Free Republic

In March 2013, the U.S. government invented a new way of calculating GDP. The Financial Times reported that starting from July 2013, U.S. GDP would become 3% bigger due to a change in statistics. As this adjustment in GDP calculation is pretty significant, I will discuss the new items in the U.S. GDP, what the consequences are and how investors should act on this revision in statistics.GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports), orThe government made a significant change in the gross investment number (I), which now includes R&D spending, art, music, film...

Future historians will likely be flummoxed by the moment we’re living in. In what amounts to less than a blink of an eye in the history of Western civilization, homosexuality has gone from a diagnosed mental disorder to something to be celebrated — or else. Indeed, the rush to mandatory celebration is so intense, refusal is now considered tantamount to a crime. And, in some rare instances, an actual crime if the right constable or bureaucrat concludes that you have uttered “hate speech.” Or, if you refuse to bake a gay couple a cake for their wedding. That was...

A team of researchers from Penn looked at the condition of higher education and came to about the same conclusion that academics usually come to when pressed to make a self-examination: Universities need more money. “The years before 2000 saw relatively few attempts to compare states’ performance in higher education,” Joni E. Finney, Laura W. Perna and Patrick M. Callan write in their report. “The Measuring Up series of state report cards, published from 2000 to 2008, called attention to how state higher education systems stacked up against the best–‐performing states and, later, against international standards.” “These state reports focused...

If you have been following Glenn since his days at Fox News, you may remember the expose he did on Obama ‘regulatory czar’ Cass Sunstein and his nudge theory. One of Sunstein’s more disturbing ideas involved government operatives infiltrating online communities in order to disseminate false information. As Glenn describes it, the goal was to “pose, infiltrate, and discredit.” Anyone who actually took Sunstein’s words at face value were mocked and labeled conspiracy theorists. But, as it turns out, it was all true. “The English version of the NSA is the GCHQ… The English NSA has now revealed that that’s...

I “pulled papers” for the Williamson County Commissioner position. District 2. This is my first time running for office. I want to be an example to other moms, and regular folk to get involved in their local government. It’s the only way we will save America... I have just become an “empty nester” so I have time in between acting jobs to get involved. (I’m doing stand up comedy with Joe Piscopo and Father Guido Sarducci Feb. 21 and shooting a movie in Louisiana in May.) I was recently at the TN Capital supporting House Bill 1129 which would require...

The Obama Administration’s former Homeland Security Chief has taken over the University of California. “Janet Napolitano had zero experience leading a college before she became president of the University of California last year,” Eric Kelderman wrote in The Chonicle of Higher Education on February 21, 2014. “Yet after just four months on the job, Ms. Napolitano, 56, has outlined major goals for the system, including a reconsideration of tuition policies, improving cooperation with the other two higher-education systems in the state, ensuring the prominent role of research and graduate education, and making the campuses carbon-neutral by 2025.” “She even has...

Unarmed citizens in Ukraine taking sniper fire from their own government. Sadly, they aren't allowed to own guns like we are. And people here wonder why we value our Second Amendment? (Taken from Guns Across America on facebook)

President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress in early March, as part of his fiscal 2015 budget, to reduce some of the tax advantages for employer-sponsored retirement plans for higher-income earners, according to published reports. Plus, the president wants to limit the value of all tax deductions, defined contribution exclusions and IRA deductions to 28% of income — and include an overall cap on all retirement accounts, including pensions, that could bring in $1 billion a year in new tax revenue, according to a Pensions & Investments report. Read Companies bracing for 1-2 retirement punch . According to the report,...

"Take a good look at them," I said, "because the state plans to exterminate them." I kind of agree with the department's main reason for exterminating New York state's resident mute swans (by the way, that's the species' name, because they're usually silent). Non-native species often pose problems. I just have two problems with the plan. One, I don't think mute swans are really too much of a threat to anything or anyone in New York state. They live mainly on Long Island and the lower Hudson, with a few on the Great Lakes. They number just around 2,200 birds,...

Republican legislators, stop this Fed takeover of the newsrooms in it's tracks! They already control around 95% of Big Media. We are hedging toward 100% Pravda reporting! STOP BEING WIMPS!!

An Obama administration plan that would get researchers into newsrooms across the country is sparking concern among congressional Republicans and conservative groups. The purpose of the proposed Federal Communications Commission study is to “identify and understand the critical information needs of the American public, with special emphasis on vulnerable-disadvantaged populations,” according to the agency. However, one agency commissioner, Ajit Pai, said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece Wednesday that the May 2013 proposal would allow researchers to “grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run.” He also said he feared the study might...

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has gone to the National Labor Relations Board alleging unfair labor practices on behalf of employees at Mercy Health Partners Hackley Campus in Muskegon and the Luther Manor skilled nursing facility in Saginaw. Two years ago, following a long battle, the health care workers at the Muskegon and Saginaw facilities got out of the Service Employees International Union. Employees said union officials had been unresponsive to their requests, had a track record of nepotism and generally were operating in a questionable manner. The specific SEIU affiliate involved was SEIU Healthcare Michigan, the...

This is amazing history. Be sure to read the quotes in BOLD at the end. Thomas Jefferson was a very remarkable man who started learning very early in life and never stopped. At 5, began studying under his cousin's tutor. At 9, studied Latin, Greek and French. At 14, studied classical literature and additional languages. At 16, entered the College of William and Mary. Also could write in Greek with one hand while writing the same in Latin with the other. At 19, studied law for 5 years starting under George Wythe. At 23, started his own law practice. At...

Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC and former Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville said that children belong to all of us. No, they donÂ’t. IÂ’ve seen what happens to children when they are owned by the state. State ownership of children leads to neglect. It cripples children, so donÂ’t do it. That is so glaringly obvious that I wonder why Harris-Perry and Reville say otherwise.IÂ’ve cleaned up the mess of state owned children. My son came from an Eastern European orphanage. Many children died there. He was examined by a foreign doctor before he was given an immigration visa. His medical...

The coalition is overseeing the biggest reduction in Britain’s vast public sector workforce for half a century, and will have slashed one in five jobs by the time austerity is due to come to an end, a report says today. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says employment by the state will fall by 1.1 million, or 19 per cent, by 2018-19 compared with when George Osborne entered the Treasury in 2010. But in a significant endorsement of the Government’s plan to re-balance the economy in favor of the private sector, it concludes that a ‘buoyant’ jobs market means that...

Years ago, I advocated that the best way to protect the traditional definition of marriage was to get government out of the business of it. Many traditionalists objected to it, and there are good arguments for conserving the tradition in law as the basis to keep families and children prioritized over the desires of adults seeking government recognition for their own non-traditional relationships. That argument relies on the moral force of law in the culture, but the momentum of the culture clearly has accelerated in the opposite direction, and moral force in the definition of marriage with it.The greater issue...

The following comments have been attributed to Democrat political operative James Carville (aka “Serpenthead”, an appellation given him by his own wife). According to the alleged myth-busting website Snopes, owned and operated by a leftist Canadian husband and wife team who have been often caught shading – or ignoring altogether – information inimical to their leftist agenda, Carville never said this: (Begin Carville's “alleged statement”.) "Ideologies aren't all that important. What's important is psychology. The Democratic constituency is just like a herd of cows. All you have to do is lay out enough silage and they come running. That's why...

Ottawa (AFP) - Canada's conservative government pegged its re-election hopes Tuesday on a return to a budgetary surplus, while unveiling spending for a bridge, car manufacturing and pipelines to boost exports.

Obama truly is not like us; his beliefs are utterly alien to our political tradition. That is why this administration violates all the rules. It is not an accident. It is simply who they are. The act of sending the bust of Churchill back to Britain signaled Obama's hatred for the Anglo-American political tradition, including the US Constitution. In Russia, Putin has introduced a 14% flat tax, and is boosting traditional morality. Only Obama still harbors that old post-colonial rage against white imperialists, which is why he can't tell the difference between murderous terror gangs and democratic revolutions.

**SNIP** In one of the year's most closely watched races, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., recently aired a commercial that shows her in numerous public settings last fall sternly telling President Barack Obama to keep his promise to let people keep their current health plans if they want to — and then taking credit after he took steps to make that happen. "I'm fixing it and that's what my bill does, and I've urged the president to fix it," Landrieu says of the health care law in the ad. It ends with a screen that reads: "The result: People now allowed...