Free Republic

If a company is conducting business legally in the United States and you label them as "unpatriotic" then YOU ARE A FASCIST!

The Congressional Budget Office released a bit of a good news/bad news report on Wednesday regarding the state of the U.S. economy and federal budget. In the bad news column, CBO projected 2014’s GDP growth at just 1.5 percent. The report blamed this revision on “the surprising economic weakness in the first half of the year.” In early June, the International Monetary Fund projected the United States to grow by just 2 percent this year, revising its own estimate down from a previously anticipated 2.7 percent GDP expansion. This report is not likely to be warmly greeted by the...

Liberal left socialist utopianism has destroyed Argentina's economy, and the country is now joining the ranks of leftist economies gasping for air, and slowly A year ago conservatives in Argentina claimed the South American country was headed in the same direction as Venezuela. Economic freedom was under assault because of the institution of a failed Bolivarian economic monster - Hugo Chavez’s “twenty-first century socialism” was destroying yet another South American victim. As with any nation that embraces socialism and abandons the free market, poverty increases, and things like toilet paper become a luxury. Liberal left progressive big government madness filled...

The Internet is proving to be a lifeline for those seeking information about the ongoing investigation into the officer-involved fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in an otherwise quiet suburban Missouri town. Unfortunately, the Internet is also serving as a reminder that will always be those who seek to make a dollar off the chaos and misfortune of others. The online merchant “TshirtLegend” is selling a “Justice for Mike Brown” t-shirt alongside other shirts that read “Let’s Get Nashty” and “I Want to Believe” on the online marketplace Etsy. Some online merchants have begun selling T-shirts and other merchandise...

WHAT country's non-native English-speakers speak the best business English in the world?  Try to think of five countries before reading on. Done?  The answer, according to GlobalEnglish, is probably not what you think.  (GlobalEnglish is owned by Pearson, which part-owns The Economist).  Remember that the survey tested non-native speakers, so don't be too distracted by the placement of the Anglophone countries.  Still, Global English's results are very strange. If you thought that the Philippines has the best business English in the world, and that Germany would miss the top 25, you haven't had the same work and travel experiences I...

Thrash metal band Megadeth and hip hop star CeeLo Green joined a growing list of entertainers on Tuesday whose scheduled concerts in Israel have been cancelled amid the Gaza crisis. Los Angeles-based Megadeth was due to play in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, but on its website the group said it wasn’t able to secure a guarantee that it could make it. “The band was looking forward to this concert and is disappointed they will not be able to put on the show for their fans, but expects to return to Tel Aviv on their next international tour,” it said.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- There is roughly a 50% chance that Dollar General (DG_) tries a competing bid for Family Dollar (FDO_) after the company agreed to an $8.5 billion merger with Dollar Tree (DLTR_) in late July, Bloomberg reported. If Dollar General does move forward on a flip of the coin bid for its primary competitor in discount retail, it will face three major hurdles. Carl Icahn, once Family Dollar's largest shareholder and a major advocate of a Dollar General takeover, sold most of his shares in the company last week. Icahn pared his Family Dollar stake from nearly...

AmericaÂ’s corporate officers and CEOs are deeply concerned about a variety of new financial and industrial regulations imposed on them by the administration. In a recent interview with The Economist, President Barack Obama addressed the concerns of American corporate officers and others in a compelling and comprehensive fashion when he told them, essentially, to shut up. From new regulatory regimes imposed by legislation, like the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, to executive actions like those which recently allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions, many are sounding the alarm. The president, however, does not...

President Obama says he has been “friendly” to business, but understands why they are “frustrated” with many of his regulations in a new interview published in The Economist. “They always complain about regulation,” Obama says of business leaders. “That's their job. “I would take the complaints of the corporate community with a grain of salt,” he adds. “If you look at what our policies have been, they have generally been friendly towards business.” Speaking of the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, Obama says his regulations helped hold the global economy together at a time of crisis. Obama explained that there are “core”...

There do not seem to be many defensive gun uses by people who openly carry guns.   This is understandable, as roughly 95% of defensive gun uses do not involve a shot being fired.   When the aggressor sees that the person defending themselves or stopping a crime is armed, the situation is defused, the criminal leaves the scene, and not much happens. It a person is openly carrying a firearm, most of those 95% situations will occur without the gun carrier even knowing that they happen.   This is known as tactical deterrence.  The criminal sees the gun, and chooses not...

The former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin wrote in the Washington Post on July 27, 2014, “How ignoring climate change could sink the U.S. economy.” Not counting the non-enforced southern border and the hordes of new and lawless Democrat citizens who demand their fair share of the American dream now turned into a welfare nightmare, the national debt is most likely to sink the economy sooner than any other variable and that includes climate change that has been changing for millennia.

It’s official: Tesla Motors has broken ground on a stretch of land outside Reno that could serve as the site for its forthcoming $5 billion battery factory. But not so fast: they’re not the only one in the mix. In a letter to shareholders, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was careful in saying the Reno site “could potentially be” the location for the Gigafactory, expected to create 6,500 jobs. “Consistent with out strategy to identify and break ground on multiple sites, we continue to evaluate other locations in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas,” Musk wrote. The news followed weeks of...

A Brazos County jury on Wednesday awarded a $27 million in a lawsuit against McDonald’s relating to the 2012 deaths of two Blinn College students.Jurors found McDonald’s negligence to be 97 percent responsible for the deaths of Denton Ward, 18, of Flower Mound, and Lauren Bailey Crisp, 19, of Flower Mound, both of whom died in the early morning hours of Feb. 18, 2012. The remaining 3 percent of liability was laid on the men who violently attacked Ward and his friend, Tanner Giesen, 21, in the parking lot of the McDonald’s at 801 University Drive. The jury’s verdict reflects...

When I read last week’s revision in the International Monetary Fund’s forecasts, I was reminded of William Gilmore Simms, a 19th century US historian, who said: “I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show that they have a sense of humour.” If only that were true. The latest update of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook puzzled me in two decimal-point respects, neither of them humorous. The sanctions to be decided this week are known in EU jargon as “tier three”; the red-alert stage. As reported by Peter Spiegel, the Financial Times Brussels bureau chief, the European...

This recount, found on The Meta Picture, tells the story of one restaurant’s quest to find out why they kept getting bad reviews despite serving the same number of customers on a daily basis. It took a look into their past to discover exactly what has changed in the last ten years – and their findings tell more about how we as a country have changed – possibly, for the worse. Now, although this particular instance may or may not be true, it tells a story that is all too common today in America. We are so engrossed in ourselves...

Police found bank deposits receipts worth Dh1.2m and expensive four-wheel car with himSaudi police arrested an Arab man for begging although he had in excess of SR1.2 million (Dh1.2 million) and an expensive four-wheel vehicle. Police said the unnamed man, a resident of a nearby Gulf country, is visiting the Gulf kingdom on a tourist visa with his wife and three children, adding that he was found to be staying in a luxury furnished apartment in the Western Saudi port of Yanbu. “We found large sums of cash with him and receipts for bank deposits…he had a total of more...

Hooray! Maria Bartiromo and gang were just discussing "Economic Patriotism" on her Fox News Channel show "Sunday Morning Futures". I couldn't believe it. FINALLY. Way to go. Much more conservatives need to climb on board this important topic.

This story is about a gilded class of people and corporations enriched by the new American economy while the rest of its citizens pay the tab. The protagonists could be any number of institutional elites, but this column happens to be about a Democratic senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, and his daughter, Heather Bresch, the chief executive of Mylan, a giant maker of generic drugs based outside Pittsburgh. Her company's profits come largely from Medicaid and Medicare, which means her nest is feathered by U.S. taxpayers. On Monday, Bresch announced that Mylan will renounce its United States citizenship and...

For business graduates, job placement appears to be on par with last year, if not slightly better, and salaries are holding firm. At a recent open house for parents of incoming freshmen business students at Bentley University, Career Services Director Len Morrison had an encouraging message to share. Recent graduates have been landing jobs with ease, and companies have been flocking to campus, many making multiple hires, Morrison said. “I told them that I don’t think there is a better time to be graduating as a business student,” he said. “The economy is back and looks like it is moving...

Most employees believe they have no say when it comes to changes in the workplace that directly affect their jobs. Six out of ten corporate staff said they have little or no input in decisions which affect them personally at work, according to a recent survey by Strayer University and Ipsos. Those over 35 felt their opinions mattered less than those workers aged 18-34 - although perhaps that's just a healthy dose of cynicism that comes from spending longer on the corporate ladder.