Free Republic

By its campaign and conduct of the 2020 election, the ruling class ceased pretending to be part of a constitutional republic. By treating fellow Americans as inferiors through word and deed, its members renounced their common citizenship with us. Eschewing persuasion, they set about compelling obedience to an openly manipulated election. Thus did they burn their bridges to the rest of America as surely as did Hernán Cortéz when he burned the ships that had carried his troops to conquer the Aztec empire. Henceforth, they must rule or ruin as the oligarchy they have become. For four decades beginning in...

Murray Rothbard pointed out in his book Anatomy of the State how the state is far more punitive against those that threaten the comfort and authority of government institutions and workers than they are against crimes against citizens. This, according to Rothbard, exposed as a myth the notion that the state exists to protect its citizens. “We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely—those against private citizens or those against itself?” Rothbard wrote. “The gravest crimes...

From the folks who brought you the "Brosurance" campaign that promoted the Affordable Care Act to young men comes a new line targeting women who will receive subsidized birth control under the law.

Who is Ed DeMarco? What is the FHFA? Even though it did not come entirely unexpected, the day has finally arrived. President Obama has decided to nominate Mel Watt instead of Ed DeMarco as the Director of the FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Administration). Most people have never heard of the FHFA, nor Mr. DeMarco. Who cares? Why should one care? You should actually all care. The real estate market has officially entered a new chapter. Analysts, economists, investors and homeowners, throw away everything you thought you knew about real estate and start all over. I would like to get right...

Starting May 1, the European Union will be collecting an additional 26 percent import duty on all women’s jeans made in the United States, on top of the jeans’ current 12 percent duty. The increased duty will be a big slap in the face to the Southern California apparel industry, known for its high-end premium denim jeans made primarily in and around the Los Angeles area. “This will not only affect the brands that make jeans but all the wash houses and sources that support the industry,” said Ilse Metchek, president of the California Fashion Association. “When you do the...

If history has taught one certain lesson, it is that the less fettered an economy, the better humankind is able to do what it does best: run from trouble and run toward opportunity. In this way mistakes are quickly resolved and progress assured. Conversely, the deeper the muck of regulation, mandates, taxes, subsidies and other bureaucratic meddling, the slower we humans are in following our natural instincts until the point that progress is slowed or even stopped. It is said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. In the current circumstances, it appears that enough time has passed...

“The US is going to hell,” we told the group at the Watergate last night. “You mean the economy is really going to get worse, huh?” “No, I mean it’s going to hell.” We had been invited to watch the State of the Union address with a group of dinosaurs…a group approaching extinction with dignity and intelligence. You might call them ‘thinking conservatives,’ ‘paleo-conservatives’ or ‘constitutionalists.’ Whatever they were, they were not like the scoundrels currently running for the Republican nomination or the yahoos who vote for them. They were more like a renegade, retrograde group…like a secret society of...

There are occasions in American life — and they come too often these days — when you want to scream: “what the heck has happened to this country?!” Everyone encounters events that strike a particular nerve, some egregious violations of the norms for a free country that cut very deeply and personally. We wonder: do we even remember what it means to be free? If not — and I think not — The Idea of America: What It Was and How It Was Lost (hardcover and Kindle), a collection of bracing reminders from our past, as edited by William Bonner...

"Kick the can" "Quantitative easing" "Bail 'em out" "The system needs the taxpayer to help it" The Greeks have rendered their verdict on this sort of thing with molotov cocktails, murder and mayhem. Let's take a critical view of this: Was it murder and mayhem, or was it justified violence? Wait a second: All violence is not justified, right? Well, no. If someone kicks your door in at 3:00 AM intending to rape your wife, and you shoot them, that's certainly violence. But most people would call it justified violence - that is, lawful self-defense. On the other hand if...

Editor's Note: Officials in China are a special breed. They tend to be restrained when facing the press and stick to the scripted lines. But occasionally they can be caught off guard and make some of the most unusual remarks one can expect from public servants, including those that are funny, annoying, ironic or simply heartless. You can laud them for speaking their minds, or you can criticize them for their big mouth, but you cannot deny that these retorts, rebuttals and asides add much needed color to an otherwise drab portrait of Chinese officialdom. The top 10 everything of...

A number of recent headline stories out of China about joint ventures and acquisitions involving American companies didn't seem to get much attention in the US media, yet these stories indicate that the current economic recovery will remain jobless for some time. Is China a lifeboat for US firms, or the tugboat pulling the entire wounded US economy back to shore? The biggest news came out of the automotive industry, where Beijing Automotive announced its intention to acquire all or part of Saab from General Motors which also announced a joint venture with Shanghai Automotive to sell small cars...

China yesterday executed the former manager of a securities company who embezzled millions of dollars - the first execution of an executive from the country's financial sector, Xinhua said. Some wanted Yang Yanming to be kept alive so he would explain where the 65 million yuan ($9.5 million) went, news reports said. Yang, 51, served as general manager of the Beijing securities trading department of China Great Wall Trust and Investment Corp from 1997 to 2003. He was sentenced to death in Dec, 2005.

OSAKA (Kyodo) – Suntory Holdings Ltd. acquired a U.S. PepsiCo Inc. unit Friday, company officials said, for an estimated ¥10 billion. Suntory’s acquisition of Conway-Myrtle Beach Inc., a franchise bottler based in South Carolina, comes as Suntory is holding merger talks with Kirin Holdings Co. that would create one of the world’s largest beverage and food firms. Suntory, which has the exclusive sales rights to PepsiCo products in Japan, bought the assets and exclusive marketing rights from Conway-Myrtle Beach through a joint venture with PepsiCo. The firm buys ingredients from PepsiCo and sells the products in South Carolina. The...

Workers assembling vehicles at the SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co production line in Liuzhou, Guangxi. GM and SAIC together operate eight joint ventures in the country. [Agencies] General Motors Co on Friday said it has set up a $100 million joint venture in Hong Kong along with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp Group (SAIC) to focus on the Asian markets. As part of this, the new venture would bring under its umbrella all the Indian operations of GM including the two vehicle manufacturing facilities, a power train unit and the nationwide distribution network. GM would also produce and sell small cars and mini-commercial...

A senior Chinese official criticized foreign banks for selling derivatives with “fraudulent characteristics” that led to heavy losses for state-owned airlines and other companies. “Some international investment banks are the biggest villains,” said Li Wei, deputy chairman of the agency that oversees China’s biggest state companies, in a commentary in this week’s edition of the Study Times, a newspaper published by the school of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. The comments were the Chinese government’s most pointed public criticism yet of foreign institutions. Li’s agency said in September it would support companies that want to challenge the contracts in court....

China State Construction Engineering Corp, the largest contractor in China, has bagged a subway ventilation project worth about $100 million in New York’s Manhattan area, marking the construction giant’s third order in the United States’ infrastructure space this year. The contract was given to China Construction American Co, a subsidiary, the Wall Street Journal quoted a source as saying. “The new project, along with the $410-million Hamilton Bridge project and a $1.7-billion entertainment project it won earlier this year, signals China State Construction’s ambition to tap the American construction market,” said Li Zhirui, an industry analyst at First Capital Securities....

(China Daily/Agencies) – Mattel Inc, the world’s biggest toymaker, lowered the sales target for its Barbie store in Shanghai by at least 30 percent after deciding the original marketing concept didn’t work. “The initial sales targets were astronomical,” said Dann Murphy, who took over as general manager as his predecessor left eight months after the store opened. Targets for the six-story outlet’s restaurant and “retail experience”, which includes designing personalized Barbie dolls, have been revised down three times since its opening in March. Mattel chose Shanghai for its first dedicated Barbie store as consumer demand slumped in the United...

The average American pays little attention to news from Asia. American culture is insular, sparing little attention to developments in other countries. The nation’s focus is on the wars in the Middle East and the expansion of domestic welfare programs – an expansion demanded by handout-seeking voters who may now be starting to understand the downside of getting what they wanted. The US media traditionally spends little attention on economic news from the rest of the world, and even President Obama’s current trip to Asia has not generated much coverage of the back story behind his visit – the...

The property market in Shanghai seems to be revving up again stoking fears of an impending price rise, going by the record sales price of an apartment in the expensive but much sought after Tomson Riviera. According to data from Shanghai Real Estate Trading Center (SRETC), the 600-sq-m luxury apartment has been sold for a whopping 96.09 million yuan ($13.3 million) – at 160,848 yuan per sq m – a new record for luxury homes. It also represents a 13-percent increase over the February 2007 sale of a similar apartment. Confirming the development, Li Qing, a manager at Tomson...

(T)he Chinese are concerned about the viability of the American economic system and about the long-term value of their more than $1 trillion of investments in American bonds. They are also dependent on the market even a recession-mired America offers, with exports to the United States still near $300 billion a year. Americans are worried about the effect of lower-cost Chinese labor on U.S. jobs, even though most of the lost jobs were lost long ago and have as much to do with the corrosive effects of technology on labor as they do with cheap production in China. Meanwhile, China...