Free Republic

President Obama’s campaign team and top supporters are telling donors they need to get off the sidelines now so they can compete with GOP super-PACS waging an expected $1 billion campaign against them. The deluge of cash from outside groups backing Republican Mitt Romney has prompted a sense of urgency among Obama’s supporters. Their message to donors is simple: send money now.

The lowest price is usually available only if patients don't use their health insurance. In one case, blood tests that cost an insured patient $415 would have been $95 in cash. A Long Beach hospital charged Jo Ann Snyder $6,707 for a CT scan of her abdomen and pelvis after colon surgery. But because she had health insurance with Blue Shield of California, her share was much less: $2,336. Then Snyder tripped across one of the little-known secrets of healthcare: If she hadn't used her insurance, her bill would have been even lower, just $1,054. "I couldn't believe it," said...

Obama Voters Losing Jobless Benefits Due to the Manipulation of Workforce Numbers May 11, 2012 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Michael in Momence, Illinois. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Thanks a lot, Rush, first-time caller. I'm calling because I was at the unemployment office just yesterday, and they have tables there where people fill out the paperwork that they have -- RUSH: Wait, wait, wait whoa, whoa, whoa, just a second. I need you to go slow here. CALLER: Okay. RUSH: Why were you at the unemployment office? It may seem like an obvious question, but...

Tennessee police are apologizing after arresting a man for using a $50 bill they thought was fake but that turned out to be real. Police in Shelbyville thought the bill was counterfeit after a convenience store clerk called them. The clerk said a marker used to detect false money didn't show the bill was real. The Shelbyville Times-Gazette reported Officer Brock Horner arrested Lorenzo Gaspar on Friday. But a police evidence technician told the arresting officer that some old bills don't react to the markers. So police gave the money to two banks to check, and they said it was...

An Aldi customer in Milwaukee who shot and wounded an armed robber is suing police for the return of his gun. Nazir Al-Mujaahid had a concealed weapons permit to carry the gun, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel blog Proof & Hearsay. In February, prosecutors said Al-Mujaahid was within his legal rights when he shot the man who pointed a shotgun at a cashier and then at Al-Mujaahid, according to a prior Journal Sentinel story. But police are keeping Al-Mujaahid’s gun as evidence in the case against two men accused in the robbery. Wisconsin Carry Inc., a gun rights group,...

Should our fine financial system cease functioning cash will become a rare and precious medium. Over the years Americans have exchanged paper currency with confidence. Yet, today everyone's cash is a digital value out of hand. Our vast nationwide cash money market holdings greatly exceed any paper currency supply making any Bank run a momentary event. Should the financial house of cards crash, holders of green back US Dollars will be able to engage in trade. Gold hoarders will not know what to do. Credit cards won't work. Checks won't either. If you can't barter, cash will be king. Get...

Should our fine financial system cease functioning cash will become a rare and precious medium. Over the years Americans have exchanged paper currency with confidence. Yet, today everyone's cash is a digital value out of hand. Our vast nationwide cash money market holdings greatly exceed any paper currency supply making any Bank run a momentary event. Should the financial house of cards crash, holders of green back US Dollars will be able to engage in trade. Gold hoarders will not know what to do. Credit cards won't work. Checks won't either. If you can't barter, cash will be king. Get...

Update: The pictures can no longer be accessed through Facebook. Screen captures can be found below. The Democratic Party’s newly appointed Jewish outreach liaison is pictured on Facebook in a series of provocative photos with her friends holding dollar bills and referring to themselves as “Jewbags” and the “Jew cash money team.” Dani Gilbert, who has been a staffer in the office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), was recently appointed as the Democratic National Committee’s Jewish outreach liaison, according to her Twitter feed. Photos publicly available on her Facebook page depict her engaged in the kind of youthful...

Occupy Wall Street in New York running low on cashBy Michelle Nichols | Reuters – 9 hrs ago NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Occupy Wall Street group in New York is running low on money and on pace to run out by the end of the month, raising questions about the future of the movement that sparked a wave of nationwide protests against economic injustice six months ago. Donations to the group, which raised about $500,000 within weeks of setting up camp in a park near Wall Street on September 17, have slowed and with plans for an American Spring...

Jailed killer had dad, girlfriends cash unemployment checksBy msnbc.com staff A convicted murderer awaiting trial in the Los Angeles County jail system had family cash $30,000 in unemployment checks, the Los Angeles Times reported. Anthony Garcia’s father and two girlfriends reportedly cashed those checks, $1,600 a month, and also deposited money in his jail account and that of other gang members. His father, Juan Garcia, 47, and girlfriends, Sandra Jaimez, 45, and Cynthia Limas, 25, were charged with unemployment fraud, the Times reported.

No MF Global customer cash in JPM account: trusteeBy Nick Brown Fri Feb 17, 2012 5:11pm EST (Reuters) - The trustee managing the assets of bankrupt MF Global Holdings Ltd said none of the roughly $26 million being used to fund the futures brokerage in Chapter 11 is part of a $1.6 billion shortfall in customer accounts. **SNIP** "After an exhaustive investigation - which included the review of volumes of bank statements and an extensive population of cash transaction activity during October 2011 - the trustee does not believe that any of the cash in the JPM account ... represents...

MADISON — Candidate committees can rack up cash in a hurry, especially during a high stakes race. And provisions in election law allow campaigns to invest campaign funds, bolstering — or diminishing — contributions. In the 2011-12 election cycle, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-District 1, raised nearly $2.5 million, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. At the end of 2011, his candidate committee held $4.6 million. In early 1999, Citizens for Arlen Specter, the campaign for the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, sought the opinion of the FEC to determine what could be done with his excess cash,...

MADISON — In 2010, Sen. Russ Feingold raised $13.7 million in his bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate. The long-serving Democrat lost, but he finished with more than $900,000 on hand. The former senator — like all candidates in federal elections — has some options when it comes to handling leftover campaign funds, some allowances that may surprise donors and the electorate at large. With a flood of Republican presidential candidates bowing out of the nomination chase — and in Wisconsin, U.S. Senate candidate Frank Lasee, a GOP state senator from De Pere, doing the same — Wisconsin Reporter...

When last heard from, former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine was telling a congressional committee he hadn’t the foggiest idea what happened to $1.2 billion of his Wall Street clients’ money. This, following the $6.3 billion collapse last fall of MF Global, the brokerage Corzine took over after voters ousted him from the Trenton statehouse. The firm went belly-up after Corzine decided to risk pretty much everything on European debt. But an audit couldn’t account for $1.2 billion, and suggested the firm may have illegally mixed client funds with the company’s own. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that...

The Obama re-election campaign has revealed the names who utilised their star power and/or financially endowed friends to shell out cash for his quest to stay in the White House. Included were 61 people who each raised at least half a million dollars. The donations are not based on individual donations, but how much friends of the Obama campaign was able to bring in based on the contributions of their pals and colleagues, a process known as 'bundling'.

In the Washington Times, Charles Hurt writes, “Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Romney look like they should be cast as president in a made-for-TV movie. But in reality, both are hopelessly out of touch, calculating wax figurines. They both even speak French! In the end, Mitt Romney is John Kerry without the war medals.” Oh, come on, that’s not true. For starters, Kerry doesn’t have his war decorations anymore, since he threw them away. But I know John Kerry. John Kerry’s a blog target of mine. And Mitt Romney is no John Kerry. David Harmer is a California lawyer who...

Read more: http://www.gazette.com/articles/jackson-130783-police-officers.html#ixzz1hkULafXb

A Kings County sheriff's deputy is under arrest for embezzlement after fellow officers set up a sting and caught him stealing $500 from what appeared to be a stash of drug money. Patrol deputy Nick Simpson, 33, a five-year veteran of the department, was arrested Friday, one day after he had been dispatched to a bait car with a hidden video camera, Sheriff Dave Robinson said Monday. What Simpson didn't know was that the car in rural northwest Kings County had been planted with 1 ounce of methamphetamine and $1,760 in cash.

UPPER SAINT CLAIR, Pa. -- Money blew out of an armored vehicle transporting cash in Upper Saint Clair on Wednesday. Investigators said the money was being shipped to the West View Savings Bank when a door on the truck somehow opened. Drivers of a Fidelity Courier Services van said they were alerted by a passing motorist that bags of money were falling from the rear door of the vehicle as it travelled southbound on Route 19. Investigators said some of the cash was recovered by couriers who returned to the scene, but plastic bags containing "well into six figures" worth...

If raising cash is the first presidential primary, the latest round of campaign filings contains early warning signs for Barack Obama in key states that were crucial to his election in 2008. Though he’s raised almost three times as much as Mitt Romney—the former governor of Massachusetts has brought in $32 million—the president is trailing his GOP rival in a handful of battleground states. In both Florida and Nevada, Romney nearly doubled the president’s haul, despite a crowded field of Republican candidates who are also vacuuming up donations. And Romney, of course, doesn’t enjoy the power of incumbency.

The political geniuses in Louisiana have decided they hate poor people so much, they passed House Bill 195—near unanimously! (One nay in the senate.) It bans cash on all second-hand transactions. Now, when a good Louisianian holds a garage sale after a bout of spring cleaning, if they accept cash for their old vinyl collection, they’ve broken the law. Swap meets. Church bazaar sales. Antique stores. Buying used skis off Craigslist. You can’t use cash in the Pelican State. Their stated reasoning is to prevent the sale of stolen goods—their view is cash transactions make it easy for criminals to...

Cold hard cash. It's good everywhere you go, right? You can use it to pay for anything. But that's not the case here in Louisiana now. It's a law that was passed during this year's busy legislative session. House bill 195 basically says those who buy and sell second hand goods cannot use cash to make those transactions, and it flew so far under the radar most businesses don't even know about it. "We're gonna lose a lot of business," says Danny Guidry, who owns the Pioneer Trading Post in Lafayette. He deals in buying and selling unique second hand...

Cold hard cash. It's good everywhere you go, right? You can use it to pay for anything. But that's not the case here in Louisiana now. It's a law that was passed during this year's busy legislative session. House bill 195 basically says those who buy and sell second hand goods cannot use cash to make those transactions, and it flew so far under the radar most businesses don't even know about it. "We're gonna lose a lot of business," says Danny Guidry, who owns the Pioneer Trading Post in Lafayette. He deals in buying and selling unique second hand...

Five foreign men were arrested during a courthouse break-in early on Wednesday and police said they found photographs of public buildings, water systems and malls from various U.S. cities in their van. The men, at least three of whom were in their 20s, will be questioned by a joint terrorism task force including the FBI and immigration authorities, officials said. Bexar County spokeswoman Laura Jesse said three men were found inside the 120-year-old Bexar County Courthouse, a landmark in downtown San Antonio and two in a large recreational vehicle parked in front of the building. She said all five were...

Cold hard cash. It's good everywhere you go, right? You can use it to pay for anything. But that's not the case here in Louisiana now. It's a law that was passed during this year's busy legislative session. House bill 195 basically says those who buy and sell second hand goods cannot use cash to make those transactions, and it flew so far under the radar most businesses don't even know about it.

Anti-Wall Street protests are growing in number across the country and around the globe, but their political impact remains unclear and will likely depend upon their staying power. At a minimum, the protests have become a channel for public anger over rising economic inequality and Washington's ineffectiveness. "They are a pretty good thermometer for the level of discontent in the country," said John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. "But the connection between Republicans and Wall Street and the banks will surely be an election issue next year." Romney used...

I thought this was pretty comical...

Reporting from Washington and Sacramento— A suspected embezzlement scheme that has ensnared hundreds of campaign accounts of Democrats has sent candidates scrambling for new cash as they prepare for an election season that could reshape California's political landscape. Just when they need to start hiring staff and commissioning polls, many candidates have no idea how much might have been taken from them or how much they have left, and they cannot find out: As many as 400 political accounts have been frozen by the banks holding the funds since the Sept. 2 arrest of treasurer Kinde Durkee. This January 2008...

Economy: Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is reaching back 50 years for a "trick" to get the economy moving, but it won't work. Our problem today isn't monetary policy. It's government meddling. The idea is simple: The Fed holds $1.7 trillion in Treasury debt. It wants to "rebalance" that by selling short-term debt and replacing it with long-term Treasuries. In theory, that would cut long-term interest rates, boosting investment in both housing and business. Sounds good, but we've tried it before, in 1961. The strategy — dubbed "Operation Twist" — was supposed to keep rates low and give the economy a...

The Left’s working motto consistently turns out to be “do as I say, not as I do.�  How else could they possibly make bold pronouncements to the media but live the exact opposite? The day before his declaration of war on the Tea Party movement, Teamsters President James Hoffa appeared on CNN and deemed American companies as “unpatriotic,� according to the Political Ticker. “I think the president should challenge the patriotism of these American corporations that are sitting on the sidelines,� Hoffa said. “The problem in America isn’t that we don’t have enough money. We’ve got more money than any...

No! Next question. But really, are we okay with this? An actual newspaper (the Austin Chronicle) is running this full-page ad next week? This seems like an awful lot of money to spend on an ad likely to result in a large number of people saying, “No!” emphatically and continuing with their days, but then again, perhaps this lack of acumen is why I am not the president of CASH. And I’m not sure why he chose the “Star Wars” font. Nothing says effective ad-making like “an ad (hominem) hoping to find someone who has had sex with Rick Perry,...

An Austin Ron Paul supporter has taken out a full-page ad in the local alt weekly newspaper seeking any "stripper ... escort ... or 'young hottie'" who has slept with Rick Perry, part of his single-minded jihad against the presidential candidate. Robert Morrow describes himself as a "self-employed investor and political activist" as well as a three-time delegate to the Texas state GOP convention. "Have you ever had sex with Rick Perry?" blares the ad, placed by Morrow in this week's Austin Chronicle. "Are you a stripper, an escort, or just a 'young hottie' impressed by an arrogant, entitled governor...

Ron Paul Supporter Takes Out Full-Page Ad In Texas Paper A full-page newspaper ad by a supporter of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is raising eyebrows, asking, "Have you ever had sex with Rick Perry?" Robert Morrow placed the ad in the Austin Chronicle alt-newsweekly less than one week after the Texas governor threw his hat in the ring for the presidency, Salon.com reported.

A Ron Paul supporter in Texas has taken out a full-page ad in a local alternative weekly newspaper seeking women who have slept with the presidential candidate. “Have you ever had sex with Rick Perry?” asks the ad, which runs in this week's Austin Chronicle. The ad was placed by Robert Morrow, who describes himself as a “self-employed investor and political activist” and a three-time delegate to the Texas state Republican convention.

A steady stream of people in need flows through Granters Jewelry & Loan, an El Cerrito pawn shop with a carved carousel horse in the window and a cigar-store Indian in the vestibule. Two guys hock a guitar for $300 to get rent money. A woman offers up a diamond ring for cash to pay her PG&E bill. A man pawns a laptop for $40 to last until payday. A mother with two toddlers in tow counts out $99 to repay a loan plus interest so she can retrieve a necklace and some rings. "It's hard times," said Tammi Owens...

As the Administration’s push for alternative fuels grows stronger, Congress is set to consider H.R. 1380, which would create very generous tax credits to manufacturers who retrofit existing work vehicles to run on natural gas rather than on that terrifying global menace known as oil, and very generous subsidies to natural gas vehicle consumers: $7500 per car and a whopping $64,000 for heavy-duty trucks and 18-wheelers. It’s common knowledge in DC that Texas hedge-fund operator and natural gas-magnate T. Boone Pickens is the force behind this bi-partisan, pork-laden legislation, possibly because his natural gas empire would greatly profit from the...

As was pointed out yesterday, courtesy of a blistering $80 billion cash burn in the first half of July, Tim Geithner managed to reduce Treasury cash balances from $130 billion to $39 billion. Granted this number will increase next week after this week's $66 billion in Treasury auctions settle, only to drop once again when another batch of Bills mature and are not rolled. So in response to various inquiries we present the 29 public companies that hold more cash than the US Treasury does as of July 13 (Geithner is tied with Google at $39 billion). Not very surprising,...

The number of dollar bills rolling off the great government presses here and in Fort Worth fell to a modern low last year. Production of $5 bills also dropped to the lowest level in 30 years. And for the first time in that period, the Treasury Department did not print any $10 bills. The meaning seems clear. The future is here. Cash is in decline. You can’t use it for online purchases, nor on many airplanes to buy snacks or duty-free goods. Last year, 36 percent of taxi fares in New York were paid with plastic. At Commerce, a restaurant...

The leader of Scotland's doctors has questioned whether society can afford to pay thousands of pounds to keep terminally-ill people alive for weeks or months when health service budgets are under unprecedented strain. Dr Brian Keighley, chairman of the British Medical Association Scotland, said in some cases tens of thousands of pounds were spent on drugs to extend cancer patients' lives for relatively short periods.[Snip]But he stressed any decision had to be made at a society level, rather than being left to doctors. Patient groups are concerned that many cancer treatments are being rationed by the NHS

Cash-strapped counties to fund election costs MADISON — Wisconsin's political parties may be trying every trick possible, from spoiler candidates to lawsuits, to manipulate the recall elections scheduled this summer. But the people on the ground, who have little opportunity to affect the process, will be facing the consequences. For the officials running the elections, it's a nasty and expensive headache that comes at the height of summer when employees typically take vacation, and voters' attention is anywhere but on elections. “For this time of year, it’s very hectic,” Fond du Lac County Clerk Lisa Freiberg said. Still, candidates and...

NEW YORK (AP) -- President Barack Obama turned to the bright lights of Broadway and celebrity backers Thursday night to raise money for his re-election bid. The presidential motorcade crisscrossed Manhattan as Obama worked his way through three events that raised money for the Democratic Party and his 2012 campaign. Key Obama fundraisers have been asked to raise $60 million for that effort by the end of June. The fundraisers included an event on a Broadway stage, where Obama spoke to supporters who bought tickets, starting at $100, to watch a performance of the musical "Sister Act." The fundraisers were...

Report: $6B missing in Iraq may have been stolenBy Tucker Reals June 14, 2011 7:35 AM The man Congress put in charge of auditing the billions of dollars dumped on Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled has told the Los Angels Times he can't rule out the possibility that $6.6 billion in cash sent from the U.S. was stolen. Special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen told the Times the missing money may represent "the largest theft of funds in national history." It was not, it is crucial to note here, U.S. tax-payer dollars which have gone missing in...

Pacific Investment Management Company co-founder Bill Gross is starting to talk about what "financial repression" means for the bond markets, which America has not seen since the darkest days of the 1930's when the term was first used. I'm starting to talk about what financial repression means for Americans. ~snip~ There would be no cash left in the vaults and no cash left in the drawers. Without cash reserves, banks would not be able to fund credit card purchases, debit card purchases, or supply ATM machines with dollar bills. They would not be able to underwrite small business loans either....

Daley Can Take $1.1 Million With Him Unlike his brothers, lawyer Michael and banker Bill, Mayor Richard M. Daley didn’t use the family name to amass wealth. He used it to amass power. But now, the mayor has a chance to convert his power into wealth. Which is what being a Chicago politician is all about, after all. Because he chose not to run for re-election, Daley still has $1.1 million in his campaign fund. In 1998, the General Assembly banned politicians from converting leftover campaign money for personal use. But, of course, the law included a grandfather clause, so...

Republican legislators think they have a way to keep Minnesotans on welfare from spending their benefits on booze, smokes and lottery tickets: They'd keep them from taking more than $20 in benefits in cash. Right now, welfare recipients can use their electronic benefits cards to withdraw much of their monthly allotment in cash. The proposed legislation would require more people on welfare to get a second card to use for cash withdrawal, and would limit that to no more than $20 a month.

The U.S. Treasury is depleting its cash at an accelerating pace, drawing down its cash balance by $81.6 billion in the just the first four days of March, leaving the federal government with only $108.9 billion on hand, according to the Daily Treasury Statement released Monday afternoon. At the beginning of February, the Treasury had $349.1 billion in cash on hand, but spent that down by $158.5 billion during the month, ending February with only $190.6 billion on hand. Were the government to continue to draw down its cash balance

HOENIG The president is insisting on getting people to drive electric cars literally no matter how many tax payer dollars it takes in the process. $2.5 billion in grants for electric cars, $2 billion in grants for batteries, $250,000 to rectify the plug in stations, the $7,500 rebate you talked about, $10 million for towns to promote electric use of those vehicles, and for what? GM sold like 321 volts last month. This is ethanol 2.0. It's a waste of tax payer dollars and it just shows how incredibly depraved the green movement is in this country. BYRNES 0.1 percent...

Establish smart spending habits. Live like you're poor. How do you do that? Drive your cars into the ground, don't eat out very much, avoid expensive and potentially unhealthy processed foods, buy food in bulk, buy just enough clothes to fit your needs, and use public transportation. ... Use credit cards only as a convenience to avoid carrying cash; limit your credit card spending so that you can easily pay off the balance each month. Make every dollar count with your spending, so you can free up money to invest in the future. Get healthy. One of the best things...

Earlier this month, Microsoft borrowed $2.25 billion in unsecured debt. What in the world possesses a company with $40 billion in cash and short-term securities to go out and borrow money? Rock-bottom interest rates are one reason. But the bizarre, byzantine U.S. tax code seems to be another. Microsoft declined to comment on whether its recent borrowing was partly driven by tax considerations. But, like many purportedly cash-rich companies, Microsoft can't bring home much of its cash without writing a fat check to the Internal Revenue Service. Politicians have been carping about the more than $2 trillion in cash sitting...

This week, state Sen. Michael Rubio will introduce legislation that would prohibit food stamps from being used to purchase "junk food" or prepared meals at fast-food restaurants. "The question is what should we be using taxpayer funds to purchase," the Bakersfield Democrat said Tuesday. "In my opinion, we should be focusing on what people need, not what they want." Those needs include foods found in the traditional food pyramid, he said, including breads and cereals, meats, beans, nuts, dairy products and other protein sources, and lots of fruits and vegetables. Rubio's idea is not yet an official Senate bill. But...