Free Republic

Vice President Harris hauled in nearly half a million dollars in book royalties during her first year in office, ethics disclosure forms show. Harris reported $325,000 in royalty earnings from her 2019 book “The Truths We Hold,” and another $130,000 for her children’s book “Superheroes Are Everywhere,” Bloomberg reported Friday. The cash far outstripped President Biden’s, who reported between $15,001 and $50,000 in royalties for “Promise Me, Dad,” — a heartfelt 2018 memoir about his late son Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015.

The New York Times appeared to celebrate a liberal think tank tied to leftist billionaire George Soros for spreading its influence in Washington, D.C. The Times propagated how Data for Progress, a pro-Green New Deal and Medicare-for-All group, “has grown comfortable with mainstream influence.” The group is a project of the dark money group Tides Advocacy, The story, headlined “Born on the Left, Data for Progress Comes of Age in Biden’s Washington,” championed how “President Biden mentions it in private calls. The White House reads its work. And Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, teams up with its leaders for...

It turns out that the left has no problem taking “dark money” when it benefits their own political ends. The New York Times published an explosive report naming liberal Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss as “one of the most important donors to left-leaning advocacy groups and an increasingly influential force among Democrats.” New tax filings showed that two of Wyss’s organizations “donated $208 million from 2016 through early last year to three other nonprofit funds that doled out money to a wide array of groups that backed progressive causes and helped Democrats in their efforts to win the White House and...

The story of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a one of a whole lot of money spent on broken promises, no results, and a bad reputation.The story of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is one of a whole lot of money spent on broken promises, no results, and a bad reputation. Bloomberg’s late entry into the crowded Democratic Party presidential primary last fall was marked with the intrigue of a well-financed and well-known candidate deploying a unique strategy in an unusual race. One of the richest men in the world, who built a financial empire...

In “The French Connection,” the iconic 1971 film starring Gene Hackman as the grisly New York City detective Popeye Doyle, the bad guy is a wealthy Frenchman operating the world’s largest heroin-smuggling syndicate. In what could be its sequel, the Chinese government has been operating the world’s largest influence-peddling syndicate for decades. The drug of choice is no longer heroin but money - and lots of it. Starting in the mid-1990s with the Clintons, it has grown in both size and audacity and now seems to have ensnared the Biden family, as well. There is a straight line from China’s...

“Seinfeld” cast members Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander along with the co-creator Larry David are reuniting on Friday for a virtual fundraiser for the Texas Democratic Party. The aim of the event, titled “Fundraiser About Something,” is to raise money in the hopes of getting Texas to vote blue in the 2020 presidential election. Hosted by NBC’s Seth Meyers, the cast of the sitcom will discuss their favorite episodes of “Seinfeld.” Tickets for the event are donation based. “Most people are chipping in $38 for Texas' 38 electoral votes,” the website states. Higher donations come with perks such as a...

Are Jack Dorsey, who has lied to Congress, and Mark Zuckerberg, who has no love for freedom, democracy, and the Constitution, Russian assets? President Donald Trump was accused of being a Russian asset because Moscow’s operatives tried to influence American opinion by buying a few thousand dollars of Facebook ads while fake Twitter accounts planted dubious stories. So how are Twitter and Facebook not meddling in our elections by suppressing a major American newspaper’s URL for a story deemed harmful to one candidate in a presidential election? If there ever was any doubt that the social media tech giants Twitter...

Are Jack Dorsey, who has lied to Congress, and Mark Zuckerberg, who has no love fot freedom, democracy, and the Constitution, Russian assets? President Donald Trump was accussed of being a Russian asset because Moscow’s operatives tried to influence American opinion by buying a few thousand dollars of Facebook ads while fake Twitter accounts planted dubious stories. So how is Twitter and Facebook not meddling in our elections by suppressing a major American niewspaper’s URL for a story deemed harmful to one candidate in a presidential election? If there ever was any doubt that the social media tech giants Twitter...

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday was locked out of her personal Twitter account for sharing The Post’s bombshell cover story on Hunter Biden’s alleged hard drive and an email linking Joe Biden to his son’s job at a Ukrainian energy company. “Your account has been locked,” a message from the social media network informed McEnany, whose account has more than 1 million followers. “We have determined that this account violated the Twitter Rules,” the network said, highlighting her prior tweet with a link to The Post’s article. Without providing any evidence, Twitter said McEnany — who shared...

Less than two months ahead of the presidential election – with concerns of foreign interference again at the forefront – a conservative political group is raising "serious concerns" about millions of donations reported by a major Democratic fundraising platform. A preliminary computer analysis by the Take Back Action Fund, obtained exclusively by Fox News, has found that nearly half of all 2019 donations to ActBlue were made by people claiming to be unemployed. Action Fund President John Pudner questioned the veracity of those donations and called it a loophole that must be closed for the sake of election integrity. "After...

A third of Americans fear being fired for their political beliefs. Unfortunately, for those who wish to support political campaigns, federal and state laws leave no place to hide. “Cancel culture” has divided First Amendment advocates. Some argue that private actors must tolerate differing views for free speech to survive, while others say the only concern should be government intrusions on speech. But when private individuals target and harass other Americans for their political donations, the government can’t say it plays no role. Campaign contributions are public because the law requires it. Every American who gives more than $200 to...

We should have learned our lesson by now. In elections, it’s not what you pay; it’s what you say. Hillary Clinton spent almost twice as much as Donald Trump only to lose the 2016 election, even while independent groups supporting Clinton outspent those supporting Trump by 3-to-1. In the spirit of making the same mistakes, many 2020 hopefuls have taken “you get what you pay for” as a given. Billionaire Tom Steyer dumped more than $300 million from his own pocket into his campaign and failed to score a single delegate. Michael Bloomberg somehow did both better and worse, spending...

Former First Lady Michelle Obama has been given a show by PBS starting next week, the taxpayer funded network announced Friday. The timing of the announcement comes after Democrats marked $75 million for PBS’s parent the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the coronavirus relief bill that passed at the end of March. Newsbusters reported the $75 million is on top of the $465 million given CPB in the current year’s federal budget, which is an increase of $20 million over the previous year.

House Democrats held a panicked hearing this month about how to respond to the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which upheld the right of corporations to spend in elections. Their concern was the undue influence corporate spending might have on the coming elections. In the entire 2016 campaign cycle, corporations spent less than $300 million on federal races, less than 5% of total spending. Meanwhile, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already spent more than $360 million on cable, broadcast and radio advertisements since declaring his candidacy in mid-November. That doesn’t include Mr....

"Services are valued at prevailing commercial rate" Sanders packs venues because he has major corporate entertainers play for free. See for example: "Move Over Coachella, Bernie Sanders' Caucus Rally Is The Hottest Line Up This Season" https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/01/9261165/bernie-sanders-concert-bon-iver-vampire-weekend-iowa-rally

A record-shattering tab for TV ads, $12 million for a self-created tech firm to rival Donald Trump’s digital operation and nearly $250,000 on swank office furniture for his sprawling Manhattan headquarters — that was just a fraction of Mike Bloomberg’s budget for the first five weeks of his young, self-funded presidential campaign. Bloomberg’s top two campaign lieutenants, chair Patti Harris and manager Kevin Sheekey, are on track to earn annual salaries of $375,000, according to a campaign aide. And that doesn’t account for the vintage Bloomberg staff bonuses, which totaled $1.5 million the year of his 2005 mayoral race alone....

The staff, the ad spending, the campaigning -- Michael Bloomberg was going to do all of this to defeat President Donald Trump already. Doing it as a 'candidate' excempts him from limits on PACs and political donations. There is very good reason to believe Michael Bloomberg isn’t actually running for president.Of course, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. For one, he declared he is. He’s also hired more than 1,000 staff and is still expanding, offering salaries far above campaign averages. This week, he became the first of the declared candidates to have campaigned in all 14 states...

Senate Democrats introduced a constitutional amendment on Tuesday to undo the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision. A group of Democrats, led by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and progressive activists rallied outside the Supreme Court to unveil the amendment, which faces an unlikely path to being ratified. "Few decisions in the 200 and some odd years of this republic have threatened our democracy like Citizens United. People say they want to get rid of the swamp. Citizens United is the embodiment of the swamp," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at the rally. Schumer added that "overturning Citizens United...

Ten years ago, the Supreme Court overturned portions of a federal law that empowered government to dictate how Americans who were not connected to any candidates and political parties could practice their inherent right of free expression. It was one of the greatest free speech decisions in American history. The case of Citizens United revolved around state efforts to ban a conservative nonprofit group from showing a critical documentary it produced of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton right before the 2008 Democratic primary elections. At the time, the McCain-Feingold Act made it illegal for corporations and labor unions to engage in...

SAN MARCOS, Texas — Michael R. Bloomberg on Saturday did not rule out spending a billion dollars of his own money on the 2020 presidential race, even if he does not win the Democratic nomination, and said he would mobilize his well-financed political operation to help Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren win in November if either is the party nominee, despite their sharp policy differences. Mr. Bloomberg’s plans would effectively create a shadow campaign operation for the general election, complete with hundreds of organizers in key battleground states and a robust digital operation, ready to be inherited by the party...