Free Republic

Why Scott Walker FLip-Flopped. One of the few intelligent and worthwhile things that John Maynard Keynes contributed to society is the following quote “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” Governor Scott Walker’s information has recently changed. Remember that Governor Walker had the guts to back down the Progressive Establishment in The Democratic Party of Wisconsin. It thus comes as no surprise that he also has the guts to take on the increasingly progressive and less pro-American pro-immigration caucus in the GOP. Walker explains his qualms concerning this headlong rush to replace domestic American...

Global temperature change observed over the last hundred years or so is well within the natural variability of the last 8,000 years, according to a new paper by a former Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) lead author. Dr. Philip Lloyd, a South Africa-based physicist and climate researcher, examined ice core-based temperature data going back 8,000 years to gain perspective on the magnitude of global temperature changes over the 20th Century. What Lloyd found was that the standard deviation of the temperature over the last 8,000 years was about 0.98 degrees Celsius– higher than the 0.85 degrees climate scientists say...

A number of states are quietly considering merging their healthcare exchanges under ObamaCare amid big questions about their cost and viability. Many of the 13 state-run ObamaCare exchanges are worried about how they’ll survive once federal dollars supporting them run dry next year. Others are contemplating creating multi-state exchanges as a contingency plan for a looming Supreme Court ruling expected next month that could prevent people from getting subsidies to buy ObamaCare on the federal exchange. The idea is still only in the infancy stage. It’s unclear whether a California-Oregon or New York-Connecticut health exchange is on the horizon. But...

Patent law is not something most Americans are passionate about or have ever contemplated -- which is exactly why the Obama White House and Congress got away with making radical changes to our time-tested traditions of protecting the fruits of entrepreneurial inventors' labor. It's yet another progressive horror story of abandoning what works in the name of what's politically trendy. For left-wing saboteurs and their Big Business GOP enablers, this means throwing our unique patent system and its constitutional underpinnings under an 18-wheeler. So-called "patent reform" proposals continue to plague Capitol Hill. But like health care "reform" and education "reform,"...

...after Hurricane Sandy bared down on New York, killing over 150 people and wreaking $65 billion in damage, federal leaders cried for help to make the Northeast more flood-proof. Dutch expert Henk Ovink answered..... ... there's good cause to be worried when the Dutch expert says there’s no place in worse shape today than Miami. He’s begun calling the city “the new Atlantis,” after the legendary and beautiful island subcontinent that was submerged by the sea in one night. “If we look around the world and take into account sea level rise and the increase of water related disasters, among...

A few broad distinctions have defined the United States' two main parties for decades. Republicans advocate smaller government, less taxation, and less regulation. According to the Pew Research Center, their supporters tend to be whiter, older, and more likely to identify as Christian than the average American. Democrats see the potential to alleviate certain perceived social ills through regulation and legislation, funded by taxation. They rely more on young people and ethnic and religious minorities for support. This familiar conservative-liberal political axis has been augmented in recent years by a second axis, which contrasts establishment and anti-establishment agendas. Anti-establishment groups...

On life support as of early Thursday morning, President Barack Obama’s trade agenda has found new life. In a dramatic vote critical to the future of the president’s goal of securing new trade deals with Pacific Rim and European countries, the Senate on Thursday broke a bipartisan filibuster of legislation to give the president “fast-track” authority to negotiate new trade deals. The 62-38 vote preserves the possibility that the Senate can finish the trade bill before the Memorial Day recess, which would be a major boon to Obama and Republican leaders in the House and Senate. It came after a...

Comparing Operation Choke Point to Tom Cruise’s “Minority Report,” a film where police use “psychic technology” to arrest alleged murderers before they actually commit a crime, Sen. Mike Crapo today made another attempt to end the Justice Department’s controversial program. “To explain [Operation Choke Point], I want to remind everybody of a movie that came out in 2002. It’s called ‘Minority Report,’” Crapo, R-Idaho, said during a Senate Banking Committee hearing this morning. “[T]he Department of Justice has engaged in a program where it has actually designated not companies, not individuals, but business types or industries that are entirely legal...

Vegetable farmers in Brandenburg are worried about the future of the famous Spreewald gherkins, as the new national minimum wage has driven prices up.Spreewald gherkins aren’t just any old gherkins. They hold a certain status in Germany, to the extent that they are designated by the EU as a Protected Geographical Indication, designed to protect local specialties. And yet the greatest threat to their survival isn’t coming from international competitors, but from German politicians. Producers say that the national minimum wage introduced by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as part of the coalition agreement is forcing prices up. “More than...

Ferguson city leaders project a $2.5 million budget shortfall during the current fiscal year and a similar shortage in fiscal 2016, largely due to the unrest and fallout after the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, the town's mayor said Thursday. Mayor James Knowles III said several businesses damaged or destroyed in the riots have not returned, so sales tax revenue is about $400,000 less than budgeted. The city voluntarily agreed to reduce the amount of money collected through the municipal court. Beyond that, police were issuing few tickets in the months after the shooting because they were too...

I see that unions, led by the Service Employees International Union, are out in full force championing the $15 an hour minimum wage. Business leaders scoff at this. The average CEO earns just over 350 times as much as the work force below. Those executives need to come down from the stratosphere and breathe real air. If we truly want to make that happen, how about joining the new $15 minimum wage with a $15 million maximum income? Could CEOs somehow manage to subsist on that? I think so. And then all of us could live pretty comfortably and in...

As Friday’s referendum on same-sex marriage in Ireland approaches, attention has turned to the funding behind the Yes campaign. A petition has been launched which says that “this push for same-sex marriage in Ireland has not at all been a ‘home-grown’ phenomenon, but, rather, a carefully-orchestrated and massively well-funded assault on the natural family, coming from private American funding”. In most countries funding local politics with overseas money would be as popular with voters as barbecuing puppydogs at a school fair. But not, apparently, in Ireland. A charity founded by Irish-American businessman Chuck Feeney, Atlantic Philanthropies, cheerfully acknowledges that it has poured about...

California might be ready to legalize cannabis for adults 21 and over, but some members of the Oakland community are worried it will be a job-killer for their street dealers. Support for legalization proved mixed at a public meeting of the ACLU’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Legalization in Oakland this week. "Street-level drug dealers who are now selling to 17- to 25-year-olds could see legalization cut their market in half," said Robert Dousa. “Many of these dealers are doing it to support their families — they need to make money,” Dousa said.

Back when he first announced, I figured upwards of 65 percent of the Jeb Bush presidential campaign would consist of him cautiously criticizing the obvious weak points of Bush 43 policy, one of which assuredly is spending. If you’re linked by blood to a president who left office under dismal circumstances, job one is explaining how you’ll be different. Then Megyn Kelly asked him about Iraq, Dubya’s biggest liability, and we watched Jeb spend a full week grasping for ways not to squarely disagree with his brother.Which is to say, this shouldn’t be newsworthy but I guess now it is....

The world is busy trying to achieve a global warming goal that some think we’re not on course to achieve, and that some scientists worry may not be enough to prevent some troubling scenarios — like significant sea level rise. That goal is limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But there’s another view, embraced by many countries (which tend not to be the big emitters), suggesting that a safer target involves limiting global warming to just 1.5 degrees C. Yet that target would be still tougher to achieve, finds a new paper in Nature Climate Change that...

Scott Walker is coming to Philadelphia. The Wisconsin Governor and probable 2016 presidential candidate will keynote the 2015 Northeast Republican Leadership Conference.“Governor Scott Walker is one of the leading voices of conservative values in the Republican Party,” PA GOP Chair Rob Gleason said. “Governor Walker has a proven track record of putting Republican principles into practice in government. Scott Walker has always put the needs of the taxpayer ahead of the wishes of special interests, and I look forward to hearing him discuss his vision for the future of our Party and our country.” “As the cradle of liberty, Philadelphia...

The price is still wrong for too many health insurance customers. Nearly half of all people with individual health insurance plans this year said it's "very" or "somewhat" difficult for them to afford their monthly premiums. The vast majority of Obamacare exchange customers receive a discount on their monthly premiums as a result of subsidies they are issued. Despite that, among individuals with both subsidized and nonsubsidized coverage, "You've got a substantial share saying it's not a great value for the money," said Liz Hamel, director of Kaiser's Public Opinion and Survey Research team. About four in 10 people surveyed...

ith the Senate poised to vote to end debate on Obama’s fast-track trade legislation, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is continuing his assault on the effort. Wednesday, Sessions took on arguments for the trade deal with a series of what he office says are “myths” versus “truths” about the trade deal under consideration in Congress. In the myth buster account, Sessions’ office says not only will fast-track erode congressional power over the trade process but the trade agreements implemented under that authority will trump U.S. law. Myth: Trade agreements implemented under fast-track will not supersede existing U.S. law. Truth: Every trade...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Chinese state firms are poised to be strong contenders in the race to make high-speed trains that will sprint between Los Angeles and San Francisco, part of a $68 billion project to bring the service to the United States for the first time. While "bullet train" manufacturers from Germany, Japan, South Korea, and France are expected to be among those jockeying for the estimated $1 billion train contract, China’s ability to offer low prices and hefty financing appear to make it the one to beat, say lobbyists and industry insiders. Lacking experience in the technology, California...

President Barack Obama's signature Asian trade push cleared another hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Thursday after a knife-edge vote moved the White House closer to gaining the power to speed trade deals through Congress. Senators voted 62-38 to give Obama a major victory and set up a speedy decision on the "fast-track" trade negotiating authority the president needs to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. TPP is seen as central to U.S. efforts to counter China's increasing economic muscle. Thirteen of 44 Democrats supported the legislation through the second Senate vote. Some supported moving ahead with fast track...