Free Republic

Billionaires buy whatever they want. And not just mansions and Teslas but elections and legislation. The recent Supreme Court decision lifting caps on campaign contributions gives them even more power. The libertarian Koch brothers have already pumped millions into this year’s elections. But Michael Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch and George Soros are no less guilty of buying our political system, and all of them, from libertarian Koch brothers to liberal Soros, are united in one cause: Bring in more foreign workers, increase job competition, and allow “market forces” to drive down wages. Since 2007, political lobbies spent a whopping...

A disgruntled worker hatched an unusual revenge plot against his former boss when he sent more than 1,000 baby ducks to his home. Builder Chiu Xiang arranged for the 1,130 live ducklings to be dropped in the home of his employer, Hung Bin, in a dispute over wages. The 60-year-old, who worked for Bin for three years, said he was owed £300 in unpaid wages after quitting his job in China’s Sichuan province last year, according to the Shanghaiist. ‘It was all he deserved,’ he said. ‘I hope the ducks drove him quackers.’ Xiang organised for a contact who runs...

See a comprehensive takedown of liberals on this issue at Legal Insurrection.

According to stunning new numbers just released by the federal government, nine of the top ten most commonly held jobs in the United States pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year. When you break that down, that means that most of these workers are making less than $3,000 a month before taxes. And once you consider how we are being taxed into oblivion, things become even more frightening. Can you pay a mortgage and support a family on just a couple grand a month? Of course not. In the old days, a single income would enable a...

Obamacare will reduce the earnings of its 300,000 members by up to $5 an hour by requiring them to buy health insurance, according to a report by Unite Here, a union which represents chiefly lower-wage workers in service industries. The union said it “threatens the middle class with higher premiums, loss of hours and a shift to part-time work and less comprehensive coverage.” Americans who says they’ve been hurt by Obamacare outnumber those who say they’ve benefited from it by more than 2 to 1, according to recent polls by both Rasmussen and Gallup.

MILFORD >> Residents with a collage of questions and suggestions made their way to the microphone held by Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman at a town hall event in Milford. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy stood at the lectern in City Hall Wednesday to answer as many questions he could in an hour — or directed people to the right staff member to contact to follow up.

Economy: Food and energy prices are rising, wages are flat and the top concern among Americans is unemployment. What was that word coined in the '70s to describe a stagnant economy suffering inflationary pressures? Since the Obama "recovery" started 4-1/2 years ago, inflation appears to have been relatively tame, with core prices climbing just 7% from June 2009 to December 2013. But as CBS News discovered when it looked a little closer, the overall number is deceptive. In fact, it found food prices soaring. The official inflation data confirm this. Overall, food prices are up 9% since June 2009, according...

In his State of the Union address, President Obama urged Congress to “give America a raise.” Well, it turns out that Obama is giving America a $70 billion annual pay cut, courtesy of Obamacare. That is the overlooked nugget in the new Congressional Budget Office report detailing the economic costs of Obamacare. While much attention has been paid to the report’s finding that Obamacare will reduce employment by as much as 2.5 million workers, buried on page 117 (Appendix C) is this bombshell: “CBO estimates that the ACA will cause a reduction of roughly 1 percent in aggregate labor compensation...

President Obama’s recent State of the Union address was the culmination of months of advocacy from Democrats and activists for a higher minimum wage. The President proposed a raise to the minimum wage for federal contractors by executive order to $10.10 per hour and called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage for all workers to the same mark, along with indexing it to inflation. A raise of the national minimum wage was framed as giving low income workers the “living wage” they deserve and fighting perceived growth in income inequality in America. Though the President’s proposal is well...

The Democrats, their union supporters, and liberals in general are making a hard and concerted push for an increase in the minimum wage. President Obama mentioned the subject prominently in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night and even promised to take executive action to increase the minimum wage federal contractors must pay their workers starting in 2015. While Republicans and small business owners are sure to resist this push, it is important that everyone on both sides debates the issue with the correct facts. Much of what you hear about the minimum wage is completely untrue. First,...

Five years after winning control of the White House and Congress, Democrats can’t wait a minute longer for a serious conversation about income inequality, a problem that is considerably worse under President Obama than it was under his much-maligned GOP predecessor. Republicans naturally accuse the president of wanting to double down on anti-poverty measures that haven’t worked, but they too seem eager to engage the issue. This decision to make income inequality the priority issue in 2014 is noteworthy in light of last year’s priority issue: comprehensive immigration reform. Although dormant for the past few months, immigration reform is still...

McDonald’s has pulled an internal website that advised its workers to avoid eating the fast food it sells... It was the last straw after a long list of embarrassments calling even more attention to what workers are already protesting that it's hard to live on a McDonald’s wage. “If everyone is talking about these gaffes and pr nightmares, that just draws attention to the fast food strikes and I don't think that's what McDonald’s should be drawing attention to,” said CNN money writer Emily Fox Recently the web site instructed McDonald’s workers how to find a second job, sell off...

Since he wrote "Fast Food Nation" more than a decade ago, muckraking author Eric Schlosser has noticed a sympathy gap in the food movement that he helped foster. Some foodies seem to care more about the treatment of the animals they eat than the workers who prepare and serve them. "It's not all foodies by any means," Schlosser said. "But the food movement can get sidetracked into wealthy, upper-middle-class people caring about food as status, caring about food as pleasure. I'm a huge supporter of animal welfare, but the compassion for the abuse of animals is so much more excessive,...

Fully 20 percent of U.S. adults become rich for parts of their lives, wielding extensive influence over America's economy and politics, according to new survey data. These "new rich," made up largely of older professionals, working married couples and more educated singles, are becoming politically influential, and economists say their capacity to spend is key to the U.S. economic recovery. But their rise is also a sign of the nation's continuing economic polarization. They extend well beyond the wealthiest 1 percent, a traditional group of super-rich millionaires and billionaires with long-held family assets. The new rich have household income of...

Could an "Arab Spring" type of upheaval be brewing in the United States? Is the frustration and anger toward our dysfunctional politics and economics beginning to reach a tipping point where young folks begin to push for profound change? Has our democracy become so broken that citizens are going to find creative avenues to express their feelings? Will we pass through the holidays and winter of our dysfunction to arrive at a spring of change? I sense a movement of social unrest growing strongly and quietly towards our own version of the Arab Spring. Let's take a look at some...

The White House has offered “no response” to a months-old call from congressional Democrats to bypass Congress and use executive action to raise workers’ wages, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus told Salon Tuesday afternoon. “It wasn’t responded to,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. “I mean, the response would have been, ‘We’re working on it, we’re looking into it,’ ‘We feel it’s a good idea,’ or, ‘No, we’re not going to do it.’ Any of those is a response. We received none of that.” Grijalva pledged that, starting with a Thursday rally at the National Air and Space Museum,...

One of the seven principles of sound public policy is that we consider long-run effects and all people, not short-run effects and a few people. The latest push for an increase in the minimum wage could use more of a consideration of the long-term effects on all people. The stated goal of proponents for a higher minimum wage is to help struggling families, according to Fight for 15, the union-sponsored group supporting fast food strikes around the country. In 2012, however, 55 percent of all minimum wage workers were between 16 and 24 years old, according to the Bureau of...

Switzerland will vote on Sunday on whether to limit the salaries of top executives so they don't earn more in a month than the lowest paid workers earn in a year, a move that could mean big pay cuts for business leaders earning millions. The so-called 1:12 initiative for Fair Pay, the latest attempt to narrow a growing wage gap in one of the world's wealthiest nations, was brought about by the youth wing of the Social Democrats (JUSO), who gathered the 100,000 signatures needed to force a nationwide vote. Despite its high standard of living, Switzerland is a generally...

POLITICS Obama courting CEOs on immigration widens conservative split, raises issue of corporate motives Published November 10, 2013 FoxNews.com President Obama's courting of top U.S. executives this week to help get the Republican-controlled House to pass immigration reform is furthering the divide among conservatives, with a top GOP senator and others suggesting corporate America is lending its support with hopes of getting more access to low-cost immigrant labor. The president said before the White House meeting Tuesday that he and others who support comprehensive immigration reform passed in the Senate know the “politics are challenging” in the House and that...

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the real median earnings of Americans dropped in the third quarter of 2013. blsheaderrealmedianwage According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the great recession ended in June 2009. Since the end of the Great Recession, real median earnings for Americans have dropped 3.5%. Any wonder why mortgage purchase applications are so low … mbapurchase1995 and money velocity is dying? m2velosp20