Free Republic

Job growth soared past expectations in January and wages rose faster than inflation, exhibiting more strength at the start of an election year in which the economy could be a huge factor. The U.S. economy added 353,000 jobs last month, according to the Labor Department, about double what economists were expecting in different forecasts. The unemployment rate held steady at 3.7 percent. Wages on nonfarm payrolls rose by 0.6 percent to $34.55, double the monthly pace of headline inflation in December. Annual wage growth ticked up to 4.47 percent, still considerably higher than the 3.5-percent growth that many economists think...

A Washington, D.C. judge has ruled that the conservative think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute cannot be held responsible for an outside blogger’s 2012 online attack on a prominent climate scientist. At the same time, the judge decided that a jury should decide whether the blogger, Rand Simberg, should be held liable for his post, which excoriated Pennsylvania State University climatologist Michael Mann and suggested that he had engaged in fraud. Mark Steyn, an outside blogger for the National Review, another conservative publication, also should face a trial over his own post, two days after Simberg’s, Superior Court Judge Alfred...

Health experts are warning the national count of Covid-19 deaths in the United States could be underestimated as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread. This could be especially true because the reporting data can lag by an average of one to two weeks, according to the latest guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's. Also, deaths due to Covid-19 "may be misclassified as pneumonia deaths in the absence of positive test results, and pneumonia may appear on death certificates as a comorbid condition," the CDC noted, adding that "analyses to better understand and quantify reporting delays" for...

Scientists have developed a method that allows them to identify so-called climate change "fingerprints" in daily weather observations - and it found consistent evidence of global warming every day since late March 2012. Using climate models and statistical learning techniques, a team of researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland were able to identify climate change's "fingerprint" in global daily mean temperatures, which had been calculated from measurements collected in locations across the world. The researchers highlighted that while local daily mean temperatures might fluctuate significantly year-on-year, global daily mean measurements show a consistent trend towards global warming. They say their...

President Donald Trump's late campaign blitz targeting immigrants has rallied the Republican base of white working-class voters, helping to curb the Democratic advantage heading into Tuesday's midterm elections for Congress. The election-eve NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Democrats leading by seven percentage points, 50 percent to 43 percent, among likely voters. That's down from a nine-percentage point lead last month. That slightly narrowing reflects rising interest in the election from the foundation of Trump's support: White men, especially older, less educated, less affluent ones in small towns and rural areas. Most noteworthy for a mid-term election, the 2018 campaign...

... I run an exit polling survey project in Boyle County, Kentucky as part of a regular community-based learning component of our political science courses at Centre College. Our students have surveyed over 1,000 randomly-selected voters on their way out of the voting booths in every fall election since 2011. To examine these competing theories, I compared the results of the exit polls with the actual results in Boyle County in each of these recent elections. Central Kentucky is an especially appropriate place to test for such an effect given that the economic and demographic characteristics are favorable to a...

For more than seven years, Federal Reserve officials have touted their progress toward achieving "full employment," with the most recent target a 4.9 percent unemployment rate. With Friday's nonfarm payrolls report showing that the goal has been achieved, perhaps the Fed can raise the "Mission Accomplished" banner along with a welcome mat to the world of "full employment." The jobless rate last reached this level in February 2008, following a run from June 2005 to April 2008 during which unemployment never eclipsed 5 percent. Getting a "4-handle" on the number -- using Wall Street lingo -- was supposed to represent...

Prior to the Apple Watch’s launch, many were already predicting that the device would be the answer to wearables and be the device that would change the landscape of the wearables industry. Initial reviews are a bit mixed but it is Apple’s first-gen smartwatch so there are bound to be some areas that could be improved upon. However if the figures provided by analysts are accurate, it seems that there are many who are interested in the device regardless of the reviews. According to the latest numbers from Global Equities Research, they have estimated that Apple has received 7 million...

Climate scientists highlight cloud mysteries in a bid to compete with astronomy and cosmology. Clouds are key to understanding climate change, but more-realistic models of their formation are needed.I wonder which junk science genius came up with that (that random blobs of water vapor floating around in the atmosphere are the key to understanding). And in light of the claims of this article, how did he ever convince himself that it was true, given that he was incapable of doing the science himself? And why should we believe him? In an earlier time, he would've no doubt claimed it was...

San Francisco activist Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate Super PAC Monday announced the billionaire Democrat will wage a campaign to put Republicans on the “hot seat” about climate change and spend “what it takes” for an aggressive new high-tech “war room” to track — and attack — GOP candidates in 2016. The program, based at the NextGen headquarters in the Financial District — with satellite offices in Washington, D.C., and other cities — aims to make climate change a “top tier” issue next year. It will focus its firepower on turning environmental concerns into a “wedge issue,” especially with young voters,...

In 2005, I changed my mind about climate change: I concluded that the balance of the scientific evidence showed that man-made global warming could likely pose a significant problem for humanity by the end of this century. My new assessment did not please a number of my friends, some of whom made their disappointment clear.At the 2007 annual gala dinner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a D.C.-based free-market think tank, the master of ceremonies was former National Review editor John O'Sullivan. To entertain the crowd, O'Sullivan put together a counterfeit tale in which I ostensibly had given a lecture on...

Last year, government scientists tell us, was the hottest year on record. This news is terribly — what's the word? — inconvenient. No, not for polar bears or drought victims or coastal dwellers. It's inconvenient for politicians across the country who, despite whatever data or overwhelming scientific consensus might be proffered, insist on denying global warming. In recent weeks, West Virginia has snatched national headlines for its attempts to doctor school science standards to discredit climate change. The sixth-grade science curriculum, for example, was amended so that, rather than having students "clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the...

THE North and South Poles are “not melting”, according to a leading global warming expert. In fact, the poles are “much more stable” than climate scientists once predicted and could even be much thicker than previously thought. For years, scientists have suggested that both poles are melting at an alarming rate because of warming temperatures – dangerously raising the Earth’s sea levels while threatening the homes of Arctic and Antarctic animals. But the uncertainty surrounding climate change and the polar ice caps reached a new level this month when research suggested the ice in the Antarctic is actually growing. And...

On December 23, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the Commerce Department issued its latest revision of U.S. economic growth for the third quarter period (July through September). According to the BEA, the U.S. economy grew at a 5.0% annual rate during that quarter. Unfortunately, the once honorable Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Census Bureau tweaked the quarterly GDP numbers in order to achieve the 5% growth rate. This tweaking was predicted by Tyler Durden of zerohedge.com.When Durden analyzed the final revision for the first quarter back on June 25 (Here's the reason for the total collapse in Q1...

The unemployment rate no longer seems to reflect America’s mood. Friday’s strong jobs report showed that the jobless rate—the most closely watched gauge of the economy’s health—is down to 5.8 percent. A year ago, the rate was 7.2 percent. Five years ago, it was 10 percent. It’s the kind of sustained decline that would normally suggest a satisfied public. Not so much anymore. […] Many Americans don’t feel they've benefited from falling unemployment any more than they have from a sustained rise in the stock market or from solid U.S. economic growth. Some hints of their discontent can be found...

The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits fell to a 14-year low last week, a positive signal that could counter doubts over whether the economy is shifting into a higher gear. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 23,000 to a seasonally adjusted 264,000, the lowest level since 2000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The decline suggests the labor market is gaining steam even as worries grow that the economy will not be strong enough for the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates around the middle of next year.

Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner has been dogging the compilers of the formerly prestigious New York Times best-seller list for trying to deny best-seller status to conservative authors. First it was Dinesh D’Souza’s book America. Now it's David Limbaugh's latest book Jesus on Trial. He reports the Times crew has "banished conservative legal author David Limbaugh's latest, Jesus on Trial, from its upcoming best seller list despite having sales better than 17 other books on the list." According to publishing sources, Limbaugh's probe into the accuracy of the Bible sold 9,660 in its first week out, according to Nielsen...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell for a second straight week last week, underscoring the strengthening labor market fundamentals. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 298,000 for the week ended Aug. 23, the Labor Department said Thursday. Claims for the prior week were revised to show 1,000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims climbing to 300,000 last week. A Labor Department analyst said there were no special factors influencing the state level data. The four-week average of claims, considered a better measure...

Fewer people applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week, another sign the job market is improving. The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly claims for jobless aid fell 14,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 298,000. The prior week’s figures were revised up slightly to 311,000. The less-volatile four-week average rose 4,750 to 300,750. It remains close to levels that predate the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Applications are a proxy for layoffs. Employers aren’t just keeping workers. They’re hiring at a pace last seen during the tech boom. They added 209,000 jobs in July, the sixth straight month that job...

Each new climate-change study seems more pessimistic than the last. This May and June, for example, were the hottest ones on record for the planet. Effective countermeasures now could actually ward off many of these threats at relatively modest cost. Yet despite a robust scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are at the root of the problem, legislation to curb them has gone nowhere in Congress. In response, President Obama has proposed stricter regulations on electric utilities, which some scientists warn may be too little, too late. Why aren’t we demanding more forceful action? One reason may be the frequent...