Free Republic

About 80 people showed up at a meeting in Aspen on Thursday on whether the BLM should void 65 oil and gas leases in the region, including 25 in the Thompson Divide area. Two-thirds of the way through the meeting in the basement of the Pitkin County Library, every person who had spoke urged the 13 BLM officials in attendance to cancel the leases, which were first authorized in a 1993 environmental impact statement. “We’re very much in favor of voiding the leases, specifically within the Thompson Divide area,” said Rob Ittner, the chair of the Pitkin County Board of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says President Barack Obama's budget request would mean significantly larger budget deficits than the White House claims. CBO says the budget plan proposed last month by Obama would produce deficits of $6.6 trillion over the next 10 years — $1.6 trillion more than the White House estimates. The main reason is that the White House has a rosier estimate of the economy's performance over the decade than CBO. That means the administration predicts higher tax revenues. The president's budget is just a proposal; it has gained little...

On Wednesday Tracy and Mary Finney of Marietta, Georgia were met by a police officer outside their children’s public school and informed they were trespassing on school property because they opposed the school’s process of testing all children. The Finneys, whose children attend West Side Elementary School, had decided to opt their children out of Georgia’s state test, the CRCT. ~~~snip~~~~ Meg Norris, an organizer of United Opt-Out Georgia, told Breitbart News she is “shocked” at how the mandates to test children are being enforced in Georgia. “It’s happening in schools all over Georgia,” Norris said. “Even children who are...

THE WORLD now has a rough deadline for action on climate change. Nations need to take aggressive action in the next 15 years to cut carbon emissions, in order to forestall the worst effects of global warming, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Expect a certain part of our political class to insist that man-made climate change is not consensus science, and that until it is, nothing should be done. The problem there is obvious: By the time all the skeptics are persuaded, it will be too late for an effective response. In that regard, climate change poses a...

(CNN) – Hoping to help close the gap between workers' skills and the needs of businesses, President Barack Obama on Wednesday will announce he's putting hundreds of millions toward job training programs that produce highly skilled workers. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will head to a community college in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania to make the announcement. The funding will come in two parts: $500 million toward a new job training competition that pairs community colleges with businesses, and $100 million for new apprenticeship programs to train workers. The White House says the new initiatives are meant to combat a...

Hi, The videos and pics did not copy in, but this is the text. Thank you Freepers! You are the ones that uncovered much of the evidence in this case. Will the Bundy Ranch become for Obama what Grenada was to the Soviets? In 1983 the Soviet Union and Marxism had imperialistically conquered the majority of the world, land wise and population wise, without ever losing any territory they had conquered. Their latest victim was a small island named Grenada. Then Ronald Reagan decided to push back and liberated Grenada. Within 7 years The Soviets lost every colony they had...

During the final standoff at the Bundy Ranch on Saturday, we had a hundred or more militarized government agents and snipers aiming military grade weapons at hundreds of innocent American citizens. And they were being ordered through a public address system to move away or they would be "SHOT!" Their crime? Standing in defense of a Nevada citizen who was being ruthlessly tormented by rogue federal agencies over a twenty year period. The fact that the BLM seemed to be perfectly willing to slaughter innocent Americans using military grade weapons and tactics over “grazing fees” on public lands is a...

WASHINGTON -- This may shock you. During the eight years of the Reagan Presidency I was not his biggest fan. I looked not so much at what he accomplished but what he didn't accomplish. My expectations were that government would get smaller under President Reagan. It didn't. I was disappointed. I looked at the agencies left in place -- the National Endowment for the Arts, the Legal Services Corporation (which has done so much damage) and A.I.D. -- and I felt that the Reagan Administration did not make a real effort to curtail them. I was disappointed. Also there was...

By midnight on April 15, roughly 140 million Americans will have filed their federal income tax returns and breathed a sigh of relief. Politicians from both parties, however, will spend most of the day criticizing our current tax system. --snip-- Creating a new tax regime based on the ability to pay had significant consequences. Not only did it provide sorely needed revenue while addressing growing inequality, it also fostered greater social solidarity and bolstered faith in government — a lesson lost on many lawmakers today. Reformers believed progressive taxes could be used to reconfigure the relationship between citizens and the...

New figures by the Congressional Budget Office released on Monday reveal that over the next 10 years the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will double to 78%. Over the last four decades America's average debt-to-GDP ratio was 39%. At the end of 2007, federal debt was just 35% of GDP. The CBO report says gross federal debt will soar from $17.7 trillion to $27 trillion over the next ten years. CBO warned of the dire consequences the nation's debt will have if gone unchecked. "Such high and rising debt would have serious negative consequences," says the report. "Federal spending on interest payments...

The United Nations (UN) has delivered its latest verdict on the measures necessary to save the world from global warming and the news is as grim as it is predictable and wearisomely familiar: More regulation from "experts", technocrats and bureaucrats at supranational organisations, such as the one whose initials begin with U and end with N.More taxpayer subsidies for expensive, inefficient renewable energy.More nuclear power (with shale gas used as a transitional fuel to replace coal). The abandonment of fossil fuels. Less meat consumption.A single, globally-regulated price for carbon dioxide. More local-government-enforced walking, cycling and public transportation. More back-door wealth...

A Thursday Huffington Post article highlighting Obamacare victims is causing quite a stir on the left. The piece, titled "How Obamacare Leaves Some People Without Doctors," breaks from the Huffington Post's usual embrace of Obamacare and features the voices of Covered California customers who are already dissatisfied with the health insurance they bought through the Covered California exchange. "My insurance is pretty useless," 35-year-old new Los Angeles mother Ruth Iorio told HuffPo. "I don't know what to do. I may just drop it for myself and keep my son on it. It's really depressing." Iorio says her Obamacare plan is...

If you're poor, the only way you're likely to injure someone is the old traditional way: artisanal violence, we could call it – by hands, by knife, by club, or maybe modern hands-on violence, by gun or by car. But if you're tremendously wealthy, you can practice industrial-scale violence without any manual labor on your own part. You can, say, build a sweatshop factory that will collapse in Bangladesh and kill more people than any hands-on mass murderer ever did, or you can calculate risk and benefit about putting poisons or unsafe machines into the world, as manufacturers do every...

In last week’s ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission , the Supreme Court was not a mere instrument so much as a blowtorch, searing a hole in the fabric of our fragile democracy. The American experiment seems to be run by a smaller and smaller control group as billionaires — like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson — get expanding seats at the shrinking political table. NASCAR drivers wear the corporate logos of their sponsors on their suits. The justices who sided with plutocracy ought to wear sponsorship logos on their robes, too. The all-out assault against campaign finance...

On the heels of the news that Mozilla’s CEO-for-a-minute Brendan Eich has resigned following criticism over a Proposition 8 campaign donation, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight decided to look into just how rare similar donations are in Silicon Valley. It turns out that they are pretty rare. Silver mined a Los Angeles Times database of contributions for and against the anti-gay-marriage proposition, hunting for donors working at Silicon Valley tech firms listed in the Fortune 500. The list included Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Cisco Systems, Apple, Google, Sun Microsystems, eBay, Oracle, Yahoo, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Symantec. Among those 11 companies, 83...

The Tower of David skyscraper boasts a helicopter landing pad, glorious views of the Avila mountain range, and large balconies for weekend barbecues. Yet a 45-storey skyscraper in the center of Venezuela's capital Caracas is no five-star hotel or swanky apartment block: it is a slum, probably the highest in the world. Dubbed the "Tower of David", the building was intended to be a shining new financial center but was abandoned around 1994 after the death of its developer - banker and horse-breeder David Brillembourg - and the collapse of the financial sector. Squatters invaded the huge concrete skeleton in...

President Barack Obama's home state of Hawaii's Obamacare exchange spent $35,749 per enrollee, a sum greater than the price of a new 2014 BMW 320i sedan (MSRP $32,750). "Just obscene amounts of money have disappeared into these state exchanges for very little actual performance," said American Commitment President Phil Kerpen. "You just have this huge duplication and waste in places like Hawaii and Oregon." A CNBC analysis ranking taxpayer-funded federal expenditures on Obamacare found that Hawaii enrolled just 5,744 people through its Obamacare exchange at a cost to taxpayers of $205,342,270. The second-worst performer was the District of Columbia which...

Each week we will take some time go through my 10 Commandments of Political Warfare from my new book Rules for Patriots: How Conservatives Can Win Again. My 10 Commandments of Political Warfare provide a blueprint for defeating the Statist Marxist Left in America. However, before we can devise a plan to defeat our opponent, we must first know our opponent. The Statist Marxist Left in America is propped up by a four-legged stool. If you do not cut off the legs of this stool you cannot defeat them. If a candidate for office you’re supporting doesn’t at least threaten...

Bell linked to a Salon article about the RNC’s new ad campaign featuring a Republican millennial. Naturally, she managed to tie that into an argument for higher tax rates for the wealthy:

Too much inequality and too few natural resources could leave the West vulnerable to a Roman Empire-style fall Navigate to the Previous Story in this Section TECHHere's How NASA Thinks Society Will CollapseToo much inequality and too few natural resources could leave the West vulnerable to a Roman Empire-style fall. Few think Western civilization is on the brink of collapse—but it's also doubtful the Romans and Mesopotamians saw their own demise coming either. If we're to avoid their fate, we'll need policies to reduce economic inequality and preserve natural resources, according to a NASA-funded study that looked at the collapses...

The progressive left, headed by President Obama, loves to talk about being on the right side of history. Go back five years and these people talked about making history, now they’re talking about being on the right side of it. Putin is on the wrong side of history when it comes to Ukraine, the right side of history isn’t entirely clear. Syria’s use of chemical weapons was the wrong side of history, opposing it the right side. Supporting homosexual marriage and other special rights for homosexuals is the right side of history, opposing them the wrong. When it comes to...

The cabinet chief has sent a clear message to unionized teachers. “Discerning involves the compliance of duties as well,” Jorge Capitanich said following yesterday’s failure in salary talks in which Buenos Aires province teachers rejected a 30.9-percent wage hike, vowing to continue with a walkout that has left more than 4 million students without classes since last week.

The possibility to amend the Constitution in the Assembly for indefinite reelection of the elected officials, is gaining support in the block of the Government (Alianza País). This regarding to the possible reelection of President Rafael Correa in 2017. The referendum would be another way to modify such action in the Constitution. According to Virgilio Hernandez, AP Assembly member, is not necessary to “consult the people” in the polls, because the issue is not going through a “reform of the structure of the state.”

Buried deep in a section of President Obama's budget, released this week, is an eye-opening fact: This year, 70% of all the money the federal government spends will be in the form of direct payments to individuals, an all-time high. In effect, the government has become primarily a massive money-transfer machine, taking $2.6 trillion from some and handing it back out to others. These government transfers now account for 15% of GDP, another all-time high. In 1991, direct payments accounted for less than half the budget and 10% of GDP. What's more, the cost of these direct payments is...

Obama in the city for Clinton ally’s fundraiser By Emily Smith President Obama is coming to Manhattan Tuesday for yet another fund-raiser, hosted by longtime Hillary Clinton friend and bundler Alan Patricof. While the president is flying in on Air Force One for the intimate “fireside chat” at Patricof’s home in front of just 26 people at the $32,400 per ticket event, private equity and venture capital pioneer Patricof has made it clear the fund-raiser is not to bolster Obama, but to boost the Democratic National Committee ahead of a possible Clinton presidential run.

So the people of all classes now find themselves in a situation in which electric power is no longer reliable, blackouts are common, and diseases that were eliminated are returning. Inflation can run up to 50% per month, rendering the Bolivar fiat currency nearly worthless. Since the government had forcefully expropriated (through the Venezuelan socialist version of eminent domain) huge tracts of productive domestic livestock and then given it "to the poor" who didn't know how to farm it, domestic food production crashed. Food was then imported, using dollars. Once inflation soared, the government clamped down on the ability to...

O love the Lord all ye hes saints: preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer. Psalms 31:23 We are soon going to see the second big hit on the economy in the next two years as we will have another manmade spike in our energy costs. These will be directly caused by ignorance and hatred towards the American way of life. The Marxists know the best way to short circuit an economy is to take out the foundation which is low cost energy. The Obama regime and the Three Pillars have found a way to destroy the low...

De Blasio’s charter war hurting the kids he claims to help By Michael GoodwinFebruary 28, 2014 | 1:43am Either City Hall has a sick sense of humor, or Mayor de Blasio is as arrogant and tone deaf as he appears. Just as news was breaking that he had declared war on poor black children, his schedule had him attending a Black History Month celebration at Gracie Mansion. Maybe he thinks the contrast was clever. What, you hadn’t heard about the mayor’s jihad on black children? Then you missed the meaning of his attack on the charter schools that serve them so...

A new low in the disgrace of the American political class was reached when Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) took the floor this week to extol the virtues of Cuban communism. A new high immediately followed, as Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) rose to annihilate Harkin, and all the other miserable apologists for left-wing tyranny. The civilized world continues to pay an appalling price for failing to cast out communism with the same vehement disgust we showed towards fascism. Among other things, the difference in our attitude toward these monstrous evils blinds us to their similarities. Too many Western politicians and academics...

The founder of liberation theology, the Latin American-inspired Catholic theology advocating for the poor, received a hero’s welcome Tuesday at the Vatican as the once-criticized movement continues its rehabilitation under Pope Francis. The Rev. Gustavo Gutierrez of Peru was the surprise speaker Tuesday at a book launch featuring the head of the Vatican’s orthodoxy office, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller; one of Francis’ top advisers, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga; and the Vatican spokesman.

I have been quite appalled at how so very lost the supposed leaders of most of the churches of today are. They purport to represent Jesus' teachings, yet their is outright denial of the very powerful message that satan's grip on us to cause us to sin, is indeed broken. No, rather the ministers of today all over teach a watered down and lying ministry that Jesus merely has saved us from the aweful results of going to hell. Yet, in one simple sentence and act with Mary, when he told her to go and sin no more, he proved...

WHAT IS MEMORABLE FROM YOUR 9TH GRADE CLASS? Modern American Marxism insists that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. No beauty can be more beautiful than another. All art is equally beautiful……..which logically means ‘that which is equally beautiful is equally ugly’…..Equality is the goal of Marxist achievement. I disagree with these academic Marxist goals in any of the social sciences. It is because I am old and have been taught otherwise when Marxism was an anathema to our American way of life.. Is it possible that the utterings of a well-heeled, but cold-blooded murderer faced with his...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Hugo Chavez was an incompetent, communist dictator, who wreaked havoc on Venezuela’s ability to produce goods and services Last year, Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, died.How do I know that Chavez was a dictator?Because only a dictator would use the military to seize food from private owners.How do I know that Chavez was incompetent?Because only a complete incompetent could create a shortage of gasoline in a country that has some of the world’s biggest oil reserves.How do I know that Chavez was a communist?Because only a communist would label toilet paper as a “luxury.�Hugo Chavez...

Author’s Note: This is a column I wrote back a few years ago but never published. Instead, it appeared in abbreviated form in my latest book, Letters to a Young Progressive. Given recent political trends, I thought it would be good to publish it in its original extended form. In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in the books of Ayn Rand. After escaping from the Soviet Union in the 1920s, Rand became a famous American playwright, philosopher, and novelist. She has written many books – three of which I would urge everyone to read. The first,...

President Obama is stepping up his efforts to coalesce and energize the Democratic base for the 2014 elections, backing off on issues where his positions might alienate the left, and more aggressively singling out Republicans as being responsible for the country’s problems. --SNIP-- Polls show most Americans share the Democrats’ views. “The position that is popular with the progressive base is the mainstream position,” Pfeiffer said.

Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro has invited US President Barack Obama to join him in talks aimed at resolving the problems between the two countries. Mr Maduro said the meeting would help "put the truth out on the table". He has accused US conservatives and media organisations of plotting to overthrow his government.

This just struck me like a bolt of lightning--if Oswald had more patience and was willing to wait about ten years he would have seen his dream come true of a Marxists state in the United States. The assasination was not even necessary to bring about the Marxist government that Oswald wanted. If Oswald were living today he would be holding pro-Obama signs and quite pleased with the direction this country is going in. The Marxists took over the Democrat Party in the seventies and today most Democrat voters don't even seem to be the wiser. They wept at Kennedy's...

Union Suffers Big Loss at Tennessee VW Plant Volkswagen workers rejected the UAW by a vote of 712 to 626. Neal E. Boudette Updated Feb. 14, 2014 11:44 p.m. ET The United Auto Workers union suffered a crushing defeat Friday, falling short in an election in which it seemed to have a clear path to organizing workers at Volkswagen AG VOW3.XE +1.10% 's plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. The setback is a bitter defeat because the union had the cooperation of Volkswagen management and the aid of Germany's powerful IG Metall union, yet it failed to win a majority among the...

And What if Obama is a Marxist? WHAT IF HE IS MARXIST? Ken Blackwell 2/14/2014 Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. http://townhall.com/columnists/kenblackwell/2014/02/14/and-what-if-he-is-a-marxist-n1795046/print Well, what if the President is a Marxist? Stanley Kurtz was one of those cooler heads in 2008 who rejected the claim that Barack Obama was a Marxist, a socialist. Then, he researched the record and wrote Radical-in-Chief. Kurtz’s book is a long, detailed, and very carefully researched analysis of the Obama record. Kurtz finds Obama acknowledging in his own words, in Dreams from my Father, that he was mentored as a teen growing up...

Red herrings - A review of American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character by Diana West Stumbling into a barroom brawl was the last thing I’d intended. Lined up on one side: sculptors of a hagiography that is now conventional wisdom crow about a noble conquest over totalitarian dictators. The other side bellows: “Nonsense! In defeating one monster, your heroes merely helped create another, sullying us with their atrocities and burdening us for decades with a global security nightmare.” The first side spews that its critics are deranged, defamatory conspiracy-mongers. The critics fire back that these “court historians”...

It’s still relatively early in the Sochi Olympics, but the star so far has been Julia Lipnitskaya a diminutive fifteen year old figure skater from the Urals. While the adoration hasn’t been unanimous, most people have, understandably, been awed by her performances. Lipnitskaya combines technical proficiency in skating with the sort of mind-warping flexibility one usually associates with elite gymnasts. She performed on an entirely different level from her competitors, and while the individual competition hasn’t yet started in earnest, Lipnitskaya now appears to be the odds-on favorite to win an individual gold medal. To sum things up, an awful...

An unfortunate legacy of the Cold War is the negative attitude some American conservatives yet harbor toward Russia. Conditioned for decades to see Russia and the Soviet Union as synonymous, they still view post-communist Russia as a threat. They forget that Tsarist Russia was the most conservative great power, a bastion of Christian monarchy loathed by revolutionaries, Jacobins, and democrats. Joseph de Maistre was not alone among 19th-century conservatives in finding refuge and hope in Russia. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia is emerging once more as the leading conservative power. As we witnessed in Russia’s rescue of President Obama from...

Yesterday “TheBlaze” published an interview with Romanian Lt. Gen Ion Pacepa, a discussion which arose around the publishing of his work, “Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism.” Pacepa is a defector to the United States, but not just any run-of-the-mill defector. He is the highest-ranking Soviet intelligence officer to ever defect. He crossed over back in 1978 and was given political asylum by then President Jimmy Carter. He has made a practice since that time to write in defense of freedom while living his life under threat of assassination, hiding out...

At a public hearing on proposed gun control legislation, Manuel Martinez, a man who escaped Cuba in 1962 after opposing Fidel Castro and being imprisoned for it, blasts Oregon gun control lawmakers in an impassioned speech that only someone that has lived through communism and Marxism, only someone that watched innocent men, women and children murdered by their own government, only someone that fought against his whole country being enslaved by a dictator, can give. “They come here in those dog and pony show and cry that their going to protect people. You’re going to protect nobody! I want to...

Time and time again I have been accused of being on the "wrong side of history" when it comes to the arguments over abortion and, especially, to so-called gay marriage. This linguistic fad has exploded in use lately as if history itself is the sole arbitrator of what is right and true. It is the weapon of utter dismissiveness that is boldly and routinely wielded by the Left. One should, in reality, not be interested in being on the "right side of history," but on the right side of right and wrong. The most recent and sudden burst of Leftist...

As his catalog of historic failures and serial abuses grow exponentially, there is little doubt the ultimate goal of Barack Obama and his Marxist minions is to dismantle America brick by brick: her institutions, philosophical beliefs, our markets. The two most indelible pillars that illustrate this subversive ambition is the passage of Obamacare, nationalized healthcare, and the unprecedented rise of our national debt. As laid out by Sal Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”, once you control people’s healthcare, their very lifeblood, they are forever at the government’s mercy. Obamacare wasn’t designed to coexist with other insurance options; it was designed to...

That's why it's pretty chilling to hear Vladimir Putin hurling accusations at the West and pointing out that what's going on is identical to what went on when communism was established and religion was completely expunged from the Soviet Union. Between 1917 and 1937, almost a quarter of a million Christians were executed, and churches that survived destruction were converted into things like museums of atheism. Russian President Putin, who hasn't been shy about expressing his disapproval of homosexuality and has banned what he defined as "homosexual propaganda," had this to say: Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their...

First, the Obama administration showed during the course of the GM and Chrysler bankruptcy proceedings, that when it comes to Most Preferred Voter classes, some unsecured creditors - namely labor unions, and the millions of votes they bring - are more equal than other unsecured creditors - namely bondholders, and the zero votes they bring. Five years later we are about to get a stark reminder that under the superpriority rule of a community organizer for whom "fairness" trumps contract law any day, it is now Detroit's turn to make a mockery of the recovery waterfall. As it turns out,...

Only at the Modern Language Association (MLA) can you find an English professor who will boldly go where no Marxist has ever gone before. It is one thing to think Marx was a brilliant economist, despite more than a century’s worth of evidence to the contrary. It is quite another to think he was a talented poet. To Crystal Lynn Bartolovich of Syracuse University, Marx was the master of “critical irony.”

Another insane cold wave — not the infamous “polar vortex ” but its evil twin — is bringing sub-zero and single-digit temperatures to much of the nation. And global warming may be even more extreme, and potentially more catastrophic, than climate scientists had feared. This is, of course, no contradiction. The rallying cry of the denialists — “It’s really cold outside, so global warming must be a crock!” — can be taken seriously only by those with a toddler’s limited conception of time and space. They forget that it’s winter, and apparently they don’t quite grasp that even when it’s...