Free Republic

Although this article is posted on Newsmax.com, it looks that the originator is the AP. Thus, only posting link: https://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/1003258/1

How Do We Measure the Cost of Effectiveness? Illegal immigration prompt discussions about increasing border security. If the lack of adequate border control is the problem then increasing border security would seem the solution. Many people are against added border security simply because President Trump feels he needs it to enforce immigration law. These people have to rationalize that it cost too much because they already know barriers work. The empirical information regarding the effectiveness of a border barrier is clear but information on the cost effectiveness is missing. How is the cost effectiveness of a barrier determined? One way...

If modern physics is to be believed, we shouldn’t be here. The meager dose of energy infusing empty space, which at higher levels would rip the cosmos apart, is a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times tinier than theory predicts. And the minuscule mass of the Higgs boson, whose relative smallness allows big structures such as galaxies and humans to form, falls roughly 100 quadrillion times short of expectations. Dialing up either of these constants even a little would render the universe unlivable. To account for our incredible luck, leading cosmologists like Alan Guth and...

President Obama put his rosy glasses on for an interview with CNBC on Thursday, claiming “It’s pretty hard to find an economic measure where we’re not significantly better off.” Obama spoke with CNBC’s Steve Liesman about the economic policies pushed by the White House and what the federal government expects going forward. “What can you tell average Americans about the outlook of the economy?” Liesman asked, noting that even Obama’s own former economic advisor Larry Summers is forecasting lower growth over the next few years. Obama dismissed that notion. “If you think about where we were, Steve, when I came

After a monumental battle that saw national pro-life groups and abortion supporters engage in a furious fight in the state of New Mexico, voters in Albuquerque today defeated the nation’s first city-wide ban on late-term abortions. Initial results from 50,000 early and absentee ballots showed 56 percent of voters against the proposal, while 44 percent supported the ban on most abortions after 20 weeks. The totals from voters casting ballots on election day didn’t change those percentages much and, with 28 of 50 precincts tallied, the vote remained 55-45 against the ban. Some pro-life advocates are asserting the results are...

The House of Representatives registered its disapproval of U.S. involvement in the NATO-led Libya campaign Friday, solidly rejecting a resolution expressing support for American military engagement in the war-torn North African country. The resolution -- similar to a measure introduced in the Senate by Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, and Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona -- lost in a 295-193 vote. Republicans voted overwhelmingly against the measure, while Democrats voted more narrowly in favor of it.

As millions across the country prepared for their annual Thanksgiving feast, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) was busy taking shots at Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) over food safety, claiming in a letter from a Reid spokesman that Coburn, a physician who has delivered more than 4,000 babies, doesn’t care if children get sick. Coburn is offering amendments to, and opposing the current form of, Senate Bill 510, the so-called “Food Safety Modernization Act.” According to Coburn’s camp, this bill, which could come to a vote as early as next week and which is being heavily pushed by Reid and...

Ballot measure fears unite Dems, GOP in 3 statesBy David Crary AP National Writer / November 1, 2010 **SNIP** In Colorado, there's bipartisan dread over three measures to ban borrowing for public works, cut the income tax and slash school district property taxes. The proposals would cost the state $2.1 billion in revenue and eliminate tens of thousands of jobs, opponents warn. Similar fears are being voiced in Massachusetts, where a ballot measure would mark down the state sales tax from 6.25 to 3 percent. All three gubernatorial candidates oppose the measure, which would force the state to slash $2.5...

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. -- John Maynard Keynes Much of the western world is mired in debt. American consumers are walking away from their suffocating mortgage payments in droves, and consumer credit outstanding has barely declined. To make matters worse, the US is suffering from the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression. Many economists, market gurus, and television talking heads are waiting for the moment inflation strikes. Here's the...

I'm surprised to see Greg Mankiw endorsing Robert Samuelson's column about measuring poverty (or at least pointing to it without comment as though he endorses it). Apparently Samuelson is worried that the new measurements might cause us to give more help to the poor. I guess in his view, the poor are getting all the help they need, but that's not how I see it.Dean Baker responds to Samuelson: Robert Samuelson's Cellphone Standard of Living, by Dean Baker: Robert Samuelson invokes the cellphone standard of living in his column today which complains about the Obama administration's adoption of a...

Who is poor in America? This is not an easy question to answer, and the Obama administration would make it harder. It's hard because there's no conclusive definition of poverty. Low income matters, though how low is unclear. Poverty is also a mind-set that fosters self-defeating behavior -- bad work habits, family breakdown, out-of-wedlock births and addictions. Finally, poverty results from lousy luck: accidents, job losses, disability. Despite poverty's messiness, we've tended to measure progress against it by a single statistic, the federal poverty line. It was originally designed in the early 1960s by Mollie Orshansky, an analyst at the...

Convert any unit to another (Book Mark)

More than a century ago, a small metal cylinder was forged in London and sent to a leafy suburb of Paris. The cylinder was about the size of a salt shaker and made of an alloy of platinum and iridium, an advanced material at the time. In Paris, scientists polished and weighed it carefully, until they determined that it was exactly one kilogram, around 2.2 pounds. Then, by international treaty, they declared it to be the international standard. Since 1889, the year the Eiffel Tower opened, that cylinder has been the standard against which every other kilogram on the planet...

WASHINGTON - Democrat Barack Obama introduced a Senate resolution late Thursday that says President Bush does not have authority to use military force against Iran, the latest move in a debate with presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton about how to respond to that country's nuclear ambitions. Clinton's campaign accused Obama of playing politics instead of taking a leadership role from the outset. Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the Illinois senator drafted the measure in an effort to "nullify the vote the Senate took to give the president the benefit of the doubt on Iran." Burton was referring to an amendment...

Putting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a tight political position, the state Assembly voted Monday to place a measure on California's Feb. 5 ballot urging President Bush to immediately withdraw American troops from Iraq. The 43-32 roll call left the proposal one step from Schwarzenegger's desk. It was sent back to the Senate, which approved a slightly different version of the bill in June. Final approval by the Senate would send the bill to the Republican governor, who could risk angering members of his own party by signing it and putting it on the presidential primary ballot or veto the bill...

China to measure the Great Wall The structure is a series of walls first linked up over 2,000 years ago Researchers are to carry out the first detailed survey of the Great Wall of China to establish just how long the ancient barricade is, Xinhua reports. Along with checking its dimensions the four-year study, which starts in May, will map the wall's exact route. And it will check the condition of the fortification, built to protect the northern border of the Chinese Empire. The wall, the world's largest man-made structure, is estimated at over 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) in length....

WASHINGTON - Presidential candidates from both parties are urging the Senate to set up an independent office to probe ethical questions involving fellow senators. That could be a tough sell. There is some "institutional resistance," said Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record), D-Ill., a potential candidate who has long championed the notion of an independent office of public integrity that would take over some of the self-policing duties of the Senate ethics committee. "A lot of members are concerned about the use of an independent commission as a political club to beat them over the head," Obama said at...

Use of Traditional Measuring Units to Be Fined By Cho Jin-seo Staff Reporter Shops, restaurants and companies that use traditional units of measurements such as pyong and keun from next July will suffer legal sanctions, the government said yesterday. The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said that business owners that do not follow the international standard of measurements _ meter-kilogram-second _ will be subject to up to two years in prison or a seven million won fine. The move is intended to prevent errors in using traditional units, which sometimes differ from region to region, or from item to...

WASHINGTON The House voted Thursday to end a quarter-century offshore drilling ban and allow energy companies to tap natural gas and oil beneath waters from New England to Alaska. Opponents of the federal ban argued that the nation needed to move closer to energy independence and insisted the gas and oil could be taken without threatening the environment and coastal beaches. They said a state choosing to keep the moratorium could do so. The measure was approved 232-187. But the bill's prospects in the Senate were uncertain. Florida's two senators have vowed to filibuster any legislation that would allow drilling...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Provide free preschool for all California children, tax the rich to pay for it, and get a famous Hollywood director to sell it. A measure on Tuesday's ballot to create universal preschool in the nation's most populous state seemed like a can't-miss idea in heavily Democratic California. But the $2.4 billion-a-year plan has been a tough sell. The Preschool for All initiative's best-known supporter, "When Harry Met Sally" director Rob Reiner, ducked out of the campaign spotlight this spring after a state education commission he headed was accused of improperly using taxpayer money to run TV commercials...