Free Republic

FTC WARNED INVESTORS OFF HUGE DOLLAR GAINS/TAKE 3Jan 27, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.comby Chris MackWashington’s regulators are supposed to stand up for the little guy. Maybe they also help the little guy stay that way. In the last decade, under the pretense of protecting people from losing their shirts, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released warnings about indium and other strategic metal investing “scams.” Some of these warnings haven’t been updated since - and in any event they are all over the ‘Net. Anyone with a computer and Google can type in “fraud” and “indium” and come up with the following:...

MADISON – Aaron Rodgers has faced some of the most ferocious defensive linemen the National Football League has ever unleashed on professional football fields. The Green Bay Packers quarterback has passed his way to the top of his game, becoming among the most accurate, respected and highest paid players in NFL history. Now, Rodgers is taking on a much more brutal enemy: The murderous warlords of the Democratic Republic of Congo in command of a civil conflict that has claimed more than 3 million lives. Green Bay’s QB has signed up as a celebrity front man for Raise Hope for...

HIRSCHFELD, GERMANY - Scientists in Germany have come up with a method for extracting the precious element germanium from plants. The element is a semi-conductor and was used to develop the first transistor because it is able to transport electrical charges extremely quickly. Nowadays, silicon-germanium alloy is indispensable to modern life, crucial in making computers, smartphones and fiber-optic cables. Transparent in infra-red light, germanium is also used in intelligent steering systems and parking sensors for vehicles. Yet although germanium is present in soil all over the world, it is difficult to extract, and most supplies currently come from China. Now...

COVID-19: It’s all we talk about, on the cable news, and in our 6-foot socially-distanced prison walks around our silent neighborhoods. And in nearly every conversation comes the intellectual shrug, “who could have seen this coming?” A single phrase that neatly absolves governments and experts alike of any responsibility of predicting the pandemic and, if not being able to stop it, at least cushioning its blow........ But is it unfair to engage in so much 20-20 hindsight? After all, who could see COVID coming? Well, we did. We — as in nodes within the U.S. Government tasked with tracking critical...

he power of the coronavirus pandemic as a potential global “game changer” may be on full display in the South China Sea. China is stepping up its operations in the international waterway while the U.S. Defense department grapples with over 1,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in its ranks. The pandemic began in Wuhan, China and peaked in the Communist country in February. China’s numbers may reek of skepticism but by all accounts, they have seen the worst of the disease. Barring any 2nd wave of COVID-19, the country is slowly returning to normal with their military unscathed and at full...

Joe Biden’s campaign is offering to help states receive coronavirus resources through its own private connections. Let me repeat that for the CNN-impaired… Joe Biden is offering to help states get their hands on coronavirus resources through his own private connections. In other words, rather than offer these much-needed resources to the federal government or even the state and local governments, Biden’s connections are offering them to his campaign so Biden can pretend to be president while he hides out in his Delaware basement. And Joe Biden is okay with that. This is not a joke. This is really happening...

The U.S. Energy Information Administration just announced some spectacular news that should be banner headlines across the country: The price of natural gas has fallen to its lowest February level in 20 years. The data shows that natural gas prices fell to $1.77 per million British thermal units. In inflation-adjusted terms, the price of gas has plunged by some 80% since its high of $13.60 12 years ago. The price is down 90% since 2005, when prices hit nearly $20.

San Francisco, CA — Testimony has concluded in the punitive RICO case brought by Planned Parenthood against pro-life activists, including Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman, who exposed Planned Parenthood’s participation in the illegal trafficking of aborted baby tissues and organs. It is a trial that has had its high and low moments. Of note recently was the admission under oath by a representative from Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) that is still has a contract with Planned Parenthood to supply them aborted baby body parts. That means the organ trafficking continues — and so do Planned Parenthood’s potential crimes! In another development,...

Early in September, international news was awash with the claim that 87 elephants had been “killed by poachers” in Botswana. The story originated from the NGO Elephants Without Borders, which received massive publicity – and presumably donations – as a result. Even the beleaguered UK Prime Minister tweeted the story, while a petition calling for wildlife guards to be re-armed surpassed 150,000 signatures. I know a little of Botswana. A few years ago, I was declared “public enemy number one”, threatened by a government spokesman on television, and banned from the country. This was because Survival International was instrumental in...

Recycling, for decades an almost reflexive effort by American households and businesses to reduce waste and help the environment, is collapsing in many parts of the country. Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. And last month, officials in the central Florida city of Deltona faced the reality that, despite their best efforts to recycle, their curbside program was not working and...

Elections count, will Zinke survive and Trump on fire Grimness under Grijalva Elections do make a difference. How would you like to have the Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the former Chair of the Congressional Environment Task Force with a 100 percent voting record according to the Sierra Club, as the new Chairman of the House Resources Committee? That’s the Committee with jurisdiction over livestock grazing, wilderness, national monuments, endangered species and other land use activities of the Forest Service, BLM, USFWS and other entities of the Interior department. Well that’s what you are going to get with Raul...

The FBI raided the home of a whistleblower who was in possession of documents regarding the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One, according to the whistleblower’s lawyer, Michael Socarras. The whistleblower, Dennis Nathan Cain, had turned the documents over to the Department of Justice’s inspector general and both the House and Senate Intelligence committees, according to the lawyer. The FBI rummaged through Cain’s home for six hours, even after the whistleblower handed over the documents, according to Socarras.

"We called the White House and they acted swiftly on the Friday event, which has since been postponed," said a staff member for Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who complained that the event would have openly undermined President Donald Trump’s agenda on Cuba."The event in question has been postponed," a State Department official confirmed."This (event) was designed to embarrass the president and Pompeo—somebody needs to be held to account," one source said. "The fact that State Department officials were advancing a program that is so slanted and completely at odds with the president's directive on Cuba, I am concerned what...

According to recent media accounts, America is in a population death spiral. Open-borders activists have seized on the narrative to promote ever-looser immigration policies.But the narrative is wrong.In fact, women in the U.S. are more likely to be mothers than in the past, and they are having more children, reports the Pew Research Center.The Pew study found that women have 2.07 children during their lives on average – up from 1.86 in 2006, the lowest on record. Family size is also up. In 2016, mothers at the end of their childbearing years had had about 2.42 children, compared with 2.31...

**Translated from French by Google Translator**Humanity will have consumed on 1 August all the resources that nature can renew in one year, according to the NGO Global Footprint Network. Wednesday 1 st August will be the day "exceeded". The one where humanity has exhausted the resources that nature is able to renew in a year, according to the NGO Global Footprint Network. It is "the date when we will have used more trees, water, fertile soils, and fish than what the Earth can provide us in a year to feed, house, move, and emit more than carbon that oceans and...

US authorities are to examine Roman Abramovich’s ties to the Kremlin as part of a national security review of a $2.3bn (£1.18bn) bid for Oregon Steel by a company controlled by the Russian billionaire. Experts in Washington say the US government panel that reviews foreign deals will scrutinise the proposed takeover, announced last month, more closely if Mr Abramovich is found to be acting with the backing of the Russian government. Mr Abramovich is believed to be close to Vladimir Putin, Russian president. The Russian steel company, Evraz, is controlled by Mr Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, group director. Evraz and...

Senate Democrats are planning an amendment to stop the GOP from using the budget process to more easily allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and a handful of others told reporters Tuesday that they’re working on how exactly to fight the ANWR provision in the budget, and to bring on Republicans to oppose it as well. “We’re going to work together with our colleagues to determine just the right moment in this budgetary process to make this amendment,” Markey said outside the Capitol. “But we are going to do so, and we...

SURFACING MODELS OF THOUGHT Out of the complexity of the global sand trade has emerged something of a butterfly effect, in which an economic decision in one place can wreak social and environmental havoc on the other side of the world. If you’re looking for a way to express something that’s staggeringly hard to count, you won’t find a more reliable metaphor than grains of sand. There is indeed quite a bit of it – about 7.5 quintillion grains on Earth’s beaches and deserts, according to one estimate. But if you think that this would be sufficient to supply an...

My wife has stage 4 metastatic cancer. She has battled this before and survived twice. This time the cancer has reached her brain and the doctors are a bit more apprehensive than before. Does anyone know about grants? All of her doctors are telling us to apply for grants to pay for her medicine. Any advice would be appreciated. I may not be able to respond right away, but I will do my best. Lots of planning and preparation on my part.

America’s uranium industry has been absolutely devastated by Department of Energy decisions and political maneuvering by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and individuals closely tied to her. ... in 1976, the uranium extraction industry employed 35,000 people. Today .. fewer than 500 people in this country are involved in it .. 20 percent of our electrical power is dependent on those 500 people, that’s every fifth light-bulb. We’re now producing enough uranium to power 4 or 5 of our nuclear reactors, that’s 94 dependent on foreign uranium. ... Since 2011, DOE has sold off roughly $1 billion of publicly-owned uranium...