Free Republic

... Wall Street’s disdain for the bottom-up populist campaigns of Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont has gotten a lot of attention. The candidates’ full-throated attacks on corporate greed, extreme wealth and banking excesses are backed up by ambitious plans to upend the industry’s everyday operations. Wariness extends far beyond an elite financial fellowship, though, to many small and medium-size businesses whose executives are not reflexively Republican but worry that the ascendancy of a left-wing Democrat would create an anti-business climate. In their view, sweeping plans to remake the health care system or slash the cost...

MAPLE PARK, Ill. — Snow and sleet were falling on Eldon Gould’s 500 acres this week, but he was already looking ahead to planting season; depending on ground conditions and the temperature, that could be just several weeks away. But now the prospect of steel and aluminum tariffs was adding to the list of worries and uncertainties that come with every corn and soybean season. “It’s the retaliation risk,” Mr. Gould said from his kitchen table in Maple Park, in a region of northern Illinois where farmland runs on for miles. “The world’s already awash in grain,” Mr. Gould said,...

The Republican tax plan may have passed Congress and been signed by President Trump, but that’s not stopping the New York Times from slamming it as a fairy tale that will doom the GOP in the 2018 congressional elections. In the process the paper made some bold anti-Republican predictions that can be checked next year, as the consequences of the tax bill wind through the economy and the political landscape The Republican tax plan may have passed Congress and been signed by President Trump, but that’s not stopping the New York Times from slamming it as a fairy tale that...