Free Republic

Occupy Wall Street buys $15 million of Americans' medical debt Tue, Nov 12 2013By Elizabeth Dilts(Reuters) - An Occupy Wall Street spin-off group has bought up $14.7 million worth of Americans' personal medical debt and forgiven it over the last year as part of its Rolling Jubilee project, the group announced Monday.The Rolling Jubilee project, organized by Occupy Wall Street's Strike Debt group, has so far spent $400,000 to buy the debt, in the process relieving 2,693 people of the money they owed for medical services Occupy thinks should be free."Think of it as a bailout of the 99 percent...

Colorado - The Gilmore case attracted national attention because he supported demonstrations at an Occupy Wall Street encampment a block away from where the fire was started. Occupy activists were protesting against economic inequality and government policies favoring the wealthy. The early-morning fire caused an estimated $10 million damage to a four-story apartment complex under construction and the occupied Penny Flats condominium and retail building next door.

The House Oversight Committee wants to find out why the Park Service behaved so bizarrely. ... Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a former prosecutor, almost drove National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis into incoherence with his relentless questioning. Gowdy wanted to know why Jarvis had allowed “pot-smoking” Occupy Wall Street protesters to camp overnight illegally in Washington’s McPherson Square park for 100 days, yet put up barricades to keep veterans out of war memorials on the first day of the shutdown. By not issuing a single citation to the Occupy campers, Gowdy argued, the Park Service was treating them...

Matt Damon’s new sci-fi blockbuster 'Elysium' has received a deluge of criticism that it is pushing a socialist agenda - inspired by the Occupy movement - down moviegoers’ throats. Set in the year 2154, ‘Elysium’ imagines a world where the wealthy elite have abandoned an overcrowded Earth for a better life aboard a luxury space station. While Earth is characterized by crime-riddled and poverty-stricken slums, the super-rich live in Elysium, an exclusive gated community in space complete with a cure for all illnesses and robots that enforce strict anti-immigration laws. The extreme disparity between the haves and have nots in...

John Pike -- the University of California, Davis police lieutenant whom the university fired for pepper spraying Occupy protesters Nov. 18, 2011 -- has filed a workers' compensation claim based on a "psychiatric injury." UC should change its motto from "Fiat lux" ("Let there be light") to "Fiat meum" ("Where's mine?"). The protesters got theirs when they sued the University of Deep Pockets. Ironically, they were protesting rising tuition while telling themselves they were underdogs who courageously stood up to authority. Please, their demands for more state money were in perfect harmony with the aspirations of UC brass. Protesters set...

Media in general do not report things that are not happening; perhaps an artifact of human nature, but important non-events simply are not news. The fact that nobody in the US starves to death for lack of food is a non-event, as is the decreasing rate of cancer or the absence of polio infections. These non-events are actually bigger news than the latest warehouse fire or shark attack, but such is the news business. Another non-event worthy of reporting is the complete death of Occupy Wall Street. Once billed as the future of political discourse, and heralded by many left-wing...

Men's Wearhouse executive chairman George Zimmer has been "terminated," the clothing retailer said on Wednesday. Zimmer opened the company's first store in Houston in 1973. He's been the bearded face of Men's Wearhouse (MW) in television ads for years, famously promising men "You're going to like the way you look. I guarantee it."

To think it only took the world's most (in)famous whistleblower to get the NSA to disclose that it had heroically managed to prevent terrorist attacks involving the New York Stock Exchange (we supposed they refer to the Manhattan-based TV studio and not the actual exchange where the servers are now housed in Mahwah, NJ) and the NY Subway. Because whereas there was a time in the past when the various US secret services would scurry at the opportunity to disclose their expertise to the general public, now it is a false negative that is supposed to disprove a positive (pervasive...

Barbara1247 wrote:  The Republicans have helped bring us to this sorry state of affairs. - How About More Scandal, Incompetence, Venality, Hubris, Vanity and Error to Start Dear Comrade 1247, You’re a liberal, so even when you are right- like you are now- it’s accidental. So as a public service, let me explain to you, in the simplest terms, what you got right, accidentally. Certainly the GOP has helped establish a track record of what might be the sorriest 25 years of governing in American history. But it’s because they have supported watered-down versions of the Democrat agenda. For every...

Susan L. Anderson, wife of embattled former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, was a supporter of, and active participant in, the Occupy Wall Street movement, attending and promoting Occupy DC in Oct. 2011. Photo posted to Twitter by @slandersonwdc In the fall of 2011, during the height of the global Occupy protests, Anderson tweeted out to her followers: Jobs on Main Street, not on K-ching Wall Street! #takeback11 #ows #occupydemocracy http://yfrog.com/o0crsizj 12:20 PM - 5 Oct 2011 At Larry Lessig teach-in @ #occupydc. Will intro him tonight on his new book on how big $ threatens our #republic @ GW Law...

Usually movie makers strive to stay ahead of the cultural curve. It makes them "visionaries" who are "cutting edge" because they "push the envelope." Two years ago, "Occupy Wall Street" was the hot fad, stoking the usual left-wing outrage at bankers and the finance industry. They were the ones portrayed as greed-heads never held accountable for their crimes. Businessmen just twirl their mustaches and laugh evil laughs. But that was two years ago. Time for something fresh -- and edgy. A new movie suggests that movement was for sissies. It's time for someone to start a new campaign: Assassinate Wall...

Obama’s big money corporate donors included: AT&T--$4.6 million Microsoft--$2.1 million Boeing--$1 million Chevron--$1 million Genentech--$750,000 Deloitte--$500,000 FedEx--$500,000 Coca Cola--$430,000 Bank of America--$300,000 Xerox--$250,000 ExxonMobil--$250,000 Northrup Grumman--$100,000 Verizon--$100,000 Obama also hauled in $250,000 checks from each of the following unions: The International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the National Education Association.

Optimista wrote: I don't like the reference to the 2% tax hike. That reduction was nothing but an Obama gimmick to spike spending. Knowing full well that it wood be taken away soon. It was being stolen from the SS budget which is strained as it is. I wish the conservatives would state it truthfully. It hurts credibility and confuses people not to mention the fodder it gives the liberal morons to argue with. - Occupy and Redistribute D.C Dear Comrade Optimista, And I don’t like your reference to Social Security as anything other than theft. In fact, the more...

Occupy Wall Street activist Carne Ross and his consulting firm, Independent Diplomat, have a new job. Rather than champion for members of the world’s 99 percent, Ross and co. will now be lobbying for the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, which TheBlaze revealed this week may have ties to al-Qaeda. Russia Today reports that legal registration papers provided by the U.S. Department of Justice this week confirm Independent Diplomat’s role advising the Syrian rebel forces opposing the Bashar al Assad regime. According to lobbying papers filed on April 8, 2013, Independent Diplomat “will provide information on and...

The fire was reported just before 1 a.m. Thursday at "Church on the Esplanade" at 1119 Esplanade near West 1st Avenue. It damaged the fellowship hall, a separate building next to the church. Fire inspectors said it climbed up the back wall into the ceiling. According to a source close to the Chico Police Department, the fellowship hall was set on fire by a home-made bomb.

A neatly dressed tourist taking pictures in Times Square was caught off guard when a visibly agitated woman blocked her path and then attacked her. The 34-year-old long-haired blonde woman was walking with a friend and photographing their surroundings with a point-and-shoot camera when the aggravated passer-by confronted her and stood in her way. The confrontation at West 46th Street and Broadway, across the street from a Forever 21, led to a verbal exchange which quickly turned into a scuffle.

Horrifying. It has come to this: People are so morally bankrupt that they not only praise a suspected cop-killer, but they root for him to kill more people.

Aaron Greene, the 31-year-old Harvard grad who was arrested on Saturday morning with his pregnant girlfriend for allegedly possessing explosive powder and shotguns, previously stabbed a bouncer in 2005 with an eleven-inch butcher knife and served eight months in jail. The man he stabbed says that the altercation began after Greene stole his slice of pizza and stalked him through the Lower East Side—and soon after the stabbing he predicted Greene was more dangerous than authorities believed at the time. "I told the District Attorney that one of these days, he's gonna shoot up a schoolyard or blow up a...

The privileged daughter of a prominent city doctor, and her boyfriend — a Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street activist — have been busted for allegedly having a cache of weapons and a bombmaking explosive in their Greenwich Village apartment. Morgan Gliedman — who is nine-months pregnant — and her baby daddy, Aaron Greene, 31, also had instructions on making bombs, including a stack of papers with a cover sheet titled, “The Terrorist Encyclopedia,’’ sources told The Post yesterday. People who know Greene say his political views are “extreme,” the sources said.

Comedian Adam Carolla has never been one to censor what comes out of his mouth. The gift of gab took him from humble beginnings in economically destitute North Hollywood to dizzying heights inthe entertainment industry, where he could afford to move a few miles away. It's a story of hard work and success that comes through in his recent book Not Taco Bell Material, a chaotic tour that takes readers from Carolla's early years to how he finally found his calling - and his success. Carolla's disdain for the politically-correct culture of sensitivity has made him an unlikely but powerful...