Free Republic

While liberalism’s terminus is failure, its first stop is hypocrisy. Higher-tax advocate Warren Buffett recently illustrated this with his reported use of a tax strategy to avoid — you guessed it — higher taxes. There is nothing new in the tax strategy or in Mr. Buffett’s use of it; it’s just an ample example of liberal hypocrisy. As reported in Bloomberg BNA’s Daily Tax Report on March 20, Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. “plans to limit taxes on more than $1 billion of gains in Graham Holdings Co. stock by swapping the shares for assets owned by the former Washington...

Senate majority leader Harry Reid has a whole page on his official Senate.gov website devoted to revealing "THE FACTS ABOUT THE KOCH BROTHERS." One of the alleged facts promoted on Reid's website is that the Kochs do not pay any corporate taxes: “They are known for bankrolling conservative, Libertarian and Tea Party causes and became poster boys for corporate tax reform last year when an Obama Administration official suggested Koch is organized as an S Corp. and so pays no corporate level taxes.” The claim that the Koch brothers don't pay corporate income taxes was first made by former White...

A major development occurred today in the scandal surrounding the Washington Post’s attempt to advance Democratic Party talking points by falsely linking Koch Industries to the Keystone Pipeline. In the unlikely event that you are not already familiar with the story, you should begin by reading this post and this one, as well as the one from last October where I dismantled the International Forum on Globalization report that was the basis for the Washington Post’s story of March 20. The facts, very briefly, are these: Koch Industries has no interest in the Keystone Pipeline; it has not lobbied in...

Warren Buffett epitomizes everything that is wrong with the global economy, and the U.S. economy specifically. He is the consummate crony capitalist, a brilliant yet conniving oligarch who intentionally plays on the gullibility of the masses to portray himself as one thing, when in reality he is something else entirely.He publicly talks about how rich people need to pay more in taxes, then turns around and pioneers new ways for his company Berkshire Hathaway to avoid hundreds of millions in taxes. He thinks that by going on television stuffing ice cream cones and hamburgers in his mouth and acting all grandfatherly...

Even if you're Warren Buffett--billionaire investor, founder of Berkshire Hathaway, and Democratic donor--it helps to have friends in high places. Through his holding company MidAmerican Energy, Buffett is currently atttempting to purchase NV Energy, a Nevada-based energy firm, and he's getting some big help from that state's senior U.S. senator, Majority Leader Harry Reid. Energy and Environmental Daily reports (subscriber content only) that Reid, who has been publicly supporting Buffett's acquisition of NV Energy and has criticized Nevada state regulators holding up the purchase, wrote a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requesting the agency give "close consideration" to...

Warren Buffett's conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway posted a record profit in 2013, jumping 31 percent over the previous year, the company said in its annual report, released on Saturday. Profit for the full year rose to $19.5 billion from $14.8 billion in 2012. Net income rose to $4.99 billion in the fourth quarter, or $3,035 per Class A share, from $4.55 billion, or $2,757 per share, a year earlier.

FORTUNE -- In a practice he began when running a hedge fund 50 years ago, Warren Buffett has always positioned his company, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA), as being in annual competition with the S&P 500 index's total return—and right now that's not working too well for him. Announcing Berkshire's 2013 results this morning, Buffett said in his annual letter to shareholders that book value per-share—Buffett's standard yardstick in this competition—rose by 18.2% to $134,973. That's a very solid performance. But the S&P 500 index, having its best year since 1997, had a huge total return of 32.4%.

PARIS -- An environmentalist lies down alongside his fellow organic cucumber aficionados to block the construction of an oil pipeline and wakes up a member of a proxy army serving the billionaires who are fighting against America's economic and national security interests to line their own pockets. How did that happen? This phenomenon is on display in the battle against the Keystone XL pipeline project, the cornerstone of Canada-U.S. energy independence, set to run from Alberta, Canada, into Nebraska, then ultimately to the Gulf Coast of Texas where it can be exported. None of this pleases environmental activists, whose actions...

China National Gold Group Corporation General Manager Sun Zhaoxue has come out and told the world media that the US is suppressing the gold price. The reason for America’s manipulation of gold is to ensure US Dollar dominance on the world stage. America has by default ended up with the world’s reserve currency and therefore gets the world to work for them in exchange for an ever increasing supply of printed greenbacks. He also went on with an excellent analysis of America’s war against Europe and the Euro using their investment banks. Another good insight from Sun Zhaoxue is that...

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said he thinks President Obama will approve the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. In the wake of multiple crude-by-rail train accidents in North Dakota -- leaving railcars ablaze and nearby residents at risk --Hoeven said on "Platts Energy Week" that the U.S. needs more pipelines. The U.S. needs pipelines "not only to improve conditions in terms of rail, but trucks," Hoeven said on Sunday. "With the Keystone pipeline, we'd take 500 trucks a day off our roads in western North Dakota." "So clearly pipelines are a part of the solution. But also we have to do everything...

Chinese automakers have been making noise about entering the North American market for years, stretching back a decade or more. A combination of factors – from the disjointed nature of the Chinese auto industry to lingering quality issues – have kept that from happening, but the day when Chinese cars roam the Great American Road may finally be upon us. Following aborted efforts by such automakers as Geely and Great Wall, it's BYD that appears to be leading the charge this time. The company backed by investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate is now targeting 2015 – just a year...

BREAKING NEWS: A train is derailed west of Casselton, North Dakota. It happened at 35th Street and 154th Avenue Southeast just before 2:20 p.m. Monday. Several area emergency teams are on scene and are setting up an incident command center. A viewer who is about a half mile from the derailment tells Valley News Live she can see large flames. Several train cars are on fire and huge plumes of black smoke can be seen for miles. Emergency crews are urging people to stay inside and a code red alert has been sent out to residents in a two mile...

Suddenly, the government has dramatically raised the profit potential of a company, Da Vita, that Obama donor Warren Buffett has a huge investment in. DaVita runs dialysis centers across America. From the Wall Street Journal: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it would reduce payments to kidney dialysis providers by less than 1% over the next two years in a reversal of the much-larger cuts it had proposed this summer.The decision handed at least a temporary victory to dialysis providers such as DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc.Medicare pays for the majority of patients with life-threatening kidney failure, also known...

... In short, Mr. Obama is about to hammer the American energy industry, and he's doing it for money. The real elephant in the room is the Keystone XL pipeline project intended to bring Canadian oil to American Gulf Coast refineries and the resulting products onto the international market. In fact, the title of the Bloomberg article cited above includes the words "Keystone foes." Mr. Obama has already delayed Keystone, once and a final decision is coming up. While Keystone has received a lot of press attention, there are two interrelated aspects that have not yet come to the surface....

The Sierra Club has announced its approval for a "one-time" use of civil disobedience. The civil disobedience is intended to step up their efforts to oppose the Keystone pipeline. Many of the other groups opposing Keystone have been engaging in civil disobedience as a tactic, including arson-based ecoterrorism. This will be the first time in the Sierra Club's history that they have approved violating the law.

Energy companies behind the oil boom on the Northern Plains are increasingly turning to an industrial-age workhorse - the locomotive - to move their crude to refineries across the U.S., as plans for new pipelines stall and existing lines can't keep up with demand. ... The environmental fears carry an ironic twist: Oil trains are gaining popularity in part because of a shortage of pipeline capacity - a problem that has been worsened by environmental opposition to such projects as TransCanada's stalled Keystone XL pipeline. That project would carry Bakken and Canadian crude to the Gulf of Mexico. Wayde Schafer,...

Warren Buffett's company has sold two short-line railroads it recently discovered it owned to satisfy regulators who might have reviewed Berkshire Hathaway's 2010 acquisition of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad. Berkshire told the Transportation Department's Surface Transportation Board earlier this month that it had completed the sale of both short-line railroads ahead of schedule. If Berkshire had reported owning those railroads when it bought BNSF, the Surface Transportation Board would have had to scrutinize the deal. Berkshire first disclosed owning the railroads to the Surface Transportation Board in September. (snip)

Warren Buffett is by now no stranger to the national debate over federal tax policy. In 2009, he penned a New York Times op-ed calling for "truly major changes in both taxes and outlays." Two years later, he returned to the Times with a widely publicized call for large tax increases on the "super-rich," noting that his own effective federal tax rate (17 percent) was far less than his employees' rates (ranging from 33 to 41 percent). President Obama liked the idea so much, he called for Congress to pass "the Buffett Rule" in his 2012 state of the union...

Warren Buffett, in a New York Times Op-Ed piece Monday, is proposing a minimum tax on high incomes and a higher ceiling of $500,000 on increased taxes on wealthy Americans. "I support President Obama's proposal to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for high-income taxpayers. However, I prefer a cutoff point somewhat above $250,000 - maybe $500,000 or so," the Berkshire Hathaway head wrote. "Additionally, we need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that."

Billionaire Warren Buffett may be the poster child for President Obama's tax plan, but the investment tycoon insists he is not a "card-carrying Democrat." "I support certain Republicans," Buffet told members of Washington, D.C.'s Economic Club Tuesday night. "Actually this year I gave money to a Republican congressman." While Buffett didn't name the recipient of his rare cross-party donation, Federal Election Commission data shows that Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell was the lucky beneficiary. Buffett gave Rigell the maximum legal campaign donation of $2,500, although that's substantially less than the $70,000 he has given to help re-elect President Obama over the...