Free Republic

WASHINGTON - Senior Democratic lawmakers are moving to fulfill President Joe Biden's desire to expand the child tax credit by drafting legislation that would direct the Internal Revenue Service to send recurring monthly payments to tens of millions of American families, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share knowledge of the internal discussion. Under one draft of the plan being discussed, the IRS would be tasked with depositing checks worth $300 every month per child younger than 6, as well as $250 every month per child aged 6 to 17. That would amount to $3,600...

In 2020, however, there were no positive results of the government’s sale of favors and corporatist policies. Millions are still out of work, not because they were bad employees, but because the government wouldn’t and still won’t let them work. Small businesses, the backbone of the American economy and our middle class, were devastated by government lockdown policies. And when the government did try to “help,” namely through the Covid relief bills, the main result was even more corruption and cronyism. Special interests received billions and average Americans were left with crumbs. And what did we gain from that? Nothing...

The Trump administration has relaxed a regulation restricting water flow from showerheads, a pet peeve of President Donald Trump, who complained that he wanted more water to make his hair “perfect.” Since 1992, federal law has dictated that showerheads shouldn’t spew more than 2.5 gallons (9.5 liters) of water a minute. As newer shower fixtures came out with multiple nozzles, the Obama administration updated the ruling, stating that 2.5 gallons was still the limit regardless of how many nozzles were running. The new ruling, issued on Tuesday, now says each showerhead can emit 2.5 gallons a minute. “So showerheads —...

Washington, DC (August 31, 2020)—The German Marshall Fund’s Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative today launches the “Digital New Deal,” a yearlong campaign that will bring together a broad community of policymakers, technical experts, and scholars to create an Internet that supports democracy by enacting specific reforms in five key areas.

There’s another global disaster we also need to try to prevent: climate change. We have only some of the tools we need to eliminate the world’s greenhouse gases. We need breakthroughs in the way we generate and store clean electricity, grow food, make things, move around, and heat and cool our buildings, so we can do all these things without adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. We need to revolutionize the world’s physical economy—and that will take, among other things, a dramatic infusion of ingenuity, funding, and focus from the federal government. No one else has the resources to...

“America’s prosperity was not a gift from the government or anyone else. Free enterprise, not government, is the source from which our blessings flow.” I think that this quote by Ronald Reagan on prosperity just about perfectly sums up why we need to be mindful of government promises of prosperity. Yes, the government can implement policies that don’t constrain citizen action enough to limit wealth creation too much and we should always support politicians that promise those policies. But, frankly, any government action will only hurt the economy. The government might be here to help, but it’s like your idiot...

With the hull and sail design based on a trading schooner built in the Åland Islands, Finland, in 1906, from the horizon Ceiba will have the appearance of a classic turn-of-the-century vessel, when the last commercial sail-powered ships were made. “They represented the peak of working sail technology, before fossil fuel came in and cut them off at the ankles,” ...Ceiba is small for a cargo ship – tiny in fact. She will carry around nine standard shipping containers. The largest conventional container ships today carry more than 20,000 containers.

The government’s long-running and destructive effort to control our nation’s economy at all levels, which went into overdrive this year with the advent of COVID-19, barely slowed for the speed bump that was the November 3 election. The current pattern has become distressingly clear and sadly predictable: issue declarations and then shame people into following them. Without any science to support many of their recommendations, unelected bureaucrats and politicians enamored of the power their status provides, continue to propose radical and often nonsensical measures. The American people can see this system at work simply by skimming through Joe Biden’s official...

To that nagging question, the answer increasingly seems to be yes. Certainly, they were a novelty. As novelist Lionel Shriver writes, "We've never before responded to a contagion by closing down whole countries." As I noted in May, the 1957-58 Asian flu killed between 70,000 and 116,000 Americans, between 0.04% and 0.07% of the nation's population. The 1968-70 Hong Kong flu killed about 100,000, 0.05% of the population. The U.S. coronavirus death toll of 186,000 is 0.055% of the current population. It will go higher, but it's about the same magnitude as those two flus, and it has been less...

James Altucher, who might best be described as a renaissance man, recently wrote a sobering piece about New York City. Altucher is bearish on the city’s future for a variety of reasons. I don’t quite share his pessimism, especially considering all of the variables likely to affect a NYC comeback—the widespread availability of a vaccine, government policy, “pandemic fatigue,” technological innovations, etc. But I am confident in saying that if the city resists tearing down the barriers to innovation—high taxes, burdensome regulations and gratuitous mandates—recovery will be all the more difficult. I say this as someone who lives in Upstate...

The Democratic National Convention has come to a close. Between their speeches and their platform, one thing is clear, to every inequity or problem, the Democrats have a spending program or some government action to offer. The price for those programs, however, will be to kill the very job growth they claim to want. The Democrats, for several decades now, and to an ever-increasing degree, decry the conditions in the United States. They insist America is the land of inequity and inequality not opportunity. They don’t laud its success but, instead, decry its failures.

A week ago, on Sunday the 2nd August 2020 at 1:43pm the State of Victoria was declared to be in a State of Disaster. This was of course due to Covid-19. Between the start of February and the 2nd August, 123 people have died with Covid-19 in their body in Victoria. 123! A State of Disaster basically means that the government can use all government resources, including financial to help to alleviate any disaster. Are we in a disaster? In 2018 there were 158,493 recorded deaths in Australia, that works out to 434 deaths a day. As of the 6th...

People who resist COVID-19 restrictions are often accused of being selfish and caring only about their own freedom. While that might explain the actions of some, moral arguments can be made against many of the restrictions. Although simple appeals to “freedom” are indeed less popular today than in the past, we should not disregard them. Nearly all our responses to COVID-19 require balancing one concern against another, and individuals and institutions will come to different conclusions as they try to strike that balance.

At a time our country faces a massive recession brought on by the coronavirus lockdowns, America’s welfare state exacerbates that stagnation. Ronald Reagan had an old adage about the nine most terrifying words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Recently, a new paper reinforced that truth and adds to the existing literature showing how America’s welfare state often traps generations in a cycle of poverty.At its core, a complicated set of welfare programs and tax breaks generate sizable incentives for many low-income Americans not to increase their incomes and improve their station in...

On May 26, Virginia’s Gov. Ralph Northam announced that wearing masks outside one’s home will be mandatory effective May 29. He first hinted he might issue a masking order a week ago, likely to test the water. A new refrain in public discourse is growing in volume by the day: “Things will never be the same.” The certainty with which we are assured of this pre-determined future is perplexing. Whether or not “things” will ever be the same is not at all clear, but that some people hope things will never be the same is certain. To those looking to...

It starts with a phone call from a public health worker: You’ve been in contact with someone who has COVID-19. How do you feel? If you’re feeling sick, you may be asked to self-isolate, get a coronavirus test, and share the contact information for everyone you’ve recently interacted with. The practice, known as contact tracing, is a tried-and-true public health technique used to trace everything from food poisoning to sexually transmitted diseases to Ebola. Now, public health officials across several states believe it could be used on a far greater scale to help track the spread of COVID-19, stamp out...

Citizens must be wary of the attempt to redirect legitimate concern about coronavirus into a mandate for sweeping new government powers. Civil liberties are a delicate thing. Governments are instituted among people to protect rights, rather than create them. In the midst of necessary action at the federal, state, and local level, citizens must be wary of the attempt to redirect legitimate concern about coronavirus into a mandate for sweeping new government powers.A full 74 percent of voters support a nationwide lockdown due to the pandemic. With the American public desperate for answers and solutions, this could allow our politicians...

Once again, government intrusion into the health-care sector has proved disastrous. While New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blames the president and the federal government for the lack of beds and ventilators in his state, the power to determine the number of these critical medical supplies in New York hospitals falls squarely upon the shoulders of the governor.During a Tuesday press conference, Cuomo lashed out at the federal government for not sending enough ventilators as the Wuhan coronavirus continues to rattle the state. “Four hundred ventilators? I need 30,000 ventilators,” Cuomo said. “You want a pat on the back for sending...

NEW YORK - Republicans who have spent the past decade howling about the danger of ballooning deficits embraced the coronavirus rescue package approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump, shrugging off past concerns about spending in the face of a public health crisis. In many cases, the conservatives who backed the $2 trillion bill - the largest economic relief measure in U.S. history - were the very same who raged against the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package backed by the Obama administration. But facing the unprecedented threat of a global pandemic - and working under a Republican...

Nothing makes government grow like a crisis. People get scared, politicians respond to that fear with promises that the state will step in and make everything better, and government ends up larger and more powerful. The pandemic of COVID-19 coronavirus threatens a world-wide wave of sickness, but it's the healthiest thing to happen to government power in a very long time. As it leaves government with a rosy glow, however, our freedom will end up more haggard than ever. During Senate testimony, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Robert Kadlec, who coordinates the department's COVID-19 efforts, floated the...