Free Republic

The Florida Panthers faced some high stakes Tuesday; not on the ice, but at Broward County Hall. With opposition building against the Florida Panthers' request for $86 million for free rent at the county-owned BB&T Center in Sunrise, a majority of county commissioners made it clear at a workshop meeting Tuesday that they’re in favor of a major public giveaway to the hockey team. New Florida Panthers hockey team owner Doug Cifu said he has no plans to move the team with or without the $86 million bailout he's asking from public, but that didn't stop Broward County Commissioner Marty...

President Obama was in Michigan last week to sign a 10-year, $1 trillion farm bill. While much of the debate has centered around the spending on food stamps, buried in the 1,000-page plan are many other provisions that are indefensibly bad policy. While some are praising, and others complaining, about slightly rolling back spending on food stamps and eliminating some of the direct payments to "farmers" (who did not actually farm), the bill goes far beyond that. This bill continues special subsidy deals to farmers in every area in the country — from corn and beans to rice and peanuts...

Colorado health-exchange director on paid leave DENVER — A director with Colorado's health-care exchange is on paid leave after it was discovered she has been accused of stealing from a nonprofit housing organization she oversaw in Montana. Christa McClure is the director of partner engagement for Connect for Health Colorado, the state program that implements the Affordable Care Act. According to the Denver Post, program spokesman Ben Davis says in her Colorado job, McClure does not have access to any of exchange's finances. The eight-count indictment against McClure was filed in U.S. District Court in Billings, Mont., in January.

The Bible says that “the wages of sin is death,” but the same can’t be said of Washington, DC. The bureaucrats, lobbyists, politicians, contractors, insiders, cronyists, and influence peddlers have rigged the system so that they get rich by diverting money from people in the productive sector of the economy. How bad is the disconnect between Washington and real America? Well, according to Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index, people in every state have a negative outlook. But there is one outpost of giddy prosperity, and that’s the District of Columbia, where residents have a 20-point gap compared to the most optimistic...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Republican lawmakers in Tennessee are threatening that the state could turn off the spigot of incentives for Volkswagen if workers at the German automaker's plant decide this week to approve union representation.

Have you thought about becoming an Ambassador, diplomat, or foreign dignitary? Well stop wasting your time trying to build a career… Just bundle a few million dollars in campaign money for your friendly Chicago-style politician, and help him become President. Once he’s in charge, you might even get a nomination to far-away-lands that you know nothing about! At least, that’s how it seems to work judging by the administration’s latest nominee. Noah Mamet, has been nominated as the ambassador to Argentina. Noah is well traveled, but has admitted that he has never even visited Argentina… (Become a political crony, and...

I don’t know exactly how to characterize this, but there is a new campaign to highlight crony capitalism (or the portmanteau that I like to use–crapitalism) . This campaign–The Kronies– uses youtube clips and specially designed 80s style action figures.

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, First Lady Michelle Obama joined the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) and SUBWAY® along with SUBWAY® Famous Fans Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin, and Justin Tuck at a local Washington, DC, SUBWAY® Restaurant, to announce a three-year commitment by the chain in support of her Let’s Move! initiative to promote healthier choices to kids, including launching its largest targeted marketing effort to date. In addition to strengthening its already nutritious menu offerings to kids, SUBWAY® will launch a new series of campaigns for kids aimed at increasing fruit and vegetable consumption and will set new standards...

Some of Texas’ biggest business trade groups are moving to counter tea party and anti-government forces that have dominated recent Republican primaries. The movement mirrors the schism happening nationally between hard right and establishment Republicans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently pledged $50 million to back pro-business Republicans in U.S. Senate primaries and fight tea party insurgents. Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of the fiscal-hawk group Empower Texans said the Texas Future Business Alliance is nothing but a group of big-money interests wanting taxpayer dollars to flow into their pockets. “This is what we’ve come to expect coming out of the...

[W]hile crony capitalism has certainly flourished under the Obama administration, the GOP hasn’t exactly gone out of its way to combat the trend. Many have argued that taking on crony capitalism, and perhaps adopting a more populist tone that emphasizes the needs of working-class Americans, should be an important aspect of the GOP’s rebranded agenda. By advancing a message and a policy agenda that combat the stereotype of Republicans as beholden to Big Business, the party could go a long way toward regaining some lost trust with the American people. But the party’s actions haven’t matched this desire to change...

No year-end film has stirred up as much talk as Paramount’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which looks at American greed and excesses. The three-hour film has earned $34 million since it opened Christmas Day, with supporters embracing its originality and daring, but some fretting that the film celebrates the self-obsessed lifestyle of convicted con man Jordan Belfort. In an interview with Variety, Leonardo DiCaprio, a producer and star of the pic, talked about the challenges and rewards of making a film that is “outside the box” in its subject matter and approach. Here are excerpts of the interview, with...

Crony capitalism — the highly profitable alliance between Big Business, K Street, and the federal government — is a frequent topic of scorn for Republican critics of President Obama. But while crony capitalism has certainly flourished under the Obama administration, the GOP hasn’t exactly gone out of its way to combat the trend. Many have argued that taking on crony capitalism, and perhaps adopting a more populist tone that emphasizes the needs of working-class Americans, should be an important aspect of the GOP’s rebranded agenda. By advancing a message and a policy agenda that combat the stereotype of Republicans as...

Welcome to the new world of ObamaCare reality. As a presumed constitutional scholar, Barack Obama should know that while a president has authority to check the Legislative Branch by recommending legislation to be passed by Congress, or through presidential veto, he or she cannot legislate through executive fiat or pick which parts of the law to comply with or decline. Article 2, Section 3, Clause 5 of our Constitution requires that the president “…shall take care that the Laws be carefully executed.”    It doesn’t limit those laws or encapsulated provisions to the particular ones that he or she likes.Speaking before...

As we all are painfully aware, the Affordable Care Act (aka, Obamacare) had a disastrous launch. Not to mention $940 million to CGI for a non-working website. Obamacare is so complex that it is likely unworkable … and unpopular once everyone gets a load of how their insurance premiums and deductibles have risen. obamacarecontractors Who in their right mind would design such a disaster? An overly complex mess that is unworkable. obamacare_chart_LGa The government, of course, and their cronies and apparatchiks. Like it or not, it is the insertion of government into the system that causes the problem. Just like...

Senior Navy civilians investigated in alleged scheme to defraud military for $1.6 million Federal authorities are investigating three senior Navy intelligence officials as part of a probe into an alleged contracting scheme that charged the military $1.6 million for homemade firearm silencers that cost only $8,000 to manufacture, court records show. The three civilian officials, who oversee highly classified programs, arranged for a hot-rod auto mechanic in California to build a specially ordered batch of unmarked and untraceable rifle silencers and sell them to the Navy at more than 200 times what they cost to manufacture, according to court...

The Obama administration has been accused of cronyism after it was revealed the First Lady's Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company contracted to build the beleaguered Obamacare enrollment website. Toni Townes-Whitley is senior vice president at CGI Federal, the U.S. arm of a Canadian company, which won the no-bid contract for the problem-plagued website. Townes-Whitley, from the Princeton class of ’85, and Michelle Obama are members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni, according to The Daily Caller.

America is suffering from an epic case of Armageddon fatigue. Budget showdown, government shutdown, debt ceiling debacle—the stakes are real but the establishment seems to feed off the chaos they create as a means to foment fear and outrage and translate it into campaign donations for themselves. Look closely and you’ll see that something seismic is going on under the surface of the manufactured chaos in D.C. Washington has morphed into an extortion racket, a place where members of the permanent political class threaten to inflict legislative and regulatory pain to extract campaign donations that they can then siphon into...

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said that President Obama is “frustrated” by snags in the Obamacare rollout. But how about American citizens who either are having trouble enrolling in Obamacare or are suffering from the shock of rising healthcare insurance premiums AND the size of their deductibles? The anecdotal stories of “sticker shock” are legion (for example, here is a story from New Jersey). And physicians in New York are howling as well. Of course, there are many winners in the Obamacare rollout. Some households will receive added benefits and healthcare benefits that they previously didn’t have. But the biggest winners...

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said that President Obama is “frustrated” by snags in the Obamacare rollout. But how about American citizens who either are having trouble enrolling in Obamacare or are suffering from the shock of rising healthcare insurance premiums AND the size of their deductibles? The anecdotal stories of “sticker shock” are legion (for example, here is a story from New Jersey). And physicians in New York are howling as well. Of course, there are many winners in the Obamacare rollout. Some households will receive added benefits and healthcare benefits that they previously didn’t have. But the biggest winners...

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said that President Obama is “frustrated” by snags in the Obamacare rollout. But how about American citizens who either are having trouble enrolling in Obamacare or are suffering from the shock of rising healthcare insurance premiums AND the size of their deductibles? The anecdotal stories of “sticker shock” are legion (for example, here is a story from New Jersey). And physicians in New York are howling as well. Of course, there are many winners in the Obamacare rollout. Some households will received added benefits. But the biggest winners are … government cronies and contractors. Here is...