Free Republic

When you dish out illegal stock tips at the golf course, there are no mulligans. This summer the Securities and Exchange Commission has brought insider trading cases that center on the relationships between golfing buddies and how their chitchat in the tee box or at the 19th hole turned into lucrative and illegal trading bonanzas. In July and August, the SEC filed two separate charges involving golf connections, including one targeting seven friends who regularly hit the links at Oakley Country Club just outside of Boston. The SEC charged they made more than $554,000 through illegal trades involving information shared...

California lawmakers have approved a measure that would make the state the first to impose a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags. SB270 cleared the Senate on a 22-15 vote Friday and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown. It was approved by the Assembly a day earlier. …

If you got health coverage through President Barack Obama's law this year, you'll need a new form from your insurance exchange before you can file your tax return next spring. Some tax professionals are worried that federal and state insurance marketplaces won't be able to get those forms out in time. That could lead to delayed tax refunds for millions of consumers.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi starts a five-day visit to Japan on Saturday, looking to deepen defense and commercial ties between the two Asian countries as they grapple with an increasingly assertive China. Mr. Modi is to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other officials for what are expected to be wide-ranging discussions about regional security as well as a possible deal on civil nuclear cooperation. […] “It is a watershed meeting,” said Brahma Chellaney, a strategic affairs analyst at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “It is crucial to preventing the rise of a Sino-centric Asia.”...

Brain-wave sensing machines have been used to ‘telepathically’ control everything from real-life helicopters to characters in a computer game. Now the technology has gone a step further by allowing someone in India to send an email to his colleague in France using nothing but the power of his mind. The researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) headsets to record electrical activity from neurons firing in the brain, and convert the words ‘hola’ and ‘ciao’ into binary. In EEG, electrical currents in the brain are linked with different thoughts that are then fed into a computer interface. This computer analyses the signal and...

A trade group representing the fast-growing electronic cigarette industry is contesting a new government study that claims the largely unregulated products lead teens on a path to tobacco cigarette smoking. 
 The American Vaping Association blasted this week’s study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), describing the assertion as “plain deceptive” and calling for the paper’s retraction. The industry posits that e-cigarettes can actually help smokers quit, though they are prohibited from marketing the devices as a cessation tool. “There is no evidence e-cigarettes are gateways to smoking, and in fact, for millions of Americans they are...

In a clearing in a cornfield in the Eagle Ford region of south Texas, the rig drilling the Sisti A3 well for ConocoPhillips looks very similar to the ones that have been working in the state’s shale reserves for more than a decade. But a mile or two below the surface, the way the wells operate has changed radically. Since 2012, Conoco has doubled the volume of ceramic proppant – a sand-like material – it uses for hydraulic fracturing. Mixed with water and pumped into wells at high pressure, the proppant forces open the cracks in the rocks where oil...

Most real estate experts believe the U.S. housing market is roaring back. Few have anything to negative to say about real estate. But what if they’re wrong? Real estate analyst Keith Jurow, author of the Capital Preservation Real Estate Report, is warning that the real estate market is not as strong as it seems. Says Jurow: “I never bought into the idea that we had a recovery at all.” His research leads him to conclude that home prices will be heading lower. Why? Largely because home listings are going up but sale prices are not. Jurow discovered that as of...

The E.U. has suggested an interim agreement on the gas supplies between Russia and Ukraine without waiting for a Stockholm arbitrary court decision, E.U. Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger said in a news conference following his meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko late Tuesday. Two cases are before the Stockholm court, but the hearings will take 12-15 months, which is too long, while Europe needs an interim solution for this winter, Oettinger said. In June, Russian gas giant Gazprom switched Ukraine off gas over the unpaid debt and filed a $4.5 billion suit to the Stockholm arbitration court. Later, Kiev reciprocated...

White House: National Debate Needed Before Obama Amnesty     President Barack Obama wants a national debate on immigration, says his spokesman Josh Earnest.The new call for a debate suggests that the president is abandoning — or at least delaying — his high-risk promise to Latino advocates that he would provide work permits to millions of illegal immigrants in the weeks before the election.The president “wants to have a debate about the status of our immigration system, and what the consequences are for allowing a broken immigration to persist [and] what Republicans have done, or in this case, have not...

BERNE - A 21st-century Albany County initiative that combines farmers markets with online shopping is receiving extra funds to continue growth. State Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Paul Tonko announced Wednesday that FarmieMarket Online LLC, based in the town of Berne, is receiving $24,490 in federal funding. The SNAP’s monthly electronic benefit transfers (EBT) dollars, which 95,000 individuals and their families in the Capital Region currently receive, cannot be used in many online food stores, but only at authorized retail food stores. The new program will allow EBT users to order fresh food online with the benefit...

Labor Day used to be more than a summer-closing holiday; it was a celebration of labor unions and the American labor movement. That’s easy to forget these days because labor unions don’t have much to celebrate. At the height of their influence in the 1950s, labor unions could claim to represent about 1 of every 3 American workers. Today, it’s 1 in 9 — and falling. Some have seen the shrinking size and waning influence of labor unions as a sign that the US economy is growing more flexible and dynamic, but there’s mounting evidence that it is also contributing...

When we look back on what happened in Ferguson, Mo., during the summer of 2014, it will be easy to think of it as yet one more episode of black rage ignited by yet another police killing of an unarmed African American male. But that has it precisely backward. What we’ve actually seen is the latest outbreak of white rage. Sure, it is cloaked in the niceties of law and order, but it is rage nonetheless. Protests and looting naturally capture attention. But the real rage smolders in meetings where officials redraw precincts to dilute African American voting strength or...

There are few characteristics of human nature that are more immutable than the tendency to be focused on the short term. And just like a heart patient straying from his diet as time passes after his heart attack, the political class has collectively decided to tune out the federal debt as an issue. Between 2009 and 2012, the federal government ran deficits exceeding $1 trillion per year, for a total of $5.1 trillion over four years. During this time, the issue of deficits and debt became a prominent part of the national political conversation. In contrast, a Congressional Budget Office...

* Trading volumes light ahead of Labor Day holiday * Major indexes notch fourth straight week of gains * Chicago PMI, consumer sentiment both top forecasts * Indexes up: Dow 0.11 pct, S&P 0.33 pct, Nasdaq 0.5 pct U.S. stocks closed out a strong month on a quiet note on Friday, with the S&P 500 posting a modest gain to close at a new record as the latest positive data helped extend a rally that had been briefly threatened by overseas concerns. Since falling to a near three-month low on Aug. 7, the S&P 500 has risen in 12 of...

A Big Summer Story You Missed: Soaring Oil Debt by Andrew Nikiforuk, originally published by The Tyee  | TODAY Over 100 of the world's largest energy companies are running out of cash. Photo of Keystone pipeline in Nebraska by Shannon Ramos. Creative Commons licensed.Some of the summer's biggest news stories took place in the bombed schools of Gaza, the abandoned hospitals of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the wheat fields of eastern Ukraine and the bloody mountains of northern Iraq.But one of the most important made virtually no headlines at all, and seemed to only appear on the website of...

Over the last two years, the U.S. has had a spike in expatriations. It isn’t exactly Ellis Island in reverse, but it’s more than a dribble. With global tax reporting and FATCA, the list of the individuals who renounced is up. For 2013, there was a 221% increase, with record numbers of Americans renouncing. The Treasury Department is required to publish a quarterly list, but these numbers are under-stated, some say considerably. The presence or absence of tax motivation is no longer relevant, but that could change. After Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin departed for Singapore, Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob...

The winner of the U. S. Minority Business Development Agency's (MBDA) Lifetime Achievement Award says the economic fate of America's Black community "hangs in the balance" because "we are a fourth quarter people". Michael Grant, president of the National Bankers Association and its foundation, says, "Unlike our Hispanic and Asian brothers and sisters, we had to spend the first three quarters just getting in the game...So you see, all things being equal, our ethnic counterparts came to the game with a different mindset, a different set of circumstances, a different self-image, and already with some capital from back home." Grant...

It is no longer a question of how much government Americans want. The only question is how much government Americanscan afford. And the former Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the answer is becoming clear. “I talk about this in the book,” Ryan told Watchdog Radio Monday. “About very progressive policies. About the outcomes they produce, and how they bankrupt governments.” Ryan writes in his new book, “The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea”, that the federal government has expanded entitlement programs, Medicare, Social Security and now Obamacare, to the point where they cost far more...

Largest U.S. labor union not ready to back Hillary Clinton 2016 White House bid The country’s largest labor union won’t endorse any Democrat who has the same economic team as President Obama and won’t be getting behind Hillary Rodham Clinton early in the 2016 presidential race, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Thursday. “If you get the same economic team, you’re going to get the same results. The same results aren’t good enough for working people,” he said.