Free Republic

The United States is supposed to be enjoying a recovery. Indeed, we’re now supposedly in the fifth year of an expanding economy. Many Americans must wonder why it doesn’t feel that way. In part, that’s because growth has been very anemic. Indeed, this is the weakest recovery since the Great Depression. But it’s also because the labor market has been very weak. Most observers correctly note that there are far fewer jobs than Obama promised if the so-called stimulus was enacted. I think that’s a very fair complaint, but I’m even more concerned about the very troubling drop in the...

With an appearance on Bloomberg TV Tuesday, Former CNN president Jon Klein and former NBC entertainment chairman Jeff Gaspin announced their new online streaming video venture called TAPP, short for “TV App.” As for the types of personalities the pair hopes to feature on the service? According to Klein, Sarah Palin is exactly the type of person they are looking for. “We are not talking about specific talent,” Klein said in response to rumors that they have been in talks with Palin about the venture. “I will tell you that Sarah Palin is the kind of personality who has a...

President Dad-Jeans #Normcore is in town this afternoon ahead of an exclusive $32,400-a-head fund-raiser, and he's spending the intervening hours as a man (from out of town) of the people. At the Gap. On 42nd Street. Basically, Obama is channeling The Office's Michael Scott, who once said, "I always like to come to New York a little bit early and hit some of my favorite haunts," like Sbarro for "a New York slice." According to the White House pool report, "President Obama is doing a little shopping for his wife and daughters." But also, politics: In his State of the...

The Obama administration is infusing millions of additional dollars into the stabilization and strengthening of county governments across Kenya to protect taxpayers there by having Americans foot the bill. Without opening the endeavor to competitive bidding, the U.S. Agency for International Development simply changed the terms of an existing Kenya aid program and put more money into it. Kenyans had been facing additional financial costs for their own local governments before the agency extended the contract by assigning new responsibilities to Development Alternatives Inc., or DAI. But the change by USAID means that Americans, not Kenyans, will be on the...

Geopolitics: Four central European nations have appealed to the U.S. to increase natural gas exports should Russia cut off its supply to Ukraine. We are the superpower of energy. Time to give Vladimir Putin some gas pains. Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic sent a letter Friday to House Speaker John Boehner, with a similar letter expected to be sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, asking the U.S. to expedite approval of natural-gas export applications. These nations believe a steady gas supply is key to the region's economic and geopolitical stability. Putin's Russia has used its energy resources...

House Republicans are plotting a $1.7 billion tax increase aimed at America’s most elite colleges and universities. The tax increase is buried on page 879 of Rep. Dave Camp’s (R-Mich.) 979-page tax reform bill. The bill is considered unlikely to become law, but Camp is chairman of the powerful, tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, and his draft legislation is likely to provide a road map for tax reformers in years ahead. The tax, as outlined in Section 5206 of the legislation, is called an “excise tax based on investment income of private colleges and universities.” It begins, “there is hereby...

What do you do when a union vote doesn’t go your way? Well, if you are the United Auto Workers union, you ask for a “re-do”. The UAW has asked the National Labor Relations Board to reconsider their failed attempt to unionize Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, because… Well because they think it was unfair that anti-union voices were allowed to make their case on TV, highway billboards, and newspaper columns. In other words: the UAW feels they were unfairly outgunned by free-speech. According to the Wall Street Journal: The UAW has filed an election objection with the labor board alleging...

The California Department of Motor Vehicles began Tuesday to puzzle through the complex question of how to regulate cars that rely on computers—not people—to drive them. Once the stuff of science fiction, “driverless cars” could be commercially available by decade’s end. Google already has sent its fleet of Priuses and Lexuses, fitted with an array of sensors, hundreds of thousands of miles in California, and major automakers are testing their own models. …

Big name Republicans and putative conservatives signing onto the Obama Administration’s Common Core education reforms in the belief that they will raise standards in public schools may want to entertain the possibility that they will actually lower them. Stan Karp writes in Rethinking Schools that “For many teachers, especially in the interim between the rollout of the standards and the arrival of the tests—a lot of Common Core’s appeal is based on claims that: “It represents a tighter set of smarter standards focused on developing critical learning skills instead of mastering fragmented bits of knowledge; “It requires more progressive, student-centered...

Last month, Barack Obama traveled to snowy St. Paul, Minn., the same place where in the sunnier days of June 2008 he predicted that his clinching of the Democratic presidential nomination would be remembered as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the earth began to heal." This time in St. Paul he addressed a lesser problem, one within the ambit of a president's powers: transportation. He mentioned the most common form of transportation -- auto travel over streets and highways -- only in passing. Instead, he hailed St. Paul's "spiffy new trains," one of...

Pioneer Flourishes in U.S. Shale Fields Where Shell Floundered By Joe Carroll Mar 10, 2014 7:00 AM ET Pioneer Natural Resources Co. (PXD), the top energy stock in the S&P 500 last year, is tripling drilling in shale fields as international energy explorers five times its size recoil from losses on the U.S. oil renaissance.Pioneer is expanding its fleet of drilling rigs in the northern part of Texas’ Spraberry field to 16 from five this quarter after striking reservoirs so rich that some wells are expected to pump as much as 1 million barrels of crude during their lifespans. Pioneer’s...

Eagle Ford Shale Continues to Get BiggerBy Matt DiLallo | More Articles | Save For Later March 11, 2014 | Comments (0) Photo credit: Carrizo Oil & Gas,In addition to reporting stellar quarterly results, EOG Resources (NYSE: EOG  ) also reported a 45% surge in the company's resource potential in the Eagle Ford Shale. In the four years since the company discovered the play, it has now boosted the recovery potential of oil and gas from the Eagle Ford Shale by four-fold.Better data on previously drilled wells along with improved completion techniques have contributed to the boost. However, the real reason...

... As the end of the harshest winter in recent memory approaches, the bill is coming due for millions of consumers who are not only using more electricity and natural gas but also paying more for whatever they use. And there might not be relief in future winters, as the coal-fired power plants that utilities have relied on to meet the surge in demand are shuttered for environmental reasons. The sticker shock has been particularly acute in the Northeast, where natural gas supplies have been constrained. But it has spread to other regions of the country, including the Midwest, where...

3,000 Americans around the world renounced their citizenship last year. Meet five U.S. citizens who have given up their passports -- or are thinking about it -- to escape an overly complicated tax code. I threw up after renouncing View photo.Donna-Lane NelsonName: Donna-Lane Nelson, 71Lives in: Geneva, Switzerland I renounced my U.S. citizenship in 2011. After I did it, I was so emotional that I threw up outside the embassy. During my renunciation, I broke down. It was like getting a divorce. America gave me my education, a good career path, and I came from a beautiful part of the...

The US employment situation is far weaker than the Feburary jobs number suggests While February job growth was decent at +175,000, the overall US employment picture in the last few months has deteriorated substantially. Seven out of the 9 previous times that the YoY% change in aggregate hours was as low as it is now, the economy had entered a recession.

The saddest thing about a guy like Obama, as opposed to say, Bill Clinton, is that if you went forward in time and showed him all his mistakes, showed him an alternate vision-- one that's successful for the country-- he is such an ideologue that he would reject the advice out of hand. But still that doesn’t mean that I won’t share the five things Obama could do to turn the country and the economy around. Some of these are things anyone could do. OK, anyone but Obama: 1) Negotiate with Republicans on Obamacare—This signature piece of legislation is...

Last month, Barack Obama traveled to snowy St. Paul, Minn., the same place where in the sunnier days of June 2008 he predicted that his clinching of the Democratic presidential nomination would be remembered as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the earth began to heal.” This time in St. Paul he addressed a lesser problem, one within the ambit of a president’s powers: transportation. He mentioned the most common form of transportation — auto travel over streets and highways — only in passing. Instead, he hailed St. Paul’s “spiffy new trains,” one of...

A new study says governments around the world boosted their debts by more than 40% to over $100 trillion in response to the global financial crisis. Where's the promised recovery from all that spending? From mid-2007 to last summer, the world added $30 trillion in government debt to its balance sheets, the Bank for International Settlements says. By comparison, that's twice the size of the $15 trillion U.S. economy. After the financial crisis, governments around the world, but especially in Europe, the U.S. and Japan, went deeper into debt so that they could spend more. They were following the old...

Global debt outstanding, that is, all debts public and private, reached $100 trillion in mid-2013, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) quarterly review revealed. Credit outstanding has grown by more than $30 trillion since the financial crisis began in 2007. When compared to data compiled by the Federal Reserve, the U.S. share of the $100 trillion is almost three-fifths — with about $58 trillion credit outstanding nationwide at the end of the second quarter in 2013. In contrast, the $17 trillion U.S. gross domestic product only makes up a little less than one quarter the world’s total economic capacity, currently...

Buried deep in a section of President Obama's budget, released this week, is an eye-opening fact: This year, 70% of all the money the federal government spends will be in the form of direct payments to individuals, an all-time high. In effect, the government has become primarily a massive money-transfer machine, taking $2.6 trillion from some and handing it back out to others. These government transfers now account for 15% of GDP, another all-time high. In 1991, direct payments accounted for less than half the budget and 10% of GDP. What's more, the cost of these direct payments is exploding....

Just over a year ago the state of Michigan passed a right-to-work law ruling that the state's teachers cannot be forced by law to belong to a union as they had been before. Since then the state teachers union has claimed that it lost only a few members. Still the union was also forced to admit that 8,000 teachers have stopped paying dues. In October of last year, the Michigan Education Association (MEA) made the claim that "99 percent" of its members remained happily unionized despite the state's ten-month-old worker freedom law. It is true that the union has allowed...

It was a lot of hot air about a lot of hot air. Democrats took to the Senate floor Monday night to talk about global warming and did not let up until morning.

They are proposing to use exactly the same track for these hazardous cars. Totally unacceptable,” said Berkeley Vice Mayor Linda Maio.The hazardous cars Maio is talking about could carry a highly explosive crude oil fracked from the Bakken region of North Dakota. It is as flammable as gasoline: as we saw when a 100-car train carrying the fuel derailed in Quebec last summer.

The hand-wringing over what to do to help Ukraine has had a very positive impact on the U.S. oil and gas industry. Politicians like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are seizing on the crisis to call for a lifting of the ban on U.S. oil exports — the better to counterbalance Russia’s petro-influence. While the Wall Street Journal this morning wrote that western politicians are working on a variety of options to help “loosen Russia’s energy stranglehold on Ukraine” including “larger exports of U.S.-made natural gas.” Nevermind that the U.S. currently exports no natural gas in the form of LNG because...

If the U.S. economy is getting better, then why are major retail chains closing thousands of stores? If we truly are in an "economic recovery", then why do sales figures continue to go down for large retailers all over the country? Without a doubt, the rise of Internet retailing giants such as Amazon.com have had a huge impact. Today, there are millions of Americans that actually prefer to shop online. Personally, when I published my novel I made it solely available on Amazon. But Internet shopping alone does not account for the great retail apocalypse that we are witnessing. In...

 Is Marcellus Shale Gas Production Nearing a Peak? By Arjun Sreekumar | More Articles | Save For Later March 9, 2014 | Comments (0) Natural gas industry observers will attest that growth in gas production from Pennsylvania's Marcellus shale has surpassed even the most optimistic of projections. And, according to a new report by a prominent investment research firm, Marcellus production growth won't be peaking anytime soon. Let's take a closer look. Source: Wikimedia Commons.The rapid growth in Marcellus gas production Last year, natural gas output from the Marcellus surged 61% year over year to average 10.4 billion cubic feet...

(Newser) – Connecticut could become the first state to curb loud movies. The legislature's Public Safety and Security Committee is considering the bill, which would prevent theaters from showing a film or preview that exceeded 85 decibels. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends noise should be kept below 85 decibels for workers for eight hours to minimize hearing loss. For comparison, the American Tinnitus Association says 85 decibels is the sound of average traffic, 80 decibels is the sound of an alarm clock 2 feet away, and 100 decibels is the sound of a blow dryer. "Hopefully...

More than a thousand people marched on the state Capitol today demanding a repeal of Stand Your Ground legislation. When they left, they left with a threat. Led by the Reverend Al Sharpton, police estimate 1200 people came from as far as Miami with a common goal. “We’re trying to amend the Stand Your Ground law,” said Virginia Lawrence of College Park, GA. “Can you imagine all the injustice?” On stage, Congresswoman Corrine Brown (D-Jacksonville) called the state and Stand Your Ground “stuck on stupid.” Trayvon Martin’s mother said she would not let her son die in vain. “Right is...

Israelis Detained on Board Norwegian Jade as Cruise Ship Docked in Port of Tunis Israeli tourists were denied the right to disembark from the Norwegian Jade, a vessel operated by the Norwegian Cruise Line, when it stopped in the Port of Tunis, Tunisia recently, Jewish human rights organization B’nai Brith Canada said on Sunday. As passengers prepared to get off the ship to visit the North African republic, the Israelis were quietly told that they were not welcomed by the Tunisian Government, the group said in a statement. The cruise line did not advise the passengers in advance that Israeli...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The head of the organization that monitors the nuclear test ban treaty said Monday he has asked its experts to see if they detected an explosion at high altitude of the missing Malaysian Airlines plane. Lassina Zerbo, executive director of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization told a news conference that the CTBTO uses "infrasound" - or infrasonic sensors - to monitor the earth mainly for atmospheric nuclear explosions....

In light of the recent crisis instigated by Russia, lawmakers have lately been pushing the Obama administration to expedite the more than twenty outstanding applications from energy companies for permission to export more natural gas into the world market — and a handful of central European countries are decidedly for it. They have recently developed infrastructure advancements that have made it possible for gas that normally flows through Ukraine to the EU to also flow in the other direction, meaning that the EU can and in fact has been shipping gas to the Ukraine, and these ambassadors are hoping that...

The promise of Obamacare was the right one and the hope for extending healthcare coverage to the un-and under-insured a step in the right direction. Yet the unintended consequences will hit the average, hard-working American where it hurts: in the wallet. Currently a national dialogue is emerging by all political parties on the issue of income inequality. That is a debate worth having. The White House and Congressional Democrats are “resetting” the domestic agenda following the negative fallout from the rollout of the ACA. They plan to shift focus from health care to bread and butter issues of income inequality...

Buried deep in a section of President Obama's budget, released this week, is an eye-opening fact: This year, 70% of all the money the federal government spends will be in the form of direct payments to individuals, an all-time high. In effect, the government has become primarily a massive money-transfer machine, taking $2.6 trillion from some and handing it back out to others. These government transfers now account for 15% of GDP, another all-time high. In 1991, direct payments accounted for less than half the budget and 10% of GDP. What's more, the cost of these direct payments is...

Union Report Criticizes ObamaCare 10 March 2014 Though labor unions have been some of President Obama's biggest advocates, a recent report from a major union reveals trouble in paradise. According to the report, Obama's prized healthcare law will further worsen income inequality. The report makes sure to defend the overall intent of ObamaCare, but cannot ignore the fact that it will increase the wealth for insurance companies while simultaneously hurting workers. "The promise of Obamacare was the right one and the hope for extending healthcare coverage to the un- and under-insured a step in the right direction. Yet the...

Over the past six months or so, a huge amount of attention has been paid to government snooping, and the bulk collection and storage of vast amounts of raw data in the name of national security. What most of you don't know, or are just beginning to realize, is that a much greater and more immediate threat to your privacy is coming from thousands of companies you've probably never heard of, in the name of commerce. They're called data brokers, and they are collecting, analyzing and packaging some of our most sensitive personal information and selling it as a commodity...to...

Obama should ignore the green lobby and expedite exports to Europe.Post-Crimea, everyone suddenly recognizes that Russia is a potential geopolitical menace to the West. But for years the Obama administration has completely failed to use the U.S.’s boom in energy production to increase its security and that of its European allies. Frustrated members of Congress from both parties now want to force the White House to stop delaying a full two dozen permits for the export of America’s abundant natural gas. Ukraine depends on Russia for more than two-thirds of its natural gas, and Russia is already raising prices steeply....

A fast-spreading virus that can kill 80 percent of piglets that contract it is rapidly spreading across Missouri hog farms, wiping out entire nurseries in some cases. Porcine epidemic diarrhea has killed 4 million to 5 million pigs nationwide, or about 4 percent of the pigs that would go to market later this year, The Joplin Globe reported. . . . . "We're adding 300 farms per week to the list of infected farms. I think most all will wind up with the disease," Plain said. "The average slaughter age is 6 months. So we will see the impact of...

WASHINGTON -- After an elderly couple got the boot from their local McDonald's for sitting too long, management and the owner are not answering the question if there really is a 30-minute sitting limit at the Culpeper, Va. fast food restaurant. Carl Becker, 87, a World War II veteran, and his wife Barbara Becker, 81, say they both were at the Culpeper McDonald's on Feb. 21 at about 2:30 p.m. when they were approached by the manager. The location is a place the pair has frequented for years. "And he says 'You two are going to have to leave.' He...

Four central European countries have asked the U.S. Congress to make it easier for them to import natural gas from the United States and reduce their dependence on supplies from Russia, the Czech Foreign Ministry said on Saturday. The Visegrad 4 group including Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia is looking to diversify supplies to eliminate the danger Russia could use its control of gas and oil flows to exert political pressure on the former Soviet satellite states. Supplies were briefly disrupted in 2009 during a dispute between Russia and Ukraine, through which much of the Russian gas is...

You knew it was coming.With the legalization of pot in Colorado and other states, it has been discovered that over the past few months, purchases of marijuana in pot dispensaries have been paid for with cash from welfare benefits. The purchase of marijuana is strictly a cash business so it was obvious that ATM machines should be made available inside the dispensaries for easy access to money.That’s fine except that there is no distinction between a credit/debit card and an EBT card. Taxpayers have given this money to people that are “in need of assistance”, not to people who need...

If Obama really wants to get nasty with Putin, he'll sign him up for Obamacare. So disgusted by a media that tried to persuade America Reagan's booming economy was hell on earth, while they cover Obama's disaster as the way things should be. There will be an accounting. The old networks will crash. They deserve worse. The glory of a vibrant, growing, free economy isn't that we'll all start companies and get rich --though the opportunity to try is more abundant. No, it's that in such an economy, there are more jobs, choices, and opportunities for everyone to live the...

Democratic Senate candidates, facing withering criticism on the national health care law, are gambling they can turn voters against two billionaire brothers funding the attacks—even if few Americans would recognize the pair on the street. In an accelerating counteroffensive stretching from the Senate chamber to Alaska, Democrats are denouncing Charles and David Koch, the key figures behind millions of dollars in conservative TV ads hammering Democratic candidates and their ties to President Barack Obama. Democrats depict the Kansas-based Koch (pronounced “Coke”) brothers as self-serving oil barons who pay huge sums to try to “buy” elections and advance their agenda of...

The takeover of Crimea by Russia is nearly complete. All that remains is the final vote on March 16. There would not be a vote if the outcome was uncertain. Troops Install Minefields, Border Markers in Crimea

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives raided EP Armory, in Bakersfield, California Friday, along with owner Chris Cook's home. Details at this point are still very thin, but Cook says that agents indicated that they are looking for "illegal guns." From ABC 23 News: The ATF was not able to provide information on the on-going investigation. Grahm Barlowe with the ATF declined to comment on why the store was targeted or exactly what agents were looking for.Cook said agents told him they were looking for illegal firearms. EP Armory is known mostly for its innovative "80% complete" AR-15...

From a jobs perspective, the economy treaded water in February. We didn't drown in unemployment, but nor did we manage to swim closer to the prosperity shore. It was a "blah" month, in the midst of the worst economic recovery in American history. Full-time-equivalent* (FTE) jobs increased by 147,000, thanks mostly to a large decline in the number of part-time workers. This was enough to move the nation 45,000 FTE jobs closer to full employment. While this was better than average for a month in President Obama's so-called "economic recovery" (America is 2.2 million FTE jobs farther away from full...

If Republicans and pro-growth Democrats had their wits about them, they would push the flat tax. The need for a simple flat tax was underscored recently by the comprehensive tax reform plan released by the outgoing chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, Dave Camp (R–Mich.). The chairman decided to work with the existing tax code and has attempted to change this monster into something that encourages more economic growth. He deserves all the plaudits possible for his heroic effort. THE GOOD, THE BAD … Under Camp’s plan tax rates for individuals and corporations would be reduced; the hideous...

The Federal Reserve’s seemingly endless program of quantitative easing (QE) begun under Ben Bernanke, and continuing at a slightly slower pace under Janet Yellen, has some of the punditry and much of the electorate up in arms. With good reason. Implicit in quantitative easing is the horribly obtuse notion that central banks can produce real economic growth through their monetary machinations. If only life were so simple. Back in the world of the reasonable, the sole purpose of money is as a stable measure of value that facilitates the exchange of goods and investment. Quantitative easing, by its very name,...

Asian shares were a lackluster sight on Monday, with major indexes across the region registering steep declines. Chinese shares in particular suffered a hefty loss of nearly 3 percent. Investors switched to 'risk-off' mode following disappointing Chinese export data over the weekend. The latest Japanese gross domestic product (GDP) figures further dented trading sentiment across the region. Commenting on Monday's sluggish tone in Asian equities, Kingsley Jones, Founder and CIO of Jevons Global, told CNBC's Cash Flow, "I think a lot of that (weakness) has to do with the Chinese data released over the weekend. Those weak export numbers got...

Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Superiority" made it clear decades ago that overreliance on technology can kill people. "We were defeated by one thing only – by the inferior science of our enemies. I repeat – by the inferior science of our enemies." The story's lesson is that, when national security or human safety depends on a product, that product has to work 100 percent of the time. This applies particularly to defensive firearms, cell phones, gun safes, and automobiles. Dr. Ignatius Piazza of Front Sight reports that Armatix GmbH, a German gun manufacturer, is offering a "smart gun" that...

Democrats have decided to lean-in, not back-away, from so-called clean energy. Despite the embarrassing history of government-funded green-energy failures, “wealthy environmentalists are pushing Democrats to take bolder positions on climate change”—and global warming, as an issue, provides the impetus for more green-energy spending. The Boston Globe reported on a recent “summit between Washington’s liberal elite and San Francisco’s climate intelligensia” that included “Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, six other senators, and … Al Gore.” The Globe points to new efforts by Democrats to “make global warming a central issue during the midterms.”