Free Republic

Seventy-two senators and 302 members of the House of Representatives cashed a check from the pharmaceutical industry ahead of the 2020 election — representing more than two-thirds of Congress.During the first year of Covid, Pfizer’s political action committee alone contributed to 228 lawmakers. Amgen’s PAC donated to 218, meaning that each company helped to fund the campaigns of nearly half the lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Overall, the sector donated $14 million.In addition to giving roughly $1 million to members of Congress, Pfizer also wrote checks to 1,048 individual candidates in state legislative races.

In the final chapter of his 1967 book "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proposed a bold approach to eliminating poverty. "The solution to poverty," he wrote, "is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income." Five decades later, the approach is being tested across the U.S. The idea is simple but controversial. People receive a set amount of money periodically with no strings attached. Advocates believe that this gives recipients, often in the most marginalized groups, freedom to spend it in ways that are most beneficial...

Investigators believe Barney Harris came to Alamance County to steal drugs and money from the Mexican cartel. They say Harris and his brother-in-law tied up a cartel member before shooting him in the back of the head. A shootout began, and Harris was killed in the gunfire. A popular Union County teacher described by family and friends as a devoted father, teacher and coach was fatally wounded in a shootout when he and his brother-in-law tried to rob members of a Mexican drug cartel, Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson said Wednesday. Barney Dale Harris, 40, taught Spanish and was head...

Why are Democrats so pro open borders and pro-crime? It stands to reason to me that the cartels must be funding their campaigns. It goes further than just getting more illegals to vote. They are actually anti law inforcement, anti ICE, and pro every kind of crime and open borders. Who really benefits? Follow the money.

The Drug Enforcement Administration seized more than $4 billion in cash from people suspected of drug activity over the last decade, but $3.2 billion of those seizures were never connected to any criminal charges. A report by the Justice Department Inspector General released Wednesday found that the DEA's gargantuan amount of cash seizures often didn't relate to any ongoing criminal investigations, and 82 percent of seizures it reviewed ended up being settled administratively—that is, without any judicial review—raising civil liberties concerns. In total, the Inspector General reports the DEA seized $4.15 billion in cash since 2007, accounting for 80 percent...

The Hizbullah terrorist organization is in hot water over a scheme to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in multi-national drug trafficking revenues. According to a report published by the World News Tribune, the Lebanon-based terrorist organization is using American banks and other financial institutions to process money earned from trafficking in South America. The complaint filed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Justice, charges Hizbullah with using the money to buy used cars in the U.S. for transport to West Africa, where they are then sold, mostly in Benin. U.S. Attorney Preet Bhara noted, "It...

The Washington Post reports on the nearly impossible task of stopping billions of dollars in drug money – almost all of it in cash – from moving South across the US border and into Mexico. The drug cartels are collecting an estimated $20-$25 billion a year from their drug sales in the United States and immigration authorities in the US and on the Mexican side of the border are confiscating maybe one percent. “At the Laredo port alone, 22,000 cars cross into Mexico every day, plus 12,000 pedestrians and 6,000 tractor-trailers. They all can't be searched, officials say, and $1...

As Obama dithers about homeland security and presses on with a lawsuit against Arizona, the terrorists continue to plot this country's destruction. In a Daily News editorial dated July 11, 2010 there is a report that "Mexican authorities have rolled up a Hezbollah network being built in Tijuana, right across the border from Texas [sic] and closer to American homes than the terrorist hideouts in the Bekaa Valley are to Israel. Surprise, surprise. This is not the first time that firm evidence points to the infiltration of terrorists coming into the country. According to a Kuwaiti newspaper, this "Hezbollah network...

More than $3 billion in cash has been openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years, a sum so large that U.S. investigators believe top Afghan officials and their associates are sending billions of diverted U.S. aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad. The cash -- packed into suitcases, piled onto pallets and loaded into airplanes -- is declared and legal to move. But U.S. and Afghan officials say they are targeting the flows in major anticorruption and drug trafficking investigations because of their size relative to Afghanistan's small economy and...

South of the border, down Mexico way, a new and savage revolution rages just beyond our inspection lanes. After less than five years of fighting, estimates of the dead have reached 22,000. The rate of killing accelerates each month. And Washington covers its eyes like a kid at a scary movie. Well, the Mexican narco-insurgency, in which well-armed guerrilla forces confront the authority and presence of the state, is our No. 1 security challenge. The chaos in northern Mexico has far deeper implications for our country than Islamist terror or even an Iranian nuclear capability (as grim as those threats...

West Africa is becoming a new source of income for al Qaeda. So the U.S. is attacking the problem with some unique tactics. That includes putting sanctions on two senior military commanders of the African nation Guinea-Bissau. Air force chief of staff Ibraima Papa Camara and former navy chief of staff Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto were accused of being "drug kingpins" and key members of a drug smuggling operation that moves cocaine from South America to Europe and the Persian Gulf, via Guinea-Bissau. The sanctions freeze any assets the two men have in the United States, and prohibit Americans...

A Johnstown-area defense firm under investigation for possible contract fraud received an infusion of cash during its start-up years from a narcotics trafficker with whom one of the company's founders admitted engaging in the drug trade. At the time, Kuchera Industries was a startup company that assembled electronics components and sought federal contracts -- contracts that would ultimately make the company and its sister firm, Kuchera Defense Systems, multimillion-dollar businesses. Peter Whorley, a Florida man and business associate of William Kuchera, one of the top officers at the companies, put up $50,000 to help Kuchera Industries find its feet, according...

A Rosemount teen got to play high roller for a day after finding a plastic bag containing $18,000 in a highway ditch, and he gave away thousands of dollars to classmates on Tuesday before authorities got involved. Dakota County officials are releasing few details about the source of the money, but they have a pretty compelling clue: When the student, 16, led them back to the spot where he found the money, they discovered 4 pounds of marijuana and some scales. "This is tied in to drugs, obviously," said Sgt. Joe Leku of the Dakota County Drug Task Force. He...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/February/09-ag-162.html Hundreds of Alleged Sinaloa Cartel Members and Associates Arrested in Nationwide Takedown of Mexican Drug Traffickers “Operation Xcellerator” Takes 23 Tons of Narcotics Off America’s Streets and Seizes More Than $59 Million in Drug Money WASHINGTON – Today Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., announced the arrest of more than 750 individuals on narcotics-related charges and the seizure of more than 23 tons of narcotics as part of a 21-month multi-agency law enforcement investigation known as "Operation Xcellerator." The Attorney General was joined in announcing the current results of Operation Xcellerator by...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/0902/090210boston.htm February 10, 2009 Boston area man sentenced to seven and a half years in federal prison for laundering drug money Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents helped crack the case BOSTON - A Boston-area man was sentenced on February 10, 2009 to seven and a half years in prison on charges of money laundering and drug distribution in connection with a Jamaica Plain money remitting business known as Boston Envio. Claudio Tejeda Andujar, 35, (a/k/a Jose Rivera and a/k/a Dagoberto Lazacha) was a partner in Boston Envio that between 2004 and 2006, wire...

A 52-year-old New Orleans man was arrested Saturday and booked with first degree murder after he confessed that he stabbed his mother to death earlier that day for money to buy narcotics, according to New Orleans Police Department spokesman Garry Flot. Tony Declues said he stabbed 73-year-old Louise Declues to death at their home in the 1300 block of Cambronne Street for drug money, Flot said. Second District officers responding to a call of a female down inside of a home found the victim with apparent multiple stab wounds about 3:15 p.m., Flot said. Emergency medical personnel arrived on the...

Two men traveling south on Interstate 85 southwest of Lexington Tuesday told Davidson County sheriff's deputies that the $88,000 in cash they had hidden in their car was to buy a house in Atlanta. Officers with the sheriff office's Interstate Criminal Enforcement unit didn't believe the story after a drug-sniffing dog found a strong odor of narcotics inside the car. No drugs were found, and the two men weren't charged with a crime, but officers did keep the money, citing a federal drug assets seizure and forfeiture law. Deputies first stopped the car for following too closely to another vehicle,...

A Quincy woman who tried to board a plane at Logan International Airport in February with $46,950 stuffed inside her bra says she was heading to Texas for plastic surgery on her buttocks and breast. But, in a lawsuit filed yesterday, Ileana Valdez said a male Drug Enforcement Administration agent told her she had a ''nice body" and didn't need any surgery -- then seized the cash, claiming it was drug money. Valdez, 26, a single mother who was born in the Dominican Republic and is a US citizen, is petitioning to get the cash back in the suit filed...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Vicente Fox called recent U.S. measures to stem illegal immigration a step back for bilateral relations on Friday and said Mexican migrants do jobs "that not even blacks want to do." In comments likely to raise the temperature of the immigration debate, Fox defended the role of undocumented Mexican workers in the United States to a group of Texas business people meeting in Mexico. "There is no doubt that Mexicans, filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States," he...

Kids threatened over drug money 08:36 AM CST on Thursday, January 27, 2005 By TAWNELL D. HOBBS and GRETEL C. KOVACH / The Dallas Morning News The discovery of a large sum of money by at least one South Dallas elementary student has proven to be more trouble than treasure, sparking concerns that a drug dealer may resort to violence to retrieve the cash. Authorities and parents say the drug dealer already has threatened children at their homes to recover the money – perhaps as much as $100,000. The money apparently was found in the area of J.J. Rhoads Learning...