Free Republic

The Navy will scrap the USS Bonhomme Richard after a fire burned aboard the amphibious assault ship for nearly five days in July and rendered it unsalvageable, the service announced Monday. After “thorough consideration,” the Navy has decided to decommission the ship “due to the extensive damage” from the blaze, the service said in a statement. “We did not come to this decision lightly,” Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite said in the release. “Following an extensive material assessment in which various courses of action were considered and evaluated, we came to the conclusion that it is not fiscally responsible to restore...

Regardless of whether Biden would find a loophole or merely attempt to cajole Congress, it remains concerning that there are many people who want him to force taxpayers to bail out the well off.Will a newly inaugurated President Joe Biden make taxpayers pay off $50,000 in student debt for everyone who has it? That’s what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has called for, according to recent reporting.Although Biden does have a plan to make taxpayers pay $10,000 a year for each college debt-holder for up to five years of work for government or non-profit organizations, he dodged the question...

The filing by the nation’s largest retailer of musical instruments highlights the growing gap between the strongest and weakest companies in the pandemic.

The U.S. government stands to lose more than $400 billion from the federal student loan program, an internal analysis shows, approaching the size of losses incurred by banks during the subprime-mortgage crisis. The Education Department, with the help of two private consultants, looked at $1.37 trillion in student loans held by the government at the start of the year. Their conclusion: Borrowers will pay back $935 billion in principal and interest. That would leave taxpayers on the hook for $435 billion, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The analysis was based on government accounting standards and didn’t...

Calls are mounting among Democrats and progressives for a prospective Biden administration to make “canceling” student debt a top priority.The loudest demands have come from progressive legislators such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ilhan Omar. Meanwhile, prominent senators such as Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer are imploring Biden to “cancel” $50,000 in student debt via executive order. Student loan forgiveness is good, actually — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 16, 2020Student loan debt is holding back a whole generation from buying homes, starting small businesses, and saving for retirement – all things we rely on to grow our economy. Executive...

Being president is pretty much the same as being a magician. You’ve seen magicians who wave a magic wand and can make an elephant disappear? Well, presidents can wave a magic pen and make tens of billions of dollars in cash disappear.The only difference is presidents don’t usually wear a pointy hat.In the last decade or so, presidents have become experts at the disappearing money trick. They’ve also gotten very good at making money magically appear. Maybe instead of an election, we should hold auditions for the best magician in the country.As most of us were taught when we were...

As with pretty much all problems, more government is not the solution. The Big Government solution of forgiving student loans would just create more problems. Forgiving student loans is unfair; it rewards bad behavior and punishes good behavior. Forgiving student loans is impractical; it would be too expensive and there are too many questions that would have to be answered. And, most of all, forgiving student loans is just a bad idea. There are better solutions. The left will always clamor for more government. Especially in cases like this one where the problems are a lack of responsibility or leftist...

With the presumption that Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021, demands are already being made. The calls for him to forgive student loan debt by executive order are getting louder. This is supposedly some gift to the millennial generation—clearly, the most put-upon generation in all of American history.Schumer saying Biden can cancel first $50,000 in student debt via executive order. And will do so in first 100 days. This will change so many lives. https://t.co/nkWZykLJVE— Tom Winter (@WinterForMT) November 7, 2020Of course, that is a stretch. The millennials are victims of the ruling class’s strategy of managed...

Joe Biden will offer his post-pandemic economic plan on Monday as the stock market rose with the news of another potential COVID vaccine and President Donald Trump continues to insist he won the election. Biden and running mate Kamala Harris will speak on their plan to revive the pandemic-battered U.S. economy as stocked soared after drugmaker Moderna said its COVID-19 vaccine is 94.5 percent effective based on preliminary data. His remarks come as talks are stalled between the Trump White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill about another COVID relief package and several states have started to institute new restrictions...

Retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, newly-appointed as a senior adviser at the Pentagon, has a track record of making controversial statements. But his most provocative of all might be a proposal to do away with the U.S. Marine Corps. In a 2012 opinion piece for Time Magazine, Macgregor, a decorated veteran of the Gulf War, argued that the Corps was living on its past glories and was unsuited for combat on today's battlefield, with the possible exception for pushover enemies. He went further, too, suggesting the acronym "USMC" should really stand for "Under-utilized Superfluous Military Capability." "Most of today's Marine...

Student loan debt continues to surge despite falling college enrollment. In Q3, student loan balances rose by $23 billion from the second quarter, according to the latest Federal Reserve data. Forty-five million Americans now owe $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. Total outstanding student loan balances have surged by $54 billion year-on-year. Enrollment in colleges and universities dropped by over 231,000 students to a total of 17.97 million between 2018 and 2019. The drop in enrollment between those two years continued a trend we’ve seen since university enrollment peaked in 2011. That year, 20.14 million students were enrolled in colleges...

So he couldn't bother doing it to help Trump, he now focuses on it???

China is opening up another front in its relentless drive to expand its territorial claims. The latest target of the Communist Party’s seemingly insatiable expansionist agenda is the central Asian republic of Tajikistan. More than 90 per cent of the territory of this Muslim majority country is mountainous. Recent articles in the state-controlled Chinese media, which don’t publish anything without the prior approval of the Communist Party, have called for Tajikistan’s Pamir mountain range, which runs along the Tajik border with Afghanistan and China, to be ceded to China. According to a report in the Times of India, these include...

A Libt...I mean, Leftist, recently suggested that California should bestow largesse on impoverished Mississippi. As PF Whalen writes in this article, "California had a reported government debt of over $1.5 trillion as of 2017..." ---------------------------------- California is a mess; no secret there. But the degree of decline that befalls it, and the quickness with which that decline is moving, seems to be largely ignored; particularly by Californians themselves. The nation’s most populous state, and arguably its most naturally beautiful, is falling apart virtually everywhere we look. Yet state and local governments not only insist on moving forward with leftist policies,...

President Donald Trump said during a stop on the campaign trail Monday that he will double down on his pro-American domestic policy if he is reelected to a second term in office in November’s election, delivering a promise to “cut middle class taxes even further.” The President’s remarks came during a campaign rally in Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, the latest in a series of rallies across the Commonwealth, which is widely viewed as a key battleground state. “And in my second term I will cut middle class taxes even further,” President Trump stated, eliciting uproarious applause from the crowd.

Faced with a crippled cruise industry as a one-time cash cow, PortMiami wants to slash required rent payments for ships and hope business picks up in time to cover debt payments for an ongoing expansion. Once federal regulators lift the existing “no sail” order on cruises, cruise lines would resume rental fees for ships, but not have to meet minimum payments. Kuryla said the agreements were tailored to keep Miami poised to remain the top cruise port once ships begin filling up again, and reduce berthing costs enough for companies to consider leaving the port with vessels at a fraction...

President Donald Trump on Tuesday pushed for a comprehensive COVID-19 relief package, saying he would accept a deal worth more than $2.2 trillion despite opposition to large spending measures among his fellow Republicans in the U.S. Senate. “I want to do it even bigger than the Democrats,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News, as talks between House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin approached a Tuesday deadline for reaching a bipartisan deal that could pass Congress before Election Day on Nov. 3. The White House has proposed $1.8 trillion in coronavirus relief, while Pelosi...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday gave the White House 48 hours to reach a deal on a new coronavirus stimulus plan — saying otherwise Congress will not be able to pass the relief before the November election. “The 48 only relates to if we want to get it done before the election — which we do,” Pelosi said on ABC News’ “This Week.” “But we’re saying to them we have to freeze the design on some of these things, are we going with it or not, and what is the language.”

Two weeks ago the NY Times published a look at President Trump’s tax returns which found he owes about $400 million in debt. Immediately this became a talking point among Democrats. Nancy Pelosi went on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell and claimed Trump’s debt was a national security risk. Pelosi hinted darkly that Trump may personally owe money to Vladimir Putin: Ms Pelosi said the report showed that “this president appears to have over $400m in debt”.“To whom? Different countries? What is the leverage they have?” she asked, adding: “So for me, this is a national security question.”“The fact that...

Senate Republicans and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) raised intense objections Saturday to a new $1.8 trillion economic relief proposal from the Trump administration, greatly dimming prospects for a coronavirus relief deal before the election. On a conference call Saturday morning with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, multiple GOP senators denounced the proposal, attacking the price tag as too big, questioning the overall direction and criticizing individual proposals, according to several people who participated in the call or were briefed on its contents. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the...