Free Republic

I want you to read something. It's a snatch of transcript from a Jan. 27 C-SPAN interview with Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., that has received zero coverage in what we think of as the mainstream media. To set the C-SPAN scene, Kanjorski is harkening back to the middle of last September, when, as it happens, John McCain was enjoying his brief lead in the presidential polls and the economy as we knew it was imploding. Here's what Kanjorski said: "I was there when the Secretary (of the Treasury Hank Paulson) and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (Ben Bernanke) came...

January’s Employment Situation Report from Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was even worse than expected. Seasonally adjusted employment fell by 598,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rose to 7.6%. In his Saturday address that followed this news, President Barack Obama was correct in pointing out that 3.6 million jobs have been lost since the recession, at least as “defined” by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), began. The recession, as normal people define it (”a decline in gross domestic product [GDP] for two or more consecutive quarters”), began in the third quarter of 2008 and became official...

RUSH: I want you to listen to this, Paul Kanjorski. He's a Democrat member of Congress from Pennsylvania. He was on C-SPAN's Washington Journal on January 27th. KANJORSKI: On Thursday at about 11 o'clock in the morning -- RUSH: Stop the tape a second. Go back and recue this. He's talking about September the 18th here. Let me tease you even further. September the 18th is the day last year that the world economy almost came to an end. Don't smirk. It's true, Snerdley. That's what Kanjorski is saying. So he's talking here about Thursday, September the 18th. KANJORSKI: On...

Legislation will protect families, charities and small businesses from regulations and lawsuits that could kill thousands of jobs. Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) announced the introduction of a bill protect small businesses, charities and families by reforming the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA). Senator DeMint’s legislation would stop the most overreaching and burdensome aspects of CPSIA, slated to take effect February 10. Unless reformed, the new law will demand onerous testing for anything geared towards children age 12 and under. This mandate would fall on books, toys, clothing, hair bands, board games, sporting equipment, backpacks,...

Rasmussen Consumer Index Investor Confidence Falls Four Points to 60.0 The Rasmussen Investor Index fell four points on Tuesday to 60.0. That's the lowest level of investor confidence in over a month and barely above the all-time low of 58.5 measured in mid-December. The Investor Index is down eight points over the past week, down six points over the past month and down forty-six points over the past year. After falling for five straight days, the Rasmussen Consumer Index stabilized on Tuesday at 59.4. The Consumer Index, which measures the economic confidence of consumers on a daily basis, is down...

Twenty-five people at the heart of the meltdown ... The worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression is not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster in which we all played a part. In the second part of a week-long series looking behind the slump, Guardian City editor Julia Finch picks out the individuals who have led us into the current crisis

Does anybody have text versions of quotes over a timeline exposing the fools and the sages of economic predictions?

More Than a Good Feeling Why are so many oligarchs, royal families, and special-interest groups giving money to the Clinton Foundation? By Christopher Hitchens Bill Clinton speaks at the Clinton Global Initiative in Hong Kong Here is a thought experiment that does not take very much thought. Picture, if you will, Hillary Clinton facing a foreign-policy conundrum. With whom will she discuss it first and most intently: with her president or her husband? (I did tell you that this wouldn't be difficult.) Here's another one: Will she be swayed in her foreign-policy decisions by electoral considerations focusing on the year...

HOUSTON (AP) — President George W. Bush told a group of Texas reporters Friday that he regretted immigration policies were not reformed while he was in office. "I'm very disappointed that it didn't pass," he said in an interview with correspondents from his home state. "I'm very worried about the message that said, 'Republicans are anti-immigrant.'"

January 08, 2009, 0:00 a.m. Try a Little Honesty in 2009Why aren’t more of the fans of a Big Three bailout buying American? By Victor Davis Hanson The country is still divided over the government bailout of the Big Three automakers. Mostly Democratic supporters cited the need to save jobs and ensure that a hallmark manufacturing industry remains healthy and American. Mostly Republican opponents complained that taxpayers were asked to subsidize serially incompetent management and a fossilized overpaid union workforce. So here’s a modest suggestion for proponents of the bailout: Start buying American cars. I travel frequently to bastions...

Democrats and the media have the housing story wrong. Mythmaking is in full swing as the Bush administration prepares to leave town. Among the more prominent is the assertion that the housing meltdown resulted from unbridled capitalism under a president opposed to all regulation. It took Fannie and Freddie over three decades to acquire $2 trillion in mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. Together, they held $2.1 trillion in 2000. By 2005, the two GSEs held $4 trillion, up 92% in just five years. By 2008, they'd grown another 24%, to nearly $5 trillion. They held almost half of all American mortgages.

With England's economy gasping in the mid 1970s due to a combination of nosebleed rates of taxation and a currency in freefall, the fortunes of many of its flagship companies similarly reflected the ailing health of a country in decline.High tax rates and inflation bat a thousand when it comes to the disappearance of investors, and with Coventry-based carmaker Jaguar in major financial trouble, its executives went to the government for help. Jaguar was effectively nationalized by the British government in 1975 thanks to skeptical credit markets, and it remained that way until Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's privatization program freed...

With the opening of the 111th Congress yesterday, all of Washington is tingling with the allure of a fresh start. Not so fast. We've got some leftover business from the 110th Congress -- namely, Chris Dodd's July 2008 promise to release the details of his sweetheart loans from Countrywide Financial. The Connecticut Senator got favored treatment from the subprime mortgage purveyor, even as he was a power broker on the Banking Committee that regulates the industry. When the news broke, the Senator first denied that he sought or expected preferential treatment. He later admitted that he knew he was considered...

Lawmakers took a hard look Monday at the alleged $50 billion investment scam engineered by Bernard Madoff that has sent shock waves across the nation's already fragile financial system. At a hearing held by a House Financial Services subcommittee, lawmakers largely focused on how Madoff managed to evade detection for so long and whether gaps in regulation allowed him to carry out his alleged multi-billion Ponzi scheme. "Before we act we need to understand how Mr. Madoff organized his many business operations and how he perpetrated his alleged fraudulent acts," said Paul Kanjorski, D-Penn, the chairman of the subcommittee. A...

The big headline story recently has been Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s “play for pay” scandal relating to the president-elect’s vacant Senate seat. We’ve also been watching money scandals surrounding other Democrats such as Charlie Rangel and William Jefferson, to name but a few. It now appears by way of the New York Times that they are not alone in violating ethics. Add Hillary Clinton to the list. The next secretary of state did a huge favor for a developer who contributed thousands to her campaign and her husband's library....

As Mata wrote about here, Bill Richardson was jettisoned from the Obama camp because of another “pay to play” scheme. But there is another one coming down the pike and this one involves the Clintons. I know…big shocker! Apparently in October of 2004 Hillary pushed through some bond legislation that allowed a developer named Robert Congel to use tax-exempt bonds to help construct an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse called the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex.So what you say? Well, the next month a hundred grand shows up as a donation to the Clinton Foundation.

The 110th U.S. Congress has formally adjourned for the year without a conclusion to an ethics probe of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel, contrary to a November prediction by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi... Rangel, D-N.Y., is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee in at least four areas, including his reported failure to properly report income taxes on a Caribbean villa in the Dominican Republic; use of four, rent-controlled apartments in Harlem; questions about an off-shore firm asking Rangel for special tax exemptions; and whether Rangel improperly used House stationary to solicit donations for a school of...

California Rep. Joe Baca has long pushed legislation he said would "open the doors to the American Dream" for first-time home buyers in his largely Hispanic district. For many of them, those doors have slammed shut, quickly and painfully. Mortgage lenders flooded Mr. Baca's San Bernardino, Calif., district with loans that often didn't require down payments, solid credit ratings or documentation of employment. Now, many of the Hispanics who became homeowners find themselves mired in the national housing mess. Nearly 9,200 families in his district have lost their homes to foreclosure. Congressional districts with large Hispanic populations often feature heavy...

WASHINGTON – The Senate's leaders are standing solidly behind Israel's ground operation against Hamas. .. The senators say Israelis are victims of attacks by Hamas .. Israel is doing everything possible to protect its people. Sens. Harry Reid and Dick Durbin .. and Republican leader all say Israel's actions are understandable. ..