Free Republic

A low-temperature electrochemical method for producing iron could reshape the steel industry. A blazing snapshot of traditional ironmaking, one of the world’s most polluting industries. sdlgzps/iStock ************************************************************************* Steel is the backbone of modern civilization—used in everything from buildings and bridges to cars and appliances. On the other hand, steelmaking is one of the world’s largest sources of carbon emissions, primarily due to the traditional process of extracting iron from ore using coal-fired blast furnaces. As the global demand for steel continues to grow, finding cleaner, more sustainable methods of production is critical—not just for climate goals, but for the future...

The number of detectives in the NYPD has dropped below 5,000 for the first time since the pandemic – and union leaders warn that 1,600 more gumshoes could retire by the end of the year... There are 4,948 detectives in the NYPD today compared to 7,000 at the staffing peak following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Another 1,676 investigators with at least 19 years or more on the job will be eligible to retire in 2025 ... The Detectives’ Endowment Association said 359 gumshoes have already put in for retirement in the first two months of this year — compared...

Daniel Alman from Squirrel Hill @DanielAlmanPGH #ElonMusk chose to waive getting a salary in exchange for a performance based pay scale. Therefore, when #JudgeKathaleenMcCormick said his pay package was “unfathomable,” she was really saying that Musk did his job too well. #AtlasShrugged #WhoIsJohnGalt #AynRand #Communism 2:04 PM · Dec 4, 2024

A 2019 video of a Kamala Harris campaign event made the rounds on the internet Friday night after the Democrat presidential hopeful unveiled some of her economic proposals, including her apparent desire for Soviet-style price controls on groceries. During her ill-fated run for president, the now vice president said she could lower prices on drugs simply by having the government seize patents from pharmaceutical companies and “take over.” That’s not how a free-market economy is supposed to work, but the giddy Harris didn’t care: “My plan, as a candidate for president, on these drug prices is as follows: We are...

When in doubt, blame businesses for closing their doors instead of the crime that has made it unsustainable for them to operate. San Francisco might even do you one better: force the businesses to stay open anyway. One of the 11 members of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is floating reviving a vetoed 1984 law that would force grocery stores to stay open against their will. Supervisor Dean Preston calls it a “good idea” because of the risk of “food insecurity” that comes with grocery stores closing. The law in question would require stores to give a whopping six-month notice...

Multiple intel sources: Baltimore bridge collapse was an “absolutely brilliant strategic attack” on US critical infrastructure - most likely cyber - & our intel agencies know it. In information warfare terms, they just divided the US along the Mason Dixon line exactly like the Civil War. Second busiest strategic roadway in the nation for hazardous material now down for 4-5 years - which is how long they say it will take to recover. Bridge was built specifically to move hazardous material - fuel, diesel, propane gas, nitrogen, highly flammable materials, chemicals and oversized cargo that cannot fit in the tunnels...

When Machiavelli wrote, “in order to know Moses’ virtue it was necessary that the people of Israel be slaves in Egypt …,” he was pointing to the truth that knowing what one is up against is a powerful incentive for dealing with it intelligently. Genesis tells us that only in Moses’ time did the Egyptians make clear how harsh was the alternative to the Exodus by deciding to kill their longtime slaves’ baby boys. Today, the oligarchy that controls American society’s commanding heights leaves those who are neither its members nor its clients little choice but to marshal their forces...

If it ain’t broke, break it. This is Joe Biden’s guiding principle. He took President Donald J. Trump’s much-tighter southern border and ripped it as wide open as a gutted trout’s belly. Biden turned Trump’s energy independence into begging Iran and Venezuela to pump more oil. He also devolved Trump’s peace in the Middle East into a five-front Arab war on Israel and let the Houthi terrorists convert the Red Sea into a shooting gallery. And for his next trick, Biden wants to impersonate a Latin autocrat. On December 7, a date that shall live in infamy, Biden’s Commerce Department...

One-third of Seattle residents are considering packing up and moving elsewhere, largely citing home prices and crime, according to a Seattle Times/Suffolk University poll conducted in June. Roughly 33 percent of Seattle residents surveyed say they are seriously considering moving out of the city, while 67 percent say they are not. The survey was conducted with 500 residents by phone from June 12-16 and has a ±4.4 percent margin of error.

The proposal would cap the price of at least 80 percent of the electricity consumed by energy-intensive industries in Germany. Germany's Economy Minister Robert Habeck on Friday presented plans to cap the price of electricity used by energy-intensive industries to insulate the sector against sharp cost increases, but the proposal immediately sparked criticism. The cap, which would be set at 0.06 euros ($0.07) per gigawatt hour (GWh), would apply until 2030 and cover at least 80 percent of companies' electricity usage. Energy costs rose sharply in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as Moscow dwindled critical gas supplies...

At first glance, a lot of the social problems and resource waste emerging from government intervention seem pretty easy to fix: the government should just stop doing whatever it is doing that is creating the problems and the waste. The stubborn persistence of institutions and organizations that keep societies poor is a vexing problem for social scientists. In Political Capitalism, the economist Randall Holcombe takes on this problem by analyzing “political capitalism” as a distinct economic system with its own logic and features rather than as some kind of midpoint between capitalism and socialism. As he points out, people do...

Beginning on page 411 of the 35th Anniversary Edition of Atlas Shrugged. (from Atlas Shrugged II, Minute 40) Dr. Ferris smiled. . . . . ."We've waited a long time to get something on you. You honest men are such a problem and such a headache. But we knew you'd slip sooner or later - and this is just what we wanted." "You seem to be pleased about it." "Don't I have good reason to be?" "But, after all, I did break one of your laws." "Well, what do you think they're for?" Dr. Ferris did not notice the sudden...

Ayn Rand referred to the business and political masters (and clueless destroyers) of the economy as ‘looters.’ ... One guesses that Ayn Rand, author of the 1957 dystopian novel “Atlas Shrugged,” wouldn’t be surprised by our government-business partnerships and moral crusades. Sam Bankman-Fried would fit perfectly as a character in an “Atlas Shrugged” sequel. In Rand’s novel, a do-good industrialist collaborating with political managers of the economy opines, “It’s generally conceded that the free economy is now on trial. Unless it proves its social value and assumes its social responsibilities, the people won’t stand for it. If it doesn’t develop...

This movie, ATLAS SHRUGGED, can now be seen on ROKU app, FREE VEE All parts, 1,2 and 3 found in their Recently Added movies section. Made in 2011 - for more info you might check wikipedia.

Fifty-seven years ago, Ayn Rand predicted the red wave sweeping America today. The Left Cashes In On The Real Red Wave By Eileen F. Toplansky Indeed, there was a red wave but not the one conservatives had hoped for. It was, however, the continuation of the leftists’, Marxists’, and communists’ eternal obsession to destroy America and obliterate her values—and Ayn Rand predicted it in her 1965 seminal book titled The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. Frighteningly prescient, Rand understood the beginnings of the “intellectual disintegration” that is now front and center in most colleges. Fifty-seven years later, the Left is...

This New York Times article on the failure of California’s high speed rail reminds me of the chapter “The Moratorium on Brains” from Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged.In that chapter from the fictional book, everyone on a passenger train died because the train was controlled by politics instead of common sense.This new article from the New York Times explains how the real world train’s ridiculous, absurd, irrational route was chosen based on politics instead of on common sense.The New York Times article states:“… the design for the nation’s most ambitious infrastructure project was never based on the easiest or...

As a result of his domestic war on the oil and gas industry, energy prices for American families continue to hit records with no relief in sight. For months, President Joe Biden has repeatedly tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and claimed it was helping to ease the pain at the pump. Not only has the depletion of the emergency supply not decreased gas prices, we're learning the supply is being sold to foreign countries. "More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency oil reserves release aimed at lowering domestic fuel prices were exported...

President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is roughly 270 words long. The Declaration of Independence is around 1,320 words. Those two documents alone prove the power of brevity. (Whenever I find that I am unable to write what I'm trying to say within the Lincoln-Jefferson word limit, I chuck it in the trashcan because I've most likely buried my intended message under parasitic weeds.) The whole U.S. Constitution, the shortest in the world, has only 4,400 words. Yet every two-year Congress since WWII has enacted 4-6 million words of new law. A wise man once told me that if a law can't...

New York, NY – The mass exodus plaguing the New York Police Department (NYPD) may be having the biggest impact on its investigations with more than 100 seasoned detectives filing their retirement paperwork in June. Statistics showed that 250 NYPD detectives have retired so far this year and sources told the New York Post that another 75 veteran investigators were planning to retire in July. Before the June retirements began, the police force had 5,600 detectives. That’s almost 2,000 fewer detectives than NYPD had on the department less than 20 years ago, the New York Post reported. The detectives’ union...

For most of my adult life I’ve been told about Ayn Rand’s famous novel…but had no idea what it was about. It was particularly popular among my Libertarian buddies. So, I finally ordered a copy…and when it came, I had to update the prescription for my reading glasses, because it’s over a thousand pages in nine-point type. Early on I was able to kind of get a handle on what it was about. There are basically two kinds of people: problem solvers or innovators who are constantly trying to make things work better…and cronies, who have an overwhelming sense of...