Free Republic

Obama does have an astounding eloquence, and an ability to put a position across, but that eloquence has been reserved largely for anti-war and good-government positions. His stance against the war may resonate (though that will depend on whether McCain's qualification as commander-in-chief trumps his unpopular stance on the war). But where McCain is most vulnerable and where voters are most likely to smile on a Democrat--on everyday economic issues--Obama's heart doesn't appear to be in it. These difficulties were clear before Obama spoke in San Francisco, but they're much more glaring now. In the speech, Obama appeared to say...

Cannot be posted due to copyright issues: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/usa-2008-the-great-depression-803095.html

It is fascinating watching politicians say how they are going to rescue the "rust belt" regions where jobs are disappearing and companies are either shutting down or moving elsewhere. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is being blamed for the jobs going elsewhere. Barack Obama blames the Clinton administration for NAFTA, and that includes Hillary Clinton. Senator Obama says that he is for free trade, provided it is "fair trade." That is election year rhetoric at its cleverest. Since "fair" is one of those words that can mean virtually anything to anybody, what this amounts to is that politicians...

ALIQUIPPA, Pa. (AP) — Amid the bleak, run-down brick buildings, drug dealers drive around in shiny SUVs, Cadillacs and convertibles, the sun glinting off their chrome-plated spinning hubs. Drugs and money are exchanged on street corners. Addicts crash in crack houses, some of them right downtown. Gunfights erupt between drug dealers jealously guarding their territory. Rival gangs — the L's and the G's — deal the crack that flows into this riverfront town from New Jersey, New York, Detroit and Washington. In Rust Belt cities like Aliquippa, drugs moved in after steel moved out. In 10 of 14 Rust Belt...

In his latest attack on the free market and what appears to be a calculated political move to appeal to Michigan voters, John McCain wants to create a new welfare program for manufacturing workers. According to the Detroit Free Press, Senator McCain announced yesterday a plan to use federal dollars to make up the salary difference for workers who lose manufacturing jobs and are forced to accept lower-paying jobs until they find new careers. This is exactly the kind of plan you expect to hear from the Democratic candidates, not an alleged economic conservative, The government should not be in...

The drumbeat of bad economic news out of Michigan keeps pounding. The Great Lakes State has lost jobs for six consecutive years, Michigan’s longest run of workplace shrinkages since the Great Depression. Automakers are laying off tens of thousands. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is closing up shop in Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo. The state ranks among the top three in the country for home foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies. Analysts at Comerica Bank, which is moving its headquarters from Detroit to Dallas, say Michigan is stuck in a “one-state recession.”

ALBANY - Thousands of people left New York for other parts of the country last year, making it one of only three states that failed to grow since 2005, according to census estimates released Friday. New York's estimated population on July 1 was 19.3 million, a drop of 9,538 from a year earlier, the U.S. Census Bureau reported. That drop is minuscule - 0.0005 percent - and based on estimates rather than an actual count. But census demographers say it shows New York's population remained virtually unchanged over the year. New York and other Northeast states have suffered for years...

Cook County lost more people between 2000 and 2005 than any county in the nation, according to Census Bureau estimates released Thursday that also show continued gains in suburban and exurban counties across the region and portions of the nation. The new figures--based on administrative records and estimates for births, deaths and net migration--show the county lost more than 73,000 people, or 1.4 percent, since the last official count in April 2000. The largest-loser designation can partly be attributed to Cook County's massive size, because raw numbers were used for the rankings. Still, among the nation's 10 largest counties, Cook,...

The current U.S. expansion has lifted the fortunes of nearly every state in the country, with the notable exception of Michigan, which is busy reclaiming its 1970s's title as home of the rust belt. Sad to say, politicians in both parties are only making things worse. Amid the decline of the Big Three auto companies, Michigan ranked last in income growth last year and was the only state not hit by a hurricane to have lost jobs. United Van Lines reports that more people moved out of Michigan last year than in any year since 1982, when the state jobless...

The current U.S. expansion has lifted the fortunes of nearly every state in the country, with the notable exception of Michigan, which is busy reclaiming its 1970s's title as home of the rust belt. Sad to say, politicians in both parties are only making things worse. Amid the decline of the Big Three auto companies, Michigan ranked last in income growth last year and was the only state not hit by a hurricane to have lost jobs. United Van Lines reports that more people moved out of Michigan last year than in any year since 1982, when the state jobless...

NEW YORK — U.S. Mid-Atlantic factory activity plunged this month to its lowest level in nearly two years, a regional central bank said Thursday, the latest sign of softer economic growth. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve (search) said its business activity index skidded lower to 7.3 in May from 25.3 in April, the largest one-month drop since January 2001 and sharply below Wall Street forecasts of a milder drop to 19.0. A measure above zero denotes growth in the sector. The report confirmed that May was a tough month for East Coast manufacturers. The New York Fed (search) issued a report...

A new study by researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County finds that these "inner suburbs," which boomed after World War II, are now struggling with stagnation and decline, increasing poverty and deteriorating infrastructure as jobs and younger, more-affluent families have tended to migrate to the outer suburbs over the past 25 years. The study, by UMBC's Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education, calls for greater public and private reinvestment in these aging communities to stem the loss of open land and increasing traffic congestion as the region's suburbs keep spreading outward. Analyzing census data from 1980 through...

ST. LOUIS - City officials Wednesday declared St. Louis has reversed about 50 years of population loss and is growing, though a U.S. Census Bureau (news - web sites) official said he had no data to confirm the new count. The city earlier challenged Census Bureau estimates that the population declined by roughly 16,000 people since 2000, when the bureau set the population at 348,189. During the challenge process, the bureau changed a July 2003 population estimate from 332,223 to 348,039. According to the Census Bureau, the city's 2003 population was just 150 people below where it was in 2000....

SCRANTON, Pa. - Joe Dougherty knows better than to predict the outcome of the presidential election in this hardscrabble city at the base of the Poconos, where coal left in the 1950s and people have been fleeing ever since. "The town," says Dougherty as he flipped burgers in the back of his tidy diner off the town's faded main strip, "is always a question mark." Scranton is a mostly conservative place, "where there are as many churches as there are taverns," joked Dougherty, 68, a father of 12 who has seen the town dwindle from 140,000 to 70,000 in his...

NEW LEXINGTON, Ohio, Sept. 3 - Sharon Alfman, the cook at the little County Seat Diner here, might seem to be a likely John Kerry supporter. She has voted Democratic most of her life. She has no health insurance through the diner, and her husband's insurance ran out after he was on disability for more than a year. But she already knows that she is going to vote for President Bush. Mrs. Alfman, 51, said that if the Democrats could do anything about health insurance, they would have done it under Bill Clinton. Now, she said, the Democrats have "burned...

LIMA — The Allen County Fairgrounds is no stranger to the throaty roar of motorcycle pipes. But next year, a different kind of bike will be rolling in, something far quieter but with every bit as much muscle. In July, the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America will hold its annual rally in Lima, bringing around 7,000 people and 4,000 motorcycles to town. Despite the name, the group is an interna-tional organization with members in 40 countries, many of which send at least a few to the rally, organizers said. “We’re going to transform the Allen County Fairgrounds to Beamerville, USA,”...

<p>JOHNSTOWN, Pa. -- A few men sat around the Greyhound bus station the other day telling stories about the good times, when this was a bustling industrial city that attracted newcomers from as far away as Croatia. Nestled in the Allegheny Mountains, with its coal, steel, and railroads, the small city was once known as the "Cradle of the American Steel Industry."</p>

Fri September 12, 2003 11:14 AM ET By Karen Pierog and Susan Kelly CHICAGO (Reuters) - The prospect of a jobless economic recovery has governors in the nation's rust belt increasingly worried that the thousands of manufacturing jobs lost during the recession and the tax revenues they generated are not coming back. "I'm sending up the alarm," said Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm in a recent interview. "We are at code red in terms of loss of manufacturing jobs and the shifting of these businesses offshore." In Michigan, where manufacturing accounts for one out of every five jobs, more than 170,000...

NO: NO: YES: "Democratic Nationalists" supporting Traficant's bid pledge electoral victory against ultra-left Democratic Socialists invasion of Democratic party as well as "free trade" economic treachery of the Democratic Leadership Council. On one year anniversary of Congressman's wrongful expulsion from Congress, candidate approved "Draft Traficant" Committee Files with FEC in Washington. July 24, 2003 In a stunning political move by his supporters, authorized "Draft Traficant" leaders file official organizational papers with Federal Elections Commission in Washington on Monday. Draft Committee pledges "Candidate's Movement" supporting Traficant throughout next year in Democratic primaries nationwide. "We will fight against the Democratic Socialists and...