Free Republic

The president has nominated attorney J. Mark McWatters for the bank board. However, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, has said he's "in no hurry" to hold a hearing or a vote on the nomination. Other pending confirmations take precedence, he said.The last of the 2015 lobbying reports are in, and the top corporate spender turns out to have been the Boeing Company, at $21.9 million. Not coincidentally, the aerospace giant also outranks thousands of other firms in profiting from the subsidies doled out by the Export-Import Bank. Last year, Boeing benefitted...

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., charged the Obama administration with quietly signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement in New Zealand, and said the White House tried to minimize it because it knows the public isn't pleased with the deal.

The White House official whom Bob Woodward charged had crosssed a line by saying he would "regret" printing his version of a set of Washington negotiations was Gene Sperling, the director of the White House Economic Council, a source familiar with the exchange told BuzzFeed Wednesday. The email from Sperling to Woodward, which Woodward read to Politico Wednesday, has transfixed Washington, with Republicans and some in the press charging that it embodies a White House lording it over a cowed press corps. Woodward, Politico reported, called the top official — identified to BuzzFeed as Sperling — to tell him that...

----------Original Message---------- From: "Elizabeth Warren" Date: Jan 11, 2016 Subject: Thank you for contacting me To: Dear Pabianice, Thank you for contacting me about the Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act. On October 20, 2015, the Senate voted to reject consideration of the Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act. I voted against the bill because I share many of the concerns of the law enforcement organizations, faith communities, labor groups, and human rights and domestic violence prevention organizations who oppose it. This bill would do nothing to fix our broken immigration system. Instead, it would demonize immigrants, create new...

A strong statement from Sen. Cruz who voted against the bill: What we’ve seen in Congress today is profoundly disappointing. This spending bill does not honor the promises we made to the men and women who elected us. It funds Obamacare. It funds Planned Parenthood. It funds executive amnesty. It fails to protect our national security and stop Syrian refugees from coming to this country. It fails to do anything to stop the Iranian Nuclear Deal. And what does it do? It jacks up yet more low-skilled immigration, which will only drag down wages, kill American jobs, and hurt working...

Sens. Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions introduced a bill Friday in the Senate that would rein in the H1B “guest worker” program that has allowed Disney and other major corporations to replace their American tech workers with foreign "guest workers." The American Jobs First Act of 2015 (S. 2394) would reform the H-1B visa program to stop abuse of the legal immigration system and ensure American workers are better served, Sessions said. Sessions, R-Ala., notes, this bill is the "exact opposite in every way of the wage-crushing I-squared bill." I-squared, championed by the billionaire tech lobby, is designed to make...

Posted Dec. 12, 2015 As profoundly disturbing as Donald Trump is, we are far and away more troubled by the legion of those who support him. We've seen their posts to Facebook and their Tweets. We've received their email chains and heard their defense of Donald Trump’s horrifying lies, racist, sexist, and culturally and religiously intolerant claims at social gatherings. Enough. ...snip We understand from a Washington Post/ABC News poll that the majority of Trump's Republican supporters are white, less educated and working class. It’s easy to see a correlation between this poll and a report released last month by...

MSM CHASING THE "MISTRESS BOMB "BUT IS THERE MORE THAN ONE? Numerous national media outlets are pursuing multiple allegations of infidelity involving U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida , all in the aftermath of the "mistress bomb" report we published earlier this week. Specifically, three mainstream media outlets have independently supplied us with the names of two additional women said to be romantically linked to the GOP establishment's candidate of choice. These names are in addition to the woman we referenced earlier this week , a lobbyist whose alleged proximity to Rubio was discovered during a deep dive into the...

Ex-Im Bank board still lacks a quorum to approve multimillion dollar, taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for big business WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) yesterday voted against the $281 billion, five-year highway bill that reauthorizes the Export-Import Bank, a quintessential example of cronyism and corporate welfare. Using various budget gimmicks and one-time revenue raisers, this bill guarantees an even larger shortfall in 2020 when the next highway bill comes up. Sen. Cruz issued the following statement upon the bill’s passage in the Senate:“Last night, sadly, the Washington Cartel reversed one of the few fiscal conservative victories achieved with this...

The U.S. House on Thursday passed a five-year transportation bill that also revive(s) the charter of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which had been allowed to expire in the face of conservative opposition. the House of Representatives voted 359 to 65. All 65 "no" votes came from Republicans, including lawmakers opposed to the EXIM bank measure. "It proves to the American people that we can get things done," said House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, a Pennsylvania Republican.

I have a friend in Texas who believes everything you see on the news is made up. The 9/11 attacks? A media creation. Newtown? Secret footage exposes the fraud.  The recent Paris attacks? A false flag operation to get us all scared.Part of me thinks my friend is a little wacky, but part of me thinks he has a point. It does seem a lot of what the government treats as a crisis is a crisis only for those who stand to profit from it.  Take the 2008 financial "crisis." After the $800 billion TARP bailout, what truly needed to...

It seems bizarre that financial policy would get decided in a bill to repair roads and bridges and mass transit, but that’s the whole point of the Christmas tree strategy: If a bill is deemed “must pass,” then adding ornaments to it comprises a good strategy for getting things into law that otherwise might not receive a vote. Ryan touted this process as a positive example of new leadership. In recent years, House bills written in secret sped to the floor without the ability for alterations. But on the highway bill, over 80 amendments got a vote on the House...

Donald Trump likes to remind America that he's a master dealmaker. "I'm going to make the greatest trade deals we've ever made in our country," he proclaims in his new radio ads. But experts say Trump is talking a lot of nonsense on trade. It isn't backed up by the data. "[Trump] wants to convey as a presidential candidate that any deal that he was not involved with... is by definition an inferior deal because he didn't play a role," says Bernard Baumohl, chief economist at the Economic Outlook Group. (full article) http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/05/news/economy/donald-trump-trade-nonsense/index.html

The TPP Trade Deal is looming closer to becoming a finalized reality. Current negotiations center around Auto Manufacturing, and Japanese negotiators have constructed an outline that would devastate what remains of the U.S. Auto industry. Unfortunately the K-Street lobbyists, funded by Wall Street through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have already greased the legislative skids to all but guarantee the elimination of thousands of jobs. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue gave Senators $18 million in bribe money to insure passage. The TPP deal encompasses approximately 40% of total global manufacturing. Trillions of dollars are at stake.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says some Wall Street executives should have gone to jail for their roles in the financial crisis that gripped the country in 2008 and triggered the Great Recession. Billions of dollars in fines have been levied against major banks and brokerage firms in the wake of the economic meltdown that was in large part triggered by reckless lending and shady securities dealings that blew up a housing bubble. But in an interview with USA Today published Sunday, Bernanke said he thinks that in addition to the corporations, individuals should have been held more accountable....

Bernie Sanders blazed across the Bay State yesterday, drawing record crowds, name-dropping Elizabeth Warren and greeting rapturous crowds on his first campaign tour of Massachusetts. “As your senator, Elizabeth Warren, reminds us: This is a rigged economy. Heads, they win. Tails, you lose,” the self-avowed socialist told more than 20,000 Boston supporters. “We’re going to create an economy that works for the middle class and not just the 1 percent.” The Democratic hopeful first stopped in Springfield, and then made his way to the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, where he drew deafening cheers with his signature impassioned pledges to...

At least some Democrats are resisting Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s purge of the liberal intelligentsia. This week Ms. Warren succeeded in forcing the resignation of respected scholar Robert Litan from the Brookings Institution after he revealed that a new Labor Department regulation could cost investors billions. Now five Democratic economists have authored a letter to protest Warren’s bullying. Robert Lawrence of Harvard’s Kennedy School and Bowman Cutter of the Roosevelt Institute are among those writing “to express our concern over our colleague Bob Litan’s treatment at the hands of the Brookings Institution and Senator Elizabeth Warren.” Also signing the letter are...

Leaked Audio: Hillary Clinton Calls at Private Fundraiser for Infrastructure Bank to Resemble Clinton Global Initiative Hillary Clinton told donors at a private fundraiser in New York last Thursday that she plans as president to create a “national infrastructure bank” modeled on the Clinton Global Initiative, according to a recording of her remarks obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. This was the first time that Clinton, who has long supported the formation of a government-controlled bank to invest in national infrastructure projects, cited the Clinton Global Initiative—the flagship arm of her family’s controversial foundation—as an investment model for her proposed...

Businessman Donald Trump says there’s at least one subject where he can find some common ground with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont: trade. “I was watching him and he talked about trade and he was talking about how we’re getting ripped off left and right on trade, and I [said], you know, I think I can take that paragraph and just use it in my speeches,” Mr. Trump said Monday via phone on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “It’s what I’m saying — it’s one of my big things.” Both Mr. Trump, who has been leading recent polls on the 2016 GOP...

Fed decision day: The event traders across the globe have anticipated for months has finally arrived. As of 8:00 a.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were 43 points lower, or 0.26% to 16621. S&P 500 futures shed 6 points, or 0.31% to 1982, while Nasdaq 100 futures slid 10 points, or 0.24% to 4370. Today’s Markets Months of speculation about whether September was the month in which the Federal Reserve would begin to lift short-term interest rates is finally coming to a close. The Federal Open Market Committee meets for the final day of its two-day policy-setting meeting, which...