Free Republic

HUGER, S.C. — Safely stationed in the control pulpit, Chris St. Amand is watching the pot boil. Working the day shift at the sprawling Nucor Steel plant along the Cooper River here, Mr. St. Amand monitors a four-foot-wide lasagna noodle of steel as it is dunked into a molten broth of protective shimmering zinc. He tracks every step of this galvanization process — from the caldron’s 865-degree temperature to the line speed — on a bank of flashing screens. Except, that is, for the screen at the bottom right. “I watch our stock and the Dow Jones on that one,”...

Senator McConnell asked unanimous consent to allow committees to meet during today’s session of the Senate. Senator Durbin objected because of the decision last night by the President of the United States to terminate the Director of the FBI and the questions that it’s raised. Barring further action, committees have until 11:30am to meet. (From what I seen happen was the Democrats left the Senate Room and Senator McConnell said they can't do business unless they have the votes to continue to do so, the Democrats are upset over what happened with Comey)

Money is a feminist issue — and yet, women are still reluctant to talk about it. According to a recent Bustle survey of more than 1,000 Millennial women, more than 50 percent of people said they never discuss personal finances with friends, even though 28 percent reported feeling stressed out about money every single day. That's why Bustle launched Grown-A$$ Finances, a series that gets real about what Millennial women are doing with their money, and why — because managing your money should feel empowering, not intimidating. A lot of people have side jobs in addition to their full-time ones,...

Earnings season has offered plenty of reasons for investors to be optimistic. Even more good news is on the way. With over 80% of S&P 500 companies having posted quarterly results, the profit engines at the biggest U.S. public companies are humming along. In an environment of elevated valuations, strong earnings growth helps justify record highs for stocks and suggests the bull market still has legs. First-quarter earnings are on pace to increase 13.5% from the same period a year earlier, according to FactSet. That would be the third consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth and the quickest pace since the...

Earlier today President Donald Trump signed HR244 into law. The provisional spending bill that funds government through September 30th, the end of fiscal year 2017. There has been a great deal of anxiety amid punditry about the spending outline itself, and the spending priorities as determined by both houses of congress. Some of the criticism is warranted, most is not. The basic principle the entire professional political class seem to overlook is the reasoning for the CR itself. Congress has been unable to fulfill its budgetary obligation since 2007. In fact, the last federal budget (fiscal year Â’08) was signed...

The UniParty is sly, I would say professionally and expertly so, and before readers feel the need to point out the obvious – when it comes to legislation, yes, I am professionally cynical. The reason is simple, having trained ourselves to see when the pea is never under the shell, the legislative conversations that really matter are always behind a Potemkin Village called K-Street. You have to know the unwritten legislative rules of the UniParty as they have been evidenced for almost 15 years to understand the ruse.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — “Never think about yourself; always help others.” The motto of the late Robert “Bob” Wegman, who pioneered the Wegmans Food Markets founded by his father and uncle, hangs up with his portrait in his one-stop supermarkets. But the business philosophy on which the Catholic merchant founded the family-owned company came from the lesson the Sisters of Mercy taught him as a boy in Catholic elementary school: The most important thing in life is getting to heaven. Today, Wegmans Food Markets, headquartered in Rochester, New York, has 92 stores in six states and is recognized as one...

Why won’t the White House publish its visitor logs? Because any Democrat or business executive who meets with President Trump will be attacked on social media for “collaborating” with the enemy. (Disney CEO Bob Iger, who was blasted for participating in a Trump advisory council, is a great example.) As a result, Team Trump has chosen to grant some guests privacy. Meanwhile, by insisting on this extreme hostility and resistance, the Left has foregone an enormous opportunity to influence policy under this president even though Donald Trump is open to suggestion. As Democrats have comfortably settled into their new role...

Perhaps the most famous line from George Orwell’s classic satire on socialism, “Animal Farm,” is that which declares, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” If the following report on what House Republicans are doing with their Obamacare replacement bill holds true, then they have just turned Orwell’s words into action by granting themselves a privilege not extended to everyone else. However, while the left-leaning Vox seemed to imply that this is some sort of new and nefarious development by uncaring Republicans granting themselves special privileges, The American Spectator pointed out that Congress has long...

House Republicans have an updated bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare, and The Hill has a new whip list. The updated bill includes an amendment that would allow states to opt out of key ObamaCare rules, including on minimum coverage requirements and allowing insurers to charge more based on individuals' health. Those changes are designed to win over conservatives, and the new legislation has been backed by the House Freedom Caucus and outside groups including the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks. The question is whether GOP centrists can back it. This list was last updated on April 27 at at...

One of the key sticking points during negotiations to avoid a government shutdown on Friday was funding for President Donald Trump’s border wall — funding the Democrats refused even to consider. Trump had requested $1.4 billion to begin construction of the wall this year, but Democrats refused to let those funds be included in the budget request, even though it was a minuscule fraction of the federal budget, CNS reported. On the other hand, The Daily Caller reported that the Energy Transitions Commission, a group that includes former Vice President Al Gore, insisted that the world needed to invest $15...

There's no shortage of people telling Donald Trump he can't build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. And maybe, in the end, he won't do it. But at the moment Trump takes office, he will have the legal authority and the money he needs to get started on the wall. Yes, there will be obstacles — what's the over/under on the number of lawsuits that will be filed trying to stop it? — but the fact is, the law is already in place that will allow Trump to go forward. As in other areas of immigration enforcement, Trump will be...

Drug smugglers are being helped by the Democratic leaders in Congress who are trying to block funding for a border wall, says President Donald Trump. He is using Twitter to hit the Democrats as enablers for the criminal gangs that are smuggling deadly drugs into American cities and towns around the nation, and which are sending murderous MS-13 gang members into Americans’ neighborhoods. Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump The Wall is a very important tool in stopping drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth (and many others)! If Donald J. Trump ✔ ‎@realDonaldTrump ....the wall is not...

Sorry for the vanity, but I'm dealing with a financial situation that is apparently a very unusual one and isn't easily addressed through traditional means. Long story short ... I'm looking into some options for opening a self-directed IRA (which is different from a self-managed IRA). The tax rules about these accounts are complicated, but I've determined that I can navigate them with minimal outside help. The issue I'm facing is that the IRS requires a third-party custodian to be involved in the process to file the necessary paperwork and annual tax forms. For the life of me, I cannot...

Uber Technologies, Inc. has filed 986 labor condition applications for H1B visa and 167 labor certifications for green card from fiscal year 2014 to 2016. Uber Technologies was ranked 124 among all visa sponsors. Please note that 23 LCA for H1B Visa and 3 LC for green card have been denied or withdrawn during the same period.

Low-income Americans will no longer be passed over when the federal government pays the bill for construction projects, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said Thursday. Carson said using a rule that has been ignored for much of the past 50 years is part of his different approach to running the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “It’s not how many people we can get into public housing,” Carson said during an interview with Newsmax TV. “It’s how many people we can get out of it.”

The tenth edition of the Rich States, Poor States: ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index has just been released, and once again, Utah was found to have the best economic outlook of any state in the nation. The rankings are based on 15 equally-weighted economic policy variables, including tax rates, labor policy, and regulatory climate. They continue to show that states valuing economic freedom and competitiveness outperform states adhering to the tax-and-spend model, with state economic policies having a substantial effect on where businesses and individuals choose to set up shop. Taxes matter for economic competitiveness. People and businesses often...

Hoping to spur economic growth, President Donald Trump embarked Friday on new steps to dismantle some of the tax and financial regulations established by former President Barack Obama. Trump signed an executive order to review any major tax regulations set last year by his predecessor, as well as two memos to potentially revamp or eliminate fundamental elements of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reforms passed in the wake of the Great Recession. "This is really the beginning of a whole new way of life that this country hasn't seen in really many, many years," the president said before signing the measures...

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney appears on Bloomberg News to discuss the seismic, epic, thundershock confrontational clash that is about to take place between the Trump administration and the DC UniParty. There are no adjectives capable of describing the scope and immeasurable scale of the battle that is about to transpire between the White House and the Democrat/Republican UniParty. MONEY is where every entity within the full-swamp goes nuclear against President Trump and the administration. Despite all prior discussions toward this end, it is doubtful that more than one-in-a-million people can fully grasp the dynamic at play....

The Facebook anguish continues. A Medium post investigating declining Facebook reach has set off the most recent alarm bells among publishers. Kurt Gessler, deputy editor for digital news at the Chicago Tribune, posted that since January, the Tribune has seen a significant drop in the reach of its posts on Facebook, despite having grown its fan base. The post sparked a sigh of validation across publishers as others chimed in on social media that they’re seeing similar declines. @kurtgessler This looks somewhat familiar to me as well. It's not just you. — rob blatt (@robblatt) April 19, 2017 @whet @kurtgessler...