Free Republic

On Wednesday (March 30, 2022), at a meeting of the U.S. Senate Committee on Budget, Sanders raised an issue that’s been a regular part of his political platform for many years: wealth distribution. “Anyone who thinks we do not have an oligarchy right here in America is sorely mistaken,” he said. “Today in America, multibillionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson are off taking joy rides on their rocket ships to outer space.” Sanders appeared to be citing the three billionaires’ spaceflight companies: SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, respectively. All three U.S.-based businesses have played a large part...

Pinning the death of Jamal Khashoggi on Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is important to those who want to return to the Obama-era alignment of the U.S. with Iran, not Saudi Arabia, as our principal relationship with the Middle East Muslim world. MbS, as he is known, is a committed modernizer, favorable to warming relations with Israel. Damaging his global standing with the tar of culpability for the killing and dismemberment of Khashoggi could even lead to his fall from the pinnacle of power in Riyadh.Caroline Glick explains who Khashoggi really was — not an actual "journalist" or "columnist"...

So, tomorrow at 9:00am EDT, the Blue Origin New Sheppard is planned to launch into the West Texas skies, carrying its first human passengers to the edge of space. The question is: will the world's richest man, Jeff Besos, pull off this stunt as fellow billionaire Sir Richard Branson did a few days ago? He's supposed to go higher than Branson did, not to mention that he'll be accompanied by both the world's oldest (82) and youngest (18) people to go into space.

Barcelona’s poorest district is to pilot a “basic income” scheme that will see residents given grants to lift them above the breadline in a ground-breaking social experiment. The Barcelona district of Besós has been picked to test a €13 million European Union funded pilot scheme investigating “innovative and creative solutions” to urban poverty. The Catalan capital has been chosen alongside Utrecht in the Netherlands and the Finnish city of Helsinki to test the scheme, which will see the poorest residents in each chosen district given grants for two years to lift them above the breadline. In the B-Mincome experiment, 1,000...

There was a fair bit of coverage on Monday of the news that the Donald Trump campaign had removed the press credentials from the Washington Post because the campaign was upset with the Washington Post's coverage of the campaign. While it got a lot of attention, it was quickly pointed out that Trump has revoked or barred at least six other news outlets from receiving press passes, including Politico, the Huffington Post, the National Review, Buzzfeed and the Daily Beast. This issue is being discussed in lots of media circles. But what interested me much more was buried deeper in...