Free Republic

Redfin projects mortgage rates may not fall until early to mid-2023 ... Red-hot mortgage rates are giving home buyers and sellers cold feet. About 17% of homes that went under contract with real estate brokerage Redfin last month were called off. The technology-powered real estate firm reported that approximately 60,000 deals fell through in September, marking the "highest share on record aside from March 2020," the same month the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus pandemic. Redfin Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao said the housing market is at "another standstill" although it's completely different from the early days of the...

US Foods Accused of Unfair Labor Practices as Executives Deal with Growing Number of Unresolved Labor Contracts (WASHINGTON) – The Teamsters Warehouse Division and numerous Teamster locals currently in contract negotiations with US Foods [NYSE: USFD] are putting the foodservice giant on notice that work stoppages are imminent. Workers at a growing number of US Foods Distribution Centers throughout the East Coast are considering the possibility of walking off the job following an increasing number of unresolved labor contracts. Workers at several of these locations say the company has violated federal labor laws, and US Foods is currently being investigated...

Jersey City officials and a coalition of Hudson County bike groups have opposed the New Jersey Turnpike Authority’s plans to widen the Hudson County extension through Bayonne and Jersey City to the Holland Tunnel and replace the aging Newark Bay bridge. The opposition is based on concerns the project won’t alleviate congestion and would create more traffic and air pollution from vehicles cutting through Bayonne and Jersey City neighborhoods when traffic backs up on the extension. Bike advocates have a powerful ally, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who had a letter sent on the city’s behalf, asking the Turnpike Authority...

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s donors were rewarded with over $33 million in city contracts during his eight years as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, according to a Daily Mail report. There were 23 companies that donated to Buttigieg’s mayoral political action committee who were later awarded millions in city contracts. Between the companies, their executives, and spouses, $253,750 were donated, resulting in at least $33,280,426 worth of contracts between 2011 and 2019.

In a 2 minute video, Romanian MP reveals the outrage that even members of parliament were only given a heavily redacted version of the contract signed with the big vaccine companies. The same situation exists in countries all over the world. Click link for 2 min video

The Biden administration will wait until 2022 to sign contracts for the highly in-demand 500 million coronavirus test kits, according to White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients. After not acting on his promise to order enough testing kits ahead of the omicron variant, the White House has still not executed the purchase order for 500 million testing kits that Biden announced American taxpayers would purchase last week, Reuters reported. “I’ve ordered half a billion of the … test kits that are going to be available to be sent to every home in America if anybody wants them,” Biden told ABC...

Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) revealed on Wednesday that she has contracted the Chinese coronavirus despite being vaccinated and boosted. Schakowsky said she is experiencing a fever and feeling generally “ill.” “As I mentioned in my weekly video, my husband Bob tested positive for COVID Friday. Yesterday I was having a bit of fever and feeling ill. After several negative tests in the days before, I tested positive for COVID last night. We are both vaccinated and received the booster,” she revealed on social media.

"Joe Biden intends to mail out a half-billion COVID-19 tests, starting in January. The Biden administration announced early Tuesday that it plans to send 500 million test kits to homes as part of an effort to fight the spread of the omicron variant. "Today, the President is announcing his Administration will purchase a half-billion at-home, rapid tests this winter to be distributed for free to Americans who want them, with the initial delivery starting in January 2022," said the White House in a press statement. ..."

The 47-year-old news anchor — who muscled her way into the evening slot in 2019 as she fled a reportedly strained relationship with co-host Gayle King on “CBS This Morning” — now stands vulnerable to the network’s bean counters as her ratings have stayed stubbornly stuck in third place, according to sources close to the situation. Insiders likewise pointed to O’Donnell’s hefty pay package that is in the ballpark of $8 million a year and a three-year contract that’s slated to expire next spring.

Advocacy group Public Citizen gained access to several leaked and unredacted contracts between Pfizer and both domestic and foreign governmentsThe company has 73 formalized deals for its COVID-19 vaccine, but only five have been formally published and include redactionsSeven unredacted contracts reviewed by Public Citizen are worth more than $5 billionPublic Citizen claims Pfizer used power to 'shift risk and maximize profits' in their secret government contractsThe group accuses Pfizer of blocking donations of the jab, opposing intellectual property waivers, having unilateral authority on decisions and more Pfizer has reportedly rejected the group's allegations A consumer rights advocacy group has...

Obama’s Deep State FBI obtained a FISA warrant to spy on Trump Tower based on information that Russian Alfa Bank was interacting with candidate Trump. However, we now know the corrupt FBI knew the entire story was a lie and yet they withheld this information from the court. As we reported in April 2019, the Alfa Bank hoax all started in June, 2016. After news broke that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked, a group of prominent computer scientists went on attack. The group of individuals, led by a Hillary supporter whom the Obama Administration had provided a grant,...

Cybersecurity experts who held lucrative Pentagon and homeland security contracts and high-level security clearances are under investigation for potentially abusing their government privileges to aid a 2016 Clinton campaign plot to falsely link Donald Trump to Russia and trigger an FBI investigation of him and his campaign, according to several sources familiar with the work of Special Counsel John Durham. Durham is investigating whether they were involved in a scheme to misuse sensitive, nonpublic Internet data, which they had access to through their government contracts, to dredge up derogatory information on Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign in 2016...

A report by Dr. Joseph Mercola claims to include a document from Big Pharma Pfizer with the nation Albania regarding their COVID vaccine. A summary of the report shows: A leaked document broken down by Twitter user Ehden reveals the shocking terms of Pfizer’s international COVID-19 vaccine agreements. Countries that purchase Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot must acknowledge that “Pfizer’s efforts to develop and manufacture the product” are “subject to significant risks and uncertainties.” In the event that a drug or other treatment comes out that can prevent, treat or cure COVID-19, the agreement stands, and the country must follow through with...

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s move to authorize significantly more defense spending next year than President Joe Biden wants demonstrates that there’s still a sizable number of Democratic hawks in the Senate willing to challenge the party’s dovish progressive wing. At the committee’s Wednesday markup of the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, Oklahoma’s James M. Inhofe, the ranking Republican, offered an amendment to authorize $25 billion more than Biden requested (and $37 billion more than what was appropriated for the current fiscal year), aides said. The committee has made little information about the closed markup public. But aides disclosed...

or years, Interstate 69 being built through Johnson County was a distant idea. On Tuesday, the state awarded more than $1 billion in construction contracts for the last leg of I-69 construction, marking the start of the final two phases of the project between Martinsville and Indianapolis. Now, the entire 27-mile corridor from State Road 39 in Martinsville to Interstate 465 in Indianapolis is under contract, according to the Indiana Department of Transportation. INDOT awarded a $345 million contract for I-69, from Morgan Street in Morgan County to Fairview Road in Johnson County, to Reith-Riley Construction Co. of Goshen, and...

The son-in-law, Dr. The son-in-law, Dr. Howard Krein, is part of the firm StartUp Health. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's son-in-law is advising the Biden campaign on its coronavirus response while his venture capital firm is looking to invest in health-care startups working on the pandemic. The Biden relative, Dr. Howard Krein, is part of the investment firm StartUp Health, which in March, when the virus began its rapid spread in the U.S., began an initiative soliciting pitches from entrepreneurs with products that address the outbreak, according to Politico. The next month, Krein reportedly participated in daily calls to brief...

Widespread disruption brought on by the coronavirus outbreak has hammered global supply chains and spurred Chinese companies to declare “force majeure” — a provision that exempts them from contractual obligations. But experts warn there’s a high chance such a move may not work. A force majeure event occurs when unforeseeable circumstances, such as natural catastrophes, prevent one party from fulfilling its contractual duties, absolving them from penalties. Since late January, the Chinese government has implemented city-wide lockdowns and large-scale quarantines that effectively curbed the movements of millions in China as the country seeks to contain the COVID-19 virus. Those restrictions...

Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to make it easier for the government to force psychiatric treatment for people with mental illness and expand statewide a still-developing test program that allows officials to more easily take control over those deemed unable to care for themselves. In a State of the State address Wednesday devoted almost entirely to the issue of homelessness, the Democratic governor said the state should broaden those laws “within the bounds of deep respect for civil liberties and personal freedoms — but with an equal emphasis on helping people into the life-saving treatment that they need at the precise...

Chiu’s bill comes as the state and local governments are ramping up their spending on homelessness, but the number of people on the street continues to rise. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently proposed spending more than $1 billion on homelessness in his 2020-21 budget, including $750 million to build housing for the homeless and help prevent struggling families from ending up on the streets. His last budget also included about $1 billion to fight homelessness — including $650 million for cities and counties. Meanwhile, the crisis keeps getting worse. The homeless population grew by 42% between 2017 and 2019 in San...

Amazon Web Services is asking a federal claims court for depositions from President Donald Trump, as well as his current and former secretaries of Defense, as part of its bid protest of the Pentagon’s $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI). The cloud computing company claims there are gaps in the discovery information provided by the Department of Defense about its evaluation of JEDI bids and eventual award to Microsoft, according to court documents filed in the Court of Federal Claims in January but unsealed Monday. Seeking to supplement the record, AWS issued a number of requests for targeted additional...