Free Republic

There are actually more unemployed people of working age as a percentage now than the height of The Great Depression. While the '70s stagflation was bad, the country still had a vibrant middle class and the process of gutting our infrastructure was just getting started. Main Street was still alive in the 1970s and The Great Financialization of the 1980s and 90s that created record wealth inequality hadn't begun. People talk like interest rates were 20% for the entire decade. It wasn't until 1979 that interest rates climbed that high, and only stayed there for two years. The massive interest...

A judge wants to know why two men convicted of secondary roles in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have been transferred to federal prisons out of state. Paul Bellar and Joe Morrison are entitled to appeal their convictions following a trial on state charges in Jackson County in 2022. But their lawyers said it’s extremely hard to work with them hundreds of miles away. They said the distance interferes with a right to have access to Michigan courts. The transfer is "mind-boggling" and "appalling," said Michael Faraone, who represents Morrison. "Whatever we may say about this case,...

The GAO found that federal offices have challenges like the private sector. In comparing building capacity to employees, none used over 50% and some used only 9%. WASHINGTON – The Agriculture Department is headquartered at the gateway between Washington and Virginia in a building rich with history – but on any given day, roughly 90% of it sits empty. That’s not an anomaly. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) surveyed two dozen federal agencies and found they averaged a roughly 80% vacancy rate during the study period earlier this year. Not a single agency topped 50% use, GAO reported.

Pro-Palestinian protesters are occupying the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC, calling for a ceasefire by Israel on Wednesday.

A seemingly unrelenting wave of debt is piling onto America’s balance sheet. New data from the U.S. Treasury Department show the federal debt increased by over $296.524 billion from August 8th to September 8th, reaching a total of $32.940 trillion. The new numbers come as JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon issues a warning on America’s fiscal trajectory. At a conference hosted by Barclays, Dimon told reporters that America’s rapid rate of spending is bound to have a significant impact on households. “I just think people make a mistake to look at real-time numbers and not look at the future. And...

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday told the judge overseeing the Fulton County, Georgia, election subversion case that he “may” try to move his state case to federal court. Attorneys for Trump had previously indicated an interest in trying to remove the case from state to federal court, which could help him fight the 13 charges he faces by invoking immunity protections for federal officials and produce a more favorable jury pool. “President Trump hereby notifies the Court that he may seek removal of his prosecution to federal court,” his lawyer Steven Sadow wrote in a court filing. “To be...

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) said Tuesday he will introduce legislation dubbed the “Freedom to Breathe Act” which will effectively ban federal mask mandates. The act would prohibit President Joe Biden and federal agencies from implementing face mask requirements requiring submission from public transit passengers or students in schools. “The bill, if passed into law, would prevent the reimposition of federal mask mandates in the United States — particularly in public schools and on airplanes and public transportation systems. It would only apply through the end of 2024.

President Biden informed Congress on Thursday of his intention to raise federal civilian workers’ pay by an average of 5.2 percent, taking a required step to advance the proposal outlined in his 2024 budget request earlier this year. In letters addressed to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Vice President Harris in her capacity as president of the Senate, Biden outlined his alternative pay plan for an across-the-board pay increase of 4.7 percent and locality pay increases averaging 0.5 percent, for an overall average increase of 5.2 percent.

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz has introduced a bill to shut down the Internet Covert Operations Program, a domestic surveillance operation run by the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service... ...“The Postal Service should be focused on delivering the mail on time and on budget, not running a covert surveillance program to monitor political behavior on social media,” Gaetz said in a statement... ... “As the dangers of government surveillance and targeting become ever the more clear, especially to conservatives, Congress must immediately abolish this program,” the congressman said at the time ..

Federal workers have been authorized to leave work early as severe weather is expected to hit the Washington, D.C., area and parts of the Northeast region of the country. In a news release Monday, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said federal employees located in the D.C. area were authorized to leave their workplaces two hours earlier than expected, and that all employees must evacuate their buildings “no later than 3:00 at which time Federal offices are closed.” Telework employees are also expected to receive weather and safety leave for the amount required for them to commute back home,...

The U.S. national debt has increased by $1 trillion in the five weeks since President Biden signed a bill into law that effectively turns off the debt ceiling until 2025. According to Treasury Department data, the total national debt stood at $32.47 trillion on July 6, $1 trillion more than the $31.47 trillion level last seen on June 2. The national debt had been stuck at or near that June 2 level for months because the government had hit the debt ceiling and was legally prohibited from borrowing any more money. On June 3, however, Biden signed legislation reflecting negotiations...

Democratic presidential challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called Sunday for the federal legalization of marijuana, arguing that states should be allowed to decide their own pot laws without federal interference. Politicians have taken steps toward legalization in recent years, though even under President Barack Obama — an admitted former marijuana enthusiast — federal law considered pot illegal, creating tension with states.

Nearly $1 billion from the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act will go toward climate-friendly upgrades for federal buildings, the Biden administration said on Tuesday. According to a press release from the General Services Administration (GSA), $975 million will go toward electrification or energy efficiency upgrades to make the buildings more climate-friendly. About 20 percent of the buildings in the GSA’s portfolio will be impacted. Twenty-eight of them will become carbon neutral and 100 more will become all electric. The effort — which is also expected to incorporate additional private funding — is expected to avoid 2.3 million metric tons of greenhouse...

Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez (NJ) held a meeting in his Washington, DC, office in 2018 with a New Jersey businessman who is at the center of a federal corruption probe into the senator, the Wall Street Journal reported. Southern District of New York prosecutors are investigating Menendez as part of a corruption probe, which reportedly stems from facts similar to a 2015 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) case against Menendez and Democrat donor Salomon Melgen for conspiracy and bribery. According to the Wall Street Journal: The meeting, which hasn’t been previously reported, came months before the businessman, Wael Hana, secured...

Sen. Charles Grassley's and Rep. James Comer's subpoena to the FBI to release an unclassified document it holds about a whistleblower allegation of a "criminal scheme" involving Joe Biden, is nominally about whether the FBI ever bothers to investigate allegations of crime involving Democrats. And that's a well and worthy aim, given that Comer is the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, and Republicans are casting a spotlight on the illegal politicization seen in that law enforcement agency. "We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current...

Former President Trump will try to move his Manhattan criminal hush money case from state to federal court, his lawyer said. Trump attorney Todd Blanche made the announcement during a court hearing Thursday, according to The Associated Press. Moving the case to federal court would increase the potential jury pool, which is currently limited to the heavily-Democratic population of Manhattan. Blanche said Trump’s legal team will file a motion later Thursday to transfer the case, according to the AP. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over his alleged role in a hush money scheme ahead of the...

The federal government is pulling in less tax revenue than expected, prompting concerns the early numbers could leave far less time for Congress to strike a deal to avoid a default on the national debt. Before tax figures started rolling in after last week’s filing deadline, Congress appeared to have until sometime in late July or August to pass legislation to raise or suspend the debt limit. But some experts have warned that a major shortfall in tax revenue means the U.S. government could run out of cash as early as June.

INTRO: this document quotes a former DNI (someone who would know) pointing out how extraordinarily unlikely it is an Airman 1st in IT could obtain this leaked information on his own. Author makes a good case he was fed the docs. Presuming these docs were only available in a SCIF and required access to the SIPRNET, I find the author's closing sentence(s) to be spot on -- "It will be interesting to see what is found on print logs, and security video, and file transfer logs. " SCIF/SIPRNET logs don't lie. but people do. Excerpt follows. "Despite working in information...

In the early 2000s, the city of St. Paul, Minn., cracked down on landlords who ignored rat problems, bad sanitation, poor heating, and so on. But instead of shaping up, the landlords sued the city for violating the federal Fair Housing Act. They argued that St. Paul’s insistence upon habitable homes hurt minorities by forcing the landlords to raise the rent. A federal court of appeals let the lawsuit go forward — holding that killing rats and fixing toilets could indeed violate the law if it somehow unintentionally displaced minorities. When a similar case reached the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel...

Thursday, Joe Biden signed an executive order embedding the tenets of Critical Race Theory into the operations of the federal government. EO 13985, Executive Order on Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government, requires the establishment of “Agency Equity Teams” to ensure that equal outcomes are imposed on federal programs.(i) Each Agency Equity Team shall be led by a designated senior official (senior designee) charged with implementing my Administration’s equity initiatives, and shall include senior officials from the office of the agency head and the agency’s program, policy, civil rights, regulatory, science, technology, service...