Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Tony Podesta is one of the best-connected rainmakers in the nation's capital, with a web of personal contacts stretching back 42 years and six Democratic presidential candidates. His brother John was Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff and an adviser on President Barack Obama's transition team. But in an uncharacteristic twist this year, people at Tony Podesta's powerhouse lobbying firm have chosen to donate $32,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee to help its chairman, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, wrest control of the Senate from the Democrats. Since Obama's election, the political action committees and employees...

The alleged “failure of American radicalism,” perhaps appropriate for a paper that covers 1900-1933 and written in 1981, is not so apparent these days. As a student, Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was so interested in the socialist movement that she wrote a thesis about its history in New York City from 1900-1933. But the history of the Progressive Party, which ran FDR’s former vice president Henry Wallace as its presidential candidate in 1948, helps bring the subject up to date and explains the current direction of the Democratic Party. The Progressive Party was controlled by the Communist Party...

Last month I went into extended detail about the story called Crime Inc. Exposed by Glenn Beck, Crime Inc. is a web of liberal and progressive organizations that leave a trail all the way to the White House and President Obama. Cap and Trade is the flag all of the players rally in Crime Inc. rally around. Mr. Beck added another twist to the story, as if it was not spooky enough already. Only now the central theme is George Soros. First let me lay out who the major players are, but please do not get lost in the details:...

20 April 2010: An oil rig rented and operated by BP in the Gulf of Mexico explodes, killing 11 workers. 21 April 2010: All 115 workers are evacuated from the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig. 22 April 2010: The Deepwater Horizon collapses into the sea and sinks. 22 April 2010: President Obama delivers a speech on Wall Street to advocate more government intervention in the country's financial sector, but offers no reforms for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which helped precipitate the 2008 meltdown. He also delivers a speech regarding the contributions of Earth Day to environmental awareness. Meanwhile, 200,000...

Instead of an oil spill commission staffed with experts, as promised in his Oval Office address, the president has announced a panel with membership that reads like a Who's Who of radical environmentalism. Former Senator Graham of Florida, for example, has consistently pushed for a ban on oil drilling, and Frances Beinecke of the National Resources Defense Council has argued for the global warming agenda -- including linking "global poverty" to global warming, an argument used at the Copenhagen conference to support reparations to be paid to nations such as Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe for our supposed global crimes. In fact,...

Within 48 hours after President Obama issued the six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling, the George Soros-backed Brazilian oil company, Petrobras, contacted a large New Orleans company, Laborde Marine, which services the deep-water drilling market. The company was seeking to lease all its vessels. “If the moratorium on deep-water drilling is not lifted, 33 semi-submersible rigs and/or drill ships affected will simply go to other countries where they will be well received, such as Brazil,” Cliffe F. Laborde and J. Peter Laborde, Jr. wrote in a June 4 letter to their Louisiana Senators. Could this be merely a happy coincidence for...

Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool By: Timothy P. Carney Examiner Columnist June 9, 2010 In this May 30, 2010 file photo, BP PLC CEO Tony Hayward talks to reporters as he visits a Coast Guard command center in Venice, La. BP's inability to contain the worst oil spill in U.S. history has focused attention on CEO Tony Hayward's words and deeds over the past six weeks - and the scrutiny has not yielded a flattering image. (AP file photo) As BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was on...

If you want to see where President Barack Obama’s response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster is heading, try following the urgings of the Center for American Progress. The liberal think tank with close White House ties appears to have more influence on spill policy than the president’s in-house advisers. On May 4, for instance, the CAP’s energy and environment expert, Daniel Weiss, called on the president to name an independent commission to look at the causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. On May 22, he did just that. On May 21, CAP president, John Podesta, privately implored White House officials...

If you want to see where President Barack Obama’s response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster is heading, try following the urgings of the Center for American Progress. The liberal think tank with close White House ties appears to have more influence on spill policy than the president’s in-house advisers. On May 4, for instance, the CAP’s energy and environment expert, Daniel Weiss, called on the president to name an independent commission to look at the causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. On May 22, he did just that. On May 21, CAP president, John Podesta, privately implored White House officials...

Washington (CNN) - John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, can describe the state of Washington politics with a single word. And it's not a nice one. Asked in an interview with the Financial Times to comment on "the health of American political system," Podesta responded: "Sucks." Podesta made the remark with a chuckle, but the man who chaired President Obama's transition team expressed deep concern about the White House's ability to pass big ticket items in the current political climate.

We've been following the special election in Massachusetts, where the GOP hopes to pull a surprise upset in the race to fill Ted Kennedy's seat. If they do pull it off, healthcare reform is instantly in trouble, as the Democrats drop below 60. But money is coming to the rescue of Democrat Martha Coakley -- healthcare industry lobbyist money, specifically. Tim Carney identifies several of her top fundraisers. Take a look at who they represent: * Thomas Boggs, Patton Boggs: Bristol-Myers Squibb * Chuck Brain, Capitol Hill Strategies: Amgen, BIO, Merck, PhRMA * Susan Brophy, Glover Park Group: Blue Cross,...

While much of K Street has seen a dip during the recession, Tony Podesta has managed to buck the trend. His firm, the Podesta Group, has earned more in lobbying fees in nine months than it did in all of 2008, has nearly doubled its staff and is expanding its office space by one floor. It helps that Podesta is arguably the most recognizable Democratic name on the Washington lobbying scene. Podesta is modest about his success. In an interview with The Hill, he called lobbying “a people business” and credited his success to his staff, listing off a bipartisan...

In 1998, when the Clinton White House found itself in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, one of its key defense strategies was to attack the conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife as the dark power behind the allegations against the president. The Clinton camp believed Scaife to be "the Goldfinger of the right-wing conspiracy," as Newsweek put it in a February 1998 report.

John Podesta was the fourth Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton; he also headed the Obama transition team. Today he is George Soros’ point man at the liberal think tank, Center for American Progress. In a recent interview at the Clinton Global Imitative Conference, Podesta explains that it is the high standards and tough vetting process that makes it so difficult to get the best NGO and business executives to work for the federal government. Podesta said, “We are denying the government some really spectacular talent” (See Video interview here) Consider a small list of the spectacular talent Podesta helped...

A liberal think tank with close ties to President Barack Obama says the administration and Congress should consider raising taxes on Americans to help close federal budget deficits, an opening salvo in what is likely to be a protracted debate on tax policy. In a draft report, the Center for American Progress says the size of projected budget gaps requires considering options including tax increases as well as curbs on annual spending and entitlement programs supported by Democrats. Such ideas could pose problems for Mr. Obama, who pledged during the campaign to not increase taxes on families making less than...

This week’s Washington Times column: A telling event occurred on Sept. 15, Day 6 of the drip, drip, drip ACORN video rollout. President Obama met for lunch with former President Bill Clinton at trendy Il Mulino in New York City. For the second consecutive day, the New York Post featured the ACORN scandal on its cover – complete with James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles in their outrageous “pimp and ho” costumes. Does anyone think the president and the former president were unaware that the city in which they were dining was mesmerized by the ACORN scandal – especially since ACORN...

John Podesta compared the nation’s current budget crisis to the situation former President Bill Clinton faced in 1993 and said some form of a value-added tax is “more plausible today than it ever has been.” “There’s going to have to be revenue in this budget,” said Podesta, Clinton’s former chief of staff and co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s transition team, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.

( Surprise: ACORN audit to be conducted by panel full of leftists and cronies.) From this profoundly warped announcement (via ABC who engages in daily, early-morning information huddles with the Obama “White House”) from ACORN itself, it’s announced that ACORN is, uhh, going to “investigate” ACORN, with this group of Lefties-at-hire to go onto the media-stage and do the “Let’s Investigate” routine: In a press release, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis says, that as “a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our employees,” the group will immediately stop accepting anyone into ACORN office for service programs, will conduct...

Activist group ACORN started in 1970 to help the poor in Arkansas and quickly went national, growing into a multimillion-dollar conglomerate with a mission so far-flung that schools now bear its name, two radio stations are affiliates and a man it backed is the president. Oh yeah, it's also the unwilling star of a hot Internet video featuring a couple dressed as a hooker and her pimp. SNIP Many Democrats used to advertise their ACORN connections. Now, however, the Democratic-led Senate has voted to cut off its grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Democrat-dominated House...

UPDATED: ACORN, calling the actions of some of its employees "indefensible," has suspended advising new clients as part of its service programs and is setting up an independent review to see what happened.