Free Republic

Economic study suggests we're heading for a Blade Runner future Earlier this month, a group of economists released the results of a massive study looking at the economic prospects of people from across the United States. What they found was that the U.S. is like a patchwork quilt of different countries, where some regions offer people the economic prospects of a typical developed nation — and other regions are more like a developing country. This study debunks a few myths about the United States, including the idea that wealthy nations have wealthy citizens. It's a powerful reminder that nations are...

Two men were behind bars for allegedly stealing more than $50,000 in checks from President Barack Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters. Jessie Adams, 36, of the 1100 block of Spencer Road in Joliet, was charged with one count of being an organizer of a financial crime enterprise.

....Obama was emphatic about how recovery money was to be spent......Eighty percent of the Department of Energy's (DOE) green loans, loan guarantees, and grants went to Obama backers.... ...In March 2011, for example, the GAO examined the first 18 loans that were approved and found that none were properly documented. ... No notes were kept during the review process..... Schweizer concludes, "DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman......testified that contracts have been steered to "friends and family." So with all that in mind, let's turn our attention to what has actually happened since Obama took office. * SunPower, after receiving $1.5 billion...

Newsbytes from Dr. Benny Peiser at The Global Warming Policy FoundationA diplomatic cable published last month by the WikiLeaks website reveals that most of the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in India should not have been certified because they did not reduce emissions beyond those that would have been achieved without foreign investment. Indian officials have apparently known about the problem for at least two years. The revelations imply that millions of tonnes of claimed reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions are mere phantoms, she says, and potentially cast doubt over the principle of carbon trading. –Quirin Schiermeier, Nature News, 27...

Posted: 4:21 p.m. Oct. 25, 2010 Michigan to get $160M for high-speed rail projects link only http://www.freep.com/article/20101025/NEWS06/101025042/1318/State-to-get-160M-for-rail-projects

Recession: The Democrats' politicized housing and mortgage policies pushed our economy into its worst downturn since the Great Depression. So, of course, it's a perfect time for the biggest tax increase in history. Why is the economy still paralyzed after the president's much-touted "Recovery Summer"? It may be that private investment, too, has been immobilized. With unemployment now up to 9.6%, Americans fear that the economy won't get moving again anytime soon. As a new report from Americans for Tax Reform shows, that fear is completely rational. The report outlines the impact of the largest-ever tax hike that's coming in...

Federal Spending: When the president urged Congress last week to pass $26 billion in emergency aid to help save the jobs of laid-off teachers, one of his human props was out of place. It was a mistake he may regret. Flanked in the Rose Garden by teachers, President Obama said last Tuesday: "We can't stand by and do nothing while pink slips are given to the men and women who educate our children or keep our communities safe." Later in the day, Obama signed the bill that Democrats say will save the jobs of 300,000 teachers and police officers who've...

Economy: Disappointing GDP growth of 2.4% in the second quarter signals that our "recovery" isn't what it's cracked up to be. But then, how could it be when politicians have been trying to kill it for years? How do you keep an economy from digging itself out of a major recession? One surefire method is massively expanding a government whose major programs are already on their way to bankruptcy, then sitting idly by as major tax increases arrive. The Democratic Congress has spent a trillion dollars on a failed Keynesian stimulus that promised millions of jobs that never materialized. They...

SNIPPET: "(CNSNews.com) - Maryland will join Pennsylvania as the second state to use federal tax dollars to pay for abortions under the new health care law signed by President Barack Obama in March, according to information released by Maryland’s State Health Insurance Plan. Maryland will receive $85 million in federal funds for its federally mandated high-risk insurance pool, which will cover abortions. As CNSNews.com reported on July 14, Pennsylvania will receive $160 million in federal funds for its high-risk insurance pool, which will also cover abortions."

Obama's Christianity Requires As a Politician He Redistributes White America's Wealth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwEHyHyPZFs Naked Emepror News

Oakland police released photos today and asked for the public's help in identifying people who engaged in looting and vandalism during last week's downtown protest over the involuntary-manslaughter verdict of a former BART police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed rider. The people in the photos are "involved criminal activity" and could face arrest and prosecution, said Officer Jeff Thomason, a police spokesman.

In the political marketplace, there's now a run on Obama shares. The left is disappointed with the president. Independents are abandoning him in droves. And the right is already dancing on his political grave, salivating about November when, his own press secretary admitted Sunday, Democrats might lose the House. I have a warning for Republicans: Don't underestimate Barack Obama. Obama is down, but it's very early in the play. Like Reagan, he came here to do things. And he's done much in his first 500 days. What he has left to do he knows must await his next 500 days...

You may remember Robert Reich -- he served as Secretary of Labor during Bill Clinton’s first term. Mr. Reich has fashioned himself as an economist since he left that lofty federal post, and he frequently leads the argument for positions on the left wing of the Democratic Party while attempting to present himself as a man of reason. He has once more pontificated the left-wing position on the problems of our stagnant economy and thereby shows how lost the left continues to be regarding a free-market economy. Reich is certainly a smart man, a very educated man and a very...

(CNSNews.com) - In his first-ever address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, President Barack Obama said he was going to “inform” the chairman of BP that he must surrender the company’s money to an independent party that will distribute it to people and businesses determined to have been harmed by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The president’s declaration raises a serious constitutional question about his authority: Where does the president get the lawful power to order any private-sector company—BP or any other—that it must surrender its money? Should not courts and normal legal proceedings determine who is responsible, who has...

For 97 years the 12 regional banks of the Federal Reserve system have operated relatively free of political interference from Washington. The looming financial reform bill threatens that independence, not least through an effort to impose new presidential appointees at the regional banks. The biggest underreported threat comes from Subtitle I, Section 1801 of the House financial reform bill titled "Inclusion of Minorities and Women; Diversity in Agency Workforce." Sponsored by California Democrat Maxine Waters, the provision requires each federal financial agency, the Fed Board of Governors and the 12 regional Fed banks to "establish an Office of Minority and...

Obama: Is He Helping Or Hurting Your Business? Timothy Shea has been providing IT solutions for 21 years and has never worked as hard or felt as much economic pressure. Shea, CEO and senior consultant at Alpha NetSolutions, a solution provider based in Marlborough, Mass., says his income as the owner of an "S" corporation that files a personal tax return has dropped 25 percent from 2007 to 2009. At the same time, the health-care costs for his eight-employee, $1.2 million business have doubled over the past three years. Shea is one of many small-business solution providers interviewed for this...

It hasn't attracted much notice, but recently some prominent advocates of Obamacare have spoken more frankly than ever before about why they supported a national healthcare makeover. It wasn't just about making insurance more affordable. It wasn't just about bending the cost curve. It wasn't just about cutting the federal deficit. It was also about redistributing wealth. Health reform is "an income shift," Democratic Sen. Max Baucus said on March 25. "It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower-income, middle-income Americans." In his halting, jumbled style, Baucus explained that in recent years, "the maldistribution of income in America has...

Pollution Control: From cars to coal mines, the imposition of economy-killing restrictions is under way. Are the new EPA regulations on auto emissions the precursor to regulating carbon dioxide by executive order? In announcing the Environmental Protection Agency's first regulations on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars, Administrator Lisa Jackson has promised they won't be the last such rules stemming from the EPA's "endangerment finding" that carbon dioxide, six pounds of which every human being exhales every day, is a dangerous pollutant. "These are the first regulations that cover greenhouse gas emissions in the United States," Jackson told reporters in...

Health Reform: The linchpin of ObamaCare 2.0 is that 31 million uninsured will be covered at little added cost. But in fact, White House estimates for low costs are based on little more than accounting tricks. The president's plan "puts our budget and economy on a more stable path by reducing the deficit by $100 billion over the next 10 years — and about $1 trillion over the second decade — by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse," the White House says on its Web site. Sound too good to be true? It is. None of...