Free Republic

A confession: Many years ago, I was an ultra-left liberal, a Marxist, in fact. As a newly minted attorney at law in New York, I joined the ACLU and volunteered serve as one of their lawyers. About six weeks later, they asked me to represent an American Nazi accused of inciting to riot. I refused. They were mightily put off, horrified in fact. They remonstrated. “But he has a right to counsel.” I said, “Maybe so, but he doesn’t have a right to me. I’m protected by the Thirteenth Amendment.” (The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary...

Shares of Angie's List (ANGI) were gaining 9.6% to $6.16 Wednesday after the online local business review company announced CEO William Oesterle will step down and raised its EBITDA guidance.

GRANDVILLE, Mich. (WOOD) — The owner of a Grandville auto repair shop says he won’t hesitate “to refuse service to an openly gay person or persons.” Brian Klawiter, the owner of Dieseltec on Ottawa Avenue in Grandville, posted the statement to his company’s Facebook page on Tuesday because he says the voices of those who have Christian, conservative values are often overshadowed by those who do not. “I want to have a voice about this,” Klawiter told 24 Hour News 8 Wednesday. “I want to be heard about this… It’s challenging to decide to say I’m on the opposing side...

What Is the State of the U.S. Gun Business? By Marcelo Prince and Carlos A. Tovar After several years of strong sales to civilians worried about new regulations, big U.S. firearms makers have recently reported lower sales. The overall number of American households with guns is declining..

Former CEO of GM Jack Welch and wife Suzy, authors of “The Real-Life MBA: Your No-BS Guide to Winning the Game, Building a Team, and Growing Your Career”, talked to Brian on Kilmeade and Friends about why they wrote the book.---snip--- (AUDIO-AT-LINK)On the 2016 GOP Presidential candidates, Jack Welch told Brian that he is taking a very interesting and deep look into Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) because he likes what he stands for, has guts, and does what he says....

<p>Of fully 40 different demographic subgroups measured, the only one in which more people think businesses should have that right than shouldn’t is Republicans. And even among Republicans, it’s only a plurality who say so. There were no clear majorities for the right to refuse service on religious grounds among any group tested.</p>

Public policy matters to economic performance. Economic theory and data have established this link clearly. Most notably, limited government, free market policies that unlock the creative potential entrepreneurs and small business matter deeply to state economic health. Rich States, Poor States, released today and now in its 8th year, compares the 50 states public policy climate to see which states are most poised for growth. Utah again earns the top spot for states with the best economic outlook, followed by North Dakota, Indiana, North Carolina and Arizona, according to the newest edition of Rich States, Poor States. New York comes...

Standing alongside Democrats, a representative for the state’s powerful business lobby Tuesday denounced two proposed amendments to the state constitution aimed at bolstering protection for people acting on religious beliefs, which detractors say would legalize discrimination against gays and lesbians. “These amendments are bad for business,” Bill Hammond, chief executive of the Texas Association of Business, said at a press conference. “They would devastate economic development, tourism and the convention business.” It’s part of a larger debate taking place around the country, most notably in Indiana, where public backlash over a similar law forced the state’s governor to sign an...

Bake me a cake, or go to jail! Sadly, that is the new message from "inclusive" America. If you don't want to cater, photograph, preside over, sell pizza at, sell flowers to or otherwise participate in a gay wedding, you will be punished. If you don't want your business to pay for a kind of birth control that you consider murder, you will pay fines until your business is bankrupt. Personally, I think both birth control and homosexuality are just fine, and gay marriage is as valid as straight marriage. But forcing everyone to act as if they think that...

ROSWELL – Gasoline prices in New Mexico could drop to as low as $1.60 a gallon this year as the United States and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries engage in an outgoing crude oil price war, an expert told the New Mexico Landmen’s Association on March 27. Dr. Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, said at the landmen’s association’s monthly meeting recently that crude oil storage in the United States is at a near maximum, meaning it will be some time before crude oil prices...

Can you remember a time when a business owner's business was considered to be HIS or HER business? They could (and did) post signs reserving the right to serve anyone they chose. For example, "No shoes...no service." Or, "You must wear a coat and tie to dine here." No one thought much about it. It was a given....it was THEIR business, THEY took the risk, and they could run it as they dang-well pleased! And if they didn't want your business, fine, you could go to the many establishments that did. The marketplace pretty much sorted it all out without...

Sam Ro4-5-2015 Since the beginning of the year, the pace of growth in numerous US economic indicators deteriorated significantly, so much so that many of these metrics even fell short of economists' expectations. Weirdly, the pace of jobs growth had been resilient even amid unexpected plunges in key measures like retail sales and durable goods orders, reports which reflected weakness in both consumers and businesses. However, this weirdness has begun to work itself out. On Friday, we learned the US economy added just 126,000 jobs in March, missing expectations for 245,000 new jobs. You have to go all the way...

What amazed me about the latest “Billionaire” issue of Forbes magazine was not the stories about the billionaires, but about Forbes itself. See the amazing graph below. For years we’ve been told the print media is dead, that digital media (like Forbes.com, wsj.com, etc.) was the wave of the future. As the graph shows, Forbes magazine is not only surviving, but thriving, and now has 7 million readers. Yet Forbes is an outlier. The rest of the print media is going down, slowly but surely. In the past two years, circulation for Fortune, the Economist and even the mighty Wall...

At least 2,000 jobs will likely be lost in New Mexico’s oil and gas industry in the coming months because of sharp declines in the price of crude oil, according to estimates by the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department.

“Angie’s List is open to all and discriminates against none,” Oesterle said, “and we are hugely disappointed in what this bill represents.”

Willie Nelson takes a hit of the cigarette-sized vaporizer in his gnarled hand, exhaling a small cloud, before placing it on the foldout table in front of us. We’re seated in the cool enclave of his tour bus, at the entrance to his sprawling property just outside Austin, Texas, which he has dubbed the town of Luck. Up a hill and around a corner, people are rocking out at Willie’s own Heartbreaker Banquet, an annual fundraiser/music festival held concurrently with SXSW. Now 81, Willie is biding his time before joining the festivities, and we’re talking about why he puts on...

A recent Michigan Public Radio story promoted a poll's finding that found 86 percent of Michigan voters support the concept of employees getting paid time off for illness or to provide care to a family member. The poll was done by Denno Research. The story pointed out that Democratic state lawmakers had introduced House Bill 4167 and Senate Bill 101, both of which would require employers to give paid sick leave to their employees. The paid leave would be between 40 to 72 hours annually, depending on the size of the business. But an advocate for small business owners and...

It's long been debated whether Yelp has the right to manipulate the order and appearance of its own listings. Many restaurant owners, of course, think it's horribly unfair — and go as far as to classify the practice as extortion. That's where Billion Dollar Bully comes into play: Prost Productions is crowd-funding an investigative documentary to spotlight how Yelp takes advantage of small-business owners. Fifty percent of the project has been filmed, and from the looks of it, the documentary could be quite damning for the company's image. In the teaser, the owner of a small Oakland restaurant says: "It...

Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida have released a blueprint for federal tax reform called “The Economic Growth and Family Fairness Tax Plan.” First, we should not embrace the language of progressive socialism in believing tax reform should have as a goal to advance “family fairness.” The plan should simply be entitled “The American Growth and Opportunity Plan.” That said, the Lee-Rubio plan is a great improvement over the current system. For the individual tax structure, the plan introduces a two-tier system to replace the current seven tax brackets. This plan moves America from a...

Last summer we talked about the rather faint hopes that some Seattle businesses were clinging to as the city moved toward jacking up their minimum wage (for some jobs) to $15.00 per hour. Employers – particularly in the restaurant industry – were asking the city council to reconsider as they evaluated their options in the face of labor costs which were about to rise to between 42 and 47 percent of their operating expenses. It all fell on deaf ears, unfortunately, and the plan is moving forward. And rather than waiting for the roof to come crashing down, some...