Free Republic

GOP elites have blown $65 million on Jeb Bush so far this campaign cycle and have another $30 million to blow on his failed campaign. Roll Call reported: The spectacular bust of Jeb Bush's campaign for president so far is as much a story about Bush himself as it is about the failure of Right to Rise, the shock-and-awe super PAC that was supposed to launch him into the lead and keep him there. Right to Rise raised $103 million in 2015 and has spent more than $65 million so far. But nine months after he got into the race,...

on Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. It would become perhaps the most condemned official act of Clinton's political career. A New York Times editorial called it "a shocking abuse of presidential power." The usually Clinton-friendly New Republic noted it "is often mentioned as Exhibit A of Clintonian sliminess." Congressman Barney Frank added, "It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous." Marc Rich was wanted for a list of charges going...

The daughter of former President Bill Clinton and ex-secretary of state Hillary Clinton explained in a recent interview why she left lucrative professions and opted for working with her family’s philanthropic foundation. 'I was curious if I could care about (money) on some fundamental level, and I couldn't,' she said. Hillary Clinton insists she isn’t "well-off" and now daughter Chelsea, according to a recent interview, claims she couldn't care less about money. “I was curious if I could care about (money) on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t,” she told Fast Company in an interview that ran in the magazine's...

They could not have pulled it off so behind-the-scenes easily were it not for Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State at the time it went down as noiselessly as the Titanic Hillary Clinton’s country of birth is not under the microscope of the ‘birthers’, and most tragically, nor is Canada, the country of the birth of her Clinton Foundation mega millions. 2016 Democrat hopeful Clinton was not, like the currently beleaguered Senator Ted Cruz, born in Canada, but it is documented fact that the Clinton Foundation was both born and nurtured to maturity in the Land of the Maple Leaf....

Charles Koch is “disappointed” with the line-up of Republican candidates in the 2016 cycle, and is surprised by the lack of influence he and his brother have wielded so far. In an interview with the Financial Times, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist, said he’ll eventually support a candidate who he agrees with on some things with, but that it’s hard to get excited. He said a list presented to all the candidates about the Kochs' political arm's priorities “doesn’t seem to faze them much. You’d think we could have more influence.”

(CNN)--Dick Uilhlein, one of the top Republican megadonors nationwide, has decided to back Ted Cruz's presidential campaign and has donated $1 million to his super PAC. Uilhlein committed on Wednesday evening, according to Drew Ryun, a super PAC official with Keep The Promise PAC. "He is one of the top five courted GOP donors," Ryun told CNN. "For us to land him is a good shot in the arm for Ted, and it really sets the stage going into Iowa."(continued)

Dick Uilhlein, one of the top Republican megadonors nationwide, has decided to back Ted Cruz's presidential campaign and has donated $1 million to his super PAC. Uilhlein committed on Wednesday evening, according to Drew Ryun, a super PAC official with Keep The Promise PAC. "He is one of the top five courted GOP donors," Ryun told CNN. "For us to land him is a good shot in the arm for Ted, and it really sets the stage going into Iowa." Uilhlein previously backed Scott Walker's campaign and gave $2.5 million to his super PAC. Uilhlein, of Illinois, started the shipping...

You can always count on Democratic candidates for president to bash millionaires, even while cultivating their friendship and support behind the scenes. Yet and still, what you are never likely to hear is their inclusion of college presidents in this august group. Nevertheless, the latest Chronicle of Higher Education tells us that "32 leaders of private colleges earned more than $1 million in 2013." Here they are: ~ Lee C. Bollinger of Columbia--$4,615,230 ~ Amy Gutmann of Penn--$3,065,746 ~ Nido Qubein of High Point University--$2,909,148 ~ Richard M. Joel of Yeshiva--$2,503,794 ~ Nicholas S. Zeppos of Vanderbilt--$2,147,452 ~ Scott S....

**SNIP** Among all millionaire voters surveyed - Democrats, Republicans and independents - Hillary Clinton is still the overall favorite. Clinton was the top candidate among 34 percent of total respondents, followed by Rubio with 13 percent. Trump and Carson tied for third, with 9 percent.

Her campaign has centered on her claim that she will be the champion of the middle class if she is elected to the White House. So the average person will no doubt find it easy to relate to the beachfront mansion that Hillary Clinton is renting for her summer vacation in The Hamptons.

July 31, 2015 (NewsBusters) -- In response to a series of incriminating under-cover videos from The Center for Medical Progress about the major abortion provider, organizations have been cutting ties -- or denying ties -- to Planned Parenthood. But where nonprofits are concerned, tax records keep the story straight. Between 2010 and 2013, no fewer than 966 individual organizations donated to Planned Parenthood. Of those, 31 gave more than $1 million each during those four years, totaling $374,199,059. The seven highest donors made up $324.8 million of that. These largest Planned Parenthood donors include Warren Buffett, George Soros, Bill Gates, and others....

If there is any story on this blog that you’re going to grow tired of reading, it’s the one about the former NBA or NFL athlete who is now broke and living with his mama. These stories are everywhere, and it has people wondering if the Harvard-educate d financial managers being employed by professional sports leagues are actually helping these guys protect their wealth or if the players are being chewed up and spit out by people who could care less about them. But we’re all responsible for our outcomes, and when we read stories like this one, we have...

Hillary Clinton‘s tax returns will not only set a major obstacle in her campaign to prove herself a Regular Person™ but, according to CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny, they prove her past statements to be completely false. According to her latest tax returns, released by the campaign late this week, the Clintons earned nearly $141 million from 2007 to 2014. And as CNN’s senior Washington correspondent Zeleny told John King on Sunday, such enormous wealth definitively contradicts the candidate’s assertion to Diane Sawyer that she and her husband were “dead broke.”

More millionaires have left China over the past 14 years than any other country, according to a new study reporting where the wealthy choose to live. Asia Unhedged views this gold-plated exodus from China as another country’s gain. The report from New World Wealth, a company which provides information on the global wealth sector, lists the top eight countries that saw the most outflows and inflows of millionaires between 2000 and 2014. Out of the top 10 nations with the most millionaires, China came in fifth, with 608,500 millionaires in 2014. The US topped the list with 4.1 million. However,...

In laying out her economic vision for the country, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton attacked banks and Wall Street, and advocated for a less complicated tax code in which the rich pay their “fair share.” But a look at donors to her 2008 campaign paint a different picture, one in which she is quite cozy with the country’s uber-wealthy. In April, just before her first campaign kick-off, the Center for Public Integrity released “12 things you need to know about Hillary Clinton.” In their list, they point out that her “top 2008 presidential donors generally came from four places:...

A top establishment Republican donor reportedly wants Donald Trump banned from the first presidential debate... And that is not sitting well with some of the party’s top donors, many of whom favor pro-amnesty legislation and do want to see their establishment darlings like Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 80% challenged on the issue. According to an Associated Press report, “Republican donor John Jordan said Monday that GOP leaders should take steps to block Trump’s access to the first presidential debate in early August.” “Someone in the party ought to start some sort of petition saying, ‘If Trump’s going...

Rapper 50 Cent filed for bankruptcy on Monday. The news came as bit of a surprise since The New York Times just described him as a man of "exceptional business instincts" less than a week ago. In May, Forbes pegged his net worth at $155 million. 50 Cent, aka Curtis Jackson III, reportedly earned between $60 million and $100 million from a stake in Vitamin Water when it sold to Coca-Cola in 2007, according to The Washington Post. Yet in the abbreviated Chapter 11 filing Monday, Jackson's lawyers said that his assets range from $10 million to $50 million, including...

Campus Reform Correspondent Cabot Phillips played "Candidate's Cribs" with young people in front of the White House. After trying to guess which Presidential candidate has lived in a series of mansions, many of them were shocked to find out that Hillary Clinton had lived in all four of them.

A recent study by real-estate brokerage Redfin showed that more people are looking to move out of the Bay Area than ever before. Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said that tech workers and their high salaries could be responsible for making Silicon Valley unaffordable. A new Redfin study demonstrates a correlation between rising home prices and hiring by big tech companies.They found that, as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have ramped up their hiring in various cities in the past year, the cost of homes in those cities has also gone up. "For every 1% increase in technology workers, there’s a...

THE AVARICE of Bill and Hillary Clinton is a wonder to behold. They crave wealth, it seems, even more than they crave power, and display no qualms about exploiting their political stature to amass it. According to a required financial disclosure filing last week, the former president and his wife have collected more than $30 million since January 2014, most of it from speaking engagements for which they charged an average of $240,000 each. To put that figure in perspective, what the Clintons earn per speech is nearly five times what the median US household earns per year. Since leaving...