Free Republic

Since 2014 The US Has Added Half A Million Waiters & Bartenders And No Manufacturing Workers: Here's Why by Tyler Durden Aug 5, 2016 12:43 PM 0 SHARES As part of our monthly tradition showing the gaping disparity in the quality of the US labor market, we present the breakdown between the lowest paid jobs available, those for workers in "food services and drinking places", also known as waiters and bartenders, and compare them to the number of workers in the traditionally best paid sector, manufacturing. Here is the bottom line: as the chart below shows, there have been half...

"I don't think you've heard this anywhere but here," began Mr Trump, before setting out his claim that the Iranian military had filmed the $400m being taken off an airplane and then released the tape to embarrass the United States. Immediately people began to wonder what he was talking about. No-one in the media could remember seeing or broadcasting such a tape, about which Mr Trump was remarkably specific. "They have a perfect tape...

Republican Mutiny Fizzles: "Trump Will Be On The Ballot" by Tyler Durden Aug 3, 2016 8:20 PM 0 SHARES Amid the constant headlines, speculative reporting, uncited sourcing, and relentless spin; it appears chatter of mutiny aboard the GOP has been officially squashed. As The Hill reports, the Republican National Committee is categorically denying reports that party officials are looking into how to replace Donald Trump in case he drops out of the presidential race before Election Day... No one at national party headquarters has been instructed to look into that doomsday scenario, RNC strategist Sean Spicer said, and speculation that...

A Half Of Millennials Live Paycheck To Paycheck, Most Don't Think They Will Ever Be Millionaires by Tyler Durden Aug 3, 2016 7:59 PM 0 SHARES In a stark refutation of Obama's "recovery" narrative, most millennials don't see a bright future for their personal finances. Take the case of Shaun Luberski, a 21-year-old recent graduate of Temple University, who is skeptical she will be able to save $1 million by the time she retires. Ms. Luberski landed a full-time job as an account coordinator at Philadelphia magazine and works various side jobs in marketing and promotions.  A big problem plaguing...

America's Oligarchs Support Clinton Almost Unanimously by Tyler Durden Aug 3, 2016 7:30 PM 0 SHARES Authored by Eric Zuesse,The results are already in, even before the official campaign-finance final figures will become available after the election.Though a large percentage of the people funding the campaign advertising will never be made public - due to recent Supreme Court decisions allowing “dark money” - data already exist on the final product of the campaigns (including both the above-board and the dark money), which is the booked advertising time for each of the two candidates at the start of their campaigns. (Similar proportions...

What economists call an ability to make "compensating differences" is a valuable tool in everyone's arsenal. If people are prohibited from doing so, they are always worse off. You say, "Williams, I never heard of compensating differences. What are they?" Jimmy Soul's 1963 hit song, "If You Wanna Be Happy," explained the concept of compensating differences. His lyrics went: "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife. So from my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you." His point was that an ugly woman would...

The Burrito Index: Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001 by Tyler Durden Aug 1, 2016 11:31 AM 0 SHARES Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via PeakProsperity.com, In our household, we measure inflation with the "Burrito Index": How much has the cost of a regular burrito at our favorite taco truck gone up?Since we keep detailed records of expenses (a necessity if you’re a self-employed free-lance writer), I can track the real-world inflation of the Burrito Index with great accuracy: the cost of a regular burrito from our local taco truck has gone up from $2.50 in 2001 to $5 in...

My love abounds in the riches of the fruit from My Tree. So come and partake of Me in Mercy and Grace. Bathe yourself in My humility and find Peace in all you do for I AM a Wellspring of knowledge and as you seek MY Face I will adorn you in My manifold Spirit so you to may walk in the fullness of My ways and not lack anymore. Philippians 4:19 19 And my God will liberally supply (fill until full) your every need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Obama lackey John Podesta who founded the far left Center for American Progress is about as transparent as Obama. The Center of American Progress has been hiding it’s donor lists for month. Finally, today they were shamed into releasing a partial list of donors. Problem is Podesta’s Center for American Progress isn’t accounting for over $5 million in donations from ‘anonymous sources.’ Podesta will likely be a big part of Hillary Clinton’s run next year, if the old granny does in fact run. Wonder if she’ll get questions about her buddy Podesta’s missing $5 million. Funny too that you don’t...

In a far corner of southern Italy, transactions in fake currency are not only accepted by local shopkeepers, they are positively encouraged. The small Calabrian town of Gioiosa Ionica, population 7,000, is currently home to a group of asylum seekers, who are given the imitation bank notes, or "tickets" as they are known, as part of a voucher system. The refugees can spend the cash on whatever they like, but only in the town, so that local businesses benefit. Rather than featuring European architectural gems, they bear the likenesses of a collection of communists and leftist leaders - Che Guevara...

Alejandrina Elsa Quispe Ramirez had allegedly told authorities she was traveling to Shriners Hospital for Children in Boston, so that her son could be treated for burn wounds. But what she had planned, according to the Secret Service, was actually something sinister. A tip had come from the Peruvian National Police: A woman and her two sons would be traveling to the United States on July 11 carrying a significant amount of US dollars in their luggage, concealed in thread cones, the type of string or yarn spindles used in sewing machines. The Secret Service had recently seized counterfeit US...

Donald Trump raised more than $26 million for his campaign and another $25 million in conjunction with the Republican National Committee in June, a hefty haul that his campaign hopes will put to rest anxieties in the party about his fundraising prowess... Much of the campaign's money appears to have come in during the final 10 days of the month, when Trump’s operation began aggressively soliciting money online for the first time. The Trump campaign announced Wednesday that more than 400,000 supporters made donations in June, with more than $3 million coming in just one day. That indicates that the...

An elite Manhattan school is teaching white students as young as 6 that they’re born racist and should feel guilty benefiting from “white privilege,” while heaping praise and cupcakes on their black peers. Administrators at the Bank Street School for Children on the Upper West Side claim it’s a novel approach to fighting discrimination, and that several other private New York schools are doing it, but even liberal parents aren’t buying it. Modal Trigger A slide from the Bank School shows the different goals for white children (right) and “kids of color” (left). They complain the K-8 school of 430...

Case in point, I was able to view a menu board from a Dairy Queen sometime not very long after 1955 (I can tell, because it had the dilly bar on it and Dilly Bars were introduced in '55). Anyway, the price of the next to the largest dipped cone is 25¢. Back then quarters were 90 percent silver. Today the melt value of the silver in one of those quarters will buy you the LARGEST dipped cone DQ sells ($3.29, Indiana) and you'll get change back. Current melt value of pre 1964 quarters is $3.32.

The 2016 presidential election will be the second since the court’s disastrous Citizens United decision and the first without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act in place. That means big donors will have more sway over elected officials to dictate the agenda. Already the wealthy are pouring money into the election: Politico reports that the 67 biggest donors, who have each given a million dollars or more have donated three times more than 508,000 small donors combined. A new report from Every Voice Center finds that individuals living in 1 percent of the nation’s zip codes (equal to...

GoFundMe campaign intended to raise $250 for a lawnmower for Memphis teen, instead raises nearly $200G A GoFundMe page set up so that a Memphis teen could kickstart a lawn mowing business has exploded, raising nearly $200,000 for his impoverished family. The “Chauncy’s Chance” crowdfunding campaign was set up by a benevolent stranger, Matt White, and initially set out to raise $250 for a lawnmower for 16-year-old Chauncy Black. Now the teen has his sights set on buying a home for his mother and funding his education after donations started pouring in. Matt White was inspired to help out Black...

“Trump has rejected the whole gamut of U.S. imperial war rationales, from FDR straight through to the present.” If the Bernie Sanders campaign has propelled the word “socialism” – if not its actual meaning – into common, benign American usage, Donald Trump may have done the world an even greater service, by calling into question the very pillars of U.S. imperial policy: the NATO alliance; the U.S. nuclear “umbrella”; the global network of 1,000 U.S. bases; military “containment” of China and Russia; and U.S. “strategic” claims in the Persian Gulf. Were the U.S. to actually rid itself of these strategic...

You have come through the eye of the needle into Kingdom Come , Zion lays before you blessed daughters and sons, So now the "real awakening begins", Truly you ARE worthy free from all sins, Look you are dressed in righteousness for you wear my gown, I have bestowed on you and a clean turban as your crown, Your feet shine at the mention of My WORD, For Now they Know it IS the Path of Righteousness they have heard, Holy ! Holy ! Holy ! Is the sound, That you hear now echoing all around, Voices that sound like...

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis) has introduced legislation that would require taxpayers to pass a drug test before being allowed to itemize deductions on their 1040 tax forms. The bill is in retaliation for state laws that require welfare recipients to pass drug tests in order to receive benefits. "I am sick and tired of Republicans forcing poor people to jump through hoops to receive the money they are entitled to under the law," Moore complained. "We enacted these programs to help the unfortunate. Few members of society are as unfortunate as drug addicts. They are slaves to chemicals that their...

Nothing is less material than money. . . . Money is abstract, I repeated, money is future time. It can be an evening in the suburbs, it can be the music of Brahms, it can be maps, it can be chess, it can be coffee, it can be the words of Epictetus teaching us to despise gold. Money is a Proteus more versatile than the one on the island of Pharos. —Jorge Luis Borges, “The Zahir” I fell in love with Jorge Luis Borges when I was a freshman in college. That year, full of hope and confusion, I left...