Free Republic

<p>Unusual weather in the Southwest could cause a nationwide salad shortage later this month. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce): Scientists say the weird weather is probably caused by climate change - which means these sorts of problems are likely to happen again.</p>

February’s quarterly auction of carbon dioxide emission allowances under California’s cap and trade program was another financial washout for the state. Results for last week’s auction were posted Wednesday morning, revealing that just 16.5 percent of the 74.8 million metric tons of emission allowances were sold at the floor price of $13.57 per ton. The paltry auction revenues will likely stall Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2017-18 budget plan to spend $2.2 billion on a variety of climate-related programs and projects, including $800 million on his bullet train project.

Dozens of governments and private philanthropists have pledged nearly $200 million for family planning services, after US President Donald Trump banned funding for groups linked to abortion. Sweden, Belgium and Finland promised €20 million each (about $21 million) to the the global fundraising initiative, She Decides, launched by Dutch Development Minister Lilianne Ploumen. The pledges came at a one-day She Decides conference in Brussels on Thursday, aimed at raising funds for aid groups whose funding is under threat. Some 50 governments, ranging from EU members states to African and Asian countries, attended the conference. Organizers hope to raise $600 million...

Tuesday's address to a joint session of Congress was without a doubt the best speech President Donald Trump has ever given, perhaps the best speech to a joint session of Congress since the great Ronald Reagan.  But who could watch it and not be embarrassed by our infantile, bitter Left? It was uplifting, optimistic, full of unifying words, and obvious to everyone. The pathetic exception was the Democrats in Congress. And those were the ones who did not boycott the event.   Like spoiled children, who had not gotten their way, they refused to applaud at the most obvious good-for-the-country...

Californians are in shock that after five years of too little water, the problem now is too much. Some are calling this a wake-up call for California as climate change could bring similar damage. But this shouldn't be a surprise, says Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University. "It's actually exactly what has been predicted by scientists for at least 30 years," he says. He says California is likely to see more extreme flooding with climate change. And the reason is pretty simple. If it's warmer, storms produce more rain instead of snow. But that's not what California's water...

Greece to Surrender Gold, Utilities and Real Estate in Exchange For Pieces of Paper Printed in Brussels It's official: The Germans will not allow debt relief for Greece. Instead, Berlin wants to send in the repo man. The untold story of the Greek "bailouts" is that it wasn't a "bailout" — it was an auction of Greek assets. Real, tangible things with real, tangible value were seized in exchange for pieces of paper that guarantee Athens will be chained to Berlin and Brussels for the foreseeable future. It's your basic extortion racket. As one rather gloomy (but intriguing) analysis puts...

In light of President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders, forms of resistance against him, including protests, have become more prevalent in the United States. One group that organizes many of the protests is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Boston College will soon see its own rising group of socialists, as the Young Democratic Socialists of BC (YDSBC) seek to become a registered student organization (RSO) on campus. “The primary purpose of the club will be to produce a more in-depth discussion [about socialism] on campus,” said Joshua Behrens, creator of the club and MCAS ’18. “I feel like critiquing...

A few weeks ago, tenants’ rights activist Jon Grant announced that he’s running for City Council this fall as a Democratic Socialist. Although he is not, technically speaking, a member of any political party - the affiliation is more a kind of “shorthand to describe my values to voters,” he says - his second-time run for a Council seat is couched in the belief that, in Seattle, anyway, “it’s not enough anymore to be an establishment Democrat.” The events of the past year, and especially of the past few months, seem to echo that sentiment. November 8, 2016, was an...

Climate change is taking an obvious physical toll on earth: from depleted farmland to the rise of toxic pollution to the degradation of long-stable ecosystems to the disappearance of biodiversity and endangered species. But looking beyond the physical, experts are also trying to sound the alarm about the quieter, more insidious effects of climate change: namely, that global warming is threatening the emotional health of humans worldwide. “We see a sense of despair that sets in as inevitably Mother Nature, who we think of as our nurturing force, tells us we’re not going to be able to survive the conditions...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hailed President Obama’s stimulus program on Sunday, telling ABC’s “This Week” that within one month of Obama’s inauguration, “he signed a bill which saved or created 4 million jobs.” Pelosi invoked the controversial $832-billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to unfavorably compare President Donald Trump to former President Obama at the one-month mark: “What has the Trump administration done from their inaugural address, where they talked about decay and carnage? They've done nothing except put Wall Street first, make America sick again, instill fear in our immigrant population in our country, and make sure...

A hypocritical NBCNews.com article argues that America is a “flawed democracy” that can be fixed by copying the “World’s Best Democracy” — Norway. In “Norway Is the ‘World’s Best Democracy’ — We Asked Its People Why,” NBC pretends to provide an objective look at why the Economist Intelligence Unit — based in London, where the country’s parliament actually considered banning America’s president — downgraded the U.S. to a “flawed democracy” and rated Norway the best. The article doesn’t mention one reason the U.S. is a flawed democracy: it isn’t one; it’s actually a Republic. […] Feigning fairness, the article points...

Should it be the Barack Obama Expressway or the Barack Obama Tollway? Democratic state legislators seem to agree that the hometown state senator made good should take his place alongside Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy and others immortalized in Illinois highways. Two Illinois state representatives have competing plans to rename different Illinois highways after Obama. On Jan. 26, state Rep. Robert Martwick, D-Chicago, submitted House Joint Resolution 0017 that would designate “the entirety of Interstate 294 of the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways as the “‘President Barack Obama Tollway,’” state legislative records show. The move to...

Socialism: Want to lose weight fast? Don't worry about the latest fad diet. Just move to Venezuela. There, the new Socialist Diet has caused the population to lose millions of pounds in 12 months. Unwillingly, of course. A new study of Venezuela's stunning decline under Hugo Chavez's socialist model, still followed faithfully by his lap dog successor, Nicolas Maduro, reports that the average Venezuelan lost 19 pounds in the last year. Today, the 2016 Living Conditions Survey finds, 32.5% of Venezuelans eat only once or twice a day, up from 11.3% just one year ago. And 93.3% of all people...

Where We Can Work With SocialistsIt is true that the doctrines of communistic Socialism, if consistently followed, mean the ultimate annihilation of civilization. Yet the converse is also true. Ruin faces us if we decline steadily to try to reshape our whole civilization in accordance with the law of service, and if we permit ourselves to "Be mislecf by any empirical or academic consideration into refusing to exert the common power of the community where only collective action can do what individualism has left undone, or can remedy the wrongs done by an unrestricted and ill-regulated individualism. There is any...

Where We Cannot Work With SocialistsIt is always difficult to discuss a question when it proves impossible to define the terms in which that question is to be discussed. Therefore there is not much to be gained by a discussion of Socialism versus Individualism in the abstract. Neither absolute Individualism nor absolute Socialism would be compatible with civilization at all; and among the arguments of the extremists of either side the only unanswerable ones are those which show the absurdity of the position of the other. Not so much as the first step towards real civilization can be taken until...

A poll released this week among Venezuelan nationals found that 75 percent of Venezuelans reported losing “at least 19 pounds” in 2016, while 93 percent of Venezuelans said they do not have the money to secure three meals a day for themselves. The Living Conditions Survey, organized in part by three national universities, also found that 83 percent of Venezuelans were below the nation’s poverty line. While 78 percent of respondents confirmed that they eat breakfast, only 32 percent said they eat two meals a day. A combination of socialist economic mismanagement, government rationing of basic goods, and corruption have...

The rank of the United States on the Heritage Foundation's latest annual Index of Economic Freedom fell from 6th to 17th over the duration of the Obama Presidency. In 17th place, the US is behind Lithuania, Luxembourg, Georgia, Taiwan, Chile, and the United Arab Emirates, among others. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) said the decline "is embarrassing. We like to think of America as the land of the free, but when we see that we've dropped out of the top ten and are actually doing worse than some countries not normally considered havens for freedom, it's...

The “Scenic Route” sign on Highway 12 announces the obvious to motorists heading into the Valley of the Moon. It’s cradled by mountains, dotted with giant oaks, horse ranches, vineyards, remnants of old orchards and the odd water tower. The road delivers inspiring views of imposing Hood Mountain, its craggy face standing sentinel over a historic route from Santa Rosa to Sonoma that carried stagecoaches and trains before the automobile took over. But today, the two-lane highway is crowded with traffic generated by commuters, residential and commercial development, sightseers and visitors headed to wineries and tasting rooms. The northern arm...

<p>MADISON -- A new audit shows huge cost overruns at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, with dozens of projects costing double or triple their original estimates.</p> <p>The Legislative Audit Bureau report finds that estimated costs for 19 major projects completed between 2006 and 2016 were $1.5 billion, double the initial projection. The audit also finds that the estimated costs of 16 ongoing major highway projects have increased by $3.1 billion.</p>

A famous novel by H. G. Wells begins: “No one would have believed in the last years of the 19th century that this world was being watched keenly and closely…[that]intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the 20th century came the great disillusionment.” That’s a perfect summary of Professor John Dewey and his friends— intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic. They looked at our culture and our schools and came to a hostile conclusion: this place needed fundamental transformation. So John Dewey and...