Free Republic

TALLAHASSEE — A company owned by Craig Mateer, an Orlando entrepreneur, GOP megadonor and gubernatorial appointee, was paid $75,000 in September to provide travel to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign, federal campaign reports show. That pales in comparison with the $1.6 million in travel expenses covered by a company associated with Scott Wagner, a South Florida lawyer and longtime friend of DeSantis who was reappointed to the South Florida Water Management District. DeSantis has a well-documented track record of appointing big political donors to government positions where they preside over multimillion-dollar budgets, make spending and policy decisions, award contracts, and...

Somebody new going to fall out of a window in Moscow? Seems the czar of Russia is not well regarded by the boyars he holds in his closest circle, and now the entire world now knows about it. That's what we read in the Daily Mail:Moscow's high society has been rocked by a scandal after a pair of prominent Vladimir Putin cronies were allegedly heard insulting the Russian despot.Oligarch and former Russian senator Farkhad Akhmedov and high-profile Moscow music producer Iosif Prigozhin, both supposedly supporters of Putin, have been accused of calling him 'Satan' and a 'dwarf'.An audio recording of...

Back in the days of Barack Obama, he handed out billions of dollars to solar and wind power projects. The Chicago Tribune noted that just one of them, the "Solyndra scandal," cost taxpayers at least half a billion dollars. That solar panel company got $535 million from the government, "with the help of the Obama White House," over objections from federal budget experts. "Obama and Vice President Joe Biden got a nice photo op. They got to make speeches about being 'green.' But then Solyndra went bankrupt. Americans lost jobs. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill." Now, it seems Biden...

His secret girlfriend has lots of secret wealth. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s longtime mistress has an estimated net worth of $100 million in “shadow wealth,” including swanky apartments and a yacht, despite her modest background, a trove of newly leaked documents reveal. Svetlana Krivonogikh, 46, has been romantically linked with the Russian strongman since he was still deputy mayor of her hometown of St. Petersburg, and reportedly has a daughter with him. But Krivonogikh — who grew up in a communal apartment — and other Putin cronies have been enriched through shell companies in the Virgin Islands and elsewhere, the...

Some of the world's biggest chip buyers, including Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google, are joining top chip-makers such as Intel Corp (INTC.O) to create a new lobbying group to press for government chip manufacturing subsidies.

The White House announced last week that it is launching a “Call to Action” asking private businesses to help with the resettlement of refugees. This could be done without regard to the government cap of 85,000 total refugees, including 10,000 Syrian refugees, in 2016. Fifteen founding corporations have teamed up with the Obama administration on the effort. These are: Accenture, Airbnb, Chobani, Coursera, Goldman Sachs, Google, HP, IBM, JPMorgan Chase & Co., LinkedIn, Microsoft, Mastercard, UPS, TripAdvisor, and Western Union. The Call to Action initiative is not only to help refugees in the United States, but all over the world....

A look at political donations shows that the big-dollar contributors put their money on the Democrats. So which group is really the party of the rich? For decades, the Democrats have been getting away with portraying Republicans as hateful men who do the bidding of the wealthy at the expense of the country's poor and middle class. Yet as the Associated Press reported just before Christmas, "it's actually the liberal-minded who shelled out the most cash in the just completed midterm elections." What's more, "the two biggest super PACs of 2014," the "Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC," were...

Note: a slightly altered version of this story appears at WND today as well. Following a weeklong confrontation between protestors and police from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), events at the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada came to an abrupt end on Saturday, April 11, when the BLM suddenly threw in the towel and left. Speaking to a local TV news program Monday, Nevada Senator and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “This isn’t over…” And he is certainly correct. The showdown between BLM and Cliven Bundy – the last rancher in Clark County, Nevada – was but the...

A federal jury found former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS +2.11% trader Fabrice Tourre liable for misleading investors in a mortgage-linked deal that collapsed during the financial crisis, delivering a historic win for a U.S. regulator eager to prove its mettle inside the courtroom. The panel of nine jurors reached their verdict during the second day of deliberations, finding Mr. Tourre liable on six of seven claims that he violated federal securities law. "It was a long, slow process," said juror Beth Glover, a 47-year-old Episcopal priest, after the verdict. The victory is an important one for the Securities and...

They’ve been helping the government spy on people for a very long time. The cozy relationships go back decades.BREAKIn an interview with National Journal, former NSA Director Michael Hayden indirectly confirmed Microsoft’s involvement. “This is a home game for us,” Hayden says. “Are we not going to take advantage that so much of it goes through Redmond, Washington? Why would we not turn the most powerful telecommunications and computing management structure on the planet to our use?” Most of this co-opting of the private sector has happened with the full-throated support of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, again behind...

And Hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he had given us. Rom 5:5 Once again we see the hypocrisy of the religion of liberalism. Even though America is the least racist country in the world we see the race industry tying another Whitey to a tree and lashing her before her lynching. While Paula Deen is watching her life being destroyed for using the N word while White thirty years ago yet at the same time we witness the deification of a Black girl slamming Whitey....

Harry Reid, Jon Corzine and other cronies that got away in 2012By Peter Schweizer Published December 12, 2012 FoxNews.com **SNIP** 2. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) For Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.), politics is a family business. And when it comes to doling out the federal goodies to favored friends, few can compete with the Nevada senator. Sen. Reid has sponsored at least $47 million in earmarks that directly benefitted organizations that one of his sons, Key Reid, [RW1] either lobbies for or is affiliated with. Recently, another of Sen. Reid’s sons, Rory Reid, helped Chinese energy giant ENN Energy Group make...

Warren Buffett is by now no stranger to the national debate over federal tax policy. In 2009, he penned a New York Times op-ed calling for "truly major changes in both taxes and outlays." Two years later, he returned to the Times with a widely publicized call for large tax increases on the "super-rich," noting that his own effective federal tax rate (17 percent) was far less than his employees' rates (ranging from 33 to 41 percent). President Obama liked the idea so much, he called for Congress to pass "the Buffett Rule" in his 2012 state of the union...

Republicans need a new coalition and a new message. The heart of that coalition should be the working class. The message should be populism. Populist movements in the past have often been ugly because they scapegoated vulnerable minorities. The new Republican populism shouldn't blame the "47 percent" of Mitt Romney's imagination, or immigrants seeking to make a better life. The new Republican populism should declare war on the cronies and special interests who use big government to rig the game in their favor and deny opportunity to those trying to climb the ladder and live the American dream. It's time...

Newt Gingrich has at least one name on his list of potential running mates: GOP rival Mitt Romney. "I think Mitt Romney is a very admirable person, and I'm not going to pick a fight with Mitt Romney," Gingrich said in an interview Wednesday with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. When asked if he would ever ask Romney to be his vice presidential nominee, Gingrich didn't mince words. "I think the consensus is that he'd certainly be on the list, whether he'd want to or not," Gingrich said. "He's a very competent person. This is a very serious man. I would certainly...

Just like clockwork, the Obama administration never misses an opportunity to unload thousands of records it hopes no one will ever bother sifting through during the holidays. On Black Friday, the White House released more visitor log info — trumpeting disclosures it has fought tooth and nail. I’ve started looking through the data. And you can, too, right here:

The last time I checked, didn’t the Left call this sort of thing ‘crony capitalism?’ Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor. As you probably know, smallpox was eradicated in the wild decades ago: mostly because it was a genuinely terrifying threat...

Our new study shows that under the Obama jobs bill, debt-ridden states will get another big handout.Last Thursday, the president urged Congress to pony up roughly $200 billion in taxpayer money to "provide more jobs for teachers [and] more jobs for construction workers" and more money to carry out other state and local activities. He urges Congress to spend this money even after handing out hundreds of billions of dollars for similar purposes as part of the 2009 stimulus package, as well as a score and more billion dollars again in 2010. These vast contributions to the coffers of state...

*snip* General Electric [GE 15.41 0.40 (+2.66%) ^ 0.40 (+2.66%) ] officially notified Berkshire Hathaway [BRK.A 103460.00 -340.00 (-0.33%) ] on Tuesday it intends next month to repurchase the $3 billion of preferred stock it sold him in October 2008.GE has flagged the move for a while. Under terms of the deal it struck with Buffett when all hell was breaking loose, the company led by Jeff Immelt was obliged to wait three years to call the bonds. It also needed to give at least 30 days notice—hence this week's letter from Fairfield, Connecticut, to Omaha. Buffett's money doesn't come...

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama will nominate businessman John Bryson to lead the Commerce Department, a White House official said Tuesday. Bryson's appointment brings another private sector player into an administration that has been making a concerted effort to improve its relationship with the business community.