Free Republic

The first question any logical person would pose upon hearing the Cecil the lion story should be along the lines of whether or not that lion meat (presuming it is edible) was used to feed the people of Zimbabwe. Too bad the story didn’t attract any logical people, those who might give two cents about the suffering of the people, not the animals of Africa. For Western, middle-class and celebrity animal-rights activists, it is simply easier to leave Africa to the Africans, many of whom don’t really get why killing a lion in a nation largely without running water is...

A first-of-its-kind car-sharing program will give residents of Los Angeles' neglected neighborhoods access to carbon-free transportation.Electric vehicles have helped people save money and curb their greenhouse gas emissions. But for those with less cash to spare, those benefits have been largely out of reach. Now a first-of-its-kind E.V. car-sharing program in Los Angeles aims to put the city’s low-income residents—some of whom have to walk a mile to the closest bus stop—behind the wheel of convenient and carbon-free transportation. “It will help improve the lives of every Angeleno in these neighborhoods by offering them options they don’t have,” said Matt...

Only Hillary Clinton could try to get away with slamming her Republican opponents for siding with the wealthy at the same time disclosing she’s filthy rich. Just $141 million for her and Bill Clinton since 2007, a figure that makes even the one-percenters envious. But Hillary’s different from other rich people because she wishes she had less money. If only her heartless GOP opponents would let her. “They want to give me another tax cut I don’t need instead of putting middle-class families first,” she said. Another thing that makes Hillary Clinton understand the middle class better: She pulled herself...

Three universities contributed to a study that shows that children are faring badly in the Obama years, although they stop short of questioning the official unemployment rate. The 2015 Kids Count Data Book, published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that “In 2013, nearly a third of children (31 percent) were living in families where no parent had full-time, year-round employment. The child poverty rate has remained stubbornly high. At 22 percent in 2013, it was still several percentage points higher than before the recession.” The report goes on to note that “In 2000, 9 percent of children lived...

Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s choice to replace Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency, has been chastised for having lied to Congress, in claiming that EPA did not use “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify new 54.5 mpg standards for cars and light trucks. She’s also been implicated in the agency’s practice of using fake emails to hide questionable dealings and activities. These issues highlight attitudes toward ethics, law and public policy that prevail at EPA and too many other government agencies. However, that attention should not distract from other important matters. Ms. McCarthy may be the worst of the...

The White House confirmed to Fox News what the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported two days ago — that the administration met with the deputy of a radical cleric who is barred from entering the United States, and whose organization supports Hamas.  Sheik Abdullah bin Bayyah served as vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, a group headed by Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi, who has urged Muslim nations to acquire nuclear weapons, demanded the death of American soldiers in Iraq, and defended Hitler. So what did the White House want to discuss with bin Bayyah? Moderation: A senior...

A coalition of Christian leaders devoted to helping end poverty has released a series of videos featuring six 2016 presidential candidates. Each candidate explained the approach that he or she would take to solve poverty and hunger issues in the United States and across the globe if they were elected president.As over 45 million Americans are living below the poverty level, The Circle of Protection, a coalition representing a diverse group of over 65 Christian leaders and organizations headed by Bread For The World, Sojourners and the National Association of Evangelicals, challenged each presidential candidate on the day they announced...

Black lives matter? Apparently not in New York City. A “Pregnancy Outcomes” report from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reveals in 2013, more black babies were aborted than born in the city. A chart on page 7 shows 24,108 “non-Hispanic black” babies were born while 29,007 faced “induced terminations” — or abortions.

On arrival in La Paz, Pope Francis was presented by Bolivian President Evo Morales with a wooden crucifix carved in the form of a hammer and sickle, the symbol of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Fidel. Had Pope John Paul II been handed that crucifix, he might have cracked it over Evo’s head. For John Paul II had seen up close what communism did — to his country, his church and his people in 45 years of Bolshevik rule. On his arrival in the Nicaragua of Daniel Ortega in 1983, Pope John Paul castigated a priest-collaborator who dared to serve that...

When the Census Bureau began calculating poverty a half-century ago – as a “war on poverty” became a hot issue in Washington – it devised a rather simple formula. The formula defined income that would be counted – excluding non-cash income such as food stamps and housing subsidies – and applied it to a narrow “market basket” of food and other living necessities. All the data were nationwide, with no adjustments for regional or local differentials. By the official poverty index, California doesn’t fare too badly, with 17 percent of its residents impoverished, a bit above the national rate of...

Black activists got angry when the Detroit Police Chief James Craig called the people responsible for shooting 12 people on a playground killing one of them urban terrorists. They complained about the insult and want him to apologize. Craig refused to back down and stuck to his guns. Craig said quite bluntly: “You will allow this to continue if you do nothing. It must stop now.” That’s when the president of the Detroit National Action Network (founded by Al Sharpton) Rev. Charles Williams took umbrage to Craig’s assertions that these thugs are urban terrorists: “We want to make it...

As Pope Francis tours the Americas, his economic message about capitalism and redistribution is coming into sharper focus. While there's a strong spiritual dimension to his message, there just isn't much in the way of factual evidence to back it up.

One of the things that I have been trying to point out around here is that the United States doesn’t actually have poverty by the way that the rest of the world understands this word, “poverty”. Most certainly, there are people in the US, in America, who have more than others. This is inequality. And yet we have myriads, almost myriads of myrmidons, telling us that this equals poverty. And I’m sorry, but these two things are just not the same. Inequality is not poverty: poverty is not inequality. And now we’ve got this latest set of numbers from Pew...

Last Friday, while most Americans were distracted debating the pros and cons of the Confederate Flag, or lamenting the latest SCOTUS rulings, Democrats and one world supporters gathered in San Francisco, California to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the United Nations. The event, held in San Francisco City Hall, was a Progressive star-studded event featuring the likes of Governor Jerry Brown, Mayor Ed Lee, and Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. But the most compelling statement was made the the keynote speaker, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon. Secretary Moon admitted that in September World Leaders, including President Obama,are set...

Assuming "growth" will fund all promised pensions and entitlements is magical thinking.The core problem with pension plans is that the promises were issued without regard for the revenues needed to pay the promises. Lulled by 60 years of global growth since 1945, those in charge of entitlements and publicly funded pensions assumed that "growth"--of GDP, tax revenues, employment and everything else--would always rise faster than the costs of the promised pensions and entitlements.But due to demographics and a structurally stagnant economy, entitlements and pension costs are rising at a much faster rate than the revenues needed to pay the promised...

Why are today’s working poor so quiescent? I’m not the only one posing this question. “Why aren’t the poor storming the barricades?” asks The Economist. “Why don’t voters demand more redistribution?” wonders David Samuels, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. The headline on an April 7 National Catholic Reporter article reads: “Why aren’t Americans doing more to protest inequality?” There are legitimate grounds for grievance. For those in the bottom quintile, household income in inflation-adjusted dollars has dropped sharply, from $13,787 in 2000 to $11,651 in 2013. According to the Census Bureau, 64 million Americans currently live in...

A record 21.7 million American kids get free or reduced-price lunch during at school. But when summer vacation starts, the vast majority of them go without this essential, federally funded benefit. Fewer than 4 million kids -- or just 18% of those in the school lunch program -- are fed through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's summer food program. While that's a record number for the 40-year-old initiative, many advocates and government officials say more needs to be done. "In the summer, when those school meals disappear, children find themselves hungry and with few options," said Duke Storen, a senior...

An African-American millionaire can buy a home in any expensive suburb. Color is no longer a barrier. Despite this progress, President Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development is accusing expensive towns of racism, simply because most minorities can’t afford to live there. Westchester County has struggled under a federal monitor since 2009 to compel the county to build multi-unit affordable housing in the county’s most expensive areas. Hillary Clinton claims to be a warrior against inequality. But her adopted hometown of Chappaqua is battling HUD’s demands — and that means it’s fighting the man believed to top Hillary’s veep...

Why Is Hillary Rodham Clinton Harming The American Composers and Performers She Once Loved? Mrs. Hillary Clinton unabashedly stated to the American public, “For a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear." Mrs. Clinton, in his 2015 Grammy award winning rap performance, "I", American Rap Performance Artist Kendrick Lamar reveals, "I've been dealing with depression ever since an adolescent." In a January 20, 2011 LAWeekly interview (Google search), American rapper and Grammy winner Kendrick Lamar, born in 1987, the same year songwriter Suzanne Vega wrote...

When it comes to energy supplies — and therefore carbon dioxide emissions and climate change — who are you going to believe? Pope Francis, or BP? Whether you love the pope and hate BP, or vice versa, doesn’t matter. What matters when discussing energy availability, climate change, and poverty are hard numbers and simple math. And the latest edition of BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, which was released eight days before Pope Francis issued his encyclical on climate change, is chockfull of numbers that expose the pope’s failed climate math. Indeed, an analysis of the two documents reveals the...