Free Republic

Did progressive women ever have brains to begin with? Or, were they… always this way? Here’s the story, from a report at Breitbart News:Harris Campaign: ‘Tough to Define’ ‘Price Gouging’ She Wants to BanOn Wednesday’s broadcast of ‘NewsNation Now,’ Harris-Walz surrogate and National Finance Committee member Lindy Li acknowledged that the ‘price gouging’ that 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris wants to ban is difficult to actually define.Per the article, host Connell McShane first broached the topic by asking Li if she agreed that it was a term “tough to define” — this is how she responded:Li answered,...

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 50 basis points Wednesday, the central bank’s first rate reduction following a two-and-a-half year crusade against inflation that raged in the wake of the pandemic. The new federal funds rate is 4.75 percent to 5 percent, a jumbo rate cut that signals the Fed’s confidence that its war against inflation is coming to an end. The pandemic hit the economy hard, scrambling supply chains, shuttering stores and leading to layoffs of millions of Americans. When the world started to reopen in the spring of 2021, however, the economy went into overdrive. The consumer...

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates Wednesday by the biggest amount in 16 years. The 50 percentage points reduction will make borrowing money less expensive, taking some of the pressure off consumers' wallets. Today's cut brings benchmark borrowing costs down to between 4.75 percent and 5 percent.

There was an active shooter in Edmonton's City Hall this week, and you probably haven't heard about it. And gee, I wonder why... Maybe it's because this shooter wasn't "MAGA" enough. Maybe it's because this was a terror attack carried out by a Muslim. AND PERHAPS, it's because he clearly cites the "genocide in Gaza," inflation, and the "man-made immigration crisis" as the reason for his attack. Joe Warmington @joe_warmington · Follow A jihad-like terror attack in Canada that no one seems to know about | Toronto Sun torontosun.com WARMINGTON: This was a jihad-like terror attack in Canada that no...

Right now, the trillion dollars per year interest payments on federal debt exceed the entire budget of the Department of Defense. Former President Trump warns "this will bankrupt the country. We won't have the money to pay for anything else--no roads, no schools, no military, no medical care. We desperately need the government efficiency commission I have proposed for my second term." Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen called Trump's warning "unduly pessimistic. The federal government is not limited in the same way that a household or business is limited when it comes to acquiring the money it needs to...

This listing is for a vintage paper advertisement. This is a 1995 ad for a TIAA-CREF Retirement! The size of the ad is approximately 8.5x11inches. The caption for this ad is 'They say in thirty years a burger & fries could cost $16, a vacation $12,500, and a basic car $65,000' The ad is in great condition. This vintage ad would look great framed and displayed! Add it to your collection today!

Reporter: What are your specific plans to bring down prices? Kamala: "I grew up a middle class kid... I grew up in a neighborhood of folks who were very proud of their lawn. Ya know?

The U.S. government for the first time has spent more than $1 trillion this year on interest payments for its $35.3 trillion national debt, the Treasury Department reported Thursday. With the Federal Reserve holding benchmark rates at their highest in 23 years, the government has laid out $1.049 trillion on debt service, up 30% from the same period a year ago and part of a projected $1.158 trillion in payments for the full year. Subtracting the interest the government earns on its investments, net interest payments have totaled $843 billion, higher than any other category except Social Security and Medicare....

Both Gold and Bitcoin are holding above key resistance levels in After Hours trading.

Ask any budget expert in Washington to explain the ballooning deficit and debt, and Social Security and Medicare will be high on the list of causes. That’s wrong. The real driver, the elephant in the room, is means-tested social-welfare spending—Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, federal housing subsidies and almost 100 other programs whose eligibility is limited to those below an income threshold. True, Social Security and Medicare are a drain on general revenue and will become big fiscal problems if not reformed. But they aren’t the major source of our current...

The numbers: U.S. wholesale prices showed a mild increase in August and reinforced the idea the rate of inflation is returning to low prepandemic levels. The moderate increase in wholesale costs follows a similarly mild rise in consumer prices last month. With inflation slowing, the Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut interest rates next week. The producer-price index rose 0.2% last month, the government said Thursday. That matched the forecast of economists polled by the Wall Street Journal. The increase in wholesale prices in the past year slowed to 1.7% from 2.1% in the prior month and touched the...

The cost of rent and utilities in 2023 rose faster than home values for the first time in a decade, the latest sign that a distorted housing market has pushed more people into renting. That’s one takeaway from the 2023 American Community Survey, released Thursday by the Census Bureau. From 2011 to 2019, real rent costs rose less than 3 percent every year, the data show. In 2022, after peaking during the coronavirus pandemic, rent grew 1 percent. But last year, rent rose 3.8 percent, compared with a 1.8 percent rise in inflation-adjusted median home values. The data comes as...

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris repeatedly say they want to help the poor and middle classes but their policies, which caused inflation to soar, have absolutely destroyed the dollar’s purchasing power. People can no longer afford to patronize the establishments they’ve always patronized, because they are living paycheck-to-paycheck, have already depleted their savings, and have run up credit card debt to unsustainable levels—and these chains are falling like dominos. Now, Big Lots is the latest casualty, and preparing for bankruptcy: ... Dollar Tree and Dollar General are also facing significant headwinds. ... Inflation has significantly risen because of direct actions...

Inflation fell to its lowest level in 3-and-a-half years in August, clearing the way for the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates next week. Consumer prices in August were up 2.5% from a year ago, according to a report from the Labor Department Wednesday. That's the smallest annual increase since February 2021. Here are four things to know about the cost of living report. Housing costs are still climbing, but gasoline is getting cheaper Housing costs have been the biggest driver of inflation in the last year, rising 5.2%. Gasoline prices, on the other hand, have plunged more than...

The blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average headed toward one of its worst days of the year Wednesday, after the latest inflation reading failed to support investors’ most optimistic hopes for the Federal Reserve to boost valuations with interest rate cuts. The Dow fell as much as 740 points, or nearly 2%, by mid morning, touching its lowest price since Aug. 14 and pacing toward its second-worst daily loss of 2024 on point and percentage bases, trailing only the Aug. 5 mini crash which wiped out nearly 3% from the index; losses moderated to a 1.3%, or 530-point, dip by...

Are greedy corporations to blame for inflation? Ariane Navarro thinks so. She recently pulled up her budgeting spreadsheets from 2021 and was shocked by how much her family's grocery bill has skyrocketed. She's not imagining it: From February 2020 to this July, grocery prices grew a cumulative 25.6%. That's higher than overall inflation, which was 21.6% during that same period. "We have no other choice — we have to buy groceries," says Navarro, who lives in Houston. "That's a basic need. And so [companies] use that to kind of take advantage and keep raising prices." It's a widespread sentiment —...

While $100 may seem like it holds the same value across the U.S., that’s far from the reality. The purchasing power of a dollar can vary significantly from state to state, influenced by factors such as the cost of food, utilities, taxes, housing, and transportation.This map, via Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti, illustrates the purchasing power of $100 by state, using data from GOBankingRates compiled as of February 19, 2024.MethodologyGOBankingRates compiled data from the 2022 Regional Price Parities reoporting by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Affairs. It then used factors such as median household income, sourced from the 2022 American Community...

The Democrats let President Joe Biden back into the wild this week after he disappeared during the Democratic National Convention, hid in California and then napped on the beach in Delaware. It was a nearly three-week absence, and his latest appearance in a key swing state proves why they’re happy to have him missing in action. During an event in Wisconsin, Biden finally admitted that the “Inflation Reduction Act” was deceptively named and didn’t actually reduce inflation. In fact, it increased prices through excess spending and was a giant, corrupt handout to the so-called “green” energy industry. It’s why I’ve...

Though churches have reported ongoing declines in worship service attendance, their fiscal health has not suffered as significantly because the faithful who continue to attend have been giving more to cover operating expenses, a new study from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research suggests. In "Finances and Faith: A Look at Financial Health Among Congregations in the Post-Pandemic Reality," researchers highlighted data from the Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations research project and the Faith Communities Today research initiative.The data was collected mainly from the 2023 survey of over 5,000 congregations and the 2020 survey of over 15,000 congregations, representing...

Ramstein Air Base, Germany — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rarely attends the security summits organized by his Western partners in person, but on Friday, he paid his first visit to the sprawling Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared in his opening remarks of the latest such meeting that "it is a critical moment" in the war ignited by Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion. The gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group comes days after Zelenskyy's nation suffered its single worst attack of the year, when two ballistic missiles slammed into a military academy in...