Free Republic

Politics Socialism’s Lonely Eden by Chad Ashby March 22, 2016 The rise of Bernie Sanders this election cycle has American voters dusting off an old question: What is socialism? In 2016, the Cold War is a distant memory, and many millennial voters were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In a political race shaped by tweets and sound bytes, it’s tempting to think socialism is just a catchall term for a hodgepodge of liberal policies like free college, universal healthcare, wealth redistribution, and tax plans. Such assumptions suggest that socialism is misunderstood in the 21st century—in fact, even...

Last night, in a parking lot in South Carolina, a car drove by with the following message on a bumper sticker, or should it be bummer sticker: Socialism: Because People Matter More Than Profits

What does it say about Bernie Sanders--and the Pope--that when it comes to economics, Sanders sees Pope Francis as more "radical" than he is? Appearing on today's Morning Joe, Sanders discussed the news that he has been invited to visit the Vatican. Sanders mentioned that [other than on social issues] he is a "big, big fan of the Pope." Said Sanders: "people think Bernie Sanders is radical. Uh-uh. Read what the Pope is writing." Sanders went on to describe the Pope's views on economics: "he's talking about the idolatry of money, the worship of money, the greed that's out there...

The America we live in, our nation, our people, our society, is not the America most of us were born in at all. The uniquely American forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the football games, the local bars, the movies, the concerts, and the holidays. But the spirit, which most of us never noticed because we made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, has been fundamentally transformed. The transformation has occurred through the slowly creeping separation of not only the government from the people, but the people themselves from their country. It has taken place...

For a long time, there's been one key part of the Earth system that, just maybe, could help us out a little bit with our global warming problem: Clouds. Clouds are central to the climate because their white surfaces reflect sunlight back to space, keeping the planet cooler than it would be otherwise. But if you change the ratio of water to ice, you also change the strength of the feedback. And based on recent satellite observations, Tan and her colleagues - from Yale and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - argue that water has a higher prevalence in these clouds...

The computer models that predict climate change may be overestimating the cooling power of clouds, new research suggests. If the findings are borne out by further research, it suggests that making progress against global warming will be even harder. The balance of water and ice in clouds affects the impact that carbon dioxide levels have on atmospheric temperatures, a factor known as equilibrium climate sensitivity. With less ice in the mix to start, however, there is less capacity for water to replace ice, said Ivy Tan, an author of the paper and a graduate student at the department of geology...

Most computer simulations of climate change are underestimating by at least one degree how warm the world will get this century, a new study suggests. According to the study published Thursday in the journal Science, computer model simulations say there is more ice and less liquid water in clouds than a decade of satellite observations show. Because as the climate changes, there will be more clouds with far more liquid, and global warming will be higher than previously thought, said study co-author Trude Storelvmo, a Yale atmospheric scientist.

Bernie Sanders and his young supporters say, “No worries, we’re democratic socialists.” Outsiders say, “No problem, they barely know what socialism is.” Others see Sanders’s movement as a passing response to an economic downturn. All of this is largely mistaken. Modern American socialism is decidedly undemocratic; its young acolytes are far less ignorant of socialism than they appear; and contemporary socialism is more of a religious than an economic phenomenon. Distracted by the disturbing rise of Donald Trump, liberals and conservatives alike are responding far too complacently to a recrudescent socialist movement that is destined to harm our democracy. *********snip***********...

Predictions of unprecedented rainfall extremes in the 20th century driven by global warming turned out wrong, a study said Wednesday, casting doubt on methods used to project future trends. A massive trawl of Northern Hemisphere rainfall data for the last 1,200 years revealed there had been more dramatic wet-dry weather extremes in earlier, cooler centuries before humans set off fossil fuel-driven global warming. This is problematic, said a study in the journal Nature, as the same data models used to anticipate that global warming would cause record rainfall extremes in the 1900s, are the basis for projections of things to...

On Tuesday I published a short post about the key arguments of climate-change skeptics while also pointing out that some 98 percent of published scientists in the field believe human-caused climate change is indeed happening and must be addressed. For years the two sides have been talking - or yelling - past one another, which benefits none of us. As expected, the post brought forth a wave of comments from readers. Many lambasted me for providing a forum for the "lunatics" who deny human-caused climate change. Climate skeptics, on the other hand, chastised me for only presenting their more simplistic...

The Obama administration brushed over the threat that climate change poses to the snow-loving wolverine when it denied protections for the elusive predator, a federal judge ruled Monday. U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen ordered wildlife officials to act as quickly as possible to protect the species as it becomes vulnerable to a warming planet. Wolverines need deep mountain snows to den, and scientists warn that such habitat will shrink as Earth heats up. The ruling comes two years after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected the views of many of its own scientists and decided not to protect the...

Climate records back to Viking times show the 20th century was unexceptional for rainfall and droughts despite assumptions that global warming would trigger more wet and dry extremes, a study showed on Wednesday. Stretching back 1,200 years, written accounts of climate indicated that variations in the extremes in the 20th century were less than in some past centuries. "Several other centuries show stronger and more widespread extremes," lead author Fredrik Ljungqvist of Stockholm University told Reuters. "We can't say it's more extreme now." Ljungqvist said many existing scientific models of climate change over-estimated assumptions that rising temperatures would make dry...

Barack Obama has called for international tax reform in the wake of the revelations contained in the Panama Papers. “There is no doubt that the problem of global tax avoidance generally is a huge problem,” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “The problem is that a lot of this stuff is legal, not illegal.” The US president said the leak from Panama illustrated the scale of tax avoidance involving Fortune 500 companies and running into trillions of dollars worldwide. “We shouldn’t make it legal to engage in transactions just to avoid taxes,” he added, praising instead “the...

A former NHS director died after waiting for nine months for an operation - at her own hospital. Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex. But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery. Her devastated husband, Jim, is now demanding answers from Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust - the organisation where his wife had served as a non-executive member of the board of directors.

Fraud: While the global warming alarmists have done a good job of spreading fright, they haven’t been so good at hiding their real motivation. Yet another one has slipped up and revealed the catalyst driving the climate scare. We have been told now for almost three decades that man has to change his ways or his fossil-fuel emissions will scorch Earth with catastrophic warming. Scientists, politicians and activists have maintained the narrative that their concern is only about caring for our planet and its inhabitants. But this is simply not true. The narrative is a ruse. They are after something...

nezuela is, once again, in the throes of a full-blown electricity crisis. Citizens complain of unannounced blackouts are shutting down factories, forcing shopping malls to close early, and otherwise wreaking havoc on an already-sputtering economy. The crisis is so severe that President Nicolás Maduro has curtailed working hours for government workers. Last week he even extended the Holy Week holiday to reduce power usage. And Venezuelans are preparing for even worse news. Many are anxiously monitoring the dwindling water supply of the enormous Guri dam, which supplies roughly half of the country’s electricity. Experts are predicting that, as soon as...

How affordable is the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare? One just needs to look at the state of Minnesota. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota increased its individual health insurance premiums by an average of 49 percent in 2016. In Minnesota, many younger people may now have to pay for a portion of the health care assistance a dead parent received in the past. When Minnesota agreed to expand its Medicaid program, required asset tests were eliminated. Prior to that change, assets such as real estate were accounted for when determining eligibility. Now assets are not used...

California and New York — where almost 1 in 5 Americans live — are on their way to raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour, and the activists who spearheaded those efforts are now setting their sights on other similarly liberal, Democratic-led states. Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington are among the states with active “Fight for $15” efforts, and even economic experts who oppose the increased rate see it gaining momentum. “There is lots of pressure to do this,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who is now president of...

Here’s how you know people generally disfavor socialism. Proponents of socialism take a parent to child approach by wrapping a distasteful thing (socialism) inside something seen as more palatable (democrocy). Viola, cheese covered broccoli. Except Democratic Socialism is still socialism, with all the trappings and pitfalls of a miserable population, a crap economy, and a huge gap between rich and poor. Also, spoiler alert: the USA is a REPUBLIC. Stop saying we’re a democracy already. I explain in detail below. VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XgdtHewGR0

Call it Pennsylvania’s highway robbery. A pot of money from a huge increase in fuel taxes and motorist fees under a 2013 law designed to shore up Pennsylvania’s highways and bridges is not so huge anymore, as a growing amount is getting diverted to the Pennsylvania State Police. Now, alarmed transportation planners, construction firms and engineers are looking at 12-year Department of Transportation projections that show a fattening state police budget consuming more dollars for construction projects. Lawmakers are taking notice, too.