Free Republic

The political news is all about the 2020 presidential election.  We get daily polls purportedly informing us of who is up, who is down, who's going up, who's going down, and the impact of every comment, either woke or misspoke. The Beltway and the Acela corridor lock in on this "data" as if it were an NFL championship game between teams led by Payton Manning and Tom Brady.  (I'd use a women's soccer analogy, but no one's watching women's soccer, and foul-mouthed think pieces don't age well).  The rest of America, particularly once you are about a 30- to 35-mile radius away (about...

Fifteen months before the 13 members of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS, approved the sale of the Canadian company Uranium One to Russia’s nuclear arm giant Rosatom, the FBI began investigating persons who were connected to the Russian state corporation. The FBI said in court documents and in interviews conducted by Circa that by 2010 they had gathered enough evidence to prove that Rosatom-connected officials were engaged in a global bribery schedule that included kickbacks and money laundering. FBI officials said the investigation could have prevented the sale of Uranium One, which controlled...

Hillary Clinton generates events to support her narrative. For example, Clinton accused Trump of creating an atmosphere of violence at his rallies. To support the narrative she paid people to instigate trouble at Trump rallies. She has long had the narrative that Trump is connected with Russia. It began with accusations that Trump’s adviser Paul Manafort was tied to Russia, and that Trump too was tied to Russia. That went nowhere. Now months later the narrative has advanced to Russia hacked the DNC. This claim is based on Dmitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike. Given Clinton’s pattern of generating events to support...

CRUDELE: I began investigating when I was told Census data collectors were inventing interviews....and of possible financial mis-doings on contracts, expenses, maybe even pension funds. Four of the six Census regions apparently falsified economic data. Philadelphia, NY, Atlanta, LA, Chicago and Denver Census Offices have million dollar tax-paid budgets w/ little oversight. A couple weeks ago, the whistleblower — Ivan Irizarry, lead scientist at Census’ Demographic Statistical Methods Division — came to me out of frustration. The UofM contract was never put up for competitive bid....and was the most costly and most interesting: Robert Groves, who was picked by President...

Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner praised President Barack Obama on Sunday, saying he was "excellent in crisis." “I had an amazingly good experience with this president in this White House, ...who was willing at that time to put policy ahead of politics in a way that was very important for the country," Geithner said on CBS's "Face the Nation." “He was excellent in crisis. Good at making decisions. Very tough on the rest of us, very tough on all of us to examine all the options. And I never felt I was in a position where they put a political...

The White House wanted Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to lie on Sunday talk shows to downplay the part Social Security played in driving the deficit, it was revealed today. Geithner writes in his memoir Stress Test, out today, that the White House communications director asked him to downplay the long term cost of Social Security spending to mollify the Democratic Party's base. 'I remember during one Roosevelt Room prep session before I appeared on the Sunday shows, I objected when Dan Pfeiffer wanted me to say Social Security didn't contribute to the deficit. It wasn't a main driver of our...

If anyone thinks "Bridgegate" is an example of political bullying and abuse of power, then the sworn (under penalty of perjury) allegation of a corporate heavy hitter against Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner is off the charts. Bloomberg Businessweek reports: Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told McGraw Hill Financial Inc. Chairman Harold W. McGraw III in 2011 that Standard & Poor's downgrade of the U.S. debt would be met by a response, S&P said. S&P filed a declaration by McGraw yesterday in federal court in Santa Ana, California, as part of a request to force the U.S. to...

Bob Woodward has yet another book coming out, and the consummate Washington insider provides us with a glimpse of what's in it. In doing so, he inadvertently confirms what so many internet pundits have been warning about -- an economic catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. In the article in the Washington Post, Woodward describes the debt-ceiling confrontation between Congress and the President. It is likely that Mr. Woodward or most other political types do not recognize the admissions contained within the article. For these people, politics is a game of winners and losers. That is where the drama and excitement is....

The White House official whom Bob Woodward charged had crosssed a line by saying he would "regret" printing his version of a set of Washington negotiations was Gene Sperling, the director of the White House Economic Council, a source familiar with the exchange told BuzzFeed Wednesday. The email from Sperling to Woodward, which Woodward read to Politico Wednesday, has transfixed Washington, with Republicans and some in the press charging that it embodies a White House lording it over a cowed press corps. Woodward, Politico reported, called the top official — identified to BuzzFeed as Sperling — to tell him that...

Over the next year, we will probably see much controversy over the implementation of Obamacare. Health insurance is something that almost every adult has some acquaintance with, and there seem to be glitches aplenty in the legislation, much delay in issuing regulations and some possible changes resulting from litigation. We're likely to see or hear less about the operations of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation legislation, passed four months after Obamacare. Most of us don't work at banks or financial institutions, which will have to grapple with its myriad provisions and the regulations to be issued thereunder, and we tend to...

Leading Democrats are putting together fallback proposals if Washington fails to reach a deal on the “fiscal cliff” that would allow the party to cast itself as seeking to cut taxes. “Of course, I’ve got a backup plan in the event that we don’t succeed here,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Friday. “I’m sure the White House has one too.” Tax rates are set to expire on most households in January if Congress does not act to extend some of the rates, something some Democrats have long seen as giving their party an advantage....

The Obama Administration proposal to fix the "fiscal cliff" coming at the end of the year called for $1.6 trillion in tax hikes over current policy. House Speaker John Boehner said he was "flabbergasted" when presented with the proposal this week. Boehner tells "Fox News Sunday" that after Geithner briefed him privately on Thursday, he looked at Geithner and said, "You can't be serious." Boehner called it "silliness" that the White House was, among other things, asking Congress to give up its power to set the nation's debt limit. Earlier today, Geithner insisted that the Obama Administration wouldn't relent on...

Have you ever wondered how much we as taxpayers actually owe because of commitments politicians have made on our behalf? Turns out, the answer is not as simple as you might think. The place to start is with a report put out annually by the U.S. Treasury. There I learned that the federal government officially recognizes an outstanding debt of $17.5 trillion. This amount consists of $10.2 trillion in government debt held by the public, plus pension and retirement benefits owed to federal employees. On the one hand, that amount exceeds our country’s entire gross domestic product and that’s pretty...

The Clinton line, an elaboration of Obama excuse No. 37 for the dismal economy (after the Arab Spring, ATMs, the euro crisis and tomato blight in Mrs. Obama's White House garden), goes like this: The economy was so damaged by George W. Bush-era policies that "no president" could have been expected to do better than the record-high poverty, staggering unemployment, shrinking workforce participation, anemic growth and gargantuan debt over which Barack Obama has presided. We're asked to believe that the Obama administration knew all along that things would take longer than four years to improve. "I never said this journey...

(Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is facing growing criticism for his changing predictions on when the country might face a debt default, shifts that have led some Republicans to discount his dire warnings that the debt limit must be raised soon. Since January, Geithner has changed his forecast of when the U.S. would hit its borrowing cap, and the final deadline for raising the debt limit, at least four times -- fueling a belief among rank-and-file Republicans that his latest August 2 deadline is artificial and can be ignored.Some Democrats are increasingly worried that the changing calendar has...

BEIJING (CNN) -- China said Friday that the Chinese activist at the center of a diplomatic storm has the right to apply to study abroad... If Chen Guangcheng wants to go overseas to study, "as a Chinese citizen, he may apply like other Chinese citizens"... ....[SNIP].... The Chinese comments came as U.S.diplomats spoke by phone with Chen, who is currently in a Beijing hospital. The officials also met with Chen's wife,Yuan Weijing, in person, according to a senior State Department official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. The U.S. officials had been scheduled to...

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner advised taxpayers to “quit complaining, taxes are what you pay for the privilege of being an American.” “You know, there are places in the world where the government can take everything you have,” Geithner observed. “The fact that you get to keep anything here ought to inspire a greater appreciation for your own government’s forbearance.” The Secretary warned those he called the “one-percenters,” that “government is the only thing preventing the other 99% from murdering you and looting your property. The protection we offer ought to be worth whatever it costs. Quibbling over the price...

If you're a conservative, then you probably have no love for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. He wanted to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich in 2010. You might think his foreclosure prevention plan was a mess. But if you're a progressive, then you probably don't love the guy either. He wasn't particularly aggressive in pursuing cramdowns or principal reductions for struggling homeowners. He also doesn't tend to be too hard on the banks. So who does like Geithner? President Obama must -- he worked to ensure that Geithner wouldn't resign earlier this year when his family moved back...

The U.S. plans on being an active partner as efforts intensify to get Europe get back on its feet financially, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNBC Friday. Getty Images U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner With global leaders preparing for next month's Group of 20 nations (G20) summit in Cannes, France, the International Monetary Fund — of which the U.S. is the greatest contributor — is being relied on to help underwrite whatever efforts are needed to backstop toxic European sovereign debt . Geithner said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has "very substantial" resources to fund a device that could look...

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has issued a stern warning to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as Boehner sits down with President Obama Sunday night to negotiate a raising of the debt ceiling: don't do it. Palin, in an interview appearing in Newsweek, “made it clear that she’s against any deal that raises the debt ceiling and would hold House Speaker John Boehner’s feet to the fire if he agreed to one” according to the magazine. “No, we have to cut spending. It is imperative, and I will be very, very disappointed if Boehner and the leaders of the Republican...