Free Republic

GoFundMe removed a crowdfunding campaign on behalf of jailed Baltimore rioters Sunday, a day after conservatives began complaining about the effort. Greg Scott, vice president of media communications for Alliance Defending Freedom, said he first contacted the company Saturday about the rioters’ crowdfunding campaign. His Twitter posts decrying the campaign were picked up by conservative radio talk-show host Dana Loesch and Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoft. “We first started poking GFM yesterday by contacting the site directly and then via a series of tweets,” Mr. Scott said in a Sunday email. “The purpose has really been to either expose the...

Bernie Sanders' nascent presidential campaign announced Friday that it raised more than $1.5 million in its first 24 hours, a number that far outpaces what Republican presidential hopefuls posted in their first day. Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, kicked off his dark horse campaign for the Democratic nomination on Thursday with an email to supporters and a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol. Since then, more than 100,000 people signed up for the campaign and 35,000 people donated money, according to a campaign press release. The average donation was $43.54. "This is a remarkable start...

Embattled Clinton Foundation and Clinton Health Access Initiative its major health-related offshoot received over $7 million from the US government in recent years, according to an analysis of public records conducted by the Washington Free Beacon. The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), chaired by Bill Clinton and run by the former president’s long-time associate Ira Magaziner, has received $6,010,898 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) since 2010. CHAI, the biggest arm of the Clinton family’s charitable efforts, accounting for 60 percent of all spending, received $3,193,500 in fiscal years 2010, 2011, and 2012, according to federal contracts,...

Gee, I wonder why? After all, many of them haven’t yet been identified. Ken Vogel explains that the publicity surrounding the influence-peddling schemes at chez Clinton has potential donors looking elsewhere, but … does that apply to those who still want to buy influence? Hmmm. Actually, the fact that so little goes to charity — and that the rate (6.4% in 2013) has become so public — is what has them rethinking their commitments:

David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research showed up at a stockholder’s meeting for Boeing. He asked Boeing CEO W. James (Jim) McNerney, Jr to turn over email correspondence between Hillary Clinton and her State Department and Boeing. McNerney turned him down flat. This is the second time in a week that a CEO has refused a request from a member of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Last week, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt also refused to release emails between GE and Hillary Clinton. GE received favorable treatment from the Algerian government because of...

Eighty-four percent of campaign contributions made by a group of 614 Harvard faculty, instructors, and researchers between 2011 and the third quarter of 2014 went to federal Democratic campaigns and political action committees, according to a Crimson analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. During the three years, the Harvard affiliates represented in analyzed public filings gave nearly $3 million to federal campaigns and candidates. Each of Harvard’s schools leaned to the left in the contributions made by their affiliates, many by wide margins. Ninety-six percent of donations in the data set from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which includes...

Airline giant Boeing said this week that it will not release correspondence pertaining to the State Department’s work in securing a Russian contract for the company, a donor to the foundation of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Boeing recently rejected a shareholder resolution proposed by David Almasi, a Boeing shareholder and the executive director of the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research, asking the company to disclose more information about its charitable giving. At the company’s Monday shareholder meeting, Almasi asked chief executive James McNerney “to set the record straight that every communication between Boeing and the State Department was...

--snip-- Back in Arkansas, she once had a Clinton family crony from Tyson Foods invest $1,000 in cattle futures on her behalf. That relatively tiny sum mysteriously exploded into a $100,000 profit. Professional investors suggested that the odds of such unheard of profit-making were 31 trillion to 1. And there was most definitely "something wrong" about the taxes — or lack of them — that Clinton paid on the profits. She failed to report fully her capital gains to the IRS. That lapse earned her some $14,600 in tax penalties and back interest.

--SNIP-- Any cheap grifter can make money illicitly, but it takes an expert to make money in two different ways from the same grift. And let’s face it, this is a natural strategy for Hillary: When she’s not talking about strong women and shattering the glass ceiling, she’s hiding behind why-is-everyone-so-mean-to-me victimhood. Those are the two sides of her coming “first woman president” campaign pitch. Begging lefty suckers to fork over money in indignation that this fabulously rich family and its fabulously rich “charity” are being challenged for accepting some fabulously lucrative donations from foreigners at curious times is vintage...

From Joshua Green and Jennifer Epstein writing at Bloomberg Politics, confirming yet another set of facts from Peter Schweizer’s “Clinton Cash” and showing that Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, lied in claiming government funding for the International Youth Foundation went down when Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State: Former president Bill Clinton stepped down from his position at Laureate International Universities, part of Laureate Education Inc., on Friday. His five-year term as “honorary chancellor,” the company and Clinton’s staff said, had expired. But Peter Schweizer, the conservative author of a forthcoming book examining the Clintons’ financial dealings, suggests a different explanation:...

New information about donations to Hillary Clinton’s family foundation and her husband have her on the defensive. It’s also going to make it harder to go on offense.When Clinton announced her campaign, she outlined four big fights she would take on. One of the pillars of her pitch was that she wanted to fix “our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment.”This position has political appeal. Voters think the system is rigged, and they think big money helps those in power keep it rigged. For a...

And so it begins. The New York Times and the Washington Post on Thursday published separate investigative reports digging deep into the finances of Hillary and Bill Clinton, their family foundation, and the overlap between their interests and those of their global patrons. Neither report provides a smoking gun, but both illustrate a politically fraught dynamic that is expected to dog Hillary throughout her 2016 campaign. As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman...

Hillary Clinton may be reticent to speak on the subject of foreign policy just yet - she's peppered her rare interactions with actual media with bland policy positions mostly having to do with middle class Americans and favorite burrito proteins - but that might be because the Clinton Foundation is still trying to work out how they're going to accept all that foreign cash while one of their founders is campaigning to be leader of the free world. Turns out, they're still going to accept the foreign cash, at least as far as six key countries, with whom the US...

Major contributors like the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer would get a break on gift taxes to secretive non-profit groups. The House on Wednesday with little fanfare passed legislation that would protect major donors like the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer from having to pay gift taxes on huge donations to secret money political groups. The legislation, which now heads to the Senate, is seen by fundraising operatives as removing one of the few remaining potential obstacles to unfettered big-money spending by nonprofit groups registered under a section of the Tax Code — 501(c) — that allows them to shield...

On July 17, country singers Tim McGraw and Billy Currington will headline a fundraiser for gun control group Sandy Hook Promise in Connecticut. Sandy Hook Promise was founded after Adam Lanza stole various firearms then carried out a heinous attack on Sandy Hook Elementary. NBC Connecticut quoted McGraw as saying: Out of this tragedy a group was formed that made a promise to honor the lives lost and turn it into a moment of transformation. Sandy Hook Promise teaches that we can do something to protect our children from gun violence. I want to be a part of that promise...

Hillary Clinton seeks $2B to end big money politics [WTH?] The Clinton Foundation said late Wednesday that it will continue to accept donations from foreign governments during Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, despite concerns that such gifts will create a conflict of interest for the Democratic front-runner. The foundation's board said that donations directly to the foundation would only be allowed from six governments — Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom. However, other governments could continue to participate in the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), a subsidiary program that encourages donors to match contributions from others to tackle...

He has a name (sort of)! Environmental activist and billionaire Tom Steyer served notice on Monday that he will use his wealth to try to bring climate change into the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, vowing to target Republican hopefuls who deny the connection between burning fossil fuels and rising global temperatures.Steyer’s NextGen Climate political action committee launched what it calls the Hot Seat campaign aimed at calling out Republican candidates for taking money from the billionaire Koch brothers. The group will target Senator Rand Paul, who is expected to launch his presidential campaign on Tuesday.Steyer’s PAC found limited success...

Environmental activist and billionaire Tom Steyer served notice on Monday that he will use his wealth to try to bring climate change into the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, vowing to target Republican hopefuls who deny the connection between burning fossil fuels and rising global temperatures. Steyer’s NextGen Climate political action committee launched what it calls the Hot Seat campaign aimed at calling out Republican candidates for taking money from the billionaire Koch brothers. The group will target Senator Rand Paul, who is expected to launch his presidential campaign on Tuesday.

A new governmental report shows American taxpayers have been forced to send $1.5 billion in federal funds to the nation’s biggest abortion business, Planned Parenthood. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Two years ago, pro-life members of Congress sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) requesting a comprehensive report on which abortion advocacy groups Americans were forced to fund with their tax dollars. Today the government watchdog (GAO) released the requested report which details funding for six abortion advocacy groups over a three year period (2010-2012).The six organizations researched were Planned Parenthood, Population Council, International Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher...

Editor’s Note: This excerpt, from a book by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, first appeared on the left-wing site Salon. We reprint in part here.  Hillary tapped Kris Balderston, the hit list author, to keep the Clinton political network humming at State. A longtime lieutenant to both Clintons, Balderston, who called everyone “buddy,” liked to talk in salesman’s terms about Hillary’s “power to convene” and her commitment to making sure her partners could “do well by doing good.” What he meant was that Hillary could use the Clinton Rolodex to focus private-sector money, government power, and the expertise at colleges and...