Free Republic

A bill that the Mexican president is expected to approve soon would curtail private investors in the energy industry and possibly reverse gains in lowering carbon emissions. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has never been short of criticisms about his predecessor’s legacy. But he has reserved a special contempt for the sweeping overhaul that opened Mexico’s tightly held energy industry to the private sector.He has called the changes a form of legalized “pillaging,” the product of corruption and a resounding failure. He has suggested that some foreign energy investors are “looting” the nation and that Mexican lawyers who work for...

Once on the margin of the margins, calls for the nationalization of US fossil fuel interests are growing. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the basic argument was this: nationalization could expedite the phasing out of fossil fuels in order to reach climate targets while ensuring a “just transition” for workers in coal, oil, and gas. Nationalization would also remove the toxic political influence of “Big Oil” and other large fossil fuel corporations. The legal architecture for nationalization exists — principally via “eminent domain” — and should be used. But the case for nationalization has gotten stronger in recent months.

The revelation that the Capitol mob - covered in emblems of extremist groups - included off-duty law enforcement officers possibly assisted by working police is escalating pressure on sheriffs and police chiefs nationwide to root out staff with ties to white supremacist and far-right armed groups. Law enforcement leaders have faced criticism in the past for failing to police their own officers’ involvement with extremist groups. However, the selfie photos that off-duty officers took inside the Capitol during the violent siege, which left one police officer dead and dozens of others injured, were a wake-up call for many who have...

George Soros failed in a bid to overturn an insider-trading conviction at France's highest appeals tribunal, but vowed to pursue an appeal....... The Court of Cassation, the tribunal of last resort in France, yesterday upheld a March 2005 judgment that Soros violated the law when he bought Societe Generale SA shares in 1988 with knowledge that the bank might be a takeover target. The Hungary-born financier....has been fighting the case for 17 years, will appeal......The verdict came as the 75-year-old former financier turned his attention from his investing career to political and charitable activities.

Last year Joe Biden bragged about how he coerced Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor Victor Shokin by threatening that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees from them. While this type of interference in a foreign government by the then-Vice President of the United States is highly inappropriate in itself, what makes it even worse is that the prosecutor he got fired was probing a firm for which his son Hunter Biden worked. Yesterday an audiotape has been released by a Ukrainian politician which details conversations between corrupt and discredited former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko...

The German government is planning an economic aid package worth €822 billion to prevent companies from going under during the coronavirus pandemic. The planned funds are to be made available according to a draft bill seen by AFP on Saturday. The funds will go towards a slew of aid programs, including help for employees forced into shorter work hours. They may also be used to fund the partial nationalization of large enterprises in order to keep them afloat, according to the text. […] Germany’s so-called “debt brake” was written into its constitution in 2009, and limits a federal budget deficit...

Italy has recapitalized its airline Alitalia, and France is considering similar moves to rescue affected companies. Now even Germany seems ready to use the ultimate weapon in the coronavirus battle: nationalization.Italy has stepped up efforts recently to keep its bankrupt flagship carrier Alitalia afloat, with a new €600-million ($647 million) loan under discussion as part of a plan to renationalize the airline. Meanwhile, the government in Paris has announced that the state would intervene in any way necessary to protect the country’s economic assets, with Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire saying that this could include capitalizing corporations or taking stakes...

Finally, today, we get at least an attempt at an explanation of President Obama’s dead-of-night decision on December 16 to grant Interpol — the international police force — immunity from American law. (See here and here.) Unfortunately, in the habit to which we’ve grown accustomed, the Obama administration itself didn’t provide the explanation. It comes from Interpol’s secretary general, Ron Noble, via an informative report by Valerie Richardson at Human Events. (Ms. Richardson, who quotes from my posts in her story, was good enough to call me for comment; I regret that, because of the press of other business, I...

The United Nations and Interpol, the global police organization, are poised to become partners in fighting crime by jointly creating an international police force. Interpol, which is financed by 187 member nations, says the "global police doctrine" would allow the deployment of peacekeepers among rogue nations plagued by war and organized crime. "We have a visionary model," said Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble, who described the joint partnership "an alliance of all nations." He suggested that by relying on Interpol's resources, the United Nations would be able to handle international conflicts and transnational crime far better.

On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) stated that the coronavirus outbreak is a case for “a nationalization of crucial factories and industries that could produce the medical supplies to prepare this country for what we need.”

The Senate overwhelmingly passed an ambitious bill today to clean up the nation's election procedures, to help states buy new voting machines and to prevent ballot disputes like those that left painful memories of "butterfly ballots" and "hanging chads" after the last presidential election. The bill, approved by a vote of 99 to 1, goes to a conference committee of senators and members of the House of Representatives. In December, the House passed legislation with a similar purpose that differs from the Senate bill in many significant details. Both bills set minimum federal standards for the conduct of elections across...

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials tried to hack Indiana’s state electoral system with at least 14,800 “scans” or hits between Nov. 1, 2016, to Dec. 16, 2016, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned. The attacks are the second confirmed IT scanning assault by DHS officials against states that resisted then-President Barack Obama’s attempt to increase federal involvement in state and local election systems by designating them as “critical infrastructure” for national security. Members of the National Association of Secretaries of State voted Saturday at their winter meeting to oppose the designation. They are asking President Donald...

Whoever wins this week's UK election, there's more at stake for businesses and investors than at any time since the 1970s — and it's not all about Brexit. The future of Britain's plan to leave the European Union, which would reverse 46 years of trade and economic integration, could be decided on Thursday. Huge domestic policy change also looms large. Britain's two main political parties both want to increase government spending after a decade of painful austerity under Conservative-led administrations. But opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to dramatically expand the role of the state and boost public...

When a dozen of conservatism’s best minds take on Socialism and expose it for the utopian fraud it is, attention must be paid. In a brief foreword to a special issue of National Review, Editor-in-Chief Richard Lowry admitted that many conservatives thought socialism in America had been “vanquished” after the collapse of Soviet Communism 30 years ago. But as T. S. Eliot insisted, “There is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.” The experts examine socialism in its many guises, beginning with Charles Cooke’s blunt assessment that socialism is not...

Progressivism has been with us for just under 120 years now, destroying the country. Since day one, these people have staked their claim on the purity that they always have and always will stand against monopoly. Not so fast. Public posturing and the resulting public policy compared with the core ideological belief are two very different things. Progressives stand for and are ardent believers in the absolute regulation or complete nationalization of everything in sight, believing that government is the only entity that has any responsibility to be engaged in this, that, or the other thing. How dare they claim...

The primary suspect in the massacre Friday of 49 people at two mosques in New Zealand named a prominent British fascist leader who was allied with Italy’s Benito Mussolini in the 1930s as the historical political figure with whom he most identified. The suspect, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant, published a 74-page manifesto before killing 49 people and injuring another 20 at the Christchurch mosques. Tarrant wrote that Sir Oswald Mosley “is the person from history closest to my own beliefs.” Describing himself as a “racist,” Tarrant state’s he’s not a conservative and could be labeled a socialist, “depending on the...

A member of the Young Democratic Socialists of America at Georgia Tech University is furious at Sen. David Perdue after the Georgia Republican nationalized his phone while campaigning for gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp: “Give me my phone back, senator” exclaimed the young man who wants the government to take other people’s property: So it’s only OK if the government takes someone else’s property and not your own? WEIRD! Also, these are the people who are pissed at Sen. Perdue right now: It’s going to be a really, really short “Revolution” if this is how they act. Sen. Perdue did quickly...

French President Emmanuel Macron will be putting his investment banking experience to use in coming weeks as his government prepares a new wave of state asset sales to pay for his “disruptive innovations” fund. After his election last year Macron pledged €50 billion ($62 billion) to help modernize the country’s economy, and €10 billion has been earmarked for promoting innovative technologies. To avoid putting further strain on the already stretched public finances, the government will finance the plan by selling stakes in the roughly 80 French companies owned partly or entirely by the state. The process was launched last autumn,...

The Ukrainian authorities began to seize assets of the Russian holding company Gazprom for allegedly failing to comply with the Stockholm Arbitration Order and violating the monopoly legislation of Ukraine. It happened following the comments of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers. According to the court decision, the department of the state executive service intends to recover from Gazprom almost 172 billion hryvnia in favor of the state budget of Ukraine. "In this case, the identification and arrest of assets belonging to Gazprom in Ukraine began," it was reported. Among being seized the property of the companies Gazpromprom Ukraina and the...

Delivering remarks on domestic terrorism at an event co-sponsored by the George Washington University’s program on extremism and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin announced on Wednesday the creation of a new position within the Department of Justice (DOJ) aimed at investigating violent extremism. “We are here to talk about combating domestic terrorism, which the FBI has explained as ‘Americans attacking Americans based on U.S.-based extremist ideologies.’ The threat ranges from individuals motivated by anti-government animus, to eco-radicalism and racism,” stated Carlin. He continued, “Homegrown violent extremists can be motivated by any viewpoint on...