Free Republic

The Dutch government was successful in seizing farms and now they want to take over private homes too. The Housing Act will allow municipalities to force homeowners to sell their homes ONLY to people with a lower to middle income in the value of the home is less than 355,000€. Research shows that this will drive housing prices UP and cost of rent too. It is a shocking power grab in the year 2023.

We really didn't know how good we had it. The covid-19 pandemic upended many of the societal norms we took for granted as a combination of forced social distancing, the emergence of mask cultural and routine societal decay dissolved many of the social contracts people held amongst each other. One of the biggest social casualties from the pandemic is the attitude about theft, especially from large consumer goods retailers. Earlier this year, CVS told Axios that the company experienced a 300% increase in retail theft at its stores since the pandemic started. The increase has been attributed to a rise...

....According to the FBI and Department of Justice, Xu had since 2013 used multiple aliases to target US and third-country aviation companies and experts in that field. He would invite them to China on academic pretexts and then slowly lure them to espionage. Xu's arrest and conviction are unique and shed light on a shadowy conflict in which Beijing is trying to wrestle global supremacy from the US using any means possible. Military secrets aren't the only target. The US's top counterintelligence agency estimates that Beijing steals $200 billion to $600 billion worth of economic secrets from the US every...

This week, the U.S. House passed, along party lines, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. A vote in the U.S. Senate is expected soon. Buried within the 591-page bill is a $350 billion bailout for 50 states, tribal governments, U.S. territories, and more than 30,000 cities and counties.Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com finally located the $350 billion allocation, line-by-line, in a supplemental database hidden on the back end of the House Oversight Committee’s website.We mapped the data to each of the 50 states. Click here to see how much taxpayer money Congress earmarked your hometown to receive from...

The violence in Chicago was so severe this weekend that city officials had to lift the drawbridges and close freeway exits to prevent access to and further damage to the downtown area the following night. Over 100 people were arrested in the Sunday riots, and over a dozen police officers were injured. Rioters broke into a Tesla dealership, Walgreens, and several other stores. Yet, if you ask some Black Lives Matter Chicago activists, they'd loot again. The group held a rally on Monday in support of the violent mob that tore up businesses all across the city, likening the looting...

Some politicians running for federal office make it sound as if the biggest problem facing our country is that we don’t send enough of our paychecks to Washington, D.C. They propose increasing or creating new federal taxes on income, payrolls, business profits, carbon emissions, financial transactions, wealth, and more. Before they start trying to spend more and more of our money, they would do well to consider just how much they’re already spending. Looking back over the last decade, it’s clear they’ve already entered the “drunken sailor” stage. From 2010 through 2019, U.S. households sent an average of $228,000 to...

President Trump has signed a memorandum enforcing a provision requiring sponsors of legal immigrants to pay back the government for any social services used by the immigrant. The provision was part of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and Welfare Reform laws enacted by then-President Bill Clinton. The law stated that immigrants should “not depend on public resources to meet their needs.” However, the provision has not been enforced. (continued at source)

The proposal would raise the annual registration fee to $1,000, more than 57 times the current amount of $17.50. Illinois officials believe the legislation will raise $2.4 billion for future projects, the major one being roadway improvement, according to the Chicago Tribune. The bill would also make things more expensive for residents who drive non-electric cars. The state's gas tax would go up 19 cents to 44 cents a gallon, fees for driver’s licenses would double and the registration fee for non-electric vehicles would go up nearly 50% from $98 to $148. “It’s outrageous,” Tesla owner Nicoletta Skarlatos, 56, told...

In politics, 2020 is but a blink away, and who will be anointed by the Democrats to challenge President Trump is being decided right now. And I promise you, they are considering Michelle Obama a possibility.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department will issue new directives to increase the federal govenment's use of civil asset forfeiture, a controversial practice that allows law enforcement to seize property from suspected criminals without charging them with a crime. Speaking at a National District Attorneys Association conference in Minneapolis Monday, Sessions said state and local law enforcement could expect changes from U.S. Attorneys in several areas: increased prosecution of gun crimes, immigration offenses, gang activity, and prescription drug abuse, as well as increased asset seizure by the federal government. "[W]e hope to issue this week a new...

The senior Obama Education Department official who resigned this month to avoid testifying before Congress got hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses despite his well-documented failures, sources inside the agency tell Judicial Watch. The extra cash was kept off the books, away from the public, and doesn’t appear on his official government salary record but Judicial Watch has obtained the figures with yearly breakdowns. The official, James Runcie, ran the scandal-plagued Federal Student Aid (FSA) office, the government’s $1.4 trillion financial aid program. It includes, among other things, administering more than $150 billion in loans, grants and work-study funds...

Kansas has more than 140,000 miles of public roads — the fourth most in the U.S. Such a massive network requires substantial public investment in maintenance and new projects, and some transportation advocates are worried that the state’s revenue crisis will prevent much of this necessary work from getting done. For example, the Brownback administration has transferred more than $1 billion from the Kansas Department of Transportation to the state general fund over the past few years. … Earlier this year, $185 million was removed from the highway fund to counteract meager state revenue collections. This sweep was announced alongside...

Social media posts, along with Cruz’s campaign website, reveal that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97% supporters in the Colorado Republican Party were responsible for crushing an effort to give Colorado the ability to vote in a state primary. In May of 2015, four Colorado Senate Republicans killed an initiative “to create a presidential primary in 2016,” reported the Denver Post. “Under the bill, Colorado would have held a presidential primary in March that ran parallel with the state’s complicated caucus system… when it came before the Senate Appropriations Committee, four Republicans voted to kill the bill with three Democrats supporting it.”...

Environmentalists and public employee unions say a lack of money was behind Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) poor response to lead contamination in the Flint, Mich. water supply. "What most people don't understand is that nearly half of EPA's budget goes to states, tribal authorities, and municipalities, and of the remaining half, almost half of that goes to contractors," John O'Grady, president of the American Federation of Government Employees chapter representing EPA employees involved in Flint, told The Washington Post Thursday. "U.S. EPA does not have the sufficient capacity to assist. So, issues such as the one which occurred in Flint,...

Attorneys at a hearing to determine who would receive temporary custody of the 5-year-old boy told a judge Friday morning that his mother and an aunt had been notified that the hearing would take place but that neither were in the courtroom to speak on his behalf. His father hadn’t yet been found, and the grandmother who abandoned him Tuesday at Kohl’s when she bolted from a shoplifting stop was still on the run from law enforcement, Sedgwick County Assistant District Attorney Amanda Marino said. The judge placed the child in the temporary custody of the state.

IMF paper warns of 'savings tax' and mass write-offs as West's debt hits 200-year high ... Debt burdens in developed nations have become extreme by any historical measure and will require a wave of haircuts, warns IMF paper. The paper said policy elites in the West are still clinging to the illusion that rich countries can chip away at their debts with a blend of austerity cuts and growth. – UK Telegraph Dominant Social Theme: The West is out of control and only taxes can save it. Free-Market Analysis: The UK Telegraph has discovered that the IMF wants to inflict...

Link to "an edited version of the introductory chapter of a new e-book, Going Postal, by investigative journalist Peter Byrne." snip "The post office is being killed for political reasons, they assert, pointing out that the corporation with the exclusive contract to negotiate sales for the Postal Service's $85 billion real estate portfolio is C.B. Richard Ellis (CBRE). And that the company is chaired by Richard C. Blum, who is the husband of US Senator Dianne Feinstein and a member of the University of California Board of Regents. CBRE's connection to a politically powerful family with a history of accessing...

When you see the image of 61-year-old Larry Ruthenberg pushing his mother, 89-year-old Doris, through a store in her wheelchair, you probably think there's a caring son looking after his elderly mother. But Gilbert Police see something very different. They see the duo caught in the act; stealing. "They kept pretty much to themselves," said Timothy Thomas, who lives in Mesa. He says the two moved in to the home next door for a short time in March. What he noticed about his new neighbors was their huge amount of stuff. "There were all of these trucks and stuff parked...

With energy costs escalating, more Germans are turning to wood burning stoves for heat. That, though, has also led to a rise in tree theft in the country's forests. Woodsmen have become more watchful. With snow blanketing the ground, it's the perfect time of year to snuggle up in front of a fireplace. That, though, makes German foresters nervous. When the mercury falls, the theft of wood in the country's woodlands goes up as people turn to cheaper ways to heat their homes. ----clip---- The problem has been compounded this winter by rising energy costs. The Germany's Renters Association estimates...

A well-known Brownsville minister was arrested Friday on charges that he stole more than $70,000 in taxpayer money through a community nonprofit agency that he controlled. Miami-Dade prosecutors say the Rev. Larrie Lovett, minister at the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church of Brownsville, took grant money from the nonprofit Brownsville Community Development Corp. and used it to pay for personal expenses — from rent on his Pembroke Pines home to car payments on his Lexus to a family vacation in Orlando, according to an arrest warrant. Lovett, 48, was charged with grand theft and organized scheme to defraud.