Free Republic

SEATTLE — Kshama Sawant said she needs to see progress on a $15 per hour minimum wage soon, or she and her supporters will move ahead without the help of her fellow city council members and the mayor. She said if there is not significant progress soon she will start collecting signatures to put a minimum wage measure on the ballot. Sawant said signatures are due June 10. The socialist council member is holding a rally this coming Saturday where she will lay out her latest plan of action moving forward.

The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, met Sunday with U.S. actor Sean Penn, and after taking the almost traditional selfie , asked him to be their spokesman to the U.S. authorities for dialogue and peace . "We spoke of the great interest that we have, I have asked Sean Penn to forward to where it can transmit more interest we have, that I have as president of the new ambassador Maximilien Arvelaiz in Washington move toward relationships first dialogue "Maduro said, quoted by the Spanish news agency EFE.

<p>Harvey Weinstein revealed on Saturday that he wasn't sure how he felt about Barack and Michelle Obama when Hillary Clinton -- a longtime friend -- was defeated by Obama in the Democratic primary.</p> <p>"I strongly support Hillary. When she lost, Michelle invited me back in ... but I thought I was going to sit that one out," Weinstein said during his keynote speech at the 38th annual UCLA Entertainment Symposium, hosted by the UCLA School of Law.</p>

This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. The radical Marxist-progressives (communists) took control of the democrat party some time ago. They’ve only become more emboldened with the election of Barack Obama, who was raised as a communist from birth. With their new found leader, Barack Obama, the Socialist Party of America felt secure enough to announce the names of 70 democrats in Congress that belong to their caucus. Other than Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who openly ran as a socialist, the rest of this lot ran as “moderate democrats.” I think it’s time we put the myth...

President Obama announced his fiscal 2015 budget on Tuesday morning at Powell Elementary in the District’s Petworth neighborhood, highlighting the school’s early childhood education program as a model for the nation.

SEATTLE, Wash. — Seattle city councilmember Kshama Sawant advocates a bold idea for ending the dispute between taxi companies and rideshare businesses - she says the city should take over the taxi business. Taxi drivers feel they’ll be crushed by competiton, despite the limits on rideshare companies that city council members voted to approve last night. Because rideshare companies use high-tech service to lure customers away from taxis, councilmember Sawant says the city should step in. “The real solution to this problem is for the city to have the app, the smartphone app and the dispatch system and to employ...

Mayor de Blasio brought down the hammer Thursday on three charter schools operated by his nemesis Eva Moskowitz, leaving hundreds of kids without classrooms this fall. “This has to be the saddest day for the Success Academy’s children, family, teachers, school leaders,” Moskowitz said after meeting with stunned charter parents in Harlem. “Right now, our kids are being evicted. Evicted out of their school. It’s wrong and we need an explanation. You’re going to have to ask Mayor de Blasio what the motivations are for a decision that will hurt so many children now and, frankly, forever.”

So, I lurk on Free Republic quite a bit. Usually it's to read some of the outrageous comments some post here and some of it is to see what your opinions are on certain articles that also get posted elsewhere. So, a little bit about myself. I'm in my 20s and of Hispanic origin. I was born in New York but moved to Florida when I was three years old. I'm what you guys would consider a "socialist". I don't consider myself a socialist, I'm a supporter of the free market economy except I favor strong government regulations. While on...

A plan by the Federal Communications Commission to study how news organizations select stories has prompted about 10,000 people to sign a petition saying “no government monitors in newsrooms.” That’s according to the American Center for Law and Justice, which announced the petition Wednesday and said it reached that number within the first two hours. The agency announced a Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs last year, explaining that it wanted to understand the process of which stories are selected, station priorities, content production, populations served, perceived station bias, and perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the “critical...

I saw this headline this morning on my twitter feed. It is on Breitbart. O'Reilly says Obama is a patriot. I saw the Super Bowl interview. BOR asks a viewers question - why do you want to fundamentaly change this country that has provided so much opportunity for you? Obama says he did not say that. Flat out lied. Yet BOR says he is a patriot who wants the best for America. Are we as a nation truly lost now?

Violent clashes have erupted during anti-government protests in Ukraine's capital, Kiev, with at least nine people, including two policemen, dead. In the worst violence in weeks, police used rubber bullets and stun grenades as thousands of protesters marching on parliament. A deadline set by the security forces for the violence to end has passed with no immediate sign of police action. The clashes came as MPs were due to debate changes to the constitution. The proposals would curb the powers of President Viktor Yanukovych, but the opposition say they were blocked from submitting their draft, meaning no debate could take...

Appearing together in Church, Mayor de Blasio dialed down the temperature Sunday in his ongoing clash with Gov. Cuomo over how to fund universal prekindergarten. Speaking at a church service for attendees of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus in Albany, the mayor did not mention at all his plans to fund it with a tax on the wealthy while stressing the need for universal Pre-K. “We know the direction,” de Blasio said. “We all have to work together at it. And I know we will because the public is realizing, the public is realizing that if...

Seattle, Wash. — At an organizing event and rally for a $15-per-hour minimum wage, Councilmember Kshama Sawant emphasized the movement should not accept any watered-down version of the wage increase “I’m throwing down the gauntlet,” Sawant said, declaring herself the first politician to support a true $15-per-hour rate. She and other rally speakers cautioned against politicians and businesses who say they support a minimun wage increase but want loopholes and exemptions.

Lars Larson, substituting for KVI’s John Carlson, listens to a mildly contentious exchange between the two city council members during a Monday council hearing where council President Tim Burgess ordered councilwoman Sawant to stop talking when she went ‘off-topic’. Sawant was venting about her pet issues, employer wage theft. Also, Larson discusses the now interminable delay of the Seattle downtown tunnel dig because of damage to the drilling machine known as Big Bertha.

City Comptroller Scott Stringer on Wednesday criticized Mayor de Blasio for personally intervening when a politically connected preacher pal was busted by cops — saying “the mayor shouldn’t be involved in any way when someone gets arrested.” “It’s my sense that good intentions — trying to obviously be concerned about a bishop — is certainly something that I’m sure he felt,” Stringer said after a City Hall budget briefing. “But I think the rule is mayors should not get involved in any way about somebody’s arrest. It can only be problematic.” “Once a mayor makes a call like that, it...

The Democrats are right, there are two Americas. The America that works, and the America that doesn’t. The America that contributes, and the America that doesn’t. It’s not the haves and the have nots, it’s the dos and the don’ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, to obey the law and support themselves and contribute to society, and others don’t. That’s the divide in America. It’s not about income inequality, it’s about civic irresponsibility. It’s about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization in order to win elective office. It’s about a political party that loves power...

HANOVER, N.H. – President Obama’s longtime buddy, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, Thursday night told debate opponent Dinesh D’Souza and an audience at Dartmouth College that the Constitution is an outmoded document and it ought to be changed. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, were the main founders of the domestic terror group the Weather Underground, which was assigned responsibility for dozens of bombings aimed at destroying the defense and security infrastructure of the U.S. D’Souza is the maker of the movie “2016: Obama’s America,” which is the second-highest grossing political documentary of all time.

**SNIP** In a frank and unflinching critique not seen or heard on the broadcast or cable news shows, Sawant described Obama's renewed focus on income inequality as an indictment of his own failures and misguided economic policy. Pointing to record high poverty and the fact that "95% of the gains in productivity during the so-called recovery have gone to the top 1%," Sawant argued that Obama's rhetoric on inequality has been forced on him by popular "outrage over the widening gulf between the super-rich" and the millions of workers, many working in low-wage retail and fast food jobs, who generated...

Seattle’s only Socialist City Council member announced Monday that she will make good on a campaign pledge and accept only $40,000 a year in salary — bringing her down to the average wage of a worker in the city. The remainder of the roughly $117,000 salary will go to social justice causes such as strike funds, civil rights and women’s rights, she said in a statement. "Every Councilmember faces a choice of who they represent and which world they inhabit,” said Kshama Sawant, who took office earlier this month. “My place is with working people and their struggles. I want...

WASHINGTON — President Obama will tell Congress in his State of the Union address Tuesday to either act or get out of the way, White House officials said Sunday.