Free Republic

This week we are moved to ignore the news – which we have done our best to follow without throwing things at the television – take a large step back and consider a question which has been bugging us. Why is it that left are the nice guys – the ones that care – while the right are the heartless, inconsiderate bastards?We think we may have the answer.

The recent state of Nebraska’s tax and fiscal policy climate has been lackluster compared to other states in the region. In the most recent edition of Rich States, Poor States: ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index Nebraska ranks 35th (1 being the best, 50 being the worst), which is the poorest economic outlook ranking in the region. Nebraska has been slowly falling behind its neighbors, especially South Dakota and Wyoming—two states without any income taxes—and Kansas improving its economic climate with major recent tax reform. Nebraska has also lost $2.58 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI) to other states from 1992...

Hillary Clinton portrays herself as a champion of women in the workforce, but women working for her in the U.S. Senate were paid 72 cents for each dollar paid to men, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of her Senate years’ salary data. Snip “Politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can’t have it both ways,” Perry said. “They use raw, aggregate, unadjusted gender differences in pay and then claim that those pay gaps are the result of gender discrimination, like the 23 percent national gender pay gap in aggregate median income.” “They would then have to admit that...

Sweden has cut interest rates below zero and launched quantitative easing to fight deflation, becoming the latest Scandinavian state to join Europe’s escalating currency wars. The Riksbank caught markets by surprise, reducing the benchmark lending rate to minus 0.10pc and unveiled its first asset purchases, vowing to take further action at any time to stop the country falling into a deflationary trap. The bank presented the move as precautionary step due to rising risks of a “poorer outcome abroad” and the crisis in Greece. Janet Henry from HSBC said the measures are clearly a “beggar-thy neighbour” manoeuvre to weaken the...

Most of life happens without a central planner. Yet people think we need one. Suppose you'd never seen a skating rink, and I told you that I want to lay down some ice and charge people money to strap sharp blades on their feet. They will zip around on the ice -- young and old, skilled and unskilled. My only rule: Go counter-clockwise. Hillary Clinton would say the rink needs regulation. She calls herself "a government junkie." Government junkies like government plans. Hillary'd probably demand that my rink have an official who tells skaters when to zoom left or right,...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares wobbled on Monday after dismal Chinese trade data eclipsed a strong U.S. jobs report, raising concerns about a deepening slowdown in the world's second-largest economy and sending the Australian dollar sliding. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slipped 0.3 percent with Australian shares (.AXJO) down 0.5 percent in early trade. U.S. stock futures also shed 0.4 percent (ESc1).

Jody Hall, owner of Cupcake Royale, was an early supporter of the mayor's plan to raise the minimum wage to $15. Now she is having serious second thoughts.Hazel Roos, owner of Paint Away in Redmond, had planned to open a specialty toy store near her home in Seattle. Those plans are now on hold. Ethan and Angela Stowell own 10 neighborhood restaurants in Seattle. They have decided not to move forward on two new restaurants because of uncertainty over the minimum wage. As the Seattle City Council continues to debate a plan to phase in a $15 minimum wage, and...

resident Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech, called for a minimum-wage hike and for government-mandated paid family and medical leave. "We are the only advanced country on Earth," said the President, "that doesn't guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers." On the minimum wage, Obama issued this challenge: "And to everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it. If not, vote to give millions of the...

Human Events’ readers, in an online poll, recently voted billionaire financier George Soros “the single most destructive leftist demagogue in the country.” Here are the Top 10 Reasons George Soros Is Dangerous1. Gives billions to left-wing causes: Soros started the Open Society Institute in 1993 as a way to spread his wealth to progressive causes. Using Open Society as a conduit, Soros has given more than $7 billion to a who’s who of left-wing groups. This partial list of recipients of Soros’ money says it all: ACORN, Apollo Alliance, National Council of La Raza, Tides Foundation, Huffington Post, Southern Poverty...

When Democrats talk about middle class Americans, they almost inevitably use them as a cudgel to attack the rich. On the other hand, bizarrely, Republicans seem to spend much more time defending the rich from attacks by the Left than talking about what they’re going to do to help the middle class. That’s unfortunate because middle class Americans are the backbone of the country; yet their interests always seem to take a backseat to those of the wealthy, the poor and the naked self-interest of BOTH political parties. There’s nothing wrong with giving the poor a hand-up or making sure...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Ignoring history, Obama falsely claims that raising the capital gains tax yields higher tax revenue The Washington Times recently reported:Obama’s State of the Union speech to include $320B tax hike proposalPresident wants capital gains rate, bank fees raisedPresident Obama will propose $320 billion in higher taxes in his State of the Union address, mostly by raising the rate on capital gains and closing tax loopholes for wealthier families, senior administration officials said Saturday.Previewing Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night, aides said the president will propose raising the top tax rate...

President Obama believes that “middle class economics” work. This meaningless tag line must have been popular in focus groups. What exactly qualifies as “middle class economics”? Based on the President’s State of the Union speech and the lead up to it, it apparently entails a bunch of big government programs provided to the middle class for “free.” Unlike the lower classes, who pay very little in taxes, the middle class likely isn’t fooled by the ruse of “free.” Most in the middle class understand that free means taxes are increased, likely on them. While the President offered a few middle...

Poachers kill 300 Zimbabwe elephants with cyanide • Cyanide has been used to kill 300 elephants in Zimbabwe's biggest nature reserve - three times the original estimate - as new photos show the scale of the slaughter Poachers in Zimbabwe have killed more than 300 elephants and countless other safari animals by cyanide poisoning, The Telegraph has learned. The full extent of the devastation wreaked in Hwange, the country's largest national park, has been revealed by legitimate hunters who discovered what conservationists say is the worst single massacre in southern Africa for 25 years. Pictures taken by the hunters, which...

The other day at work I was working on Windows 7 and opening an XML document by right-clicking on the mouse and going to the menu to choose “Windows XML reader” and then, once it was open, to save it to Excel. At some point during the process, I noticed a menu item appear that read “Use SnagIt.” I thought this was interesting since the last time I had used SnagIt, was when it was a proprietary stand-alone application. And I thought to my self, first, “Hey, that’s great! I’m glad it’s available”...and then, coming to, “Hey! Wait a minute!...

In my younger years, I oftentimes would have arguments with statists who wanted me to believe that countries in Northern Europe like Sweden “proved” that generous welfare states were compatible with economic prosperity. That doesn’t happen as often today because the Nordic nations in recent decades have not enjoyed rapid growth. Moreover, some of the nations – such as Sweden in the early 1990s and Iceland last decade – suffered from serious financial downturns.So I stand by my position that free markets and small government are the recipe for prosperity.That being said, there are still some interesting lessons to be...

Now that the U.S. economy is showing signs of life, President Obama is not wasting a moment to take credit for this recovery. “The steps we took nearly six years ago to rescue our economy and rebuild it on a new foundation helped make 2014 the strongest year for job growth since the 1990’s,” he said in a recent speech. For sure we can expect the president to continue this message in his upcoming State of the Union address, as he works to rebuild his credibility, thinking toward his final two years in office and his place in history. And...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Venezuelan military tells customers not to take pictures of empty shelves in supermarkets The Venezuelan military has troops stationed in supermarkets, and they are telling customers not to take pictures of empty shelves. But that hasn’t stopped people from doing it. During the first week of 2015, the Twitter hashtag #AnaquelesVaciosEnVenezuela (“Empty shelves in Venezuela”) listed more than 200,000 tweets.For example: (posted here under fair use from https://twitter.com/Indiferencia/status/551547489565016064/photo/1 ) Nicolas Maduro, the country’s president, has continued the policies of Hugo Chavez, the country’s previous president who died in March 2013.Chavez was an incompetent, communist dictator, who...

A book by a French economist who became a darling of 99 percenters and his lefty peers is riddled with errors, cherry-picked data and flawed premises, according to two new studies. Thomas Piketty's “Capital in the 21st Century,” which New York Times columnist and Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman called “the most important economics book of the year — and maybe of the decade,” calls for an 80 percent income tax to stop wealth inequality from increasing. The book earned its author an invitation to the White House to meet with Obama administration Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. ... ... The recent...

The sudden fall in the price of oil provides a unique opportunity to examine the widely held belief that deflation is economic poison. As many governments and central banks have vowed to fight deflation at all costs in 2015, the question could hardly be more significant. While falling prices may strike the layman as cause for celebration, economists believe that it can kick off a nasty, and often inescapable, negative cycle, which many believe leads inevitably to a prolonged recession, or even a depression. However, these same economists acknowledge that falling energy prices may offer a stimulus, equivalent to an...

The income gap and income inequality is a hot button topic in the United States that has taken center stage in political debates and college classrooms in recent years. Economic Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman have argued in The New York Times that income inequality is a major issue that requires political action to remedy. President Obama even hails income inequality as “the defining challenge of our time.” So what real problems does the income gap propose for American citizens and the country’s future, why is it such a major issue, and what can be done about it, if anything at...