Free Republic

When are we going to run out of energy? You don’t hear that as much as you used to, since Those Who Know Best are working to plug up all our energy sources anyway. Most energy sources put out carbon dioxide, and that’s going to make all the plants grow and devour us all, or it will heat the planet up and make Minneapolis a desert — and we’ll all fry. Or something. But we don’t hear much any more about running out of energy. What do the experts say about it? “According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA)...

During an interview with Bloomberg on Monday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen commented on President Joe Biden’s reported forthcoming announcement of increased tariffs on China by stating that the move is being made because President Joe Biden wants to protect “the stimulus that’s being provided through the Inflation Reduction Act” to support certain industries.

Word has been out about the Inland Empire region of California for a while now. The large, multi-county area east of Los Angeles and Orange County has seen a ton of new investment and overall growth in recent years, spurred on partly by coastal renters moving east to buy standalone homes in one of Southern California’s last “affordable” regions. Now, new population numbers released by the state further back up all that talk. Last week, the California Department of Finance released its annual report on population and housing estimates statewide, and the data shows that the Inland Empire is very...

This article is posted in its entirety after a podcast from Bloomburg discussed the unfair NYC property tax system.New York City’s notorious property tax system — which places a higher burden on rental properties and advantages affluent white areas at the expense of lower-income neighborhoods of color — appears headed for a major overhaul.The state’s highest court voted 4-3 on Tuesday to reinstate a lawsuit by a coalition called Tax Equity Now New York that sought to have the convoluted system declared illegal.The Court of Appeals revived two claims from the suit, which had previously been dismissed by lower courts....

A majority of voters (51 percent) believe their financial position is worse off under President Joe Biden’s economic policies, a Financial Times/Michigan Ross poll recently found. Biden’s poor economy for Main Street is the number one issue facing voters in the 2024 election. The average Wisconsin family lost $21,981 because of the increased cost of living under Biden, the Republican National Committee estimated in May. In Biden’s America, a McDonald’s Big Mac burger, a medium beverage, and a medium fry meal costs $18 in some locations, up $10 from 2018 when former President Donald Trump was in office.

In today’s edition of Getting What You Vote For, the dummies in California are about to get hit with a 50 cent per gallon gas tax. Remember, California voters have handed the Democrat party full power over the former Golden State. Democrats run everything from the governorship on down. Democrats not only hold majorities in the state legislature, they hold veto-proof majorities. In other words… Republicans are powerless in California. And so… According to Triple-A, the average cost of a gallon of gas in California today is $5.29. That’s nearly $1.70 more than the national average. In some parts of...

We all know what tiny homes are, but have you ever heard of a skinny home? What originally began as plans to construct a single-family residence in Washington, DC, suddenly shrank when the city unexpectedly changed its zoning laws. “The developer bought the property, thinking it could be a four-story home that was 15 feet wide; but the city changed the zoning laws, so he had to build this skinny home in its place,” says listing agent Jennifer Young, of Keller Williams Chantilly Ventures. “It had to be scaled down to almost half the width. This home is now just...

States like California, New York, and Massachusetts have passed climate policies specifically intended to jump-start this battery industry. But this year, for the first time ever, the fastest-growing energy storage market appears to be Texas, a free-market-affirming red state that officially cares little about solving climate change. Nonetheless, the state’s low-regulation, business-friendly landscape has created ideal conditions to build batteries quickly and at scale, just like it previously incubated thriving wind and solar markets.

UNC-Chapel Hill's Board of Trustees on Monday approved the transfer of $2.3 million in diversity and inclusion spending to public safety priorities in the 2024-25 budget. The trustees held a special meeting Monday morning. The board is scheduled to hold its regular meeting Wednesday and Thursday. The UNC System Board of Governors is expected to vote next week to eliminate diversity goals and jobs at member institutions, including UNC-Chapel Hill. A Board of Governors committee last month approved a complete rewrite of the system's existing diversity, equity and inclusion policy. The move is likely to create job losses at the...

U.S. News and World Report compiled a rankings list of the best states to live in, 2024. The magazine also compiled a list of the best cities to live in 2023-2024. There are some interesting incongruities between the two. Below I highlight apparent discrepancies between three of the top ten states, and the main cities therein.For example, U.S. News ranks Washington State as the 8th best state to live in. However, in a separate ranking of best places, they rank greater Seattle a very lowly 81st best place to live.That is curious because the timeframes are the same and their...

Defiant Columbia University graduates wore zip-tie handcuffs, brandished pro-Palestinian signs and even went as far as tearing up a diploma on stage during the Ivy League’s first commencement ceremonies last week. The protesting students were caught on camera storming across the platform on Friday to accept their degrees during ceremonies that were significantly pared after weeks of violent anti-Israel demonstrations on campus. In one of the most belligerent displays, Tarsis Salome, a Columbia social work graduate, charged forward with her zip-tied hands above her head as those in the audience cheered her on.

New Yorkers are fortifying their homes with panic rooms and bullet-proof doors like never before over fears about crime, migrants and national turmoil — and it’s not just the city’s elite partaking in the trend. “Not every [customer] is an ultra-rich stockbroker — a lot of them are just people, middle-class kind of people,” said Steve Humble, founder of the home-defense contractor Creative Home Engineering. “I’d say the pandemic really kicked off an uptick. Business was really good throughout the pandemic time, and it really hasn’t slowed down,” said Humble, who specializes in top-of-the-line secret doors disguised as bookshelves, fireplaces,...

President Joe Biden’s policy of mass migration is forcing up housing inflation, so pushing up interest rates and mortgage rates, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Housing prices should have dropped amid the recent supply of new apartments and homes, but have “not behaved the way we thought it would,” said Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.. “I still think it will, but if it doesn’t, we’re going to have a hard time” bringing inflation back down to the target of 2 percent, Goolsbee told the Journal for a May 11 article.

America’s attention to Arctic security has intensified in recent years. Our force structure has grown deliberately, a word that usually means “on purpose.” For this Alaskan, particularly when Russia and China practice war games with live ammunition in Alaska’s fishing grounds, “deliberate” can also mean “slowly,” or “not fast enough.” More intensive U.S. security “deliberation” might best be directed now toward Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, too. In geopolitics, the Antarctic has been quiet to date, or at least less competitive. A great circle air route over the South Pole has less traffic, and southern shipping has less strategic significance...

President Biden wants to let the tax rate cuts that President Trump and Republicans passed without Democrat support, in 2017. Biden and others continue to intentionally lie that the tax cuts "cost" the government $2 trillion and increased the debt and deficit. That essentially was the prediction of Congressional Budget Office. The problem is predictions are not facts. Here are the facts that show that the government has collected a huge amount of additional revenues after the tax cuts were passed, and additional revenues do not cause increased debt. The problem is that the government is spending more. Individual income...

Americans consistently voice their disapproval on the state of the economy in recent polls, largely because of the stratospheric cost of living. But apologists for the Biden administration point to the low unemployment rate of 3.9% in April as proof of the economy’s strength. Yet this is a hollow talking point since the real unemployment rate is likely between 6.5 and 7.7%. The unemployment rate is the percentage of people in the labor force who don’t have a job. That means the unemployment rate can change if either the number of people unemployed or the total size of the labor...

Proving that the Big Apple still has plenty of juice, a report finds that it holds more millionaires than any other large metro area in the word. Indeed, New York City’s count of millionaires is up 48% from just a decade ago. The data, compiled by Henley & Partners, show that nearly 350,000 New Yorkers — one in every 24 — have at least a seven-figure liquid net worth.

While it’s true that some things get better with age, the United States’ aging transmission infrastructure is not one of them. Updated transmission infrastructure is crucial to reducing emissions and ensuring dependable electricity service. Congress has passed green energy laws to help make this update happen, but now it’s up to a little-known government commission to fully realize the benefits of our transformational climate laws. And they need to act before it’s too late. It would be an understatement to say our country’s existing transmission infrastructure—the energy cables, towers and transformers that move energy between a generation system and the...

Dozens of students walked out of Duke University’s commencement ceremony on Sunday to protest guest speaker Jerry Seinfield over his support of Israel during the war in Gaza. Video of the incident shows a group of students walking out of their seats and carrying a Palestinian flag as soon as the comedian and TV star was called to the stage. The attention to the protesters was quickly diverted by the cheering crowd, who chanted, “Jerry! Jerry!” as Seinfeld would go on to give his speech and accept an honorary degree from Duke.

Employees at an Apple store in a Baltimore suburb voted to authorize a strike on Saturday, setting up what could be the first work stoppage at any Apple retail store in the country. The Towson, Md., employees claim the tech giant isn’t bargaining in good faith as they negotiate a union contract. The group of about 100 employees are organized under the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers’ Coalition of Organized Retail Employees (IAM CORE). The location was the first Apple store to form a union in 2022 of over 270 retail locations nationwide.