Free Republic

Even the best things come to an end. After enjoying a quarter of a century of writing this column for Creators Syndicate, I have decided to stop. Age 86 is well past the usual retirement age, so the question is not why I am quitting, but why I kept at it so long. It was very fulfilling to be able to share my thoughts on the events unfolding around us, and to receive feedback from readers across the country — even if it was impossible to answer them all. Being old-fashioned, I liked to know what the facts were before...

Rehm's retirement is a Christmas gift to America National Public Radio mainstay Diane Rehm, who did Hollywood a disservice by missing her calling as a horror movie voice actor, has at long last retired after nearly four decades of boring and infantilizing helpless Washington, D.C. area taxi fares. Her retirement Dec. 23 is an early Christmas present for Americans. The fossilized crypt-keeper of taxpayer-funded NPR, a pillar of the left-wing media establishment, is beloved by wrong-thinking people across the fruited plain. She also helped starve her husband so he would die prematurely which makes her a heroic figure — a...

Two financial firms raked in billions of dollars of business from the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the $184-billion retirement fund serving many state employees, after their agents bribed one of the pension fund's employees with cash, watches, travel, bottle-service, cocaine, strippers, prostitutes, and Paul McCartney tickets, according to indictments announced today by Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The two indictments announced today only cover three people: Navnoor Kang, 38, the director of fixed income and security for the $185 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund; Gregg Schonhorn, 45, the vice...

When Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013, the city’s emergency-financial team said that high levels of retirement debt could prevent them from rescuing the Motor City’s finances. Detroit had been in economic decline for decades, and the pension problem—including billions of dollars in bonuses handed out while the city was hurtling toward insolvency—was just one part of the depressing financial picture. Dallas, by contrast, has been one of the fastest-growing American cities in recent years. Becoming a magnet for investment and opportunity, however, hasn’t protected the Texas city from experiencing its own Detroit-style financial crisis. Dallas’s retirement system for cops...

Hack Senator Chuck Schumer called ‘Dirty Harry’ Reid, “truly one of a kind”, “one of the most unique men any of us…any of us..would ever meet.” “Harry,” he said, “I would not be the senator nor the man I am today without you.” He called him his mentor. He couldn’t help but cry as he spoke. CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO.... Harry Reid ran the Senate like a little despot and Chuck apparently plans to follow his lead. He is his mentor after all. Senator Bob Corker, not one given to hyperbole, described his leadership as akin to Putin’s....

Sen. Barbara Boxer of California bid farewell to Congress on Wednesday after 33 years as a liberal champion, choking up as she read a letter from jazz great Sonny Rollins thanking her for "making life beautiful" for the people she's represented. "What he said is all I wanted to do, make life beautiful for people," Boxer said in her farewell speech on the Senate floor. "I didn't always succeed ... I can honestly say that I never stopped trying." Former House colleagues of Boxer including Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco came to the Senate to pay their...

Germantown, MD – Abortionist LeRoy Carhart will no longer be conducting abortions at Germantown Reproductive Health Services (GRHS), an abortion facility in Germantown, Maryland, that has until now provided abortions throughout all nine months of pregnancy. According to local sources, Carhart’s last abortions in Maryland took place during the week of October 30, 2016. He returned to GRHS on November 8, but stayed only a few hours, sending several very late-term patients home without abortions. He left later in the afternoon and never returned. “The fact that Carhart will no longer be aborting babies in Maryland is something to be...

The company said the move is an alignment with industry trends in which fewer companies offer pensions. WILMINGTON, Del. -- The DuPont Company said it will eliminate its pension contribution for active employees. ... active employees will no longer accrue additional benefits, and employees under age 50 also will no longer receive dental, medical and life insurance benefits in retirement. ... Since 1998, nearly one-quarter of all Fortune 500 companies have stopped contributing to employees' primary pension plans, and 40 percent offer only a 401(k).

Patriotic Retirement Plan: There are about 40 million people over 50 in the workplace. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations: 1) They MUST retire. That means forty million (some attrition of course) job openings. Unemployment fixed. 2) They MUST buy a new American car. Car industry and manufacturing restored. 3) They MUST either buy a house or payoff their Mortgage. Housing crisis fixed. That's it, we're only talking 40 million dollars in taxpayer money, not even worth a line item in the US budget. This would be ample retirement money for anyone with...

I talk a lot about the global investment markets. I’m focused on making profits, and often I’m looking to make multiples, knowing full well that some opportunities won't work out. I’ll get timing wrong or I’ll miss something entirely and need to hedge, reposition, or exit entirely. That’s life. But I haven’t spent much time on stating the obvious (because I figured it’s obvious) so today's post is going to do just that. We are going to forget all about economics, financial markets, central banks, derivatives, GDP, and all that stuff, and we're going to go all the way back...

illary Clinton And Wall Street: Financial Industry May Control Retirement Savings In A Clinton Administration BY DAVID SIROTA @DAVIDSIROTA AND AVI ASHER-SCHAPIRO ON 10/19/16 AT 12:50 AM Blackstone's Tony James: America's Not Great at Saving While Hillary Clinton has spent the presidential campaign saying as little as possible about her ties to Wall Street, the executive who some observers say could be her Treasury Secretary has been openly promoting a plan to give financial firms control of hundreds of billions of dollars in retirement savings. The executive is Tony James, president of the Blackstone Group. The investment colossus is most...

While Hillary Clinton has spent the presidential campaign saying as little as possible about her ties to Wall Street, the executive who some observers say could be her Treasury Secretary has been openly promoting a plan to give financial firms control of hundreds of billions of dollars in retirement savings. The executive is Tony James, president of the Blackstone Group.

If a politician said he thought he should tax the income from your retirement plan, right now, at 50% (no matter where you are in the retirement process, that would certainly hurt the ability of your portfolio to compound), what would you think (other than that he was completely Looney Tunes)? But that's exactly what the Federal Reserve has done by keeping interest rates low. It has reduced the fixed-income returns in retirement plans and the broad pension plans upon which so many people are dependent to practically nothing. And the Fed has done this to prop up asset prices....

In business, the 80/20 rule states that 80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers. In an economy where more than 2/3rds of the growth rate is driven by consumption, an even bigger imbalance of the “have” and “have not’s” presents a major headwind.

The law, which took effect Saturday, allows Pennsylvania to seize some retirement accounts three years after they're presumed abandoned - regardless of the account owner's age. Previously, the state waited until individuals reached age 701/2 before seizing retirement accounts and liquidating the portfolios. Now, older folks and famously contact-averse millennials could be affected. Valley Forge-based Vanguard, with more than $3 trillion in assets, isn't happy about the state's budget-inspired change and plans to join forces with others in the financial industry to repeal the law next year. ... For those who opt to communicate electronically, the "lost contact" trigger is...

"...Now many in that class are turning 58 years old, and Butler is a shell of what it was four decades ago, with the mills long-since shuttered or shrunk — casualties of the globalized steel industry — taking most of the jobs and that old sense of security with them. People here are approaching their golden years with a sense of bitterness about the new, unforgiving economy and foreboding about what they will have to show for this life. Something their parents could count on — a comfortable retirement, debt-free and maybe in a warmer place — seems out of...

The state’s largest 100 municipalities owe more than $4.2 billion in unfunded pension benefits to their employees, and Michigan’s 83 counties add another $2.5 billion to the total. Wayne County’s experience shows how this underfunding arose, while Oakland County shows the way out. Most Wayne County communities run a defined benefit pension plan for their employees, and most of them are significantly underfunded. Detroit was allowed to keep enrolling new employees in a smaller defined benefit plan after it left bankruptcy court and received a state bailout. Foreseeing such problems, in 1994 Oakland County closed its defined benefit pensions to...

Thinking of retiring to western N.C. I'd love a log cabin in the mountains with modern amenities, but don't want to be too far from Dr's, grocery shopping, hospitals, etc., so a good mtn view would suffice. I've been looking north, west & east of Asheville and also in the Lenoir area and further south of Lenoir. I'm watching the weather, and reading N.C newspapers and it seems like flooding can be a real problem. Any suggestions/warnings from North Carolinians, especially regarding areas to avoid, would be helpful. Thanks

NEW YORK (AP) — The Huffington Post is going to be without a Huffington. Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post's editor-in-chief, announced Thursday that she's leaving to head a new health, wellbeing and productivity startup.

Yankees say A-Rod's last game will be on August 12th; will then assume role as special advisor and instructor.