Free Republic

The end is near, we’re all going to die. Unless, that is, we empower government to control more of the economy and our lives. It’s a standard trick of the left – predict doom and gloom in the future in an attempt to scare the Hell out of people while promising to avoid it if we let them get their way. While this could apply to nearly anything Democrats are pushing on any given day, this week it’s about global cooling. I mean, global warming. Er, scratch that, climate change…for now, at least.The government issued another climate report on Friday,...

Mark Robbins gets to work at 8:15 each morning and unlocks the door to his office suite. He switches on the lights and the TV news, brews a pot of coffee and pulls out the first files of the day to review. For the next eight hours or so, he reads through federal workplace disputes, analyzes the cases, marks them with notes and logs his legal opinions. When he’s finished, he slips the files into a cardboard box and carries them into an empty room where they will sit and wait. For nobody. He’s at 1,520 files and counting. […]...

The total debt shouldered by Americans has hit another record high, rising to $13.5 trillion in the last quarter, while an unusual jump in student-loan delinquencies could provide another signal that the U.S. economic expansion is growing old. Flows of student debt into serious delinquency - of 90 or more days - rose to 9.1 percent in the third quarter from 8.6 percent in the previous quarter, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported on Friday. That propelled the biggest jump in the overall U.S. delinquency rate in seven years. Total household debt, driven by a $9.1 trillion in...

AFGE calls recent actions by the VA ‘the latest overreach in their quest to bust unions’ and remove rights at workWASHINGTON – The country’s largest federal employee union filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block recent union-busting actions by the administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs.  The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 250,000 workers at the VA, filed the lawsuit along with the National Federation of Federal Employees and the National Association of Government Employees in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia late Wednesday, hours before the orders were to be...

Let’s say you and some of your friends decide to gather your young children together a couple of days a week for a few hours of free play. Maybe you switch off who leads the gaggle of kids each week, allowing for some shared free time and flexibility. Sounds like a great arrangement for all, right? Your kids get to play freely with their friends, and you get some occasional free babysitting. According to government officials in Washington, DC, arrangements like this are violations of the law. They are cracking down on what they call an illegal “child development facility”...

The legal fight over a 2016 lower court ruling upholding Obama-era net neutrality regulations aimed at ensuring a free and open internet - rules that have since been repealed by President Donald Trump’s administration - came to a formal end on Monday, with the U.S. Supreme Court declining to take up the matter. The Trump administration and internet service providers had asked to justices to wipe away the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that had temporarily preserved the net neutrality regulations championed by Democratic former President Barack Obama. But the justices refused...

Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Sunday that she changed her mind recently and took a DNA test proving her heritage because Americans’ trust in government is “at an all-time low” and she wanted to help rebuild it by being transparent. The incumbent Massachusetts senator spoke at her second debate against Republican state Rep. Geoff Diehl in the U.S. Senate race. […] Ultimately, she said, she took a DNA test because she believes one way to rebuild trust in government is by posting her full family history online “so anybody can take a look. … I believe one way that...

Astonishingly, today’s Americans expect government to care for us from cradle to grave, the way commoners once expected a benevolent king to care for his subjects. We treat people as members of groups rather than as individuals, insidiously devolving into the very class system against which the Founders rebelled. Americans are voluntarily surrendering the very freedoms that millions fought and died to establish and protect. President James Garfield once said the most common form of death in politics is suicide. After a noble 225-year history, is the American experiment dying at the hands of its own people? Many of the...

While everyone’s eyes were on now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings and votes the Republicans grew government. Again.President Donald Trump signed into law the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 – a law which regulates everything from airline seat sizes to whether people can make cell phone calls on flights (something Jazz wrote in favor of earlier today). The bill also defined exactly what a Lactation Area is (they can’t be in restrooms) and includes money for studies looking at the design specifics of aircraft oxygen and on allergic reactions on board airlines. There’s also a study on what...

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is right that Senate’s confirmation process is "a national disgrace." The damage done to Kavanaugh’s family is horrific. Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was clear: “What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020.” The threats and vicious messages that his family and Christine Blasey Ford have received are a national embarrassment. Hopefully, everyone other than the most partisan Americans wants to fix this and stop it from ever happening again. But the question is how? What went wrong? The problem has been getting worse...

Judicial confirmations have become a blood sport. Wasn’t it just weeks ago at John McCain’s funeral that Democrats were calling for more civility in politics? We never used to fight so much over Supreme Court nominations.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is right that the Senate’s confirmation process is "a national disgrace." The damage done to Kavanaugh’s family is horrific. Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was clear: “What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020.”

As a left-leaning state that has embraced the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, California is unlikely to pursue work requirements for that program. But with the Trump administration backing efforts by a handful of states to impose such requirements, backers of the measure said it was important to enshrine in state law that California would not do the same. Critics have said that work requirements will limit the care of those unable to work, including those with chronic physical ailments, mental illness or substance abuse problems. Four states have already taken action to move toward work mandates,...

“It’s like a police state.” That is Nico Jarvis’ complaint after the New Zealand government announced a plan to eventually ban all cats in her village of Omaui, according to the Otago Daily Times. Ali Meade, biosecurity operations manager for Environment Southland, said the proposed plan would prevent people from purchasing any new cats — and require owners to neuter, register and microchip any current felines they have at home, the newspaper reported. The ban is needed because Omaui has nature reserves, Meade reportedly told Newshub, and the cats are “preying on native birds” and “all sorts of things.” New...

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for all” plan has gained traction among some mainstream Democrats, including possible presidential contenders... New analysis...found that single-payer health care for all Americans would cost at least $32.6 trillion during the first decade...but it’s worth keeping in mind that a Sanders-style single-payer system would transfer all health care spending to the federal government. “I’m scoring the federal cost here, and it’s enormous,” Blahous told Yahoo Finance. “The other side of the coin is businesses, individuals, states and others are not going to be paying these costs. They’re going to be given to the federal government.” ...total...

The federal government collected a record $1,305,490,000,000 in individual income taxes through the first nine months of fiscal 2018 (October 2017 through June 2018), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today. Despite the record individual income tax collections, the federal government still ran a deficit of $607,099,000,000 over those same nine months, according to the Treasury statement. The approximately $1,305,490,000,000 in individual income taxes that the Treasury collected in October through June of this fiscal year was $71,815,310,000 more (in constant June 2018 dollars) than the $1,233,674,690,000 (in constant June 2018 dollars) in individual income taxes that the Treasury...

State lawmakers proved it again last month: Watch them closely or they’ll get you good. That’s what they did when they passed a new bereavement-leave bill at the 11th hour as the legislative session ended. The bill would force employers to offer workers 10 — yes, 10 — weeks of time off with pay whenever a family member dies. That may sound nice, but the cost would be paid by the worker himself, via a 0.126 percent payroll deduction. Via a new tax, that is.

If you read the latest Social Security Trustees Report, you're aware that the program's combined trust funds are expected to run dry in 2034. And clearly, that's not great news. But before you start panicking about your benefits, it's important that you understand the implications of those trust funds running out.Social Security won't go broke The most important thing you should know about Social Security's trust funds is that they're not the program's primary source of funding. Rather, the bulk of the revenue that Social Security takes in comes from payroll taxes. Now for the first time in multiple decades,...

The Trump administration is disbanding a panel of experts focused on protecting consumers from financial abuse. Members of the panel, called the Consumer Advisory Board, say Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Acting Director Mick Mulvaney has dissolved the group, which includes consumer advocates, financial industry representatives, community leaders and others. As head of the CFPB, Mulvaney has moved to eliminate or blunt a number of financial regulations, including rules for payday lending, pre-paid cards, mortgages and student loans, while also curbing its industry oversight.

President Donald Trump has warned Congress that he will never sign another foot-tall, $1 trillion-plus government-wide spending bill like the one he did in March. His message to lawmakers in both parties: Get your act together before the next budget lands on my desk. After a brief government shutdown earlier this year, Democrats and Republicans now agree on the need for budgeting day-to-day operations of government by the old-fashioned way. That means weeks of open debate and amendments that empower rank-and-file lawmakers, rather than concentrating power in the hands of a few leaders meeting in secret. But Capitol Hill’s dysfunction...