Free Republic

Look on the bright side: She might not run. In which case we won’t have to worry about Texas imposing a Democratic stranglehold on the White House for the foreseeable future until, oh, 2024 or so.Or maybe 2020? Much depends on the time frame for that path to citizenship that Schumer, McCain, Rubio, et al. are cooking up. While the knee-jerk reaction among many Republicans would be to dismiss the idea that the state could be competitive in 2016 — just four years after Mitt Romney carried it by 16 points over President Obama — Texas GOP Chairman Steve Munisteri...

State Farm, the nationally knowninsurance chain headquartered in Bloomington Illinois, has apparently had its fill of “The Land of Lincoln’s” confiscatory taxes. The 800 million dollar company is reported to have purchased “substantial workspace” in the Dallas, Texas area. The giant insurance firm’s workers are being kept in the dark reportedly to avoid “alarming them” but is it their workers or the State of Illinois they would like to keep in the dark about this move? If this doesn’t signal State Farm’s coming dash out of Illinois’s clutches what could it mean? A knowledgeable Dallas real estate insider has called...

Friday evening the largest Global Warming snow ever hit the Northeast. The storm had been predicted by Al Gore and other patients for years. Scientists had first thought the snow was the ordinary H2O type of snow that has fallen for years. However, closer investigation indicated that the snow was not regular snow but solidified carbon dioxide, (aka dry ice). Drs. Mann, Jones and Hansen speculated that the carbon dioxide had built up quickly because the coal fired electric generator plants had been working at full capacity because of the recent Artic cold spell. What triggered the consolidation and solidification...

Long-term shifts in the U.S. economy coupled with the recent recession means Americans are more likely to pack up and move for employment-related reasons. Although the total number of residential moves is down, new data shows a clear pattern of the states that people are fleeing the fastest.

Two storms will merge quickly enough to bring colder air, heavy snow and increasing wind to New England. Some areas will be hit with an all-out blizzard and a couple of feet of snow. The worst of the storm will hit late Friday and Friday night and will wind down Saturday morning. However, lingering effects from blowing and drifting snow, blocked roads and other travel delays are likely to linger into much of the weekend. Numerous flight delays and cancellations are possible centered on New England, but these problems will be felt elsewhere across the nation. Strong winds will not...

Tuesday, January 29th, 2013, (Santa Monica, CA) — It has been 34 years of marriage, three children, two grandchildren, two homes and three jobs, and Mary and Joseph Peterson have had enough. The two Sacramento natives and college sweethearts have lived in California their entire lives. Now their lifelong stay in the Sunshine state is sadly coming to an end. Mary Peterson, 56, and husband Joseph, 57, lament being only an estimated 250,000 people who are now leaving California annually, in comparison to the hordes more that are storming in (mainly illegally). They also lament not having fully experienced the...

On Thursday, Jan. 24, the Rhode Island House of Representatives passed the "gay marriage" bill (H5015) by a 51-19 vote, two days after the bill was passed by the House Judiciary Committee. The move was not unexpected, given that the Speaker of the House, Gordon Fox, a Democrat, is openly homosexual and has been a champion of this bill. But the bill now moves to the Senate, where its fate is very uncertain. The Rhode Island Senate has not been as monolithic in its support for this bill as the House. The Senate President is on record as opposing it,...

Alabama has taken the crown previously held by Mississippi as the most conservative state in the union, according to a new Gallup poll. Last year the top four were Mississippi, Utah, and Wyoming, with Alabama coming in fourth. Overall, Americans in 2012 remained more likely to identify as conservative (38%) than as moderate (36%) or as liberal (23%), although liberals have gained 2 percentage points compared to 2011. On the liberal side, the medalists have gotten stronger. Washington DC, Massachusetts, and Oregon, the 2011 liberal top three, retain their titles...Residents of Washington DC are more liberal

Alabama is the most “conservative” state in the U.S., with roughly 50 percent of its residents “identifying their ideology as conservative,” trailed closely by North Dakota and Wyoming (both 48.6 percent), according to a recent survey by Gallup.

Illinois’ credit rating has taken another hit. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service downgraded the state from an “A” rating to “A-minus”, making it the worst in the country.

The report ranks the most and least “Bible-minded” cities by looking at how people in those cities view the Bible.... Regionally, the South still qualifies as the most Bible-minded. The top ranking cities, where at least half of the population qualifies as Bible-minded, are all Southern cities. This includes the media markets for Knoxville, TN (52% of the population are Bible-minded), Shreveport, LA (52%), Chattanooga, TN (52%), Birmingham, AL (50%), and Jackson, MS (50%). Other markets in the top 10 include Springfield, MO (49%), Charlotte, NC (48%), Lynchburg, VA (48%), Huntsville-Decatur, AL (48%), and Charleston, WV (47%). The least Bible-oriented...

Candy, soda, tobacco, and bottles of water and sports drinks are all in Gov. Deval Patrick's crosshairs as he announced another $2 billion tax wish list in his $34.8 billion proposed fiscal 2014 budget at the State House this afternoon. Among the tax highlights: The cigarette excise tax would be hiked by $1 to $3.51 per pack. Taxes on cigars and smokeless tobacco would also increase. The state would essentially expand the bottle bill to include water bottles and sports drinks on deposits. Candy and soda would no longer be exempt from the state sales tax. Patrick last week proposed...

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Chevron is California’s largest corporation, but it seems to be making the move to becoming Texas’ largest corporation instead. That’s 800 jobs out the door which gives Chevron a larger presence in Texas than it still has in California.

With their enthusiastic backing of President Obama and the Democratic Party on Election Day, the bluest parts of America may have embraced a program utterly at odds with their economic self-interest. The almost uniform support of blue states’ congressional representatives for the administration’s campaign for tax “fairness” represents a kind of bizarre economic suicide pact. Any move to raise taxes on the rich — defined as households making over $250,000 annually — strikes directly at the economies of these states, which depend heavily on the earnings of high-income professionals, entrepreneurs and technical workers. In fact, when you examine which states,...

Don’t buy a house in a state where private sector workers are outnumbered by folks dependent on government. Thinking about buying a house? Or a municipal bond? Be careful where you put your capital. Don’t put it in a state at high risk of a fiscal tailspin. Eleven states make our list of danger spots for investors. They can look forward to a rising tax burden, deteriorating state finances and an exodus of employers. The list includes California, New York, Illinois and Ohio, along with some smaller states like New Mexico and Hawaii. Let’s say you are a software entrepreneur...

The brokeyest broke state in the nation (which means it is also one of the brokeyest broke entities in the world, as it has the world’s 8th largest economy) has long served as the place where the far left has conducted field experiments for their policies. How’s that working out? Neil Munro tells us (Daily Caller) The Golden State has fallen on hard times, with a poverty rate that is now twice as bad as West Virginia’s and substantially worse than the rates of poverty in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas. Democrat-run California earned its last-place rank under the federal...

On Tuesday voters in California went the wrong way on three propositions. Voters approved Proposition 30 "temporarily" increasing the state sales tax and income tax on individuals making over $250,000. They voted against Proposition 31 that would allow the governor to cut the budget in fiscal emergencies. They voted against Proposition 32 would prevent unions from making campaign donations via members' dues. Moreover, and worse yet, Democrats picked up two more votes in the state legislature giving them a supermajority, capable of passing any tax hikes they want. Those results are so awful I suggest you prepare for the demise...

Most of us are, by now, familiar with the maps the TV channels and web sites use to show the results of presidential elections. Here is a typical map of the results of the 2012 election:

A winter storm battered the Northeast coast Thursday after cutting power to at least 115,000 homes and dumping record snowfalls in the New York City area. The National Weather Service warned of wind gusts as high as 60 mph along the coast, “minor to moderate” flooding from storm surges, and more snow, particularly in New England, early Thursday. More than 600,000 people were without electricity as a result of superstorm Sandy and the new storm. NBCNewYork.com reported that more than 198,000 Long Island Power Authority customers, 55,000 Con Edison customers in New York City and Westchester County, 197,560 Jersey Central...