Free Republic

The federal government pays more than $100 million a year to employees who aren’t doing their actual government jobs, but rather working for unions representing government employees against management — with taxpayers essentially funding both sides of the bargaining table. For decades, the government has tracked and reported those figures, but the Biden administration has removed the reports. Under the policy known as “official time,” hundreds of nominal government employees haven’t done anything but full-time union work in years, yet remain on the federal payroll. Not only is the policy expensive to taxpayers, but it also props up the power...

Guys, we're almost there! We're this close to finally replacing journalists with machines!Since no one in DC wants to let you know what Congress is voting on until after the vote, and since our corporate press is too lazy and complicit to worry about it, Elon Musk is stepping up to the plate.Grok, the AI on X, is being outfitted so that it can read, comprehend, and explain the 1,000-page bills that Congress seems to love because it allows them to hide a TON of pork.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign slammed two draft resolutions *** The first resolution would mandate the RNC remain neutral in the nominating contest until he secures the necessary 1,215 delegates, while the second would ensure the party doesn’t foot his legal bills.“The primary is over and it is the RNC’s sole responsibility to defeat Joe Biden and win back the White House,” senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said in a statement. *** Trump is also pushing for his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to serve as party co-chair, and North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley to replace Ronna McDaniel as the...

On January 1, 2024, the new requirement to file a beneficial ownership information (BOI) report with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) goes into effect. More than 32 million entities – mostly small businesses – will have to file this report, which is required by a federal law called the Corporate Transparency Act. Violations of this law can result in a civil penalty of $500 per day the violation continues and criminal penalties of up to $10,000 and two years in prison. January 1 is fast approaching. Now is the time for all small business owners to start preparing. Below...

FIRST ON FOX: Republicans on the House Budget Committee are demanding a full accounting of all funds sent by the United States to Ukraine amid its war with Russia.Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, and Budget Committee Oversight Task Force Chairman Jack Bergman, R-Mich., directed a letter to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young, demanding transparency regarding the strategy behind sending billions of dollars overseas."It has now been over 20 months since Russia invaded Ukraine. Congress has provided $114 billion in supplemental appropriations – not including potentially billions in additional repurposed, transferred, and reprogrammed funds – and yet we...

'A selection of documents and answers remain unclear.' Gov. Ron DeSantis visited New York City for the annual commemoration of the 9/11 terror attacks 22 years ago. And the Florida Governor and 2024 presidential candidate is calling on the current President to make public information that is currently classified about how those attacks came to happen. “And now, decades later, we as a nation still owe full transparency and accountability to these grieving families. Yet too many politicians have broken past promises to them, and that is wholly unacceptable,” DeSantis said. DeSantis called on President Joe Biden “to publicly commit...

A group of 10 House Republicans helped Democrats sink a bill that would have forced Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to report his flight records on government-owned jets. The bill — introduced by Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., as an amendment to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization legislation — was defeated in a narrow 219-216 vote late Wednesday. According to the roll call, 10 Republicans voted against (snip) "We are disappointed that Representative Miller’s important amendment failed," Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director for watchdog group Americans for Public Trust (APT), told Fox News Digital. "After Secretary Buttigieg was caught excessively using a...

Ron DeSantis always makes a big deal about signing all of the Florida laws that stem from new legislation the people behind his administration submit from his office. However, when he signed the new law that sealed all his travel records [Previously Discussed Here], he did so quietly. .... Snip.... Ron DeSantis ’24 is 100%, guaranteed to be an absolute construct of the billionaires, multinationals, and hedge fund managers who must stop Donald Trump and the America First platform. Look backward at the professional Republican outcomes in 2018, 2020 and 2022 to see the background of what this is all...

(May 8, 2023) — The 2024 presidential election cycle is now underway with a few candidates having already declared their candidacy. Presidential candidates now are required to file the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) Financial Disclosure Form 278e with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) within 30 days of declaring their candidacy. From my experience and from the experience of others who have contacted me with questions about various candidates, several of the candidates are not being responsive to this author and others when sent questions regarding their full life narrative, background, and family history. Their tactic seems to be to...

Lawmakers are considering sealing the governor’s travel records. Republicans say it’s about the governor’s safety and security while Democrats say it’s about the safety of the governor’s political ambitions. Lawmakers readied the bill Monday for a final vote on Tuesday. The bill would make all travel logs of the governor, the state’s cabinet members, legislative leaders, and the Chief Justice exempt from public record requests. Also, the bill is retroactive, meaning if signed into law any records regarding protection, travel, and potential threats in the past, present and future would be sealed. “That’s what the bill is about, safety and...

Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that President Joe Biden’s lack of cooperation and transparency on classified documents found at his and former President Donald Trump’s homes was “outrageous.” Mitchell asked, “Have you had access to the substance of the classified documents either from Mar-a-Lago, from Biden, from Pence, any of that?” Warner said, “This is where the Biden administration gets an absolute failing grade. Their position is outrageous. You got Mike Pence saying yesterday as well. He would be happy to have the intelligence committee. He trusts us to look...

Florida’s bipartisan Senate Governmental Oversight and Accountability Committee has just approved a bill that seeks to shield Governor Ron DeSantis’ travel records from the general public. SB 1616 allows Florida’s Governor, the governor’s close family, visiting governors, and others state officials to be exempt from disclosing their travel records. Currently, Florida has several “sunshine laws” which permit the general public to request travel logs of state officials. The new bill attempts to amend state statute 943.68, that requires records of the Governor’s transportation and protective services to be disclosed to the public.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was on a Zoom meeting this afternoon with members of Congress, the Fed, the Treasury, and FDIC. The call was organized after Silicon Valley Bank crashed and was taken over by the State of California on Friday. Silicon Valley Bank was the largest US bank to crash since the 2008 banking crisis. During the call on Sunday afternoon Massie reported that one Democrat Senator asked if there was a program in place to censor free speech at this time on social media. The first thought of the Democrat Party is to strip Americans of their right...

Democrats who control the state legislature are continuing to defend their use of an online survey they fill out in secret to help determine which bills should live or die. Leaders of the House and Senate said this month they’re considering using the system again this spring despite allegations from a transparency group that it violates the state’s open meetings laws. When the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition read a KUNC report in October about how the so called quadratic voting system was quietly killing bills at the statehouse, the group did something it said it rarely does. It sent...

Below is my column in the New York Post on the pledge of transparency by President Joe Biden in the classified documents scandal. Yesterday, President Biden assured the public that it could take “the word of a Biden” on their bright future. That would be more reassuring if he would fulfill his pledge to be “very transparent” on his storage of documents from his time as senator and vice president. Here is the column: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has repeatedly assured the public that President Biden is committed in the classified-document scandal to move forward in “a very...

Race to the Bottom describes the process of competitive devaluation, where value is gutted to remain competitive with those who are grabbing market share by stripping out quality, value, durability, transparency, accountability and competence.We see the global Race to the Bottom in everyday products: the quality of goods has plummeted as manufacturers compete to reduce costs to maintain high profit margins by stripping out the quality and durability of components. We see it in shrinkflation, where the cereal box contains less cereal while the price ratchets higher.We see it when cereals that once contained no sugar are now sickly-sweet because...

Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton vowed that lawmakers would stall Biden government nominations until it handed over the materials the FBI recovered from both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. "Until the administration stops stonewalling Congress, there will be pain as a consequence for them," Cotton said, according to The Hill. "Whether it's blocking nominees or withholding budgetary funds, Congress will impose pain on the administration until they provide these documents." "I'm prepared to refuse consent to fast-track any nominee from any department or agency and to take every step that I can on every committee on which...

Staffers at The Washington Post are livid at publisher Fred Ryan. That's according to conversations I had on Wednesday with nearly a dozen employees at The Post who expressed fury at the way Ryan announced in a town hall that the company would undergo layoffs in early 2023. Ryan said that the layoffs would only amount to a single-digit percentage of the workforce and that the overall size of the company would not shrink, given there would be reinvestments in other areas. But none of that quelled outrage from staffers. The staffers at The Post, who were already seeking answers...

Below is my column on Fox.com on the firing of former FBI General Counsel James Baker at Twitter. The move by Elon Musk is raising serious questions of whether he has faced a type of “deep state” problem within his own company obstructing his efforts to restore transparency and free speech values to Twitter. Here is the column: On Tuesday, Elon Musk surprised many by firing former FBI General Counsel James Baker as legal counsel for Twitter. For many of us, the most surprising thing was that Baker was still at Twitter. I had assumed that Baker had left the...

Summary:How is it possible for proprietary AI models to enter patient care, without extensive peer reviews for algorithmic transparency? That's a question we should be asking about Epic's Deterioration Index, which has been utilized for several use cases, including COVID-19 patient risk models.The conversation about machine learning development largely centers on how individual organizations proceed - and whether they use adequate data, methods, algorithms, transparency, and a process that guarantees models do not go into production until they are tested and vetted.At the other end of the spectrum are AI models developed by Google and Facebook that are completely opaque,...