Free Republic

Drop this grenade. Dodge this bullet. Give us tax reform. Give us regulatory reform. Numerous times the President has said in his opinion the Republicans should let Obamacare alone for a year or two. Let it implode (as it was designed to do) while the Democrats still own it. When President Trump gave his well-received speech at CPAC, he said that he has told Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and the Republican leadership in Congress to simply “let it implode.” The law is simply “repealing itself,” Trump told the audience. “All we have to do is let it implode.”...

A call center company spun off from Quicken Loans' telephone-focused mortgage sales operation is planning to add 500 employees by year's end and looking for additional office space in downtown Detroit. Rock Connections, a five-year-old call center and part of Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert's family of companies, has reached capacity with 800 employees in its building at 1900 Saint Antoine next to Ford Field, said Victor You, CEO of Rock Connections. The fast growth adds teeth to Gilbert's observation that call centers could be a growth industry for Detroit and create a "point of entry" to jobs for residents....

An Ireland-based cyber-security and payments industry firm has opened its Brookhaven location, which will eventually create 500 jobs for DeKalb County. Sysnet Global Solutions intends to invest $2 million with the Brookhaven center in the Perimeter Summit development. Numerous officials and community leaders were on hand for a ceremony at the site Thursday, including Brookhaven Mayor John Ernst. He’s said he’s excited to have the company in town. “Five hundred plus jobs is always a great sign of a vibrant economy,” he said in January....

INDEPENDENCE, Ohio -- Sterling Talent Solutions, a pre-employment background screening company that just expanded its U.S. operations center at 4511 Rockside Road, expects to hire about 65 people in 2017. Sterling Talent Solutions, founded in 1975 and based in New York, has 4,000 employees in 20 offices globally, including a large presence in Manhattan and in Greater Seattle. But the Independence office, now with 225 employees, is its largest in the U.S. and its only office in Ohio. Sterling, which hired 65 people in 2016, moved into the 40,000 square foot offices at 4511 Rockside Road in anticipation of more...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Sean McGarvey, the president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, says he fully expects President Trump to keep his promises to push a trillion-dollar infrastructure program and that he expects Congress to enact it by the end of the year. He did not say, however, that all of the tens of thousands of jobs such a program would create would be union jobs. McGarvey brushed aside criticism from some quarters in the labor and allied movements about his meeting with President Trump and three other building trades union leaders at the White House only three days...

More than 60 Hispanic companies, all interested in constructing the controversial wall that US President Donald Trump wants to build on the Mexican border, are putting aside political and patriotic concerns for the chance to make money and create jobs. "Honestly, for us it is above all an infrastructure project and a way to create jobs, something we really need in New Mexico," Mario Burgos of the Burgos Group construction company told EFE, adding that his state has an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent, the country's highest. Of Peruvian descent, Burgos said that if the family business takes part in...

Following the backlash that Ivanka Trump's clothing brand experienced in recent months, you might think its sales would be on the decline. But statistics show business is booming for her namesake line — and in fact, people seem more curious about it than ever. It's not all positive news, however: Certain customers are purging their closets of Ivanka Trump wares, and thredUP, a fashion resale site that's been around for nearly a decade, has released the numbers on just how much people are unloading. According to the reseller's "Purge Surge" list, Ivanka Trump merch comes in at number seven, behind...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Tuesday sent President Donald Trump a measure to expand the number of applicants for jobless benefits who can be drug-tested. The White House has said Trump will sign the measure into law as a cancellation of "unnecessary regulations." Lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Congress have complained that under President Barack Obama, the government placed too many limits on states for deciding which unemployment applicants can be drug-tested. The Labor Department's regulation meant that states could only test applicants for unemployment benefits who do jobs that require drug testing. The resolution passed by the House and...

Then rounds down to support his argument You were on the receiving end of 16 hours of brutal mockery over the worst piece of “journalism” ever, I imagine you’d want to lash out. You’re the embarrassed butt of a national joke, you have no valid contrary arguments, and you just lent incalculable assistance to your arch-enemy’s cause. Having burned yourself badly - and being a liberal, thus incapable of introspection - you’re spoiling for a fight.

Fried chicken will never be guilt-free. But you may soon be able to remove at least part of the remorse the next time you chow down—because it might not have required a single bird to be harmed. Memphis Meats is one of a cadre of startups racing to create meat that doesn’t involve killing any animals. The firm's approach to what it calls “clean meat” is to culture animal cells in the lab, feed them nutrients until they grow into pieces large enough to cook and eat. The company has already grown beef (as have others). Last year, it made...

We are stuck with the probability that the bank, masquerading as an agency for student learning, will collapse under the weight of unpaid debts Americans should brace themselves for the coming failure of one of the biggest banks in the country that does not have the word “bank” in its title. And no impressive polished brass safe in the lobby either. Why should Americans care about this bank? Because they own it! And its receivables exceed $1 trillion! How much of those “assets” are actually collectible is a valid question.

The scoreboard on President Trump and mainstream media haters: Trump, 1, MSM, big fat zero! The Swan Song is blaring for Rachel Maddow, reigning Queen of MSNBC. Wretched Rachel set her sights on bringing the Donald down through the release of his tax returns. Instead, she ended up sinking her own leaky boat.

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (PRWEB) March 14, 2017 - Alkane Truck Company, the South Carolina-based assembler of alternative fuel vehicles, has announced it will establish more than a dozen assembly facilities in the USA, Canada and Mexico over the next 36 months. Alkane is coordinating with economic development offices across North America to identify potential business partners interested in becoming contract assemblers. “We will provide training for their employees and deliver all components required to assemble Alkane vehicles for direct shipment to our existing and ever-expanding dealership network," says Bob Smith, CEO of Alkane Truck Company. "These business partners will...

HENRY COUNTY, Ga. - Luxottica Group, a leading designer eyewear manufacturer, is planning to create 1,000 jobs in Henry County with the addition of its North American distribution facility. According to a press release from Governor Nathan Deal, the expansion will use the company’s new lens service model in which both frames and lenses are assembled and distributed from a single location in Henry County by the end of 2017. The company said in a press release that move will allow them “to produce and deliver a complete pair of prescription frames of the highest quality and perfect fit anywhere...

Chart done by David Scott Total private guns in the United States,  404 million Gun Watch Total private guns added during President Obama's two terms, 96 million Gun Watch Murder rate in the U.S. (latest from 2015)  4.9 per 100,000  FBI Murder rate in the U.S.  1993  9.5 per 100,000  FBI Murder rate in Brazil (latest) 24.6 per 100,000  Wikipedia Murder rate in Mexico  2013 15.7 per 100,000  Wikipedia Number of people with Concealed Carry permits in the United States: 14.5 million  CrimeResearch.org study Number of States where no permit is required to carry concealed or openly:  12 No...

Infrastructure spending is the key to increasing economic growth, because it will give Americans better-paying jobs, a prominent investment banker and economist said. "The private sector has done all it reasonably can, yet the U.S. labor market remains a shadow of its former self. It is time to rebuild America," Daniel Alpert, a founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, said Monday in a presentation titled "The Case for Aggressive Fiscal Spending on Infrastructure in 2017."(continued)

[A simple explanation for why nothing improves in our public schools.] In the movie, Bill Murray gets up every day and has to live through the same realities that he lived through the day before. Nietzsche called this predicament “eternal recurrence.” Einstein weighed in on this topic. Doing the same thing again and again, while getting the same results, is a working definition of insanity. So there you have our public school system, an insane Rube Goldberg contraption with lots of wheels turning, balls dropping, springs springing…. but nothing is accomplished. I've been studying education for 25 years and finally...

Is it Obamacare-lite--or worse than Obamacare? House Speaker Paul Ryan is talking out of both sides of his mouth on health care reform. He claims that his proposed “American Health Care Act” (AHCA) will increase choice and lower costs. Yet the actual bill preserves many of the provisions in Obamacare that do the opposite. (I wrote about the bill at Bombthrowers on Saturday.)

America will always have a safety net for the genuinely needy--unless we bankrupt the nation catering to those who embrace personal irresponsibility Nothing about America’s ever-expanding welfare state has been more egregious than its unflinching cultivation of personal irresponsibility. From able-bodied people getting welfare or disability payments, to single women having illegitimate children, much of what we used to consider unacceptable or immoral behavior has been de-stigmatized. Our shame-free society must be kept in mind during the GOP’s effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare. That’s because the Left’s greatest weapon—one also embraced by several weak-kneed Republicans—is the idea that if...

And Rand Paul too! The word we get from Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell is that the American Health Care Act (actually it’s just a bill right now), is the bill. This is the ObamaCare replacement. Take it or leave it. It doesn’t sound like that’s necessarily President Trump’s position. He spent several days last week in intense discussions with conservative members of both the House and Senate - as well as libertarian Rand Paul, who sometimes pretends to be conservative - trying to reach an agreement that will push a good bill forward to passage. What the conservatives most...