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The Koch brothers, the most powerful conservative mega donors in the United States, will not use their $400 million political arsenal to try to block Republican front-runner Donald Trump's path to the presidential nomination, a spokesman told Reuters on Wednesday. The decision by the billionaire industrialists is another setback to Republican establishment efforts to derail the New York real estate mogul's bid for the White House, and follows speculation the Kochs would soon launch a "Trump Intervention." "We have no plans to get involved in the primary," said James Davis, spokesman for Freedom Partners, the Koch brothers' political umbrella group....

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is "hiding" his tax returns from primary voters who have a right to know what's in them, Texas senator and GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz told "Face the Nation" in an interview taped for Sunday's broadcast.

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/02/25/rubio-trump-would-selling-watches-if-not-inheritance/80960194/

As former Florida governor Jeb Bush suspended his presidential bid Saturday night, new details were trickling in about the massive investments the Right to Rise super PAC made to prop up his candidacy. As of Saturday, the group had raced through at least $95.7 million out of the $118.6 million it had collected by the end of January, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Almost $87 million went into a barrage of television ads, online videos, slick mailers and voter phone calls. The group flew an airplane with a banner mocking Donald Trump over a rally of his supporters, produced...

Jeb Bush, the Republican establishment’s last, best hope, began his 2016 campaign rationally enough, with a painstakingly collated operational blueprint his team called, with NFL swagger, “The Playbook.” On page after page kept safe in a binder, the playbook laid out a strategy for a race his advisors were certain would be played on Bush’s terms – an updated, if familiar version of previous Bush family campaigns where cash, organization and a Republican electorate ultimately committed to an electable center-right candidate would prevail. Story Continued Below The playbook, hatched by Sally Bradshaw, Mike Murphy and a handful of other Bush...

Get out your tiny violins. Martin Shkreli, the man America loves to hate, appears to have lost $15 million in bitcoins after he tried to buy the rights to Kanye West's new album. The now-ex-CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, who hiked the price of HIV medication by 5,000 percent, was trying to buy Kanye West's album from his record label so he could sell it on to his fans.

John McAfee, better known in recent years for his brushes with the law in Belize and Guatemala than for his anti-virus software, filed to run for United States president as a Libertarian candidate. McAfee told USA Today he plans to run on a platform of pardoning all marijuana users in prison and and to "stop the U.S. from being the world's policeman." Doug Craig, a national board member of the Libertarian Party, said,"He fits right in with our political philosophy.: Earlier this year, McAfee vowed to run as a member of the Cyber Party to "disrupt the political status quo"...

First he was forced to quit his job as New York governor after spending a rumored $15,000 on hookers, then he lost his marriage after an affair with a spin doctor 23 years his junior was exposed. Now disgraced Democrat Eliot Spitzer, 56, is being investigated by police over claims that he choked a woman in a $1,000-a-night suite at the Plaza Hotel near New York's Central Park. According to police sources who spoke to the New York Post, Svetlana Travis called cops at 8pm on Saturday to say she was having a breakdown and had slashed her wrists. She...

Some of the biggest Republican donors, who collectively have contributed tens of millions of dollars to shape the presidential race, are tightening their purse strings out of frustration with their inability to boost their favored candidates, or to slow Donald Trump. Rather than continuing to write huge checks to support the cluster of establishment candidates jockeying to emerge as the leading alternative to Trump, a billionaire real estate showman roundly despised by the GOP elite, these donors have mostly retreated to the sidelines. They're watching anxiously, hoping that the field sorts itself out, according to interviews with a half dozen...

Many white Americans like to believe the United States is a country with a level playing field, where everyone has a fair chance of making it. But a recent Bloomberg article states that race has a lot to do with your economic success. Bloomberg gathered data from economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Writer Victoria Stilwell also posed the question: Would it be possible to calculate the odds of being a millionaire for anyone in the U.S., based on age, education and race? The economists, who had already conducted extensive research on the subject, found that race...

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.