Free Republic

If you’ve ever played the shell game – one ball and three half coconuts – then you understand the entire charade behind this so-called economic recovery: deception. Let me introduce you to subtraction, addition’s tricky friend! According to astute celebrities like Chris Rock, only in America could a black President lower the unemployment rate to less than 6%, reduce the price of gas to $2.50 a gallon, end two wars – despite accounting for 75% of all casualties and using the exact same timetable as George Bush – and still somehow be considered a failure. Hmm, well that depends on...

A Facebook meme posted by a liberal Democratic group puts a new twist on an old claim that the state of Wisconsin is "broke." The post by Occupy Democrats includes a photo of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and this statement: "Last year, Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a $541 million tax cut for millionaires and corporations. Today, Wisconsin’s budget is $283 million in the red, funding for education is being slashed, government programs are being gutted, and the state is about to miss a $108 million debt payment -- because it is dead broke." In the comments below the...

Peter St. Onge writes: The job-threatening rise of the machines is an economically illiterate meme that refuses to die. We’re actually probably in the early stages of it, a bull-market in neo-luddism, if you will. Bastiat’s “Candlemakers Petititon” answered this one long ago, but today I’ll run a little thought experiment that owes it all to good old Bastiat. Let’s say Weird Al Yankovic invents a machine capable of making everything with a single push of a button. The first thing he does is print up a bunch of machines and sell them for a ton. Weird Al is now...

Have you noticed that events have begun to accelerate? Over the past few weeks, things have officially started to get very weird. Chinese stocks are crashing, the Greek debt crisis is spiraling out of control, the New York Stock Exchange was down for about four hours on Wednesday thanks to a “technical glitch”, and global politicians have been acting very strangely. After several years of relative calm, could it be possible that the second half of 2015 will usher in a time of chaos and confusion on a worldwide scale? Personally, I have never been more concerned about a period...

Is America hard at work? Or hardly working? I ask this because 430,000 Americans of working age (16 and older) dropped out of the workforce in June. Over the last year, only 1.3 million of working age have entered the workforce, even as the population of this same demographic increased by more than 2.8 million. Just over 1 million members of this group found jobs. That's right — of the new additions to the working age population, less than four in 10 found jobs. The newspapers touted the reduction in the unemployment rate to 5.3% as a cause for celebration....

<p>There are few people in politics who are quite as hilarious as Stephen Moore. Formerly the Heritage Foundation’s chief economist (he’s now a “Distinguished Visiting Fellow” for the group) Moore has achieved greater notoriety as one of the worst pundits alive. The man is constantly, flagrantly wrong. He’s been blacklisted by a major newspaper for making too many embarrassing errors in his columns. He’s a climate change denier who draws his arguments against environmentalism from sci-fi monkey movies. He’s written anti-Obamacare Op-Eds that are literally 0 percent accurate. As an economic thinker he’s been no more successful – he has a string of bad predictions under his belt and a tenuous grasp of the field he’s supposedly an expert in.</p>

If you’ve been out and about in Manhattan over the past six weeks and you have eyes and ears, you know something’s happening — something worrisome. The urban streetscape is ­degrading. Take a walk down Broadway on the Upper West Side from the 100s to the 70s, as I did Sunday, and you’ll see it everywhere. It seems every barren storefront with a rental sign in the window has ­become impromptu outdoor housing for a homeless person. There are many such storefronts — ironic signs of prosperity, not recession. Rents have risen so high that small businesses often can’t afford...

AMERICA RUNNING OUT OF TIME. SUPPORT TEAMS URGED. Albany, NY. June 24, 2015 Founder and Director of Oath Keepers Stewart Rhodes urges all Oath Keeper chapters across the country to hold an Emergency Summit by state, in order to prepare for an economic collapse. 'Assume the worst' and formulate support teams. Food storage the most crucial.

With avowed socialist Bernie Sanders making waves across the country by seriously challenging Hillary Clinton in some states, it's time to ask the question: is Sanders an outlier? Or a harbinger of things to come? Socialism has always lurked on the fringes of American politics. Even during the Depression, when many young Americans gave up on capitalism and became Communists or socialists, their numbers were comparatively small. But the indoctrination of the young has been so successful that one fears for the future of America. A Pew poll in 2011 found 49% of 18- to 29-year-olds having a positive view...

Donald Trump, loud-mouth-in-chief, has recently been in the news for some of his earliest comments as a Presidential candidate. Most notably Trump launched a jeremiad filled with derogatory and entirely false information about Latin American immigrants. The comments themselves are so offensive and absurd they do not bear repeating, and in fact the comments themselves are somewhat beside the point. Donald Trump is playing one of the most notable roles in American bourgeois politics, that of the populist demagogue who plays on people’s deepest fears while holding out the promise of a clearly fanciful future prosperity. We have seen this...

<p>Cultural aggression, destructive policies, and ceaseless smearing are wearing out a great people.</p> <p>Great job.</p> <p>You’ve succeeded beyond your wildest dreams in your efforts to, as the front man for your current operation called it, “fundamentally transform America.” It’s been seven years with said front man in charge, and those of us not in on your game are staring slack-jawed at what you’ve made of this country.</p>

Self-repairing pipes. Printed organs. Bulletproof t-shirts. Seriously?In April I was asked to speak at the annual TED conference in Vancouver (following Bill Gates…gulp) on the topic of 3D printing production and its implications. I have detailed my thoughts on why the shift to 3D printing production is not only likely but inevitable in articles one, two and three in this series for Forbes. Now, let’s take a step into a fascinating future, where daily life will be shaped by several powerful forces directly related to 3D printing production. What it will be like to live in a 3D-printed world? Imagine...

A federal health official dealing with the surge of illegal immigrants last year at the southern U.S. border ripped President Obama for the months-long crisis, calling him a "Marxist" and “the worst pres we have ever had,” according to newly released internal emails. The emails, obtained and published by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, show a June 9, 2014, exchange between Centers for Disease Control and Prevention logistics specialist George Roark and agency public health adviser William Adams. Roark begins by writing: “Unreal, no country in the world would allow this.” Adams responds: “Well, in ten years or less,...

U.S. Is Heading Toward Financial Ruin Economic Collapse Says Harry Dent On today's show, financial expert, author and founder of HS Dent Investment ... Harry Dent: U.S. Is Heading Toward Financial Ruin Economic Collapse.

Although it’s not possible to know exactly what the mood is among Party officials in China regarding the inexorable slide in stock prices that’s unfolded over the course of the last three weeks, it’s reasonable to assume that at least some officials in Beijing are in the throes of Politburo panic after watching some $3 trillion in market value disappear into thin (and probably polluted) air. Amid the turmoil, China has resorted to an eye-watering array of policy maneuvers, pronouncements, and plunge protection schemes aimed at arresting the slide. Nothing has worked. Not suspending compulsory liquidation for unmet margin calls,...

WHILE the world worries about Greece, there’s an even bigger problem closer to home: China. A stock market crash there has seen $3.2 trillion wiped from the value of Chinese shares in just three weeks, triggering an emergency response from the government and warnings of “monstrous” public disorder. • LATEST: CHINESE INVESTORS FLEE FOR SAFETY And the effects for Australia could be serious, affecting our key commodity exports and sparking the beginning of a period of recession-like conditions. “State-owned newspapers have used their strongest language yet, telling people ‘not to lose their minds’ and ‘not to bury themselves in horror...

Michigan has achieved another economic milestone on the road to establishing a reputation as the comeback state. From 2009 to 2014, the state experienced the third-highest percentage increase in state gross domestic product (GDP). The state was surpassed by just two states, both with heavy exposure to a national oil drilling boom. A widely used measure of the size of an economy, GDP is defined as the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a state or nation during a specific period of time. Michigan’s GDP has expanded 13.8 percent from 2009 to 2014. This far...

Socialism: Indebted nations of the world are applauding the "Oxi" vote against "austerity" in Greece not so much as a victory for the common man, but because they have plans to default on the billions they owe. Brace yourself. Socialism: Indebted nations of the world are applauding the "Oxi" vote against "austerity" in Greece because they no doubt have plans to default on the billions (BEG ITAL)they(END ITAL) owe. Brace yourself. What we're witnessing is the revenge of the debtors — socialist nations that believe they're striking a blow for human rights by not paying what they owe unless creditors...

The big joke Tuesday was that comb-over reality TV star Donald Trump announced that he’s running for president in 2016 as a Republican. As if it isn’t funny enough that he’s given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Foundation, he also said he wants Oprah Winfrey as his VP. And just in case you aren’t convinced of his conservative credentials, it turns out he’s left quite a liberal footprint of anti-gun, pro-abortion, redistribution of wealth, Obam-esque socialism. Back in 2000 The Don was flirting with running for president as a Reform Party candidate... Here’s...

<p>There’s an old expression in politics, “If you shoot at a king, don’t miss.” In the matter of the unions vs. Scott Walker, unions paid the price for their failed at tempts to stop Walker and his reforms. Amazingly, Wisconsin became a Right to Work state.</p>