Free Republic

At any rate. We have reached the end of the road. The regime has two choices: either bury the chavista revolution or start shooting people. I am afraid that the second one will be the choice since so many people would face jail terms if the country became more "normal". Which of course makes the cliff only higher, the crash only more spectacular.

Democrats have long called for grammar school to be “free” (that is, taxpayer-funded)… and they’ve long called for high school to be “free” (yes, even more taxpayer-funded)… and now the Democrats are calling for college – or at least the first two years of it – to be free as well. The proposal can – and should – be shot down with a single point: The United States is, by any measure of the term, bankrupt. We have gone from 7 trillion dollars in debt to 15 trillion in just six years, more than doubling a national debt that had...

On Thursday, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum, directing all federal agencies to give federal workers six weeks of paid leave for parents with a new child. The President is expected to call for Congress to pass similar legislation compelling all American companies to offer the same six weeks of paid paternal leave. Small business owners are worried about the cost of this new entitlement. The President’s Council of Economic Advisers has estimated that the cost of this new perk for federal employees will run to $250 million per year. Press Secretary Josh Earnest downplayed these small business fears as...

In Lancaster County, PA, an alert and armed woman stopped a crime spree.  One of the things that destroys the sense of security in a neighborhood is  the proliferation of  burglaries and thefts of personal property from vehicles.  That is what the pair of suspects were involved in when an alert woman stopped Robert LaFleur from breaking into her car at 2:30 am and held him at gunpoint until the police arrived. It seems unlikely that LaFleur would have obeyed the woman's commands if she had not been armed.   The police report that he resisted arrest when they...

Why have so many countries been unable to fully adopt a market economy? The answer is complex, but there are certain basic conditions that must be met for an economy to become free and prosperous. Two that are non-negotiable are private property and the rule of law. Without these a market cannot exist. But there is another element that is crucial but often overlooked—it is what has been called “social capital,” specifically the existence of trust. Why are trust and social capital so important for economic success? [] If these virtues are not esteemed, or if trust exists only within...

When the government of China tells people they can read state-run newspapers but not print and distribute Bibles, imprisoning and torturing dissenters; or have one child but not two, forcing women to have abortions; or watch state-run television but not listen to Radio Free Asia, jamming broadcast signals and threatening students--that is not freedom. But the absence of centralized state control is not necessarily freedom, either. The people of Beirut are not free. Neither are the people of Medellin and Cartagena, the drug capitals of Colombia. Freedom is not anarchy, chaos, and mayhem. The freedom to "let soulless forces operate,"...

The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma has accepted money from the highly partisan Everytown for Gun Safety to put on a two day seminar on covering guns and gun violence.  They have already been criticized for creating a propaganda vehicle using money supplied by Michael Bloomberg.   As their article includes the sensationalist and discredited claim that there have been "nearly 100 school shootings"  since Sandy Hook, it is hard to consider them unbiased.   Nonetheless, I sent the point of contact an email asking that she include voices with assumptions other than that of Michael Bloomberg.  Here is...

Envy, I’ve often thought, is the very worst human emotion. The epic Biblical narrative of Cain’s slaying of Abel reminds us that people have been jealous of others’ successes and well-being from time immemorial. When mixed, however, with the near-obsession with inequality that dominates much public discourse these days, there’s a serious risk that envy — and desires to appease it — can start driving public policy in ways that aren’t economically wise or politically healthy. Remarks like “you didn’t build that” or François Hollande’s notorious 2012 “I don’t like the rich” statement don’t of course come out of a...

Imagine that the wealth of both the poorest and richest Americans were to double overnight (and the middle class wealth stayed the same). Would the poor be better off? Most of us would agree they would be. But those obsessed with income and wealth inequality would fret that the poor were in even worse shape than before since inequality just got much, much worse.

Envy is much older than any political system or any political ideology. Envy does not exist because socialism exists. Rather, socialism refers to and needs envy.

Uber chief Travis Kalanick said he wants to expand operations in Europe and, in the process, create 50,000 jobs and take 400,000 personal vehicles off the road. Kalanick said the ride-sharing service isn’t opposed to regulation, but wants “progressive regulation” that promotes safe and affordable rides and generates tax revenue without limiting competition. Cities around the globe have been going after Uber and other services, using a mix of existing regulations and new laws. “We want to make 2015 the year where we establish a new partnership with (European Union) cities,” Kalanick said, speaking Sunday at the DLD Conference in...

Imagine a country where nobody can identify who owns what, people cannot be made to pay their debts, resources cannot conveniently be turned into money, ownership cannot be divided through documents, descriptions of assets are not standardized and can not be easily compared, and the rules that govern property vary from neighborhood to neighborhood or even from street to street. You have just put yourself into the life of a developing country or former communist nation; more precisely, you have imagined life for 80 per cent of its population, which is marked off as sharply from its Westernized elite as...

Today, those who defend free markets and capitalism often do so solely on managerial or technical grounds, but economic liberty needs a moral defense as well. Defense of economic liberty without reference to morality will ultimately prove injurious to liberty itself. Rightly understood, capitalism is simply the name for the economic component of the natural order of liberty. It means expansive ownership of property, fair and equal rules for all, economic security through prosperity, strict adherence to the boundaries of ownership, opportunity for charity, wise resource use, creativity, growth, development, prosperity, abundance. Most of all, it means the economic application...

Perhaps you read the title of this article, and automatically assumed that we made a typo. After all, it sounds awfully similar to a story we did in the past about 3D Systems. If you have been following the 3D printing space for the past several months, then you know that 3D Systems has been working on creating a new 3D printing system that they say is based on a “racetrack architecture”. It is an assembly line of sorts, and is said to be able to fabricate objects up to 50 times faster than other printers currently available today. Now...

This one must be solved fast because the regime cannot fire bureaucrats and misiones beneficiaries fast enough. Never mind that cutting off 20% of its payroll in bureaucracy or welfare would push us further into recession, with even less consumers, more social instability. The regime is seriously considering increase taxes further which in today's context would be lethal for the economy as businesses still alive barely make it through. Reminder; if you have 60% inflation your business must have benefits of 61% or start losing its value. That is, if your business does not make more than inflation you erode...

Harmony was never in Obama's vocabulary. Discord, on the other hand, is his middle name. Confront President Obama and his obstructionist pen that hovers prepared to slash their efforts to dial back his ruinous agenda President Obama, the King of “Me,” confiscates credit for anything that even sniffs of a positive scent. Right now, that’s the smell of economic growth from privately owned and developed oil fields. His own policies have shuttered federal oil leases, selling them at a premium with crippling restrictions while extorting oil companies (most particularly BP after the Gulf spill in 2010) to pay royalties on...

The Village Voice of New York City has come out in favor of knife reform legislation.   The abusive prosecutions under this law have, no doubt, been going on ever since its passage in the 1950's.   Knife Rights has been in the forefront of this fight, and has an ongoing court case, noted in the Voice article.  The abuses have become increasingly severe in the last 10 years, with The Village Voice noting that as many as 60,000 people have been arrested.  From the Village Voice: Assemblyman Dan Quart will introduce a bill today to adjust the language of the...

Property owner Miodrag Burgacic defended himself and his property one too many times in crime ridden Cleveland.  He has shot people who were attempting to steal from him twice before, and been able to hold people without shooting them at least once.   No charges were filed in those incidents. From theblaze.com: Miodrag Bugarcic seems to attract criminals like a magnet. But because the Cleveland businessman has used firearms to thwart crimes on his property multiple times — once with lethal results — why crooks keep trying to rip him off is anybody’s guess. After the third shooting, which...

A bridge linking mainland Russia with the Crimean Peninsula will be built by Arkady Rotenberg, a Russian construction tycoon and friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a January 14 report in Vedomosti. Russia has sought to build a bridge to Crimea since the end of World War II, but the project always stalled out due to high costs and political controversy. Since Russia officially annexed Crimea last spring, the controversy within Russia has diminished, bringing a renewed impetus for a connection. The plans for the bridge have not been made public, but sources inside RussiaÂ’s Finance Ministry told...

<p>After two constitutionally dubious delays, ObamaCare’s employer mandate took effect on Jan. 1 for employers with 100 or more full-time employees. The last open-enrollment date for our company, CKE Restaurant Holdings, Inc., was Dec. 4, 2014. As of that date, our company had approximately 20,000 employees, 6,900 of whom worked 30 or more hours a week and were eligible for ObamaCare-compliant health insurance. We elected to offer them coverage rather than pay the employer penalty, which would have sent workers to ObamaCare’s health-insurance exchanges, where those who qualified could receive federal subsidies to help pay for insurance.</p>