Free Republic

A high-speed transit system through the mountain corridor could serve as a major economic boon to communities on the Western Slope, according to a new study recently published by Development Research Partners. A high-speed transit system — likely in the form of a train that would carry passengers and light freight between Denver International Airport and Eagle County Regional Airport — was listed in the 2011 Record of Decision issued by the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Federal Highways Administration as a potential long-term solution to dealing with congestion on Interstate 70. Late last year, stakeholders — including the...

The perception that only elite schools produce elite leaders needs to die. The No. 1 company in last year’s Fortune 500 was Walmart Inc., with $500 billion in revenue. That would make its chief executive, Douglas McMillon, a pretty important and powerful executive, don’t you think? Can you guess where he went to college? The University of Arkansas. He has an MBA, too. From the University of Tulsa. Second on the list was Exxon Mobil Corp. Its CEO, Darren Woods, went to Texas A&M. Third was Berkshire Hathaway Inc., run by the man many consider the greatest investor who ever...

The stock price of Kraft Heinz plunged 20% late Thursday after the food giant disclosed it received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission and reported a large net loss due to the reduction of goodwill in some of its best-known brands. Kraft Heinz also said in a conference call discussing earnings that it cut its quarterly dividend to 40 cents a share from 62.5 cents and that it was considering selling off some of its businesses to help pay down debt. The company reported $30.9 billion in long-term debt at the end of 2018, up from $28.3 billion...

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is itching to do a massive acquisition, but is having a difficult time due to elevated valuations. The Oracle of Omaha explained his buying criteria for deals in his 2017 annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday. "In our search for new stand-alone businesses, the key qualities we seek are durable competitive strengths; able and high-grade management; good returns on the net tangible assets required to operate the business; opportunities for internal growth at attractive returns; and, finally, a sensible purchase price," he wrote. "That last requirement proved a barrier to virtually all deals we reviewed...

Health care costs are "a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett says, and now his firm is teaming up with Amazon and JPMorgan Chase to create a new company with the goal of providing high quality health care for their employees at a lower cost. The new company will be "free from profit-making incentives and constraints" as it tries to find ways to cut costs and boost satisfaction with the health care plan for employees of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. The trio unveiled their new venture in a news release. "The...

WASHINGTON — Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co. will create an independent health care company that is “free from profit-making incentives” that will aim to reduce healthcare costs for their U.S. workers. The focus of the company will be technology solutions “that will provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost,” a news release says. “The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy. Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable. Rather, we...

For someone who backed Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, Warren Buffett has done just fine so far with a Donald Trump victory. The multibillionaire head of Berkshire Hathaway has seen his investment portfolio explode in the days since Trump’s stunning upset Nov. 8. Buffett has benefited particularly well from the myriad financial holdings he holds in the company’s portfolio. Bank stocks have surged since Trump’s win, on anticipation of higher rates and less regulation of Wall Street. Taken together, the company’s half-dozen top financial holdings have brought the Oracle of Omaha a hefty $4.3 billion in profits since the...

The daily paper, which operates as, in effect, a local monopoly in the small southern Idaho city at the center of a sexual assault of a 5 -year-old American-born girl involving three Muslim refugee boys, is owned by Lee Enterprises, which received a $2.1 million loan in 2012 and another $9 million loan in 2013 from a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by globalist billionaire Warren Buffett, an ardent supporter who endorsed Hillary Clinton in December. ... The Twin Falls Times-News op-ed generated a number of comments from local readers, some backing the paper’s reporting as “objective,” but...

From the Powerline blog:Nebraska attorney Dave Begley is our faithful Omaha correspondent. Dave reports: (video follows)Friday night in a crowd of 500 to 700 people at Creighton University it appeared that I was not only the only conservative, I was also the only person who was thinking clearly and critically. One of global warming’s oldest and most revered leaders, Dr. James Hansen, spoke prior to his protest at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting on Saturday. I have never heard such nonsense in my life. He gave a rambling and incoherent presentation for nearly two hours. Three times he forgot...

Berkshire Hathaway shareholders have overwhelmingly rejected a resolution calling for the company to write a report about the risks climate change creates for its insurance companies. CEO Warren Buffett says he agrees that dealing with climate change is important for society, but he doesn’t think climate change creates serious risks for Berkshire’s insurance businesses. Buffett says the fact that Berkshire generally writes insurance policies for one-year periods allows it to regularly re-evaluate risks, such as climate change. The activists who proposed the motion tried to urge Buffett to take a public stance in favor of measures to reduce consumption of...

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Vice Chairman Charles Munger criticized leading candidates from both major U.S. political parties. At a meeting with investors of his Daily Journal Corp. in Los Angeles Wednesday, Munger, 92, was asked whether a person who couldn’t make money in the gaming industry would be a good fit for the top office in the U.S. “Well, he did make money for quite a while,” Munger said of Republican Donald Trump. “My attitude is that anybody who makes money running a casino is not morally qualified.”

Warren Buffett has dismissed the possibility that climate change could prove a big risk to Berkshire Hathaway’s insurance business, in a combative annual letter to shareholders. In the letter, released on Saturday, Mr Buffett took on a dissident shareholder who plans to raise global warming at Berkshire’s annual meeting next month, as well as critics of the company’s Clayton Homes mobile homes subsidiary and politicians who paint a gloomy picture of the US economy.

Warren Buffett bemoaned the “negative drumbeat” on the U.S. economy from presidential candidates in his annual Berkshire Hathaway Inc shareholder letter on Saturday, saying they are misleading Americans into believing their children will be worse off than they are. “It’s an election year, and candidates can’t stop speaking about our country’s problems (which, of course, only they can solve),” Buffett wrote, italicizing “they” for emphasis. As a result of their dour outlook on the U.S. economy, many Americans now believe that their children will not live as prosperously as they themselves do, the 85-year-old Buffett said. “That view is dead...

A second northwestern Colorado coal mine will undergo a review of the mine's environmental impact following an agreement reached by the federal government, the mine's owners and WildEarth Guardians.. The agreement between the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM), Trapper Mining Inc. and WildEarth Guardians was filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Denver. The agreement gives the federal government until the end of April to complete a new review of the mine’s operations. ... Our miners must be allowed to keep working to supply Craig Station with the coal that’s needed to supply the grid...

Kraft Heinz says it is cutting about 2,500 jobs as part of its plan to slash costs after the food companies combined. Spokesman Michael Mullen says affected workers are in the U.S. and Canada and were to be notified in person. About 700 of the cuts were coming in Northfield, Illinois, where Kraft had been headquartered. The company would not specify where other cuts were taking place but said that all the jobs were salaried. It said none of the job cuts involved factory workers. The Kraft Heinz Co. said it had a total of around 46,600 employees before the...

Whole Foods shares are getting crushed after earnings. The company reported record second quarter sales that still were below investors' expectations, and shares were down as much as 10% in after hours trade on Wednesday. This past weekend at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders' meeting this past weekend, CEO Warren Buffett singled out the company, saying that that the customers there simply don't seem like a happy bunch. Here's some more color on what Buffett said, according to Time: "Food and beverage companies will adjust to the expressed preferences of consumers. No company does well ignoring its consumers. "It’s amazing...

Another day, another mega-M&A deal taking advantage of abnormally low bond rates, this time however not involving biotechs or a specialty pharma seeking to purchase a debt-free balance sheet, but one involving the Oracle of Omaha himself, and his Heinz investment, which will merge with Kraft Foods whose market cap was over $40 billion this morning on the news of the merger, and create the third largest food and beverage company in the US, and 5th largest in  the world. And while the resulting company will certainly be an unprecedented food giant, one which leaves the US food industry even...

What do train whistles and Warren Buffett have in common? If you answered old-fashioned charm, you’re wrong. The Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, calls the avuncular billionaire “the man behind the exploding trains.” Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns Union Tank Car Company, North America’s largest leaser of tank cars. Berkshire also owns BNSF Railway Company, which moves many of those cars.

Some Burger King customers are finding it hard to swallow that the home of the Whopper could move to Canada. Investors seemed to welcome the announcement by Burger King late Sunday that it was in talks to buy Canadian coffee-and-doughnut chain Tim Hortons and create the world’s third-largest fast-food restaurant company. The news pushed shares of both companies up more than 20 percent. But customers were already voicing their discontent with the 60-year-old hamburger chain because of its plans to relocate its corporate headquarters from Miami to Canada in a deal that could lower its taxes. …

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is urging consumers to boycott Burger King over reports that the fast food chain is eyeing a tax-cutting move to Canada. Brown, an outspoken corporate critic, said people hankering for a burger should head to Wendy’s or White Castle, two Ohio-based chains that aren’t looking to shrink their tax bill via a so-called “corporate inversion.” “Burger King’s decision to abandon the United States means consumers should turn to Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers or White Castle sliders,” he said in a statement. “Burger King has always said ‘Have it Your Way’; well my way is to support...