Free Republic

New international test scores show American students lagging behind in math and performing about average in science and reading. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development tests 15-year-olds around the world every three years as part of the Program for International Student Assessment. Half a million students in 65 countries participated in the most recent test, administered in 2012. The top average scores in each subject came from Shanghai, China's largest city and also from Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the results a "picture of educational stagnation." However, critics of the...

Mounting opposition to ObamaCare among young adults is creating a new crisis for the White House. While the federal enrollment website HealthCare.gov appears to be improving by the day, polls show the “young invincibles” key to making the law work are becoming less likely to enroll. Younger people were skeptical of the healthcare reform law even before its troubled rollout, despite their support for President Obama. But polling indicates the problems facing HealthCare.gov — a site the administration initially touted as a hip, tech-friendly experience — have reinforced their doubts about the need to have health insurance at all. “The...

Are U.S. federal government policy makers planning for an economic meltdown? Fiscal and financial news isn’t a particularly sexy topic for broad audiences, even under normal circumstances. And over the Thanksgiving national holiday weekend, about the only news people care to consume are football scores. But as we enjoyed turkey dinners, shopping, and hopefully some quality time with friends and family – and even in the recent days leading up to the holiday weekend – some major policy ideas and changes have emerged that could keep you away from your personal finances in the face of another meltdown. Americans...

My last thread about TVs was published in 2006. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1725379/posts I still have the 2k in the bank and still want to buy one I have been looking at the Sharp Aquos Quattron 3D 240 70" Model 757. Any opinions? Good Amazon ratings. How does one get it installed if purchased on the net? How does one pick a sound system, and I need a sound system with headphones because of a mild hearing deficit (What did he just say? Where are they going? Why did he kill her?) I am looking for a theatre-sort of experience at my low...

For more than 65 years the National Health Service has occupied a sainted position in British life. Even the most radical, right-leaning Governments have hesitated before embarking on reforms which could be characterized by opponents as “cuts”. In recent years, however, the halo has slipped dramatically. … Now, details from a secret report on Wexham Park Hospital have provided devastating confirmation. … The report highlights huge structural problems, with a top-heavy cadre of bureaucrats spending their time—and our money—feuding with each other, against a backdrop of deepening financial problems and a chronic bed shortage. Shockingly, we have also established that...

America’s public pension funds are in trouble because sketchy Mr. Wall Street sold some slack-jawed pension fund managers on risky investments with promises of high returns that may never materialize. Or so Matt Taibbi seems to believe. In a recent piece in Rolling Stone, Taibbi blames public pensions’ current woes on “Gordon Gekko wanna-be’s” (sic), “scorched-earth takeover artists like Bain Capital,” and “Wall Street,” who used the financial crisis to lure weakened pension funds into investing in “alternatives.” Alternatives are investment vehicles that are different from stocks, bonds, and commodities in that they are typically traded by individuals without the...

I think that’s it’s safe to say that community organizing is a little bit easier than, say, being President of the United States. Or being a practicing attorney. Barack Obama has now found that out. To the sorrow of the rest of us. And here’s the essential problem with Barack Obama’s resume, as opposed to, say, Abraham Lincoln’s, who also was unprepared to become president of the United States, but made up for it with ability: Obama has spent his whole life being against stuff, protesting against powers higher than himself, blaming those in control. Lincoln on the other hand...

lmost exactly one year ago we wrote "The Next Subprime Crisis Is Here: Over $120 Billion In Federal Student Loans In Default" in which we took the latest (2009 three year cohort) loan default data on Federal Student Loans released by the Department of Education and applied it to the total amount of student loans outstanding, which back then was $914 billion. Yesterday, ED.gov provided its annual update - this time to the 2010 three year and 2011 two year cohorts - and to nobody's major surprise, learned that things just got even worse. To wit: "The national two-year cohort...

Five years ago, Jim Simpson informed America of the grand conspiratorial sabotage presenting Barack Obama for the United States Presidency. That is, he presented much more than we already knew, to those who were already awake, aware, alarmed, and looking for more. And we have all continued to tell those who have not been willfully, unrepentantly, and fatally ignorant. This article also introduced to many the very old, Marxist and fascist (some would say Illuminist and Jacobin) strategy of collapsing a nation’s economy through government obligations and debt, recently reprised as the “Cloward-Piven strategy.” Whether reviewing or reading for the...

Over the past few years, there has been a growing awareness that many experimentally established “facts” don’t seem to hold up to repeated investigation. This was highlighted in a 2010 article in the New Yorker entitled The Truth Wears Off and since then, there have been many popular press accounts of different aspects of science’s current reproducibility crisis. These include an exposé of the increasing number of retractions by scientific journals and damning demonstrations of failures to replicate high profile studies. Articles in recent days have discussed how the majority of scientists might be more interested in funding and fame...

Israel's largest daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot has a photo of US President Barack Obama published with the comment "From threats to words." In Jerusalem, we are disappointed by Obama's behavior. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued veiled criticism of the White House: "If we do not help ourselves, no one will." According to Netanyahu, the world needs to see: "Anyone who uses weapons of mass destruction, has to pay the price." If Syria used chemical weapons against its own people, there is no doubt it would do so against Israel. Therefore, America's reluctance to act now is being heavily criticized...

For the five year anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis, Ed Lazear and I have released a paper titled “Observations on the Financial Crisis,” published through the Hoover Institution. It’s just over 25 pages and also has a fairly detailed timeline of events as an appendix. Ed was chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers when I was director of the National Economic Council. Here are the 19 observation headlines. I urge you to read our supporting arguments, especially if you’re going to comment on or respond to them. Each argument takes only about a page. “The recession that...

"'Your No. 1 client is the government,' John J. Mack, Morgan Stanley's chairman and chief executive from 2005 to 2009, told current CEO James Gorman in a recent phone call. Mr. Gorman, who was visiting Washington that day, agreed." - Wall Street Journal, September 10, 2013. The five year anniversary of the ‘financial crisis' has predictably generated all manner of commentary about its presumed causes. What's most unfortunate five years later is that ‘financial' and ‘crisis' are still used together. It's unfortunate simply because despite what you read, the crisis was decidedly not financial, nor was it caused by a...

As the war drums for Syria get louder, let this thread serve as a repository for news, background, Tweets, photos, video, on-the-ground reports, etc., as was done recently with Egypt.

This summer the White House unveiled "President Obama's Plan for a Better Foundation for Middle Class Homeownership," which is so amazing it merits a second slogan, the "Better Bargain." A cutesy infographic explains the Plan, using language that seems out of place among Obama Administration statists: "Put private capital at the center of the mortgage system""NO MORE TAXPAYER BAILOUTS!""End Fannie and Freddie's failed business model" The White House explains further: [President Obama] made it clear that we can't go back to the same bubble-and burst housing system that caused the financial crisis. We need a rock-solid foundation for financing homeownership...

The UK is drawing up contingency plans for military action in response to the chemical weapons attack in Syria, Downing Street has said. David Cameron will also consider a recall of Parliament when he returns to No 10 later on Tuesday. MPs from all parties have demanded they be consulted before any move to support military action is taken. The suspected chemical attack took place on Wednesday near Damascus, and reportedly killed more than 300 people. Syrian rebels say the Assad government was responsible, but it blames rebel forces - saying footage of the attack was "fabricated". Mr Cameron is...

This past July, Russian president Vladimir Putin ignited outrage among the (primarily Western) pro-homosexual community by signing into law a ban on homosexual adoption. The new law also prohibits adoption by single parent households. Only a few days before, Putin also signed into law broad prohibitions against "gay propaganda," which included provisions that allow "the government to arrest and detain gay (or 'pro-gay') foreigners for up to 14 days before they would then be expelled from Russia" While these latter measures are no doubt draconian, they nonetheless represent a growing realization within Russian society, namely: sexual anarchy has proven devastating...

Testimony from victims of the Syrian conflict suggests rebels have used the nerve agent sarin, according to a leading United Nations investigator. Carla del Ponte told Swiss TV there were "strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof". However, she said her panel had not yet seen evidence of government forces using chemical weapons. Syria has recently come under growing Western pressure over the alleged use of such weapons. Ms del Ponte, who serves on the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said in an interview with Swiss-Italian TV: "Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims,...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama is clearly playing a nasty political game with the air traffic controller furloughs that have forced severe airline delays across the country. It's not the first time he's exploited the budget-cutting sequestration law for political purposes. Earlier this year, he tried to stir up fears that our economy would be hit by fiscal Armageddon if the Republican House didn't submit to his tax-hiking, big-spending demands. But his hysterical claims that our food would be unsafe, America's defenses would crumble and the elderly would lose their benefits have proven to be groundless. A headline in Thursday's Washington...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Social Security's disability program is overwhelmed by so many claims that judges sometimes award benefits they might otherwise deny just to keep up with the flow of cases, according to a lawsuit filed by the judges themselves. The Social Security Administration says the agency's administrative law judges should decide 500 to 700 disability cases a year. The agency calls the standard a productivity goal, but the lawsuit claims it is an illegal quota that requires judges to decide an average of more than two cases per workday. "When the goals are too high, the easy way out...