Free Republic

Parent PLUS is not typically the loan program making headlines when student loans are in the news. But over the past several years, it has become a central part of America’s higher-education financing system. Under Parent PLUS, parents can borrow freely—with no limit—from the federal government to support their children’s education. Government programs without significant guardrails rarely turn out well, and Parent PLUS is no exception. New research from Adam Looney and Vivien Lee of the Brookings Institution illustrates just how out-of-control the parental loan program has grown. In 2014, the average parent borrower held $38,812 in Parent PLUS debt...

President Trump making his case for a barrier on the nation's southern border in a speech Tuesday night, describing a crisis with illegal immigration that includes the deaths of thousands of Americans..... The co-leader of the anti-mass immigration Alternative for Germany party, Alice Weidel, says that the brutal attack on AfD parliament member Frank Magnitz was an attempted assassination. Weidel added that: "the hatred against the AfD and the media coverage against this democratically elected party is bearing fruit" At least three masked men beat Magnitz unconscious using a piece of wood Monday in the city of Bremen. He was...

After the United States pulled out of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed and added to sanctions last year, the Trump administration granted waivers to eight countries who were already established buyers to continue buying specified amounts of Iranian oil for 180 days. Now, however, a senior Iranian energy official in Tehran says that these countries are not making use of the waivers and are instead complying fully with the strict zero-oil sanctions. According to Iran's deputy oil minister for trade and international affairs Amir Hossein Zamaninia, "China, India, Japan, South Korea and other countries that were granted waivers...

Most of this was previously posted. Some of the links may no longer work.]. Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute, has reported that Enron played a major role in pushing the global warming scam, including establishing the Kyoto Protocals. Enron had already profited from trading sulfur dioxide credits and saw the potential for even greater profits from trading what would become known as "carbon credits". The article is the first in a series of articles about those who seek to profit from what Weather Channel founder John Coleman calls "the greatest scam in history." It's...

The message from President Emmanuel Macron's government communicated through the media is that "thugs" and "violence" must addressed in France following the predominately peaceful resurgence of the Yellow Vests protesters last weekend. French President Emmanuel Macron's Prime Minister Edouard Philippe appeared on the TF 1 news Monday night to announce 80-thousand police will be deployed next Saturday including 5-thousand in Paris. The government is proposing new laws that would punish protesters who's protests are not approved by the government, would ban people designated as "troublemakers" from protests and ban the wearing of masks during protests. Meanwhile government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux...

"The mistake many in our industry make is to attribute the success of indoor farming solely to LED. LED makes indoor farming viable. But if you want to make indoor farming scalable, you have to think in trends that are happening in robotics, automation, computer vision and machine learning." So says Irving Fain, CEO with Bowery Farming. Yesterday the company announced a $90 million funding round, led by GV (formerly Google Ventures). Additional investors in this round include Temasek (the global investment company headquartered in Singapore), Dara Khosrowshahi (CEO of Uber), David Barber’s fund Almanac, First Round Capital, GGV Capital...

ewly elected socialist firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “if we want economic growth and a fairer distribution of wealth the rich will have to pay more in taxes.” She cited history to back her claim. “In the 1960s, before President Kennedy’s tax cut, both economic growth and taxes in this country were higher than today,” the first-term congresswoman observed. “In more progressive countries like the Soviet Union and Communist China economic growth was even faster with the government essentially controlling all the investment and distribution decisions.” “My ‘Green New Deal’ is a moderate first step...

Goldman Sachs reduced its outlook for oil prices this year citing abundant supply, Bloomberg reports, quoting a note to clients. The investment bank’s analysts now expect Brent crude to average US$62.50 a barrel this year, down from an earlier projection of US$70 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate, according to Goldman Sachs, will average US$55.50 a barrel, compared with an earlier estimate of US$64.50 a barrel. The price outlook revision was motivated by expectations of another glut despite the OPEC+ production cuts aimed at removing 1.2 million bpd from the global market and continued growth in U.S. shale oil production, as...

Lee Oui-ryuk was on the verge of dying of starvation when he stole a block of tofu in a market in North Korea at the height of a nationwide famine. Too weak to run away after he swiped the food, Lee continued eating as the seller cried and beat him with a metal rod, staining the white tofu red with his blood. At nine years old he knew the theft would end in violence, but in his head he repeated over and over: “Even if you are beaten, keep eating.” He eventually passed out and when he awoke, took a...

At year-end 2018, how is President Donald Trump’s regulatory reform project going? Better than Obama, Bush II, and Clinton in terms of fewer regulations; but not as good as Trump’s own first year. Let’s look at it. Monday, December 31, 2018, is the last federal workday of the year. That would seem obvious, but a partial federal shutdown on December 22 made clock-out earlier for some. Nonetheless, a preliminary tally for Federal Register page and rule counts for Trump’s 2nd calendar year has appeared, even though “[d]uring the funding lapse, Federalregister.gov is not being supported." The Number of Pages in...

"Once again extreme violence has come to attack the Republic...." French President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter following Act 8 of the Yellow Vests Protest 1/5/2019 The police in France officially are saying some 50-thousand protested this Saturday in the country, up from 32-thousand last Saturday. Peaceful processions in many cities and towns across the country throughout the day. 35-hundred protesters were identified in Paris by the police. 34 arrests reported there at the end of the day as there were confrontations between protesters and police. Fires were set in a few locations. Minister of the Interior Christophe Castaner described the...

The harsh language of President Emmanuel Macron calling Yellow Vests racists and anti-Semites and homophobes in essence by calling them the forces of "hate" and his call for order "without compromise" aroused feeling in their own right Monday night when he spoke them on New Year's Eve.......

Glass is one of the oldest building materials and its use is incredibly widespread in our modern world of screens and skyscrapers that are literally covered in the transparent wonder. Very few materials are both hard and transparent, but those characteristics are highly desired in architecture, automobiles, and design. The popularity of glass is matched only by the difficulty of manufacturing it; glass is a viscous liquid only at very high temperatures and is incredibly sensitive to temperature variations and other environmental factors. As such, efforts to 3D print with glass have been limited. But leave it to MIT to...

President Trump's statement that he is willing to have the government "shutdown" last for years, if that's what it takes to get funding for a border wall, has Democratic Party leaders agog. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) called the threat "cruel and insensitive toward the non-essential federal workers who are bearing the brunt of this insane tactic. They all have families to feed. They need the checks they've come to expect every two weeks." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) contended "non-essential or not, these employees are part of the brain that keeps America alive and kicking. Citizens wouldn't know...

The Champs-Elysees will be the main site of protest in Paris from 10am to 5pm Saturday (4am to 11am Eastern time US) with some Yellow Vests set to march to the Palace de la Bourse in the middle of the day. There is a march in the afternoon from Paris City Hall to the area of the National Assembly where a response will be read to President Emmanuel Macron's speech denouncing "hate" coming from the Yellow Vests and promising order "without compromise" on New Year's Eve. BFM-TV reported at mid-day Friday that 10-thousand had expressed interest on Facebook in the...

[PHOTO] When is an invasion not an invasion? When the invaders are voters and you can’t kill them, because it would look bad. But Either way, they would vote the same: free bennies, free money, free food, and free everything. They would vote the same even if you killed A few. How would they vote? Democrat, of course, even if it were Democrats killing them. These illegals from south of the border and all over the collapsing world—they’re from, and used to, totalitarian, leftist, socialist, and communist regimes. And the fact is, that along with their horrible diseases, parasites, crimes,...

"We wanted to show the French that we are not free" Eric Drouet "Facebook" Video Thursday 1/3/2019 Following His Release "The French police have arrested a prominent leader of the Yellow Vest movement for a second time, in a clear sign that the governmnt is following through on a pledge to crack down on the protests...." Adam Nossiter-"New York Times" 1/3/2019 He's released from jail Thursday and will face a court date on February 15th, but Eric Drouet says his attempt to launch a Yellow Vests protest Wednesday was designed to show the people of France that they are not...

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded. All seven astronauts were killed. Eyewitness Frank Mottek described the scene: Just then we both stood up and looked up at the shuttle making its way farther and farther into the sky. Suddenly, I was struck by a pattern I had never seen before. From our vantage point, it appeared that an extra flame was trailing from the shuttle. Then, in that split second, a silent fireball appeared in the sky. Then there was silence, the silence of alarm. . . Investigations later revealed that two rubber O-rings, which were designed...

[PHOTOSHOP] Just who the hell ARE these two billionaires? Where do they get their money? Why are they “so smarter” than “everybody else? And Why would they want “amnesty” for all these illegal, “immigrants...migrants...refugees...patriotic youths, constituents,” or whatever? “The pro-mass immigration Koch brothers’ network of billionaire, donor class organizations will push an expansive amnesty for illegal aliens this year while vowing not to financially support President Trump’s 2020 re-election bid. “In a leaked email obtained by Time Magazine, the Koch brothers’ network of organizations — which includes Americans for Prosperity, the LIBRE Initiative, and Freedom Partners — have their sights...

Video covering how Google auctions off advertising and how their practice of doing so may very be online auction fraud.