Free Republic

I am going to vote no on all of the propositions in May. Very simply stated, the so-called spending limit does not warrant the tax increases, or an extension. As usual, our Republican friends in the Legislature got sold a bill of goods. They really got nothing for the tax increases they voted. for. The ballot propositions that are supposed to implement the budget solutions are either meaningless, foolish, or increase state spending. As usual, the Democrats got everything they wanted, that is, no spending reductions at all (I am not going to argue about the baseline issues, there really...

Liberal Senate Democrats and the U.S. State Department are desperate to get the U.N.'s Law of the Sea Treaty ratified. But Senator David Vitter, a conservative Republican, keeps getting in the way. Through skillful questioning during Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, the Louisiana Republican got a leading treaty supporter to acknowledge that America's enemies can manipulate the process of mandatory dispute settlement under the treaty so that the United Nations Secretary-General plays the key role in the outcome. Vitter called this a "recipe for disaster" for America and urged more hearings into the treaty's flaws.

(CNSNews.com) -- An additional 45-day government review of the controversial bid by a Dubai-owned company to operate some terminals at six U.S. ports will do nothing to change the minds of congressional Democrats like U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader. "Congress must put an immediate halt to this deal that the (Bush) administration hastily approved in secret without input from the Congress or state officials and without a thorough review of how it might affect America 's security," Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared on Capitol Hill Wednesday. However, across town a group of current and former law enforcement officials urged...

Word has it that Gov. Schwarzenegger is seriously considering a $100-billion infrastructure bond, causing many to ask, “Can we afford this?” The answer is an emphatic no, even though California’s fiscal picture is slightly better than it has been in recent years. That can be attributed to a generally healthy economy funneling billions into state coffers. Structurally, however, California remains in poor condition as the state continues to pay for past mistakes such as spending sprees during the Davis era. This locked California into obligations that were only sustainable with the tremendous tax-revenue growth of the late 1990s. Predictably, the...

HAVANA (AP) - Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman said Wednesday he met with President Fidel Castro late Tuesday after a trade delegation from his state finalized deals to sell wheat, beans and soy products worth about $27 million (about euro23 million) to the communist-run island. Heineman declined to provide details about the hour-long meeting at Castro's offices, which the Cuban leader requested. The Republican governor has been striving to keep a low political profile during his trip and has steered away from discussing U.S.-Cuba relations, emphasizing instead the economic benefits of the Cuban market for Nebraska farmers. The deals signed Tuesday...

December 29, 2003 How FDR's New Deal Harmed Millions of Poor People by By Jim Powell Jim Powell, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is author of FDR's Folly, How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression (Crown Forum, 2003). Democratic presidential candidates as well as some conservative intellectuals, are suggesting that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal is a good model for government policy today. Mounting evidence, however, makes clear that poor people were principal victims of the New Deal. The evidence has been developed by dozens of economists -- including two Nobel Prize winners -- at Brown,...

Abidjan - Stone-throwing mobs attacked the French embassy and army base in the Ivory Coast on Sunday as thousands marched in an explosion of anger over a peace accord they said France had imposed to the advantage of rebels. The massive protests underlined the problems facing the power-sharing deal agreed by President Laurent Gbagbo in Paris on Saturday to end the four-month war that has split the world's top cocoa producer along ethnic lines. Soldiers from the former colonial power used teargas and riot-control stun grenades to drive demonstrators from their military base in Abidjan and from the French embassy,...