Free Republic

A new minimum wage study suggests Seattle's quest for a $15 minimum wage may not be completely painless. Not all is rosy in Seattle as the city gradually pushes to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, according to a new study that suggests hiring and the number of hours worked among lower-wage employees took a hit last year as minimum pay rose. The National Bureau of Economic Research unveiled a working paper on Monday that found the number of hours worked in low-skill professions dropped more than 9 percent in Seattle during the first three quarters of last...

A teacher at a public high school in Alabama sent his students home with a summer reading list chock full of conservative authors from which to choose, including Ann Coulter, Ronald Reagan, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, and libertarian John Stossel. But parents became concerned that it leaned too far right and so now, the kids don’t have to read anything over the summer.

Democrats in the state Legislature are walking a tightrope, seemingly oblivious to potential danger. First, they raised gas taxes and vehicle fees. Then the Senate passed a ridiculously costly universal healthcare plan. Now, the Legislature is getting close to helping undocumented criminals avoid deportation. How far left can the majority party careen, even in deep blue California, before Republicans start benefiting at the ballot box? California voters only like state taxes that other people pay. A recent poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies found that 58% of voters oppose the transportation funding plan. In contrast to the gas-tax...

It probably wasn't easy but Venezuela's bishops have managed to buttonhole Pope Francis for a rundown on the facts of life in Marxist Venezuela. At their “request,� Pope Francis met Venezuela’s top bishops Thursday. Discussions centered on the country’s growing political unrest against a “cruelly� repressive government. So it was the bishops who had to ask or else they'd go unheard. That they even had to ask is evidence of how opaque the pope has been about the nightmare engulfing the retrograde communist country. “The situation is very, very grave,� [Venezuelan Cardinal Jorge] Urosa Savino told Crux Tuesday. “What...

New York health insurers requested double digit increases as high as 47 percent for ObamaCare policies next year as the debate rages in Washington how to overhaul the law. The average proposed increase for individual policies for 2018 is 16.6 percent, the state Department of Financial Services said in a report released late Wednesday. But some consumers would get whacked with much higher increases, if approved by Albany. HealthNow New York is seeking a 47 percent boost in premiums, United Healthcare of New York a 38 percent hike, and Care Connect wants 30 percent more.. Emblem Health/HIP has filed for...

The French Revolution from 1789 to 1799 had a large influence on Karl Marx, and on the origins of communism. We've written previously about Gracchus Babeuf, regarded as the first revolutionary communist, and his direct influence on Marx; and we've also written about Maximilien Robespierre, whose violent Reign of Terror had a strong influence on both Babeuf and Vladimir Lenin. But what were the ideas that incited Robespierre to start his Reign of Terror? What was the environment that would inspire the atheistic hatred behind the French Revolution's dechristianization movement? And what was it that inspired the revolutionary revolts that...

Research on sex-based cognitive differences from Stanford University’s magazine on medicine published this week indirectly highlights the “anti-science” attitude that runs throughout modern progressive thought. ...

Barcelona’s poorest district is to pilot a “basic income” scheme that will see residents given grants to lift them above the breadline in a ground-breaking social experiment. The Barcelona district of Besós has been picked to test a €13 million European Union funded pilot scheme investigating “innovative and creative solutions” to urban poverty. The Catalan capital has been chosen alongside Utrecht in the Netherlands and the Finnish city of Helsinki to test the scheme, which will see the poorest residents in each chosen district given grants for two years to lift them above the breadline. In the B-Mincome experiment, 1,000...

The White House audience today broke out in applause when President Trump announced the United States was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord. The cost of the climate deal was $3 trillion. Trump decided to stand with the American worker and against globalist elites. The Dow Jones Industrial also closed at a record high on the news today. But Barack Hussein Obama wasn’t happy about this news since his goal was to destroy the U.S. He hates seeing his ‘legacy’ unravel as President Trump destroys it one day at a time. Hussein Obama released a statement following the news about...

The Reign of Terror in the French Revolution laid the foundations from which communism grew. It pushed for an idea of “liberation” that gradually destroyed free will, and was based on a top-down system that sought to establish social good by regulating the beliefs and opinions of the individual. Communism sustains itself by violently suppressing all other ideas. Its dictators hold that their ideas are Utopian—the ends of human progress—and that all ideas contrary to their own should be crushed by force. Before François-Noël “Gracchus” Babeuf attempted his Conspiracy of Equals, and before his ideas spawned the League of Outlaws,...

If you were to ask most people about the origins of communism, they’d likely point to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of “The Communist Manifesto.” If you asked a Marxist, however, they’d likely point to François-Noël “Gracchus” Babeuf, who is regarded as the first revolutionary communist. And if Babeuf could still speak today and was asked about the origins of his belief, he’d likely reply that, well, it’s complicated. On July 28, 1794, French politician Maximilien Robespierre was beheaded in front of a crowd by guillotine, bringing an end to the dictatorship of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary political...

Student also had her LinkedIn profile posted, called racist. Jessica Murphy, a 20-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, recently published a column that represented the culmination of months’ worth of work and research, including a dozen public records act requests to the University of Wisconsin system. Her target? Biased classes offered through the public university system that indoctrinate rather than teach, and “degrade capitalism, praise Marxism and encourage a ‘social justice warrior’ ideology,” she wrote in her piece, headlined “Top Five Wasteful Classes in the UW System.” Published Monday by the MacIver Institute, a Wisconsin-based think tank...

No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years. The entire market for land transport will switch to electrification, leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century. This is the futuristic forecast by Stanford University economist Tony Seba. His report, with the deceptively bland title Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030, has gone viral in green circles and is causing spasms of anxiety in the established industries. Seba’s premise is that people will stop driving altogether. They will switch...

Despite the success of socialist governments over the past two decades, conference attendees agreed that grave inequality continues to plague the region. Today's roundtable discussions focused on how to counter the oligarchs and imperialism who accompany the rise of far-right wing politicians. Cuban researchers emphasized how the academy can be used in a regional context to resist these anti-democratic forces. Despite the success of revolutionary and anti-neoliberal governments in Latin America and the Caribbean over the past two decades, conference attendees agreed that the region continues to be plagued by grave inequality. More than 175 million people remain in abject...

President Trump is doing away with the White House Cinco de Mayo celebration, a 16-year-old tradition, Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion reported Wednesday. Instead of a White House celebration this year, one headlined by Vice President Pence will be held at a to-be-determined location and with a reduced guest list, the report said. The White House did not respond to a request for comment and has not issued an official announcement of any planned events for the holiday. Both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama used Cinco de Mayo to connect with the Hispanic community — inviting Cabinet members,...

After Pope Francis early in his papacy decried capitalism as "trickle-down economics" — a polemical phrase coined by the left during the Reagan years that Francis frequently borrows — radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh commented, "This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope." Talk show host Michael Savage called him "Lenin’s pope." Pope Francis took such comments as a compliment. "I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended," he told the Italian press. Pope Francis grew up in socialist Argentina, an experience that left a...

Chicago Public Schools teacher Hector Sanchez brought 20 of his students to the May Day protest Monday across from the county juvenile detention center. The trip came as part of a "democracy in action" program for political science students at the Social Justice High School in Little Village, where they learn about government. In class, Sanchez taught students about lobbying Congress, but some wanted to know: "How do regular people lobby?" "This is part of that," Sanchez said as dozens of protesters holding signs gathered on an empty lot at Roosevelt Road and Ogden Avenue. Around the world, union members...

Winery owner Brent Helleckson’s hands flew among his budding grapevines, pruning off bits of cane as a spring breeze ruffled the plastic tape keeping the vines trellised to wires. On the other side of Western Colorado’s North Fork Valley, snow lingered on mountain peaks, a reminder of the wintery weather that circumscribes the vineyard’s operations. “In theory we’re done with frost now,” Helleckson said. “But I wouldn’t bet on it.” In a warming West, areas where wine grapes are growing at the limit of their cold tolerance may see a respite from frigid, plant-damaging winters. Warmer areas, meanwhile, including parts...

A lot of people don't want to hear it, but it's true: in the future, you will either be a religious conservative, or secular. The religious left will evaporate. Don't take my word for it. Take the word of Daniel Cox, the head of research at PRRI, a firm whose religious views tend towards progressivism. Excerpts: The first and perhaps most significant reason for skepticism is that there are far fewer religious liberals today than there were a generation ago. Nearly four in 10 (38 percent) liberals are religiously unaffiliated today, more than double the percentage of the 1990s, according...

A spectre is haunting Seattle—the spectre of Kshama Sawant. Consider the April 12 Seattle Times editorial. In it, the editorial board called on Mayor Ed Murray to forgo a re-election bid. The reason: The child sexual-abuse allegations recently leveled against him make him vulnerable. “If he runs under that cloud,” the paper reasoned, “it increases the possibility of a Mayor Kshama Sawant, or some other extreme left-wing ideologue, steering this booming city wildly off course.” This was an odd argument to make, especially since Councilmember Sawant is almost certainly not running for mayor this year. In the swell of resistance...