Free Republic

Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake said that she wants the entire Maricopa County Board of Supervisors recalled due to their incompetence in handling the 2022 election. "We need to recall everyone at the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors — especially Bill Gates and Stephen Richer," Lake said on Tuesday's edition of the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "These two men in charge of this election started a Super PAC to raise money and try to defeat me and they were in charge of the election when I'm on the ballot." Lake has recently filed a petition to...

President Joe Biden’s administration wants the United States to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 — and a big part of that plan involves a switchover to electric vehicles. EVs, we’re told, are the way of the future. Gone are worries about “range anxiety,” we’re told. These vehicles can put in some serious miles on a single charge — and the government’s building more charging infrastructure along the highways every day.

Batman battles numerous supervillians, but none is more clever than the Riddler, the best criminal mastermind in Gotham City. The Riddler has no superhuman powers, but he excels at creating elaborate riddles, puzzles, and traps that constantly fool and evade Batman and the police.Now in the real-world state of Georgia, dear FReepers, there's a taxpayer fraud scam so ingenious and intricately woven that it's likely the work of a gang of Riddlers. Indeed, the schemers have spun their crime to the public as a great commercial success — which, of course, has only fueled the fraud's growth. The fraud...

Under the guise of "economic development" and the promise of "jobs, jobs, jobs", large corporations are cheating American taxpayers when they relocate/expand their businesses across state lines (or exert pressure on their existing state/city by threatening to exit and take their jobs elsewhere). The most visible example of this scam was Amazon's highly publicized search for a second headquarters in 2017-2018. Read the excellent Wired Magazine story, Why Amazon's Search for a Second Headquarters Backfired, which highlights Amazon's abuse as it played states against each other to extract the maximum incentives for itself. The truth is, in most cases,...

As you travel across the Capital Region, you can see that many of our highways and bridges are in need of repair. That's where the NYS dedicated highway and bridge trust fund should come in. It's funded by all sorts of taxes and fees - the gas tax you pay every time you fill up your car, vehicle registration fees, car rental taxes and more. Just one problem -- the dedicated highway and bridge trust fund is dedicated to just about anything but highways and bridges.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made it even harder for cash-strapped watering holes and restaurants to churn back to life — by declaring that a bag of chips is no longer enough to comply with the requirement that they serve food with booze. His State Liquor Authority reversed course with that revised edict posted late Tuesday, which requires they sell more substantial food with alcoholic drinks to be in compliance with the recent executive order. Cuomo last Thursday issued that rule, as well as a statewide ban on walk-up bar service, as part of his crackdown on violations of social-distancing rules....

The 35-page document of unverified allegations about President-elect Donald Trump's links to Russia and compromising information the Russian government might have on him that BuzzFeed published on Tuesday is actually fairly old. Snip Both Sen. Harry Reid and Sen. John McCain knew about the dossier over a month ago. Both thought it was serious enough to warrant an FBI investigation.

Big Government: The federal government wasted more than $100 billion on overpayments last year. It knows this, even tracks it, but somehow can’t seem to stop it. Is there a better indication that government is too big? A federal website called Payment Accuracy tracks in great detail what it calls “improper payments” made by the federal government through Medicare, Medicaid, farm programs, school lunch programs and others to contractors, doctors, students, and so on. Last year, the government made $126 billion in overpayments, nearly double the amount of made in President Bush’s last year. Improper payments in Medicare, for example,...

Resurrect The Republic . com has a You Tube video that I found interesting, even crucial enough to send to every person on my Face Book friend list and open an account here to inform more Americans. Are we satisfied occupying all of our time with frivolous topics or is there someone reading this who wants to know the truth? If you really do want to know the truth and you're tired of living with your head planted firmly in the sand, go to this link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k27efEtxHt0 Since this is my first post here I don't know if you can...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Internet connection and a bunch of stolen identities are all it takes for crooks to collect billions of dollars in bogus federal tax refunds. And the scam is proving too pervasive to stop. A government report in November said the IRS issued $4 billion in fraudulent tax refunds over the previous year to criminals who were using other people's personal information. Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that the "scale, scope and execution of these fraud schemes" has grown substantially and the Justice Department in the past year has charged 880 people. Who's involved? In...

Many libertarians, outraged by how our government spies on us, call me a "traitor" because I'm not very angry. I understand that the National Security Administration tracking patterns in our emails and phone calls could put us on a terrible, privacy-crushing slippery slope. But we're not there yet. Some perspective: We are less closely watched by government than citizens of other countries. There are about 3,000 government security cameras around New York City, but London has 500,000. Some people in London love that, believing that the extra surveillance deters crime and catches terrorists. I thought government cameras helped identify the...

The Federal-State Unemployment Insurance program paid out $10.3 billion in benefits in 2012 to people who should not have received the money, according to the Department of Labor (DOL). The data provided on the government website, paymentaccuracy.gov, shows those payments amount to 11.42 percent of all the unemployment insurance checks handed out—an increase from 11.36 percent in 2011 and in excess of the government’s “target” for overpayments of 9.66 percent. The DOL states that most of the data reported on its paymentaccuracy website was for the federal government’s fiscal year, which runs from Sept. 30 to Oct. 1, but that...

Stop the presses: Big-spending Democrats are finally up in arms over a federal boondoggle. Details of the U.S. General Services Administration bacchanalia get worse by the day. We've graduated from overpriced breakfasts in Vegas, friends-and-family junkets galore and in-house videos mocking their own profligacy to extravagant bonuses, alleged kickbacks, obstructionism and bribes. But the scandal is still small potatoes compared to the potential billions GSA is pouring down the Big Labor drain. Whistleblowers and an independent inspector general investigation estimate that the GSA's Sin City conference cost taxpayers an estimated $1 million in 2010. Washington bureaucrats squandered another $234,000...

Pentagon Reports Billions of Dollars in Contractor Fraud The Pentagon paid hundreds of billions of dollars to defense contractors engaged in criminal or civil fraud -- in some cases paying the companies after they were convicted, according to a new Defense Department report. At least 91 contractors holding contracts worth $270 billion were the subjects of civil fraud judgments -- and in some cases CRIMINAL FRAUD convictions as well, many of which resulted in fines, suspensions or debarments. Even so, Defense Department contracting officers still assigned $4.9 billion worth of work with these companies after the fraud was uncovered, the...

Over the last two years I've patiently analyzed the evolving price and performance forecasts of electric vehicle advocates and lithium-ion battery developers. In the process I've shown them to be possible, but unlikely, and interdependent to the point where a single flawed assumption can level the entire house of cards. I've also puzzled over the broader question of why supposedly reasonable businessmen would encourage market expectations that are so aggressive that the probability of delays, cost overruns, performance shortfalls and other predictable failures approaches certainty. Everyone knows that the stock market reacts badly to disappointment, so I've never been able...

Radio station WWL of New Orleans, which is part of a large radio and television conglomerate in the area, is reporting several major updates from the ground on the Gulf oil spill. In a live broadcast minutes ago, which was sent out to affiliated stations around the country, WWL reported that the oil rig which exploded in the Gulf was equipped with sophisticated warning systems that would alert personnel of a pending explosion or malfunction. Survivors report, however, that the warning system did not indicate any problem prior to the explosion. Oil rig workers were taken completely by surprise, forcing...

Tensions are mounting in Poland as the rank-and-file citizens express growing suspicion that current Polish politicians and Russian officials are engaged in a cover-up of the real story behind the air disaster that killed a large number of top government officials, including the President. As reported yesterday, Jane Burgermeister has uncovered evidence showing small caliber gun-fire at the scene of the crash and discrepancies between the official Russian version of the disaster and the information recovered in the 'black box' voice recorders from the plane. Today, Burgermeister issues a breaking updated report indicating that Poland's Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, is...

The ads are running at least once per hour on all of the major network, cable, and satellite TV outlets. General Motors claims it has repaid its bailout from the taxpayers in full. Only one big problem stands in the way of this grand announcement being taken seriously. It is simply not true. Through a deft sleight of hand technique, the automaker used taxpayer bailout funds it had stored in a separate account to repay its loan from the taxpayers. Simply put, GM used bailout money to pay back bailout money, and then claimed it had 'repaid its loan from...

Treasury-Secretary Timothy Geithner, the tax cheat who had not paid his taxes when nominated by Obama for the position, is now using the IRS to smear GOP Senatorial candidate Marco Rubio in Florida. Rubio now leads Florida Governor Charlie Crist for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, prompting the governor to hint that he may drop out of the race and run as an independent. As a young, bright, articulate small-government conservative, Rubio is viewed by many within the GOP and the Tea Party movement as a potential star in conservative politics with the same charisma and gravitas as...

As the country's attention is directed to the Goldman-Sachs scandal, a much greater story lurks beneath the surface involving massive government corruption that makes Wall Street firms pale in comparison. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak). Sen. Chris Dodd, D-CT. The current government of the United States of America under the leadership of Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress is the single most corrupt entity in the nation, worse than all of the private sector scandals combined. One would be hard-pressed to find an era of U.S history when government was any more corrupt than it is at present. The manner in which...