Free Republic

...the Obama administration Tuesday opened the door for states to collect tolls on interstate highways to raise revenue for roadway repairs. The proposal, contained in a four-year, $302 billion White House transportation bill, would reverse a long-standing federal prohibition on most interstate tolling.

An audit released this month on Oregon’s dismal track record shifting people off of welfare and into jobs offers a detailed look at the effects of the recession. The audit from the Oregon Secretary of State's Office includes maps and charts that illustrate the downturn’s toll, including a sharp rise in welfare recipients and a reduction in state services. Data show bad news on every front for many Oregonians: Unemployment spiked from 2007-09 and remains above the national rate. And most of the jobs lost in 2008-12 were middle-wage – the kind that keep families off of welfare. The jobs...

Brian Alunan has nothing to show for the 150 applications he has submitted to Sacramento area employers over the last few months. No bites, no interviews, no job. Alunan is 29, and lives with his parents. His work history is spotty. His unemployment benefits have ended. The bank is about to take his car. If every generation is supposed to be better off financially than the one that proceeded it, Sacramento “millennials” have a lot of catching up to do. Several experts said the economy is the primary culprit. Many millennials graduated from high school or college during the Great...

...Charlotte’s father, Ben Bell, has been looking for a policy job for more than two years and recently has been trying to get a job with the Obama administration. He worked on the Obama campaign in 2012....

President Barack Obama grabbed dinner at one of the world's most exclusive restaurants while visiting Tokyo on Wednesday. Sukiyabashi Jiro has no set menu and meals typically last 15 to 20 minutes - but 20 pieces of sushi will set you back 30,000 Japanese yen (about $300). And that's if you're lucky enough to land one of only ten seats in the cozy basement venue.

The number of Californians 50 to 64 who live in their parents' homes has surged in recent years, reflecting the grim economic aftermath of the Great Recession. Debbie Rohr lives with her husband and twin teenage sons in a well-tended three-bedroom home in Salinas. The ranch-style house has a spacious kitchen that looks out on a yard filled with rosebushes. It's a modest but comfortable house, the type that Rohr, 52, pictured for herself at this stage of life. She just never imagined that it would be her childhood home, a return to a bedroom where she once hung posters...

Have you ever wondered why the Obama Administration’s plans for improving the U.S. economy always seem to fall flat? It just might have something to do with the fact that the Obama Administration has been working with someone who doesn’t like capitalism. According to an article on France24.com, a well known economist who isn’t fond of capitalism, but promotes Socialism, has been working with the Democrats and the Obama Administration “for a long time”: In his latest book, French economist Thomas Piketty warns that modern-day capitalism leads to unsustainable levels of inequality. While he is often linked to France’s Socialist...

The One Word Democrats May Not Utter During the Campaign Posted By Rick Moran On April 19, 2014 @ 11:26 am In Politics | And it’s not “Obamacare.”As important as Obamacare is to the Republicans in the midterm elections, the economy still tops everyone’s list as the number one issue facing the country.Some Democratic political consultants are advising candidates to avoid using the term “recovery” when describing the economy — for obvious reasons. This Fox News poll from January shows that 74% of Americans still think we’re in a recession. Any Democrat uttering the word “recovery” is likely to...

How does a city strike a balance between the needs of the homeless and the needs of those around them? Those questions will be put to the Fort Lauderdale City Commission as they consider two provisions on the agenda at Tuesday’s commission meeting. At the beginning of this year, the Fort Lauderdale City commission sat down to discuss how the city could address the issue of homelessness better. Out of that came ideas about ways to protect non-homeless residents’ quality of life. One of the ordinances up for consideration would prevent homeless people from urinating or defecating in public. The...

According to stunning new numbers just released by the federal government, nine of the top ten most commonly held jobs in the United States pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year. When you break that down, that means that most of these workers are making less than $3,000 a month before taxes. And once you consider how we are being taxed into oblivion, things become even more frightening. Can you pay a mortgage and support a family on just a couple grand a month? Of course not. In the old days, a single income would enable a...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week, but the underlying trend continued to point to some strength in the labor market. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 16,000 to a seasonally adjusted 326,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists had forecast first-time filings for jobless aid rising to 317,000 in the week ended March 29.

I wish that this were just another bad April Fools' Day joke, but sadly, this story is all too real. Since President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated into office a little over five years ago, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have doubled America's publicly held debt, an increase of more than 6.3 trillion dollars: Date                   Debt Held by the Public         Intragovernmental Holdings   Total Public Debt Outstanding 03/31/2014        6,307,310,739,681.66          4,319,566,309,231.42          10,626,877,048,913.08 8/19/2011          12,619,319,113,193.99 ...

The number of minimum wage workers with college degrees is still more than double what it was during the Bush years. ... If you thought paying tens of thousands of dollars for a college education guaranteed a high-paying job, think again. Obamanomics in action… 260,000 college graduates are stuck in minimum wage jobs.

Despite adding almost a trillion dollars to our national debt and failing to keep the unemployment rate at or below 8% as advertised, liberals consider President Obama's signature stimulus package — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — a success, in part because of the number of jobs it "saved." Beyond the obvious failings of the president's plan, now more than five years old, the approach is illustrative of how presidents sometimes try to stabilize an economy using fiscal policy. But there is a right way and a wrong way. Sen. Ted Cruz recently remarked on two very different fiscal...

A White House aide set off a stampede of liberal media criticism for Internet news pioneer Matt Drudge over Obamacare – but his critics don't seem to understand how small businesses pay taxes. The brouhaha started when Drudge tweeted, “Just paid the Obamacare penalty for not 'getting covered'... I'M CALLING IT A LIBERTY TAX.” Jesse Lee, the Director of Progressive Media at Barack Obama's White House, responded that that was a “Flat lie, no fee for previous year,” adding, “Scary how much influence he once had.” Lee’s response to Drudge set off a firestorm in the liberal media, with many...

The good news is that with a recent surge of employment, California has regained virtually all of the million-plus jobs it lost during what many call the Great Recession. The bad news is that despite regaining those lost jobs, California still has one of the nation's highest jobless rates, surpassed by only a handful of other states, and it's still well above the national average of 6.7 percent. How can that be?

Obamanomics: For five years now, President Obama has been telling Americans that we "have a long way to go" before the country will see a return to prosperity. Just how long does he expect us to wait? Do a search of the White House website for "long way to go" and you come up with hundreds of hits, most of them involving President Obama or someone in his administration counseling patience on economic growth. Now, it might have made sense in mid-2009 to say that recovery from a deep recession will take time. After all, the recovery had just begun....

If the U.S. economy is getting better, then why are major retail chains closing thousands of stores? If we truly are in an "economic recovery", then why do sales figures continue to go down for large retailers all over the country? Without a doubt, the rise of Internet retailing giants such as Amazon.com have had a huge impact. Today, there are millions of Americans that actually prefer to shop online. Personally, when I published my novel I made it solely available on Amazon. But Internet shopping alone does not account for the great retail apocalypse that we are witnessing. In...

<p>Illinois employers warned they would lay off more than 1,000 workers in the coming months, according to notices filed with Illinois regulators in February.</p> <p>Accretive Health warned it would lay off 148 workers. The company said in January the layoffs are part of a broader restructuring in which positions will be moved from Chicago to other cities to be closer to clients. Accretive said then the layoffs could affect as many as 170 workers. The company employs about 600 people in the region.</p>

The Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules aimed at phasing out coal-fired power in favor of low-carbon fuels will come at a high cost, according to a newly released report. Over the next two decades, the EPA’s rules to fight global warming will cost the economy $2.23 trillion, raise energy prices and lower families’ incomes. Using economic models based on the federal government’s National Energy Model System, the conservative Heritage Foundation found that, by the end of 2023, EPA climate regulations will cost the U.S. nearly 600,000 jobs and reduce a family of four’s income by $1,200. EPA rules would also...