Free Republic

Gloria Vanderbilt left almost all of her estate to her youngest son, Anderson Cooper — and nothing to her estranged middle son, Chris Stokowski, according to her will. The document, filed Monday in Manhattan surrogate court, says the recently deceased socialite fashion icon’s eldest son Leopold “Stan” Stokowski will get her Midtown pad in a co-op at 30 Beekman Place, but “all the rest” of her property goes to the CNN host. Vanderbilt — the great-great-great-granddaughter of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt — died June 17 at age 95 after being diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer. It wasn’t immediately clear exactly...

In an article about U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), the manager of the Turkish state-run news channel TRT World's Research Centre, Dr. Tarek Cherkaoui, encouraged readers to donate to Omar's campaign fund. The article, written for the English-language website of the Turkish pro-government daily Yeni Åžafak and published April 1, 2019, was titled "Media Flak Directed At Ilhan Omar No Surprise At All."[1] At least seven other Turkish media outlets ran the same article, in both English and in Turkish. It should be noted that U.S. federal law prohibits foreign nationals from donating to political candidates. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)...

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the basketball league will stop using the term "owner" to describe the owners of the teams. "We are sensitive to the feelings of the Black millionaires who make up the overwhelming majority of our players," the Commissioner said. "Given the racist history of America it is deplorable that we have been using this term." Silver acknowledged that "we haven't yet settled on a specific replacement terminology. Some have suggested 'overseers' while others favor 'bloated plutocrats.' I think we'll be doing some market research with polls and focus groups to try to find the right language...

There are many takes on the Facebook roll out of a new cryptocurrency called Libra. Most experts in the field have mixed feelings about this new attempt to provide an alternative to fiat currency. There are some good and bad qualities of this new product. The good is that Facebook is providing yet another alternative to fiat currency. Anything that disrupts the central bank and provides alternatives for consumers to pay for products will disempower banks and the Federal ReserveÂ’s monopoly over currency. One of the great qualities of cryptocurrency is that power is being pulled away from the big...

I wrote five years ago about the growing threat of a wealth tax. Some friends at the time told me I was being paranoid. The crowd in Washington, they assured me, would never be foolish enough to impose such a levy, especially when other nations such as Sweden have repealed wealth taxes because of their harmful impact. But, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the foolishness of politicians. I already wrote this year about how folks on the left are demonizing wealth in hopes of creating a receptive environment for this extra layer of tax. And some...

There are people in prison right now for bribery. Judges have been removed from the bench for taking bribes, and people sent to cells for extended periods for offering and/or accepting them. So why aren’t the candidates running for the nomination for the Democratic Party for president among them? You name it, and there’s a Democratic candidate out there offering to give it to people if they’d just vote for them. How is that not bribery? Want free college? Done, just vote for candidate X, Y, or Z. Want your student loans “forgiven”? You got it, just vote for one...

The results are in: she only wanted to try that hot new restaurant. A new study published Friday in the Society for Personality and Social Psychology journal found that a quarter to a third of heterosexual women have gone on a date with a guy they weren’t interested in — just for a free meal. “Foodie calls,” can happen when money’s tight, the grocery store is out of a favorite frozen meal, or a must-try entree is just too extravagant to justify — when the tab comes out of your own bank account. Two studies, the first conducted with 820...

I don't know if this kind of question is allowed on Free Republic, but given that we have lots of people who have created wealth for themselves on here, I am wondering about something. I came into $2000 unexpectedly and thought I would use it to learn how to invest in the stock market as an independent investor. Thankfully, if it went away tomorrow I would be fine. I opened up an account on a low-cost online brokerage. This brokerage has investment ratings--- A, B, C, D, etc. I am wondering if these have any value or are they bupkus?...

Your Harbinger of Freedom is about to arrive, No more work or reason to strive, I have erased your Crossroads for you have met ME there, And Now for the first time in your Life FREEDOM is in The Air, Lifting you into My Perfect WILL, For you Carry My Voice and Write with My Quill, A Fragrant Blossom Truly are you, The Rainwater of morning , Hermons Dew, For you are My Sonshine as I paint your Day, For those I send you to, bringing exactly what I say ! There is no difference from your Voicebox or My...

Don't be fooled by the Americans behind the camera. In today's Hollywood, there's one director -- and that's China. As important as U.S. audiences are, filmmakers know there's a bigger one. And they're willing to do anything they can to tap into it, even if it means becoming co-conspirators with one of the most evil censorship operations in the world. It's the biggest partnership no one knows about, and according to some experts, the most dangerous. The majority of Americans probably have no idea when they buy a ticket to the latest blockbuster that the film they're about to see...

A growing body of evidence shows why Gen Y consumers aren't ideal: because many of them are broke But a troublesome detail has been persistently overlooked over the last decade of wooing this crowd: Millennials—many of them, anyway—are strapped for cash. That’s one of the takeaways of a brand new study from Deloitte’s Center for Consumer Insight, which surveyed over 4,000 American consumers to determine their current consuming habits. And when it came to millennials, one statistic stuck out: Since 1996, the average net worth of consumers under 35 has dropped by 35%. The problem, Abramson believes, is that brands...

We knew there were some decisions coming from the Supreme Court this week, but thus far the only interesting ones (to me at least) have resulted in decisions not to make decisions. First, it was the challenge to a federal law regulating suppressors, and now it’s the lawsuit from an atheist who wants “In God We Trust” removed from the nation’s currency. The court declined to hear the case, creating a dead end for that effort. (Fox News) The Supreme Court rejected an atheist case Monday to remove “In God We Trust,” the national motto, from all coins and...

The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up a legal dispute targeting the inscription of “In God We Trust” on coins and currency from the Department of Treasury. Michael Newdow, an activist who filed the case on behalf of a group of atheists, argued Congress's mandate to inscribe the nation’s motto on U.S. money was a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits Congress from establishing a national religion.

The Supreme Court rejected a case Monday brought by an atheist who wanted to scrub “In God We Trust,” the U.S. motto, from the nation’s currency, claiming it was an entanglement of state and religion. Michael Newdow, an activist who previous challenged reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in schools, had set his sights on money, but lost at the district, circuit and now Supreme Court levels. On behalf of a group of atheists, Mr. Newdow argued America’s money lacked an reference to God until 1864, when it was added in. He said that amounted to an endorsement of religion.

As presidential candidates promise to refuse so-called “dark money” and Members of Congress decry the role of money in politics, a Special Report from CRC dispels one of the biggest myths in political discourse: the Left doesn’t use “dark money.”CRC’s report by investigative researcher Hayden Ludwig, Big Money in Dark Shadows: Arabella Advisors’ Half-billion-dollar “Dark Money” Network, profiles four nonprofit organizations, all controlled by senior leaders at Arabella Advisors, a for-profit consultancy.Read the full report here and find the executive summary of Big Money in Dark Shadows below.* * *Executive Summary The political Left often criticizes—and the mainstream media frequently report on—the network...

Well, what is China like? Is it a smog filled “hell hole”, or is it a Stalinist storm-trooper stomping dictatorship? Just what the heck is it, and what is it like? This is a post that I threw together after reading a fellow American justify the eight wars that America is currently fighting all over the globe. As he said “…it our duty to police the world because no one has it better than us.” Eh? Say what? Of course he was referring to a United States military presence all over the world. And at this I shake my...

It's been well over a couple of years since Apple officially announced the availability of iPhone SE in 2016 and since then the main iPhone line was upgraded on a regular basis but not the SE. But now we know why! Our source which is closely associated with Foxconn's manufacturing facility in India has confirmed the iPhone SE 2 is actually iPhone XE. According to the source, iPhone XE will feature an iPhone X or XS style edge-to-edge 4.8" AMOLED display, but sadly with the notch. The iPhone XE will be having Face ID and no Touch ID is reportedly...

So the Saudis blame Iran for a drone attack eh? DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia accused Tehran of being behind a drone strike that shut down a key oil pipeline in the kingdom, and a newspaper close to the palace called for Washington to launch “surgical” strikes on Iran, raising the specter of escalating tensions as the U.S. boosts its military presence in the Persian Gulf. Washington (that would be the United States) ought to launch strikes on Iran because Saudi Arabia believes Iran bombed KSA?Well, I have a solution to this problem: The House of Saud can formally deed over...

Why you should care Beijing’s recent sales of securities are triggering concerns that it might dump U.S. securities for leverage in the ongoing spat with Washington. It was an unnerving piece of data for investors two weeks back, buried halfway down an esoteric spreadsheet released by the U.S. government that tracks how many Treasuries foreign investors buy and sell. China, the largest foreign creditor to the U.S. government with total Treasury holdings in excess of $1.2 trillion, sold $20 billion of securities with a maturity exceeding one year in March, according to U.S. government data. The sales amounted to China’s...

By Garrett Fahy & Sara J. FahyOslo, Norway - They’re everywhere, they’re handling everything, and they’re loving it. Pushing the strollers. Carrying the kids on their shoulders. Taking the daughters to brunch. Shepherding a gaggle of excited little ones down a parade route on an unseasonably hot May 17th Norwegian Constitution Day. We’re talking about Oslo’s fathers. They’re on daddy daycare and fashionably making it look easy. But two obvious questions occur: where are the mothers? And, what is Norway doing to convince and prepare its fathers to run the kid show? On the first question, the mothers are around,...