Free Republic

Move could result in loss of transparency The political action committee that sustained and supported Andrew Gillum's 2018 campaign for governor of Florida appears to be shifting a significant percentage of its activities to a nonprofit, according to new campaign finance filings. As a consequence, many of the political activities undertaken by him would come under an entity that has fewer requirements for both donors and for expenditures. Forward Florida was a PAC established specifically for Gillum and was initially funded by large checks from megadonors George Soros and Tom Steyer.

A new independent audit found multiple errors and flaws in the rollout of California’s automated “motor voter” system California’s ambitious effort to automate voter registration at Department of Motor Vehicle offices produced almost 84,000 duplicate records and more than twice that number with political party mistakes, according to an audit released Friday by state officials. The analysis covered just the first five months of the new “motor voter” program, which was launched in April 2018. It found a wide array of problems with the rollout of the DMV system, including a limited amount of testing as well as inconsistent and...

A federal lawsuit accuses the brother of former Vice President Joe Biden, hedge fund manager Michael Lewitt and others of attempting to defraud a Tennessee business. ... It says the plaintiffs founded Diverse Medical Management to reform failing rural hospitals, and Jim Biden promised to sell the health care plan to investors. It says Biden and Lewitt then urged the plaintiffs to borrow $10 million from Lewitt that would be repaid by investors. But the investors never materialized. It says Lewitt then threatened to sue the plaintiffs for not making payments on the borrowed cash.

Adding to the barrage of criticism of prominent Baltimore Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), President Donald Trump recently said “billions and billions” in federal assistance to the city has been “stolen.” Plenty of federal dollars flow to Baltimore every year, but what happens to all of it is hard to determine, since the city has long had a problem tracking its dollars. “What Elijah Cummings should do is, he should take his [House] Oversight Committee, bring them down to Baltimore, and invest all of them and really study the billions and billions of dollars that’s been stolen,” Trump told reporters upon...

One could consider the billions trillions of dollars in taxpayer funds already spent on places like Baltimore a form of reparations.  But it should be clear by now that more money from the government is not going to fix places like Baltimore. Ever since Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Party gave us the infamous promises of the "Great Society" — which was supposed to result in "the total elimination of poverty and racial injustice" — for decades, liberals across the U.S. have promised minorities, especially black Americans, that if they would only vote for Democrats, life would be better. Fifty-five years,...

A federal grand jury indicted Illinois State Sen. Thomas Cullerton this morning on embezzlement charges related to a job with Teamsters Local Union 734. Prosecutors allege he received $275,000 in salary, bonuses, health and pension benefits for “little or no work” as a union organizer. The Villa Park senator, 49, worked for the union before assuming office in November 2012. In a statement, Cullerton’s attorney denied any wrongdoing and suggested Cullerton was the victim of Teamsters boss John Coli. Coli is cooperating with federal investigators as part of a plea deal in an extortion case related to Cinespace Studios on...

When asked about climate change during the second Democratic debate, Beto O’Rourke responded, “I’ve listened to the scientists on this and they’re very clear. We don’t have more than ten years to get this right…” World renowned climate change expert Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has previously stated, “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change and combat CO2.” First, I wish these two would get their story straight. If the world is going to end in either ten or twelve years, it sure would be nice to know which one. It’s going to be very...

A watchdog group has filed a complaint with the IRS for the mishandling of a non-profit organization run by Rep. Elijah Cummings’ wife, Maya according to One America News’ Jack Posobiec. The findings are shocking. According to the report, the nonprofit group was “cutting deals” with special interest groups directly tied to Cummings’ House Oversight Committee. Maya runs her non-profit “Global Policy Solutions” along with a separate for-profit venture. The watchdog alleges her group “received $6.2 million in grants from various corporate backers including Google, JP Morgan, Prudential & Johnson and Johnson.” The complaint also highlighted that Mrs. Cummings’ separate...

FBI Documents Detail That Comey Had Trump FBI Docs At His Home! Judicial Watch Goes To Court on FBI Stonewall and Cover-Up U.S. Wastes $907 Million Tax Dollars on Useless “Nutrition Education” FBI Documents Detail That Comey Had Trump FBI Docs At His Home! As the Justice Department reportedly takes a step to give James Comey a pass for illegal activity, Judicial Watch is uncovering the details of these crimes. We received six pages of records from the FBI showing that in June 2017, a month after Comey was fired by President Donald Trump, FBI agents visited his home...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, July 31, 2019 Department of Justice Begins Fourth Distribution of Funds Recovered Through Asset Forfeiture to Compensate Victims of Bernard Madoff Fraud Scheme Largest Payment of Forfeited Funds in the History of the Department of Justice’s Victim Compensation Program The Department of Justice today announced that on July 31, the Madoff Victim Fund (MVF) began its fourth distribution of $469.6 million in funds forfeited to the U.S. Government in connection with the Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS) fraud scheme, bringing the total distributed to $2.4 billion...

DETROIT — Andrew Yang says it’s already too late to stop climate change, and that it’s time for Americans to head for the hills. Yang, debating his fellow Democrats on Wednesday night in Detroit, had this to say when the subject of climate change was in full swing. Yang — a long-shot candidate — is best known for his universal basic income proposal: he has put a $1,000-a-month payout at the forefront of his platform. **SNIP** Yang said the U.S. acts like it controls 100% of global emissions itself, and that, “the truth is even if we were to curb...

**SNIP** In a recent study in Nature Climate Change, Danielle Lawson, a postdoctoral student at NC State University, and her colleagues found that putting middle-school children in a class about climate change could influence their parent’s views on the subject. The effects were the strongest on conservative fathers—significant because conservative white men have been previously shown to have the lowest levels of climate concern. Lawson called this a case of "intergenerational learning," or the transfer of behavior and knowledge from children to parents. She thinks their study was successful partially because ideology and political identity have become so conflated with...

Prior to the second round of Democratic primary debates in Detroit July 30, DNC Chairman Tom Perez addressed the crowd of voters and donors to lay out what his party had to offer in 2020. After gushing over the twenty candidates’ “inclusive vision” of America, Perez freaked out about democracy and climate change. He vented that “our democracy is on fire and it’s a five-alarm blaze,” and predictably lashed out at Republicans for linking Democrats with the rise of socialism in the U.S. As he brought up climate change he ranted against EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler: TOM PEREZ: And our...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) shredded his fellow 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who weren’t supportive of ambitious plans to tackle climate change during CNN’s debate on Tuesday evening. “I get a little bit tired of Democrats afraid of big ideas. Republicans are not afraid of big ideas,” Sanders said, referencing GOP-led efforts to bail out big banks during the 2008 financial crisis. “Please don’t tell me that we cannot take on the fossil fuel industry … nothing happens unless we do that.” **SNIP** Sanders rejected the characterization, saying that when it comes to tackling climate change, “there is no choice.” “We...

Senate Democrats introduced a constitutional amendment on Tuesday to undo the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision. A group of Democrats, led by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and progressive activists rallied outside the Supreme Court to unveil the amendment, which faces an unlikely path to being ratified. "Few decisions in the 200 and some odd years of this republic have threatened our democracy like Citizens United. People say they want to get rid of the swamp. Citizens United is the embodiment of the swamp," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at the rally. Schumer added that "overturning Citizens United...

China's securities regulator has suspended 43 initial public offerings and refinancing cases being handled by the country's second-largest accounting firm... Ruihua Certified Public Accountants, which audits almost a third of all listed companies in China, is implicated in a scandal.

h/t Dr. Willie Soon; According to Foreign Policy, moving “beyond Democracy” towards an authoritarian Chinese system would allow governments to override the climate obstructionism of older voters, but they have concerns about the societal disruption the transition to authoritarianism would cause. DEMOCRACY IS THE PLANET’S BIGGEST ENEMY Young people care a lot about climate change—but most of them can’t vote. Here’s how governments can adapt to accommodate them. BY DAVID RUNCIMAN JULY 20, 2019 In today’s Britain, a rare public figure can bring together Brexiteers and Remainers, Conservatives and Labour. Yet the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg did just that...

The Left’s outrage machine cranked up to maximum output again earlier this week when it was reported that the Border Patrol had kept an American citizen in detention for three weeks prior to releasing him. But as is usually the case, there is much more to the story, and a USBP official provided those details during congressional testimony this week. Brian Hastings, Chief of Law Enforcement at the U.S. Border Patrol, told a House committee that the reason why the citizen was kept in detention for so long was that he told agents he was Mexican. Hastings’ claim came in...

DELAWARE COUNTY, Pa. (CBS) — A Delaware County man faces several charges after he allegedly posed as a “Good Morning America” producer and a New York Times reporter. District Attorney Kat Copeland made the announcement on Wednesday morning. Copeland said Nikolaos Tzima Hatziefstathiou, also known as “Nik the Hat,” has been charged with creating a false, racist government email, identity theft and tampering. Hatziefstathiou claimed he was the editor in chief for YC News. Copeland said it was all in an effort to obtain government documents. “From April 23 to April 25, Nik Hatziefstathiou, after creating fake email accounts posing...

(CNN)Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló is expected to resign Wednesday after more than a week of protests that rocked the island's capital city, a source familiar with the situation told CNN. Thousands have jammed the streets of San Juan calling for the governor's resignation after Puerto Rico's Center for Investigative Journalism published a series of group messages between the governor and his inner circle that included homophobic and misogynistic language and jokes about Hurricane Maria victims. Demonstrators were determined to stay on the streets until Rosselló stepped down, fed up with years of government corruption, high poverty rates, crushing debt...