Free Republic

President Trump plans to unveil a new White House office on Monday with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction — by harvesting ideas from the business world and, potentially, privatizing some government functions. The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be...

The Atlanta Fed GDPNow Model inched up to 1.0% from 0.9% on Friday. Nothing much mattered since a week ago. The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2017 is 1.0 percent on March 24, up from 0.9 percent on March 16. The forecast for first-quarter real nonresidential equipment investment growth increased from 7.3 percent to 7.8 percent after this morning's durable manufacturing report from the U.S. Census Bureau. The forecast of the contribution of inventory investment to first-quarter growth increased from –0.87 percentage points to –0.77 percentage points after last...

President Trump predicted Friday that pressure on Democrats will compel them to work with Republicans to pass a healthcare reform package after Obamacare collapses. "When it explodes, they come to us and we make one beautiful deal," Trump told the Washington Post's Robert Costa in a phone interview shortly after House leadership pulled the American Health Care Act in the face of conservative opposition. Trump said he believed Republicans came within "five to 12 votes" of passing the AHCA. They needed 216 votes to send the legislation to the Senate.

Gabriel Sherman writes that White House chief strategist and former Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon (or, for those concerned with SEO, Steve Bannon) has privately expressed concern that the American Health Care Act (AHCA) betrays the populist voters who put Donald Trump in the White House.

Thinx boss Miki Agrawal wanted to break taboos about the female body. According to some employees, she went too far.Miki Agrawal, the co-founder of Thinx — a company that makes “period underwear” — doesn’t think much of boundaries. “I just love the taboo space,” she told New York last year, of her mission to (profitably) destigmatize menstruation. And in a promotional video for the product, she said, “My favorite thing to talk about are the things you’re not supposed to talk about.” According to a complaint filed late last week by a former employee (and echoed in interviews with multiple...

In an effort to frame a Russian conspiracy narrative against Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Reuters has to ignore their own prior reporting 48 hours ago. Reuters publishes an article citing Secretary Tillerson’s schedule and his decision not to attend a NATO summit in Brussels on April 5th and 6th, by citing Tillerson attending a Chinese state visit meeting in the U.S. scheduled for April 6th and 7th.

Filli Boya Paint, one of Turkey’s best-known brands of construction paints, produced a short video to celebrate International Women’s Day. Indeed, it has become a tradition in the last decade that male-dominated sectors, such as the construction industry and car manufacturing, honor women’s accomplishments in their field. This year's Filli Boya commercial was different, however. For starters, most of the speakers in the clip were middle-aged or elderly residents from rural areas. On top of that, the video gave voice to women and men from different regions of the country, identifiable by their attire. The ad was also intriguingly anti-government, but without mentioning the ruling Justice and...

With the election of Donald Trump and Republican majorities in the House and Senate, we have an unprecedented opportunity to roll back the worst economy-killing laws and regulations of the Obama and Bush eras. Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and the Keystone pipeline top the list, but there are hundreds more no one outside specific industry niches has even heard of, cumulatively equal if not more destructive. One example: TEFRA 1706, the Tax Equity and Fairness Reform Act of 1986. Buried inside it is Section 1706, dealing with regulation of independent computer consultants, laying out over a dozen "tests" of the independence of...

The House Budget Committee has voted to advance the troubled Republican health care bill. The American Health Care Act was passed out of committee quickly by a 19-17 vote. That’s one vote shy of what would have been needed to deal a damaging and embarrassing - though not fatal - setback to the party’s showpiece legislation. Three conservative Republicans voted against the bill: Reps. Dave Brat, R-Va.; Mark Sanford, R-S.C.; and Gary Palmer, R-Ala. •Paul Ryan says GOP health-care bill will be refined, improved

YouTube of the Health Care meeting this morning with President Trump and V.P. Pence

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act supports America’s fight against international business bribes and corporate favors. Intended to promote American business and foreign-policy ideals around the world, and give US companies a tool to battle corruption abroad, it has also helped other countries crack down on bribery, and has extracted billions of dollars in fines. The FCPA makes it illegal for US companies and people working abroad to engage in corrupt acts such as bribing officials. It bans foreign firms and people from doing the same in the US. American companies must keep accurate, transparent records and not hide payments in...

Last night President Trump had a lengthy dinner and conversation with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in advance of several upcoming foreign emissary visits to the White House, and T-Rex’s strategic trip to Asia. Today President Trump took Secretary Kelly (DHS), Secretary Ross (Commerce), Secretary Mnuchin (Treasury), Secretary Shulkin (VA), together with their spouses to Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. Accompanying the cabinet group was key staff: Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Senior Adviser Steve Bannon, and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. However, word of President Trump going to his National Golf Club in Virginia immediately sent The Hill into...

Saakar S. Yadav’s profile on a professional networking website reads: Learning to fly, technology enthusiast, farmer, investor, politician, teacher et al. Add to this list the description of a hard worker, taskmaster, perfectionist and an early mover. Consider this: Yadav, the MD of Skorydov Systems, replies to emails only between 5 am and 9 am. He is not on any of the popular messaging platforms, prefers to discuss things over the phone rather than emails, reaches his Nariman Point office at 7 am every day and ends his day by noon. Yadav believes in sound organisational systems built on aggressive...

The way to help women continue to move forward isn’t to propagate the myth that women in the United States are victims, oppressed by the system and unable to help themselves secure a better future.Yet that’s exactly the message of the “A Day Without a Woman” strike happening Wednesday.Various organizers, including the Women’s March crowd and other feminists, are pushing women to “take the day off, from paid and unpaid labor,” as well as by not shopping (except at “small, women- and minority-owned businesses”) and by wearing red.An op-ed advocating the strike published in The Guardian last month by eight...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is pushing an alternative ObamaCare repeal bill amid growing opposition to the House GOP leadership's plan. Paul introduced a bill - known as the ObamaCare repeal bill - mirrored off a 2015 bill that cleared the Senate along party lines. "The Republican Party is unified on Obamacare repeal," Paul said in a statement. "We can honor our promise right away by passing the same language we acted on in the last Congress."

Around the same time a Republican majority in the Michigan House failed to pass a 0.2 percent income tax cut, all but six Republicans in the Michigan Senate voted to give $1.8 billion taxpayer dollars to a handful of developers over the next 20 years. There were 20 Republicans and seven Democrats who voted “yes.” No Democrats opposed the handouts, but six did not vote, along with one Republican who did not vote. Six Republicans voted ‘no’: Pat Colbeck (Canton), Judy Emmons (Sheridan), Joe Hune (Fowlerville), Phil Pavlov (St. Clair Township), Tori Rocca (Sterling Heights) and Tonya Schuitmaker (Lawton). Here’s...

In today’s hyper-partisan era, one goal crosses the political divide: the need for more entrepreneurs. Encomia are everywhere: Politicians praise them, Hollywood lionizes them, venture capitalists chase them, universities foster them. Entrepreneurs, from Henry Ford to Elon Musk, are embedded in American lore. In an earlier era they were popularized in Horatio Alger rags-to-riches terms; today it’s the garage-to-tech-titan stories that have legendary status for Millennials. Could it be, however, that we’ve hit peak preoccupation with entrepreneurship? Although entrepreneurial magic is often discussed in “tech” terms, the reality is most startups involve such things as restaurants and lawn services or...

Investors reacted positively from President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to Congress, pushing the Dow Jones industrial average above 21,000 points Wednesday for the first time in its history. Banks, financial institutions, companies in the energy and materials sector saw huge gains as Trump reaffirmed during his speech his plans to cut taxes and push for other business-friendly policies. The Dow jumped 242 points, or 1.2 percent, to 21,055 as of 10:07 a.m. Eastern Time. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 24 points, or 1 percent, to 2,387. The Nasdaq composite index added 59 points, or 1 percent, to...

The U.S. Army Corps will spend more than $1 million to clean up the mess left behind by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and others opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. The protesters — who succeeded in temporarily shutting down pipeline construction under orders from President Barack Obama — were evicted after President Donald Trump put the pipeline project back online.

Get ready folks, we are going to hear more parseltongue and fake news catch phrases in the next several weeks and months surrounding the federal budget, it already began today. As we have discussed numerous times, President Trump is going to propose a $10 trillion spending cut over ten years – or $1 trillion per year. This is entirely reasonable considering the scale and scope of government.