Free Republic

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison is set to donate tens of millions of dollars to back Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) for president in 2024, according to reports. Ellison has been planning to support Scott’s presidential bid since he donated $30 million to the pro-Scott super PAC, Opportunity Matters Fund, CNBC reported. After months of speculation, Scott officially kicked off his presidential campaign on Monday in North Charleston, South Carolina. Scott gave a shoutout to “one of his mentors,” Ellison, who sat in a VIP section at the rally. “One of my mentors, Larry Ellison, is with us today, and I am...

interviews with nearly two dozen GOP donors, strategists and voters suggest the desire for a backup option has intensified amid questions about how the Florida governor would fare [cut] With an eye on DeSantis’s vulnerabilities, many donors have kept the door open to other potential White House contenders. One lesson that sticks with many benefactors who helped Jeb Bush raise more than $100 million by July of 2015 only to see the former Florida governor falter is that Trump’s ability to torpedo his rivals — as he is now trying to do with DeSantis — necessitates a backup plan. “My...

Gary Webb, reporter who exposed CIA, dies THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Gary Webb, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who wrote a controversial series of stories linking the CIA to crack cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles, has died at age 49. Webb was found Friday morning at his home in Sacramento County, dead of an apparent suicide. Moving-company workers called authorities after discovering a note posted on his front door that read, "Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance." Webb died of a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Sacramento County coroner's office....

Oracle and Walmart’s plan to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations has been pushed back indefinitely, as President Joe Biden reviews former president Donald Trump’s efforts to address potential security risks from Chinese tech companies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Oracle’s stock was slightly positive in premarket trading Wednesday and Walmart’s was slightly negative. Trump pushed TikTok to find an American buyer by threatening to ban the popular video app due to concerns that its Chinese parent company ByteDance could hand over U.S. users’ data to the Chinese government. TikTok has denied that this...

Billionaire Bill Gates is warning that America is heading for “civil war” and fears that “political polarization” could “bring it all to an end.” Gates made the prediction during a recent keynote conversation at this year’s Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy. The Microsoft co-founder revealed that he plans to end Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 25 years. “The goal for the foundation is to run for another 25 years,” Gates said in the keynote conversation with Forbes’ Chief Content Officer Randall Lane. He revealed that he plans to spend billions of dollars over the next few years on...

Giving an entirely new meaning to the term “collaboration,” Oracle has become a paying customer of Amazon Web Services as part of Larry Ellison’s strategy to make Oracle’s databases available on as many cloud platforms as possible. Ellison opened his remarks on this week’s earnings call by describing the availability of Oracle’s MySQL HeatWave database on AWS and emphasized repeatedly the imperative of customer choice. Declaring that “the multi-cloud era has begun,” Ellison said, “Our job is to give our customers the ability to choose application and infrastructure technology from multiple cloud providers, and then have those different clouds coexist...

REDWOOD CITY (CBS SF) – Longtime Bay Area software giant Oracle announced Friday that it has moved its headquarters to Texas, becoming the latest Silicon Valley firm to relocate during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a regulatory filing obtained by Bloomberg, the company based in Redwood City will be headquartered in Austin. In the filing, the software company said the move “means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part time or all of the time.” Oracle said it would continue to support other office locations throughout the country,...

TikTok's US footprint is saved in a deal that includes Oracle and Walmart owning 20% of a newly formed TikTok Global and an IPO within 12 months. Oracle said it will be TikTok's cloud provider in a deal that gives it a 12.5% stake in the social media network and a key reference customer. Walmart will own a 7.5% stake and explore the intersection of TikTok and e-commerce. In a statement, Oracle said "the technical decision" by TikTok was based on the Zoom reference account. However, TikTok, owned by ByteDance, was facing a Sunday shutdown order over security concerns by...

Oracle Corp said on Monday it would team up with China’s ByteDance to keep TikTok operating in the United States, beating Microsoft Corp in a deal structured as a partnership rather than an outright sale. Getting the transaction across the finish line will rest heavily on Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison, one of the few top technology executives to openly support President Donald Trump, who has ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok amid concerns over the safety of the personal data of U.S. consumers. Key moments: December 2016: Oracle Chief Executive Safra Catz joined then president-elect Trump's transition team, and...

Last week Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison held a fundraiser for President Trump’s re-election campaign at his Rancho Mirage estate near Palm Springs, Calif. At the time the fundraiser was announced, there was silence from The Resistance, which is unusual given the reality of today’s political environment – public figures who support Trump must be shamed and shunned. It turns out about 300 employees of the American multinational computer technology corporation protested Ellison’s fundraiser but they did so the day after the event which seems like an odd way of going about it. Oracle employs about 136,000 people, so...

Dr. Rick Bright, who led the agency tasked with creating a coronavirus vaccine, is alleging that he was demoted for not bowing to pressure to direct money toward hydroxychloroquine, and has hired Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, who became known for representing Christine Blasey Ford, to make his case. Bright, the now-former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), said in a statement Wednesday that he was also removed as deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response and instead given a smaller position at the National Institutes of Health. Bright told the New York Times that he...

Last week Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison held a fundraiser for President Trump’s re-election campaign at his Rancho Mirage estate near Palm Springs, Calif. At the time the fundraiser was announced, there was silence from The Resistance, which is unusual given the reality of today’s political environment – public figures who support Trump must be shamed and shunned. It turns out about 300 employees of the American multinational computer technology corporation protested Ellison’s fundraiser but they did so the day after the event which seems like an odd way of going about it. Oracle employs about 136,000 people,...

Employees at software giant Oracle are demanding that the company’s Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison cancel a fundraiser for President Donald Trump set to take place this week. Recode reports that following Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison’s decision to host a fundraiser for President Trump this week, employees at the company have demanded that Ellison cancel the event. Breitbart News reported that President Donald Trump is expected to attend a campaign fundraising event at Ellison’s Rancho Mirage estate on Wednesday, just two weeks before California’s Super Tuesday primary. Ellison will be hosting supporters on a golf outing at his home on...

The left went bonkers on Twitter when news broke that Big Tech billionaire Larry Ellison was hosting a pro-Trump fundraiser. Lefty outlet Vox Recode characterized the billionaire founder of Oracle Corporation's decision to support President Donald Trump as "unthinkable for a tech titan" and “a major coup for the Trump team." Recode continued: "Ellison is, after all, the country’s fifth-richest person, with a net worth of almost $70 billion.” Vox Recode also issued a harbinger in its Feb. 12 report: “[T]he fundraiser [to be held in Ellison’s estate] is sure to expose the flamboyant 75-year-old billionaire [Ellison] to a new...

A super PAC supporting Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign raised $2.5 million in January, including $1 million from tech billionaire Larry Ellison, according to a report filed Saturday with the Federal Election Commission. The donation from Ellison, the executive chairman of Oracle Corporation, brings his total spending on behalf of Rubio to $4 million, making him among the top donors of the 2016 cycle. Conservative Solutions PAC spent nearly $11 million last month, mostly on ads and direct mail attacking Rubio’s rival for the Republican presidential nomination Ted Cruz and his former rival Chris Christie, who has since dropped out. The...

A notorious al Qaeda magazine is encouraging lone-wolf terrorist attacks on U.S. economic leaders, including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett. The list in Inspire magazine also included industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch, internet entrepreneur Larry Ellison, and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. A prominent economist was also on the list but asked that his name be withheld. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was named, though not Janet Yellen, who succeeded him. Also pictured was Jim Walton, one of the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, although he was misidentified in the caption as his late father, Sam Walton. Several...

Call it failure to launch for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 80%as, despite a minor bump in the polls a month or so after his April presidential campaign launch, the 44-year-old junior senator from Florida is now officially relegated to the middle of the pack—where he’s been unable to climb out. Virtually every major pollster has shown Rubio’s chances at being a serious contender for the GOP nomination slipping away... Rubio was supposed to be the golden boy who could woo the donor class but still excite the grassroots. He’s succeeded in winning over lots of big-money backing, with billionaire donors...

The names of the tech workers in this story have been changed.Ten thousand miles from Silicon Valley, in a room near the Black Sea, Yegor Karpenchekov dreams of money. At night, while the rest of Odessa sleeps and cocaine smugglers drift in and out of the port under cover of darkness, Yegor logs onto FaceTime and talks to a 70-year-old woman in San Francisco. Her name is Sally Faubion, and five months ago she recruited Yegor from the freelancer marketplace UpWork to code her apps. She believes "divine intervention" brought them together; for Yegor, it was likely $20 per hour...

Look, up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane ... No, it’s two planes! Two taxpayer-funded planes, that is. And on those two planes last Thursday were two occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, jetting across country to the same destination — L.A. Separate planes. Your money. Ready for the pain? You’re going to need a No. 2 pencil and scrap paper for this. Estimates are that Air Force One costs about $206,000 per hour to operate. You could go on Priceline right now and book a round-trip itinerary from Boston to LAX for between $500 and...

An American worth less than $1.55 billion could not land on this year's "The Forbes 400," the annual ranking for the richest people in America. The cut-off increase from last year's $1.3 billion disqualified 113 poor billionaires for this year's list. Bill Gates once again lorded over his fellow wealthy Americans for the 21st consecutive year with a healthy $81 billion, up $9 billion from 2013. He outpaced Warren Buffet ($67 billion), Larry Ellison ($50 billion) and the Koch brothers' Charles and David (each worth $42 billion) to round out the top five. Michael Bloomberg ($35 billion) managed to slide...