Free Republic

Unions in America really are under assault from every direction. Certainly they are still powerful and not to be under estimated, but unions really have lost much of the power they once had. At less than 20 percent of the work force these days, the unions that are left have been finding themselves being forced to make the sort of concessions that they once would never even consider. The New York Times reports on one more bit of news showing that unions are taking deals just to stay working that once would have been flatly refused as two-tiered wage scales...

Remember how Obama said that if you liked your healthcare plan you could keep it? Apparently someone forgot to tell the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in New York because they've announced that Obamacare is forcing them to drop coverage for the children of its 30,000 low-wage members. The union will be dropping coverage for 6,000 children starting in the new year because new state and federal rules will drive up its costs 60% causing it to face a "dramatic shortfall" between what employers contribute and the premiums charged by the insurance provider. The union is blaming both state and...

How many terror attacks or attempted terror attacks have occurred on U.S. soil since 9/11? Five? Six? Ten? According to our government each and every one of these attacks, whether failed or not, have had one thing in common: "they are not part of a conspiracy." Clearly, however, our officials are lying to us on this count. Just to name a few of these incidents, in no certain order we've had Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber; Richard Reid, the shoe bomber; Michael Finton (calling himself Talib Islam), the creep in Illinois that wanted...

President Barack Obama will soon introduce the Undocumented Resident's Affirmative Toleration Act (URAT) in order to protect those unfortunate minorities that didn't win life's lottery by being born in the U.S.A. President Obama's compassion for these downtrodden and oppressed peoples is well known, but he wants particular attention paid to those human beings that white Arizona racists have mercilessly attacked with their new ultra strict, unheard of anti-minority resident laws. President Obama has released information of the URAT Act ahead of the scheduled press conference including the features of URAT. The 2010 Undocumented Resident's Affirmative Toleration Act (URAT) will summarily...

A pro-Israel education group called Z Street is claiming that Obama's IRS has violated its Constitutional rights by denying it tax exempt status solely because it supports Israel, support that apparently runs counter to Obama's stance on Israel. Z Street reports that Obama's IRS asked a telling question of the group as it sought the tax exemption earlier this year. In August, Z Street filed a lawsuit claiming that the IRS was delaying the consideration because the group is a vocal supporter of the State of Israel and that support apparently runs counter to the Obama's administration's position. According to...

It's a holiday and some might say we should be charitable to the unfortunate. By unfortunate usually they mean those that don't have as much as you and I. But one might construe "unfortunate" to mean being gut wrenchingly stupid, too. And when one thinks of the gut wrenchingly stupid one often thinks of the denizens of Hollywood above all others. Still it is awfully hard to be charitable toward such stupidity, I have to admit. Today I have two members of the gut wrenchingly stupid Hollywood set to report upon. It might have been three but the terminal lunacy...

One would think that a fellow as ravaged by cancer as Roger Ebert would find his soul a bit less rancorous toward others. One would think that a man that has had such pain would not wish pain on others. But Roger Ebert is a liberal. Pain and hate is what they do. Proof of this is in the latest hatred that spewed from Roger Ebert's keyboard over the Thanksgiving holiday. While everyone else was enjoying family and thanking God for their bounty, this black-souled, venom-spitting, hatemonger was taking a little time out of his holiday to wish ill on...

What is it called when a government creates a state-sponsored "news" agency, again? Ah yes, it's called government propaganda. And that is what the Obama administration seems interested in creating if the words of Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis's senior advisor Carl Fillichio can be believed. On Nov. 19 Fillichio attended the annual meeting of the International Labor Communications Association and in his address to the room he laid out a few "revolutionary" plans and policy ideas one of which was to create a new media agency that would act as a sort of ministry of Big Labor information all...

Apparently there is an awful lot of "anti-Muslim hate" going on in this post 9/11 America. At least that's what the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) gravely tells us each and every day. Just look at all this anti-Islamic bigotry going on out there: In May, CAIR demanded that the GOP refudiate all that "racist," anti-Muslim hatred a'goin' on out there. (OK, they said "repudiate," but, well, you know) In July CAIR demanded that the FBI explain why it dared to hire terror expert Robert Spencer to advise it on matters of terrorism. In October CAIR -- a group that...

What was it that our apologizer in chief and his minions have told us? Wasn't it that we all have to sacrifice because the U.S. is less than she used to be? Well American Federation of Teachers union chief, Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten, says phooey on that. Sacrifice if for the unwashed masses, not her. Weingarten was full of dire warnings for Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Even though the commission said that funding for education should not be cut Weingarten wanted to warn the commission that she and her union would attack them anyway for their recommendations...

This is a story that warms the anti-union cockles of my free-market heart. At the recent meeting of the Republican Governors Association in San Diego those governors gathered made a point to discuss angles of attack to take down the budget-busting, anti-democratic public employees unions. In attendance was the ever present former Speaker of the House of Representative, Newt Gingrich, and he whipped up the crowd with the policy goal of taking down those Public Employee Unions with ideas centered on limiting union gains and cutting benefits to bring them more into line with reality. Newly elected Wisconsin Governor Scott...

If nothing else has proven that Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele is not in tune with the GOP today, his recent statements on the Tea Party movement should serve as exhibit number one. Showing that he has no clue the effect that the Tea Party movement had on the 2010 elections, in a five-page memo to committee members last week, Steele said that the GOP saved the day by stopping Tea Partiers from going third party in 2010. Daily Caller excerpted Steele's comments on Nov. 20. "The RNC," Steele told the members, "welcomed the energy and limited government principles...

Most media-watching conservatives have simply been flabbergasted at how the Old Media establishment has so neatly come together to destroy Sarah Palin. The Internet has been abuzz with examples of this attack on Sarah since she was chosen by John McCain to be her number two during the campaign for the 2008 presidential election. Every day there is a new example of it and here is yet another one. This time it was penned by a "TV critic" for the Washington Post named Lisa de Moraes. De Moraes is well known for constantly injecting left-wing asides into her work and...

Newly elected Cook County Commissioner Jeff Tobolski is leaving the office of mayor of the Village of McCook, Illinois. Now, a few weeks after the election, the Chicago Sun-Times reports that he and his father before him have filled village government with relatives from top to bottom raking in a combined $350,000 in yearly salary (not including benefits), tax money elicited from a tiny village of only 200 some residents. Naturally, in another installment of the "name that party" game, the Chicago Sun-Times seemed to somehow forget to mention in its coverage of this outrageous nepotism that Tobolski is yet...

The government's newest great idea to save us all from ourselves is to put billboard sized photos of cancer victims on packs of cigarettes. Big pictures of guys with holes in their necks, lungs blackened, maybe even the occasional really yellow teeth, or perhaps the severely calloused thumb of a smoker who was constantly flicking his Bic will assault our eyes when we go to buy our smokes. Whatever. But does anyone really care about people that have damaged themselves for smoking? Not really. In fact, the logical reaction is to shrug one's shoulders in a too-bad-for-you-pal way and move...

The Cleveland, Ohio chapter of the AFL-CIO is mad. After Cleveland was chosen as the host city for the 2012 Democrat Party convention some carped that Cleveland was not sufficiently unionized to qualify as the right place for the Democrats to hold their event. Cleveland's AFL-CIO, however, begs to differ. The AFL-CIO was so incensed at the accusation that they wrote a letter to the DNC. "Cleveland and the Cleveland metropolitan area boast a healthy number of union hotels," the executive secretary of the region’s AFL-CIO federation, Harriet Applegate, wrote in a letter to Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine...

Blog Police Creeps Are George Soros Plants For at least a month now a crew of three or four screen names here on Free Republic have been used to spam post after post all across the board. They have decided that they are Free Republic's police, they think they speak for the whole board, and have been attempting to drive people off this site. But are they real FReepers? Or are they something else? It is pretty clear that they are being paid to do this by a George Soros-styled, left wing organization to spam FR, attack posters, and attempt...

With the recent midterm election and the resulting GOP tidal wave that is about to inundate Congress, many people have wondered aloud if net neutrality was dead? Well if FCC Chief Julius Genachowski has his way, net neutrality will be implemented by fiat when he has his agency simply change rules without involving congress at all. The results of this election doesn't even seem to be giving FCC Chairman Genachowski the slightest pause. Reports are that he is still working on a proposal for the FCC to take over the Internet and implement net neutrality anyway. In The Hill, Genachowski...

I'll avoid any "the only good politician is a…" jokes here, but one thing is certain, newly elected State Representative Tom Morrison (R, 54th District) has taken the first step on the road to being a good politician. Or at least a good steward of the people's tax dollars. Mr. Morrison of Palatine has decided to forego the state pension benefits that he is legally eligible for because of his electoral success. According to the Daily Herald, Morrison was asked "are you sure you want to do that?" by an administrator when he turned down joining the pension plan this...

Americans for Tax reform have done a study (download .pdf) that shows a very interesting trend. States that are losing population the fastest are predominantly those that force employees to join unions as a condition for employment while those that are growing are mostly states that feature right to work rules. Because congressional representation is measured by population, those states whose population has shrunk will lose seats and those that are growing will gain them. ATR looked at those states losing congressional seats in the coming reapportionment and compared them to states that are gaining seats and found some interesting...