Free Republic

Hawaii received $2,284,000 million of federal stimulus funds for the 11the Congressional district, $40,903,941 million for the 15th Congressional district, $1,651,811 for the “00” Congressional district, and $799,656 in the 99th congressional district creating a combined “3.4” jobs or $13,423,355 per job, according to the federal government’s transparency web site for stimulus funds, http://www.Recovery.gov/.However, Hawaii has just two congressional districts, 1 and 2. Those districts received $592,211,484 million and $174,075,308 respectively, according to the federal web site, creating combined total of 1,541.5 jobs. See the full report on Hawaii here: http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/StateSummaries/Pages/statesummary.aspx?StateCode=HI Media inquires to the governor’s office, the state budget...

KISSIMMEE — Stealing power from utilities has become the recession's crime of choice for penny-pinching suspects large and small across Central Florida. A supermarket CEO, cash-strapped homeowners and even pot growers have landed in jail in recent months, all charged with meter tampering for allegedly stealing electricity — a crime costing local utility companies millions each year. Industry spokesmen say power thefts have spiked as unemployment and housing foreclosures have increased during the past two years.

States are getting creative in the search for new tax revenue…

FOX News: "Everyone knows that people around the table are stealing, but they don't want to turn each other in if they're going to have to pay the full penalty," said Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Asked in an interview on MSNBC what he meant by stealing, the New York Democrat replied, "I mean stealing." Asked if he were referring to drug companies, he said, "I'm talking about pharmaceuticals, in the sense that they're now coming forward saying that they want to be able to fill that vacuum that's there." FOX News: Rangel Accuses...

Paleontologist gets 4 months in halfway house, three years of probation GREAT FALLS, Mont. - Renowned dinosaur hunter Nathan Murphy was sentenced Wednesday to four months in a halfway house and three years probation after pleading guilty to stealing fossils. Murphy was accused of stealing 13 dinosaur bones from central Montana's Hell Creek badlands in 2006. He pleaded guilty in April to theft of government property. U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon also sentenced him to 300 hours of community service and ordered him to pay $17,325 in restitution.

I stole a laundry bag from the Alvear Palace Hotel in Buenos Aires. It was made of thick ivory linen, embroidered with the words "dry cleaning" in cerulean blue, and looked like something that I could have found at an antique textiles show. But that wasn't the case. I'm usually pretty scrupulous about purloined souvenirs. Of course, I help myself to soap and shampoo, sewing kits, even those black sponges meant to spruce up your shoes -- oh, and ballpoint pens and darling little notepads. But the laundry bag was my first sojourn into the land of, what shall we...

After about a month of will-he-or-won’t-he intrigue, the disgraced ex-CEO of Qwest Communications International Inc. has reported to prison in Pennsylvania.Joe Nacchio entered the system on Tuesday after a federal judge denied a last-minute appeal for a new trial. Nacchio faces the same fate as other inmates of the luxury, minimum-security Schuykill facility – according to the Wall Street Journal, Nacchio will work 7.5 hours per day and eat lots of margarine. That’s the only condiment served with meal-time bread. (Apparently “luxury prison” does not include butter, which we find to be most apropos. Perhaps Nacchio’s nickname will be “Oleo...

Ironic: The same union demands big business return the money to the workers of America for stealing from them. Of all the ironies that come out of this story. Watch videos: http://www.butasforme.com/2009/03/20/seiu-member-who-met-with-biden-caught-stealing/

DES MOINES - A Cedar Rapids man, apparently at the State Capitol Thursday with a union group, was arrested after a lobbyist caught him trying to steal women's wallets. Marshall Clemons, 38, of Cedar Rapids, was arrested by the Iowa State Patrol and charged with two counts of fifth-degree theft. Lt. Mark Logsdon of the Iowa State Patrol's Post 16 said lobbyist Jim Henter spied Clemons reaching into a woman's bag and retrieving a billfold. Henter followed Clemons and stopped him, Logsdon said. Clemons gave the woman back the money that was in the billfold and then went to a...

The Taliban are stealing U.S. supplies and selling them in roadside markets. You know this kind of thing happens in wartime, but it still steams your blood. I hope a predator fired 'hellfire' missile has their name on it soon. Video here.

Money Magazine) -- Alicia Munnell is a Harvard-trained economist. She served as an assistant secretary of the Treasury and is regarded as one of America's foremost experts on 401(k)s. You'd think she'd be terrific at managing her own retirement, but even she has to fess up to some mistakes. "When my son got married, I took some money out of my plan to help," says Munnell, who heads Boston College's Center for Retirement Research (CRR). "And I ended up paying a 10% penalty and taxes."

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) predicted on Thursday that none of his Senate colleagues would "have the chance" to read the entire final version of the $790-billion stimulus bill before the bill comes up for a final vote in Congress. “No, I don’t think anyone will have the chance to [read the entire bill],” Lautenberg told CNSNews.com.

A rising chorus of GOP leaders are protesting that the blockbuster Democratic stimulus package would provide up to a whopping $5.2 billion for ACORN, the left-leaning nonprofit group under federal investigation for massive voter fraud. Most of the money is secreted away under an item in the now $836 billion package titled “Neighborhood Stabilization Programs.” Ordinarily, neighborhood stabilization funds are distributed to local governments. But revised language in the stimulus bill would make the funds available directly to non-profit entities such as ACORN, the low-income housing organization whose pro-Democrat voter-registration activities have been blasted by Republicans. ACORN is cited by...

The Fresno County District Attorney's Office filed charges on Friday against a deputy coroner, alleging that he stole property from at least one dead person. Joe Tiger is accused of grand theft and embezzlement in an incident that allegedly took place last March.

Link only - Ex-Weight Watchers worker gets 10 years for stealing nearly $1M

A state appeals court in San Francisco has upheld a San Mateo County Superior Court sentence of three years in prison for a former political fundraiser who was a fugitive for 15 years. Norman Hsu, 57, was sentenced in January for a 1992 no-contest plea to a charge of grand theft in an investment scheme. County prosecutors said Hsu operated a so-called Ponzi scheme, by soliciting investments in a purported latex glove company and paying returns to early investors with funds from later investors. Prosecutors said he defrauded about 20 victims of nearly $1 million. After pleading no contest to...

MAKING OF A CANDIDATE Obama knows his way around a ballot By David Jackson and Ray Long | Tribune staff reporters 6:48 PM CDT, April 3, 2007 The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot. Fresh from...

From the October 10, 2008 Newsweek poll... (www.newsweek.com/id/163337) Results: Obama 52, McCain 41. SAMPLE SIZE/MARGIN OF ERROR FOR REGISTERED VOTERS SUBGROUPS: 1,035 Registered voters (plus or minus 4) 280 Republicans (plus or minus 7) 402 Democrats (plus or minus 6) 325 Independents (plus or minus 7) 839 White (plus or minus 4) 175 Non-White (plus or minus 9) 491 Men (plus or minus 5) 544 Women (plus or minus 5) 126 18-34 (plus or minus 10) 159 35-44 (plus or minus 9) 434 45-64 (plus or minus 6) 283 65+ (plus or minus 7) 247 White Evangelicals (plus or minus...

While most Americans are watching the Dow and other stock-market figures zig and zag, I have my eyes fixed on numbers that are headed straight up: voter registrations. Across the nation, election clerks and secretaries of state are regularly announcing historic increases in the ranks of registered voters. For a pollster, this is a nightmare. It changes the composition of what we hopefully refer to as the likely voter population. All of a sudden, in many states we have hundreds of thousands of new voters with no prior vote history on the books. Will they vote or not? Which party...

Lehman employees in London were seen leaving carrying boxes filled with Lehman swag--which might fetch a pretty penny on eBay. After the firm detonated their shares and bonuses, it's the least they could take:

CAMBRIDGE (WBZ) ― The elected official in Middlesex County accused of stealing has resigned. Prosecutors say Register of Probate John Buonomo was caught stealing thousands of dollars from copy and cash machines in the Registry of Deeds in Cambridge. Authorities say Buonomo, 56, was caught on surveillance video committing the alleged crimes. Police say the thefts occurred in June, July and August. Watch: Theft surveillance video (at the link) Just last month, the Supreme Judicial Court suspended Buonomo without pay. Buonomo reportedly sent a letter on Friday to Gov. Deval Patrick telling him that he quit, effective immediately. Buonomo's attorney...

Ask virtually any store manager at the Saint Louis Galleria about shoplifting, and you'll invariably get two responses: One, it's out of control; and two, it's gotten exceedingly worse since August 2006, when MetroLink opened a stop just 500 yards from the high-end shopping center. In the first six months of this year, Richmond Heights police made 345 arrests at the mall. That's nearly double the number of arrests made in all of 2005, before MetroLink opened its Shrewsbury line. This year police are on pace to take 276 juveniles into custody for shoplifting and other offenses — a sevenfold...

Jul 21st, 2008 The RNC agrees to remove the Republican Elephant from CafePress’ Endangered Species List - Grand Old Party Ensues! Some of you may have seen some of the media coverage (maybe here, here, or here) regarding the Republican National Committee’s recent complaints about our shopkeepers’ use of the terms “GOP,” “Grand Old Party,” “Republican National Committee,” “RNC,” and various elephant designs. To sum it up: back in February, the RNC demanded that CafePress “cease and desist from allowing vendors to utilize the federally registered trademarks of the RNC” and threatened legal action. While we’re open to working...

An ancient Ukrainian code was used as the basis for the United States constitution, insists Ukraine’s Prime Minister, Yulya Timoshenko. She made the extraordinary claim while addressing compatriots on the country’s Constitution Day, on June 28. The Gas Princess said: “The Ukrainian state has an undeviating constitutional tradition. In 1710, when civilised Europe was tentatively mulling over the separation of powers, and baron de Montesquieu even didn’t start writing The Spirit of the Laws, Ukraine had its own constitution by Pylyp Orlyk.” Timoshenko also claimed that she once read that the U.S. and some of the European constitutions were copied...

A Fourth-grader at Toy Town Elementary School in Winchendon, MA was suspended for five days for showing his friends an empty shell casing to some friends at lunch. According to the NRA-ILA (http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=3975), Bradley Geslak had been given the casing — from a blank fired during Memorial Day — by a US veteren. He was given two, one of which he gave to his grandfather, also a veteren. He was showing his souvenier off to some friends during lunch when a teacher confiscated the casing and called the boy’s mother to take him home. He’s also been told he won’t...

A Nixa woman accused of stealing more than $25,000 from her former employer over a two-year period was bound over to Christian County Circuit Court May 21 and scheduled for a June 6 arraignment. Sandra J. Martin, 42, will appear in front of Judge Mark Orr on one count of a class B felony for stealing from her dentist employer. She was originally slated for a bench trial May 21 in Christian County Associate Court, but instead waived her preliminary hearing and was bound over to circuit court. Martin was arrested Dec. 19, 2007, after her employer, Nixa dentist Michael...

click the link to see video of these two specimens who stole from a girl scout selling cookies. There's a commercial first, then the video.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- A Florida man is accused of ripping off his wife's prosthetic leg during a fight after leaving a sports bar. Officers in Port St. Lucie said they found a 29-year-old woman in a sport utility vehicle Tuesday night with a bruised eye and missing a leg and pants. "He ripped my leg off," the woman told police. Police then questioned the woman's husband, Luis Ramirez, 35, who said he was arguing with his wife after leaving a bar, TCPalm reported. He denied stealing her leg. The woman told police that Ramirez became possessed and started...

A judge agreed Monday to postpone for 13 months the trial of a Chinese-American engineer charged with stealing military and aerospace trade secrets on behalf of China. Kenneth Miller, the attorney for 72-year-old Dongfan "Greg" Chung, asked for the delay because he is involved in a lengthy trial, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Staples. The trial was scheduled for April 8, but U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney agreed to delay it until May 5, 2009. The government alleges that Chung stole trade secrets on the space shuttle, C-17 military transport and the Delta IV rocket during his decades of employment...

MOSCOW, March 14 (RIA Novosti) - A court in Macedonia has ordered the government to pay a $3,500 fine to a local bee-keeper over a bear that had been stealing his honey, national media said on Friday. The case came about after a man from the village of Krivogastani, near the town of Bitola, appealed to a local court, claiming damage to his property. He had initially tried to keep the bear away from his beehives by playing loud Serbian turbo-folk music. "I tried to distract the bear with lights and music because I had heard that bears are afraid...

Throughout my campaign, I have been listening to the voices of people across America. I met one man who told me, "I don't know what I did wrong. I got my education and I worked hard. I've been at the same company for 12 years now, but I've just been asked to train my successor because my job is moving to another country." Another woman said to me, "I just can't make ends meet. My health care premiums have doubled, college tuition is up. How am I supposed to make it as a single mom?"

Kettle cash tempting to thieves http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/story/329594.html http://tinyurl.com/ypos7x Posted on Mon, Dec. 03, 2007 BY DIANA MOSKOVITZ Yes, Virginia, there are grinches out there. And they steal from the Salvation Army's red kettles. One bell ringer told police she was robbed in Lighthouse Point last month when she left her kettle for a few minutes to use the bathroom. ''That is the last thing the world needs right now,'' said Capt. Tom Louden, area commander for the Salvation Army in Broward. Such thefts are a perennial problem around the country for the Salvation Army. About 20,000 red kettles appear at storefronts...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian police have detained a 45-year-old municipal worker for stealing a bridge. The 5-meter span metal bridge disappeared from a river crossing in the Ryazan region, east of Moscow. Police said they tracked it down to the man, who had used his work truck to remove it and then chopped it up and sold it for scrap. In a statement, Ryazan region police called it "the bulkiest theft of the year."

OSLO, Norway, April 2 -- The owner of a dog that was caught on tape sneaking into a Norwegian gas station to steal candy says his pooch is a repeat offender. The 7-year-old bull terrier named Conan spent some time behind bars last week before his owner, Liss-Hege Jeremiassen, bailed him out, Aftenposten reported Monday, quoting a story in the Norwegian-language newspaper Adressavisen. "He is incredibly fond of food in general and sweets in particular. He has run off a few times before and he always heads for food stores," Jeremiassen said. The dog apparently snuck out Wednesday night and...

BELVIDERE | The former pastor accused of stealing more than $600,000 from charity denied wrongdoing after his initial court appearance Thursday and said the accusations tell just one side. Authorities allege the Rev. Robert Ascolese spent some of the stolen money on himself and some went back to St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Washington. Ascolese appeared in handcuffs before Superior Court Judge John Pursel as his attorney entered a not guilty plea to a long list of theft and records-tampering charges. The priest, affectionately known to his former parishioners as "Father Bob," is accused of stealing more than $600,000 from...

Former National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger, fined $50,000 for taking classified documents from the National Archives, hid the papers under a construction trailer where they later could easily be retrieved, a report yesterday said. The National Archives Office of Inspector General said that during a 2003 visit to the facility, Mr. Berger left the building unescorted for a break, during which time he "placed the documents under a trailer in an accessible construction area outside Archives 1 (the main Archives building)." The report said Mr. Berger acknowledged that he later retrieved the documents from the construction area and brought...

The Liberals are stealing Christmas. They will deny it, but they are. Political Correctness dictates that people can't wish eachother "Merry Christmas" in public. Libs will tell you that they just don't want religious symbolism in public but people are allowed to "practice ANY religion or holliday they want." How do I do that? This is where Liberal thinking gets pretty abstract. Do I walk past people on the street and think "that guy just mentally wished me Merry Christmas?" If I move to Africa, I definitely expect them to stop celebrating Kwanzaa because I'm there. Or how about in...

BISBEE — A Mexican man pleaded no contest Tuesday to charges he stole a pickup truck and dragged a Sheriff’s deputy during a March traffic stop in Huachuca City, breaking the deputy’s ankle in the process. Hugo Rodr’guez Pelagio, 24, of Tangancicuaro, Michoacan state, will serve three years in prison and pay up to $200 in restitution as part of a plea agreement with the state. According to an arrest report from the Sheriff’s Department, Rodr’guez Pelagio was stopped at about 2:38 a.m. on March 21 as he was driving with an unidentified passenger along Highway 90 northbound in a...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Three former employees of a US auto parts company have been indicted on charges of stealing company secrets and providing them to a Chinese rival, authorities said. The Justice Department said that Anne Lockwood, formerly a vice president for sales at Metaldyne, her husband Michael Haehnel, a former Metaldyne engineer and Fuping Lui, an ex-Metaldyne metallurgist were indicted in Detroit, Michigan, on 64 counts. "Regardless of the highly competitive rough and tumble of today's global automotive industry, stealing is still stealing," US Attorney Stephen J. Murphy said in a statement. The indictment unsealed Wednesday alleges that the...

Link to PDF of entire articleAbstract: Courts and scholars have increasingly assumed that intellectual property is a form of property, and have applied the economic insights of Harold Demsetz and other property theorists to condemn the use of intellectual property by others as "free riding." In this article, I argue that this represents a fundamental misapplication of the economic theory of property. The economics of property is concerned with internalizing negative externalities - harms that one person's use of land does to another's interest to it, as in the familiar tragedy of the commons. But the externalities in intellectual property...

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivia's government took out full-page newspaper ads on Wednesday announcing its aim to redistribute nearly a fifth of the country's territory as angry landowners vowed to form land-defense groups. Leftist President Evo Morales has pledged an "agrarian revolution" to redistribute idle farmlands to the impoverished country's landless peasants -- a move that has highlighted divisions between the poor majority and the rich elite. Many landowners in the agricultural heartland of Santa Cruz are bitterly opposed to the land reform. At an emergency meeting on Tuesday, they resolved to "set up land-defense committees to protect our...

Immigrant labor -- both legal and illegal -- has been an important force propelling U.S. economic growth for years. Growth in the native population has been in decline since the 1970s, so immigrant workers have filled in, providing half of the growth in the U.S. labor force since 1990. ...

The state board that investigates lawyer misconduct says it is on record pace for disciplining Minnesota attorneys this year. The Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board says the number of sanctions, ranging from public reprimands to disbarments, is up and it is only spring. If the trend continues, it could lead to the highest number of sanctions leveled against Minnesota lawyers in over five years. St. Paul, Minn. — Many of the complaints the Lawyer's Board investigates get dismissed. Those include a large number filed by clients upset simply because their attorney lost. Every year, however, there a few attorneys the board...

Idaho Group Urges Support for Measure Blocking Eminent Domain Seizures By Allie Martin April 19, 2006 (AgapePress) - A Christian values and religious freedom advocacy group is urging pastors, their congregants, and others in Idaho to support a petition drive to protect churches and church members' private property from eminent domain abuses. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut, et al. that the Constitution of the United States does not prevent government officials from condemning churches and private homes under eminent domain and seizing the property for commercial development...

A San Francisco finance manager stopped in at a Mission District cafe and was tapping on his laptop as he enjoyed his coffee just before noon on a Thursday. Suddenly, he was under siege. "I looked up, and I saw this guy leaning into me as if he was asking a question,'' he said. "I leaned forward, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone fiddling with the computer cord. I tried to stand up, and as I stepped back, he stabbed me in the chest.'' The attack marked a violent turn in a wave of crime...

Went into Kmart yesterday. Purchased my item. Walked to the door and a clerk wanted to go through my bag. Her position is called 'loss prevention' Is This Illegal Search and seizure??? When I have purchased something, it is paid for put in a bag, is it not considered then my personal property? Then why am I subject to having that purchase inspected upon leaving the store??? this practice is expanding. It started at Costco, many years ago, and now it is at many discount stores. Is this actually illegal search and seizure? Do I have a right to refuse...

Ukraine stealing gas, says Italy Italy, like Russia, is in the throes of a cold snap Italy has joined Russia in condemning Ukraine for allegedly stealing Russian gas intended for European consumers. Italy receives Russian gas through pipelines across Ukraine, but is reporting continuing shortfalls in supplies as it endures a cold snap. Industry minister Claudio Scajola said it was "inadmissible" for Ukraine to take gas meant for his country. Ukraine has strongly denied that it is siphoning off Russian gas in transit for Europe. "Everyone should follow the rules and therefore it is inadmissible that Ukraine takes from the...

UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Kofi Annan lashed out at the media after a year of unrelenting attacks on the United Nations and criticism of his management of the $64 billion Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, calling one critic "an overgrown schoolboy." He criticized reporters Wednesday for what he said was unfair coverage of his role in the Oil-for-Food program and insisted reporters missed the big story. That, he said, was the more than 2,200 companies and invididuals from some 40 countries that paid kickbacks or illegal surcharges to Saddam Hussein's government to get contracts. An 18-month investigation led by former U.S....

Lots of people are getting rich off America's ailing $2 trillion medical system. Thomas Moore is among the most creative of them. Thomas Moore thrives on sad cases like that of Lorin Campos, who was born brain damaged in 1989. ...after five years... the medics' insurer agreed to settle... for $10.9 million. The award allowed... Moore to pocket $1.3 million... Under NY State law, his fee is set by a sliding scale. ...this past March he asked...Judge Howard Silver to up his take to $2.2 million, citing the "various complexities posed by the action, and the unusually extensive amount of...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A Chinese-American engineer and two others who allegedly conspired to steal sensitive information about Navy warships and smuggle it to China were indicted Tuesday on federal charges, authorities said. The indictment, returned by a grand jury in Los Angeles, charges Chi Mak, 65, his wife, Rebecca Laiwah Chiu, 62, and brother, Tai Wang Mak, 56, of acting as agents of a foreign government without prior notification to the U.S. Attorney General, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's office. Federal officials said Chi Mak took computer disks from Anaheim defense contractor Power Paragon, where he...