Free Republic

(Original pub date was 9/2017) “Americans are getting closer and closer to understanding that they live in an economic system that is not working for them, and will not work for their kids.” These days, Richard Wolff is feeling pretty glad he stuck around teaching this long. Now in his 70s and lecturing at the New School University and having become, over the course of his nearly 50-year-long professorial career, one of America’s most prominent Marxist economists, Wolff is used to being fringe. In 2011, the same year that Occupy Wall Street injected dissatisfaction with the financial system into the...

Say what you will about us millennials—we’re a wilting bouquet of narcissistic, socialistic, overeducated, underemployed, tatted-up hipsters who still live at home—but, from this day forward, don’t you dare say we’re climate change deniers. A strong majority (66 percent!) of young independent voters, ages 18 to 34, accept as dogma that man and his dirty deeds are causing, and will continue to cause, climate change—this according to a study conducted by a bipartisan pair of political strategy groups for the League of Conservation Voters.

19 comments To the editor: Back in 2008, right at the peak of the McCain/Palin, Obama/Biden presidential election, I wrote a scathing opinion to the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman about Sarah Palin (titled “Caribou Barbie”), and five years later, I would like to recant my opinion and tell the people of the Mat-Su Valley just how wrong I was at the time. The Frontiersman published the opinion and it drew a lot of comments, mostly negative, and here we are almost five years later, and I want to pass on what I have learned. In closing, Sarah Palin warned us, and...

Posted: Thursday, November 29, 2012 9:04 pm 19 comments To the editor: Back in 2008, right at the peak of the McCain/Palin, Obama/Biden presidential election, I wrote a scathing opinion to the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman about Sarah Palin (titled “Caribou Barbie”), and five years later, I would like to recant my opinion and tell the people of the Mat-Su Valley just how wrong I was at the time. The Frontiersman published the opinion and it drew a lot of comments, mostly negative, and here we are almost five years later, and I want to pass on what I have learned....

It's time to close the Federal Communications Commission. This week, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski gave a speech outlining his push for net neutrality, the absurd notion that the Internet should be "open and free" when in fact it's quite expensive to build. Net neutrality will straitjacket the U.S. economy's single most important driver of productivity and transformation. Besides the obvious question of whether the FCC even has the authority to regulate the Web—in April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said it doesn't—the agency has a long history of restraining trade. Founded in 1934 partly to regulate...

Firing of Teachers Underscores the Bigger Problem of Sexual Abuse in Africa. The extent of sexual abuse in Kenya came to light after the government set up a hotline for the victims. "Initially, we were not able to know what was happening in the country because of the poor communication, but now communication is everywhere. There's mobile [phones] across the country," Ahmed Hussein, the director of children's services at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Development, told the BBC. Hussein said that some of the teachers had already been arrested and prosecuted. Many, however, were simply fired and sent...

The new budget approved by Pennsylvania politicians is a victory for bigger government and special interests -- but a setback for ordinary taxpayers, the state LP has charged. "The message is clear from both parties: Government needs to grow," said LP State Chair Ken Krawchuk. "And you, the taxpayer, need to feed [politicians'] insatiable hunger for power and control." Governor Ed Rendell signed the $21.3 billion budget on December 23. The spending plan calls for a 10% increase in the state income tax, a new $500 million tax on cell phone companies, and higher taxes on cigarettes. Krawchuk, who was...