Free Republic

March 13, 2012 (Thelifeinstitute.net) - Ireland’s experience in banning abortion is hugely important for the global pro-life community. That’s because our record proves that we best serve mothers and babies when our laws protect unborn human life. Ireland is the example pro-life activists the world over can point to, because the Irish experience shows that abortion is never necessary. The abortion industry is, of course, particularly discomfited by the fact that, according to the United Nations, Ireland, without recourse to abortion, is the safest place in the world for a mother to have a baby. And Irish medical experts have...

Well, this should give Forbes—known for their annual "rich lists"—a run for their money. Last night, Bloomberg released the "Bloomberg Billionaires Index," the first daily global ranking of the richest people in the world as part of their coverage of wealth. The index is available here, and its most noticeable characteristic is that it is built to change daily depending on stock fluctuations and economic/company news. From the methodology— The index is a dynamic measure of the world’s wealthy based on changes in markets, the economy and Bloomberg reporting. Each net-worth figure is updated every business day at 5:30 p.m....

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. -- Michael Jordan's longtime personal residence in suburban Chicago is for sale for $29 million. The sprawling estate is in Highland Park, along Lake Michigan, and has more than 56,000 square feet of living space. That includes nine bedrooms, 15 baths and five fireplaces. There's also a three-bedroom guesthouse, pool area, outdoor tennis court and three climate-controlled multi-car garages. An indoor basketball complex features a full-size regulation court with specially cushioned hardwood flooring and competition-quality high intensity lighting. It has a sound system set up to provide perfect acoustics within the court space. The property was put...

Ron Paul revels in the fact that he is the presidential candidate of America's small donors, receiving more contributions under $200 than any other Republican seeking the White House in 2012.But, like every other GOP presidential contender, he also has a mega-millionaire "sugar daddy" helping to fund a super PAC that is promoting Paul's candidacy.Yet while Newt Gingrich underwriter Sheldon Adelson and Rick Santorum super-supporter Foster Friess have shared the campaign stage - and the national political spotlight - with their candidates, Paul's benefactor, San Francisco entrepreneur Peter Thiel, has never met the Texas congressman he's aiding.Who is this mystery...

Mr. Adelson, by some estimates worth as much as $22 billion, presides over a global empire of casinos, hotels and convention centers whose centerpiece is the Venetian in Las Vegas, an exuberant monument to excess with canals, singing gondoliers and acres of slot machines. That fortune is a wellspring of financial support for Mr. Gingrich, who has benefited from $17 million in political contributions from Mr. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, in recent years, including $10 million in the last few weeks that went to a “super PAC” supporting him.

Abraham Foxman, the amiably chatty director of the Jewish civil rights group, the Anti-Defamation League, has a story to tell about his friend, the 78-year-old multi-billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Adelson, who is America's eighth richest man and has given millions of dollars in support of Newt Gingrich's presidential bid, was having dinner with Foxman in Las Vegas several years ago. Foxman let slip that he was having to miss an invitation to the White House from the then president, George W. Bush. Foxman explained it was impossible to get a commercial flight. Adelson replied: "If the president of the...

On the one hand, there is the former community organizer Obama. This Obama has made it clear in recent weeks that he is at one with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, saying, for example, when ABC asked how he viewed the demonstrators, that "the most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side. ..." Obama coming down on the side of demonstrators carrying signs demanding the arrest of investment bankers and other "masters of the universe" shouldn't come as a surprise...

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- According to Forbes Magazine, there are 397 BILLIONAIRES in America now. A billion dollars is ONE THOUSAND MILLION DOLLARS. Chew on that for just a moment. Few of us can even fathom the sum. Go here to see the list: http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/ Gun prohibitionist George Soros made #7. The Walton Family (Walmart) made #9, #10, and #11. Yes, Walmart sells rifles and ammo, but is also a major contributor to the lying cabal of authoritarian elitists knows as “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” (MAIG), an organization which is completely controlled by billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC. Bloomberg drops...

Amid accusations of misleading the public, J-Street website reveals George Soros has donated money to organization. US Jewish billionaire investor George Soros, who is known for his support of leftwing causes and occasional criticism of Israel, is a major J Street donor, it emerged on Friday. Tax forms obtained by The Washington Times’ Eli Lake revealed that over the past three years, the Budapest-born Holocaust survivor and finance guru has given $750,000 to the organization. ...For years J Street had repeatedly denied having any connection with Soros.

Zbiginew Brzezinski, national security adviser under Jimmy Carter, told the "Morning Joe" program he thinks the names of the rich "should be known publicly" so the masses can "pressure some of those people to give some of it back to society." "You know, how many Americans are really fully aware of how many other good people, that’s like Warren Buffett and others, who really donate a lot of their earnings to charities, to philanthropy?" Mr. Brzezinski said. "But how many more are there in the hedge funds? In the banks? In a variety of other places who on the basis...

I heard a Commentator say that Steve Jobs created a Trust before his liver transfer to avoid Estate Taxes to his children. He wasn't sure that he had to pay a Gift tax on the transfer of 3 homes, 30 Million Shares of Apple and 120 Million shares of Disney.

The US Senate just voted to defeat Harry reid's 5.6% added income tax on "billionaires" (those making over $1M/year). Two Dems joined 46 Repubs to kill the bill that needed 60 votes to continue.

(CNN) – If you're dissatisfied with the economy, or unemployed, Herman Cain thinks you should take a long, hard look in the mirror. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal posted Wednesday, the up-and-coming GOP 2012 contender and former CEO of Godfather's Pizza summed up his bewilderment about recent demonstrations on Wall Street.

Video at Gateway Pundit

While defending his call for the rich to pay more in taxes, the president said he didn’t mind people calling him a class warrior for merely asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew. Whoops! The president meant to say “janitor” instead of “Jew,” and he immediately corrected himself. After all, he doesn’t need any more problems keeping Jewish voters enthusiastic about his re-election bid.

The billionaire backer of a wireless company accused of using White House connections to interfere with a Pentagon commander’s congressional testimony last week emphatically rejected that and other charges relating to the embattled firm on Monday. In an exclusive interview with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, private equity titan Phil Falcone – the chief investor in LightSquared, a Virginia-based firm aiming to establish a new wireless broadband network – rejected as “absolutely false” allegations that LightSquared had obtained in advance the written testimony of Air Force Gen. William Shelton.

Billionaire Obama fundraiser George Kaiser visited the White House 16 times over the past 3 years, and is caught in the middle of the Solyndra scandal as the company’s chief investor and prime beneficiary of the debt restructuring approved by the Obama Administration earlier this year. This has lead to the obvious question of whether Kaiser leveraged his political connections to obtain federal stimulus funding, and preferential treatment, but surely there might be a less nefarious explanation for Kaiser’s White House visits, right? Nah…

Warren Buffett, having already joined the billionaires’ club, enlists the president in restricting membership so it doesn’t get so crowded in there… Sometime around the tenth century A.D., probably in the southern Tang dynasty of China, a practice grew popular that horrifies us today. They called it foot binding. One story has it that young dancing girls were considered so lovely and talented that all women, even when full-grown, would be prettier if only they had the tiny feet of dancing children – so they arranged it. Another story has it that a popular empress had a club foot, and...

Upper-income Americans' economic confidence was badly shaken in August, with 80% saying the economy is "getting worse," up from 66% in July. This is the first month since the financial crisis of late 2008 and early 2009 that upper-income Americans are more pessimistic about the future direction of the U.S. economy than other Americans.

Warren Buffett will host a fundraiser for President Obama next month in New York City, the Berkshire Hathaway CEO told CNNMoney on Thursday. With the 2012 election season just around the corner, the campaign to put Obama back in the White House for a second term is well underway -- and it's not unusual for the campaign to boost the president's drawing power by allowing him to share the stage with a well known benefactor. Billed as an "Economic Forum Dinner with Warren Buffett," the fundraiser will be held at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York and moderated by...

BILLIONAIRE KOCH TO BILLIONAIRE BUFFETT: Screw Your Call For Higher Taxes -- The Government Is Incompetent Henry Blodget Aug. 19, 2011, 7:10 PM Earlier this week, Warren Buffett called bs on the Republican meme that raising taxes on deca-millionaires and billionaires will clobber the economy. His argument was persuasive--because raising taxes on billionaires won't hurt the economy. Today, in a statement published at the National Review, another billionaire weighs in on the tax issue--Charles Koch. Koch doesn't dispute Buffett's contention that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary and that he could afford to pay a lot more....

Democratic politicians and liberal groups, including unions, often rail against corporate tax loopholes as unjustified raids on the public treasury – as they should. Loopholes are particularly troublesome during periods, such as this one, when state and local budgets are leaking red ink and basic public services are being slashed. But one multimillion-dollar loophole draws vocal support from those who usually oppose corporate tax breaks – one that happens to benefit a heavily unionized industry whose top executives are overwhelmingly Democrats and contribute lavishly to the party's candidates and causes. That would be Southern California's movie and television production community....

Warren Buffett, the third wealthiest man in the world with a net worth of about $80 billion, is demanding the U.S. government make the rich like him pay higher taxes and says they should no longer be protected like endangered “spotted owls.” In a New York Times op-ed on Monday, titled “Stop Coddling the Rich,” Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway’s chair and CEO, said he and his “mega-rich” friends have been spared the “shared sacrifice” the country’s leaders have asked for as the country veers toward a double-dip recession. “While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while...

Reacting to last night’s GOP presidential debate, the White House said today that the 2012 candidates proved themselves to be out of touch with Americans by saying they would refuse to accept tax increases as part of a debt deal. In Ames, Iowa last night the candidates were asked if they would refuse to accept a budget deal with a 10-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases. All eight presidential contenders raised their hands. “That’s clearly not where the American people are,” Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters today. “That basically puts these candidates in a position...

I'm going to tell you something that Barack Obama doesn't understand. And because he doesn't understand it, our country is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars at a time when we cannot afford to waste hundreds of millions of dollars. Time and again President Obama has told us how he intends to solve our health care problems: spend money on pilot programs and other experiments; find out what works and then go copy it. He's also repeatedly said the same thing about education. The only difference: in education we've already been following this approach with no success for 25 years....

In a federal race like the presidency, each donor can only give $2,500 per candidate. However, there's nothing stopping powerful 'bundlers' from collecting checks from their rich friends. President Obama is already taking advantage of these super - donors: billionaire Democrats including Penny Pritzker and Marc Benioff have already raised hundreds of thousands for the reelection campaign. Perry must be hoping his past billionaire donors will do the same. Per Texas state disclosure records:

After being trounced in 2010, Democrats, special interest groups, and liberal billionaires have begun assembling assets to rebound in 2012. The "House Majority PAC", a Democrat Super PAC, reported this week to have raised $800,000 in the two months from its inception to June 13, including the time leading up to May’s NY-26 special election where Democrat Kathy Hochul defeated Republican Jane Corwin. House Majority PAC attack ads in the final weeks prior to the election have been speculated to have had a key role in Hochul’s victory. Politico has reported that $325,000 of the $800,000 amassed by the House...

John McMonigle claims to be the world's number one real estate agent. With $2.5 billion in residential sales over the past six years, this 46-year-old realtor may well have been. And now he's declaring bankruptcy. According to the Orange County Register, McMonigle has amassed $50 million in debt, even after selling his luxurious Newport Beach condo, his car and personal effects. The Oklahoma native started small, arriving in California with only $73 in his pocket in 1989. But within four years he was grossing $100,000 a year. McMonigle's ascension through the ranks of top realtors reached dizzying heights during the...

Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Swedish furnishings giant IKEA, has promised more transparency over the firm's business affairs, saying that it has nothing to hide after a slew of allegations in recent years. "We have nothing to hide. There is no pretension to hide anything. We are going to go through everything and show that we follow each country's laws and regulations," Ingvar Kamprad, the 85-year-old billionaire who founded IKEA in 1943, told the Expressen daily. "We will make ourselves more transparent," he said. Kamprad's comments came a few months after a documentary aired on Swedish public television, SVT, alleged...

SEATTLE — The loneliest man in this city may be the pear-shaped billionaire whose yacht occasionally glides across Lake Washington at dusk, heading for a big empty house filled with stuff to keep him distracted. On the surface, Paul Allen lives an enviable life.......Then there are the Koch brothers, David and Charles, who’ve given to cancer research and the arts, yes, but also pour millions into efforts to keep average workers from getting a fair shake, and against laws that protect clean water and air. They plan to spend millions more in next year’s election to support policies that ensure...

Since everybody seems to be coming up with plans on how to cope with the skyrocketing national debt, let me try my hand at it too. The liberals’ easy solution is just to increase taxes on “the rich.” But, if you do the math, there aren’t enough of “the rich” to cover the huge and record-breaking deficit. Trying to reduce the deficit by cutting spending runs into an old familiar counterattack. There will be all kinds of claims by politicians and sad stories in the media about how these cuts will cause the poor to go hungry, the sick to...

You could take every single dollar of wealth away from every single American billionaire — and you still wouldn’t pay down the federal deficit for 2011. It’s remarkable but yes, the combined wealth of America’s billionaires ($1.5 trillion) wouldn’t pay down the federal deficit ($1.65 trillion). In fact: The combined wealth of all of the wealthiest people in the world ($4.5 trillion) would only fund the deficit — not the entire budget but just the deficit — for less than three years. And that’s only if the deficit stays at its current level. And that’s only if you seize literally...

RACINE, Wis. (AP) -- A billionaire executive whose family has run SC Johnson for five generations was charged Thursday with having sexual contact with a now 15-year-old girl over the course of several years. Samuel Curtis Johnson III, who goes by Curt, faces a count of repeated sexual assault of a child. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. Johnson, 55, is the former chairman of Sturtevant-based Diversey Inc., a cleaning-products company that was spun off from SC Johnson in the late 1990s. Privately held SC Johnson makes household products including Pledge,...

No one really knows how to measure such wealth as billionaires as the likes of Kamprad and Gates dispose of. Kamprad's ranked as number 11 by Forbes on their 2011 listing of the World's wealthiest persons, but after recent news of his hidden possessions in the tax haven of Lichtenstein, some experts rank Ingvar Kamprad as number one. In any case, I, being Swedish myself find it interesting that two of the 15 richest men on Earth are Swedish (although I'm not one of them myself) and that small Scandinavia has more of companies listed on the Forbes Global 2000...

Russian oligarchs are back with a bang, making Moscow the billionaire capital of the world. Profiting from a boom in commodities, the number of billionaires in Russia, most of whom built their empires during the country's anarchic 1990s, grew to 101 from 62 last year, Forbes said in its annual list of the world's richest people. Moscow is home to 79 of Russia's billionaires, more than any other city in the world. Russia accounts for a third of Europe's 300 billionaires, and 15 of the world's 100 richest people, more than all the other so-called BRIC countries combined (Brazil, Russia,...

Cancer Research Before Activism, Billionaire Conservative Donor SaysBy MICHAEL COOPER Published: March 4, 2011 CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — More than a thousand miles from the labor tumult in Wisconsin — where his name shows up on the signs of protesters and a liberal blogger impersonating him got through to the governor on the phone and said “gotta crush that union!” — the real David H. Koch was greeted rather more warmly here Friday when he officially opened a new cancer research institute bearing his name. **SNIP** “It’s a case of identity theft,” Mr. Koch said of the call in which the...

Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad, considered one of the wealthiest people in the world, controls the company through a secret foundation worth 100 billion kronor ($15.34 billion), according to a Sveriges Television (SVT) report. Despite the revelation, the company and Kamprad's image will probably not be affected, according to media advisors. Kamprad controls the enterprise through a holding company called Inter Ikea by way of a secret foundation in Liechtenstein. The foundation is currently worth about 100 billion kronor, according to the latest episode of SVT's Uppdrag granskning investigative news programme, set to air on Wednesday evening. Ikea is controlled through...

Much has been written about the oil and gas billionaire Koch brothers and their multimillion-dollar donations to right-wing causes. Charles and David Koch’s combined $43 billion wealth has made them virtually unstoppable this election cycle; even prolific left-wing philanthropist George Soros recently said he was powerless against the “avalanche” of donations from conservative billionaires like the Kochs. However, in recent days a handful of liberal billionaires have decided to take on the Kochs in one of the most hotly contested battles this election season: Proposition 23, the California ballot that may well prove a bellwether for the future of energy...

Are three liberal billionaires trying to control what we think of as news in America? Hedge fund billionaire George Soros, the sugar daddy of the Democratic Party, has given NPR an initial grant of $1.8 million dollars to begin a project called Impact of Government that will allow NPR to hire 100 journalists at NPR member stations in all 50 states. The focus will be covering state governments and how their actions affect people. The New York Times reports the response of Vivian Schiller, NPR's president and chief executive: Ms. Schiller said the journalists would not be part of typical...

Liberals love their billionaires, a very long and sometimes radical list that includes Barack Obama's special favorites Warren Buffet and George Soros. Warren Buffet provides economic advice to his goofy novice, and then has to watch our over-rated chief executive herald that a non-existent metric - the profit-to-earnings ratio - had reached levels that cried out to all those sitting on the sidelines to jump back into the stock market.

The world of philanthropy got a huge financial boost today as more than 30 American billionaires pledged to give away at least half of their fortunes to charitable causes, signing up to a campaign launched by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. In an unprecedented mass commitment, top figures including New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg, the hotel heir Barron Hilton, CNN media mogul Ted Turner, and the Star Wars director George Lucas lent their names to the "giving pledge", an initiative founded last month to encourage America's richest families to commit money to "society's most pressing problems". The pledge is not...

The big spenders who shelled out $30,400 a head for dinner with President Obama at the Four Seasons restaurant and at Anna Wintour's house didn't actually break any bread with him. After starting Tuesday night at a dinner for 60 high-rolling Democratic supporters hosted by hedge-fund billionaire Marc Lasry, Obama headed to a private room at the Four Seasons to wolf down steak, potatoes and broccoli with two aides before heading to Wintour's Greenwich Village home. Obama arrived at the Four Seasons at 5 p.m. Spies said he gave a short speech and schmoozed with 60 attendees, including Lasry and...

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates called Wednesday on their billionaire peers to give away half of their wealth. The pronouncement by Messrs. Buffett and Gates stems from a series of dinners the two men held over the past year to discuss the effects of the recession on philanthropy with some of the nation's richest people, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, investor Ronald O. Perelman and David Rockefeller, his family's patriarch. The result of the dinners is an invitation, called the Giving Pledge, which asks the nation's billionaires to publicly commit to give at least half of their wealth to...

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook Inc., the popular social-networking service, as a Harvard University student in 2004. Since then, it has grown to nearly 500 million users world-wide, and the company has a private market valuation of $25 billion. Recently, Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook have had a rocky ride over the company's privacy practices. He talked with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg about privacy, personalization and the "social graph."

Running for Senate as a billionaire has its pluses and minuses. Jeff Greene is about to experience both. Greene is the newest entrant into Florida's ever-evolving Senate race, having announced his bid hours before the Friday filing deadline--and hours after Gov. Charlie Crist left the Republican Party and re-entered the race as an independent. Greene will now challenge Rep. Kendrick Meek for the Democratic nomination, while Republican Marco Rubio looms as a tentative favorite. The new candidate is a billionaire, having made his money in real estate. Greene owns a yacht. He owns more than one plane. He got married...

Oprah Winfrey -- who built a billion-dollar empire persuading everyone from celebs to average Joes to reveal the truth about themselves -- is a big phony when it comes to her own past, an explosive new book charges. Winfrey's relationship with longtime "love" Stedman Graham, her reputed dirt-poor upbringing in rural Mississippi, her rumored lesbian crushes on women such as Diane Sawyer -- all are stories she has manipulated for decades in the name of sensational ratings, according to writer Kitty Kelley's latest unauthorized biography "Oprah." The much-anticipated book details how: * Winfrey concocted stories about sexual abuse she suffered...

"The world may still be coming out of the Great Recession, but for the richest hedge fund managers, 2009 was the best year ever. And it couldn't have happened without the carnage of 2008," the magazine said. Appaloosa Management chief David Tepper, who bet on the recovery of banks and the debt of bailed-out US insurer AIG, earned the biggest payouts with $US4 billion ($4.36 billion) in 2009, a record for the sector. US financier George Soros, the head of Soros Fund Management, took the second spot with $US3.3 billion ($3.6 billion), followed by James Simmons of Renaissance Technologies with...

The nation’s first African-American billionaire, Robert Johnson, is enduring a cash crush so severe, reports Peter Lauria, that he had to hock his NBA franchise to Michael Jordan for a song.. When the nation’s first African-American billionaire, Robert Johnson, bought the expansion Charlotte Bobcats NBA team in 2002, his highest-profile move was hiring the most famous athlete in the world, Michael Jordan, to run the team. In a twist thick with irony, the employee has now become the savior: Two weeks ago, Jordan bought the team for pennies on the dollar. The sale underscores Johnson’s dire financial situation. Four sources...

Japan used to have a lot of billionaires before the collapse of their real estate market. Japan has the second most millionaires.The Merrill Lynch - Capgemini World’s Wealth Report 2009 defines HNWIs as those who hold at least US$1 million in financial assets and Ultra-HNWIs as those who hold at least US$30 million in financial assets, with both excluding collectibles, consumables, consumer durables and primary residences. The number of ultra high net worth individuals worldwide is estimated at about 95,000.

ABU DHABI—News Corp.'s Fox International Channels said Monday it is basing the Middle East operations of its global online advertising network in Abu Dhabi and setting up an office here for its documentary-production arm. Fox International said it would also move some broadcasting operations related to its Mideast channels from Hong Kong and other locations to Abu Dhabi. The moves are the latest by a handful of large, international media outlets to establish footholds in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. The city-state, in an effort to diversify away from oil, has set out to lure a...