Free Republic

The Labor Department has backed off a plan to force news agencies to use government-issued computers and other equipment to report on jobless reports and other key economic data, following a GOP-led House hearing this week, according to several published reports. Agency officials have said they want reporters who analyze, then write about economic reports inside their so-called “lock up” room to use U.S. computers, software and Internet lines so the government can further protect against such potential security breaches as hacking. But the plan also resulted in cries about potential free-speech violations and the government now having computer access...

Impending changes in Labor Department procedures for giving the media advance access to jobs data have drawn resistance from news outlets and House Republicans. With job creation a central election year issue, committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., focused on two distinct themes: whether Labor mishandled this spring’s introduction of new information security procedures for release of jobs data and whether the Obama administration is exaggerating for political gain the number of “green jobs” it has helped create. The Labor Department “has jeopardized the integrity of employment data -- in some cases for clearly political reasons,” Issa said. “Now, without clear...

More than 80 percent of 304,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria own their own homes, nearly 15 percent more than the national average, according to government statistics. The official population figures, higher by up to 20 percent than numbers reported by several left-wing groups, do not include young people living in “illegal” communities. Information from the Central Bureau of Statistics, reported by Globes, paints a picture of quality of life not enjoyed by Israelis living in urban communities. The statistics do not include other factors such as education, which is a high priority in most towns in Judea and Samaria...

The Wisconsin Democratic Party has filed a complaint against Republican Gov. Scott Walker over his latest television ad. The ad released Wednesday includes footage of Walker touting new jobs data that the state made public earlier in the day. The Democratic Party alleges in the complaint sent to the Dane County district attorney and the state elections board that Walker illegally used state time and resources to craft a political message in violation of the law. Walker's campaign spokeswoman Ciara Matthews dismisses the charge, saying Walker shot various versions of the ad in advance of when the final number was...

One thing that always amazes me with the left is their idiotic drive to believe in a biased number over brutal reality. Last week the monthly unemployment numbers came out and we are supposedly on a glide path to economic repair because the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1%. The sad fact is the 8.1% unemployment number is a sad joke.

Abbott and Costello Do Unemployment (Someone e-mailed this cleverly written riff to me just after the April 2012 Obama unemployment figures were released. If they were alive, I am sure that Abbott and Costello would do a gag just like this.) COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America . ABBOTT: Good Subject. Terrible times. It’s 9%. COSTELLO: That many people are out of work? ABBOTT: No, that’s 16%. COSTELLO: You just said 9%. ABBOTT: 9% Unemployed. COSTELLO: Right 9% out of work. ABBOTT: No, that’s 16%. COSTELLO: Okay, so it’s 16% unemployed. ABBOTT: No, that’s 9%…...

Let’s play “guess the nonfarm payrolls.” After all, our guess is as good as the conomists’, whose forecasts nicely fit a random distribution of hits and misses month in and month out. My guess? The headline non farm payrolls number would be reported as a drop of 337,000 tomorrow if you believe the withholding tax data for the period covered by the survey. That would be a huge miss versus the consensus estimate of a gain of 201,000 according to Hizzoner the Mayor’s tout sheet. Rupert Hacker Murdoch’s rags are even more bullish, posting an expected gain of 210,000. The...

The fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last month by a neighborhood-watch volunteer was a sickening and — unless new facts come to light — unjustified loss of an innocent life. Unless Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, had reason to believe that Martin was armed, shooting him was a grossly disproportionate response to a fistfight, even leaving aside the fact that Zimmerman had initiated the encounter. If such a shooting is justified under Florida’s broad self-defense law, that law has licensed violence that goes far beyond legitimate self-defense. Every American shares the despair of Martin’s family over this heartbreaking tragedy...

Everyone knows the US today is the single most powerful nation on Earth and corners of Europe like Switzerland, Scandinavia and Luxemburg are the richest (yes, Qatar is pretty rich too). But what part, if any, will lead the World in say 200 years from now? Marxists claim the US is heading for a fall. Perhaps it is, but don't expect North Korea or Cuba to take its place. Hundreds of times, I've been telling members of this forum what is right about Scandinavia. We dare to stand up for freedom of speech, we dare to fight Islamofascism, we dare...

Four patients are dying hungry and thirsty on hospital wards every day, shocking figures reveal. Dehydration or malnutrition directly caused or was linked to 1,316 deaths last year in NHS trusts and privately run hospitals. The revelation follows a series of damning reports accusing staff of failing to address the most basic needs of the vulnerable, particularly the elderly. Only this month David Cameron was forced to order nurses to carry out hourly spot checks of patients just to see whether they need help eating, drinking or going to the toilet.

Break out the party hats! Unemployment is all the way down to 8.5 percent! Whoo-hoo! Zero Hedge spotlights the steady increase in the number of Americans not in the labor force; he points out, “the labor force itself declined by 50K from 153,937 to 153,887. In fact, persons not in the labor force have increased by 7.5 million since January 2007.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics offers this chart: (see below) The recession may have ended in mid-2009 according to the economists, but the normal rate of growth in the size of the labor force stopped in 2008 and has...

In early December, in Osawatomie, Kan., President Obama delivered the sort of fiery populist speech his base had been demanding since the start of his administration. The speech as a whole strongly overstated the extent of economic insecurity in today’s America, but one particular claim jumped out at me — that upward mobility has declined rather sharply: We tell people — we tell our kids — that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, work hard and you can get into the middle class. . . . And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the...

One of the things that is fun about forums such as Free Republic is the sheer volume and scale of topics discussed. Everything from discussions of GOP primary races (come BACK, Sarah!) to speculations on the Middle East, from Kim Jong-un to fitness resolutions for the New Year, from Naughty Teacher threads to black helicopter speculations. If the Internet is a microcosm of the real world, then Free Republic is a microcosm of the internet. And all helpfully sorted by keyword, date, and author in order to make drinking from the fire hose easier. But of course, not is all...

MADISON — November appears to be another down month for Wisconsin’s workforce, with state employers reportedly shedding an estimated 14,600 jobs. But those preliminary estimates could be off, perhaps significantly, as was the case in October and June, according to revised estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS. The swings in employment statistics between the inner-monthly data collection is causing some to ask whether the BLS’ estimates are B.S. Disparity The trend has been troubling. Based on BLS data, Wisconsin has recorded five consecutive months of workforce contraction, a point state Rep. Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, jumped on...

To begin with, congrats to the US on nice Black Friday shopping statistics! Maybe, the World economy is facing a brighter future despite Obama and the horrid mess of Southern Europe. Over here, in the midst of the Euro crises, it seems Northern Europe is doing pretty well. Especially Germany and my Sweden that is, if we are to believe the most recent statistics, delivered today on the 29th of November. BGA, the Federation of German Wholesale, Foreign Trade and Services, seated in the German capital of Berlin, today announced that it estimates German exports to grow by 12% in...

Catchy headlines about the latest counter-intuitive discovery in human psychology have a special place in journalism, offering a quirky distraction from the horrors of war and crime, the tedium of politics and the drudgery of economics. But even as readers smirk over the latest gee whizzery about human nature, it is generally assumed that behind the headlines, in the peer-reviewed pages of academia, most scientists are engaged in sober analysis of rigorously gathered data, and that this leads them reliably to the truth. Not so, says a new report in the journal Psychological Science, which claims to show “how unacceptably...

It has become an accepted trope of contemporary journalism that American Muslims are under siege and beset by hatred and prejudice. But the evidence for this conventional wisdom is lacking. The story line of Muslim persecution in the United States has always been a matter of anecdotes and perception, not facts. That truth was confirmed this week when the FBI released their annual crime statistics report which showed once again that hate crimes against Muslims remain rare and are far outnumbered by attacks on Jews. The report is not perfect, since not all parts of the country do a good...

On November 1, Wisconsin became the 49th state to recognize the right of its citizens to carry firearms. Now, only one state remains in the Dark Ages -- that being the state of Illinois. As can be imagined, the anti-gun media is predicting that letting citizens carry firearms will result in carnage in the streets, shootouts in bars, and angry parents settling scores on the ball field with their firearms. And to supposedly prove their point, they cite a bogus report of the Violence Policy Center (VPC) entitled “Concealed Carry Killers.” The faux report says that “since May 2007 at...

The Census Bureau admitted Tuesday that it had “artificially inflated the number of same-sex couples” in the United States, initially reporting a number that was about 40 percent higher than what it now believes is accurate. The original data published by the 2010 Census set the number of same-sex households in the U.S. in 2010 at 901,997, including 349,377 same-sex married couple households and 552,620 same-sex unmarried partner households. But the Census Bureau said in a Tuesday conference call with reporters that it has revised these numbers downward “because Census Bureau staff discovered an inconsistency in the responses in the...

President Obama on Wednesday urged frustrated Americans to stop blaming him for the standstill on federal immigration reform and to direct their displeasure instead at Republicans in Congress. "The notion that I can somehow just change the laws unilaterally is just not true," Obama told moderators Wednesday during a Hispanic online roundtable-- "Open for Questions"-- hosted by Yahoo!, MSN Latino, AOL Latino and HuffPost LatinoVoices. "The fact of the matter is there are laws on the books I have to enforce. And there is a great disservice done to the cause of getting the Dream Act passed and comprehensive immigration...