Free Republic

As an outsider with scant experience with Florida government, Gov. Rick Scott’s administration drew much criticism for his handling of public records in his first year in office. Now, well into his second year, Scott is drawing praise for his embrace of Florida’s relatively strong Government-in-the-Sunshine Law. Going beyond what any other governor has done before him, Scott announced “Project Sunburst,” which has begun placing his emails, as well as about a dozen top staffers, on a public-access website. Scott, a wealthy businessman who is holding his first political office, has long been an advocate for more “transparency” in government....

Although negotiations over a package of tax increases and a proposed casino collapsed Monday night, the Maryland General Assembly passed a lot of bills this session — 791, to be exact. Of those, 96 percent were passed in the last week, including hundreds in the hours and minutes before midnight on Monday. Here are some highlights from the 90-day session’s last day: STORMWATER FEE The Senate spent much of the session’s waning hours fiercely debating a stormwater fee bill that was on few people’s radar earlier in the session. The bill requires localities to fund projects to reduce polluted runoff...

MYRTLE BEACH, SC - Texas Governor Rick Perry is demanding Mitt Romney release his tax records, warning there can't be any surprises should the GOP front-runner become the party's nominee. "Anita and I put out our taxes every year since back the 80s, and every candidate up there, they should put their taxes out, including Mitt," Perry insisted during a town hall meeting. "You know, November, or excuse me, September and October, is not the time for us to be finding out that whoops, there's something out there that is a problem. We need to know it now." Perry has...

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The Occupy LA movement grew by the thousands Wednesday as unionized workers, caregivers and their patients joined the call for an end to corporate greed and Congress to put Americans back to work. The demonstrators held large signs, chanted loudly and blew whistles as they marched through the streets of downtown Los Angeles to the steps of City Hall. Organized by the Service Employees International Union, the demonstration was in support of President Barack Obama's American Jobs Act....

Paul Pelosi, husband of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, will reportedly make millions of dollars from a previously undisclosed real estate venture in Mrs. Pelosi's home state of California. Mr. Pelosi is a real estate developer and an investment banker and entered into this project with the father of the current Ambassador to Hungary, as reported by The Washington Times earlier this week. Mrs. Pelosi helped the ambassador secure her the post. Angelo Tsakopoulos, a longtime associate of Mr. Pelosi put together the deal that involves Russell Ranch, a residential real estate project. Mr. Pelosi's investment has been reported...

Full title: Buffett Discloses $62,855,038 In 2010 Gross Income, $39,814,784 In Taxable Income, And $6,923,494 In Federal Taxes Excerpt: "Following a back and forth between Kansas Congressman Tim Huelskamp, we have now discovered what, according to Buffett, were the precise amounts of the Octogenarian Crony Capitalist of Omaha's 2010 gross income, taxable income and Federal tax respectively. These are as follows: $62,855,038, $39,814,784 and 6,923,494. This, apparently, was not enough for Huelskamp. The debate continues below."

When a bulldozer began to to clear away dirt for an in-ground pool in Brian Dyer's back yard, the Lakeland, Fla., homeowner got the surprise of his life: mountains of trash emerged from the hole. "It's just a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach to see what they're bringing up with each scoop," he told Tampa Bay's 10News. Dyer said that contractors tried to dig into three different areas in the backyard and each time, came up with more trash. "We found several tires, what appears to be washing machine tubs, trash, debris, metal parts, we found a...

Palo Alto-based social networking giant Facebook is seeking an exemption to rules that would require political advertisements on the site to disclose the source of their funds, according to a letter submitted to federal regulators by company attorneys. The letter, first obtained by Talking Points Memo, argues that limits on the size of Facebook ads makes including required disclosure language impractical. Federal campaign regulations require political advertising to disclose who paid for and authorized it, but the Federal Election Commission has allowed exceptions in certain cases. Facebook is seeking an exemption similar to those that apply to bumper stickers, text...

The municipal-bond market is in crisis, with prices fall ing and investors running for cover -- and for good reason. Munis -- bonds sold by states, cities, counties and other localities to finance government operations -- are in trouble because the Ponzi scheme of Big Government is coming unglued. The markets are merely reflecting this reality, as they always do. The $3 trillion muni market was once regarded as the safest of all investments because the bonds are backed by government taxes. Now it's showing all the earmarks of the 2007-08 meltdown. That mess began with investors fleeing from bonds...

Department of Labor says it will require companies providing 401(k) accounts to lay out all the fees and other charges in plain language beginning Jan. 1, 2012. The new regulations, announced by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, will affect about 483,000 retirement plans. She said the 72 million workers enrolled in 401(k) plans will now have the detailed information they need to do easy comparisons of the costs of their investment choices in their plan. Companies must begin to lay out the administrative expenses, including accounting and recordkeeping fees, and the charges that apply to the individual choices a worker...

WASHINGTON - A Minnesota campaign law requiring disclosure of corporate donations is fast becoming a national model in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts in elections. Finding their elections awash in secret donations, other states are looking for a way to replicate Minnesota's law, which requires disclosure of funding sources for groups that spend on political advertising for or against a candidate.

Senate Republicans on Thursday stood fast in blocking legislation requiring special interest groups running campaign ads to identify their donors.....The 59-39 vote fell one short of the 60 needed to advance the legislation. Two Republicans didn't vote. ...

California State University at Stanislaus and its private foundation violated public records laws and will have to release the speakers contract with Sarah Palin they had tried to keep secret, a judge has ruled. The details of Palin's contract to speak at a June 25 fundraiser for the foundation became national news last spring after foundation officials refused to tell state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, how much Palin would be paid. Yee has been trying to change a state law that shields campus foundations from public scrutiny. The Palin story grew more bizarre in April after students found discarded...

"LegiStorm launched in September 2006. Our web site is dedicated to providing a variety of important information about the US Congress. Based on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, LegiStorm's first information product was a database of congressional staff salaries but we have now added other valuable information, such as the most comprehensive database of all privately financed trips taken by members of Congress and congressional staffers. The information is provided in a strictly factual, non-partisan fashion. We have no political affiliations and no political purpose except to make the workings of Congress as transparent as possible. We expect this resource...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Friday called ethics charges against Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel "very troubling" and said he hopes the longtime lawmaker can end his career with dignity. Several House Democrats went further, flat-out urging the New York congressman to resign."He's somebody who's at the end of his career," Obama said in an interview that aired Friday on "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric." "I'm sure that what he wants is to be able to end his career with dignity. And my hope is that it happens."Obama, speaking on the issue for the first time, praised the 20-term...

The Senate Democrats' "Disclose" Act - "Disclose" stands for "Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections" - represents perhaps the baldest, if failed, power grab attempted this year. But you wouldn't guess it from reading news stories about the bill. As the New York Times reported, "The Senate on Tuesday refused to take up a bill that would require more disclosure of the role of corporations, unions and other special interests in bankrolling political advertisements, after Democrats failed to persuade even one Republican to support it." The Washington Post began, "Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked legislation requiring...

Oppose DISCLOSE! The Senate will hold another cloture vote on the First Amendment-shredding DISCLOSE Act as soon as Wednesday, July 28. Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard and urge your Senators to OPPOSE DISCLOSE! Call US Capitol toll free at the following numbers 1-877-851-6437 or 1-866-220-0044 1-866-340-9281 or 1-800-417-7666

WASHINGTON _The House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that would impose strict campaign donation disclosure requirements on unions and corporations, despite Republican opposition and objections from liberal Democrats who were upset by disclosure exemptions added to appease the National Rifle Association . By a vote of 219 to 206, lawmakers approved the Disclose Act, intended to partially fill a void created when the Supreme Court overturned some campaign spending rules in January.

The DISCLOSE ACT is back on the calendar for tomorrow June 23, 2010 Sources are reporting that the vote is expected to take place tonight or tomorrow. On April 29, 2010, Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) introduced H.R. 5175, the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act. The bill is a direct response to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (McCain- Feingold) - a First Amendment victory in which the Supreme Court overturned the prohibition on corporations and unions using treasury funds for independent expenditures supporting or opposing political candidates at any time of the...

Court Precedent Contradicts Obama Administration Position Justice Department Lawyers Claim Previous Court Cases “Incorrectly Decided” Contact Information: 202-646-5172 ext. 305 Washington, DC Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that the Obama Justice Department advanced the erroneous claim in an April 21, 2010, court filing that Secret Service’s logs of White House visitors are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  As Judicial Watch noted in its original complaint filed on December 7, 2009, this claim “has been litigated and rejected repeatedly” by the courts.  The Justice Department filing comes in...

Bloomberg is reporting that the idea of secret banking groups that control the country and global economy are not such a crazy idea because of what came out of this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., better known as AIG. The hearing described a secretive group “deploying billions of dollars to favored banks.” The legislators are looking at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most influential part of the federal-reserve system, due to its decision in November 2008 to buy out, for about $30 billion, insurance contracts, called credit default swaps that AIG...

President Obama advertised Geithner as a Treasury Secretary that didn't cater to big Wall Street banks. This news paints quite a different picture.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show. AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when...

An official announcement by the Obama administration disclosing the reality of extraterrestrial life is imminent. For several months, senior administration officials have been quietly deliberating behind closed doors how much to disclose to the world about extraterrestrial life. Dissatisfaction among powerful institutions such as the U.S. Navy over the decades-long secrecy policy has given a boost to efforts to disclose the reality of extraterrestrial life and technology. The impending disclosure announcement follows upon the secret implementation of a year long openness policy on UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Over the period February 12-14, 2008, the United Nations held closed doors discussions...

Hopes for an effective law that would protect the public’s access to essential news from inside government have been dealt a severe setback by the Obama administration. As a senator, President Obama co-sponsored a robust proposal to protect journalists and their sources who rely on confidentiality to reveal abuses, scandals and other inner workings of government agencies. But, White House officials are now proposing deep revisions to a Senate Judiciary Committee bill that weaken protections against forcing reporters to reveal their sources. At the heart of the disagreement is the balance between national security and the public’s right to know.

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed 42 pages worth of amended financial disclosure reports Thursday for the years 2000 through 2006 to more fully account for a land deal in Las Vegas and to more accurately reflect the value of some other properties he owns. Reid, D-Nev., had disclosed ownership of the Las Vegas property in his original disclosure reports, but he did not report that the title of the property had actually been transferred to a limited liability corporation called Patrick Lane LLC, which Reid had an ownership stake in. Reid valued the transaction in his amended...

LONDON – A lawmaker at the center of Britain's growing expense account scandal said Saturday he has been humiliated by public revelations about his attempt to get taxpayers to pay for a duck hut on his country estate. Opposition Conservative Party legislator Peter Viggers' duck hut — used to shield ducks from predators — has become a potent symbol of expense account excess in recent days. He tried in vain to bill taxpayers 1,645 pounds ($2,600) for the structure — just one of many misdeeds in a scandal that has turned British voters against their elected representatives and led many...

The rescue has failed: it's time to fess up, reboot and start again Last Updated: 9:40AM GMT 18 Jan 2009 Comments 16 | Comment on this article It's official. Government policy isn't working. As bank shares collapse amid renewed carnage on global markets, we now know the worst isn't over. This crisis just entered a whole new phase. Gordon Brown's "rescue plan" lies in tatters. Perhaps now the Prime Minister – and his counterparts across the Western world – will do what needs to be done. Regular readers know what's coming next. I've been writing the same thing for months....

An aide to Sarah Palin is disclosing as gifts more than $13,000 in airfare and lodging from the John McCain campaign, logged while helping the Alaska governor with state business during her bid as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

Earlier this month we reported about a sighting of a luminous grey UFO in the historic town of Bury St Edmunds in the United Kingdom. The UFO was seen spinning and hovering over the St Edmundsbury Cathedral by a townsman who promptly notified the police. It later emerged that the UFO was also seen by a staff member of the Cathedral. Sarah Friswell, the Cathedrals visitor officer, noted that the topic of the mysterious craft had come up in a staff meeting and

President-Elect Barack Obama has demanded that all potential appointees undergo a thorough background check prior to being considered for any job in his administration. Would-be cabinet members, deputies, assistants, aides, secretaries, and receptionists are being asked to provide extensive dossiers on themselves if they hope to be hired. Among the documents required are original birth certificates, all school transcripts, complete health records, military service histories, any police reports, and a listing of all business and personal associates since the applicant’s 18th birthday. Applicants are also being required to submit, under penalty of perjury, sworn affidavits either admitting to the commission...

Defendants can't deny police an encryption key because of fears the data it unlocks will incriminate them, a British appeals court has ruled. The case marked an interesting challenge to the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which in part compels someone served under the act to divulge an encryption key used to scramble data on a PC's hard drive. Failure to do so could mean a two-year prison sentence or up to five years if the case involves national security. The appeals court heard a case in which two suspects refused to give up encryption keys, arguing that...

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/election/s_584284.html

The Bush administration's anti-terrorist surveillance efforts are more extensive than top officials have acknowledged, going beyond the controversial no-warrant eavesdropping program, the U.S. intelligence chief said Tuesday. President Bush acknowledged a program allowing the government to wiretap phone calls without obtaining a warrant in 2005. The program, run by the National Security Agency, is at the center of disputed congressional testimony by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales is defending himself against allegations that he lied to Congress about a 2004 dispute between the White House and Justice Department over the legality of the eavesdropping program. In a letter defending the...

The new Democratic Congress has finally found a government agency whose budget It wants to cut: an obscure Labor Department office that monitors the compliance of unions with federal law. In the past six years, the Office of Labor Management Standards, or OLMS, has helped secure the convictions of 775 corrupt union officials and court-ordered restitution to union members of over $70 million in dues. The House is set to vote Thursday on a proposal to chop 20% from the OLMS budget. Every other Labor Department enforcement agency is due for a budget increase, and overall the Congress has added...

Under pressure from the Hill, the Securities and Exchange Commission is pushing the adoption of the so-called "Katie Couric" clause. The SEC wants publicly traded companies to give shareholders more information about multimillion-dollar salaries of their executives and employees. The name comes from the "Today Show” co-host, who is leaving NBC at the end of May to join CBS as anchor and managing editor of the to be retitled "CBS Evening News With Katie Couric. " It’s been widely reported that Couric is to receive $15 million over five years. The SEC proposal – primarily aimed at requiring the disclosure...

SACRAMENTO — A television ad campaign portrayed as an independent effort to help Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been bankrolled partly by a group with deep ties to his political operation. An official with the New Majority, a Southern California Republican group at the core of Schwarzenegger's fundraising apparatus, said its members have given about $1 million to the Washington, D.C., business group that is the public face of the ads: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. By pumping the ad money through the chamber, well-heeled New Majority members have bypassed requirements that their donations be publicly disclosed. And they skirted the...

House Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was aware of the story being developed against one of her members, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), and his questionable finances and the ensuing political troubles, yet did nothing to act on that knowledge. The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Mollohan's income and assets grew from the mundane (no more than $565,000 in 2000) to the magnificent (about $6 million, give or take a couple hundred thou in 2004). As the weekend wore down, while House Speaker Dennis Hastert was calling for Mollohan to step aside as ranking member on the House Ethics...

- nonprofits engaging in grassroots lobbying soon could be forced to reveal political strategies and financial backers under an amendment attached to one of the Senate’s two pending lobbying-reform bills. The amendment, sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), would require grassroots lobbyists such as Lux to register with the clerk of the House and disclose their spending within 45 days after starting an initiative. Conservative nonprofit groups last month assembled a coalition called LobbySense to help bring down the Senate’s original grassroots lobbying-disclosure provision, authored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) but replaced with the Lieberman-Levin language...

A notable decline in the core business of the New York Times Company has been underway, and yet is not reported in a straightforward way in the company’s official filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC requires companies to file Form 10-K every year, to provide “a comprehensive overview of the company’s business and financial condition and… audited financial statements.” The SEC’s 10-K official rules require companies to “Provide any discussion of risk factors in plain English….” At the beginning of its 2005 10-K annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New York Times Company proudly...

SACRAMENTO — When Californians vote Nov. 8 after what may turn out to be the costliest initiative battles in state history, they won't fully know who was behind the campaigns: Politicians and their backers are using holes in state law that help hide the source of donations. Despite restrictions implemented in California in recent years, political money is being raised and spent with scant public disclosure by the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars. --snip-- There won't be full accountings for some campaigns until January, long after the votes are counted. Contributors to others won't...

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ended his $8-million contract with a muscle magazine publisher last week. But his deep emotional, political and business ties to bodybuilding — and to the supplement industry that feeds it — won't be so easily severed. Since becoming governor, Schwarzenegger has remained closely involved with the bodybuilding world and with the supplement companies whose products promise such things as ripped muscles, "thermonuclear" energy and better sex. According to documents and interviews with industry leaders, Schwarzenegger has continued to give the industry advice. He has participated in private meetings about government regulations. The governor also received...

Columnist Robert Novak has made a career for himself as a human flamethrower for conservative causes. Yet, even Novak appears surprised at the mounting cost of his disclosure in 2003 of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. It was classic Novak: a hatchet job directed not at Plame, but at her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The firestorm that erupted has consumed millions of dollars in investigation and litigation costs and has wreaked havoc with the career not just of Plame (who had to leave the CIA) but of two reporters who were hauled into court and...

More than 200 lawmakers have rushed to correct travel-disclosure statements in recent months as reporters on Capitol Hill discover more discrepancies in the wake of questions about travel by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "You're dealing with hundreds," said Kent Cooper, co-founder of PoliticalMoneyLine, a Web site that compiles the forms after they're filed with the clerk's office and makes it available at www.fecinfo.com. "There's a ton more for staffers." Mr. Cooper said his figure covered parts of April and May, a period during which the scrutiny of gift travel — which is funded by corporations and outside interest groups...

Corporate tax collections in Montana are up 50 percent in the most recent year, but evidently that’s not enough for State Senator Jim Elliott. He wants more revenue and he wants to find it by examining the tax return of every company filing in Montana.1 Senator Elliott has filed a lawsuit to force the Montana Department of Revenue to disclose corporate tax returns for those corporations with over $1 million in Montana sales. Apparently he does not trust the Montana Department of Revenue to do its job, because he wants to use this information to determine whether corporations are evading...

Governor to Withhold Tax Returns • Because his assets are in a trust, Schwarzenegger won't make public his 2003 income. But his office reveals how much he paid the government. SACRAMENTO — Ending a practice of his recent predecessors, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will not release his tax returns showing what he earned the previous year, aides said Wednesday. Schwarzenegger made public two years of returns when he was a candidate for governor in 2003, but has decided he does not want to disclose his holdings now lest he compromise a blind trust set up last year to avoid conflicts of...

Interview with Troy Jenkins I recently had the pleasure to discuss the newly found Vietnam documents with Chief Petty Officer Troy Jenkins

Full Disclosure: John Edwards often speaks of "two Americas" — one that "pays the taxes" and another that "gets the tax breaks." Meet Teresa Heinz Kerry and her tax accountants. John Kerry wants to raise taxes on everyone making over $200,000, rolling back Bush's "tax cuts for the rich." So why did his wife pay only 12.5% of her income in taxes last year? According to documents released by the Kerry campaign, Teresa Heinz Kerry in 2003 paid taxes at a rate barely above the rate paid by the lowest-income Americans who actually pay taxes. She reported a total income...

Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Equal Rules for the Press? Posted October 11, 2004 By Paul M. Rodriguez Catching up on the weekend news post the second presidential debate was a bit disturbing - and just reaffirms what so many readers of Insight have complained about concerning bias in the press. Specifically: Where are the stories analyzing the campaign issues raised by John F. Kerry compared to his political stump rhetoric compared to the senator's 20 years worth of votes, speeches and legislative history? Sure, sure - I know, that would mean that news organizations actually are looking for fair...

I know she'll never do it, but I would LOVE to see this done to get CBS to take action against Dan Rather. PATRICIA HEATON, star of Everybody Loves Raymond should go on strike from the CBS hit show until Dan Rather does one of the following: (a) release the original memos in question for independent scrutiny or (b)if he doesn't have the originals, he should get the source to release the originals or reveal the source or (c)retract his report and apologize to President Bush or (d)resign or get fired. Patricia Heaton is one of the few Republicans in...