Free Republic

U.S. companies are welcome to invest in Iran’s oil and gas industry, the Iranian oil minister said Sunday. State-run Press TV quoted Bijan Namdar Zangeneh as saying that “in general, we have no problem with the presence of American companies in Iran.” He said it is the U.S. government that is “creating restrictions for these companies,” without elaborating. Zangeneh also confirmed that Iran’s state-run oil company has held talks with General Electric. […] The TV report said Zangeneh also asked Siemens executives to invest in Iran’s oil and gas industry. …

Can an authoritarian regime convert to democracy by itself? The historical record isn't encouraging. In the absence of a popular uprising, it is rare for tyrants to voluntarily retire. The military junta of Burma has promised to relinquish some power to an elected government, but it has not yet delivered. China's party-state shows no inclination to try. Russia's strongman is reversing what incipient democracy existed. This goes to the core of why President Obama's opening to Cuba seems to be failing to live up to its declared goals. When the end to a half-century of hostility was announced in December...

Employees for the federal government earn far more than their counterparts in the private sector, according to a new study by the Cato Institute. Federal workers’ pay and benefits were 78 percent higher than private employees, who earned an average of $52,688 less than public sector workers last year. The study found that federal government workers earned an average of $84,153 in 2014, compared to the private sector’s average of $56,350. Cato based its findings on figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). But when adding in benefits pay for federal workers, the difference becomes more dramatic. Federal...

State of Michigan employees took an average of 10.7 days of sick leave during the 2014 fiscal year, according to an annual report. Those 10.7 sick days are in addition to 18 days of vacation time the average state employee used. ForTheRecord says: According to the most recent available U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, private sector workers took on average 2 to 5 sick days a year in 2009. Leisure and hospitality and construction workers took 2 sick days a year on average while education and health services workers took up to 5 sick days a year on average.

At an event in New York City on Monday, President Obama said “reforming our schools for all of our kids” was one of his accomplishments. He also described “public-education institutions” as “pathways for success.” But in the same speech, the president hailed a new private sector effort to teach black and Latino kids to read at grade level by third grade; increase their high school graduation rates; and get more young black and Latino men into higher education or career training, all of them things that a “reformed” education system might be expected to do. …

It only took six years, but we’re finally starting to see the U.S. economy kick into gear. This isn’t a story of government-directed growth, but the opposite — Washington’s role in the economy starting to shrink after years of Obama administration activism. The private sector is starting to take over. Let’s start with the positive news. Economic output soared in the third quarter at a rate of 5 percent. That comes on top of 4.6 percent growth in the second quarter. It appears that the U.S. economy has clawed out of its anemic 2 percent growth rut of the past...

EU development ministers met today (12 December) in Brussels and adopted a “perspective” to boost the role of the private sector in the field of development cooperation. But leading NGOs warned that placing the private sector at the center of EU development policy “shows ministers have failed to acknowledge its limitations”. EU ministers adopted Council Conclusions, which contain strong language in favor of engaging more with the private sector. Ministers state that the private sector “is emerging as an increasingly active player in the development field”, and describe its role as “key” for implementing the future sustainable development goals. Ministers...

In fairness to the public sector column, government is always coming up with innovative ways to confiscate our money.

Three candidates with real-world experience lead the GOP attempt to oust Senate insiders... In 2008, when Barack Obama captured the White House, Bill Cassidy taught medical students in Louisiana, Steve Daines worked for a technology company in Montana, and Tom Cotton of Arkansas fought in Afghanistan. Six years later, the three Republicans are running to seize Democratic-held Senate seats in Republican-leaning states.

I had a very bad lunch today. But not because of what I ate. My lunch was unpleasant because I moderated a noontime panel on Capitol Hill featuring Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and my Cato colleague Chris Edwards. And I should hasten to add that they were splendid company. The unpleasant part of the lunch was the information they shared. The Senator, in particular, looked at budgetary projections over the next 30 years and basically confirmed for the audience that an ever-expanding burden of federal spending is going to lead to a fiscal crisis. To be blunt, he showed...

Brace yourself… Skepticism, doubt and criticism of Obamanomics (all of which are, undoubtedly, based in racism) will be cast aside. Why? Because, according to the 20-something-year-old White House intern that is in charge of the official White House twitter account, “Our businesses have added nearly 10 million new jobs over the past 52 months.” I know, right? Pretty awesome statistic. (Gloss over the fact that the President is referring to private enterprise as “our businesses”.) But before you rush out to slap an Obama ‘16 sticker on your car (are those stickers available yet?), you may want a little bit...

Chelsea Clinton, from her $10.5 million perch on Gramercy Park, declares that she finds it impossible to care about money. Bill and Hillary Clinton, shuttling between their multimillion-dollar homes — Chappaqua, Washington, the $200,000-a-month rental in the Hamptons — denounce the wicked rich and protest that they are not “truly well off.” A professor of poverty and left-wing activist at the University of North Carolina School of Law is paid $200,000 per annum to teach a single class; anti-inequality crusader Elizabeth Warren was paid $350,000 per annum to teach a single class and thinks deeply about the plight of the...

As someone whose chosen profession is dealing with governmental tax agencies, I am almost always flummoxed by the realization of others that the people who work for those tax collection operations would be in favor of collecting more taxes. This was recently reinforced by an editorial in the Washington Times. The Washington Times is one of the many daily publications I read, most of which are left of center because most are left of center. The Times gives me a little respite from the other Times (New York and Los Angeles) that reek of leftist sentiment and pro-Obama cheerleading. They...

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced on March 12th that the total cost of employing a state or local government worker is 45% more than an equivalent worker in the private sector. For the month of December 2013, employers in private industry spent an average of $29.63 per employee hour worked, but the equivalent cost for a government worker averaged $42.89 per hour. Not only do government employees average 33% higher pay than those in the private sector, their pension and retirement benefit costs are now an incredible 254% higher also. Given that compensation formulas for federal,...

A top White House official who has been with President Barack Obama since he first became a senator nine years ago is resigning. Alyssa Mastromonaco is Obama’s deputy chief of staff for operations and often described as the most influential person inside the White House who isn't well known outside of it. …

Normally, there is a pretty clear distinction between the public and private sectors. There also seems to be a pretty clear definition of the energy sector (fuel extraction, refining, power generation). However, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) now seems to think the opposite, the public sector is the private sector and everyone that’s not in the energy sector now is. The DOE will be kicking off an event tomorrow (Wednesday, November 13, 2013) with a forum on Minorities and Energy. This forum is a part of the Minorities in Energy Initiative which “seeks to empower businesses, communities, schools and...

The shut-down elements that are attracting much of the news attention turn out to be fairly easily replaceable. ---- The government “shutdown” is starting to feel a lot like the sequester — a lot of alarmist warnings that the sky is going to fall, followed by business pretty much as usual. That’s not to minimize the genuine inconvenience or worse for those government employees who have been furloughed, or for cancer patients involved in clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health, an institution that House Republicans voted to fund but that Senate Democrats are holding hostage. But for most...

THE STATE ETHICS Commission came up with three solutions to state Senator Dan Wolf's conflict-of-interest problem. Allow me to suggest a fourth. Wolf is the pilot and entrepreneur who founded Cape Air in 1989 and over the next two decades built it into one of the country's most successful regional airlines. He was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 2010, and now hopes to run for governor. But the Ethics Commission ruled last month that Wolf was in violation of state law, which bars elected officials from having a business relationship with any state agency. Since Wolf still owns...

(CNSNews.com) – The number of Americans receiving subsidized food assistance from the federal government has risen to 101 million, representing roughly a third of the U.S. population. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a total of 101,000,000 people currently participate in at least one of the 15 food programs offered by the agency, at a cost of $114 billion in fiscal year 2012. That means the number of Americans receiving food assistance has surpassed the number of private sector workers in the U.S.

In the short time since President Obama was re-elected, government has issued hundreds of new regulations. The bureaucrats never stop. There are now more than 170,000 pages of federal regulations. President Obama wants still more rules. Cheering on increased financial regulation, he said, "We've got to keep moving forward." To the president, and probably most Americans, "forward" means passing more laws. It is scary to think about a world without regulation. Intuition leads us to think that without government we'd be victims of fraud, as I explain in my latest book, "No, They Can't!" But our intuition is wrong. Consider...