Free Republic

...This election day, California voters tightened gun control, extended taxes on the rich, hiked cigarette taxes, legalized marijuana, boosted multilingual education — and of course provided Hillary Clinton with all of her winning margin of 2 million popular votes, and then some, in her losing campaign for president... Secession talk is more valuable as a pointer to all the ways that California and federal policies are likely to come into conflict during the next few years than as a formula for practical politics. California has been among the national leaders in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and as recently as September...

<p>The Indiana Board of Animal Health has issued an advisory after livestock on a southern Indiana beef cattle farm was infected with anthrax.</p> <p>A veterinarian collected tissue samples for laboratory testing after the animal died unexpectedly. Only a single, mixed-breed bull died; other animals in the herd have not shown signs of infection.</p>

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled that existing emissions limits for passenger cars for 2022 through 2025 should remain in place. It's a decision that is already opposed by lobbyists representing the auto industry, and possibly by the incoming Trump Administration. Sure enough, one automaker says it has already begun talks with President-elect Donald Trump that include a request for lower emissions targets.

Israel is contemplating the acquisition of additional Boeing F-15Is to support its future combat requirements. Although the country's air force investment is currently focused on the acquisition of 50 Lockheed Martin F-35s, Tel Aviv believes it needs more than one strike aircraft in its inventory. During briefings ahead of the 12 December arrival of Israel’s first F-35s, air force officials indicated that they were considering buying more of the legacy Boeing fighters. According to sources familiar with the matter, although the F-35’s stealth capabilities will be vital in the initial phase of a conflict, the air force will subsequently need...

Well, Brown(gov) is at it again. This time, he’s passing legislation targeting dairy cows for the horrific crime of releasing methane when they pass gas, belch or defecate. Brown has decided that he knows more than centuries of farmers—all over the globe—who have used and prized manure as a fertilizer. “Manure is a valuable fertilizer for any farming operation and has been used for centuries to supply needed nutrients for crop growth,” according to researchers at the University of Minnesota. Organic! Natural! Free-range! Environmentalists routinely employ these words to make themselves sound hip and helpful. But if you’re truly “green,”...

Venezuela will introduce six new bills ranging from 500 to 20,000 bolivars, the OPEC nation's central bank said in a statement on Sunday. Currently, the largest-denominated Venezuelan note is 100 bolivars (9.4 euros), which is worth just around two US cents on the black market. A two-liter soft drink bottle can cost 25 times that amount.

No one ever doubted Donald Trump’s talent for theater, a gift he is exercising with some flair in the matter of the Carrier air-conditioner company’s facilities in Indiana. Carrier had planned to move a furnace operation to Mexico and to shutter a plant in Huntington, Ind., where it manufactures electronic controls. After the intervention of President-elect Trump and Governor Mike Pence, Carrier has agreed to keep the furnace operation going in Indiana, albeit with several hundred fewer employees. It still will close the electronics plant and offshore those 700 or so jobs. It will move about 600 jobs from the...

During his campaign for President, Donald Trump declared that he would not approve a proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner on the grounds the deal represented “too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.” But as with so much else when it comes to Trump, it appears that vow is negotiable. On Thursday, the Financial Times reported that Trump’s transition team assured AT&T they would review the deal with an open mind, and that company executives came away confident that the deal would pass regulatory scrutiny.

U.S. stock futures indicated the Dow industrials were ready to open at a fresh intraday all-time high on Monday, with momentum driven as equity investors shook off the defeat of Italy’s constitution-reform referendum on Sunday and amid signs of steady U.S. economic growth. “The combination of steady U.S. economic growth, which won’t need too hawkish a stance from the FOMC to manage, along with the prospect of further QE from the ECB seems to be generating perfect conditions to extend the bull market rally,” said Jamieson Blake, retail sales manager at ADS Securities London, in a note to clients. On...

Facebook, Twitter, Google's YouTube and Microsoft must act faster to tackle online hate speech or they will face laws forcing them to do so, the European Commission said on Sunday. .... This included removing or disabling access to the content if necessary, better cooperation with civil society organizations and the promotion of "counter-narratives" to hate speech.

Jesse Worley threatened to sue Microsoft. He’s not the first to take on the Redmond company, but his move to take legal action had a purpose. He wanted Microsoft to acknowledge that aggressively pushing the Windows 10 update was a problem. Customers weary of the Windows 8 disaster were unwilling to take the upgrade leap; Microsoft was, he reasoned, ignoring their fear of heights. ... I’m an IT tech whose grandfather’s computer was updated through subterfuge, which made life harder for him and his caretakers until it was fixed ... Privacy advocates dislike it, as Microsoft collects data such as...

Americans should get used to a “new normal” of slow economic growth, business economists say. The median estimate from economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics calls for the American economy to grow 2.2 percent in 2017, up from a forecast 1.6 percent this year and unchanged from the previous survey in September. The improved number is still lackluster by historical standards. U.S. economic growth averaged 3.1 percent a year from 1948 to 2015, according to the Congressional Research Service. But the business economists say Americans need to get used to slow growth: 80 percent of those surveyed...

The city council in Portland, Ore., is set to consider a measure that would tax a company more if the CEO's pay is deemed too high compared to employees' salaries. It is a measure that may be too far-out right now even for famously liberal Portland, but it represents a way to use new CEO pay disclosure rules that advocates hope, and opponents fear, could be taken up by other cities or states. . . . Detractors are quick to point out potential flaws, especially that the policy would incentivize companies to leave Portland. "It's really easy to cross the...

I spent the first fourteen years of my life under communism. When my parents got out in 1962, I realized to my utter astonishment that much of academia was on the left, praising communism, rationalizing increased centralization of powers under a variety of jargons. Even the US was not immune to these ideas, and that the left and academia despised workers who wanted routine lives, rather than revolutions. All this came to my mind during the last few weeks, both with Fidel Castro’s deat... ...cry their hearts out again about the increased inequality – which, with minimal introspection, would have...

The U.S. economy added 178,000 jobs in November as the unemployment rate fell to 4.6%, the lowest since 2007, the Labor Department said Friday morning. Economists had expected a gain of 170,000 jobs and an unchanged 4.9% jobless rate. Employers in professional and business services added 63,000 jobs, while health care sector employment rose by 28,000 and construction 19,000. Manufacturing shed 4,000 jobs. October payroll growth was revised down by 19,000 to 142,000, but that was largely offset by an upward revision to September's job gain of 17,000 to 208,000. The unemployment rate fell in large part because the labor...

Economy: President-elect Trump's deal with Carrier isn't important because it saved 1,000 jobs. It's important because of the message it sends to businesses everywhere: Help is on the way. The reaction to Carrier's decision to retain some of its employees after meeting with Trump has been amusing. On the one hand, Trump's critics say the deal was a mere trifle, since there are still so many people out there hurting. On the other hand, they claim that Trump is acting like a third-world despot. A few headlines paint the picture: "Trump's Carrier Victory Is the Economy's Loss" "Trump's Carrier deal...

Ford Motor company CEO, Mark Fields, a staunch Trump opponent during the presidential campaign, now wants the President Elect to help with EPA’s surprise decision to keep long term fuel economy targets in place. A mid-term review of corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) targets set in 2012 kicked off earlier this year, but the timing of the agency’s recent decision to maintain the 54.5 mile-per-gallon goal reeks of politics, Fields claims. For automakers, reaching 54.5 mpg means extra costs. To avoid this, Ford is prepared to turn to its election campaign sparring partner — President-elect Donald Trump — for help.

You Can Be a Certified Duke Marxist. Think about that.No, this is not The Onion, a joke, nor a smear.James Buchanan “Buck” Duke was an industrialist icon; a man who made a fortune in tobacco and textiles. He was a true capitalist that feared God, inspired faith, and was a titan of industry. He funded several of America’s great educational institutions and was a philanthropist beyond measure, but his endowment is now responsible for a program that will certify the next generation of Marxists.- Let that sink in.According to a recent Duke Chronicle article, “Duke has long been known internationally...

President-elect Donald Trump reminds the world “America-First” is a policy, not a suggestion:

AT&T Inc. will unveil its long-promised over-the-top video service Monday as the company attempts to get a foothold in the future of how Americans watch television. The service, called DirecTV Now, will launch later this month and be priced starting at $35 a month for more than 100 live streaming television channels. Consumers, analysts and investors will be looking for specifics around possible pricing tiers, channel lineups and bundling options. “The question remains the quality of the product and user experience,” said UBS analyst John Hodulik, who estimates the service will have three million users by the end of 2020,...