Free Republic

A few weeks ago, the New York Times tried to manufacture a McCain land deal scandal and today it’s the Washington Post’s turn. The front-page headline of Post staff writer Matthew Mosk’s story is titled “McCain Pushed Land Swap that Benefits Backer.� It says McCain negotiated a land swap to allow Arizona rancher Fred Ruskin to exchange his checkerboard of property located in the Prescott National Forest for an equal piece of continuous federal land that was later sold for development. Mainly because the developer, Steven A. Betts, who purchased the land from Ruskin is a donor to McCain’s presidential...

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. (the presumptive Republican presidential nominee), is facing questions about his ties to Arizona real estate developers and home builders. DNC Chairman Howard Dean and Arizona Democratic Party spokeswoman Emily Bittner pointed Friday to recent stories by 'The New York Times' and the 'Washington Post' on McCain backing land deals involving SunCor Development Co., Del Webb Corp., and developers Donald Diamond and Fred Ruskin. The deals involved parcels and projects in the Phoenix area, Northern Arizona and Nevada. Republicans dismissed the stories and Democrats' criticism, saying the deals had bipartisan support and were done to benefit...

Donald R. Diamond, a wealthy Arizona real estate developer, was racing to snap up a stretch of virgin California coast freed by the closing of an Army base a decade ago when he turned to an old friend, Senator John McCain. ...Courting local officials and potential partners, Mr. Diamond’s team promised that he could “help get through some of the red tape in dealing with the Department of the Army” because Mr. Diamond “has been very active with Senator McCain,” a partner said in a deposition. ... A longtime political patron, Mr. Diamond is one of the elite fund-raisers Mr....

LOS ANGELES U.S. Rep. Gary Miller has avoided paying millions of dollars in taxes on real estate deals under a tax break that protects people forced to sell their property, but officials dispute they ever made him sell his land, a newspaper reported Sunday. Miller, R-Diamond Bar, sold 165 acres to Monrovia, a suburb about 10 miles east of Los Angeles, in 2002 for a profit of more than $10 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. Following the sale, he told the Internal Revenue Service and the state he was forced to sell under threat by the city of...

Project Could Land City In Another Investigation Developer Gets Barrio Logan Land For $100 http://www.10news.com/news/7064349/detail.html SAN DIEGO -- A planned retail center in San Diego's Barrio Logan was suppose to revitalize the entire area, but the city's redevelopment agency, developer and politicians never got anything done. Now, the lack of progress could land the city in another federal investigation.A memo from the city's redevelopment agency estimated if it had been built, the Mercado Project could have generated $307 million in revenues for the city over 40 years. Instead, the empty 6.5-acre lot is a haven for the homeless.

We’ve all been had. The bottom has long since fallen out of the key group that master-minded the Kyoto Protocol credit scheme, but nobody seemed to have joined the dots. It all began with the flight of Canadian Maurice Strong’s Earth Council from Costa Rica as noted by the National Post’s Peter Foster in May, 2004. With no fanfare, the Earth Council landed in CH2M Hill’s Consumer Road Toronto office towers. The Costa Rican government has been pursuing the Earth Council for payment of U.S.$1.65 million, for the wrongful sale of a tract of land it imprudently donated to the...