Free Republic

Repopulating Detroit—With Syrians! MARK KRIKORIAN May 15, 2015 Jeb Bush called for admitting more immigrants to “repopulate” Detroit: It just seems to me that maybe if you open up our doors in a fair way and unleashed the spirit of peoples’ hard work, Detroit could become in really short order, one of the great American cities again. Now it would look different, it wouldn’t be Polish…But it would be just as powerful, just as exciting, just as dynamic. And that’s what immigration does and to be fearful of this, it just seems bizarre to me. This wasn’t a one-time thing....

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) warned financial institutions that they could be prosecuted if they deny home loans to persons subsisting on welfare benefits. CFPB Director Richard Cordray asserted that "placing ability to repay ahead of need is contrary to federal regulations. Just because a person cannot support himself or herself doesn't mean he or she should be excluded from the benefits of home ownership. Every person has an inalienable right to own a home. Lenders have a moral obligation to help people achieve this right." "For banks to argue that the risks of default and foreclosure should preclude...

Irresponsible NGOs like Greenpeace are running roughshod over societies. It's high time to stop that menace! The “new energy” comes out of the proclamations by non-government, non-accountable, and totally irresponsible organisations like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, D. Suzuki Foundation, 350-org, Avaaz, and their THOUSANDS of offshoots, affiliates, sympathizers, hangers-on, and totally blind, deaf, and entirely misled cohorts. Just look at Greenpeace’s latest demonstration at the hotel of the G7-Energy-Ministers in Germany, on May 12, 2015, at Hamburg, Germany, a prelude to this year’s COP-21 conference at Paris. Let me translate their message on the yellow signs (from their website): “STOP COAL...

A couple of weeks ago, I received the expected rejection from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma on my application to attend their "workshop for journalists on covering guns and gun violence".   I expected it because it is clear that the "workshop" has become a mere exercise in producing disarmist propaganda, rather than an objective effort designed to help journalists get their facts right on events involving guns.  To giver credit where due,  Bruce Shapiro, Director at Dart, is unfailingly polite in the rejection email. For a short period, it seemed that there might be hope of balance,...

In a pilot program designed to reduce GHG emissions and safety risks and provide better clean food preparation in mobile food vending, the Big Apple will be home to the next generation of eco-friendly food carts.Food carts, while being convenient for consumers and a good small business venture for foodies and entrepreneurs, are also a source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and air pollution, as well as being potential public safety hazards from their onboard propane tanks. And in a metropolis like New York City, with some 8000 mobile food carts on the streets, the environmental and health effects of...

Attorney Marc Victor in a tie;  Rick Bailey in the gray shirt The good news is that Rick Bailey has had his expensive gun collection returned.  The bad news is that he had to fight for it in court in the first place, in spite of never being convicted of any offense.   From the canadafreepress.com: BELLEVUE, WA – A retired Navy veteran in Arizona whose gun collection had been seized by Glendale police now has his firearms back, the Second Amendment Foundation revealed today. SAF had intervened in the case of Glendale resident Rick Bailey early last month, taking...

Reflections on the May 12, 2015 Amtrak train crash in Philadelphia... First Day at School You’re a gym teacher at a new school, in charge of 30 kids in a gym, on your first day at work. You can’t keep your eye on all of them at once. While you were helping a couple of kids improve their free throws at one end, you hear a shout at the other end of the gym; one kid knocked another down. Scenario 1: You don’t know either kid at all, so you objectively ask the kids to all explain what happened. You...

For project developers seeking the next big petro-play, some key news this week. With lawmakers in America moving to open one of the biggest swaths of new acreage in the history of the industry. On Tuesday, the U.S. senate introduced three bills to expand areas accessible for oil and gas drilling -- targeting the eastern Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean, and the Arctic. The Gulf of Mexico acreage would be the nearest play at hand. With this week's bill contemplating allowing drilling in this area as early as 2017.

* Nasa is thought to have successfully tested a revolutionary power source * Claimed it could fly for eons at the equivalent of 450 million miles an hour * It is powered by a device similar to that found in a microwave oven * Invented by now retired British scientist Roger Shawyer a decade agoAnyone who has ever watched an episode of Star Trek or a Star Wars film will know how it works. The good guys are minding their business in outer space when suddenly the Klingons or the Dark Empire bear down on them out of nowhere. There...

The 2015-16 session of the Michigan Legislature is underway, and like a new baseball season anticipation and hope are in the air. House Republicans recently unveiled an ambitious action plan that seeks to continue Michigan’s recovery. Many of the proposals in the House agenda are ideas recommended by Mackinac Center experts: Safeguard public employees’ retirement and protect taxpayers by closing the underfunded pension system and moving public employees to a 401(k)-style system. The school employee pension system is $25 billion in the red, while Michigan’s 50 largest cities have an additional $3.4 billion in unfunded liabilities. Stretch public resources by...

Zenith Education Group, a Minnesota-based provider of career-school training and operator of Everest College campuses in metro Denver, is laying off 131 people at its Thornton call center. "We had a reduction in the student population and we are merging some call centers to the one located in Tampa," said Zenith spokesperson Krissy Humenesky, referring to a call center at an Everest college in Florida. Zenith, an affiliate of ECMC Group Inc., last December entered into a deal with Corinthian Colleges to take over 56 Everest and WyoTech campuses in 17 states across the country, including Colorado. Earlier this month,...

Saudi Arabia continues to ratchet up production, taking market share away from U.S. shale producers. According to OPEC’s latest monthly oil report, Saudi Arabia boosted its oil output to 10.31 million barrels per day in April, a slight increase over the previous month’s total of 10.29 million barrels. That was enough for the de facto OPEC leader to claim its highest oil production level in more than three decades. Saudi Arabia has increased production by 700,000 barrels per day since the fourth quarter of 2014 in an effort maintain market share. The resulting crash in oil prices is forcing some...

Did you know that 89 percent of all minimum wage workers in the United States are not teens? At this point, the average age of a minimum wage worker in this country is 36, and 56 percent of them are women. Millions upon millions of Americans are working as hard as they can (often that means two or three jobs), and yet despite all of their hard work they still find themselves mired in poverty. One of the big reasons for this is that we have created two classes of workers in the United States. “Full-time workers” are entitled to...

The evidence continues to mount..."Most since Lehman" has become the new meme for macro-economic data in the US as day after day brings another lacklustre superlative to be dismissed with some excuse by the cognoscenti of sell-side economists...  Of course, that is aside from anything related to aggregate jobs that is spewed by the government's official ministries of truth... (do not look at this chart)*  *  *So here are seven charts that scream "recession" is here...Retail Sales are weak - extremely weak. Retail Sales have not dropped this much YoY outside of a recession... And if Retail Sales are weak, then...

I was walking across the bridge from the LP Field parking lot to the NRA Meeting in Nashville, when I came across three active members of this group.  They are members of a civic minded service organization that saw a need and decided to fill it.   They created a local gun exchange that allows like minded individuals to find each other and trade and sell firearms privately.  They do this purely as a civic virtue; they make no money at it.   They have only been in existence for three years, and have about 10,000 members. This is the sort...

President Obama said today that the incidents with police in Baltimore and Ferguson, along with “a growing awareness of inequality in our society,” can turn attention back to poverty in America and bridge “ideological divides that have prevented us from making progress.” At the Georgetown University panel on poverty, Obama name-dropped Ayn Rand and acknowledged he may speak differently to a black audience. Panelists joining the president were American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor Robert Putnam, and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. “The stereotype is that you’ve got folks on the left who just want to pour more...

This entire phony genre of journalism is now well beyond embarrassing. Do you know what a fact is? That’s easy. Of course you do. Fact is an objective truth not subject to interpretation or dispute. Water is liquid if it’s above 32 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s a fact. Thursday comes after Wednesday. That’s a fact. The address of the White House is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. People who deal in actual facts can recognize that an assertion is either fact-based or its not. It’s really not that complicated. That’s for normal people who understand what a fact is. But there are other...

The Union Carbide Hunting and Fishing Lodge campground on Blue Creek is facing extinction soon, after decades of being a choice, close-by, back-to-nature getaway location for generations of Union Carbide employees, their families and friends. Those who still maintain campsites on the Elk River-area property have been given notice to vacate the premises no later than mid-August. Jack Lesher of Clendenin is the treasurer for the Carbide Recreation Club, which has maintained the campground for approximately 25 years. He recounted the history of the facility and the recent notification of its impending closure. “Back when Union Carbide ran a chemical...

Reflections on the origin of opportunities, on the opening of UI Labs' new research center in Chicago… UI Labs’ Digital Manufacturing Center opened today at Goose Island in Chicago – on 94,000 square feet of a property that was once the Republic Windows and Doors factory – and you will celebrate. It’s an important facility – everybody says so, particularly the people who made it possible, and they should know. It’s going to remake American manufacturing, by figuring out how to modernize the American manufacturing floor. You should thank Rahm Emanuel (D, Chicago) and Bruce Rauner (R, Wall Street) and...