Free Republic

Billionaire Clinton Foundation Donor, Feds Settle Lawsuit Over Reports of Terrorism TiesA billionaire Clinton Foundation donor has struck a deal with the U.S. government to settle a lawsuit over leaks that indicated he was fundraising for a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian-born businessman who lives in Lebanon, filed a lawsuit last September against the FBI, CIA, Department of Justice, and several other agencies over leaks that "improperly impugned" his reputation and denied his constitutional rights, Politico reported Monday. News reports surfaced last year that Chagoury, who contributed millions to the Clinton Foundation and pledged $1 billion to...

.....owner Steve Ross, who had three players — wide receiver Kenny Stills, safety Michael Thomas and tight end Julius Thomas — kneel during the national anthem prior to last week’s game said Sunday he wished they would stand for the anthem. The trio ended up standing in the tunnel during the anthem and running onto the field afterward. Coach Adam Gase implemented a policy Sunday requiring players to stand for the national anthem. Those who don’t wish to stand must stay in the locker room or in the tunnel. Ross, who spoke about 90 minutes before the Dolphins’ 16-10 victory...

As a billionaire, I would profit substantially from the tax cuts proposed last week...

The social network has an army of behind-the-scenes employees who can’t afford to live in an area with out-of-control housing costs... ....In May 2015, amid a nationwide movement to raise the minimum wage, the company established a $15 per hour minimum for its contractors, as well as benefits like paid sick leave, vacation, and a $4,000 new-child benefit. But those wages only go so far in a region with out-of-control housing costs. San Francisco and San Jose ranked first and third in the nation a recent analysis of rents, with one-bedroom apartments in San Jose going for $2,378. The extreme...

One week after a state appeals court ruled that Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla cannot continue blocking public access to Martins Beach on the coast south of Half Moon Bay, the gate remains padlocked with no-trespassing signs.**snip** But despite Khosla’s apparent defiance of the court in the high-profile case that could affect the public’s ability to visit other beaches across California, the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office is making clear that it considers the scenic stretch of coastline open. full title -Sheriff says visitors to Martins Beach won’t be arrested if they go around gates locked by billionaire Vinod Khosla

Siding with surfers and other backers of the public's access to beaches, a California appeals court is ordering a Silicon Valley billionaire to reopen public access to Martins Beach near Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems who has invested in renewable energy, closed the beach to the public in 2009...On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal rejected Khosla's appeal. "This is not simply a win for surfers in San Mateo County," said Surfrider Legal Director Angela Howe. "This is a win for all of the beachgoing public...

[snip]Brazen story... ordinarily trigger a front-page news story or an outraged editorial — a bunch of rich individuals asking Congress to write them a law that would give them better negotiating power against other rich individuals. [snip]Bezos, Slim, and Buffett need Congress to help them negotiate with Google.

Having bestowed the presidency on a candidate who described their country as a “hellhole” besieged by multitudes trying to get into it, Americans need an antidote for social hypochondria. Fortunately, one has arrived from Don Boudreaux, an economist at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and proprietor of the indispensable blog Cafe Hayek. He has good news: You are as rich as John D. Rockefeller. Richer, actually. Some historians estimate that on September 29, 1916, a surge in the price of Rockefeller’s shares of the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey made him America’s first billionaire. Others say he never...

Airlines all have their own uniforms for flight attendants, but those uniforms were never a reason customers choose to fly a particular airline…until now. VietJet, a regional airline in Vietnam, has its young flight attendants dress in corporate colored bikinis, and that marketing gimmick has helped the company’s CEO, Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, become the country’s first self-made female billionaire. Bloomberg reports, “With the initial public offering of Vietnam’s only privately-owned airline, Thao is set to have a net worth exceeding $1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making her the country’s first woman billionaire.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Ia1fLc8hw

A policy of nationalizing chunks of an economy inevitably creates oligarchs who skim profits off the country’s natural resources. As such, you won’t be surprised to learn that the largest energy companies in the world are owned and operated by governments, and they include: Saudi Aramco, Russian Gazprom, China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), National Iranian Oil Co., Petroleos de Venezuela, Brazil’s Petrobras and Malaysia’s Petronas. How they’re run varies wildly—as does where their wealth goes. While we’ve all been inundated with the massive amount of press on the scandals engulfing Brazil’s Petrobras, there are a few that stand out for...

The head of Apple, Tim Cook, is saying fake news is “killing people’s minds,” and the tech industry must do something to stop it. We are going through this period of time right here where unfortunately some of the people that are winning are the people that spend their time trying to get the most clicks, not tell the most truth. It’s killing people’s minds, in a way. All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news. We must try to squeeze this without stepping on freedom of speech and of...

A billionaire with links to the family of Xi Jinping was reportedly taken from his apartment in the Four Seasons in Hong Kong by Chinese police and taken to the mainland. Xiao Jianhua, one of China’s richest men, is currently in police custody on the mainland, the Financial Times and New York Times reported. He may be assisting with a graft investigation, part of the Chinese president’s sweeping campaign that critics say is more about consolidating power than tackling corruption. If Chinese police were involved in Xiao’s abduction from Hong Kong, it would appear to violate the former British colony’s...

The billionaire Tom Steyer, an environmental activist, said he won't quantify how much he is willing to spend to combat Donald Trump's presidency. “If you ask me can I put a limit on how much I value the health, the safety, the employment and the civil liberties of Americans, there’s no limit to what I think that’s worth,” Steyer told Bloomberg in an interview. Steyer, a Democrat who spent at least $87 million on the 2016 presidential election, was the biggest individual political donor in the race. According to Bloomberg, Steyer routes most of his money through the NextGen Climate...

Just call it the Sheik shake down... * * * In one of the more prominent early Podesta email revelations, we learned that Sheik Mohammed Hussein Ali Al-'Amoudi, a Saudi Arabian and Ethiopian billionaire businessman, whose net worth was estimated by Forbes at $8.3 billion as of 2016, was one of the very generous donors to the Clinton Foundation... up to a point. As a November 2011 email from Ira Magaziner, Vice Chairman and CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, sent to John Podesta and Amitabh Desai, Director of Foreign Policy at the Clinton Foundation, revealed, the "CHAI [Clinton...

Another 296 pages of Hillary Clinton’s emails were released Tuesday — exposing key Clinton aides doing favors for billionaires and, on one occasion, leaving the then-secretary of state’s daily schedule in an unlocked hotel room. The documents were released by Judicial Watch, which is suing to recover Clinton’s emails under Freedom of Information Act laws. In an April 2009 email to Clinton’s State Department aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, President Clinton’s former body man, Doug Band, the founder of corporate consultant Teneo, urgently asked them to set up a meeting with an ambassador for a major donor to the...

The Oracle of Omaha is one of several billionaires to back her. Hillary Clinton may be having a tough time reaching average American voters, but she’s having no trouble courting billionaires. On Monday afternoon, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett delivered a speech at a Hillary Clinton campaign event in his hometown, a few months after endorsing the Democratic nominee for president. ...In October 2014, Buffett gave $25,000, the most he’s donated to benefit any single candidate, to a Super PAC dedicated to helping Clinton, called Ready for Hillary. To be sure, Buffett has given sums totaling $30,000 or more to...

On the off chance the US didn't already have a big enough problem thanks to a staggering $1.3 trillion in student loans which contrary to White House' claims, are crushing an entire generation under their interest expense weight, earlier today none other than billionaire Jeff Bezos announced he was entering the student loan business, when Amazon unveiled a partnership with Wells Fargo in which the bank’s student-lending arm would offer interest-rate discounts to select Amazon shoppers. In Amazon's latest attempt to entice shoppers into its premium Prime program, Wells Fargo will cut half a percentage point from its interest rate...

British entrepreneur Richard Branson today said his Virgin Group had pulled out of a deal involving 3,000 jobs after Britain voted to leave the EU. In a television interview, the billionaire businessman added that Britain was heading for recession after the pound slumped to its lowest level against the dollar in more than three decades in the immediate aftermath of last Thursday’s referendum result.

(Full title):This Hispanic Billionaire UNLEASHED On Trump Haters, Says “Who Else Would You Have In A F**king Foxhole?” If you ask liberals about Trump’s popularity with Hispanics, they’ll tell you that Trump is a racist that will never, ever get Hispanic support. Of course, we know that it’s BS, because we have countless evidence of overwhelming Hispanic support of Donald Trump. (Video at link: language alert)

Billionaire businessman and philanthropist David Koch has pledged “tens of millions of dollars” to help bankroll the campaign of Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, according to a source within Johnson’s campaign. Koch’s money will be made available should Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, secure his second consecutive Libertarian Party presidential nomination, the source said. The Libertarians will select their presidential ticket during the party’s national convention later this month in Orlando.