Free Republic

Ayn Rand was a Russian-born writer who immigrated to the United States in 1926, worked as a screenwriter and playwright and wrote several novels expressing an individualistic philosophy she called “objectivism.” Rand’s novels and outspoken ideology were subjects of academic and media debate from the onset of her literary career, but controversy soared with the 1957 publication of her 1,168-page “Atlas Shrugged.” The novel describes a revolt by business executives, inventors, artists and other accomplished Americans who opposed suffocating taxes and regulations. Rand likens the rebels to Atlas, a figure of Greek mythology who holds the world on his shoulders....

Steven Spielberg, phone home! The legendary “E.T.” director and California resident has moved to Manhattan amid a billionaire exodus from the Golden State — as voters eye a controversial wealth tax. But the move, first reported by the LA Times, allegedly had nothing to do with the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act. “Steven’s move to the East Coast is both long-planned and driven purely by his and Kate Capshaw’s desire to be closer to their New York-based children and grandchildren,” spokeswoman Terry Press said. Press did not answer queries about Spielberg’s stance on the proposed tax, which would slap a one-time...

The number of detectives in the NYPD has dropped below 5,000 for the first time since the pandemic – and union leaders warn that 1,600 more gumshoes could retire by the end of the year... There are 4,948 detectives in the NYPD today compared to 7,000 at the staffing peak following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Another 1,676 investigators with at least 19 years or more on the job will be eligible to retire in 2025 ... The Detectives’ Endowment Association said 359 gumshoes have already put in for retirement in the first two months of this year — compared...

Daniel Alman from Squirrel Hill @DanielAlmanPGH #ElonMusk chose to waive getting a salary in exchange for a performance based pay scale. Therefore, when #JudgeKathaleenMcCormick said his pay package was “unfathomable,” she was really saying that Musk did his job too well. #AtlasShrugged #WhoIsJohnGalt #AynRand #Communism 2:04 PM · Dec 4, 2024

As a result of his domestic war on the oil and gas industry, energy prices for American families continue to hit records with no relief in sight. For months, President Joe Biden has repeatedly tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and claimed it was helping to ease the pain at the pump. Not only has the depletion of the emergency supply not decreased gas prices, we're learning the supply is being sold to foreign countries. "More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency oil reserves release aimed at lowering domestic fuel prices were exported...

President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is roughly 270 words long. The Declaration of Independence is around 1,320 words. Those two documents alone prove the power of brevity. (Whenever I find that I am unable to write what I'm trying to say within the Lincoln-Jefferson word limit, I chuck it in the trashcan because I've most likely buried my intended message under parasitic weeds.) The whole U.S. Constitution, the shortest in the world, has only 4,400 words. Yet every two-year Congress since WWII has enacted 4-6 million words of new law. A wise man once told me that if a law can't...

New York, NY – The mass exodus plaguing the New York Police Department (NYPD) may be having the biggest impact on its investigations with more than 100 seasoned detectives filing their retirement paperwork in June. Statistics showed that 250 NYPD detectives have retired so far this year and sources told the New York Post that another 75 veteran investigators were planning to retire in July. Before the June retirements began, the police force had 5,600 detectives. That’s almost 2,000 fewer detectives than NYPD had on the department less than 20 years ago, the New York Post reported. The detectives’ union...

(Reuters) - Tech and financial companies leading efforts to cut climate changing emissions are finding a new challenge from remote work: the CO2 spewing out of home offices. A few companies have begun counting what happens when employees boot up computers at home, turn up gas furnaces and ignore the world's most energy-efficient corporate campuses. It turns out that home setups popularized by the pandemic are eroding some of the climate benefit of abandoned commutes. “Emissions didn't go away," said Amanda von Almen, head of emissions reduction at Salesforce.com Inc. "They just shifted to another area." Half of 20 big...

A record-setting 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in March, according to data released Tuesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The data also showed 11.5 million jobs available, indicating a continued advantage for workers as companies and industries across the country – from airlines to teachers- struggle with staffing shortages. Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, went so far as to call the current market “the greatest job seekers’ market of all time” in a tweet.

Southwest Airlines’ CEO said the company will not fire employees who do not get the COVID-19 vaccine by Dec. 9 following a Biden administration mandate that was announced last month for federal contractors. In a statement to news outlets Friday, the Dallas-based carrier confirmed to Fox News it does not want to “lose any employee” over President Joe Biden’s mandate, adding that firing a worker over the vaccine “makes no sense.” It came a day after Southwest CEO Gary Kelly made a similar announcement during an earnings call. “This is an evolving process working with the government in terms of...

Tea Partiers should be wary of the ideology underlying a novel popular within the movement. Signs reading “Who is John Galt?” became a common sight at rallies last year. They reference Atlas Shrugged, a novel by Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand, which is considered an affirmation of individual rights and the free market. However, according to a central advocate of Rand’s worldview, there is a deeper message within the novel which the Tea Party must embrace if it hopes to affect libertarian change. On February 23rd, in a lecture hall at the University of Minnesota, Rand advocate Craig Biddle, editor of...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: All Levels of Government, Family, Military, Business, Farming, Education, Churches, Health Care Systems, the News, Media and Social Media, Citizen Keyboard Warriors, Right to Life. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

General Motors' (GM.N) Venezuelan subsidiary has sent a message to almost 2,700 staff informing them that they are no longer employed by the company and had received severance pay in their bank accounts, according to two employees. A Venezuelan court last week ordered the seizure of the company's Valencia plant, ruling in favor of two dealers that had filed a case in 2000 against the subsidiary on grounds they had not complied with an agreed sale of 10,000 vehicles. Workers say that before the seizure was announced, GM had been dismantling the plant, which has not produced a car since...

We are living inside a Universe that’s so complex that if we can grasp what’s happening for a moment, we’ll fall down on our knees and cry in surrender to its marvelous beauty! Science just barely starts to scratch the surface to the nature of reality and still, its discoveries are more shocking than we were able to imagine. It proves of quantum entanglement, unified field of consciousness, free energy, superhuman abilities, singularity, parallel universes and alternate realities. All of this is so mind boggling that you would never think a kid can understand. But maybe we need a kid,...

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban channeled Ayn Rand in a Twitter tirade Thursday. Earlier that day, Cuban had tweeted an article from The Blaze about net neutrality. When his followers dissented, he hit them with some Atlas Shrugged.

South Carolina U.S. Senator Jim DeMint will replace Ed Feulner as president of the Heritage Foundation. Mr. DeMint will leave his post as South Carolina's junior senator in early January to take control of the Washington think tank, which has an annual budget of about $80 million. Sen. DeMint's departure means that South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a Republican, will name a successor, who will have to run in a special election in 2014. In that year, both Mr. DeMint's replacement and Sen. Lindsey Graham will be running for reelection in South Carolina.

SOLYNDRA For Sale Property Size Total building area is approximately 411,618 square feet (excluding mezzanine) o Manufacturing area: 287,448 square feet single story o Office building: 37,210 square feet two-story o Mechanical Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) area: 86,960 square feet usable o Expandable to 739,232 square feet Building Highlights • Highly visible world class manufacturing facility • Frontage along Interstate 880 and Kato Road • Headquarters style office area constructed to LEED Gold Standards • Construction completed in October of 2010 • The total electrical service: 22 Megawatts • Facility is backed up by 2 diesel generators each with 2...

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, under fire over the tax consequences of renouncing his U.S. citizenship, said on Thursday he is obligated to and will pay 'hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to the United States government.' The social media entrepreneur and investor said in a statement, emailed to Reuters by a spokesman, that his decision to move to Singapore was 'based solely on my interest in working and living' there.

Main Street Bank lends most of its money to small businesses and is earning decent profits. But the Kingwood, Texas, bank is about to get out of the banking business. In an extreme example of the frustration felt by many bankers as regulators toughen their oversight of the nation's financial institutions, Main Street's chairman, Thomas Depping, is expected to announce Wednesday that the 27-year-old bank will surrender its banking charter and sell its four branches to a nearby bank. Mr. Depping plans to set up a new lender that will operate beyond the reach of banking regulators—and the deposit-insurance safety...

Who is Jane Galt? | Tea Party Tribune In Ayn Rand’s famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, the main character, John Galt, faces a fundamentally transformed America. An America that has surrendered to the false promises of Marxism. He decides he will neither be slave nor slave master, and quits his job, disappears, and unplugs himself from the system. He does not end there; he decides to collapse the collectivist system that is dominating America and goes across the country convincing “the men of the mind,” the men that make the world go around, to go on a strike that brings about...