Free Republic

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker says he is awaiting an explanation from the White House over reports that the United States has made millions of dollars in secret cash payments to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. Corker told "The Steve Malzberg Show'' on Newsmax TV that a letter he wrote to the Obama administration was first answered with officials telling him it wasn't his business, but added they have since softened their stance. "I want to know why we're doing it. I understand when we go into conflict areas in the very beginning, there's no doubt we deal with cash,'' Corker,...

The pro-amnesty lobbyists who helped craft the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill included within the bill two "slush funds" amounting to $150 million that may be supplemented with additional taxpayer dollars for years to come. Slush fund grantees are "public or private, non-profit organizations" described in the bill as including "a community, faith-based, or other immigrant-serving organization whose staff has demonstrated qualifications, experience, and expertise in providing quality services to immigrants, refugees, persons granted asylum, or persons applying for such statuses." In other words, the grantees would include many of the groups involved in writing and promoting the amnesty. [IRS] Section 2537...

The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it had awarded a $5.9 million grant to a University of Chicago Medical Center program tied to Michelle Obama and run by Eric Whitaker, one of President Obama’s closest friends. The Urban Health Initiative, which received the award, was originally based on a smaller program launched during the last decade by Michelle Obama, who was an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center before she departed to become first lady. The UHI is headed up by Obama basketball and golf buddy Whitaker, who has known the president since Obama’s...

For those who only hear about these failing companies one by one, the following is a list of all the clean energy companies supported by President Obama’s stimulus that are now failing or have filed for bankruptcy. The liberal media hopes you’ve forgotten about all of them except Solyndra, but we haven’t. Evergreen Solar SpectraWatt Solyndra (received $535 million) Beacon Power (received $43 million) AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million) SunPower (received $1.5 billion) First Solar (received $1.46 billion) Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million) Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million) Amonix (received...

Senate Democrats will try to move a component of President Obama's $447 billion bill -- $35 billion in aid to state and local governments to rehire or retain teachers and first responders -- as early as this week, disappointing Republicans who say another piece of the apple would've had a better chance for success. "Our economy cannot afford to lose any more jobs," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday, vowing to hold a vote "as soon as possible," and promising one provision per week when Congress is in session. "The bill we are introducing today continues that focus...

Call girl free to reveal rich john’s name in months [Puzzle for FReepers] "The federal gag order barring a Yellow Pages prostitute from outing the name of a well-to-do Bay State client she bedded then blackmailed when he ended their pay-to-play affair will be lifted when her supervised probation expires in five months. Michelle Robinson, 32, who under threat of imprisonment by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf has never publicly named her deep-pockets trick ..." "The case was cloaked in so much secrecy and intrigue that in 2009 Wolf made federal prosecutors submit a list to him...

When congressional leaders earlier this month named six lawmakers from each party to a debt reduction “supercommittee,” investing unprecedented power in a tiny cadre to slash funding, they set off a wild scramble among special interest groups to gain access and protect their interests. Yet many groups with the most at stake didn’t have to change their plans. Some members of the supercommittee received more campaign contributions in July from political action committees controlled by corporations, unions and other lawmakers than anyone else in Congress, disclosures filed this weekend show. Rep. Dave Camp, Michigan Republican who chairs the tax-writing House...

Just months after Miami-Dade's mayor was ousted through a recall, Miami's mayor could be facing the same fate. Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado is being targeted and the people who want him out are the city's police force and firefighters. In a harshly-worded letter posted to the Miami Fraternal Order of Police Website Monday, FOP President Armando Aguilar said they've had enough of Regalado.

The four New York Republican state senators who voted to legalize same-sex marriage in the state are now raking in major campaign donations.New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the maximum amount possible — $10,300 — to the re-election campaigns of Sens. James Alesi, Mark Grisanti, Roy McDonald and Stephen Saland after the June vote.The four senators provided the margin for victory in a close 33-29 vote in the Republican-led Senate.New York Conservative Party leader Michael Long said after the vote that each had lost the party’s ballot line for re-election. The senators may also face primary challenges.Grisanti, a freshman senator...

President Barack Obama and two of his biggest union allies — the United Auto Workers and the United Steelworkers — plan to make the automotive bailout “a central issue” in the 2012 election, Politico reported. Republicans should welcome this as an opportunity to expose the ugly truth about the auto bailouts. On Tuesday, Obama announced that Chrysler had paid back all “outstanding loans to the U.S. Treasury and American taxpayers.” This is highly misleading. American taxpayers still own a 6.6 percent stake in Chrysler, which cost them nearly $2 billion. Chrysler would have to be worth six times its current...

To big rounds of applause, three of the world’s richest men — Richard Branson, Ronald W. Burkle and Vinod Khosla — trooped onto a New York ballroom stage with former President Bill Clinton to pledge support for renewable energy projects to combat global warming and create jobs. It was September 2006, and the Clinton Global Initiative, the annual star-studded networking event for philanthropists and investors, had generated commitments to spend billions on ethanol and other alternative fuels. Cast as good works, many were also investments by businessmen hoping for a profit. And sitting in the audience was an influential public...

On Friday, President Obama mollified Big Labor bosses at the White House. Which means you better watch your wallets. Angered at the tax deal, union leaders marched into 1600 Pennsylvania with a renewed list of grievances and demands. AFL-CIO chief thug Richard Trumka was there, along with: United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard; American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten; Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry, and United Auto Workers President Bob King. One item on the Big Labor wish list: more failed government-funded infrastructure spending: AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, speaking for the union presidents at White House, backed...

General Motors Co. has begun to once again contribute to political campaigns, lifting a self-imposed ban on political spending put in place during the auto maker's U.S.-financed bankruptcy restructuring last year. The Detroit company gave $90,500 to candidates running in the current election cycle, Federal Election Commission records show. GM Resumes Campaign Contributions The beneficiaries include Midwestern lawmakers, mostly Democrats, who have traditionally supported the industry's legislative agenda on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) and Rep. John Dingell (D., Mich.). The list also includes Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Republican Whip,...

© 2010 jbjd A COUP, THROUGH and THROUGH (3 of 3) is the final installment in the 3-part series describing the fraud pulled off at the 2008 DNC Services Corporation Presidential Nominating Convention in order to ensure Barack Obama would receive the nomination so that his name would appear next to the D on the general election ballot. The groundwork for the present article, “The Coup at the Convention,” was laid in the first 2 (two) installments, A COUP, THROUGH and THROUGH (1 of 3); and A COUP, THROUGH and THROUGH (2 of 3). Trust me, if you understand what...

The Obama team has been knocked for bringing "Chicago style" politics to Washington -- but if you ask us, things down there are starting to smell suspiciously like . . . Albany. A terrifying thought. Politico reported last week that one of the president's top political advisers, Patrick Gaspard, took home nearly $40,000 last year from one of the country's most powerful labor unions -- without telling a soul. You'd think that's the sort of trick that only New York state legislators, who regularly engage in off-the-books moonlighting for special interests, would be brazen enough to try. Yet Gaspard has...

If you or I lived rent free for five years in an apartment in pricey Washington, DC, we would have to pay income taxes on the value of the rent on the place. But apparently not Rahm Emanuel. The wonderful Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times writes: We already knew that BP and its folks were significant contributors to the record $750-million war chest of Barack Obama's 2007-08 campaign. Now, we learn the details of a connection of Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayoral wannabe, current Obama chief of staff, ex-representative, ex-Clinton money man and ex-Windy City political machine go-fer. Shortly...

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama talked a lot about "fair trade." Unlike free trade, which is an objective concept, fair trade is vague and provides wiggle room to adjust to the political interests of individual politicians. President Obama's interpretation of fair trade is shaking out, and it entails paying hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars every year to subsidize the Brazilian cotton industry. Sending big bucks to Latin American competitors probably isn't what most Americans consider fair. The genesis of this example of stupid government rests with a Brazilian protest against farm support and export-credit guarantees that U.S....

Since the health care reform push hit its final stretch, numerous sweeteners for lawmakers' districts and states have been found inside the package. Earmark requests are made outside of the health care bill, making them a bit more difficult to link to any vote-trading. But it is precisely that kind of tricky-to-catch deal-making that Republican Sen. Tom Coburn said he and other GOP senators would be monitoring for months to come. "If you think you can cut a deal now and it not come out until after the election, I want to tell you that isn't going to happen," Coburn...

Scott Brown: "But what about the backroom deals? What about all the bad things?"

Reid Unveils Mesquite Gas Plant Plans Construction To Create 1,000 Jobs POSTED: 8:15 pm PDT March 22, 2010 UPDATED: 8:25 pm PDT March 22, 2010 MESQUITE, Nev. -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and others are announcing plans to build a natural gas plant near Mesquite. Reid's office said Monday that Sithe Global Power had planned to build a coal-fired power plant at the Toquop site but abandoned that idea in favor of original plans to build a natural gas plant. Reid's office said construction of the plant will take three years once it starts and will cost $1.4 billion...

"Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) said Sunday that an executive order President Obama promises to sign to guarantee a ban on the use of federal funds for abortions, is enough to win his vote to pass the ObamaCare bill. By a curious coincidence, Stupak announced just Friday on his website that three airports in his northern Michigan district have received grants totaling $726,409 for airport maintenance and improvements from the Obama Administration."

Obama Administration Awarded Hundreds of Thousands in Airport Grants to Stupak’s District Two Days Before Vote Was this Yet Another Backroom Deal to Force Obama’s Bill Down the American People’s Throats? Three airports in the district of infamous fence-sitting and ultimately kowtowing Democrat Bart Stupak were awarded $726,409 in grants by the Obama Administration just two days before a vote on Obama and Pelosi’s government takeover of healthcare. Did Stupak compromise his supposed principled stand against taxpayer funding of abortion in exchange for taxpayer dollars for pet projects? Alpena County Regional Airport received a $85,500 grant, but had only 7,519...

Was this Yet Another Backroom Deal to Force Obama’s Bill Down the American People’s Throats? Three airports in the district of infamous fence-sitting and ultimately kowtowing Democrat Bart Stupak were awarded $726,409 in grants by the Obama Administration just two days before a vote on Obama and Pelosi’s government takeover of healthcare. Did Stupak compromise his supposed principled stand against taxpayer funding of abortion in exchange for taxpayer dollars for pet projects? Alpena County Regional Airport received a $85,500 grant, but had only 7,519 passenger boardings in 2008 (the most recent year for which there is information) according to Federal...

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama tried to offer a mea culpa of sorts for the unraveling of his health care bill. Calling health care "a complex issue," the president said, "I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people." Mr. President, you are correct. We Americans don't understand. However, our lack of understanding is not because we're incapable of deciphering complex issues. Rather, we don't understand how Obamacare itself is supposed to make our health care system any better. Here is a short list of what we specifically...

Economists have given us all the usual diagnoses of what went wrong in a now bankrupt Greece — high taxes, tax cheating, too generous retirements, unsustainable entitlements, government corruption, and anemic demography.

It is legal for lawyers, like anyone else, to give campaign money to politicians. But questions arise when the politicians are local officials with influence over the selection of legal counsel for shareholder lawsuits filed by public pension funds, a role that can be lucrative. A Wall Street Journal analysis documented the extent of campaign giving by plaintiffs' law firms specializing in shareholder litigation. It found that 25 leading firms, their lawyers and family members contributed a total of more than $21 million in the past decade to state-level candidates and party funds, as well as to national-party groups that...

TAMPA - The questions no longer are if or when Tampa will get high-speed trains to Lakeland and Orlando. What's now important is how the Bay area can make the rail system pay off. The Obama Administration on Wednesday announced that Florida will receive a "down payment" of $1.25 billion toward the eventual $2.56 billion required to build the project....

Sen. Ben Nelson's (D-Neb.) approval ratings have slid since voting for health reform legislation, a new poll showed Sunday. 48 percent of Nebraskans say they disapprove of the way Nelson, a centrist who provided Democrats with the critical 60th vote for health reform, is handling his job. 42 percent said they approve, according to a poll by Wiese Research Associates conducted for the Omaha-World Herald. Those numbers mark a slide for Nelson, who won reelection in 2006 with nearly 64 percent of the vote. Voters' dissatisfaction with Nelson stemmed from his support for healthcare legislation, the World-Herald reported, though it...

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson says he didn't hold back his vote on health care legislation just to get more money for his state, "but to fix the unfunded Medicaid mandate for all states."

Over at BigGovernment.com, Don Loos posited an excellent reason about why the big public employees unions are falling all over themselves to help Obama force Obamacare down America's throats even though their members would lose their lavish healthcare plans as a result. The reason? $19 billion in likely dues money that these unions will get when helathcare is taken over by the federal government is the reason. It is true that everyone in the country will be hurt by the current Obamacare policies, it is true that everyone will experience less healthcare coverage at higher costs, it is true that...

As PIMCO's Bill Gross notes in this NYT article on zero-percent interest rates, the Fed's ongoing Wall Street bailout is coming at a cost: Anyone who has any cash savings is getting screwed. This includes retirees who did exactly what they were supposed to do--save. Their incomes are now getting clobbered. Meanwhile, for those who prefer to borrow money, the ongoing bailout has created the world's easiest way to make $1 billion. Borrow short-term from the taxpayers and lend the same money back to the taxpayers--and get a guaranteed risk-free spread. Here's Bill Gross: “What the average citizen doesn’t explicitly...

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) announced Wednesday that North Arkansas Regional Medical Center in Harrison and seven other Arkansas hospitals will be protected under an amendment she secured in the revised Senate health plan. Her proposal prevents scheduled Medicare payment cuts proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) that put 250 hospitals throughout the United States at a disadvantage, including hospitals in Mountain Home, Forrest City, Blytheville, Helena, Jonesboro, Batesville, Paragould and Harrison. The move is expected to spare North Arkansas Regional Medical Center $1,078,857 in Medicare cuts.

All it took for Senator Mary Landrieu to vote to open debate on the Democrats' leviathan health care reform measure was a hundred million. Or was it $300 million, as Landrieu claims? That's $100 million in aid to Louisiana for disaster relief plus another $200 million for Medicaid or whatever else she could weasel. And whatever she's saying about being undecided on final passage, don't buy it. The only way she'll cart off the dough is if the bill passes. But while the senator is preening like a peacock about the fat she plans to ladle from the federal pork...

The Tom Woods' congressional testimony last week Friday in favor of the 'Audit the Fed' bill had two very curious turns, he set off extremely hostile questioning from two congressmen, by the hearings Committee Chair Barney Frank and Representative Mel Watt. Every other Congressman that questioned Woods, and Fed General Counsel Alvarez, was seemingly concerned about where the money the Fed is printing is actually going. But not Frank and Watt. I discussed Frank's hostility, here. Watt was even more hostile. It looked like he was hit by a lightning bolt everytime Woods tried to answer a question that Watt...

During the testimony by Tom Woods on Friday, in favor of H.R. 1207, Congressman Barney Frank stepped up to the plate with some hostile questioning. I'll let Woods give the play by play: In my opening remarks I added to my written statement, which I wasn’t strictly reading, a phrase for which Barney Frank (D-MA) would take me to task. In my written statement, I noted that the Fed is indeed independent in the sense that it can make trillions of dollars available to unknown friends on unknown terms. I then wrote that I couldn’t imagine any self-respecting American hesitating...

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) spent $100,000 on legal expenses one week after it became clear that he was listed in Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s (D) arrest documents as “Senate Candidate No. 5,” according to Federal Election Commission documents. Jackson paid Chicago attorney James Montgomery $100,000 from his campaign account in one lump-sum payment on Dec. 18. The payment represents a very large amount — nearly one-tenth of what Jackson raised last cycle.

The Wall Street Journal reports on what everyone already knows: the federal bailout serves as nothing more than a political payoff machine. As long as lenders have friends in Washington, they’ll get TARP funds, regardless of how they’ve run their bank or their current health as a lender. Barney Frank leads the pack in the new version of pork: Troubled OneUnited Bank in Boston didn’t look much like a candidate for aid from the Treasury Department’s bank bailout fund last fall. The Treasury had said it would give money only to healthy banks, to jump-start lending. But OneUnited had seen...

Blagojevich refuses to budge NBC Nightly News VIDEO: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/28200681#28200681&gt1=43001

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama's campaign has approached Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel about possibly serving as White House chief of staff, officials said Thursday as the marathon presidential race entered its final, frenzied stretch with a Democratic tilt. The disclosure came as Republican John McCain, in need of a comeback, focused on pocketbook issues amid fresh signs of a recession. "Ohio is hurting now, people in Ohio are having trouble staying in their homes, keeping their jobs," he said as he set out on a two-day bus tour of the state.

Did Rezko pay for Gov's house rehab? FEDERAL INVESTIGATION | Probe into Blagojeviches centering on whether indicted fund-raiser paid for all or part of $90,000 work on Northwest Side home Federal investigators are zeroing in on whether Tony Rezko paid for all or part of a $90,000 rehab of Gov. Blagojevich's Northwest Side bungalow as the corruption probe of the state's first family accelerates. Contractors dealt with gov’s wife Since Rezko's felony conviction in June, the FBI has been investigating how the former top Blagojevich fund-raiser billed the governor and his wife for the work, who paid for it and...

Interestingly, several unions have this convention season tried to cross the aisle from their usual Democrat side over to Republicans looking to garner support from the Red States. The National Journal has an interesting little account of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) and the National Education Association (NEA) and a few others trying to warm up to Republicans soft on worker freedom. Under Stern, the SEIU is making a concerted effort to build bridges with the GOP, and for the first time ever it helped to finance a Republican convention by giving $50,000 to the host committee. Furthermore, the...

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has released a list of $740 million in earmark requests he made in the past three years, and it includes $1 million for the hospital where his wife Michelle is a vice president. The request for $1 million for the University of Chicago Medical Center was to help pay for construction of a new pavilion. “I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Michelle Obama was not part of our lobbying over the request, not in any way,” Kelly Sullivan, another vice president at the medical center, told the New York Times. In any case,...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- An electronic privacy group challenging President Bush's domestic spying program scored a minor victory after a judge ordered the federal government to release information about lobbying efforts by telecommunications companies to protect them from prosecution. The Electronic Frontier Foundation in January 2006 filed a class-action suit against AT&T Inc., accusing the company of illegally making communications on its networks available to the National Security Agency without warrants. Congress is now considering changing the law to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that would protect them from such court challenges. "Any attempt for immunity is aimed at...

The Saudi Arabian government will temporarily release 55 prisoners recently transferred from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and will give each of them about $2,600 to celebrate the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, a newspaper reported Saturday. Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz granted the temporary releases from detention centers in Saudi Arabia so the prisoners could spend time with their families during the holiday in mid-October, the Okaz newspaper reported. They will return to police custody after the holiday and will be referred to Saudi courts at end of this month for upcoming...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reportedly distributed $1.1 billion to estates or companies of deceased farmers from 1999 to 2005. The USDA routinely neglected to conduct required reviews to make sure payments were properly disbursed, The Washington Post reported Monday

A database company that has showered money on Bill and Hillary Clinton – and is alleged to have aided scam artists – now appears to have close links to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's family as well. The firm InfoUSA, headed by major Clinton backer Vinod Gupta, has placed Pelosi's son, Paul Pelosi Jr., on its payroll – even though he has no experience in the company's main business activities, NewsMax has learned. [...] The company is also under fire in a shareholder lawsuit which alleges that Gupta is appropriating company funds for personal use and his political pet projects. Shareholder...

Former strip club owner Michael Galardi bankrolled the plan to bribe San Diego councilmen to repeal a no-touching law at the clubs, but he was not the leader and organizer of the plan and should not be penalized as such, prosecutors said. JERRY RIFE/Union-Tribune Michael Galardi testified in the council bribery trial. In documents filed Thursday with the court, prosecutors took the unusual step of objecting to a sentencing recommendation by the neutral U.S. Probation Office by saying it is too harsh. Prosecutors are better known for objecting when they consider recommendations to be too lenient. The government disputed the...

Latin America: Ecuador's government deserves all the trouble it's got coming now that it's decided expropriation is the way to get rich. But the trouble won't come from the U.S. It's headed their way from Ecuadoreans....The loss of Ecuador's hard-won free-trade pact with the U.S., something it was on the razor's edge of signing, is virtually guaranteed. Ecuador also will probably lose all practical access to U.S. markets when its 2006 Andean trade preferences expire.Two free-trade-pact neighbors, Peru and Colombia, will gladly help themselves to Ecuador's market share in exports of flowers, shrimp and other regional specialties. About 60% of...

Scotland Yard has been called in to investigate Britain's Labour Party after allegations that Prime Minister Tony Blair organised multi-million-dollar loans and then rewarded those lending the money with peerages. For a week, Mr Blair has been caught up in the 'loans for Lordships' scandal after revelations he arranged loans to the Labour Party totalling $34 million. The loans were kept secret and shortly afterwards Mr Blair recommended some of those big party lenders for peerages. Most of the party, including the Chancellor Gordon Brown and senior leaders in the Parliamentary wing, were kept in the dark. Mr Blair has...

Hey, look what I found. Here is a website full of illegal aliens talking about how they can pass liberal laws, get amnesty, get licenses, and taxpayer tuition breaks! Can you believe that these illegal aliens are flagrantly organizing online to push their agenda? I'm going over there to set these people straight. Anyone want to join me? This is the web page: http://www.cosaonline.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2540 This is typical of what they are saying: "Democrats always have our backs. I used to identify with the Republican party, no more. Independent from now on, and I think we would of been better off...