Free Republic

When the Census Bureau began calculating poverty a half-century ago – as a “war on poverty” became a hot issue in Washington – it devised a rather simple formula. The formula defined income that would be counted – excluding non-cash income such as food stamps and housing subsidies – and applied it to a narrow “market basket” of food and other living necessities. All the data were nationwide, with no adjustments for regional or local differentials. By the official poverty index, California doesn’t fare too badly, with 17 percent of its residents impoverished, a bit above the national rate of...

Illinois and Michigan have traded places on two key metrics for measuring prosperity and opportunity, and both changes are embarrassing for the Land of Lincoln. The first major change came in October 2014, when Michigan surpassed Illinois for total factory jobs. Michigan now has 25,000 more factory jobs than Illinois even though the Wolverine State’s economy is only three-quarters the size of Illinois’. Now, new data from the Department of Human Services shows the embarrassing role reversal has come full turn. In March of this year, Illinois bumped off Michigan to become the Midwest’s No. 1 user of the Supplemental...

People who live in liberal states search for psychologists on Google 50% more, per capita, than people from conservative states. Vermont has the most searchers for mental health help, at 74% greater than the national average, which makes sense, since it is a far-left state with a socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders, who likes to talk about the joys of rape. People in liberal Massachusetts and far-left New York search 55% and 56% more often for therapists as well (California, which you would expect to be worst of all, is "only" 41% above average). By contrast, in Idaho, (adjusted for population...

The Blue-City Model Baltimore shows how progressivism has failed urban America. April 28, 2015 You’re not supposed to say this in polite company, but what went up in flames in Baltimore Monday night was not merely a senior center, small businesses and police cars. Burning down was also the blue-city model of urban governance. Nothing excuses the violence of rampaging students or the failure of city officials to stop it before Maryland’s Governor called in the National Guard. But as order starts to return to the streets, and the usual political suspects lament the lack of economic prospects for the...

Utah, Texas, and North Dakota, where taxes are low, are the most economically vibrant states in the country, according to a new report. The high-tax states of New York and Michigan rank at the bottom. Additionally, the report found, millions of people left highly-taxed states for low-tax states between 2003 and 2013. The 8th edition of Rich States Poor States, an annual report released by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) on Wednesday, found that 1.5 million people left New York between 2003 and 2013, the largest exodus of any state. California came in second by that indicator, with 1.4...

Last week, Republicans expanded their majority in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives when 26-year-old Martina White won a special election in the 170th district. Expanding a legislative majority in a state that twice voted for Barack Obama is significant on its own, but expanding it because of the support of a unique coalition of Republican and traditionally Democratic-leading voters in a district in Philadelphia, a city where Republicans have not won an open General Assembly seat in 25 years, is extraordinary. The Republican wave did not end in November 2014, and White is just the latest Republican to win in...

In a sure sign that the media is running out of things to talk about after the holiday lull, the New York Times opens the doors of their op-ed pages to Richard Florida for a meandering analysis of why life in America’s Red States can’t possibly be all it’s cracked up to be. This is one of the more remarkably tone deaf pieces I’ve seen in a while, even on the pages of the Gray Lady. Here’s just one example of why it’s supposedly not that great to live in Red State America. Red state economies based on energy...

After the GOP’s 2014 midterm election triumph, Republicans are still celebrating that the good guys (and girls) won and our nation has been saved. Finally, the American people wised up and threw the bums out. Six years after the election of Barack Obama, the midterm tsunami over the bluest of blue states filled Republicans with “hope and change,” mixed with heaps of vindication. And after winning control of Capitol Hill, Republicans hope that bold actions and good governance will follow over the next two years and will motivate a majority of 2016 voters to send a Republican candidate to the...

As most of us already know, an equal salary can stretch much further in one place than in another. If you earn at least $75,000 per year, you earn a comfortable salary. At this income level, you are said to have reached the point where you really don’t need any more money to thrive. In each state, however, this $75,000 has to be adjusted to account for costs of living differences. A few states, however, like Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Florida, and Wisconsin are right around the benchmark. That is, even when adjusting for cost of living, these states will...

How A Surge In Puerto Rican Voters Is Changing Florida Politics They may lean Democratic, but many —especially the newcomers —are 'up for grabs' By Luisita Lopez Torregrosa A Puerto Rican flag is held by Miami residents at the Calle Ocho Festival in Miami. The road to political victory in Florida is not just a metaphor, it's a place: Interstate 4, the busy highway that cuts across the vote-heavy heart of the state from Tampa to Daytona Beach. And the I-4 corridor, as it's called, now runs through a swing-vote region undergoing significant demographic change. Puerto Ricans have been migrating...

The Northeast, once the nation’s political engine that produced presidents, House speakers and Senate giants including the late Edward M. Kennedy, is losing clout in Washington as citizens flee the high-tax region, according to experts worried about the trend. The Census Bureau reports that population growth has shifted to the South and the result is that the 11 states that make up the Northeast are being bled dry of representation in Washington. Critics blame rising taxes in states such as Massachusetts and Connecticut for limiting population growth in the Northeast to just 15 percent from 1983 to 2013, while the...

Californians have moved to Colorado and Nevada. Massachusetts natives have moved to New Hampshire. New Yorkers have moved to North Carolina and Virginia — and, of course, have continued moving to Florida. Over the last few decades, residents of many traditionally liberal states have moved to states that were once more conservative. And this pattern has played an important role in helping the Democratic Party win the last two presidential elections and four of the last six. The growth of the Latino population and the social liberalism of the millennial generation may receive more attention, but the growing diaspora of...

WASHINGTON -- States that have aggressively put the Affordable Care Act into practice have cut the number of uninsured residents sharply -- in some cases in half or better -- while those that balked have improved little if at all, according to new data released Tuesday. The state-by-state numbers, from Gallup's Healthways Well-Being Index, reinforce one of the major effects of Obamacare so far: Political debate has widened the health care gap between red and blue states. All 10 states with the largest percentages of uninsured adults now have Republican governors and legislatures. The lowest percentages all are governed by...

n 1980, under the first administration of Governor Jerry Brown, California decided it wasn’t going to build any more power plants but would follow Amory Lovins’ “soft path,” opting instead for conservation and renewable energy. By 2000, with the new digital economy sucking up electricity, a drought in the Pacific Northwest cut hydropower output and the state found itself facing the Great California Electrical Shortage. You know what happened next. For weeks the Golden State struggled to find enough electricity to power its traffic lights. Brownouts and blackouts cascaded across the state while businesses fired up smoke-belching diesel generators to...

"The vacant property that the state of Connecticut has is too small to accommodate your needs (which clearly must be at least several hundred thousand square feet of building space alone) and is typically in a state of disrepair to the point where a certificate of occupancy would be difficult to obtain," Patrick M. O'Brien, assistant director of OPM's Bureau of Assets Management, wrote to an official at the U.S. General Services Administration's New England regional offices. "Indeed, many existing structures are beyond salvage and require environmental remediation and demolition."

California’s inhospitable tax policies may have struck again, this time costing Los Angeles one of its largest employers. According to multiple sources close to the situation, Toyota will be relocating its US headquarters from the LA suburb of Torrance to Plano, Texas. The company has yet to notify its employees of the news, but is expected to do so Monday, followed by a public announcement. While it’s unlikely that Toyota, which is ranked 8th on Fortune’s Global 500, will directly cite taxes as the reason for its relocation, it should come as little surprise that the financial burden of operating...

Toyota Motor Corp. plans to move large numbers of jobs from its sales and marketing headquarters in Torrance to suburban Dallas, according to a person familiar with the automaker's plans. The move, creating a new North American headquarters, would put management of Toyota's U.S. business close to where it builds most cars for this market. North American Chief Executive Jim Lentz is expected to brief employees Monday, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Toyota declined to detail its plans. About 5,300 people work at Toyota's Torrance complex. It is unclear how many workers will be asked...

A crosscheck of voter rolls in Virginia and Maryland turned up 44,000 people registered in both states, a vote-integrity group reported Wednesday. And that’s just the beginning. “The Virginia Voters Alliance is investigating how to identify voters who are registered and vote in Virginia but live in the states that surround us,” Alliance President Reagan George told the State Board of Elections.

The state with the most segregated public schools is New York. Other states with exceptionally segregated schools include California, Illinois and Michigan. These findings come from a longitudinal study of enrollment figures conducted by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles, The Associated Press reports. The period studied was 1998 through 2010. New York, California, Illinois and Michigan are traditionally among the most reliably Democratic states in the union, as an interactive 2012 map created by Slate shows. A 2013 “State of the States” feature by Gallup indicates that New York, California and Illinois are...

President Obama has said that reducing the growing gap between high and low income earners is one of his top domestic priorities. But a new study finds that residents of states that voted for Obama in 2012 “are experiencing more income inequality than people in other states.” “Income inequality is worse in blue states, and has also grown more quickly in those areas over the past 10 years,” according to the study, entitled “Blue states have the income-inequality blues,” by Richard Barrington, senior financial analyst at MoneyRates.com. CNSNews.com previously reported that a Brookings Institute study found that the highest levels...