Free Republic

Blaming Congress' impasse on the Export-Import Bank, General Electric (NYSE:GE) said that it will move 500 U.S. jobs, some of which are deep in the heart of Texas, overseas to Europe and China in order to avoid losing business to foreign companies. The Lone Star State is one of the losers in GE's announcement Tuesday, as the U.S.-based jobs will be shipped from Texas, South Carolina, New York and Maine to France, Hungary and China. Lawmakers from Texas also have been vocal critics of the Ex-Im Bank.

The Democratic Party on Friday adopted a call to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr as part of their established party platform heading into the 2016 election season. The move further polarizes the progressive wing of the party by moving them further to the left of both the Republican Party, and corporate centrist Democrats such as Hillary Clinton. In response to the Democratic Party’s vote, Terrence Wise, a Kansas City, Mo. McDonald’s and Burger King Worker and member of the National Organizing Committee of the Fight for $15, issued the following statement.

To wit, artificial suppression of free market interest rates by the central bank is designed to cause households to borrow more money than they otherwise would in order to spend more than they earn, pure and simple. Its nothing more than a modernized version of the original, crude Keynesian pump-priming theory—–except it dispenses with the inconvenience of getting politicians to approve spending increases and tax cuts in favor of the writ of a small posse of unelected monetary mandarins who run the FOMC and peg money market interest rates at will. But the whole enterprise is a crock. The consumer...

The winds of change might finally be blowing in Washington. For the first time in 81 years taxpayers are no longer dolling out dollars on risky loans to subsidize big businesses and foreign corporations, thanks to the expiration of the controversial Export-Import Bank. While this represents a victory for the taxpayers over well-funded special interests, there remains an alphabet soup of government bureaucracies that continues to dispense taxpayer goodies to those with political connections and clout. OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation) despite what the name implies, is not private but rather a taxpayer-backed outfit that provides subsidies for American businesses...

When a government agency called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is created by Congress, one would expect that a few consumers could actually receive protection, but that hasn’t been the case with this agency’s track record of mismanagement, inefficiency and waste. The CFPB has been operating for four years now and if it were a sports team, its coach, Richard Cordray, would certainly be looking for work. CFPB was created as part of a Washington law known as “Dodd-Frank” – named for sponsors former Sen. Christopher Dodd and former Rep. Barney Frank. When CFPB director Cordray announced the laudable...

The progressive movement that has overtaken the Democratic Party gains its moral authority in a morally relativistic world in part based on its support of the “oppressed” over the “oppressor.” As Joshua Muravchik ably argues in his Making David Into Goliath, in this construct, Israel has morphed into the oppressor, swapping roles with the Muslim countries that have wished to destroy her from the time of her founding. The Leftist-Jihadist nexus of which Andy McCarthy writes, on display from elite college campuses to the president’s cabinet, is perhaps stronger than it has ever been. It believes in punishing the ultimate...

The chief executive of General Electric raked in a $37.3 million pay package last year, a large sum by any standard. But how much larger was it than the average pay of the 305,000 employees who helped General Electric earn billions in profits that year? The industrial giant did not disclose that comparison, and corporate America rarely reveals how the compensation of the chief executive stacks up against that of the workers in the ranks below. That will soon change. After a long delay and plenty of pushback from corporations, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved in 3-2 vote on...

Former SC Democratic party chair Dick Harpootlian told MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki Sunday Vice President Joe Biden’s consideration of a presidential run actually gives Democrats the best chance of retaining the White House in 2016. Harpootlian said Hillary Clinton’s track record will cause her and the Democrats to “die a death of a thousand cuts,” yet Biden is “an inspirational figure” that voters can rally around. HARPOOTLIAN: I think Hillary comes into the race, as she did in ’08 with all kinds of baggage… There’s going to be distractions, we saw just this week with the Wall Street Journal about payments...

RUSH: Craig in Scarsdale, New York. Great to have you on the program. Hello, sir. CALLER: Thank you very much, Rush. I can't believe all these reporters out there who are just dumping on Trump. It's unbelievable. They gotta go back 30 years to find something that can actually stick to this guy. RUSH: No, no. They have to go back 30 years to make up something. CALLER: I'm sorry? RUSH: They had to go back 30 years to make up something. CALLER: To make up something. And not just that. Why don't we go back 30 years and look...

The House will not vote on a multi-year Senate highway bill that revives the now-expired Export-Import Bank, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Monday. “We’re not taking up the Senate bill,” McCarthy declared to a roomful of reporters in his office. Instead, McCarthy urged the Senate to take up a short-term House-passed bill which extends federal highway funding for five months, without renewing the Ex-Im Bank charter. He called the House bill the “best option” for Congress before money for highways, bridges and mass transit runs out on Friday. McCarthy’s declaration is a blow not only to the Senate,...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., kept a promise made to Democratics earlier this year that in exchange for their support on an important trade deal, he would allow a vote on a measure to extend the bank.... Obama administration is closer than ever on a breakthrough on the biggest trade deal in world history. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trans-pacific-partnership-trade-pact-challenges-120600.html All the Good ol Boys are convinced we the people, maintain generic, or self-inflicted stupid. We the people keep proving it is so, up to the tipping p0int. Raben

Mayor de Blasio is a big fan of presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders — because the Vermont senator is a proud “Democratic socialist.” [Snip] De Blasio was quick to correct CNN’s Carol Costello after she called Sanders a “socialist,” telling her the senator is a “Democratic socialist.” “I think there’s a lot to like in that title,” he gushed.

Governor’s races in South and Midwest could be lost if party brand becomes too liberal. Centrist Democrats were wiped out in the 2014 elections and in their absence emerged a resurgent liberal movement, embodied most recently by the surprisingly competitive presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. But the suddenly ascendant left — its populist overtones becoming part of the mainstream Democratic pitch — is worrying Democrats who want to compete on Republican-leaning turf. The party lost every competitive gubernatorial and Senate race in the South last year. And Democrats didn’t fare much better in the heartland. Now, as Bernie...

Next week, Senate Republicans could pass Obamacare repeal with a simple 51-vote majority as part of the long-term highway bill, according to Sen. Mike Lee. The Utah Republican laid out the argument in a press release after party leaders set the sequencing of votes: "The first Obamacare vote on Sunday will have a 60 vote threshold, and Democrats will likely block it," Lee continued. "But thanks to the sequencing of the votes we just locked in, Republicans will have the opportunity resurrect that Obamacare amendment later on in the process, and put it back before the Senate in a manner...

Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) sure does want to shut down a lot of the federal agencies he hopes to one day run.The firebrand conservative and GOP presidential candidate has defined his young Senate career by almost reflexively opposing increased government spending and programs . . ."I think we should shrink the size and power of the federal government by every and any means possible," he told the Daily Caller in 2012. -- snip -- The State DepartmentMost recently, Cruz threatened in a letter to President Obama to hold up State Department nominees and hold all bills that fund...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a blistering floor speech Friday accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) of lying to him over a deal to vote on reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank.

SEATTLE, Wash. — The mayor of Seattle and his housing committee have unveiled a plan to increase housing in the city, with a portion of the plan proposing the offering of Sharia law-compliant loans for Muslim residents. Among the number of ideas offered to make housing more affordable for Seattle residents is a segment that addresses Muslim beliefs, as Sharia law forbids usury for its adherents. “For our low—and moderate—income Muslim neighbors who follow Sharia law—which prohibits the payment of interest or fees for loans of money—there are limited options for financing a home,” the proposed plan reads. “Some Muslims...

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is proposing new incentives to encourage corporations to share profits with workers. Her plan is to give businesses that offer employees a share of profits a two-year tax credit equal to at least 15 percent of their profit-sharing payments. The plan would exclude high-income workers and firms where only a small percentage of employees benefit. …

2016: If only Wall Street bankers had listened to St. Hillary during the subprime mortgage frenzy. She now claims she warned about the risky loans. Yep, a Clinton actually went there. Her campaign may regret it. While bashing Wall Street for risky acts and "criminal behavior," Clinton in her first economic stump speech portrayed herself as the voice of financial sanity in a casino of wild greed. "As we all know, in the years before the crash, financial firms piled risk upon risk," she intoned, "and regulators in Washington either wouldn't or couldn't keep up. "I was alarmed by this...

A heckler was ejected from Hillary Clinton’s economic speech in New York City Monday after asking the former secretary of state about her position on investment banking regulations. Business Insider reported that Daniel Burke, a self-identified organizer for the LaRouche PAC which supports political activist Lyndon LaRouche, yelled at Clinton at the conclusion of her speech, “Senator Clinton, will you restore Glass-Steagall?” Clinton did not respond to the inquiry, and Burke was removed from the event location, the New School in Manhattan, by security. Passed in 1933 and then repealed 66 years later, the Glass-Steagall Act separates commercial banks from...