Free Republic

Coal production in the first three months of 2016 was 173 million short tons, the lowest quarterly level in the United States since a major coal strike in the second quarter of 1981. Among the regions tracked by the EIA, the Powder River Basin (PBR) in Montana and Wyoming saw the largest decline both in terms of absolute tonnage and as a percentage of the previous quarter.Demand for coal has dropped off steeply as natural gas becomes the primary fuel source for electrical generation. Electricity generation accounts for more than 90% of domestic coal use, but environmental regulations have caused...

Broad demographic shifts in marital status, educational attainment and employment have transformed the way young adults in the U.S. are living, and a new Pew Research Center analysis of census data highlights the implications of these changes for the most basic element of their lives – where they call home. In 2014, for the first time in more than 130 years, adults ages 18 to 34 were slightly more likely to be living in their parents’ home than they were to be living with a spouse or partner in their own household. 1 This turn of events is fueled primarily...

The world is still paying attention to millennials and their migration habits, despite Generation Z’s incoming threat. And while millennials appear to like cities, thanks to their good public transportation and myriad Apple Stores, a new study says some of the world’s biggest urban areas are in danger of losing their young people in the next 10 years. Global initiative group YouthfulCities interviewed 15,000 millennials in 34 cities all over the world, splitting them up by continent. And of those millennials, 58 percent said they planned to leave their city within the next decade, noting that they’re being driven out...

A curious poll out of Harvard was published on Monday showing that 51% of people between 18 and 29 do not support capitalism. But the curious aspect of this poll is that only 33% of respondents supported socialism. The dichotomy suggests that either most young people haven't a clue about the differernce between capitalism and socialism or, as the researchers believe, the opposition to capitalism arises out of anger at the status quo. Washington Post: The Harvard University survey, which polled young adults between ages 18 and 29, found that 51 percent of respondents do not support capitalism. Just 42...

Now here's news you’re not likely to get from many commencement speeches, especially if they are given by Obama Administration officials, including the chief executive himself. Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, believes that U.S. income mobility, or the rags-to-riches story of the American Dream, is at a standstill. At a presentation and panel discussion at the Hoover Institution, Petrilli pointed out the problems that American families are facing in today's economy. He said that other countries, not the U.S., "tend to do better than we have" in income mobility. Petrilli said that the U.S. and the...

University students are increasingly unable to read a whole book as they simply don’t have the concentration spans required, nor are they able to understand complex, nuanced arguments, academics have said. Lecturers at leading British universities are having to actively encourage students to read beyond the set texts, and have noticed that students are increasingly unwilling to read whole texts. They say they believe internet culture is to blame, as young people nowadays are used to receiving arguments in the form of 800-1000 word articles. Anything beyond that, they say, is now proving too challenging. “Incoming undergraduates have had their...

While not as heavily reported in time past, women are becoming major players in the gun industry and ownership. Contrary to popular belief, women are not stalwarts of gun control politics–they want to protect themselves as any other American. That’s why across the country record numbers of women are lining up to obtain their gun permits. In fact, since 2007, there has been a 270 percent increase in women having concealed carry permits. So, the truth of the matter is that women have always been around guns; it was that no one was catering to their needs, especially when it...

A new poll has found that youth in Israel are increasingly right-wing in their political opinions, and are overwhelmingly Zionist and loyal to their country. The survey, conducted by the New Wave Research institute for Israel Hayom and published in part on Wednesday, asked 11th and 12th graders to define their political position. A full 59% defined themselves as right-wing, while another 23% said they were centrist, and only 13% identified as leftist. Another 5% said they have no position. A whopping 82% said there is no chance of reaching a deal of some sort with the Palestinian Arabs, indicating...

White women have been dying prematurely at higher rates since the turn of this century, passing away in their 30s, 40s and 50s in a slow-motion crisis driven by decaying health in small-town America, according to an analysis of national health and mortality statistics by The Washington Post. Among African Americans, Hispanics and even the oldest white Americans, death rates have continued to fall. But for white women in what should be the prime of their lives, death rates have spiked upward. In one of the hardest-hit groups — rural white women in their late 40s — the death rate...

I confidently predict that people will still be having sex in 20 to 40 years’ time, but they will be using sex to conceive their babies much less often. Two biomedical advances are going to change how humans reproduce: whole genome sequencing and stem cell technology.

(CNSNews.com) - Sometime in the next four years the global population of human beings who are 65 and older will surpass those under 5 for the first time, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau. “For the first time in human history, people aged 65 and older will outnumber children under age 5,” says the report, entitled “An Aging World: 2015.” “This crossing is just around the corner, before 2020,” says the report. “These two age groups will then continue to grow in opposite directions,” it says. “By 2050, the proportion of the population 65 and older...

Dystopian Fiction of Yesterday is the NWO of Tomorrow: “The Shift is Toward Totalitarianism” By Jeremiah Johnson SHTFplan.com Many of the things that are happening this very moment have direct parallels in the literature of the past. Whether it is an account such as the “Gulag Archipelago” by Solzhenitsyn or a work of “fiction” such as “1984” by George Orwell is irrelevant. Elements of the history or the storyline (regarding the former and the latter works) are now becoming thoroughly inculcated into the fabric of modern reality. All of the measures taken by the Soviet Union to crush and control...

Around the world, people are beginning to turn their backs on religion. For some time, researchers have observed this trend as it ripples through developed countries, with the United States standing out as the exception. Now, a new study reveals this is no longer the case; with each passing generation, Americans too are steadily becoming less religious. --snip-- Researchers found each generation is subsequently less religious than the one before. In one example, the team found that 41 percent of people aged 70 and older reported they attend church services at least once a month. For people just under that...

Are we be better off today with the thousands of U.S. factories that have shut down and millions of American jobs lost and the trillions in accumulated debt that we've run up in the last couple decades of free trade? And, of course, this is due to many factors including such things as: Big government Regulations High taxes Unions driving up costs Cheap labor overseas Fewer regulations overseas Lower taxes overseas Trade deficits etc., And doubly exasperated by poor trade deals? Or is this all a myth? Are we better off with cheaper foreign (cheap) goods, fewer U.S. factories, fewer...

In 1974, corporate behemoth GE moved its headquarters from Manhattan to the suburban Fairfield, Connecticut. Last week, it announced that it was leaving Fairfield for Boston's waterfront district. And as GE goes, it has people wondering whether the suburbs are going to lose their economic lifeblood. Mad Men reminded us that mid-century advertising executives worked in the heart of Manhattan, but slowly began their retreat to the burbs as crime exploded in New York City. The corporate offices followed them and their growing families in the 1970s and 1980s.

"The perception that the Christian faith is extreme," says Barna Group, "is now firmly entrenched among the nation's non-Christians."I'm in the final stretch of completing this book, which I should have finished weeks (or months!) ago. And I have a number of things I plan to post about as soon as possible. But this bit of news from the Barna Group grapt aholt of me (that's a German phrase, by way of Montana): Society is undergoing a change of mind about the way religion and people of faith intersect with public life. That is, there are intensifying perceptions that faith...

Moody’s put Chevron (CVX) on review for a downgrade on expected negative free cash flow and changed Exxon Mobil‘s (XOM) debt rating outlook to negative, as lower capital reinvestment will likely haunt the oil major for the rest of the decade. The ratings agency predicts negative free cash flow this year and next at Chevron, according to a note from Pete Speer, Moody’s senior vice president. He thinks negative free cash flow could even continue until 2018. Last month Chevron cut its capital spending for this year by 25% vs. 2015, but Moody’s sees negative free cash flow to exceeded...

Few things are as painless to prepare as cereal. Making it requires little more than pouring something (a cereal of your choice) into a bowl and then pouring something else (a milk of your choice) into the same bowl. Eating it requires little more than a spoon and your mouth. The food, which Americans still buy $10 billion of annually, has thrived over the decades, at least in part, because of this very quality: Its convenience. And yet, for today's youth, cereal isn't easy enough. On Monday, the New York Times published a story about the breakfast favorite, and the...

Rio de Janeiro, February 20, Interfax - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has called on Orthodox Christians and Catholics to join efforts in the fight against the ousting of Christian values. "We still have some doctrinal disagreements, but no one is preventing us from fighting, hand in hand, to end the persecutions, the ousting of Christian values, to end the de-Christianization of the 21st century human civilization," the patriarch said, after conducting a prayer service near the Jesus Christ statue on Mount Corcovado, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the world's largest Catholic country, on Saturday. All travelers, especially...

The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was more than a tragedy for his family and American jurisprudence. It was a calamity for religious liberty. The Court will soon hear Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell, which challenges the Obamacare contraception mandate. Because the loss of Scalia reduces the number of justices to eight, the spectre of a tie vote now looms over the case. If the remaining justices vote as they did in the Hobby Lobby case, the result will be a per curiam decision whereby a prior miscarriage of justice by the Tenth Circuit Court of...