Free Republic

Thousands of young people are now employed on campuses around the world, well financed and well organized, in an unprecedented effort that challenges the very legitimacy of Israel on every possible academic and economic front. They call their movement: BDS – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Over the next few days, Mr. Sheldon Adelson and Mr. Haim Saban have called an emergency meeting of organizations concerned about BDS to answer two questions. ● From where does the finance and organizational support for BDS emanate? ● How can BDS be stopped? The answers may be easier to ascertain than one would expectMost...

This week felt like déjà vu all over again for immigration activists who held hunger strikes ahead of Christmas break. The House and Senate, one of the least productive to ever set foot in the nation's Capitol, left Washington this week to go on vacation without bringing forward a vote on reform. Again. But activists aren't the only ones fed up with Congress’ inaction on immigration reform. The country's largest states—California, New York, and Texas—have been looking for ways to take matters into their own hands when it comes to granting rights to undocumented residents. In New York, State Senator...

Crowdfunding has worked for films, political candidates, disaster relief and now real estate. Crowdfunding, the act of soliciting funds from the public, most recently on the Internet, is already a powerful tool. Now it is being used by cities to raise funds bypassing the traditional muni bond market. Central Falls, the Rhode Island city that filed for bankruptcy two years ago, is seeking to finance a park project through a crowdfunding website rather than the municipal-bond market. The city of about 19,000 wants $10,044 to put five trash cans in Jenks Park, which is currently “\”littered with garbage and debris,”...

The electronic pulltab sales slated to help fund the Vikings stadium are nowhere near their projected target, even after the state lowered that target last month, a House committee learned Wednesday. (snip) The sale of electronic pulltabs, run by Minnesota charities, was supposed to generate $348 million in taxes to underwrite the state's share of the cost of a new Vikings stadium. But the electronic pulltab games, introduced in September, have pulled in just $4.2 million in gross receipts -- and $635,000 in net receipts after prizes were paid.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Channel 2 Action News investigation found that the State Department is sending millions of dollars to save mosques overseas. This investment has received criticism as the United States makes an effort to slash nearly $4 trillion in government spending.Plenty of outrage following the announcement made Thursday afternoon by a government commission that suggested huge cuts to the budget, including eliminating the interest education for home mortgage. This juxtaposed with the United States investing millions to refurbish mosques as a good-will effort in Muslim countries has upset many taxpayer groups.

Minneapolis, Minn. — Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and labor groups say they have agreements with the Vikings that they hope will increase city support for a new stadium on the current Metrodome site. The agreements call for union labor to be used on any stadium, with unions committing to no work stoppages.

Sound bites from the left. Sound bites to the right; here I am, stuck in the middle with you (STEALERS WHEEL). The House Budget Committee was in full political regalia as posturing for the home folks and November’s election was in full force. Most of the questions are redundant or ridiculous and in some cases, both. An exception was Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who asked Mr.Bernanke if the FED‘s policies had corrupted the BOND markets that they stopped sending a credible signal. It has been a consistent theme of NOTES that the BOND market is broken as an indicator of...

There’s talk abound about the possibility of exchange controls. The ability to slow the inflow and outflow of funds is being discussed from Greece to Germany and Switzerland. It is no secret that many citizens in the peripheries are moving EUROS out of their domestic banks and into German, Swiss ans British domiciled entities. The German paper HANDELSBLATT had an article during the weekend suggesting that the SNB and Swiss government are readying a plan to undertake exchange controls and a true negative interest rate regime. The overly strong SWISS FRANC has placed a great deal of stress on the...

Major League Baseball player Wilson Ramos kidnapped in Venezuela.As of this writing there is still no news of any groups, or individuals, claiming responsibility or demand for ransom as of yet.Also, as of this writing,- while much reporting in the MSM has covered the increase in ransom kidnappings in Venezuela, none are reporting on the link between ransom kidnappings to finance "jihad", or the cooperation between Islamists and the drug cartels.  Kidnappings are on the rise in Hugo Chavez's Hizbullah-Iran friendly Venezuela.Under Chavez, Venezuela has become an Islamist jihadist sanctuary.As Islamists have increasingly made in-roads into Latin America many violent acts of terror, typical of jihad-terror...

When you get to look behind the curtain, sometimes you wish you never did. When I say we NEED a major reform of the MONETARY SYSTEM, I do not use those words lightly. I am also not a street hawker who feels I have to yell like one of those used-car salesmen to sell you something you don’t want nor need driven by a little old lady who never dies. I hate to bring this up but it appears that we have little hope of saving Europe and the whole shift away from the mark-to-market accounting that was swept in...

The blood of the ongoing murder of migrant blacks in Tripoli has a name on it many will never see: President Barack Obama and his Foreign Policy. Gadaffi is gone; his family safely ensconced in Algeria and the Obama-supported rebels left in charge are now conducting a “large scale cleaning in the areas under their control with the extermination of all blacks in the capital”, according to The Independent. Without the permission of Congress and minus the blessing of We the People, Obama took the US to war in Libya. He sided with the rebels and ultimately, in effect the...

...Yes, the Republicans can now, pretty much, put the kibosh on the Obama agenda with big victories in the House and Senate, but is that enough to turn things around? In a word–no....Former Bush economic advisor Marc Sumerlin talked about the upcoming Fed QE about a month ago on CNBC, “To me, it starts to get interesting at six to seven trillion dollars,” Sumerlin said...

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has finally bro ken his silence about the $100 million mosque he wants to build in the shadow of Ground Zero. But his op-ed article in The New York Times didn't clear up much. Rauf says that Cordoba House -- as it apparently has now been rebranded from Park51 -- will "clearly identify all of [its] financial backers." But when? The imam pledges to "seek the support of [9/11] families." But what took so long, when it was their opposition that prompted public outrage over the project? And then there are the issues raised in just...

No wonder the guys who want to build that Islamic center near Ground Zero are quiet as mosque mice about financing: Turns out, as The Post first reported, their own financial records are, well, a bit short of blue chip. Indeed, Sharif El-Gamal, who owns the site -- as The Post's Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein reported Sunday -- owes nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the city in back payments. His firm, 45 Park Place Partners, simply skipped its property-tax bills in January and July, according to the Finance Department. Gamal's folks say he delayed payments while...

DETROIT — General Motors Co. will buy AmeriCredit Corp. for $3.5 billion, a deal that allows the automaker to expand loans to customers with poor credit and offer more leases, key areas where GM must grow to accelerate its car sales. But the acquisition, announced Thursday, also means that GM, which is 61 percent owned by the U.S. government, is getting back into the business of making risky loans. AmeriCredit is an independent auto financing company that already works with about 4,000 GM dealers.

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-obama-and-president-medvedev-russia-us-russia-business-summit Home • Briefing Room • Speeches & Remarks The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 24, 2010 Remarks by President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia at the U.S.-Russia Business Summit U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C. 3:08 P.M. EDT PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, good afternoon, everybody. It is a pleasure to be here with my friend and partner, President Medvedev, and I want to thank him again for his leadership, especially his vision for an innovative Russia that’s modernizing its economy, including deeper economic ties between our...

Senator Christopher Dodd's massive financial regulatory reform bill is back and it's even uglier than before for startup companies trying to raise seed capital. Ugly for startups? A bill that means to address "too big to fail" and systemic risk to the financial system? Yes. And we're not talking about some indirect, attenuated, downstream effect from new regulation of big banks or Wall Street investment firms. The bill directly targets the way startups raise capital. This "reform" occupies only a few pages in Sen. Dodd's massive bill, at Section 926, entitled "Authority of State Regulators Over Regulation D Offerings" (pages...

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has long touted the wonderful fantasy of high-speed trains. On the authority's Web site, viewers are shown a sleek, ultramodern train zooming through a backdrop of green rolling hills and lush scenery, all at speeds up to 225 miles per hour. Not only is high-speed rail fast, but you'll be able to hop on a high-speed train without going through those bothersome security checkpoints they have in airports, resulting in a travel time from San Francisco to Anaheim of under three hours. Is anything missing from this picture? Only reality. When the imagination of dazzling...

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil. The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan. The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil...

GEORGE SOROS’ BACKGROUND: To give you an idea about this guy, here’s a news nugget from a while back, this guy can make money in a heartbeat, and pump it into far-left causes with no effort, generally using “shadow corporations”, and “dummy corporations” to do his bidding.