Free Republic

The Origin and Operation of the US Administrative StateOn July 2, 1881, only four months into the first term of President James A. Garfield, an angry attorney from Illinois named Charles J. Guiteau shot Garfield in the torso at a Baltimore, Maryland, train station. Guiteau had a motive. He was furious because he believed, due to his work for the campaign, that Garfield would give him a job in the new administration. But none was forthcoming. It was revenge. Garfield died of the wounds months later. It was a shocking thing. Congress immediately got to work figuring out how to...

Recently, one of your number, an economics professor at Oxford, had this to say: “At Davos a few years ago, the Edelman survey showed us the good news is that the elites across the world trust each other more and more. So we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that, in every single country they were polling, the majority of people trusted their elite less. So we can lead, but if people aren’t following, we’re not going to get to where we want to go.” Where to begin unpacking this stunning example...

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conducted its Seventh National Population Census (hereinafter referred to as the Census) using 00:00 hours of Nov. 1, 2020, as the reference time. Although an official government report of the census reveals an increase in China’s population, the CCP hastily launched the “three-child policy” because its economic growth, which is “stable with a growing momentum,” as claimed by the state-owned People’s Daily in May, is actually no match for the current fertility crisis in China. An unnamed senior official from the CCP Health and Family Planning Commission revealed three sets of data during an interview...

CLICK ABOVE ARTICLE LINK FOR THE VIDEO In a jaw-dropping moment caught on camera, 15 high-rise buildings were obliterated simultaneously in China after sitting unfinished for eight years. In the country’s Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, the skyscrapers were destroyed into huge pile of dust. Now, video of the demolition is going viral, leaving netizens stunned while starting a serious conversation about country’s excessive and unplanned urbanisation projects. China’s state-run Xinhua News stated that 4.6 tons of explosives were placed at 85,000 blasting points in the buildings for the demolition. The report said the mission was successfully completed in...

Monthly updated data indicates one out of every seven young urban workers in China failed to find employment in August, including graduates from high schools, colleges, and universities.China’s urban unemployment rate was 5.1 percent in August, while the rate for those aged 16-24 is three-times higher sitting at 15.3 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics announced on Wednesday.Yet the official rate for the latter in August 2019—before the pandemic hit—was two percent lower.Commentator Wen Xiaogang said the large volume of jobless young people flagged the inconsistency of Beijing’s claim on economic recovery beyond the impact of COVID-19.The latest data show...

... As I concluded from research I conducted for Belgium’s Royal Academy of Science and SFPI-FPIM, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, this can only be achieved with a degree of central planning. Any other approach falls short. ... Instead of waiting for the market to speak, a planning body — whose composition and accountability require careful consideration — should formulate plans for each of the five systems, which should then be translated into project-level criteria for sustainable investments.

How much better can things get? That’s the kind of question that politicians hate and the public loves. The two dozen Democratic candidates heading into the Iowa caucuses in a few weeks would love to accuse the president of mismanaging the economy. But with a jobs report like the one that came out early Friday morning, Trumponomics are roaring. Consider the unemployment rate of 3.5 percent. Most living Americans have never seen an unemployment rate this low, because most Americans are under the age of 50 and the U.S. economy hasn’t had such low unemployment since 1969. As every college...

There is an exceptional amount of lying in Washington these days, and our media and politicians are entranced by it. Lies must achieve extraordinary bulk and quality to impress the sport’s most ardent practitioners: Only a particularly nasty outbreak of mendacity could draw Washington’s attention to a subject it knows with such intimacy and depth. Most Americans are unsurprised. Long ago, they learned lies are the oxygen of the political world. They know the phrase “political deception” is a redundancy, like “false pretense,” “free gift,” or “foreign imports.” Most electoral lies, they’ve found, are dandruff on the body politic, pedestrian...

Why is Communism relevant today? Ignorance! Just ask around. You may be shocked to find that nearly no one under twenty-five has ever heard of Stalin, whose genocide exceeded Hitler's by a factor of five. Communism is being repackaged in this atmosphere of ignorance. Films like “Motorcycle Diaries” and “Young Marx” portray Che and Marx as wise, prophetic figures fighting for mankind's betterment. Idealistic youth is responding enthusiastically in their need for heroes. If you travel abroad, say to India or South America, you can see full-scale marches complete with red banners and portraits of Stalin. How do you get...

When a dozen of conservatism’s best minds take on Socialism and expose it for the utopian fraud it is, attention must be paid. In a brief foreword to a special issue of National Review, Editor-in-Chief Richard Lowry admitted that many conservatives thought socialism in America had been “vanquished” after the collapse of Soviet Communism 30 years ago. But as T. S. Eliot insisted, “There is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.” The experts examine socialism in its many guises, beginning with Charles Cooke’s blunt assessment that socialism is not...

"The more things change, the more they stay the same" is the best way to describe the lack of original thinking that is prevalent in politics. Take the recent resurgence of calls from politicians on both sides of the aisle to implement industrial policy. These calls are motivated to address the (mythical) decline in American manufacturing — and because other countries are doing it. These policies are tired, utterly uninspiring schemes that governments around the world have tried and, invariably, failed at. The latest example is a proposal by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., to create a new federal agency called...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) tells @burgessev and me outside GOP lunch that $12 billion in trade assistance to farmers from Trump administration "this is becoming more and more like a Soviet-type of economy here" with "commissars" sprinkling around benefits.

Is it possible for Freepers or any law firm to sue the United Nations, and by extension each of the member nations for their minutes, committee agenda's and notes or associated "get to gathers" associated with Global, International, or Nation - to - Nation immigration proposals, plans or "records of immigration" in the past 15-years that: Result in Islam or Muslims moving into non-traditional or Western Nations For the American (or other nations by other groups suing for information) List of policitians, Commercial endeavors associated with government, and other Actors such as International or American individuals who are pushing the...

The sooner the president realizes that Ryan is an establishment swamp dwelling snake...that's going to suck him down into the swampy quicksand and destroy his chances of enacting HIS agenda the better off he and we will be. Ryan represents the enemy within! Trump won the election already! Now it's his duty is to change gears, uphold the constitution, drain the swamp and MAGA. Quit screwing around with unwanted, unpopular, unsustainable, unconstitutional health care schemes. Push for and accept nothing less than a full repeal on Obamacare and then get to work enacting the rest of HIS MAGA agenda!! And...

Thursday, I laid out the case for why Obamacare should be repealed, instead of propped up and tinkered on by additional top-down, boardroom thinking. It’s clear that whatever replaces Obamacare must focus on quality and incremental local solutions, not one-size-fits-all government mandates.In this respect, the federal government’s biggest task for replacing Obamacare is to get out of the way and let state policymakers and health care providers innovate.First off, let’s get clear what Americans want: They’d like many choices of affordable health insurance plans that allow them to choose their doctors. They want to buy a plan when they are...

Obamacare, the left’s grand attempt to create a national government-run health care system, has failed. They promised lower health insurance premiums, but delivered higher ones. They promised more choice and competition, but delivered less. They promised continuity and better access to care, but delivered disruption and dislocation. Despite promises that people could keep their plans and doctors, thousands of Americans were forced into more expensive insurance with higher deductibles and plans that didn’t include their doctors. After spending billions in tax dollars, Obamacare managed to increase the number of people with health insurance by much less than predicted—with over 80...

The New York Times blasted out the headline yesterday, Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty. In short, Obama will use one or more Executive Orders to entangle the U.S. in a global treaty on climate change, without consulting the U.S. Senate. However, the Constitution requires the Senate to vote on all treaties and the bar is high: It takes a two-third vote to approve. The Constitution is out. The Rule of law has collapsed. Reflexive law has surpassed it all. The balance of this article will show you how and why.If you are saying “Huh?”, you had better...

According to new deal historians, capitalism failed in the 1930s. What, then, is it doing flourishing in the United States, Britain, and Europe and taking root in Latin America and China, where it was never previously present? For the past 20 years there has been a large and growing incompatibility between the verdicts of historians and the performance of capitalism.In 1981 the United States reduced tax rates and reined in money growth. For two decades the economy has experienced an economic boom characterized by large income gains, high employment, and negligible inflation. In the U.K. similar reforms introduced by Margaret...

Did you know that some of your local elected representatives are enabling a shadow government to evolve? These people promote the reinvention of government through their support of, and appointments to, “regional” boards that act like soviet councils. These councils are funded to implement Agenda 21. Federal tax dollars fuel their appeal, but your city and county representatives do not have to go along. Gone are the days when government was limited, where individuals were politically acknowledged to possess unalienable rights, and where money was honest. The American political structure has been transformed. This has occurred quietly for more than...

Two-hundred years after signing a declaration protecting Americans’ right to pursue life, liberty and property, the stewards of the very government our Founders formed, began stealing all three.The story of why and how our government, through federal agencies like HUD and the EPA implement global law is the story of America’s return to slavery.To understand the importance of the story we must first recognize the importance of property rights.For example, if you own a farm, but another person tells you what to plant, where you can mow, and whom you must have for neighbors, your ownership becomes worthless.  That other...