Free Republic

A key adviser to President Vladimir Putin accused Foreign Secretary David Miliband of 'anti-Russian racism' over his handling of the Alexander Litvinenko affair. It was claimed Mr Miliband let his personal views cloud his judgment in the recent tit-for-tat diplomat expulsion row over the murder of ex-KGB operative Litvinenko. Last month the Foreign Secretary expelled Russian diplomats from Britain after the Kremlin refused to sanction the extradition of the prime suspect in the murder case. President Putin responded by throwing out several British Embassy officials and banning visas for other UK diplomats. Now Russian political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky, who is...

WASHINGTON - A new Texas road being planned to accommodate truck traffic between the United States and Mexico has riled Ohio members of Congress who fear it's the first phase of a "NAFTA Superhighway" that would be used to funnel cheap imports to the Midwest as it links Mexico, the United States and Canada. Texas and federal highway officials deny that a proposed North-South toll road running parallel to Inter-state 35 is part of a planned international superhighway, and say there are no plans for a transcontinental road. They insist the new thoroughfare would merely handle some of the extra...

WASHINGTON – Three Republican members of the House of Representatives have co-sponsored a resolution calling on President Bush to provide notice of withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement. Reps. Virgil Goode of Virginia, Walter Jones of North Carolina and Gene Taylor of Mississippi introduced the bill, which has been referred to the House Subcommittee of Trade. The trio objects to NAFTA because of the rising U.S. trade deficits with Canada and Mexico, the loss of American jobs, the safety threat posed by foreign truckers on U.S. highways and the security risks it has meant in increased crime and...

The father of modern economics, Adam Smith, wrote more than 200 years ago about the all-powerful "invisible hand" of the market. It was tough, he said, but good for all. The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman was the great champion of the invisible hand and free markets. Governments, he said, should just let markets do their work. Economist Duncan Foley, in his new book "Adam's Fallacy," says wait a minute. This is free market theology, he says, and it's producing a value-free society, an unequal society, an immoral society. This hour On Point: the author of "Adam's Fallacy"...

The House on Tuesday approved a resolution urging the United States to pull out of a cooperative economic, security and public health agreement with Mexico and Canada. Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, R-Orem, said he is sponsoring HJR7 because he sees the Security and Prosperity Partnership as potentially, "wiping away our borders and becoming a common nation with a common currency" similar to the European Union. Before Tuesday's 47-24 vote, Rep. Scott Wyatt, R-Logan, questioned what the so-called SPP really entails. He pointed to the government's Web site, spp.gov, which describes the partnership as a "dialogue" and not a signed agreement. "I...

The richest 2% of the world's population owns more than half of the world's household wealth.... ...The research indicates that assets of just $2,200 per adult place a household in the top half of the world's wealthiest. To be among the richest 10% of adults in the world, just $61,000 in assets is needed. If you have more than $500,000, you're part of the richest 1%, the United Nations study says. Indeed, 37 million people now belong in that category.... ...Half the world, nearly 3 billion people, live on less than $2 a day. The three richest people in the...

U.S.-made products are losing market share to imports across a wide range of core industries in the United States, according to a new study. Among 114 product categories, U.S.-based producers boosted their domestic market share in only three categories between 1997 and 2005: heavy trucks and chassis, computer storage devices, and computer chips. Imports gained market share in 111 categories. The survey from the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a nonprofit group in Washington of small and midsize manufacturers and a critic of U.S. trade policy, used Census Bureau data. The survey excluded inexpensive consumer products found in Wal-Marts, Targets...

I have for many years now, been warning of the age old battle between the super rich and the middle class. Only in the usa during the 19th and 20th century, did the middle class win that battle. During the 19th and 20th century in the usa the power of the super wealthy was curtailed. Government enacted laws that protected the middle class and encouraged exspandsion of the middle class. Anti-trust laws prevented the super rich from gaining control over entire industries. Today these laws are ignored. Labor laws enabled workers to bargain for a living wage. Today these laws...

Our hollow prosperity-------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern PATRICK BUCHANAN © 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc. Now that the U.S. trade deficit for 2005 has come in at $726 billion, the fourth straight all-time record, a question arises. What constitutes failure for a free-trade policy? Or is there no such thing? Is free trade simply right no matter the results? Last year, the United States ran a $202 billion trade deficit with China, the largest ever between two nations. We ran all-time record trade deficits with OPEC, the European Union, Japan, Canada and Latin America. The $50 billion deficit...

LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Toshiba Corp. (6502.T) has agreed to buy Westinghouse, the U.S. power plant arm of British Nuclear Fuels, for $5.4 billion to bolster its position in the world's resurgent nuclear power industry.

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. There's a new glut on world markets. No, I'm not talking about the gluts of Chinese apparel or shares of Google stock bought at $475 each or of sub-prime U.S. lenders. I'm talking about the new glut of studies claiming that what really ails the U.S. economy is a shortage of skilled workers. In fact, all these studies really show is that there's still another glut that's engulfed the economic policymaking world – of raw, unadulterated chutzpah. What else could explain the contention that, as American multinational companies continue offshoring even...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Free Trade stands for almost everything wrong on the planet. As the Free Trade noose tightens, more revolutionary activity will occur until the strangling grip is broken completely or until the despotism of obscenely wealthy and criminal oligarchs feeding off an increasingly destitute and dehumanized world population wins its final triumph. Free Trade is a condition in which dominant industrial power (allied to overwhelming political and military power) arranges the trade of the world to its own advantage while claiming it is participating with equals in an equal exchange of goods...

The United States continues its descent into the Third World, but you would never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' July payroll jobs release. The media give a bare-bones jobs report that is misleading. The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface, things look to be pretty much OK. It is when you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises. Of the new jobs, 26,000 (about 13 percent) are tax-supported government jobs. That...

The June payroll jobs report did not receive much attention due to the July 4 holiday, but the depressing 21st century job performance of the U.S. economy continues unabated. Only 144,000 private sector jobs were created, each one of which was in domestic services. Fifty-six thousand jobs were created in professional and business services, about half of which are in administrative and waste services. Thirty-eight thousand jobs were created in education and health services, almost all of which are in health care and social assistance. Nineteen thousand jobs were created in leisure and hospitality, almost all of which are waitresses...