Free Republic

Nancy Pelosi famously proclaimed that Democrats had to pass ObamaCare to find out what was in it. On the other hand, Democrats in California last year passed legislation outlawing many freelance and independent contracting jobs knowing the disruption it would cause—and voters are now discovering the damage. Ride-hailing app Uber this week rolled out changes for drivers and riders in California in an effort to duck the state’s new labor law AB5. That law reclassified a large swath of independent contractors from freelance journalists to Uber drivers as employees who are owed rest breaks, workers compensation, health benefits and paid...

Watch cable news, particularly CNN or MSNBC, and hear how the “walls are closing in” on President Trump. Impeachment is underway, a solemn and sober process, celebrated by House Speaker Pelosi handing out autographed pens during the impeachment article signing ceremony. One would think she was signing landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act given the pomp and circumstance. Meanwhile the Senate passed the USMCA trade agreement, now ready for Trump’s signature, another promise made and kept by the accidental president who has no idea what he is doing. The rube of a president also announced a trade deal with...

A year and a half into Donald Trump’s presidency, Henry Kissinger set out a theory. “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences,” he told the Financial Times. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.” A term has been coined to describe this notion: Ryan Evans of War on the Rocks calls them “Trumportunities.” It is the idea that,...

President Trump trashed 2020 Democrat Mike Bloomberg, calling the septuagenarian a "terrible speaker" and mocking the billionaire's height at 5 feet, 8 inches. "Mini Mike Bloomberg doesn’t get on the Democrat Debate Stage because he doesn’t want to - he is a terrible debater and speaker," tweeted Trump on Friday. "If he did, he would go down in the polls even more (if that is possible!)." The president further slammed Bloomberg in a follow-up tweet soon after, saying, "Mini Mike Bloomberg ads are purposely wrong - A vanity project for him to get into the game. Nobody in many years...

TAMPA, Florida — Vice President Mike Pence told Breitbart News exclusively on Thursday that the Senate’s passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement is a “huge win” for American workers and farmers. Pence’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News, which came on his bus tour between Tampa and Orlando, for which he was conducting a campaign swing up the all-important I-4 corridor in the Sunshine State, came moments after the U.S. Senate passed the USMCA, 89-10. The overwhelming Senate vote came a month after the House in mid-December similarly passed the deal with overwhelming bipartisan support, as the USMCA sailed through...

The Senate overwhelmingly passed President Trump's proposed replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Thursday, sending the deal to the president’s desk for his approval. Passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) represents a rare moment of bipartisanship in a bitterly divided Congress. The deal cleared the Senate by a vote of 89 to 10 on Thursday, close to a month after passing the House by a vote of 385-41. Republicans were eager to help Trump accomplish a major pillar of his economic agenda despite their preferences for a deal with looser restrictions. Democrats, who broadly shared Trump’s...

Expected live at 11 a.m. ET: The Senate is expected to vote on the USMCA trade agreement. At noon, impeachment Managers, led by the House Sergeant at Arms, hold a procession ceremony.

If you go by the Labor Department’s statistics, the job market was very hot in November. Then it became cold in December. Average the two out and — in true Goldilocks fashion — the economy (like the porridge) may now be just right. I’ve always told you that the government’s employment stats are flaky. Various adjustments are supposed to take care of things like Christmas hiring and new companies just coming into being. But they don’t. They only confuse things. And only after many months or even years of revisions do we learn what the job market was really like....

Hypocrisy in politics is typical, but every so often it reaches a new low. Such is the case with a recent political ad attacking dark money’s influence in politics, an ad funded by dark money. The group Future Majority did exactly that as part of their 2018 efforts to elect Democrats to Congress. Now groups like Future Majority are focused on denying President Trump reelection in 2020.  Democrats have no good response to the president’s popularity and his accomplished record, so they turn to dark money funded smear campaigns to try and discredit him and his supporters. Politico reports one...

What a difference a year makes. 2018 was tough on investors, and it ended with stocks in retreat. The decline was triggered by growing fears of a prolonged U.S.-China trade war fueled by President Trump’s “I am tariff man” tweet on December 4.In addition, the Federal Reserve was in a multiyear cycle of rate hikes. Nobody knew it at the time, but the last hike occurred on December 18, 2018. Across nearly every major asset class, 2018 was a bad year. Fast forward to December 2019.A yearlong rally accelerated in the fourth quarter, with stocks ending the year at...

A new Media Research Center analysis found that the three major network evening newscasts only gave President Donald Trump’s booming economy and U.S. trade nine minutes of coverage since the House Democrats’ impeachment push began on Sept. 24, 2019.

U.S. coal-fired power plants shut down at the second-fastest pace on record in 2019, despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to prop up the industry, according to data from the federal government and Thomson Reuters. Power companies retired or converted roughly 15,100 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired electricity generation, enough to power about 15 million homes, according to the data, which included preliminary statistics from the Energy Information Administration and Reuters reporting. That was second only to the record 19,300 MW shut in 2015 during President Barack Obama’s administration. The replacement of coal with power generation from natural gas and renewables has...

So what is the question to which measuring wealth distributions and a wealth tax are the answer? To briefly review, in Part I we met the fact that "wealth is measured as "capitalized income," Y/r. But only some kinds of income and with r choices that blew up measured wealth inequality. In Part II we learned that a big reason wealth inequality widened is that interest rates fell. If r falls, Y/r rises, but it's the same Y. In Part III we noted the distinction between consumption, income and wealth inequality. Wealth is beyond badly measured as a measure of...

Immigration makes all of America richer, but it can make some Americans poorer, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says in a report issued January 9. “Immigration, whether legal or illegal, expands the labor force and changes its composition, leading to increases in total economic output,” said the non-partisan report, titled “The Foreign-Born Population and Its Effects on the U.S. Economy and the Federal Budget—An Overview.” But this national expansion does “not necessarily [deliver] to increases in output per capita,” or income per person, the report said: For example, business leaders say the nation’s enormous population of immigrants has expanded the...

* Fewer suicides occur when minimum wages are higher during periods of elevated unemployment, according to a new study. * Every $1 increase in the minimum wage is associated with a 6% reduction in suicide for high school grads. * Boosting the minimum wage by $1 could have saved 27,550 lives from 1990 to 2015, the study says. Raising the federal minimum wage, which hasn't increased in more than a decade, might accomplish far more than simply offering U.S. workers a boost in pay. New research suggests that lifting the baseline wage could also stop thousands of Americans from killing...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly surpassed 29,000 on Friday for the first time, setting a new record. The index hit the record earlier in the session following a moderate December jobs report, which found 145,000 new jobs created in 2019 and the unemployment rate staying unchanged at 3.5 percent, the lowest level in nearly 50 years. The Dow then retreated and was down slightly as of late morning. President Trump has frequently touted strong stocks as a sign of a booming economy, which he has made a central theme in his case for reelection. He has also cited the...

In 2016, Donald Trump handily beat Hillary Clinton in the Buckeye State. As commentator George Will noted, for quite some time, the GOP presidential strategy was to win the south, the Midwest, the West, and then spend the equivalent of the GDP of Brazil to win Ohio. There are stories about George Bush knowing that his second term hinged on him winning Ohio, which he did. Barack Obama changed all of that. Yet, public opinion shifts like the tides. Trump won Florida outright, a state that has many worrying about the competitiveness of the GOP in national elections due to...

If you went to bed early Tuesday, you were surprised to wake up Wednesday and learn that World War III has been delayed. No doubt you were also shocked that Iran blinked, oil prices were tumbling and the stock market was soaring. Once again, the Chicken Little chorus got everything all wrong. The sky isn’t falling and Donald Trump pulled off a huge victory. Oh, and he’s still president. Iran’s decision to pretend it was retaliating for the death of Qassem Soleimani by lobbing ineffective missiles is terrific news for America and freedom-loving people everywhere. So was Trump’s Wednesday offer...

NEW YORK — A little freedom goes a long way, especially when it comes to reducing poverty. The Atlas Network recently recognized several free-market think tanks that have helped move people dramatically from disadvantage to entrepreneurship to employment and toward prosperity.The Atlas Network supports and/or collaborates with some 500 pro-liberty organizations in the USA and 95 countries. On principle, Atlas Network does this with strictly private funds. These three think tanks have distinguished themselves in combating poverty and improving the atmosphere for human flourishing in developing nations.The Atlas Network bestowed the $100,000 Templeton Freedom Award for 2019 to the Foundation...

California's New Dystopian Laws Californians, are you ready for the twelve-hundred new progressive laws that take effect this year? Get ready because many of these new rules come with stiff penalties. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8FhWH4uSdk&feature=emb_title