (this alone is insane!). Just three years prior, in fiscal year 2007 the USDA had a lower budget of $88 billion. No one really knows how or why the Department of Agriculture spent $88 billion in 2007, together with an additional $46 billion in 2010, but let’s examine USDA’s 2012 budget. President Obama has proposed $145 billion. In these tough times with high unemployment and the historically...

Examples of wasteful projects include: - $762,372 to create “Dance Draw” interactive dance software - $1.9 million for international ant research - $1.8 million for a road project that is threatening a pastor’s home - $308 million for a joint clean energy venture with…BP - $89,298 to replace a new sidewalk that leads to a ditch in Boynton, OK - $200,000 to help Siberian communities lobby Russian policy makers - $760,000 to Georgia Tech to study improvised music - $700,000 to study why monkeys respond negatively to inequity - $193,956 to study voter perceptions of the economic stimulus - $363,760...

Most Americans trade an hour's sleep this weekend for more evening sunshine to enjoy after work. Officially the change to daylight saving time occurs at 2 a.m. Sunday, local time, though most folks set their clocks and watches ahead an hour before going to bed on Saturday

Raleigh, N.C. — Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker on Monday repeated his call that the city move forward with construction of a $205 million public safety center downtown, saying delays will only add to construction costs. Meeker also noted during his 2010 State of the City address that Raleigh has weathered the economic downturn better than many other cities and is well-positioned to grow as the business climate improves. Raleigh Mayor Charles MeekerWATCH VIDEO Web only: Raleigh's 2010 State of the City address The 300,000-square-foot Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center would house the city's police and fire departments, as well...

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has been given an evening speaking slot at the Republican National Convention and will focus his remarks on wasteful government spending and earmarks, his office said Thursday. Coburn, who, like GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), is a vocal opponent of pork barrel spending, will address the convention on Tuesday night. Giving the Oklahoma senator a coveted evening slot will highlight McCain’s commitment to curbing wasteful spending and is seen as a nod to fiscal conservative voters fed up with the deficit spending that occurred during Republican control of Congress and continues under the Democratic...

But no matter how many times Ryan or his allies scream “I get it” from the mountaintop and vow to do the right thing if returned to power, the voters will not believe them until they believe his colleagues are capable of acting in a way that is consistent with conservative principles and contrary to their parochial, political interests. The voters seem to be saying: do something out of character. Admit you were wrong about something. Give me a reason to pay attention to all those 10-point action plans you’re waving around. Imagine the public’s reaction if 50 or so...

Governments should tax plasma screen televisions because of the large amount of energy they consume, according to a leading expert on climate change. Professor Paul Ekins, who studies the economics of climate change, said taxing plasma screens would reflect their "greater climate change burden". This would encourage development and take-up of more energy efficient diode screens, Professor Ekins said. He said government could label energy hungry appliances as a first step. Plasma televisions, which are 50% bigger than their cathode-ray tube equivalents, consume about four times more energy, according to the government-funded Energy Saving Trust.

A urologist charged California's prison system $2,036 an hour to treat inmates. An orthopedic surgeon billed the state for 30 hours' work - for a single day. The examples are contained in an audit released Tuesday that found rampant waste in how California's prison health care system spends money on outside doctors, nurses and laboratories. The lax spending practices have cost California taxpayers millions, according to the audit by the state controller's office. Prison health care spending soared from $153 million in 2001 to $821 million this year - an increase of $668 million, or 437 percent. "Waste, abuse and...

Is the Orleans Levee Board doing its job? Critics allege corruption, charge the board with wasteful spending By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit NBC News Updated: 11:52 a.m. ET Sept. 15, 2005 Lisa Myers Senior investigative correspondent The unveiling of the Mardi Gras Fountain was celebrated this year in typical New Orleans style. The cost of $2.4 million was paid by the Orleans Levee Board, the state agency whose main job is to protect the levees surrounding New Orleans — the same levees that failed after Katrina hit. "They misspent the money," says Billy Nungesser, a former top...

The Ridiculous Food Pyramid  New Food Guide Unveiled (posted 4/23/05)4/19/05 Washington Post Concerned about steadily expanding waistlines... Stop! The first sentence of this story already rubs me the wrong way. Since when was it the responsibility of government to worry about how fat you or I are? One would think the citizens of this country would be more 'Concerned about the steadily expanding waistlines' of bloated and nonsensical government programs funded with their looted taxpayer dollars than the government would be 'Concerned about the steadily expanding waistlines' of its citizens.     I mean, who is the government?!? Who are these people that...