Free Republic

Thomas Frank, the author best-known for "What's the Matter with Kansas?" who's also a Washington political journalist, places the blame for the election of President Donald Trump squarely on the back of the Democratic Party and its abandonment of working-class Americans. "They love it when unions work hard for them and give them campaign funds," Frank said in a telephone interview. "But they aren't deeply concerned with the problems faced by working-class people," he said. "They need to stop taking those people for granted." What they got in exchange for that neglect was Trump, he said. Frank will be in...

I recently had the opportunity to read "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin, a prodigious tome dealing with the circumstances surrounding the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. I was taken aback by some of its provocative assertions. America joined World War I largely to help a few bankers profit off the war (despite a long-standing Monroe doctrine that prohibited our involvement in European affairs) The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was supported by international financial interests in order to destabilize Russia and steal the wealth of the Russian people; and So-called "foreign aid" is merely a...

It's possible Illinois is about to come down with a statewide case of Seasonal Affected Disorder. The season is construction, which an old joke says is one of two in Illinois. The disorder is the continuing one in Springfield, where the ongoing budget crisis is about to shut down road projects during the height of that season. And the affected are everyone from officials who work to put needed projects together, to the drivers who have to negotiate construction zones and torn up streets. In Aurora, workers last week got the barriers and cones out to reduce Farnsworth Avenue, near...

Workers at McLane drive forklifts and load hefty boxes into trucks. The grocery supplier, which runs a warehouse in Colorado, needs people who will stay alert — but prospective hires keep failing drug screens. “Some weeks this year, 90 percent of applicants would test positive for something,” ruling them out for the job, said Laura Stephens, a human resources manager for the company in Denver. The state’s unemployment rate is already low — 3 percent, compared to 4.7 percent for the entire nation. Failed drug tests, which are rising locally and nationally, further drain the pool of eligible job candidates....

Workers making preparations for Saturday's Kentucky Derby worry that anti-immigrant fervor in Washington could cause many of them to be deported.

Globalist French President candidate Emmanuel Macron faced animosity from workers at a Whirlpool plant facing closure during a campaign visit after anti-mass migration candidate Marine Le Pen made a surprise visit hours earlier. What started as a planned campaign stop to visit the union bosses of a Whirlpool plant facing closure in Amiens ended in disaster for Mr. Macron after a surprise visit from his presidential rival. Mr. Macron was shoved and shouted at by workers who may lose their jobs as the factory is scheduled to be relocated to Poland next June French broadcaster BFMTV reports. The 39-year-old Presidential...

Earlier this month I was asking what, if anything, was going to happen with the Obama era refugee deal which had been struck with Australia. They’ve got thousands of migrants, primarily from Iraq, Syria and other troubled regions, basically stuck in some island camps where they are coming into conflict with the local residents. The United States had said that we would be taking more than a thousand of them off their hands, but the President somewhat famously referred to it as “a dumb deal” he would have to study. I suppose the study period is over because we got...

After being rescued from bankruptcy earlier this week, [Sungevity] fired more employees with no formal notice – and changed its name to Spectrum Solar.

Remember that time, roughly two months ago, when President Trump promised not to roll back an order protecting the rights of LGBTQ workers? Yeah, well, he lied. Surprise! On Monday, Trump signed an executive order revoking key parts of previous orders by President Obama, which had effectively banned federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Under Executive Order 13673, which Obama issued in 2014, companies receiving federal contracts in excess of half a million dollars were required to demonstrate they had complied with a set of 15 federal or state labor laws over the...

As union honchos for government workers describe it, the paycheck protection legislation that passed the state Senate last month amounts to a political gag order on workers. But if there's any actual “gagging” going on, it's in attempting to swallow this union shibboleth. The Senate bill bars state, local government and school district employers from deducting any portion of union dues from workers' paychecks that fund political activity. Deductions for contract negotiations and other costs remain unchanged.

Pope warns of 'very grave sin' when jobs are cut unjustly

It was 1967. The local music store had an ink-blue Mosrite Ventures solid body electric guitar, and I wanted it badly. Cost: $500. My family was not poor, but neither could they drop five bills on one of four children. My first guitar was a $29.99 Stella acoustic from Sears. There was only one way to get the guitar of my dreams: a summer job. Complication: I had long hair, and even in the psychedelic sixties, few legitimate employers wanted that at their front counters or even their back rooms. All the head shop jobs were taken. We lived in...

JoAnn Wise thinks she wasn’t treated well. In an op-ed published Tuesday by The Washington Post, Wise writes, “I already know what Trump/Puzder economics look like because I’m living it every day. Despite giving everything I had to [labor secretary pick Andy] Puzder’s company for 21 years, I left without a penny of savings, with no health care and no pension.” Wise worked for 21 years at Hardee’s, which is one of the chains Puzder leads as head of CKE. “In 1984, I was hired as a cashier at Hardee’s in Columbia, S.C., making $4.25 an hour. By 2005, 21...

Now here's a man-bites-dog story: Labor strife at Berkeley. Janitorial, custodial and cafeteria workers at Berkeley are fighting to maintain their raise from $9 to $17 an hour with benefits at a university that prides itself on its progressive outlook. Three points need to be made about this: 1. That may still put them on the low end of the pay scale on campus; 2. Whether you want to make a value judgement on their work vis a vis that of administrators, you have to at least admit that their labors are tangible as opposed to the more metaphoric ones...

Making good on a promise to slash government, President-elect Trump has asked his incoming team to pursue spending and staffing cuts. Insiders said that the spending reductions in some departments could go as high as 10 percent and staff cuts to 20 percent, numbers that would rock Washington if he follows through. At least two so-called "landing teams" in Cabinet agencies have relayed the call for cuts as part of their marching orders to shrink the flab in government. The cuts would target discretionary spending, not mandated programs such as Medicare or Social Security, the sources said. The spending reductions...

A group of information technology workers laid off by Walt Disney Parks and Resorts claims they were victims of discrimination. The say they were forced to train their replacements from India before they were fired. On Monday, the 30 former IT workers filed a suit against the company in an Orlando federal court. They’re seeking punitive damages. The lawsuit contends that 250 IT workers in Florida were told they would need to train their replacements before they were fired at the end of 2014. Each replacement worker was of Indian origin, and was either brought from overseas or working outside...

n June, President Obama participated in a PBS townhall and was asked about Trump's promise to keep Carrier's Indiana plant in the U.S. The townhall participant -- Eric Cottonham, a member of the Steelworkers Union employed by Carrier -- asked Obama if anything could be done to stem the tide of jobs flowing out of the country, as Trump had recently promised to do. "I see here you’re doing a lot of things, but in Indianapolis, there’s nothing there for us," he asked. "I mean, what’s next? I mean, what can we look forward to in the future as far...

The first thing to understand about the minimum wage is that it is a classic case of understandable emotionalism and frustration versus concrete data and economic reality. So the clearest explanation is a pros-and-cons listing. On the pros side of increasing the minimum wage, people who are making it and who keep their jobs will make more money. Their increased earnings improve their purchasing power. The cons side is a little lengthier. Sharp increases in the minimum wage reduces the number of entry-level jobs This, in turn, reduces the opportunity for unskilled workers to start getting experience. This is common...

We’ve all had that co-worker at some point: superficially charming, supremely self-confident, but they’ll walk over anyone to get ahead and not feel a second’s remorse. Perhaps, after you were burned yet again, you half-joked that they must have a personality disorder. Today, experts believe it’s very possible that your colleague is a psychopath. Groundbreaking research presented at the Australian Psychology Society Congress in Melbourne this week reveals that one in five corporate workers may have the disorder — as many as in the prison population.

Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone magazine that the Democrats’ embrace of globalist neoliberal policies – in particular Bill Clinton’s signing of NAFTA – have provided an opening for Republican nominee Donald Trump to refashion the GOP as the party fighting for the “rational self-interest” of American workers whose wages have stagnated from decades of globalist trade policies.