Free Republic

Socialist candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination Sen. Bernie Sanders refused to answer any questions about how his Administration will pay for the plethora of taxpayer-subsidized loot he is promising to voters, saying that "it would spoil the surprise." "Does anyone demand that Santa Claus lay out a budget for all the gifts he gives?" Sanders wanted to know. "On one level, it would be rude to look a gift horse in the mouth. From a more practical standpoint, if I tip my hand ahead of time the people I'm going to ask to bear the expense may try to...

President Obama on Saturday unveiled an unemployment insurance plan that he says will provide stability and opportunity to workers in a rapidly changing economy. The president's three-pronged plan includes wage insurance of up to $10,000 over two years, expanded unemployment insurance coverage and more opportunities for laid off workers to retrain and reenter the workforce. "If a hardworking American loses her job, regardless of what state she lives in, we should make sure she can get unemployment insurance and some help to retrain for her next job," Obama said in his weekly address. "It's a way to give families some...

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”—Aldous Huxley There’s a man who contacts me several times a week to disagree with my assessments of the...

Hillary Clinton expanded on a plan to make the wealthiest Americans pay higher taxes, rolling out a new "surcharge" on multimillionaires that would restore the top tax rate to levels that haven't been in place for 30 years.

Bernie Sanders now leads Hillary Clinton by 14 points in New Hampshire, according to the latest Monmouth University Poll of likely New Hampshire voters who are likely to vote in the first-in-the-nation primary in February. Fifty-three percent of these voters choose Sanders, compared to 39 percent for Clinton. And the new poll shows that Clinton has also lost her edge over Sanders among registered Democrats, women and older voters. Sanders has now surpassed her with these voters, while holding onto his lead among registered independents, men and younger voters.

1) "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." -- Margaret Thatcher 2) "It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition...

According to an investigation by the Washington Free Beacon, Democratic presidential candidate Sen Bernie Sanders's spouse Jane O'Meara Sanders, and stepdaughter, Carina Driscoll, both drew sizable salaries from Sanders's House campaigns between 2000 and 2004. Presidential campaign Press Secretary, Symone Sanders denied there was any scandal in how prior campaign donations have been deployed. "All of this money was freely given to him by his supporters," she pointed out. "Obviously, they could afford it." Ms. Sanders also argued that "it proves that Bernie is the 'family values' candidate. A man who takes care of his own family as well as...

The developing world deserves reparations from wealthier nations as compensation for the harmful climate change effects that are mostly our fault. It's us who have tainted our global commons by emitting vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and us whose actions have led to extreme weather and other disasters in the world's most vulnerable regions. But a strictly financial mea culpa from rich nations won't be enough. Rich countries should also invest in geoengineering projects to provide solutions for those on the front lines of climate change: those who cannot afford to pay for more adaptive and resilient...

President Nicolas Maduro is doubling down on his existing economic policies with the appointment of a young leftist hardliner to head the country's cratering economy, setting up a potential confrontation between the ruling socialist party and the newly powerful opposition. Luis Salas, the new 39-year-old vice president for the economy, has scant administrative experience, but champions the same theories of price and currency controls that have defined Venezuela's leftist economic policy for 17 years. Like Maduro, Salas says the country is suffering from the world's worst recession and triple-digit inflation because business interests are colluding with the U.S. to sabotage...

Throughout his presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders has been Hillary Clinton's strongest rival, by far, for the Democratic nomination. Huge numbers of people are very excited about this 74-year-old Senator from Vermont. His campaign rallies have drawn massive crowds, sometimes in the vicinity of 30,000 attendees. The Washington Post and Bill Maher, among many others, have noted Sanders' "rock-star" appeal. And a recent poll of 75,000 voters in all 50 states found that Sanders had a higher approval rating (83%) among his constituents, than any other U.S. Senator. In short, Bernie Sanders is no fringe Democrat. Thus it is imperative for...

More than 100 restaurant owners in the state of New York are begging Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) not to force them to pay their waiters and waitresses $15 an hour. But it's doubtful he heard them over the roar of union workers at rallies Jan. 4 supporting Cuomo's call for a statewide $15 an hour minimum wage. Melissa Fleischut, president and CEO of the New York State Restaurant Association, can see the $15 an hour wage coming, but she's hoping for a five-year moratorium for people who make their livings on tips. She said her organization's members would be crushed...

By this time, Chris Matthews must be panicked. When he asked DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to explain the difference between Democrats and socialists, the MSNBC host expressed considerable angst that the party’s leading officer couldn’t do so. "I used to think there was a big difference," Matthews lamented at the time.Fast forward five months. Matthews posed the question to the party’s leading candidate for its presidential nomination, and … Hillary Clinton couldn’t explain it either. Who else can Matthews ask? Joe Manchin, please pick up the red courtesy phone: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Newsbusters has the...

Scientists say cyclical changes in the Pacific Ocean have thrown Earth’s surface into what may be an unprecedented warming spurt, following a global warming slowdown that lasted about 15 years. While El Niño is being blamed for an outbreak of floods, storms and unseasonable temperatures across the planet, a much slower-moving cycle of the Pacific Ocean has also been playing a role in record-breaking warmth. The recent effects of both ocean cycles are being amplified by climate change. A 2014 flip was detected in the sluggish and elusive ocean cycle known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO, which also...

... Some of [Obamacare's] approaches have turned out to be ineffective, poorly targeted, or not ambitious enough to address deeply rooted problems. - Healthcare experts Timothy Jost and Harold Pollack These are inevitable occurrences with any major legislation, though they don't have much to do with the real issue conservatives have with the ACA. In the view of John E. McDonough of Harvard's School of Public Health, it's that Obamacare raises taxes on the wealthy while giving them "bupkis" in direct benefits. A lot can be done to correct the real flaws in the ACA, and Timothy S. Jost, emeritus...

Progressives may preach the joys of localism, but the trend in government is all the other way in everything from climate change to the economic complexion of your neighborhood. The End of Localism This could be how our experiment with grassroots democracy finally ends. World leaders-the super-rich, their pet nonprofits, their media boosters, and their allies in the global apparat-gather in Paris to hammer out a deal to transform the planet, and our lives. No one asks much about what the states and the communities, the electorate, or even Congress, thinks of the arrangement. The executive now presumes to rule...

California officials never anticipated how many people would sign up for state-run health insurance under Obamacare. The state's health plan for the poor, known as Medi-Cal, now covers 12.7 million people, 1 of every 3 Californians. Though a surprise, the high Medi-Cal enrollment is generally hailed as a success. California's uninsured population has been cut in half since Obamacare, in large part because so many Californians signed up for Medi-Cal, which is free for beneficiaries. "The Medi-Cal program continues to grow at a very substantial rate, which is great. We are very happy that we're able to provide healthcare to...

The Catholic Church has been hijacked by the S American left, and it's sad to watch- yet ironically, this ongoing 'revolution' at The Vatican continues while disillusioned Argentines and Venezeulans run away from socialism as fast as their feet can carry them...  Get with the times -and facts/reality- Your Holiness, the left has nothing to offer the poor that has a prayer of working over the medium-long term. With all due respect, you could learn from John Paul II and Ronald Reagan... both of whom did a lot more -and did it effectively- to help the plebes than blowhard Marxist frauds like...

Shocker! Gallup finds that 69 percent of Americans view big government as the biggest threat in the future. The figure is slightly down from 2013, where it stood at 72 percent. For those “Feeling the Bern,” we regret to inform you that only 25 percent feel that big business is a threat, followed by big labor at six percent. Another interesting aspect is the number of Democrats and Independent voters who also feel big government is a problem. Of course, almost every Republican–88 percent–agrees that big government poses the biggest threat to the country. But 53 percent of Democrats feel...

Well, it’s official: Bernie Sanders did not get an Econ 101 textbook for Christmas (again): Bernie Sanders: You have families out there paying 6, 8, 10 percent on student debt but you can refinance your homes at 3 percent. What sense is that?

Gov. David Ige on Thursday extended an emergency proclamation to deal with Hawaii's homelessness crisis. The extension gives the state and counties more flexibility in how they complete shelters, micro-housing and other projects to address homelessness. [...] Hawaii has the largest rate of homeless people per capita of any state in the nation, with 7,260 homeless people in Hawaii at the latest count. ...