Free Republic

On the day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, he signed dozens of extensively radical executive orders. Then the Biden administration began populating the federal government and the federal Judiciary — including the new Supreme Court vacancy — with hundreds (probably thousands) of the most extreme anti-American people imaginable. The administration has re-crafted an enormous number of laws and regulations — often illegally — to push the hard-left, woke, LGBT agendas throughout business, government, education, and society in general. U.S. foreign policy, including the hideous abandonment in Afghanistan and unhinged Ukrainian response, has clearly been coordinated to weaken America...

Spain hailed its doctors as heroes during the coronavirus crisis, but as infections fall many frontline staff have been left depressed and traumatized by their experience, fearful of an insecure future. With 36.3 percent of public healthcare workers without a permanent contract, according to one survey, demonstrations calling for change are growing. “We have to end this low-budget health system,” says Patricia Calvo, a 40-year-old doctor, who made her own protective gear out of bin bags at the height of the pandemic. “I finished specializing in 2010, but I’m still on a temporary contract,” says the doctor from the southern...

The sooner we face up to this unpleasant reality, the better off we'll be. Shed a single tear, if you haven’t gone entirely dry, for America’s beleaguered, struggling, and anxiety-ridden law-firm partners.Sara Randazzo, writing in the Wall Street Journal, chronicles the lamentations of the lawyers: “Being named a partner once meant joining a band of lawyers who jointly tended to longtime clients and took home comfortable, and roughly equal, paychecks. Job security was virtually guaranteed and partners rarely jumped ship. That model, and the culture that grew up around it, is all but dead. Law firms are now often partnerships...

In the debate over public sector compensation, it's often noted that - in addition to generous salaries and better fringe benefits - federal employees have far greater job security than private sector workers. While a private sector worker has an approximately 20 percent chance of being fired or laid off in a given year, for federal employees it's only 6 percent. This effectively gives federal employees an insurance policy against being discharged. My goal here is to assign a dollar value to that insurance. To understand the value of job security, imagine that you were offered a job where you...

OSAKA, Japan — When the sheet metal orders coming into his small business, High Metal, fell by half last October, it never occurred to Masaaki Taruki to lay off his workers. Instead, he set about brainstorming new projects to occupy them. An indoor vegetable garden? A handicrafts workshop? Because of government subsidies, Mr. Taruki in the last three months installed rows of parsley, watercress and other plants, using factory space that has been empty since the company disposed of unused machinery. High Metal’s staff tend the sprouts religiously, topping up the water supply, adding fertilizer and adjusting the fluorescent lights....

Bad Times Spur a Flight to Jobs Viewed as Safe By LOUIS UCHITELLE After years of struggling to get their wages up, the nation’s workers are trying to find jobs that will simply last, at least through the deep recession. Fearing layoffs, investment bankers at a Merrill Lynch or a Morgan Stanley are joining small Wall Street firms for less pay but with signed employment guarantees. Academics are migrating to community colleges, which are adding teachers as enrollment rises. And in Eastern Wisconsin, workers furloughed from a paper mill they fear will not reopen are training as truck drivers and...

National Geographic Channel ran a show last night entitled, "Gun In America." According to the program, there are millions of misguided gun owners across the nation. Why? Because your guns are supposedly more likely to harm you than to help you in an emergency. "As a society, we're totally out of control with weapons," said one Philadelphia cop who was interviewed during the show. "You need to limit access that people have to these type of firearms."

OTTAWA -- A coalition of environmental groups and firefighters are calling on the federal government to ban flame retardants they say are toxic and pose a serious health risk. The group of chemicals are called polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, and are commonly found in many consumer products, such as the casings of television sets, curtains and carpets. Numerous scientific studies indicate these chemicals are linked to serious health issues, including neurological and reproductive problems, said Lisa Gue, environmental health policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation. "We are calling for all chemicals in this class ... to be banned,"...

Tiptonville, Tenn. -- The city's fire chief and three volunteer firefighters, including the chief's grandson, were arrested on arson charges stemming from a string of fires over the past two years. The four men, all members of Tiptonville Volunteer Fire Department, were arrested Monday and expected in court later Tuesday. Police Chief Norman Rhodes said the investigation had been going on for about two years "We've been pretty sure who it was for about the last year," Rhodes said. He didn't give a motive for the arsons beyond saying the suspects had formed a clique. Fire Chief James Blackburn, who...

When children can support themselves, they generally leave their parents’ home. When state colleges and universities can do the same, they find it difficult to leave the nest of taxpayer-subsidized state and federal supports. “Ours is an economy of scarcity,” Gary A. Olson writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Even well-endowed institutions find themselves in a constant struggle to find enough money to do everything that they want to do.” “That economy of scarcity extends to salaries: Most academics and administrators are not compensated at the level that their education, skills, and experience would garner in business and industry.”...

April 06, 2006 There's No Job Security Like No Job SecurityBy Steve Chapman French students and unions have been protesting for weeks now over a law making it easier for companies to get rid of employees. Under the measure recently signed by President Jacques Chirac, they may fire workers younger than 26 during their first two years on the job -- for no reason whatsoever. The demonstrators think that's a bad idea, and they're right. Here's a better one: Let companies fire any workers of any age at any time for no reason at all. Sales are off? The job...

The Danger of "Europeization" Riots, protests, public violence, disobedience, disregard for one's own country, radical idealism, islamism, socialism, communism, "youth mobilizations", urban terrorism... France. In recent months, Europe's "leader" has been immersed in a wave of radicalism. The muslims started and then the commies followed suit. What people fail to understand is that both have an underlying and perilous common denominator: hatred towards freedom. Putting the muslims aside, the radical left-wingers are violently protesting (which is the European way of trying to voice an opinion) because the French government wants to enact a law that would allow employers to...

MONDAY, April 3 (HealthDay News) -- Job insecurity can have a major impact on the health of American workers, says a University of Michigan study. Feeling insecure about your job harms both mental and physical health -- whether you actually lose your job or not. The toll taken by job insecurity can be as great as a serious or life-threatening illness, the study said. Researchers analyzed information from more than 1,000 men and women, under age 60, who underwent two interviews, about three years apart. About 25 percent of the people in the study reported feeling insecure about their jobs...

In case you've been worrying about how the war in Iraq will end, or the coming of avian flu, or the extinction of the universe as we drift into the cosmic void, well, relax. Here's something you should really fret about: the future of the U.S. economy in the age of globalization. For a discussion of same, let me call your attention to an article in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs by Princeton University economist Alan Blinder. The vice chairman of the Federal Reserve's board of governors from 1994 to 1996, Blinder is the most mainstream of economists, which...

Chicago Schools Require Driver's Ed for the Blind CHICAGO - Most high school students eagerly await the day they pass driver's education class. But 16-year-old Mayra Ramirez is indifferent about it. Ramirez is blind, yet she and dozens of other visually impaired sophomores in Chicago schools are required to pass a written rules-of-the-road exam in order to graduate — a rule they say takes time away from subjects they might actually use. "In other classes, you don't really feel different because you can do the work other people do," Ramirez said. "But in driver's ed, it does give us the...

Workers Dismissed After Rejecting Employer's Smoking Policy April 8, 2005 — If you don't like your job, you can quit. Does it work the other way? Can my boss quit me if he doesn't like, say, something I do at home? An employer in Michigan has done that, and it's making lots of people say Give Me a Break. Howard Weyers runs WEYCO, a health-care benefits company in Okemos, Mich., and he's a health nut. He's 71 years old, but still lifts heavy weights. One day, he decided his employees should be healthy too. First, he hired an in-house private...

<p>WASHINGTON — A Web site that encourages students to rate their teachers has been banned from hundreds of schools across the nation and administrators are saying it's a distraction and an abomination.</p> <p>One official in Maryland called RateMyTeachers.com &#8220;personally and professionally repugnant&#8221; and suggested that teachers might have legal recourse against the Internet forum&#8217;s operators.</p>