Free Republic

Legal challenges by conservative lawmakers and activists against guaranteed basic income programs are heating up nationwide. And one of their arguments is surprising: Some say the programs are discriminatory because they are not universal. Numerous cities and counties are experimenting with guaranteed basic incomes to support their most vulnerable populations. They typically offer no-strings-attached monthly payments between $500 and $1,000 to specific groups, like new moms, Black women, or trans people, all of them low-income residents. Guaranteed basic income programs differ from their idealistic cousin — a universal basic income. UBI, made famous by Andrew Yang during the 2016 presidential...

Former Chicago Alderman Ed Burke, once a powerful Democrat, was found guilty of 13 out of 14 corruption charges, including racketeering, bribery, and extortion. The case highlighted high-level corruption in Chicago’s city government, involving political favors for money. The trial also implicated other officials and revealed widespread corruption in Illinois, leading to numerous convictions. “This case was about bribery and extortion occurring at the highest level of Chicago city government,” U.S. Attorney Morris Pasqual said. “Burke has his hand out for money. He tied the giving of official action by him to the giving of money to him.” “Alderman Burke...

Germany's self-inflicted economic problems have been much in the news in the last couple of years. Having eschewed cheap fossil fuels for 'green' energy sources, the manufacturing powerhouse of Europe has fallen into recession, seen a slowdown in growth, a decline in exports, and a widening trade deficit. Of course, the country's move away from fossil fuels is not the only reason for its economic problems. Other factors include a global economic slowdown affecting its exports, the Ukraine war cutting off supplies of cheap gas, trade tensions, and domestic challenges such as a decline in investment and a shortage of...

Roughly 75% of Americans drink coffee every day. That won’t be the case for long, apparently, if the elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, have their way. Did anyone notice what they were talking about back in January during the 2024 World Economic Forum's Davos get-together? During a recent WEF panel discussion, a reporter for Moneywise, in an item posted on Yahoo! Finance, reported that one speaker, some banker named Hubert Keller, remarked, “The coffee that we all drink emits between 15 and 20 tons of CO2 per ton of coffee.” Ominously, he added, “so we should...

On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Surveillance,” Bloomberg columnist, economist, President of Queens’ College, Allianz Chief Economic Adviser, and former Obama Global Development Council Chair Dr. Mohamed El-Erian stated that the “sustainable energy” transition has helped create “a world that’s subject to higher inflation” than the world we had before.

The city of Houston on Saturday opened new distribution centers to give out water as around 500,000 customers remained without power following severe storms blamed in the deaths of seven people in the region. Houston was forecast to reach a high of 90 degrees Saturday as the city and Harris County recovers from tornadoes and 100 mph straight-line winds that struck with little warning on Thursday. Seven deaths — four in Houston and three in unincorporated Harris County — have been blamed on effects from the weather, including from falling trees and a fire sparked by lighting.

New York City is losing drugstores as retail theft continues to surge. Gotham has logged 21,578 shoplifting complaints this year through May 12, up 5% from the 20,552 thefts during the same period last year. Manhattan has seen 8,896 incidents of retail theft alone. Crime is so rampant, national chains like Target, CVS and Walgreens are closing locations and tempering expansion plans. Target announced at the end of last year the closure of nine stores across four states, including one in Harlem, due to theft.

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher reacted to the United Kingdom and Scandinavian nations walking back transitioning children by saying that America has tried to be so progressive, it’s actually behind the rest of the world and that the American medical establishment won’t make the same corrections other nations have because “They’re afraid.” Maher stated, “Let me add one more thing to our discussion there about rolling back some of the overexcesses in 2020…this is in the U.K., they are now pronouncing the United States as way behind. This is so, to me, symbolic of so...

BERLIN (AP) – German authorities closed down Munich airport temporarily on Saturday after six climate activists broke through a security fence and glued themselves to access routes leading to runways, officials and local media reported. The activists from the group Last Generation were protesting flying, the most polluting form of transportation, said the German news agency dpa. Police have detained the six. Incoming flights had to be diverted to other airports, an airport spokesperson said. After a couple of hours, the airport’s two runways were reopened though some disruptions to flight schedules may happen, a statement on the airport´s official...

Not long ago, President Biden promised to transform the American auto industry — “first with carrots, now with sticks” is the analogy The Washington Post used. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I’d trust the president to drive my car, much less dictate the future of industrial policy. Yet Biden implemented draconian emissions limits for all vehicles, ensuring that within nine years 67% of all new passenger cars and trucks will be electric. In the old days, a centralized state controlling manufacturing and commerce, production, prices, wages and conditions in our biggest sectors would be called...

First, the stage must be set. The joke that currently occupies the Bully Pulpit says he’s the first climate president, says he’s making history by confronting the climate crisis, not denying it. “I’m taking the most significant action on climate ever in the history of the world.” Now to his latest tactic.Biden gave a warning on climate change in September 2021, when he surveyed damage caused by Hurricane Ida in New York and New Jersey. “We’ve got to listen to the scientists ... they all tell us this is code red. ... The nation and the world are in peril,...

KEY POINTS: * Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama have voted against union representation by the United Auto Workers, the National Labor Relations Board said Friday. * The results are a blow to the UAW’s organizing efforts a month after the Detroit union won an organizing drive of roughly 4,330 Volkswagen plant workers in Tennessee. * The Mercedes-Benz vote was expected to be more challenging for the union than the Volkswagen plant, where the union had already established a presence after two failed organizing drives in the past decade. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and more than a dozen other House Republicans are pushing a measure that targets the Federal Reserve System. The measure includes text that declares, "The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and each Federal reserve bank are hereby abolished" and "the Federal Reserve Act is hereby repealed." Massie announced the introduction of the measure on Thursday, the same day that the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index surpassed 40,000 for the first time before ultimately giving up its gains and closing slightly down for the day. 'If we really want to reduce...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said he laughs at the term “America first,” an increasingly common phrase heard in the Republican Party regarding U.S. foreign policy that he finds “disorienting.” Romney said during an interview with MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle” earlier this week that growing isolationism in the GOP is “unimaginable” considering its past leaders, like former Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, as well as former Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Romney argued the term, popularized by former President Trump, “flows” in from talk radio and TV, where “outrageous” things are embraced by the party’s...

For decades now, I’ve been conducting my own informal survey of American views about CEO pay. Whenever family, friends, or random strangers ask about my job, I tell them it involves research on executive compensation. Last year, for example, I found that CEOs of America’s 100 largest low-wage employers made, on average, over 600 times what their median workers made — and often thousands of times more. Invariably, people see red when I share these numbers. And they often have choice words about the unfairness of it all. A new poll reinforces my informal findings: Americans across the political spectrum...

“I love my job,” she told Carr. “I’ve always loved being a doctor and I delivered over 1,000 babies and I took care of families, but this is the very best work I’ve ever done in the last seven years. And people ask me why, and I think well, doctors like grateful patients, and nobody is more grateful than my patients now and their families.” Her euthanasia patients, it must be noted, are dead. As one disturbed watcher noted on social media: “Enjoying her job a little too much, I felt.” Many others concurred.

The state's election office on Monday began proceedings against an advocate for wolves in Colorado over allegations of illegally lobbying during the 2024 session at the state Capitol. ... The complaints, filed in March by John Williams, who operates Colorado Wolf Tracker, claimed Stephen Capra and his organization, Bold Visions Conservation, lobbied multiple legislators on behalf of a paying client, all without registering and without disclosing the client’s identity as required by law. The Elections Division of the Secretary of State launched the proceedings against Capra ... The bill Capra was lobbying on was House Bill 1375, which was sponsored...

President Joe Biden introduced new provisions to his student debt relief plan earlier this month, and the primary beneficiaries are high-income earners, according to a new analysis released by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. While Biden’s 2023 SAVE Plan already put taxpayers on the hook for $475 billion, the new plans add another $84 billion to the tally — largely by “canceling” the student debt of some 750,000 households making more than $312,000 a year on average. The average debt relief for these households is $25,500, the study found. In June 2023, the Supreme Court struck down...

Millions of Texas residents are without power after massive storms tore through the state on Thursday and toppled transmission towers. The National Weather Service of Houston wrote on X: “Severe thunderstorms moving across the Houston metro area have a history of producing damaging winds!” “This destructive storm will contain wind gusts to 80 MPH! A tornado is possible!” Shocking footage of the toppled transmission towers was shared by users on X. Over a million Texans are without power, mainly in the eastern part of the state, poweroutage.us reported. AOL.com reported: Thunderstorms have killed four people and knocked out power to...

Mainstream media has been covering bird flu incessantly for weeks. It has been compared to COVID-19 and even the Bubonic plague with talking head “doctors” practically declaring it to be the next pandemic. Whether their concern is real or part of an election year operation is debatable, but what has become crystal clear is that Americans are viewing the sudden bird flu attention from government agencies as a reason to stock up on long-term storage beef. “The beef industry is undeniably under attack,” said JD Rucker, CEO of Prepper All-Naturals. “Whatever risk, if any, that bird flu poses to cattle...