Free Republic

The Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors’ former ties to Hollywood’s unions are coming into question in light of its recent decision to stand by its award to ultra-conservative presidential hopeful Senator Ted Cruz. The decision to give the Texas Republican its American Spirit Award had polarized the caucus’ membership, with internal objections leading to an emergency meeting of the Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors executive committee Monday, which upheld the decision to honor Cruz. The caucus traditionally hands out American Spirit Awards to a Republican and a Democrat (California Governor Jerry Brown appears to be the choice on...

The nation has "turned the page" on recession and war, Obama will trumpet tonight. The sad thing about Obama and the left wing media is that Obama believes something is true simply because he says it, and so does the press, who will not question it for one second. Obama is going to lie. Of that there is no doubt, but I have some thoughts about what he really should say. He will say: “The verdict is clear. Middle-class economics works. Expanding opportunity works. And these policies will continue to work, as long as politics don’t get in the way.”...

Everything Obama has put in motion has had the single objective of destroying the nation's economy in every possible way As 2015 began the Journal Editorial Report on Fox News was devoted to having its reporters, some of the best there are, speculate on what 2015 holds in terms of who might run for president and what the economy might be. The key word here is “speculate” because even experts know that it is unanticipated events that determine the future and the future is often all about unanticipated events. How different would the world have been if John F. Kennedy...

Clayton, N.C. — Hospira, a manufacturer of injectable and other drug products as well as medical devices, is closing its plant in Clayton which employs some 250 people. Hospira says the facility will close in the second half of this year. “After a thorough evaluation of the site and the various products produced at this facility, we had to make this difficult decision,” said Matt Stober, senior vice president for operations, in a statement. The firm operates a major plant in Rocky Mount as well. In 2012, it decided to add 200 works at that operation. Hospira (NYSE: HSP) disclosed...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)SALISBURY, Md. - A shocking turn of events on Wednesday, as aeronautical company Labinal Power Systems announced it will soon be closing its doors. This means over 600 employees -- about 94% from Wicomico County -- may be out of a job. According to Labinal, up to 160 of those employees could possibly be transferred to their Texas facility. As for the rest, local leaders say there are resources in town. Those resources may come in the form of "re-training". According to Wor-Wic Community College president Ray Hoy, these workers have valuable skills but they might not translate to another...

Now that Barack Obama’s first six years are over it might be nice to see what he has wrought, and compare him to another iconic president, Ronald Reagan. When Barack Obama took office in 2009 65.7% of Americans were participating in the laborforce. (This is called the Labor Force Participation Rate – LFPR – which includes those working and those looking for work.) Six years later that number was down to 62.8. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 63.9% of Americans were participating in the workforce and six years later that number had grown to 65.6%. Unemployment is the...

During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday evening, Barack Obama is going to promise to make life better for middle class families. Of course he has also promised to do this during all of his other State of the Union addresses, but apparently he still believes that there are people out there that are buying what he is selling. Each January, he gets up there and tells us how the economy is “turning around” and to believe that much brighter days are right around the corner. And yet things just continue to get even worse for the middle...

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...