Free Republic

After you heard President Obama’s call for a hike in the minimum wage, you probably wondered the same thing I did: Was Obama sent from the future by Skynet to prepare humanity for its ultimate dominion by robots? But just in case the question didn’t occur to you, let me explain. On Tuesday, the day before Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, the restaurant chain Applebee’s announced that it will install iPad-like tablets at every table. Chili’s already made this move earlier this year. With these consoles customers will be able to order their meals and pay...

I presume that this is the “new and improved” Obamacare that everyone is suddenly supposed to be enthusiastic about: After refusing for weeks to detail the extent of back-end problems with healthcare.gov, the Obama administration on Friday said a technical bug affected approximately 25 percent of enrollments on the federal exchanges in October and November. Those technical bugs, separate from the troubles consumers had experienced accessing information on the website during the first two months, are posing a significant new problem for those who signed up and are expecting insurance coverage come Jan. 1. One in four of those applications...

Journalist Mary Katharine Ham reacted Friday to President Obama’s interview with MSNBC last night, telling Fox News his excuses for Obamacare’s flaws proves he is “narrating the presidency, not actually holding the office of the presidency.” Ham spoke with Fox’s Bill Hemmer and the Washington Examiner’s Byron York about Obama’s justification for his healthcare law’s stumbles. “It’s not so much my personal management style or particular issues around White House organization,” he claimed. “We have these big agencies — some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly.” Let me first say that I agree with the...

Yun Chung, a retired engineer and metallurgist, read the official report explaining why massive, high-strength steel rods on the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge broke last March and was stunned – then alarmed. At first glance, Chung said about the July report, he saw obvious errors – some typographical, others that confused basic terminology. Digging deeper, he discovered more important problems. He concluded that the analysis defied metallurgical science and common sense. “I think it’s very shameful that in this public document, this important (oversight) report, there are so many errors. (I have) a sense of outrage,” Chung said in...

............"I'm shocked and dumbfounded," said Sam Smith, an Encino insurance broker and president of the California Association of Health Underwriters, an industry group. "These people would have a legitimate complaint," said Smith, who added he had been given two consumer names. The names provided include people who started an insurance application on the Covered California website but didn't complete the process. A local agent emailed Robert Blatt on Thursday asking him about the application he'd started. "You can't do this," Blatt, a technology consultant in Ventura County, told the newspaper. "For a government agency to release this information to an...

During my time in the Senate, I have used this space to speak to the people of Ohio about the issues that our state and our nation are facing, and how we are working to address those problems in Washington. But this week, I want to let the people of Ohio speak for themselves. Last month, I invited Ohioans to contact me and share their experiences with Obamacare and explain how this law is impacting their lives. These are their stories. Susan from Batavia I am a single mother. I pay for my own health insurance. I am active and...

Hillary Rosner, a Colorado-based freelance journalist, tweets about her search for a post-Affordable Care Act health insurance plan: Hillary Rosner @hillaryrosner Follow Applied for new non-ACA health plan (ACA plans way too $ in CO). Insurer charging me 20% above quote bc I had a c-section. So f****d up. 11:27 AM - 5 Dec 2013 Here's the thing. You can have it one way on "rate shock," but you can't have it both ways. There are, broadly, two ways that individual market health insurance could work. One is the situation we have now in most states, where it works more...

There are lots of times when Harvey Weinstein can be accused of leveraging events to help his movies win Oscars. Nelson Mandela’s death isn’t one of them. There are lots of times when Harvey Weinstein can be accused of leveraging events to help his movies win Oscars. Nelson Mandela’s death isn’t one of them. In a coincidence, Mandela – Madiba – happened to die at the very moment that the Weinstein Company’s biographical movie, “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” was premiering in London on Thursday. Mandela’s daughters, Zindzi and Zenani were sitting in the audience. The movie was five minutes...

Although the jobless rate in November fell to its lowest level since he took office, President Obama called on Republican lawmakers Saturday to spend tens of billions on unemployment benefits that are set to expire this month. “It shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly address. But he said the “economic lifeline” is in jeopardy Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/7/obama-hole-us-digging-out-requires-billions-more-u/#ixzz2mqvTVN7y Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Administration officials knew in early August that a federal health insurance marketplace for small businesses wouldn’t be ready on time, but didn’t say so until days before its scheduled Oct. 1 launch, House Republicans said Friday. Internal emails from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services officials and CGI Federal, the contractor charged with building the site, show that the some administration agreed on Aug. 13 that the Internet marketplace for small businesses, the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP), would launch Nov. 1 for employers and two weeks later for employees. CGI said that it couldn’t get the site done...

“Havana is like Pompeii and Castro is its Vesuvius.” – Anthony Daniels Almost every picture I’ve ever seen of Cuba’s capital shows the city in ruins. Una Noche, the 2012 gut punch of a film directed by Lucy Mulloy, captures in nearly every shot the savage decay of what was once the Western Hemisphere’s most beautiful city. So I was stunned when I saw the restored portion of Old Havana for the first time. It is magnificent. And it covers a rather large area. A person could wander around there all day, and I did. At first glance you could...

They say those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. As a student of market history, I’ve seen that maxim made true time and again. The cycle swings fear back to greed. The overcautious become the overzealous. And at the top, the story is always the same: Too much credit, too much speculation, the suspension of disbelief, and the spread of the idea that this time is different. It doesn’t matter whether it was the expansion of railroads heading into the crash of 1893 or the excitement over the consolidation of the steel industry in 1901...

The Vatican Insider newspaper in Italy reported my comments responding to Pope Francis that “Jesus Christ is weeping in heaven hearing Christians espouse a socialist philosophy that has created suffering and poverty around the world. It is impossible to love one’s neighbor as yourself without fighting against socialism,” I hope to explain further and propose solutions. Initially, at least this new Pope Francis is trying. Francis obviously cares. News reports say that Francis is sending the Vatican guards and other staff to go out at night within the City of Rome to help the homeless and the poor. This is...

One of the biggest armored-car companies in this sprawling Texas city has a message for would-be robbers: It is not worth the trouble, or your life. In response to a series of armored-truck robberies this year in the Houston region, the company, GardaWorld, has taken the unusual step of talking publicly and talking tough, even for Texas, about the lengths to which it will go to protect its cargo, its employees and the public. “We’re letting the bad guys know: We’re going to defend ourselves,” said Robert Hatchett, the senior manager for GardaWorld’s Texas operations. “They can expect, in one...

If one looks at the current paper money system and its negative social and social-political effects, the question must arise: where are the protests by the supporters and protectors of social justice? Why don’t we hear calls to protest from politicians and social commentators, from the heads of social welfare agencies and leading religious leaders, who all promote the general welfare as their mission? Presumably, the answer is that many have only a weak understanding of the role of money in an economy with a division of labor, and for that reason, the consequences of today’s paper money system are...

How bad is the error rate for consumers who have enrolled in Obamacare insurance plans through the HealthCare.gov website? Bad enough that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the information in a Friday afternoon document dump. And bad enough that liberal cheerleaders are claiming a huge success that the error rate has dropped from 25% to less than 10%(!). First, the story that CMS was trying to hide: After refusing for weeks to detail the extent of back-end problems with healthcare.gov, the Obama administration on Friday said a technical bug affected approximately 25 percent of enrollments on the...

Federal health officials have been advising ObamaCare navigators this week to stop using paper applications to enroll people because they fear they wouldn’t be processed in time. Based on interviews the Associated Press conducted, navigators—counselors and brokers facilitating the insurance sign-up process—have been advised by the Obama administration to stop using paper. Uninsured people in the United States must sign up by Dec. 23 in order to receive insurance coverage starting Jan. 1. “We received guidance from the feds recommending that folks apply online as opposed to paper," Mike Claffey, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Insurance, told the AP.......

Each Friday, Politico Magazine picks the political scandal of the week, and our colleague Mike Allen asks Playbook readers to weigh in with their crisis-management expertise, both professional and otherwise. This week’s scandal: the spectacular implosion of Martin Bashir, the MSNBC daytime host who resigned Wednesday as controversy mounted over his remarks about former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Here’s what got him in trouble: On his Nov. 15 broadcast, Bashir called Palin "a world class idiot" because she made a comparison to slavery while discussing U.S. debt to China. The host then read an excerpt from the diary of a...

How many times have parents said to their children, “Because I said so.” Contemporary parenting dictates rationalizing with your child, giving them explanations for everything, and of course being a buddy. But even the most modern of parenting techniques will undoubtedly run into roadblocks, ultimately leading a frustrated parent to utter that infamous justification, “Because I said so.” And speaking of notorious rationalizations, as the world loses confidence in fiat currency (paper money), and the “inflationistas” of the world continue to pound the drum in favor of alternative currencies (specifically precious metals), more and more typical investment portfolios will...

Some Californians whose policies have been canceled are finding relief in a surprising place: from insurance companies that aren't offering plans on the new Covered California marketplace. Earlier this year, Aetna announced it would bow out of the state's individual market, effective Dec. 31. Cigna is staying, but isn't offering any products on the exchange. Right now, both companies are accepting new customers into pre-Affordable Care Act plans. Aetna plans are available to Costco members only until Dec. 15. Cigna is offering pre-ACA plans through Dec. 23. Anne Gonzales, a Covered California spokeswoman, confirmed that a carrier not offering plans...

Well that'll be the day when you say goodbye Yeah, yes that'll be the day when you make me cry You say you're gonna leave me, you know it's a lie 'Cause that'll be the day when I die Buddy Holly With President Obama (re) declaring war on free markets to enact social justice this week, we have been warned and reminded that capitalism has no friend at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. The taxes, regulations, and demonization only backfire and retard growth. Even yesterday's "great" GDP revision was marked by lower revisions for consumer spending, because people are earning less,...

A Colorado bakery owner illegally discriminated against a gay couple when he refused to bake a wedding cake for the pair last year because of his Christian religious beliefs, a judge ruled on Friday. Administrative Law Judge Robert Spencer ordered Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in suburban Denver, to accommodate sex-couples or face fines and other possible penalties. "At first blush, it may seem reasonable that a private business should be able to refuse service to anyone it chooses," Spencer wrote in his 13-page ruling. "This view, however, fails to take into account the cost to society and the...

EXPOSETHETPP.ORG The Trans-Pacific Partnership and “Fast Track” Trade Authority What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?  The TPP is a massive “free trade” agreement currently being negotiated behind closed doors by officials from the United States and 10 other countries – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Japan is slated to join in July 2013.  The TPP has been under negotiation for five years. The public, Congress and the press cannot see the draft TPP text. More than 600 official corporate “trade advisors” have access. The Obama administration plans to sign TPP by...

Nancy Pfotenhauser, David Madland, S.E. Cupp & Jennifer Granholm debate the latest job numbers.

 The University of Oxford and the Vatican have jointly created a digital project that will put online over 1.5 million pages of medieval and biblical texts. The four-year project will digitize the collections of the Bodleian Libraries and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) related to their Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts and fifteenth-century printed books. They include a Gutenberg Bible from 1455, an autographed and annotated manuscript of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, and the oldest surviving Hebrew codex.The project is funded by a $3.2 million grant from the Polonsky Foundation. Dr Leonard Polonsky said, “In today’s fast-paced, digital-driven world of scholarship, easy...

Can you imagine going through all the trouble to get enrolled in Obamacare, only to find out you aren’t actually covered when you try to use your shiny new insurance? Consumers who made it through the crashes and glitches of the perpetually broken Obamacare enrollment site and were able to sign up for insurance may be in for a rude awakening next month due to a significant problem with the “back end” of the site. The information that insurance companies are receiving through the website is often jumbled or incomplete – and in some cases, it isn’t going through...

Initial Reaction Some of the skew in last month's job report related to the government shutdown was taken back today, as expected. The labor force stats and participation rate were exceptions, and details reveal much weakness. Last month employment fell by 735,000 due to the shutdown, this month it rose by 818,000.Averaging the two months, household survey employment only rose by 83,000 (a mere 43,500 per month)Last month, the change in those not in the labor force was +932,000. This month, the change was -268,000.Last month the labor force declined by 720,000. This month it only rose by 455,000.Averaging the...

President Obama wants to put inequality at the center of America's political discourse. Fine. Here’s the opening question: “Does inequality matter?”The answer: “It depends.” It depends on how governments react to inequality, it depends on how developed the country is, it depends on whether it's wealth inequality or income inequality.It also depends on how the wealthy got wealthy, according to a recent academic study. In short: Inequality doesn’t hurt a country, unless the inequality results from government favors.Inequality can be messy to talk about, because it is entangled in many different concepts that need to be considered separately.For starters, poverty...

(This cover of the eminent Economist says it all.) The resounding victory of N.J. Governor Chris Christie has people speculating about the 2016 presidential race, particularly on the Republican side, since it’s a given among pols and pundits that Hillary Clinton’s nomination for the Democrats is a foregone conclusion (it isn’t, but that’s another discussion). The ObamaCare debacle and the foreign policy crises resulting from the President’s weakening of American power will be in the forefront. So will the economy. And it’s in this area that candidates must exhibit an understanding that has dangerously eluded too many policymakers and...

Economy, heal thyself. It would be a good slogan if Obamacare, Obama, Obama fans, Obama subjects, Obama’s White House, Obama’s news media and Obama’s comedians—including but not limited to Press Jester Jay Carney-- would just allow anything to heal. I don’t know what it is with these guys, but their version of “healing” is tearing open old wounds and adding salt thereto. And then rinse, spit, repeat. Nevertheless, the employment report that was recently released by the Bureau of Labor statistics was, by at least one measure, a surprisingly decent report. And as I mentioned in an earlier column, it’s...

Almost 11 million people couldn’t find a job in November, and for those who don't earn a paycheck, unemployment benefits work for the economy, too, a leading Democrat says. “Economists agree that unemployment benefits remain one of the best ways to grow the economy in a very immediate way,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (R-Calif.) said at a news conference on Thursday. She spoke after Democrats held a hearing on the impending expiration of unemployment benefits—an “essential lifeline that millions of Americans and their families depend on,” Pelosi said. …

November marked the 60th straight month that the seasonally adjusted national unemployment rate has run at 7 percent or higher, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unemployment in November was 7.0 percent, said BLS. That was the lowest it has been since November 2008, but also extended the second longest streak of 7.0 percent or higher unemployment since the BLS started tracking national unemployment in 1948. …

At the "Fast Food Forward" protest on Thursday, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) demanded that Pres. Obama sign an executive order bypassing Congress and unilaterally raising the federal minimum wage. Rep. Ellison told the crowd that they should join him in demanding that Pres. Obama skip seeking Congressional approval and raise the minimum wage on his own - and that he sent the president a letter on Wednesday presenting his demand: (VIDEO-AT-LINK)"We in Congress will try to raise the minimum wage. We got opponents on the other side of the aisle who say that there shouldn't be no minimum wage. So,...

(CNSNews.com) - Federal, state and local governments hired a net additional 338,000 workers in November, equaling 41 percent of the total of 818,000 net additional jobs created in the United States during the month. At the same time, the unemployment rate for government workers fell from 4.4 percent in October to 3.2 percent in November. (The overall national unemployment rate fell from 7.3 percent to 7.0 percent.) - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/41-net-new-jobs-november-were-government#sthash.lZxkLG6e.dpuf

REDMOND, Wash., Dec. 5 (UPI) -- Microsoft is working on a smart bra with sensors to monitor a wearer's mood and trigger a smartphone app to reduce emotional overeating, U.S. researchers said. Alerts from the wearable technology would be constantly refined by user feedback, enabling the bra to improve its ability to read a specific person's feelings, InformationWeek reported Thursday. Microsoft researchers worked with the University of Rochester and Britain's University of Southampton on the project, attempting to associate emotions with poor eating habits and to determine whether wearable devices can help reduce the resulting weight gains. A wearable smart...

The Obama administration said Friday it will allow companies to kill or injure eagles without the fear of prosecution for the lifespan of (a) wind farm. An investigation by The Associated Press earlier this year documented bald and golden eagles being killed by the giant, spinning blades of wind turbines. Obamalaw "reluctance" to prosecute such cases (while keeping) the scope of the eagle carnage secret. This Interior Department sanction, " is not a program to kill eagles. is about conservation." John Anderson, director of the Wind Energy Assoc. Interior Department refuses to release any information.

An enormous alien planet — one that is 11 times more massive than Jupiter — was discovered in the most distant orbit yet found around a single parent star. The newfound exoplanet, dubbed HD 106906 b, dwarfs any planetary body in the solar system, and circles its star at a distance that is 650 times the average distance between the Earth and the sun. The existence of such a massive and distantly orbiting planet raises new questions about how these bizarre worlds are formed, the researchers said. "This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star...

Remember the infamous business plan from the South Park episode?1.Collect Underpants 2.? 3.Profit Say hello to the president’s economic theory: Barack Obama ✔ @BarackObama Follow Here's how to improve our economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs: #RaiseTheWage. http://OFA.BO/tXMYUq 2:48 PM - 4 Dec 2013 It would be an insult to readers to explain why this won’t work, but I will say that in my adult lifetime, every increase in the minimum wage has been followed within a year or two by a recession. Drew M. at AOSHQ endeavors to address the flaws in Obama’s idea, but it’s depressing...

High deductible plans and out-of-pocket limits don’t offer true protection for those who get really sick. That is why the Massachusetts health care law –which the ACA is based on– has not made a big impact on the number of medical bankruptcies in that state. Even Jonathan Gruber, who helped design the ACA and has been one of the biggest promoters, has acknowledged, “There are some groups for whom affordability remains a concern. Most important are those with high out-of-pocket spending—in particular those in the income range from two to three times the poverty level. For all those below five...

Deadline to sign up is Monday, Dec. 9. Obamacare enrollment has been far below White House expectations around the country, and it’s not going that much better on Capitol Hill. The taxpayers will pick up the difference between congressional employees’ current contribution to the federal insurance plans and the cost of the premiums in the exchange. Only one congressional leader has decided that his staffers deserve better than Obamacare offered in the District: Sen. Harry Reid. The Senate Majority Leader gave an exemption to some of his committee and leadership staff so that they can keep their federal insurance plans.

Rep. Matt Cartwright (D., Penn.) called the possibility of more Americans losing their insurance policies under Obamacare “a good thing” in an interview on MSNBC Live Friday. A member of the “strike team” sent by the White House to promote the law, Cartwright continued the talking point that those losing their insurance would ultimately benefit from that happening. “They have immense deductibles,” he said. “They have annual and lifetime caps. There’s so many people out there with what I call phony insurance policies, and the fact that they’re going to lose those policies, sooner or later, I think is a...

... Quantitative easing has had the intended effect of holding down interest rates, which has in turn encouraged borrowing by businesses and individuals with good credit and stabilized the housing market. But persistent economic uncertainty has dulled the positive impact of the Fed's program. U.S. gross domestic product has broken above a 3 percent annual rate of growth in only six quarters since 2009. Some of the money has instead inflated asset bubbles, to the benefit of mostly wealthy investors seeking high yields. The Fed's "real intention was capital investment would be stimulated, jobs would be created, incomes of the...

Western central banks have tried to shake off the constraints of gold for a long time, which has created enormous difficulties for them. They have generally succeeded in managing opinion in the developed nations but been demonstrably unsuccessful in the lesser-developed world, particularly in Asia. It is the growing wealth earned by these nations that has fuelled demand for gold since the late 1960s. There is precious little bullion left in the West today to supply rapidly increasing Asian demand. It is important to understand how little there is and the dangers this poses for financial stability. An examination of...

free trade agreement that is neither about trade nor freedom. ___ While the Obama Administration appears to be growing ever-more-limp domestically, the president is still making a vigorous international push that has the potential to shift economic power dynamics, rewrite intellectual property laws, establish new labor and environmental regulations, and reduce the authority of Congress. And, the White House hopes to have all this sorted out by the end of this year. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), considered the “cornerstone of the Obama Administration’s economic policy in the Asia Pacific,” has been quietly negotiated since since the president's first term...

In a feudal as well as futile attempt to keep wealthy French citizens from leaving the country, France hikes the "Exit Tax" on transfers of wealth to outside of France. They also lower the base and increase the number of things on which the tax applies. According to a "pay-walled" article on Le Monde of which I can only read a part ... "The exit tax was established in 1999, repealed in 2005, then reintroduced in the first Amended Finance Act for 2011. The law was intended to limit the temporary exile of entrepreneurs wanting to sell their stakes in...

It’s no secret that I dislike the value-added tax. But this isn’t because of its design. The VAT, after all, would be (presumably) a single-rate, consumption-based system, just like the flat tax and national sales tax. And that’s a much less destructive way of raising revenue compared to America’s corrupt and punitiveinternal revenue code. But not all roads lead to Rome. Proponents of the flat tax and sales tax want to replace the income tax. That would be a very positive step. Advocates of the VAT, by contrast, want to keep the income tax and give politicians another big source...

Long-term unemployment is a serious problem. Liberals don’t have an answer. Conservatives can do better. Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee wrote a letter on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to Rep. Dave Camp, Michigan Republican and Ways and Means chairman, urging him to devote some committee time to extending federal unemployment benefits. At issue is the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program, enacted in 2008 to offer qualifying unemployed workers benefits above and beyond what are available during normal economic times. Typically, the federal-state Unemployment Insurance (UI) system offers 26 weeks of benefits to qualifying unemployed workers. Given the...

The young Americans the Obama administration so desperately needs to help make the Affordable Care Act function are the ones most likely to believe the law is endangered, suggesting that sustained House Republican efforts to repeal and undermine the law are bearing some fruit. More than half of 18-to-29-year-olds who were surveyed in the most recent United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll say it is likely the law will be repealed in 2014, even though the chances of that actually occurring are remote. According to the poll, 18 percent of respondents in this age group said it was "very likely"...

(CNSNews.com) - 1,148,000 fewer Americans held jobs this November than did seven years ago in November 2006, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Back then, according to BLS, 145,534,000 Americans held jobs. This November, according to BLS, only 144,386,000 Americans hold jobs. That is a drop of 1,148,000 in the number of Americans working. This decline in the number of Americans who actually have jobs has come even though the size of the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population and the size of the nation’s civilian labor force have both grown significantly over the last seven years.

If President Barack Obama has entertained an economic insight that wasn't fashionable in 1933, I haven't heard about it. It's doubtless he's for recycling glass and plastic, but he's even more wedded to recycling ideas that were fresh and interesting during the New Deal era but have since been discredited. All of this was clear when he became the Democratic Party's pinup in 2008 (just by way of example, I wrote then that while Obama was "shiny, bright and new," his ideas were "suffering from senility"). What's dumbfounding now is Obama's detachment from his own presidency. He continues to campaign...