Free Republic

Introduction We are living in a time of grassroots demands to transform our built environment and our relationships with one another and the earth.2 To abolish prisons and police, rent, debt, borders, and billionaires.3 To decommodify housing and healthcare and to decolonize land.4 To exercise more collective ownership over our collectively generated wealth.5 Some of us are reimagining the state. Others are dreaming of moving beyond it.6 But these are more than dreams. These are demands for a democratic political economy. These demands increased in volume this year as the violence of policing continued, the fires burned in California and...

In his commentary, “Crazy Stuff—Fabricated Details of Western Oil Sanctions Against Russia,” Sundance over on the The Last Refuge casts light onto the fabricated reality we are living in. The West and America are now as the Soviet Union had been—existing in a fabricated reality behind an iron curtain:“ I’m very serious when I share with people that almost everything we understand about the geopolitical purposes and impacts of sanctions against Russian economic interests is entirely fabricated. However, because the scale of the propaganda against us is so effective, breaking the mental/cognitive barrier is almost impossible.” SundanceThe iron curtain symbolizes...

If there was no other reason -- and there are plenty -- not to vote for Joe Biden, the fact that his administration has opened the door to more and more governmental control would be a great one. Climate change is a big excuse to make all kinds of societal transformative change and control our actions--not to mention, destroying or building up industries with those controls and restrictions. Coal and oil are bad, electrical vehicles (except those from that evil Elon Musk) are good. Government shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers, yet that's what they doing...

OPINION The USA, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK which had the moral responsibility to rapidly phase out oil and gas production are responsible for planned expansion from new oil and gas fields for next decade and half. How can these countries advise India to cut on coal consumption? Our greenhouse gas emission is nearly 3 Giga tonnes of CO2 equivalent annually. We are distant third behind the two top emitters China with 14 Giga tonnes and the US with 8 Giga tonnes Among the important outcomes, COP 28 text proposes to triple renewable energy capacity and double the global...

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are “piling up on dealer lots” as American consumers continue buying traditional gas-powered cars at faster rates, the Wall Street Journal reports. According to the Journal, despite major investments from the federal government and automakers into EVs, Americans are not warming to President Joe Biden’s green energy agenda the way the administration and the industry had predicted. The Journal reports: As a result, electric cars and trucks are piling up on dealer lots, causing auto companies to reassess their investment plans. It takes a dealership around three weeks longer to sell an EV than a gasoline vehicle,...

The Biden-Harris regime has announced a new “White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience.” This new council is charged with preventing such problems as we experienced in the famous “supply chain crisis” of 2021 and early 2022 that preceded, and contributed to creating the current economic downturn. Granted, the Biden-Harris regime had already created a “Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force” in the first months of 2021, virtually as soon as they changed the names and dress sizes on the White House letterhead, and that didn’t seem to help. Maybe they’re hoping we forgot about that one. But then again, maybe...

'Congress alone has the authority' to breach federal dams, lawmakers write in letter to White House.. The Biden administration is quietly discussing a potentially far-reaching settlement with environmental groups that advocate for tearing down four hydroelectric dams in Washington... ... In the filings, jointly submitted by the federal government and eco groups... However, the filing failed to detail exactly what conditions were included in the secretive package .... We find it necessary to remind you Congress alone has the authority not only to order the breach of the Lower Snake River Dams, but also exclusive authority to direct the study...

As part of his Bidenomics agenda to lower costs for American families, President Biden is announcing nearly 30 new actions to strengthen supply chains critical to America’s economic and national security. These actions will help Americans get the products they need when they need them, enable reliable deliveries for businesses, strengthen our agriculture and food systems, and support good-paying, union jobs here at home. President Biden will announce these actions alongside members of his Cabinet and other senior Administration officials at the inaugural meeting of the new White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience. The Council, which President Biden is...

The White House has announced it plans to use a cold-war era law to ease supply chain issues that the administration argues are contributing to higher inflation – a key electoral challenge to Joe Biden’s re-election chances next year as polling consistently suggests voters are not buying his Bidenomics pitch. In a statement, the White House said Biden will use the Defense Production Act to improve the domestic manufacturing of medicines deemed crucial for national security and will convene the first meeting of the president’s supply chain resilience council to announce other measures tied to the production and shipment of...

Well, its now August 2023 and US Industrial Production for July increased … to 2007 levels. This comes after the massive spending out of Washington DC and massive Federal Rerserve stimulus. Is that all there is?? As I said a couple of days ago, the Obama/Biden economic model is a Soviet/Chinese Communist Party (CCP) style of COMMAND economics, not free market DEMAND economics. As if dimwitted Mean Joe Biden has a clue.

A proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule that “would limit tailpipe emissions so that in order to comply, auto companies would have to sell 60% of new vehicles as electric by 2030” would adversely affect the safety of cars. So says Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment. (The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundation’s news outlet.) “Well, since [electric] vehicles are more expensive, people would postpone buying them. So, they would stay with their older cars, and newer cars have more safety features. If they get in an accident, they’re less likely to hurt...

Joe Biden’s race to embrace electric vehicles risks overwhelming US charging infrastructure and creating disastrous supply shortages, two of the world’s biggest carmakers have said. Toyota and Vauxhall owner Stellantis accused the President of being “overly optimistic” in his push for a rule that would require two thirds of new vehicle sales to be electric by 2032. The companies were quick to point out that they support a move to low-emissions vehicles and electric cars in particular but warned that they need customers to buy them and that costs are still too high for the mass market. The cars typically...

A nationwide experiment is abandoned after producing only misery.Faced with a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis, Sri Lanka called off an ill-conceived national experiment in organic agriculture this winter. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised in his 2019 election campaign to transition the country’s farmers to organic agriculture over a period of 10 years. Last April (2021), Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic.The result was brutal and swift. Against claims that organic methods can produce...

The Origin and Operation of the US Administrative StateOn July 2, 1881, only four months into the first term of President James A. Garfield, an angry attorney from Illinois named Charles J. Guiteau shot Garfield in the torso at a Baltimore, Maryland, train station. Guiteau had a motive. He was furious because he believed, due to his work for the campaign, that Garfield would give him a job in the new administration. But none was forthcoming. It was revenge. Garfield died of the wounds months later. It was a shocking thing. Congress immediately got to work figuring out how to...

Recently, one of your number, an economics professor at Oxford, had this to say: “At Davos a few years ago, the Edelman survey showed us the good news is that the elites across the world trust each other more and more. So we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that, in every single country they were polling, the majority of people trusted their elite less. So we can lead, but if people aren’t following, we’re not going to get to where we want to go.” Where to begin unpacking this stunning example...

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conducted its Seventh National Population Census (hereinafter referred to as the Census) using 00:00 hours of Nov. 1, 2020, as the reference time. Although an official government report of the census reveals an increase in China’s population, the CCP hastily launched the “three-child policy” because its economic growth, which is “stable with a growing momentum,” as claimed by the state-owned People’s Daily in May, is actually no match for the current fertility crisis in China. An unnamed senior official from the CCP Health and Family Planning Commission revealed three sets of data during an interview...

CLICK ABOVE ARTICLE LINK FOR THE VIDEO In a jaw-dropping moment caught on camera, 15 high-rise buildings were obliterated simultaneously in China after sitting unfinished for eight years. In the country’s Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, the skyscrapers were destroyed into huge pile of dust. Now, video of the demolition is going viral, leaving netizens stunned while starting a serious conversation about country’s excessive and unplanned urbanisation projects. China’s state-run Xinhua News stated that 4.6 tons of explosives were placed at 85,000 blasting points in the buildings for the demolition. The report said the mission was successfully completed in...

Monthly updated data indicates one out of every seven young urban workers in China failed to find employment in August, including graduates from high schools, colleges, and universities.China’s urban unemployment rate was 5.1 percent in August, while the rate for those aged 16-24 is three-times higher sitting at 15.3 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics announced on Wednesday.Yet the official rate for the latter in August 2019—before the pandemic hit—was two percent lower.Commentator Wen Xiaogang said the large volume of jobless young people flagged the inconsistency of Beijing’s claim on economic recovery beyond the impact of COVID-19.The latest data show...

... As I concluded from research I conducted for Belgium’s Royal Academy of Science and SFPI-FPIM, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, this can only be achieved with a degree of central planning. Any other approach falls short. ... Instead of waiting for the market to speak, a planning body — whose composition and accountability require careful consideration — should formulate plans for each of the five systems, which should then be translated into project-level criteria for sustainable investments.

How much better can things get? That’s the kind of question that politicians hate and the public loves. The two dozen Democratic candidates heading into the Iowa caucuses in a few weeks would love to accuse the president of mismanaging the economy. But with a jobs report like the one that came out early Friday morning, Trumponomics are roaring. Consider the unemployment rate of 3.5 percent. Most living Americans have never seen an unemployment rate this low, because most Americans are under the age of 50 and the U.S. economy hasn’t had such low unemployment since 1969. As every college...