Free Republic

–Read Note to Editor at the end.– Hurting in ratings, CNN is now pushing for ‘voluntary layoffs’. CNN says roughly 100 employees have accepted voluntary buyouts a month after an overhaul by parent company AT&T. Brian Stelter, also confirmed the rumor, trying to spin it as “hundreds of staffers leaving CNN, as voluntary buyouts.” In a tweet, Brian Stelter said: There’s a rumor making the rounds today about big impending layoffs at CNN. A CNN spokeswoman is knocking it down on the record: “No layoffs.” There WERE voluntary buyouts throughout the organization, and about 100 people opted for it. This...

Ninety years ago the Chicago White Sox intentionally lost--dumped, to you sports fans--the World Series. Legend has it that a young fan implored the team's star, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, as he emerged from the court house, "Say it ain't so, Joe." The Shoeless one allegedly responded, "Yes, I'm afraid it is, kid." Let's hope that chief White House economic adviser Larry Summers wouldn't respond similarly if someone were to charge that he sat silently when the administration's political types decided it would be just fine to submit a budget that will take the ratio of debt-to-GDP from around 40 percent...

... Longer-term, there is little doubt that we will be paying more for energy. On Wednesday Democrats in the House agreed on a cap-and-trade system that will put a price on CO2 emissions, a cost that will be passed on to consumers in the prices of electricity and other energy sources. Agreement was reached when the bill's enthusiasts bribed recalcitrant congressmen with free pollution permits for important constituents in the utility, oil and other industries. Which is too bad: cap-and-trade is a woefully inefficient way of imposing emissions costs on polluters. Experience in Europe shows that the price of permits...

Barack Obama is unhappy with much that preceded his occupation of the White House, and not only his predecessors conduct of foreign policy, for which he is a serial apologizer. Pre-Obama domestic policy also displeases him: any prosperity the nation enjoyed, he says, was built on a foundation of sand. That won't happen again: the trillions of debt he is loading on the nation's books will enable us to erect our post-recession house on solid rock, he says. Our world will never be the same again. Of course, it never has been: the march of technology has enabled us to...

THERE IS LITTLE in the spate of economic statistics that was published this week to upset economy-watchers here in America. The economy is growing at an annual rate of 4 percent. The Institute of Supply Management reports that both the manufacturing and service sectors are expanding at an increasing rate. Share prices are showing strength, and the housing market remains buoyant. Incomes are rising. Even usually glum farmers are finding reason to cheer: their incomes are up 25 percent on last year's levels. Oil prices are falling as high inventories and warm weather relieve supply worries, and as Iraq slowly...

The headlines are bad for Bush, the numbers no one pays attention to are fine.THERE WAS A FLOOD of economic data last week--and of political commentary on the data--and John Kerry had it all his way. The economy created surprisingly few jobs--a mere 32,000, 10 percent of the number Bush had been hoping for--in July. To add to the president's discomfort, the already low job-creation figures for May and June were revised downwards by about 50,000. This wounds Bush in key swing states such as Wisconsin and Ohio. And not only there. All over America, even those working will now...