Free Republic

At least it was sustainable fair trade carbon neutral corruption. John Ashe, the UN General Assembly president, has been busted on corruption charges. A former president of the U.N. General Assembly "sold himself and the global institution he led" by allegedly pocketing more than $1 million in bribes to finance a luxury spending spree, according to a federal prosecutor. Ashe, 61, is accused of tax fraud in an alleged conspiracy involving five others, including a billionaire Chinese businessman and a former deputy U.N. ambassador from the Dominican Republic, according to a criminal complaint. Ashe is accused of underreporting his income...

Gov. Jerry Brown will visit Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles Wednesday to sign legislation mandating that half of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2030. The ambitious mandates of SB 350, championed by Senate President pro tem Kevin de Leon of Los Angeles, were outlined by Brown in his inaugural address in January. But de Leon’s legislation was significantly watered down last month in the state Assembly, which stripped away a requirement that the state slash its gasoline use by 50 percent in the next 15 years. That provision sparked heated debate in Sacramento, thanks to opposition from...

Recently, it was revealed that Volkswagen had been duping diesel-emissions tests on some of its high-end environmentally friendly cars. People were outraged. The CEO resigned. About the same time, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley told the Alberta Chambers of Commerce that her province had better get its environmental house in order or it would have measures imposed upon it. She also said that Alberta has “bad air.”Really? I challenge that statement. In 2011, Canada’s air was judged to be the third highest quality in the world. In 2006, Environment Canada reported that Red Deer was an unusual hot spot for poor...

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 26 (Reuters) - The United Nations high commissioner for refugees said on Saturday the world waited far too long to respond to the refugee crisis sparked by the wars in Syria and elsewhere, though rich countries now appear to understand the scale of the problem. "Unfortunately only when the poor enter the halls of the rich, do the rich notice that the poor exist," U.N. refugee chief Antonio Guterres told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly. "Until we had this massive movement into Europe,...

The hopes were so high back in August for a massive climate rally to support Pope Francis’ climate push. But reality has now sunk in. Climate Prediction: August 25, 2015: WaPo: ‘For Pope Francis’s D.C. visit, environmental rally of up to 200K planned’ – Several environmental groups are planning a major climate rally that will draw hundreds of thousands to the National Mall on Sept. 24, the day Pope Francis speaks to Congress and is expected to address the public afterwards. The permit for the gathering — which will make the moral case for reducing greenhouse gas emissions linked to...

The winners are the NFL’s 32 team owners, who managed to scam taxpayers out of $7 billion over the last 20 years to subsidize stadium construction and renovation schemes, according to a new report by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. That leaves taxpayers as the losers, forced to fork over their hard-earned money in a perverse corporate welfare scheme that amounts to welfare for billionaires.

President Obama and his rancid leftist allies have subjected America to a blizzard of lies. Nothing that leaves his mouth even remotely parrots the truth, but typically stands truth on its head. The propaganda infrastructure spanning media, Hollywood, non-profit institutions and the halls of academia then erects a virtually impenetrable wall of disinformation to advance the lie. They have just foisted on us a “deal” with Iran that threatens to create a holocaust, the likes of which America, and perhaps the world, has never seen. As Iran chanted “death to America” and “death to Israel,” this “deal” somehow skirted the...

They hoped to get rich off real estate, and who would be a better mentor than one of the richest men in the world? So they enrolled in Donald Trump’s university to learn the tricks of the trade, some of them maxing out their credit cards to pay tens of thousands of dollars for insider knowledge they believed could make them wealthy. With Trump rising in the polls as the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, his brief foray into education is an episode — and a business failure — that remains far more obscure than other chapters of the...

Federal investigators formally investigated top Hillary Rodham Clinton aide Huma Abedin for the crime of embezzlement after confirming she took a “Babymoon” vacation and maternity time at the State Department without expending her formal leave, resulting in thousands of dollars of pay she wasn’t entitled to receive, The Washington Times has learned. The probe also gathered evidence she filed time sheets charging the government for impermissible overtime and excessive hours after she converted from a full-time federal employee to a State Department contractor. Those timecards were filed during a period that remains under investigation over questions about possible conflicts of...

Executives of a Pennsylvania green energy company singled out for praise by Bill Clinton were arrested on fraud charges on Thursday in connection with an alleged Ponzi scheme. The individuals are facing charges of wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy over their roles in running a green energy company that authorities say was an elaborate $54 million Ponzi scheme, the Associated Press reported. Prosecutors said the trio lied to investors that their “biochar” technology and “carbon-negative” housing in Tennessee made millions, but they had almost no earnings and used the money to repay earlier investors and for themselves. The scam...

You've probably now heard of Ashley Madison, a dating website set up explicitly for married people looking to have affairs. Their entire system got hacked--not just member accounts and credit-card info, but internal company data, too. And the most interesting stuff to come out of it isn't about Ashley Madison's clientele: It's about the company itself. Ashley Madison had always sounded like a scam to me. The site claimed 37 million users, which, if true, would be an enormous percentage of America's married population. (That would be roughly half of all married people between the ages of 25 and 55....

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – State officials have launched Pennsylvania’s online voter registration system. The online registration application, hosted by the Department of State, is available for use by eligible citizens at register.votesPA.com. The new site also allows registered voters to easily update their voter record with a change of name, address or party affiliation, and voters may use the site to ask for help at their polling place. Governor Tom Wolf, who promised online registration when he ran for the office last year, said it will make the voting experience more convenient and accessible.

In the days ahead, millions of kids will pack their bags and leave home (hopefully for good) to go to college. For parents experiencing this for the first time: welcome to the biggest financial scam in America. Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University and an expert on college costs, puts it very plainly: "Colleges and universities may be the least cost-efficient institutions in the United States. No industry, perhaps other than prostitution, has seen less productivity improvements than higher education." As the father of two college kids I can personally attest to the astonishing rip-off of college tuition...

A Pennsylvania beauty queen is facing felony charges for allegedly raising thousands of dollars from donors whom she tricked into believing she was battling cancer, police say. Brandi Lee Weaver-Gates, a 23-year-old reigning Miss Pennsylvania U.S. International, was arrested Tuesday and charged with theft by deception and receiving stolen property, NBC affiliate WJAC reported. Her bond was set at $150,000, and she remains jailed at the Centre County Correctional Facility. Pennsylvania State Police said they began looking into the case after receiving an anonymous letter. "When confronted with what the investigation revealed, the accused advised that she did not want...

DALLAS – Despite the efforts of the IRS to contain it, a phone scam that's bilked individual taxpayers out of $14 million in phony tax debts continues to roll along. The scam has targeted at least 300,000 people, according to the IRS, and it may be gaining steam in North Texas. Dan Moore's been getting the robo-calls for two days. The recorded voice identifies itself as being from the "Internal Revenue Services (sic)." "The reason for this call is to inform you that the IRS is filing a lawsuit against you," the call continues. "It wasn't real friendly," Moore told...

The brother of Cecil, the lion killed in Zimbabwe by an American hunter last month, is not dead, a researcher monitoring the pride told Reuters, contradicting media reports that Jericho had been killed. "He looks alive and well to me as far as I can tell," said Brent Stapelkamp, field researcher for the Hwange Lion Research Project which is monitoring the lion with a GPS tag. A group called the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force posted on its Facebook page that Jericho had been killed at 4 p.m. on Saturday, a report picked up by some Western news media that was...

Caught cheating at Lotto on national television, the Serbian Lotto sweepstakes is now under investigation. Funny, they use the same machinery here in the USA too. Watch how the numbers appear on the screen on the LIVE broadcast before they are shown. Watch the consternation on the face of the spokesmodel. You can't win, if you don't play... LOL

Yahoo Travel reported on Wednesday that three women in Chechnya took ISIS for $3,300 before getting caught. They are now under investigation for Internet fraud, which seems to be illegal even when committed against the most fearsome terrorist army in modern times. The scam seems to be a combination of the Nigerian Prince con, in which a mark is fooled into giving the con artist large sums of money and catfishing, in which the mark strikes up an online romance with someone he thinks is an attractive woman (or man depending on the gender and preference of the mark.)

The current feel-good push for a $15 an hour minimum wage has nothing to do with helping workers and everything to do with advancing the goals of the left wing, especially the labor movement. This is true despite the occasionally soaring rhetoric of President Obama amid the Left's incessant whining about "income inequality," itself a particularly un-American concept, an imaginary evil that dwells only in the nightmares of left-wingers. The fact gets lost that the minimum wage itself and continuing increases in the minimum wage hurt working people.

Angie's List Inc. said Wednesday its revenue grew 11%, but it was less than analysts had expected as gross paid membership additions fell 27% for the services marketplace and consumer-review company. Despite seeing revenue growth, Angie's List has posted mostly losses since going public in 2011, as expansion efforts have ratcheted up costs. In the most recent quarter, Angie's List booked a loss of $8.3 million, or 14 cents a share, compared with a loss of $18.4 million, or 31 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue grew to $87.3 million from $78.9 million.