Free Republic

If the US government owns most of the land in the US and the average citizens liability for the national debt is around 45k, maybe the government should transfer ownership to citizens and sell a bunch to balance their books. What do you think the book value of all the land owned by the government is?

RALEIGH, N.C. – A prestigious North Carolina private college cannot have police officers with the power to arrest suspects and enforce state law because the school is a religious institution, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday. ... Allowing the school's security officers to carry out laws on behalf of the state violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against laws establishing religion by creating "an excessive government entanglement with religion," Judge Jim Wynn wrote in the unanimous opinion.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Private employers added fewer workers to their payrolls in July than expected and hiring in June was much weaker than had been thought, a blow to an economic recovery that is failing to gain traction. The dismal news on jobs poses a challenge to Democrats hoping to retain their congressional majorities in November elections, as well as to officials at the Federal Reserve who are debating whether more needs to be done to foster growth. Overall non-farm payrolls fell 131,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, as temporary government jobs to conduct the decennial census...

As in all major government takeovers of private companies in Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez declared that seizing beer-and-food giant Polar's facilities here would mark another victory for the poor in the country's march toward socialism. "Why is it that Polar has so much money?" Chávez asked in a February speech ... Except this time, the president's plans went badly awry, ... Polar [fought] back by taking its case to the Supreme Court, [and] its employees have risen up, too, rallying in opposition to Chávez's edict and holding all-night vigils to prevent a takeover. ... employees said they oppose the government...

The so-called “Great Debate” at the National Space Society’s (NSS) International Space and Development Conference (ISDC) in Chicago on Saturday afternoon featuring Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin and former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart was something of a dud, in part because it wasn’t that much of a debate: after ten-minute opening statements by Zubrin (who opposes the agency’s proposed plans) and Schweickart (who supports them), the floor was turned over to the audience, some of whom asked questions of the two, and others who simply expressed their opinions. Conference organizers explained that the event wasn’t intended to be a debate...

Private pensions to fund housingPlan will offer lucrative returns on bonds linked to infrastructure projects May 30, 2010 The Scottish and UK governments are to target private pension funds to raise capital for public-sector infrastructure projects. Faced with swingeing budget cuts and a fall in bank lending, Alex Salmond and Vince Cable, the British business secretary, plan to offer private pension firms lucrative returns on government bonds linked to social housing, transport and green energy developments. Currently, many of the funds, worth about £1 trillion, are investing in American corporate bonds that offer a higher rate of return than UK...

WASHINGTON — Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to American officials and businessmen, despite concerns among some in the military about the legality of the operation. Earlier this year, government officials admitted that the military had sent a group of former Central Intelligence Agency officers and retired Special Operations troops into the region to collect information — some of which was used to track and kill people suspected of being militants. Many portrayed it as a rogue operation that...

Colorado Rafters, Anglers Square Off Over Use of Streams Through Private Land In a clash that some lawmakers have dubbed "Row v. Wade," rafters and anglers are squaring off over rights to prized Colorado waterways. The debate has spilled into the state legislature and inspired at least 24 citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives. The core question: Do paddlers have an absolute right to float down any river in the state, even rivers that run through private property reserved for fly-fishing? Steve Roberts says no. His family owns a 150-acre dude ranch amid the aspens and lodgepole pines of southwest Colorado. The Taylor...

The brown coats are a comming November is going to be a doozy

TRENTON — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is looking at ways to privatize jobs to save money as he tries to find to plug a projected $11 billion budget deficit for the 2011 fiscal year. Christie will sign an executive order today to create a task force to recommend ways to privatize jobs. The administration did not specify which jobs or how many could be privatized. Speaking on New York radio station WCBS, Christie said he’s looking at privatization as a way around the “sweet deal” former Gov. Jon Corzine made with state workers union. Earlier in the week, Christie...

Baltimore issues call to contractors for snow removal helpPosted: 1:30 pm Wed, February 10, 2010 By Robbie Whelan Daily Record Business Writer With Marylanders battling the fiercest snowstorm in generations, Baltimore officials have called on local businesses to help deal with snowfall that is choking roadways and confining city residents to their homes. The National Weather Service warned Wednesday of “extremely dangerous” blizzard conditions in the Baltimore region, and as of 1 p.m., the seasonal snowfall totaled 72.3 inches at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. That’s the most since record-keeping began in Baltimore in 1893. The previous record, from 1995-96,...

Some analysts are focusing on the positive in the jobs report: a gain in temporary jobs, decent hiring outside construction, and a drop in the jobless rate. But these silver linings shouldn’t cloud the depth of the labor market’s woes. Factoring in a modest 12,000 drop in private payrolls in January and revisions to prior data that wiped out another 1.4 million jobs, private nonfarm payrolls were at their lowest level since November 1998.

It’s been pretty widely discussed that the past decade was a lost one for job creation. But focusing on private payrolls alone would also wipe out nearly all of the employment gains from 1999, among the better years on record. Next Friday’s employment report comes with an annual benchmark revision that the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated would erase 855,000 private jobs (and add 31,000 government jobs). Subtract that from the seasonally adjusted December payroll number of 108.44 million and that would leave just 107.59 million private payroll jobs. That’s the least since January 1999, when there were 107.40 million.

A big reason why the government is inefficient and ineffective is because Washington has outdated technology, with federal workers having better computers at home than in the office. This startling admission came Thursday from Peter Orszag, who manages the federal bureaucracy for President Barack Obama. The public is getting a bad return on its tax dollars because government workers are operating with outdated technologies, Orszag said in a statement that kicked off a summit between Obama and dozens of corporate CEOs.

"The private sector is not the solution to bad government; the private sector makes government bad." Ms. Wedel mourns the "emasculation" of the government due to the increased role of contractors, for which she blames former Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. "Gone are the days when government contractors primarily provided services such as printing, serving food, or landscaping," says Ms. Wedel, who apparently thinks the private sector isn't worthy of anything more important than mowing the White House lawn. If there's a chance the contractors may influence public policy, it's off-limits, she argues. This includes military...

For most of this country, this recession been a tough one. Chances are If you haven't lost a job you know someone who has. The real unemployment number (including people who are no longer getting unemployment dollars or have given up looking) is over 17%. Many many who have kept their jobs, have lost income either through pay cuts or unpaid furloughs. There is one group of people who have had nothing but good news. People working for the federal government have seen their salaries skyrocket. Not surprisingly, the number of people working for the federal bureaucracy has grown as...

A major shortcoming in an otherwise thoughtful post on deficit spending is a traditional mistake in which analysts seek to analogize the expenditures of government with that of a private household or business. The government is sovereign. This fact gives to government authority that households and firms do not have. In particular, government has the power to tax and to issue money. The power to tax means that government does not need to sell products, and the power to issue currency means that it can make purchases by emitting IOUs. No private firm can require that markets buy its products...

Arizona May Put State Prisons in Private HandsBy JENNIFER STEINHAUER Published: October 23, 2009 FLORENCE, Ariz. — One of the newest residents on Arizona’s death row, a convicted serial killer named Dale Hausner, poked his head up from his television to look at several visitors strolling by, each of whom wore face masks and vests to protect against the sharp homemade objects that often are propelled from the cells of the condemned. It is a dangerous place to patrol, and Arizona spends $4.7 million each year to house inmates like Mr. Hausner in a super-maximum-security prison. But in a first...

At an event Wednesday to launch its ‘Dream Big’ campaign to promote the American free enterprise system, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue said that people, not government, will create the jobs needed for economic recovery. “The government can support a few jobs in the short-run, but over the long-run only the private sector, powered by free enterprise, can keep America working,” Donohue said in his prepared remarks. “We believe it is imperative to remind, educate, and persuade our fellow citizens and leaders that it was a free enterprise system based on individual initiative, hard work, and personal responsibility...

BILLINGS - American Police Force officials showed up in Mercedes SUV's that had "Hardin Police" stenciled on the vehicles. The twist, the city of Hardin doesn't have a police department. Two Rivers Authority officials say having APF patrol the streets was never part of their agenda. "I have no idea. I really don't because that's not been a part of any of the discussions we've had with any of them," said Two Rivers Authority's Al Peterson. As it stands now the Big Horn County Sheriff's Department is contracted to patrol the city and APF has no jurisdiction. If that was...