Free Republic

An accomplished Republican professional who served as chief operating officer of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) during the Donald Trump administration was among those shot in a vicious carjacking spree in Washington, D.C., on Monday night, one that ended in police killing the perpetrator in Maryland early Tuesday morning. Mike Gill is in a hospital in critical condition after being shot while picking up his wife, an education lawyer, blocks from the White House on K Street in downtown D.C. at 5:45pm. “We can confirm that Mike Gill was the victim of the shooting at the 900 block of...

Now it’s Glen Youngkin. Virginia Governor Youngkin said in a release on Tuesday that he will lead a Virginia delegation to Taipei City, Taiwan, Tokyo, and Seoul, South Korea, from April 24-29.Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, John Bolton, Asa Hutchinson, Glen Youngkin… The Republican wing of the UniParty is throwing everything possible and pulling every level within their control, including last night’s outcome in Wisconsin, in order to retain the illusion of political parties as the source/solution within a nation collapsing.None of what DC Democrats, Republicans, the RNC or DNC presents is true or real within the landscape of the conflict...

The discovery of two batches of classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president could bring renewed attention to an office the president shared with his scandal-plagued son Hunter and a Chinese energy conglomerate linked to Chinese military intelligence. Joe and Hunter Biden were "office mates" with executives from CEFC China Energy in 2017, according to emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop. In an email to the general manager for the K Street office building, Hunter Biden said the office would be shared by his consulting firm Hudson West, CEFC China Energy, and the Biden Foundation, his family charity. "[P]lease...

Many of his aides and close allies are veteran Washington hands who have profited from advising big corporations. The Sanders-Warren wing of the party is not happy.

WASHINGTON — It was one of the few issues on which President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. disagreed — how far to go in limiting the influence of lobbyists in government. The vice president privately complained that his boss’s effort to slam shut the revolving door between K Street and the administration would deprive it of experienced talent, and he bristled when Mr. Obama’s aides tried to block him from hiring a well-connected Washington operator who had lobbied for pharmaceutical and insurance companies, credit agencies and others. Eight years later, that same confidant, Steve Ricchetti, is...

Media coverage of longtime Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta has disappeared completely an astonished Glenn Greenwald remarked last week. "I'm still somewhat mystified about how Tony Podesta - intimately involved in many of Paul Manafort's slimiest and most unscrupulous practices (because K Street sleaze is 100% bipartisan) - has just vanished from the news cycle and, apparently, legal jeopardy," the Intercept journalist said along with the hashtag "MissingTonyPodesta." Greenwald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who broke the story of U.S. mass surveillance aided by former Central Intelligence Agency analyst Edward Snowden, has been highly critical of Russia investigation coverage and the Democrats'...

Did nothing of value as Speaker. Didn't discourage at least half of those looking to retire into sticking around another two years where we could have maintained control. He lined up his K Street job and started throwing bombs towards Trump (which he also did a few days before the 2016 election). Trump worked and saved the Senate and made the difference in some key governor races. Tonight was not a Trump defeat. Part of it was history -- midterm election usually results in out of power party winning. But this was winnable. Ryan blew the House. /rant

As Guy wrote, fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe raked in more than $500,000 from leftist sympathizers this week after setting up a legal fund and blasting President Trump. As a reminder, McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and the DOJ Inspector General recommended he be terminated for a lack of candor. But it turns out, McCabe's pay day wasn't a result of a grassroots effort to defend him against false attacks. The GoFundMe page was set up by a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm connected to President Barack Obama. From Law...

Washington lobbyists who represent foreign powers have taken comfort for decades in the fact that the Justice Department rarely goes after them for potentially breaking the law. That all changed on Monday. The news of Tony Podesta’s resignation from his namesake firm and indictment of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates sent K Street scrambling, as lobbyists rushed to make sure they’re in compliance with the rules. The developments also renewed calls for Congress to pass legislation beefing up the Justice Department’s enforcement of the law, which lawmakers in both parties have derided for lacking teeth.

The fix is in. Did you know, corporations like General Electric Co. (GE) spend more money on lobbyists than they pay in taxes? The federal government currently taxes corporations at 35 percent. While many argue the rate is too high, you don’t hear companies like GE complaining about it. That’s because they aren’t paying it. Over the past 15 years, GE’s federal income tax rate averaged only 5.2 percent. General Electric paid no federal taxes in 2010, despite earning $5.1 billion in U.S. profits. Instead, the company claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. Meanwhile, GE executives awarded themselves more...

The number of federally registered political lobbyists has fallen by 14 percent thus far in 2017 from the 2016 total. However, based on data provided by the non-partisan OpenSecrets.org, spending by lobbyists is on track to rise by about 3 percent in 2017. Mark Twain famously wrote: “We have the best government that money can buy.” That seemed to be the case in the Obama presidency, as registered lobbyists set an all-time spending record for any president of $26.7 billion, averaging over $3.3 billion a year. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has led the lobbying charge for globalization, was...

We have been had again. We are told when we get the House, the Senate and the Presidency we can get this country straightened out. Well we see what is happening, NOTHING, just the same old thing. As the Democrat party swings hard left the Republicans are whining, " We just can't do anything because of the Democrats." That is just BS of the highest order. What we have in the Republican party is a harem for the K Street crowd. Bought and paid for by the money they thirst for daily. Political whores doing exactly what the K Street...

The death of a pioneer in black arts lobbying has Washington operatives pointing fingers and lawyering up.

WASHINGTON POST: Ex-Lobbyists Have Key Obama Roles. "Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to change Washington, vowing to upend the K Street lobbying culture he encountered when he joined the U.S. Senate. But more than a dozen members of President-elect Obama's fast-growing transition team have worked as federally registered lobbyists within the past four years. They include former lobbyists for the nation's trial lawyers association, mortgage giant Fannie Mae, drug companies such as Amgen, high-tech firms such as Microsoft, labor unions and the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress." Plus this artful phraseology: In a 2007 speech, he said...

Republican lobbyists in Washington are struggling to come to grips with the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency. “A lot of people woke up [on Wednesday] and went, 'Oh gosh. This is not a dream,’ ” said Jeff MacKinnon, a principal at Farragut Partners. “I don't think downtown was really prepared for it happening so quickly. It did catch people off guard.”

Donald Trump would make "a terrible nominee and a terrible president" — and The Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol said Wednesday that he would rather have Hillary Clinton in the White House than the Republican front-runner.

"He's got the right personality," Bob Dole said of billionaire Donald Trump, "and he's kind of a deal-maker." Dole was the Republicans' Senate leader in the 1990s, and was the party's presidential candidate in 1996. Dole today is a corporate lobbyist. Dole's view - that Trump is fine, but conservative Sen. Ted Cruz is unacceptable - is the standard view in the Republican parts of K Street. Lobbyists prefer Trump to Cruz for many reasons, but the core of the issue is this: Trump will preserve the lobbyists' incomes and power, while Ted Cruz might crimp K Street's style. "We...

With little fanfare, another taboo in U.S.-Iran relations has shattered. Jim Slattery, a former six-term Democratic Congressman from Kansas, late last year became the first former or current American legislator to visit the Islamic Republic of Iran. In Tehran to attend a conference on countering violent extremism, Slattery encountered a largely friendly reception from both officials and ordinary Iranians and came back equipped to present a more realistic and upbeat depiction of Iranians than is usually found on Capitol Hill. Speaking Monday at the Atlantic Council in Washington, Slattery conceded that there are elements in Iran that still oppose any...

Starting next month, Mary Landrieu is going to have a lot more time on her hands. That can be a great thing if you’re really looking forward to finally catching up on the Grand Theft Auto online game series, but such pursuits don’t really do much to pay the bills. The soon to be former Senator probably won’t have to worry about that too much, though. She’s reportedly a very hot topic on K Street . Mary Landrieu may have lost her Senate seat, but the Louisiana Democrat is a hot commodity on K Street. Several headhunters, veteran lobbyists...

ObamaCare has become big business for an elite network of Washington lobbyists and consultants who helped shape the law from the inside. More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010. ObamaCare has become big business for an elite network of Washington lobbyists and consultants who helped shape the law from the inside. More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010.