Free Republic

There’s something wrong with previous U.S. jobs reports. The government quietly erased 439,000 jobs through November 2023, a closer look at the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows. That means its initial jobs results were inflated by 439,000 positions, and the job market is not as healthy as the government suggests. Since the government wiped out 439,000 jobs after the fact, the total percentage of jobs created by the government last year is even higher. Increased government hiring has been driving the jobs numbers higher. This matters because U.S. jobs reports move the markets and U.S. Treasury yields....

A leaked Zoom call between doctors and marketing staff at Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center in North Carolina has gone viral. It shows staff plotting to “scare” the public with inflated COVID numbers. “I guess my feeling at this point and time is maybe we need to be completely a little bit more scary [sic] to the public,” says Dr. Mary Rudyk, who served as the former chief of medical staff. “There are many people still hospitalized that we are considering post-covid but we’re not counting in those numbers, so how do we include those post-covid people in...

Former President Obama's ethics chief ripped into President Biden's son, Hunter Biden, for selling his art at prices ranging up to half a million dollars to anonymous buyers. Walter Shaub, the former Office of Government Ethics director under Obama, said that the lucrative arrangement has a "shameful and grifty feeling to it." "The notion of a president's son capitalizing on that relationship by selling art at obviously inflated prices and keeping the public in the dark about who's funneling money to him has a shameful and grifty feel to it," Shaub told Fox News on Monday.

“The coronavirus surge is real, and it’s everywhere” says Axios and most of the DNC media. Time to panic. They pile on, “The coronavirus pandemic is getting dramatically worse in almost every corner of the U.S.” We are told new cases are rising by double-digit percentages, including: “The number of people hospitalized with coronavirus.” Hospitalized with or from coronavirus? Is this really a surge or simply fear-mongering fake news? Texas features prominently in the surge scare. Coincidently Texas is a red state that if flipped to blue would prevent a Republican from ever winning the White House for the foreseeable...

When STAT first compared projected U.S. deaths from Covid-19, in early April, there seemed to be a glimmer of good news: A prominent model had just lowered its estimate for total deaths through Aug. 4 from about 100,000 to 60,000, reflecting the apparent success of three weeks of social distancing across much of the country. On Wednesday, April 29, the country blew past 60,000, more than three months before the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected. (The 60,000 almost certainly undercounts Covid-19 deaths, by about 9,000.) IHME, whose model has been criticized by many epidemiologists, now says the most...

Dozens of retailers and farms have been named in a class-action lawsuit that alleges they engaged in price-gouging by marking up the price of eggs sold in California. Costco, Trader Joe’s, Walmart and Kroger were just a few of the retailers accused of “the despicable and illegal practice of price-gouging of essential groceries” amid the ongoing coronavirus health crisis, according to court filings obtained by Bloomberg Law. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that plaintiffs noticed “grossly inflated” prices at retailers after Calif. Governor Gavin Newsom issued a declaration of emergency...

An N.F.L. investigation has found that “it is more probable than not” that New England Patriots personnel intentionally deflated footballs to gain an advantage in the A.F.C. championship game last season, and that Tom Brady, the Super Bowl most valuable player, was probably aware of it. No penalties have been announced. The long-awaited report into so-called deflategate, released on Wednesday, concluded that it was probable that Patriots personnel were “involved in a deliberate effort to circumvent the rules.” The report said that Jim McNally, a locker room attendant, and John Jastremski, an equipment assistant, released air from the footballs. It...

At the University of Minnesota, the number of employees with “human resources” or “personnel” in their job titles has grown from 180 to 272 since the 2004-05 academic year. Since 2006, the university has spent $10 million on consultants for a vast new housing development that is decades from completion. It employs 139 people for marketing, promotions and communications. Some 81 administrators make $200,000 per year or more. In the past decade, Minnesota’s administrative payroll has gone up three times as fast as the teaching payroll, and twice as fast as student enrollment. Oh, and tuition more than doubled in...

In a new TV ad, President Obama makes an inflated claim to have added 5.2 million new jobs. The total added during his time in office is actually about 325,000. In the ad, the president says “over 5 million new jobs” while the figure “5.2 million” appears on screen. But that’s a doubly misleading figure. Viewers would need to pay close attention to the on-screen graphic to know that the ad refers only to employment gains starting in March 2010, omitting the 4.3 million jobs that were lost in the first year of Obama’s term. And there’s no way a...

A huge inflatable vehicle as long as a 23-floor skyscraper is tall has become the world's largest airship in its bid to serve as a stratospheric satellite, or "stratellite," according to its developers. The 235-foot (72 m) long airship, known as the Bullet 580, has a top speed of 80 mph (129 km/h) and can serve as a high-flying sentinel that stays aloft for long periods of time. Getting the new sky behemoth inflated required six hours inside Garrett Coliseum in Montgomery, Ala. "Our airships are radically different designs that move beyond the performance limitations of traditional blimps or zeppelins...

By Mary Beth Sheridan Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 22, 2008 Officials are casting doubt on an early projection that 4 million to 5 million people could jam downtown Washington on Inauguration Day, saying it is more likely that the crowd will be about half that size. D.C. authorities said the earlier estimates, provided by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), were based on speculation surrounding the historic nature of the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the nation's first African American president. After weeks of checking with charter bus companies, airlines and other sources, they're reassessing. "It's more of an...

The presidential election was a sharp setback both for the GOP and for the major national pollsters who saw their gloom-and-doom predictions of a double-digit drubbing blow up in their faces. The pollsters will have some explaining to do in the election aftermath, after several predicted the McCain-Palin ticket would lose by almost twice the actual margin.

In May, the Arizona Department of Education reported in the Arizona Daily Star that Arizona’s student test scores were eight percent above the national average. That figure has since been revised to put Arizona’s aggregate TerraNova scores at the 51.9 percentile, which is 3.8 percent above the national average. In trying to reconcile the different numbers being used by the media, the ADE, and other policymakers, I have come to the conclusion that there are too many versions of Arizona’s TerraNova scores floating around. The Arizona Department of Education’s source for testing data divides students into two categories, but then...

Barbra Streisand has shocked hotel staff in a top London hotel by issuing a long list of demands during her stay in the British capital. The diva is staying in a $12,000-a-night suite in the city's Dorchester Hotel, and has reportedly issued employees with strict rules - including a demand not to look the singer in the eye. A source tells London's Evening Standard, "We were given a list of requirements that had to be met. Her manager said she needed certain things to make her feel like she was at home. She is using her own security team and...

According to NY Daily News and ESPN.

Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts on Tuesday told an audience at the liberal Take Back America conference that he was sorry for voting to authorize the war in Iraq, calling the entire mission "a mistake." "We were misled, we were given evidence that was not true," Kerry said. "It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote [for it]." Kerry, who led an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2004, said it was necessary to admit mistakes because "you cannot change the future if you''re not honest about the past." He criticized supporters of the...

WASHINGTON - Most states are reporting lofty high school graduation rates that far exceed reality and mislead the public about how schools are performing, a private analysis found. The majority of states — 36 of them — say 80 percent to 97 percent of their high school students graduate on time, according to state figures provided to the Education Department. Those numbers show "rampant dishonesty," said Kati Haycock, director of The Education Trust, an advocacy organization for poor and minority students. The Trust reviewed the 2002-03 graduation rates that states had to provide this year. A series of independent analyses...

College tuitions have increased at a rate of 2 or 3 percent more than general inflation over the past thirty years, according to Cornell University's Ron Ehrenberg. This means that the real cost of going to college has nearly doubled in that span. When a price increases by this magnitude, it is important not to lose track of the law of supply and demand. A clear implication of basic economics is that it is impossible to explain the increase in college costs by looking at only one factor. This type of sustained price increase can only occur if both demand...

About a year ago, the Centers for Disease Control issued a highly publicized report stating that obesity-related health problems kill 400,000 Americans every year -- an "epidemic" second only to smoking in causing preventable deaths. The story was big news. A host of outside skeptics, however, such as the Center for Consumer Freedom, questioned the findings, and their efforts eventually forced the CDC to admit that at least part of the study was flawed. Now, despite even more critical evidence, the CDC says its mistakes don't matter.

After spending Christmas Day in a liberal home I can report that this was not a happy holiday for liberals. There was at least one thing to celebrate, though: the courage of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom in standing up to the bigots and allowing people to do what comes naturally: fall in love and get married. Otherwise things did not look too good to my liberal neighbors. They saw hate everywhere they turned; one woman admitted to waking up most days and wanting to cry. How could Americans elect a president like George W. Bush? It just didn’t make...