Free Republic

Every state has its share of crony capitalism, but Big Oil and the GOP political machine have taken that term to new heights in Alaska. The oil industry, which provides 85% of state revenues, has strived to own the government. Alaska's politicians—in particular ruling Republicans—roll in oil campaign money, lavish oil revenue on pet projects, then retire to lucrative oil jobs where they lobby for sweetheart oil deals. You can love the free market and not love this.

Players: Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, Arizona Senator John McCain, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. Subject: Coburn's amendment to remove the $223 million Alaskan "Bridge to Nowhere" from a Senate Appropriations bill and use it instead to repair the heavily damaged Interstate 10 bridge over Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain ruined by Hurricane Katrina. Results: Intimidated by the power of Appropriations Chairman Stevens, who angrily threatens to resign if he doesn't get his way, the Senate votes 82-15 to deny the funds to Louisiana and the Katrina victims who need the bridge. Senator John McCain, a...

Make certain you vote on Nov 4, BUT...DON’T REELECT ANYONE in Congress! Congress is dominated by frauds who only want a cushy job with no boss or accountability. At the heart of this problem, is the growth of a class of career politicians, whose only purpose is to be reelected forever, not to govern well. We, the voters, have it within our power to easily destroy these career politicians, and to never let them rise again. All we have to do is ALWAYS VOTE, BUT REELECT NOBODY! Wow! That’s a pretty drastic idea! Soon we would wind up with only...

For starters, we'd say Governor Palin's credentials as an agent of reform exceed Barack Obama's. Mr. Obama rose through the Chicago Democratic machine without a peep of push-back. Alaska's politics are deeply inbred and backed by energy-industry money. Mr. Obama slid past the kind of forces that Mrs. Palin took head on. This is one reason her selection -- despite its campaign risks -- seems to have been so well received by Republicans yesterday. They are looking for a new generation of leaders.

If any doubt remained that former fighter pilot John McCain loves to take unconventional risks, he put them to bed Friday by picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Introduced in Dayton by Mr. McCain, Governor Palin swung the bat pretty well. We'll now see if she can hit curve balls. It's a daring pick because Mrs. Palin has never faced national scrutiny and hasn't had to deal with foreign policy. Most VP choices are designed to do no harm, and we tend to agree with the maxim. Democrats are already saying they can't wait for Mrs. Palin's...

If any doubt remained that former fighter pilot John McCain loves to take unconventional risks, he put them to bed Friday by picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Introduced in Dayton by Mr. McCain, Governor Palin swung the bat pretty well. We'll now see if she can hit curve balls. It's a daring pick because Mrs. Palin has never faced national scrutiny and hasn't had to deal with foreign policy. Most VP choices are designed to do no harm, and we tend to agree with the maxim. Democrats are already saying they can't wait for Mrs. Palin's...

If any doubt remained that former fighter pilot John McCain loves to take unconventional risks, he put them to bed Friday by picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Introduced in Dayton by Mr. McCain, Governor Palin swung the bat pretty well. We'll now see if she can hit curve balls. It's a daring pick because Mrs. Palin has never faced national scrutiny and hasn't had to deal with foreign policy. Most VP choices are designed to do no harm, and we tend to agree with the maxim. Democrats are already saying they can't wait for Mrs. Palin's...

A week ago I was at McDonald's ordering lunch. It was very busy and there was a large crowd present. I ordered the food and waited around for a few minutes. While I was doing so, a manager and another crewmemeber were getting ready to put the flags up on the pole. The manager showed him how to fold the flags up and they folded up old glory into a nice triangle with loving and patriotic care. While they were folding the McDonald's flag, a funny looking woman in her thirties with two tots in a carriage walked up to...

Richard Rahn examines which federal tax does the most harm to economic growth Jack Kemp and Peter Ferrara argue why McCain's tax plan will promote economic growth... HSA style Medicaid reforms

Gearing up for 2009, liberals are eager to claim Massachusetts as a Valhalla of health reform. Their enthusiasm is apparently evidence-proof. Even Mitt Romney, who should know better, took to these pages recently to proclaim, "Health-care reform is working in Massachusetts." Shortly after Mr. Romney's self-tribute, Governor Deval Patrick wheeled out a new $129 million tax plan to make up for this year's health spending shortfalls. Yet partisans are cheering the cost overruns as a sign of success.

Executives from the state highway department are again defending themselves at the Capitol against people who say they are using taxpayer money to advance an agenda in favor of toll roads in Texas. At the heart of the issue are claims that TxDOT has hired lobbyists, using taxpayer dollars, to push in favor of projects like the Trans-Texas Corridor. Part of that is the "Keep Texas Moving" website. "Marketing is undertaken to inform drivers in the Austin area about the opening of new toll roads, toll road locations and incentive periods, and about the benefits of paying with an electronic...

The 11th commandment of politics is that elected officials shall not take sides in their party primaries. Then again, Missouri Republicans are burdened with so many sins, what's one more? For an insight as to why the GOP is down and out in Washington, take a look at Jefferson City. That's where Sarah Steelman, the state treasurer, is running in an Aug. 5 primary for the Missouri governorship. And it's where her reform campaign against earmarks and self-dealing is threatening the entrenched status quo, causing her own party to rise against her.

Cuba is to put more state-controlled farm land into private hands, in a move to increase the island's lagging food production.

Two days after telling an online town hall meeting that NASA had "failed us miserably" and "wastes a vast amount of money," Houston Rep. John Culberson said Thursday he was weighing legislation to overhaul the structure of the space agency responsible for about 20,000 Houston-area jobs. (snip) "We need revolutionary change, a complete restructuring," Culberson told the Houston Chronicle. "NASA needs complete freedom to hire and fire based on performance, it needs to be driven by the scientists and the engineers, and it needs to be free of politics as much as possible." The fourth-term lawmaker said he was "kicking...

HOLLAND - The mayor of this small community 15 miles south of Temple said Tuesday the commission of which she is president is ready to take by the horns the Texas Department of Transportation and its controversial proposal, the Trans-Texas Corridor. Armed with an 80-page manual, “How to Fight the TTC,” and backed by two non-profits who say they protect private property rights, Holland mayor Mae Smith said rural Bell County is ready for a fight. “Bell County sits here like a stepchild and they’re cramming this corridor down our throats,” Ms. Smith said, regarding the commission’s relationship with TxDOT....

Member of the Texas Sunset Commission today recommended 'radical' changes in the administration of the Texas Department of Transportation, including placing the troubled and controversial agency into a four year legislative 'receivership' and abolishing the Texas Transportation Commission, which runs TexDOT, and appointment of a Transportation Commissioner who would be answerable to the Legislature, 1200 WOAI news reports. But Sunset Commission member Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon (D-San Antonio) suggested going one step further. "What I am hearing form the public is that they are wanting to see an elected commissioner," she said to loud applause from the TexDOT opponents who...

Speaking at the National Council of La Raza conference today, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) engaged in a lively give-and-take with several Latino activists who questioned his stance on illegal immigration. In one heated exchange with an audience member, a questioner asked McCain whether he, like presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama (Ill.), would make immigration reform a top priority as president and provide a pathway to citizenship for 12 million undocumented workers living illegally in the U.S. as part of a single immigration bill. McCain responded by defending his record on immigration against Obama's, saying the Democrat took his lead from...

Sen. Barack Obama promised yesterday that he would make overhauling immigration policy a top priority of his first year in office if he is elected president as he chided Republican John McCain for backing away from his own comprehensive immigration bill. Obama addressed the four-day National Council of La Raza conference, which has attracted more than 20,000 people to the San Diego Convention Center. McCain, a senator from Arizona and the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting, will address the convention today. “I know Senator McCain used to buck his party on immigration in fighting for comprehensive reform, and I admired him for...

In a recent email discussion with Winfield Myers, Director of Democracy Project, I mentioned that rather than searching for topics, issues seem to find me. Recently the issue of immigration reform has been pursuing me, and it dovetails with the critical issue of the failure of American schools to prepare our students to compete in an international marketplace. The issue came up as a result of my firsthand empathy with the dilemma of a talented young colleague on a temporary visitor’s visa. He would love to build his future in America, but sadly for him and our company, the door...

Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul "slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Obama leaves out, however, that he was against the 1996 federal legislation which precipitated the caseload reduction. "I am not a defender of the status quo with respect to welfare," Obama said on the floor of the Illinois state Senate on May 31, 1997. "Having said that, I probably would not have supported the federal legislation, because I think it had some problems." Obama's transformation from critic to champion of welfare reform is the latest...

THIS IS A PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW I CONDUCTED WITH JOHN MCCAIN ON WEDNESDAY: (Who is the real John McCain – the guy who voted 95 percent with the president or the guy in his first two ads running from George W. Bush like a scalded dog?) Look at the voting records…..Senator Obama has the most extreme voting record in the Senate and does not have the record of reaching across the aisle I disagreed with the president on climate change, on the conduct of the war, on detainees, on spending…Obviously there have been disagreements between myself and the...

Finance: In the busy week that was, it's a story that was virtually ignored: The Treasury wants to give the Federal Reserve sweeping new powers to oversee and regulate Wall Street. We're not sure that's such a great idea.Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said it's time to give the Fed more authority over the investment banking houses. "Our nation has come to expect the Federal Reserve to step in to avert events that pose unacceptable systemic risk," he said Thursday. After all, the Fed has turned into the lender of last resort for Wall Street, after extending hundreds of billions in...

Treasury chief wants Congress to move quickly on giving Fed new powers WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson isn't too pleased with Washington's response to the financial-market crisis.In a speech to be delivered Thursday to the Women in Housing and Finance organization, Paulson will call on Congress to give the Federal Reserve authority to stabilize the financial system when it comes under threat. Video: Paulson talks change Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson calls for changes in the regulation of the U.S. financial market after the collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns. (June 19) "Our nation has come to expect the...

From The Sunday Times June 15, 2008 Cubans flee island over ‘sham’ reforms Optimism within Raul Castro’s Cuba is fading as his new freedoms make little impact on the poor Tony Allen-Mills ON a routine patrol off the Caribbean resort of Cancun earlier this month, the crew of a Mexican naval vessel spotted unusual activity aboard an arriving yacht. When officers inspected the boat, they found 33 Cuban migrants on board. The Cubans were heading for Miami by a roundabout route - instead of braving the short but heavily policed crossing from western Cuba to Florida, they were planning to...

A group of bipartisan US congressmen is urging reform in UNRWA, the UN body that deals exclusively with Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and calling for alternative solutions to the containment of refugees in squalid camps. "The Palestinian refugees have been used as political pawns for the past 60 years by people who don't want peace in the Middle East," said Congressman Eliot Engel (D-New York) at a meeting of international parliamentarians hosted last week by the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, a bipartisan pro-Israel parliamentary group. "The UN has been part and parcel of this conspiracy," he said. Engel, who...

Here is what the Center for Rural Affairs, a nonprofit rural advocacy group, said about the federal farm bill: "This farm bill primarily serves the vested interests of mega farms at the expense of family farmers and ordinary rural Americans. " That's an apt description of the outdated $290 billion bill, bloated by subsidies and pork, which three members of Wisconsin 's House delegation and both of the state's senators supported. President Bush tried to stop this legislative mistake with a veto, but Congress quickly overrode it.The infliction of the costly, misdirected farm bill on the American public highlights how...

May 21, 2008, 4:00 a.m. Ryan’s HopeEntitlement reform without tax increases. By Peter Ferrara They said it couldn’t be done. But Congressman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) has just done it.Ryan is the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, and a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. This morning, Ryan will introduce legislation providing for a package of comprehensive reforms to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that will completely eliminate the long-term entitlement crisis, without tax increases. Since the early 1950s, federal spending has been relatively stable at around 20 percent of GDP. But official projections now...

They said it couldn’t be done. But Congressman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) has just done it. Ryan is the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, and a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. This morning, Ryan will introduce legislation providing for a package of comprehensive reforms to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that will completely eliminate the long-term entitlement crisis, without tax increases. Since the early 1950s, federal spending has been relatively stable at around 20 percent of GDP. But official projections now show that over the next 35 years, this will soar to close to 40...

Lobbying & Ethics Reform Seal the Pork Barrel Among the most glaring abuses in Washington is the willful setting aside of taxpayer dollars for the pet projects of special interests, often through last minute additions to appropriations bills. Pork barrel spending is an insult to taxpayers, a waste of public resources, and an abdication of our leaders' responsibility to be good and honorable stewards of the public treasury, for the benefit of all Americans, not just a few. Too often it appears that elected leaders use the treasury as a campaign kitty, channeling taxpayer dollars for pet projects to preserve...

-- snip --In 2003 and in 2005, Texas enacted a series of reforms to the state's civil justice system. They are stunning in their success. Texas Medical Liability Trust, one of the largest malpractice insurance companies in the state, has slashed its premiums by 35%, saving doctors some $217 million over four years. There is also a competitive malpractice insurance industry in Texas, with over 30 companies competing for business. This is driving rates down...

If there's just one candidate of change this fall, John McCain will be the Horatio Seymour or James Cox of 2008 - a presidential also-ran all but forgotten to history. The only way McCain can hold the White House for the Republicans is if he trumps his opponent on values and national security and sells the public on a domestic reform agenda that keeps Democrats from sole ownership of the theme of change. Otherwise, Barack Obama will out-inspire him, or Hillary Clinton out-policy him, in a classic out-with-the-old election. McCain would seem a natural candidate of reform, given how often...

My column last weekend, "What I'd do as president," received more responses than any other column I've written to date. In that piece, I believe I struck a poignant chord with the American people, as well as with people as far away as Brazil, China, Israel, Africa, Australia and other lands. Therefore, I will continue this theme and apply it to Detroit, the city of my birth. What would I do if I were mayor of Detroit?

The Rockefeller family, the longest continuous shareholder in ExxonMobil, is abandoning its behind-the-scenes role at the company to press for corporate governance reforms including an independent chairman and a stronger board. Family representatives have scheduled a news conference for Wednesday to issue a public rebuke to the company, which began as part of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. “After years of working behind the scenes to encourage Exxon’s management to approach its industry challenges in new ways, members of the Rockefeller family will publicly explain the concerns held by multiple generations of their family,’’ the family said in a statement....

Go to jail, get a pension? Hillsborough appears to be the only county in the state where tax dollars provide retirement benefits for inmates who dig ditches and pick up trash. The practice prompted a Florida Senate committee Tuesday to pass a measure (SB 2848) that would prohibit inmates from accruing public retirement benefits. A similar measure is moving swiftly through the House. Hillsborough County has paid at least $162,741 in retirement benefits to the state pension system for 640 Hillsborough County Jail inmates from 2002 through early April, according to the only state data available Tuesday. But it's unclear...

Chancellor Joel Klein of New York City's Department of Education and superintendents from other parts of the state are opposing language in the budget bill clarifying last year's agreement that teachers shouldn't be evaluated on student test scores; they should be assessed on how they use test scores and other data to adjust their teaching to help students improve. This enlightened approach to tenure decisions is something that the Legislature and the governor agreed last year was eminently reasonable. The approach is akin to judging doctors on how they use the results of blood tests, X-rays, and the like to...

Tort reform: a political issue that never fully succeeds in the Oklahoma Legislature, but never dies. Year after year, the Republican caucuses in the state Senate and House of Representatives announce their intent to pass a comprehensive tort reform bill during the current legislative session. And year after year, the legislative session ends with the exchange of harsh press releases between Republicans and Democrats, and the promise to fight again the following year. The debate over tort reform is so contentious, opposing groups can’t even agree on what to call the issue. “Lawsuit reform” is the term preferred by many...

Bank Reform: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has proposed sweeping new financial reforms that would in many ways be an improvement over the dysfunctional system we now have. But we do have some concerns.Surveying the wreckage of America's financial industry, Paulson wants to reshape the entire regulatory system and give sweeping new powers to the Federal Reserve. We're not against new thinking when it comes to financial regulation. Quite frankly, since 1960 there has been at least one major financial crisis each decade that has exposed glaring weaknesses in our postwar financial regulations. Still, the idea that the government can simply...

Raul Castro is making hay from "reforms" allowing his subjects access to toasters and cell phones. Big deal. What Cubans need is cash to buy them. That can only come with real economic freedom.

Would make illegal immigrants legal residents, supporters say it is 'not amnesty' The Congressional Hispanic Caucus says it is prepared to introduce a new immigration reform bill later this year which will confront Congress with the tricky issue of legal residency for 12 million undocumented workers in the middle of an election season, 1200 WOAI news reports. U.S. Representative Joe Baca (D-California), the First Vice President of the CHC, revealed the measure today as he attended a meeting of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in San Antonio. 'We will be coming out specifically with the legislature later on," Baca said....

Without much fanfare, some of Europe’s social democracies have jumped ahead of the United States on market-based reform, writes HENRY OLSEN. When former U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to traditional NATO allies like France and Germany as “Old Europe,” he expressed a widely held American stereotype. In this view, Europe is sclerotic and calcified—resistant to change and forever looking back on its past—while America is the polar opposite: dynamic, innovative, and eager to embrace its future. So Americans might be surprised to learn that “Old” Europe is actually ahead of us in tackling many of the most vexing domestic...

HERAT, Afghanistan, Feb. 22, 2008 – On the outside, they look like any other policemen in Afghanistan, but if U.S. Army Col. James Klingaman is right, this group of 143 newly trained Afghan National Police might prove to be the best in Afghanistan. Army Col. James Klingaman, commander of Afghanistan Regional Security Integration Command West, congratulates an Afghan national policeman from western Afghanistan’s Bala-Beluk district. The 143 police officers are the first graduating class for an eight-week police training course that is a key part of the Afghan Interior Ministry’s focused district development reform initiative, designed to improve the...

For as long as I have been watching and writing about California politics and public policy, well-meaning people have been coming to me with the promise to fix what ails government in the Golden State. Name the problem and someone has tried to solve it: campaign finance abuses, rigged political districts, foolish budget policies – all of which contribute to a widening disconnect between what regular folks seem to want and what their dysfunctional government delivers. Most if not all of these efforts have failed. Some died in infancy, never to make it past the idea stage. Some led to...

That last post ended on what some might call an inflammatory note. The suggestion that some priests would react to a “re-reform” of the Roman Liturgy by setting their priesthood aside may seem hyperbolic to some; but I’m a priest, and know a lot of priests, and am confident that I’m not just whistling Dixie here (especially since whistling Dixie here could get you thrown out of some finer eating establishments). The operative question for any priest whose ministry has been exclusively post-conciliar is this: Does he view his style of ministry, his personal spirituality, his manner of celebrating the...

Flying across the vast Russian plain in 1944, the future French president Charles DeGaulle cursed the destiny that made him a Frenchman; if only he could rule a country the size of Russia, he mused, think of what he might accomplish! A similar thought must have occurred to Vladimir Putin, the most talented political leader of our time: what might he have done at the helm of the world's only superpower, instead of salvaging the hulk of the defeated Soviet Empire? Why not give him the chance? Watching the last round of American political debates, it occurred to me that...

Victimhood for All by: Bethany Stotts, February 08, 2008 The victim-oppressor dialectic of Marxist doctrine has long since penetrated the university, leading to both classes on Karl Marx and the inclusion of Marxist literary theory in the curriculum. “Now it’s interesting to also speculate—because there’s no research—what are the psychological impacts of this kind of worldview? You can go around think of yourself as victim, or go around thinking of yourself as a victimizer,” said University of Nevada-Reno Adjunct Psychology Professor William O’Donohue at an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference this November. Columbia College Chicago Professor Deborah Holdstein offered two...

And I say to you that the great state a Mississippi cannot afford four more years a Pappy O'Daniel - four more years a cronyism, nepotism, rascalism and service to the Innarests! The choice, she's a clear 'un: Pappy O'Daniel, slave a the Innarests; Homer Stokes, servant a the little man! Ain't that right, little fella? When the litle man says jump, Homer Stokes says how high? And, ladies'n jettymens, the little man has admonished me to grasp the broom a ree-form and sweep this state clean! It's gonna be back to the flour mill, Pappy! The Innarests can take...

Friday, December 14, 2007 Lutheran CORE News 1.6 A blessed Christmas to you and yours from Lutheran CORE, the coalition for reform! Most of us have other things on our mind than the struggles of our church body during this season, as we should. For the hope we claim is that the God who sent His Son to redeem our fallen humanity is the Lord of the whole Church, including that part of the Body of Christ in which we find ourselves. And we believe that just as the Holy Child was saved from the machinations of Herod and all...

Dialogue effort is largest of its kind By Sandi Dolbee UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER December 16, 2007 SAN DIEGO – In what is being described as the first such effort of its kind, two major Jewish and Muslim groups will launch “serious education programs” in the United States and Canada aimed at bridging a divide formed from centuries of animosity over land, politics and religion. “When we are killing each other in the name of God, sensible religious people have an obligation to do something about it,” Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said yesterday to about...

Having endured the Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham saga up close and personal for the last two years, most recently in the form of Mr. Brent Wilkes' conviction on all 13 counts for the corrupt acts that he and Cunningham performed, San Diego has had a ring-side seat on modern sleaze in Congress. Since the Dukester's resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2005, there has been a lot of congressional activity to change how members of Congress do business with lobbyists like Mr. Wilkes and how Congress enacts those "earmarks" that Cunningham chased so assiduously to earn his...

One Size Does Not Fit All by: Heyecan Veziroglu, November 16, 2007 Congressman Scott Garrett’s (R-N.J.) introduction of HR3177, the Local Education Authority Returns Now Act (LEARN) in July 2007 offers solutions to the various problems caused by the federal No Child Left Behind law (NCLB). At the Leadership Institute’s Wednesday Wake-Up Club Breakfast meeting recently, he said, “The whole of education centers around the issue of money.” He pointed out that he has been outspoken about the negative impact that NCLB has had on America’s children’s education and their future. He said that “‘The LEARN ACT’ gives money...