Free Republic

The Senate today is holding a key procedural vote that would allow the Trans-Pacific Partnership to be “fast-tracked.” So who can read the text of the TPP? Not you, it’s classified. Even members of Congress can only look at it one section at a time in the Capitol’s basement, without most of their staff or the ability to keep notes. But there’s an exception: if you’re part of one of 28 U.S. government-appointed trade advisory committees providing advice to the U.S. negotiators. The committees with the most access to what’s going on in the negotiations are 16 “Industry Trade Advisory...

President Obama signed a disaster declaration on Monday for Massachusetts and ordered federal aid to help the state recover from the blizzard that hit the region from Jan. 26-28. The state's costs total about $400 million. The aid is available to state, tribal and eligible local governments and certain private nonprofit organizations. It also covers state and local government snow-removal costs for a continuous 48-hour period during or after the storm and the costs of related hazard mitigation.

A popular visa program allegedly is being misused by U.S. companies to lay off thousands of American workers and replace them with foreign labor. And, adding insult to injury, many of the laid-off workers allegedly have been forced to train their replacements, in what one anonymous whistleblower called a “humiliating” experience. The allegations have caught the attention of a bipartisan group of senators -- including immigration hawk Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and the No. 2 Senate Democrat, Illinois’ Dick Durbin -- who are calling for a federal probe. A letter sent by 10 senators urging an investigation specifically cited reports...

Jake Pultorak chuckles at the mention of “range anxiety,” the fear among some electric vehicle owners that their car's battery will run out of juice before the driver can find a charger. “I had that as a gas-car driver, but the anxiety was over how much I had to pay to get where I was going,” said Pultorak, 44, of Franklin Park, who has owned an all-electric Tesla Model S for about two years. Worries at the gas pumps have diminished over the past nine months as the global crash in oil prices brought the cost of gasoline to its...

The greatly anticipated “fix” to the Indiana religious freedom law has been released by the Indiana legislative committee, and it is far worse than conservatives feared. According to law professor Mark Rienzi, the new fix will allow the state to prosecute Christians criminally for denying gay weddings their professional affirmation.Rienzi, of the Becket Fund and Catholic University School of Law and who was lead attorney in the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case that upheld a claim under the federal religious freedom law, said this would “criminalize religious objectors.”

Just as surely as Marshal Petain capitulated to Naziism in France in 1940, Governor Mike Pence and the Republican legislative leaders of Indiana have capitulated to Corporatism in 2015. Big Business and professional sports organizations backed by the corporate elites attacked the religious freedom bill in Indiana and the Republicans caved, more evidence of a Uniparty system where corporate elites dictate policy, This adds to other issues like Amnesty and Common Core, where Big Business drives the agenda and the politicians march in lockstep. The House in Arkansas has now passed a similar religious freedom bill, but the business elites...

Guess What Makes The Cut As A 'Smart Snack' In Schools? Hot Cheetos Flamin' Hot Cheetos might conjure a lot of descriptors: spicy, crunchy, unnaturally fiery red. But it's a good bet that "healthy" didn't exactly spring to mind. Yet it turns out that those fiery Cheetos beloved by school children (some kids even made an epic rap paean to Hot Cheetos a few years ago) actually qualify as a "Smart Snack" under revised federal nutrition guidelines for schools. The Obama administration rolled out the new guidelines last year in a bid to limit the amount of junk food kids...

Until Republicans can stop “pleasin’” crony capitalists with subsidies at the expense of the public, taxpayers will continue to be subject to regular “squeezin.” The really big difference between Republican and Democrat handout recipients is their ability to be sympathetically photogenic. When pressed, the average Democrat welfare recipient can hide the flat–screen TV, stash the cellphone in a drawer and refrain from cigarette smoking. And it’s not too much trouble to pretend to fill out the job application or limp convincingly to prove the bad back disability claim as long as photographers and media are around. The Republican dependency class...

“I think of him as a tennis player. You know, if you’re going to rush the net all the time you better have a lot of motion to the left and the right. And he hasn’t proven that to me yet,” Chamber CEO Tom Donahue said. He also remains bullish on immigration reform. WASHINGTON — U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue Monday criticized Sen. Ted Cruz, who led the quixotic campaign to defund Obamacare that ended up shutting down the government, saying he has yet to prove he is capable of legislating. “Well I don’t know Sen. Cruz,”...

With just a point and a click, you can browse a face book of felons, a new government website that will warn of the danger these criminals pose to society.Only these are not the faces of sex offenders and serial killers. These criminals are mortgage schemers and inside traders, most likely armed with nothing more than an M.B.A. or a law degree.Their faces will soon appear online courtesy of the Utah Legislature, which on Wednesday approved a measure to build the nation’s first white-collar offender registry, appending a scarlet letter of sorts on the state’s financial felons. The registry —...

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid helped steer billions of federal tax dollars to companies supporting a green energy group run by two of his former staff members and a current campaign operative.The Nevada Democrat pushed for millions of dollars in grants and billions more in federal loan guarantees for corporations that donated to the Clean Energy Project, a nonprofit founded by a pair of former staffers with close ties to both Reid and to a major Democratic PAC associated with the senator, Lachlan Markay of the Washington Free Beacon reported.One such company, California-based Fulcrum Bioenergy, received a hefty federal grant...

Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) managed to turn a disagreement with a crowd of Iowa businesses and farmers into an applause line at the Iowa Agriculture Summit. Cruz reiterated his opposition to the Renewable Fuels Standard, a popular policy in Iowa that presents a thorny problem for many Republicans who campaign against crony capitalism but want to win the GOP presidential nomination. “I recognize that this is a gathering of a lot of folks where the answer you’d like me to give is ‘I’m for the RFS, darnit;’ that’d be the easy thing to do,” he said. “But I’ll tell...

...when there was a Texas drought that hurt the crops of farmers there, Congress allotted $10,000 to buy seed grain to help them recover. But [President Grover] Cleveland vetoed the expenditure and explained why like this:I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think,...

Al Capone, America’s “favorite” gangster, went to prison because he failed to pay $215,000 in taxes from his gambling profits. Al Sharpton, on the other hand, is still romping around screaming about racism despite the fact that he owes roughly $4 million to Federal and State revenuers. I guess the IRS is just too busy harassing conservatives to care about some uppity liberal who’s a few million dollars behind on his taxes.The gaffable (is that a word?) Al Sharpton personally faces Federal tax liens for more than $3 million in back taxes. He has over $770,000 in state tax liens. Two...

Near-term global warming projections (brick-red region) on[0.13, 0.50] K decade-1, compared with observations (green region)that fall on [0.0, 0.11] K decade-1, and the simple model's 21stcentury warming projections (yellow arrow), falling on 0.09 [0.06,0.12] K decade-1. Credit: Science China PressA major peer-reviewed climate physics paper in the first issue (January 2015: vol. 60 no. 1) of the prestigious Science Bulletin (formerly Chinese Science Bulletin), the journal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, exposes elementary but serious errors in the general-circulation models relied on by the UN's climate panel, the IPCC. The errors were the reason for concern about Man's effect...

On Tuesday night, Senator Ted Cruz appeared on Fox News to respond to the State of the Union address — and talked about how the US economy was only working for the "top 1 percent," who he said have gotten "fat and happy" under Obama's administration.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Cruz's rhetorical move is unusual for a prominent Republican, particularly a presidential contender. This emphasis on the "the 1 percent" has long been condemned by many in the party as class warfare. For instance, Sen. Marco Rubio said in 2012 that "convincing one group that their life isn't doing better because another is doing too...

.........For many on the Left, the Arkansas company is emblematic of all that is wrong with corporate America. It is particularly detested by organized labor — a key Democratic constituency — because the company has doggedly fought all efforts to organize its workers. Clinton's ties to Walmart go back to 1986, when she joined the company's board of directors. She remained there until 1992, when husband Bill Clinton ran for the White House. For years afterwards they both maintained close ties to the retail giant. More recently, Clinton has distanced herself from the company and criticized some of its business...

I have just recently become an active poster (responder), and have seen the term "Crony Capitalism" used without explanation. Recently I saw the term associated with Communism, which confused me further. A "google" does little to clear things up, particularly in regards to how it might be interchangeable with communism. Can anyone help clear things up?

The House-passed $1.1 trillion Continuing Resolution contains a clause that exposes taxpayers to a potential $300 trillion liability for bank losses in derivatives trading. The rider to the CR was the “brain child” of Citigroup. The rider is opposed by both tea party Republicans and left wing Democrats, but is strongly supported by House GOP leadership and President Obama. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif), charged that “this maneuver puts the lie to the contention that the GOP is the Party of small government. This is a big government pay off to Wall Street financiers. I’m enormously disappointed that the...

Given that our Commander in Chief is a surprisingly decent firearm salesman, it’s a little odd that one of America’s most prolific gun manufacturers might soon be facing an agonizing financial death. But, that’s exactly where Colt is headed if things don’t change drastically. It takes a very specialized form of failure for a gun company to miss out on the Obama-inspired run on guns, the “assault weapon” craze of the 2000’s, and the proliferation of Concealed Carry in the 1990’s, but that’s exactly what happened. And, worse, this isn’t Colt’s first foray into fiscal failure. In fact, this...