Free Republic

Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 science-fiction film Elysium, starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, takes place in Los Angeles, circa 2154. The wealthy have moved into an orbiting luxury satellite—the Elysium of the title—while the wretched majority of humans remain in squalor on Earth. The film works passably as an allegory for its director’s native South Africa, where racial apartheid was enforced for nearly 50 years, but it’s a rather cartoonish vision of the American future. Some critics panned the film for pushing a socialist message. Elysium’s dystopian world, however, is a near-perfect metaphor for an actually existing socialist nation just 90...

Forty thousand dollars. That’s roughly your share of the U.S. national debt. That’s bad, but it’s nothing compared to the debt the government’s going to be racking up in the years ahead thanks mainly to America’s old-age welfare programs. As the Baby Boomers retire, the bill for Social Security and Medicare will grow fast, setting off a debt tsunami. Economists can estimate the difference between how much government is on track to spend and how much it will raise from taxes. They call this “the fiscal gap.” That number is astronomical: $205 trillion dollars, or more than half a million...

President Obama will announce a $200 million commitment from nine foundations Thursday afternoon to bolster the lives of young men and boys of color. The funding is part of a larger initiative from the White House to bring private businesses, non-profits and local governments together to intervene in key moments in the lives of young black and Hispanic men to ensure they stay in school and eventually train for and get good jobs. As Yahoo News first reported, the cause will be a major focus of Obama’s—and the first lady’s—even after he leaves office. "I think it’s something that's deeply...

A policy research group that earlier this year pressed for raising the federal minimum wage above $10 an hour is saying in an updated report that doing so would boost, not harm, job creation. The Economic Policy Institute, regularly described as liberal- or left-leaning, says a Congressional bill to hike the federal minimum from the current $7.25 an hour to $10.10 deserves broad support because it would enhance the U.S. economy, which is still wounded following the 2008 financial crisis. The bill, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, proposes lifting the minimum wage in three 95-cent increments to $10.10...

With government intervention now becoming the only viable solution being touted for everything from individual health care and the economy to our personal safety and how we educate our children, it would only make sense that officials in Washington also figure out a way to use their power of confiscation and redistribution to equalize the income playing field. It’s no secret that 48 million Americans require nutritional assistance just to put food on the table, or that over 100 million of us are living in or at the very edge of poverty, or that nearly one in three of us...

Washington is girding for another debate over raising the federal minimum wage, which has stood at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Many Democrats in Congress – led by Rep. George Miller of California in the House and Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa in the Senate – want to raise that $7.25 amount (actually, $4.87 in 1996 dollars) to $10.10 an hour. They also want to raise the minimum wage for those paid in tips as well as wages – frozen at $2.13 an hour since 1991 – to 70 percent of the standard minimum wage. Meanwhile, those states which have...

The U.S. Department of Justice has revealed in a court filing it agrees with the philosophy of the German government that bureaucrats can punish homeschooling parents. The agency contended parental rights to keep children free from instruction that violates faith essentially are negligible when the government’s goal is an “open society.” The arguments were made in a pleading before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that urges the judges to send a German homeschooling family, the Romeikes, back to Germany where members likely would face persecution. “The goal in Germany is for an ‘open, pluralistic society,’” wrote the government’s...

A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Final Rule published today in the Federal Register and a news release issued Friday by the Department of Health and Human Services, followed up with a notice to be published tomorrow, are two developments all but ignored by the mainstream press even though Vice President Joe Biden announced last week that the administration would be using executive orders to advance “gun control” goals following a Senate battle that could not muster the votes to do so legislatively. The Importation of Defense Articles and Defense Services -- U.S. Munitions Import List references executive...

I often have SurvivalBlog readers forward me alarmist e-mails, warning of "total disarmament" of the civilian populace. While there indeed may be plans or schemes to disarm Americans, I don't consider these threats credible. Let me explain why: I would conservatively estimate that there are about 316 million firearms in private hands in the United States. Of these, less than 10% are logged in any formal registry. Perhaps another 30% have Form 4473s filed with the FFL dealers where they were first purchased, but that is a fractured mishmash of records with a quite perishable life span. It is notable...

Everything done by the Obama administration since its inauguration in January 2009, every word, every gesture, every silence, every dog-and-pony show, has been to preserve the peace – of the state. In this endeavor, the public peace – or, as our Founders might have called it, the public “general welfare,” that is, the non-coercive, civilized trade between civilized men – has been largely secondary in consideration by this administration, and often at mortal odds with its primary task of preserving the state. The state must not only retain its power over the people, over the economy, over the actions of...

WASHINGTON -- Two female soldiers filed suit on Wednesday to scrap the U.S. military's restrictions on women in combat, claiming the policy violated their constitutional rights. Command Sergeant Major Jane Baldwin and Colonel Ellen Haring, both Army reservists, said policies barring them from assignments "solely on the basis of sex" violated their right to equal protectio under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. "This limitation on plaintiffs' careers restricts their current and future earnings, their potential for promotion and advancement, and their future retirement benefits," the women said in the suit filed in U.S. District Court.

Disclaimer: Except for me, all of the characters in this story do not exist to my knowledge. The Marine's Hymn and American Soldier are the property of The US Marine Corps and Toby Keith respectively and I claim no ownership of either. The title is also the property of the Marine Corps; I only chose it because I felt it was appropriate. It was late as I drove home. It was dark, raining, and the road ahead of me was just barely illuminated by my headlights. I had just left the Marine Recruiting office to get a final good-bye from...

President Obama is reportedly shifting millions of dollars to the IRS to begin enforcement of ObamaCare. This raises the obvious question: What if the Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare, with a decision expected no later than early June? Anyone who witnessed the passage of this legislation, as well as Obama’s term in office to date, should realize that question is irrelevant. Obama and House Speaker (at the time) Nancy Pelosi vowed to “deem” the bill passed if they couldn’t muster up enough votes in Congress, as they ultimately did. Obama ran on a platform of “transforming” America, and he meant...

President Barack Obama listed rising gas prices as among the many reasons to extend the payroll tax cut Tuesday, flanked by individuals the White House promoted as being affected by $40 per paycheck the average American would lose if the tax cut is not extended at the end of February. The payroll tax funds Social Security. Cutting the tax would reduce funding to Social Security by $119 billion over the next year, on top of the $105 billion reduced from funding in 2011.

If the economy does improve, and people are making more money, then this gives Obama even more excuse to raise taxes and expand government power with even more agencies and programs. The more wealth there is, the more wealth there is to redistribute. The worse the economy is, the more he can claim to justify having more people dependent on government programs. For Obama, it's a win-win. Obama says the unemployment numbers -- down slightly -- are good news. Critics say these unemployment numbers are mostly a reflection of the fact that more Americans are giving up on employment permanently,...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- David Frias works two minimum-wage jobs to squeak by in one of the most expensive cities in America. Come New Year's Day, he'll have a few more coins in his pocket as San Francisco makes history by becoming the first city in the nation to scale a $10 minimum wage. The city's hourly wage for its lowest-paid workers will hit $10.24, more than $2 above the California minimum wage and nearly $3 more than the working wage set by the federal government. It won't put much more in Frias' wallet. But it gives him a sense...

With fiscal time bombs ticking in both Europe and the United States, the pertinent question for now seems to be which will explode first. For much of the past few months it looked as if Europe was set to blow. But Angela Merkel's refusal to support a Federal Reserve style bailout of European sovereigns and her recent statement the she had no Hank Paulson style fiscal bazooka in her handbag, has lowered the heat. In contrast, the utter failure of the Congressional Super Committee in the United States to come up with any shred of success in addressing America's fiscal...

Before you read this, I request you check these songs and listen to EVERY SINGLE WORD. They will help you to understand what I’m speaking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2gAi6xAxSA&list=FLNsrZy-L0vl7Eg2hdz7VEiw&index=336&feature=plpp_video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWrMeBR8W-c&ob=av2e Now read these links: http://floppingaces.net/2010/06/21/obamas-rules-of-engagement-in-afghanistan-will-ensure-we-lose/ http://www.captainsjournal.com/2011/07/13/british-soldiers-told-not-to-shoot-ied-emplacers/ http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/09/08/75036/were-pinned-down-4-us-marines.html http://www.theusreport.com/the-us-report/2010/11/11/in-afghanistan-us-fights-taliban-and-military-roe.html I want the reader to ask themselves how the daughter of a soldier must feel when she learns that her father died because his unit was denied support for fear of civilian casualties, or how the wife of a soldier would feel to learn that her husband died because he wasn’t permitted to kill the person who planted the IED that killed him. What...

Paul Moreno, writing in the Wall Street Journal, recently said that Obama will follow Franklin D. Roosevelt's reelection strategy of 1936, during the Great Depression. "Roosevelt and his advisers blamed the recession on a 'capital strike,' trying to deflect public alarm about the United Auto Workers' sit-down strikes—really illegal occupations of assembly plants—onto the shoulders of corporations. They even claimed that big business was deliberately refusing to invest and increase payrolls as part of a political gambit to destroy the New Deal." Obama, the most socialist President since FDR, is employing the same tactics. He's cozying up to the "Occupy...

While immersed in the 1920’s to complete my latest detective novel, chickens came home to roost on Wall Street. Also, wannabe hippies, yippies, union thugs, and the countless clueless who went to “occupy” Wall Street because they had nothing better to do. I watched and read with dismay the trashing of that short but great street as hundreds, then thousands blocked it, trashed it, yelled at it, probably urinated on it, and then camped out on Zuccotti Park. Or rather, took it over. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the “Duke of New York,” has not ordered the police to clear out the...