Free Republic

The Gold ‘N Silver Inn in Reno, Nev., has long offered health coverage to its employees — but many of the cooks, dishwashers and waiters who make close to minimum wage can’t afford the $100 monthly premium. Last January, when Nevada became one of more than two dozen states to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, 10 of the diner’s 55 employees qualified for the government insurance program for low-income Americans. None of them realized it, however, until the family-run restaurant hired BeneStream, a New York-based start-up funded partly by the Ford Foundation. BeneStream charges $40 to screen each...

Venezuelans not 'lovin' it' as McDonald's fries go scarce CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan fast-food lovers are mourning the disappearance of McDonald's golden staple: the french fry. A recent shortage at the U.S. fast food chain comes as socialist Venezuela grapples with shortfalls of basic goods ranging from medicines to flour due to strict currency controls that stymie imports. McDonald's restaurants are coping by replacing the spuds with salad or local fare such as fried yuca or "arepa" corn pancakes - but Golden Arches fans are none too happy about the new meal. "Hamburgers don't go with arepas and this salad...

As if Silicon Valley hasn't given us enough already, it may have to start giving us all money. The first indication I got of this came one evening last summer, when I sat in on a meet-up of virtual-currency enthusiasts at a hackerspace a few miles from the Googleplex, in Mountain View, California. After one speaker enumerated the security problems of a promising successor to Bitcoin, the economics blogger Steve Randy Waldman got up to speak about "engineering economic security." Somewhere in his prefatory remarks he noted that he is an advocate of universal basic income—the idea that everyone should...

Forget the French fries. How about a side of yuca with that Big Mac? Venezuela's more than 100 McDonald's franchises have run out of potatoes and are now serving alternatives like deep-fried arepa flatbreads or yuca, a starchy staple of traditional Venezuelan cooking. McDonald's franchisers are blaming a contract dispute with West Coast dock workers for halting the export of frozen fries to the country. The dispute also caused several days of French fry rationing in Japan last month. But Sonia Ruseler, who runs McDonald's restaurants in Latin America, declined to say Tuesday why other countries in the region are...

Hollywood relishes making anti-American movies, but, maybe even more, loves to lavish fulsome tributes on full-blown Communists, you know, those fellows who swooned at Joe Stalin’s feet, teamed up with Hitler as he bombed the hell out of London in World War II and worked overtime to inflict deadly harm on America. Tinseltown is at it again, celebrating Dalton Trumbo, a major Hollywood Ten figure and longtime Communist enthusiast, in a brand new picture directed by Jay Roach and featuring Bryan Cranston, the star of the hit television series, Breaking Bad. The publicity for Trumbo says that Dalton bravely took...

For the third time, the cops of the NYPD have turned their backs on the mayor of New York. The first time was when Mayor Bill de Blasio arrived at Woodhull Hospital where mortally wounded officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu had been taken on Dec. 20. The second was when the mayor spoke at Ramos’ funeral. The third was at Liu’s service on Sunday. Detestation of de Blasio among the NYPD and the cops who came from across the country to stand in solidarity with their slain brothers is broad and deep. And, in a way, de Blasio served...

Jan. 1 was a red-letter day for America's provision of healthcare to its poorest residents--and we do mean red. That was the expiration day of a two-year bump in Medicaid reimbursements for primary care physicians seeing Medicaid patients. The raise temporarily raised Medicaid rates to the level of Medicare reimbursements; the expiration means a drop averaging nearly 43% nationwide, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. The consequences are self-evident. As the Urban Institute observes: "Significant drops in primary care reimbursement may lead physicians to see fewer Medicaid patients, potentially leading these patients to have difficulty finding a physician or...

Social media is awash with striking images of #EmptyShelvesInVenezuela (#AnaquelesVaciosEnVenezuela) as the evaporation of basic human staples such as toilet paper has now been hyperinflated to total chaos at warehouses and supermarkets. As President Maduro decries the loss of $100 oil "stability", vowing to return oil prices to their rightful places (and heads to China for help), lines reach for miles for milk and soap... and the people defy governmental bans on photographing empty market shelves... "We couldn't find shampoo, so we washed our hair with soap. Now there's not even soap."

Europe News Europe’s Empty Churches Go on Sale Hundreds of Churches Have Closed or Are Threatened by Plunging Membership, Posing Question: What to Do With Unused Buildings? By Naftali Bendavid Jan. 2, 2015 7:36 p.m. ET ARNHEM, Netherlands—Two dozen scruffy skateboarders launched perilous jumps in a soaring old church building here on a recent night, watched over by a mosaic likeness of Jesus and a solemn array of stone saints. This is the Arnhem Skate Hall, an uneasy reincarnation of the Church of St. Joseph, which once rang with the prayers of nearly 1,000 worshipers. It is one of hundreds...

Fifteen months ago, academic climate scientists expressed worries that a new climate model sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) was going to harm existing modeling efforts, siphoning off talent and funding when federally funded science is short on both. The biggest concern: that the Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) project, meant to forecast local impacts of climate change and to be used on DOE’s future exascale supercomputers, would dilute resources from the Community Earth System Model (CESM). That model, managed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, is built on science and code...

To hear the White House tell it, the November elections never happened and 2014 was a super-duper year for President Obama. In a “Year in Review” slideshow, the White House suggests 2014 represented a “breakthrough” for America. The Obama administration takes credit for: • An economy growing at a record pace; • The longest streak of private-sector job growth on record; • The number of Americans without health insurance falling to a near record low; • Concerted action to prevent sexual assaults on college campuses; • The highest high school graduation rate in the nation’s history; • Historic steps to...

Famous Venezuelan ice-cream store closes over milk shortage CARACAS - An ice-cream store listed in the Guinness World Records book for its 863 different flavours has become the latest victim of Venezuela's economic crisis. "We are closed during the season due to shortage of milk," the famous Coromoto ice-cream store in the highland town of Merida announced on its Facebook page. Locals confirmed that the shop, hugely popular among tourists for its exotic and strange flavours ranging from beer to beans, had been closed since Christmas Eve. A sign on the door asked customers' forgiveness "for not attending you due...

From Socialism, by Ludwig von Mises (1951, Originally written in German, 1932) Part V, Deconstructionism, Chapter I, The Motive Powers of Desconstructionism, Section 1, The nature of deconstructionism. To the socialist, the coming of Socialism means a transition from an irrational to a rational economy. Under Socialism, planned management of economic life takes the place of anarchy of production; society, which is conceived as the incarnation of reason, takes the place of the conflicting aims of unreasonable and self-interested individuals. A just distribution replaces an unjust distribution of goods. Want and misery vanish and there is wealth for all-- so...

The scars left on the soul and minds of so many surviving victims of communism are hard to heal On Christmas 1989, twenty-five years ago, the brutal communist dictatorship of Romania ended with the execution of the tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena in front of a firing squad at Tirgoviste, following a brief trial. His reign of terror lasted 24 years (1965-1989). The first communist despot, Gheorghe Georghiu-Dej (1945-1964) was so ruthless, the citizens felt like “hunted” animals during his regime. Almost forty-four years of brutal communism left a deep and festering wound that would be hard to...

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin campaigned on socialist medicine. He promised to turn Vermont into a socialist paradise, complete with “free” healthcare for all. Last week he announced that socialist medicine was too expensive for Vermont. Not even Johnathan Gruber could save the single payer dreams of Vermont socialists. The fact is socialist single payer is too expensive for the people of Vermont. The state has an annual budget of $2.7 billion. Socialist single payer would have added $1.6-2.5 billion to the budget with the latter end of projections more likely. Doubling state expenditures means doubling taxes, with an 8% income...

Its official the Socialists have taken over the Mike Brown-Eric Garner Movement. In New York tonight 100s of protesters have taken to the streets despite the calls from the City's Mayor and even New York Congressmen Meeks(D-NY) for protestors to hold off until both recently murdered cops have been laid to rest. What the Mayor, Congressmen and even Al Shrpton fail to realize is that once you start a movement the Socialists from ANSWER, SEIU, SDS Code Pink and the Weather Underground, which are made up of mostly aging White hippies will take it over. I post here about how...

Many parents undoubtedly think they are doing the best for their children by having them bring lunch from home instead of eating the lunches served in school. But recent studies clearly prove them wrong. Home-packed lunches, the research showed, are likely to be considerably less nourishing than the meals offered in schools that abide by current nutrition guidelines for the National School Lunch Program. That program is, distressingly, increasingly under attack. But the program must not continue to be undermined, and more schools should be encouraged to participate. Nearly 32 million of the more than 50 million children in public...

... There were many AGU talks about the climate impacts we’re already seeing. For example, human-caused global warming is amplifying many types of extreme weather like drought, heat waves, and storms. Climate and social scientists have struggled to communicate this urgency to the public. While most people accept that humans are changing the climate, few understand the urgency of mitigating these risks. This is particularly a problem for ideological conservatives. Among social scientists, a consensus is forming that more climate-specific knowledge translates into greater acceptance of the science and support for mitigation. However, facts are more effective when ideological barriers...

Obamacare is easily on track to beat the administration's enrollment targets, with more than 6 million people already signed up for coverage. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said Tuesday that 6.4 million people have either selected new plans or automatically renewed their coverage. The 6.4 million people who selected plans through the federally run exchanges include about 1.9 million new customers. The rest are current customers who either automatically renewed their coverage or shopped for a new plan. People who automatically renew their policies are at risk for some of the biggest out-of-pocket premium increases anywhere in...

Coal miners and gay activists — two groups that, in 1980s England at least, you might have figured would steer clear of each other — partner surprisingly effectively in the real-life story that's affectionately fictionalized in Pride.....