Free Republic

Executive Summary The political Left often criticizes—and the mainstream media frequently report on—the network of center-right nonprofits funded by billionaire entrepreneurs Charles and David Koch. But few politicos know of a left-wing leviathan in Washington, D.C., with a reach rivaling that of the Koch network. This study by the Capital Research Center documents a shadowy web into which nearly $600 million flowed in 2017, the most recent year for which data are available. Operating under the aegis of “philanthropy,” this network is housed in and staffed by a for-profit, privately held consultancy called Arabella Advisors, LLC. Arabella manages four nonprofit...

President-elect Joe Biden plans to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office, according to several news sources. The decision delighted advocates of the so-called “Green New Deal,” but will disappoint Biden’s own political allies in the trade union movement, who had backed the pipeline for the thousands of jobs it would create. As Breitbart News reported last year: The Keystone XL pipeline would run from Canada’s oil sands in Alberta across the border and into Nebraska. From there, the oil would be pumped through existing pipelines to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico....

Disadvantaged workers in San Francisco could get training for jobs in the cannabis industry under a proposed government program that would require businesses to hire the graduates. The program, dubbed CityGrow, is modeled after CityBuild, an existing government program overseen by the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, that provides training for disadvantaged residents to land jobs in the construction industry. Supervisor Ahsha Safai introduced the legislation last week for “advancing workforce equity.” He told the San Francisco Examiner Tuesday that the intent is “to make sure everyday San Franciscans are able to take advantage of these opportunities.” He noted...

Even at this late date in the presidential race, a few things stand out to those who have followed Hillary Clinton's career as a Marxist sympathizer and greedy politician/foreign policy Conan "The Destroyer" type. It is the refusal of the mainstream media and even some of the conservative media, to really dig into her past and even open actions to see things that would greatly disturb an honest, educated person, namely her accepting large amounts of money from Organized Crime and her relationship with a woman who gave all appearances of being a Cuban propaganda asset at the least, and...

President Barack Obama's decision to not allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built, Terry O'Sullivan, the president of the Laborers' International Union of North America (LiUNA!), said Obama had "once again" thrown "hard-working, blue-collar workers under the bus" while "doing little or nothing to make a real difference in global climate change." "His actions are shameful," said O'Sullivan in a press release. "The president may be celebrated by environmental extremists, but with this act, President Obama has also solidified a legacy as a pompous, pandering job killer." ...

The main union for construction workers is accusing President Obama of throwing them "under the bus" by rejecting the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) is one of the few labor unions that broke with the majority of Democrats and supported the project, which Obama rejected Friday after a seven-year review. "We are dismayed and disgusted that the President has once again thrown the members of LIUNA, and other hard-working, blue-collar workers under the bus of his vaunted 'legacy,' while doing little or nothing to make a real difference in global climate change," Terry...

Bernie Sanders has picked up a key endorsement as one of the nation’s most influential labor leaders has announced his support for the Democratic presidential candidate. The Sanders campaign made the announcement in a statement: In another show of union support for Bernie Sanders, one of the nation’s most influential labor leaders on Friday endorsed the Democratic Party presidential candidate. Larry Cohen, the past president of the Communications Workers of America, gave his backing to Sanders at a news conference held here in a local union hall. “This is not a close call,” Cohen said at the news conference. “This...

LiUNA General President Terry O'Sullivan. (Photo: Penny Starr/CNSNews.com) (CNSNews.com) – When asked at an American Petroleum Institute (API) event on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. about the claim that the Keystone XL Pipeline and other oil and natural gas infrastructure projects only provide temporary jobs during the construction phase, union President Terry O’Sullivan, said the claim was “moronic." “I think it’s one of the most moronic things that I’ve heard come out of the administration and every politician,” said O’Sullivan, whose Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) represents workers in both the U.S. and Canada. Canada has been seeking...

CAMPBELLSPORT – On Friday, 6th District Congressional candidate Glenn Grothman (R-Campbellsport) slammed Joe Leibham (R-Sheboygan) for accepting a maximum limit contribution from a progressive trade union. More: Stroebel, Leibham Trade Barbs Over Voter ID According to records from the Federal Elections Commission, Leibham accepted $5,000 from the Laborers Union International North America (LIUNA) PAC on July 15, 2014. The LIUNA was very evident during the 2011 protests against Governor Scott Walker over Act 10 which was upheld by the Wisconsin State Supreme Court and the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The LIUNA has 500,000 members that are represented in...

The former hedge fund of one of the Democratic Party’s most important donors was involved in a scheme to defraud foreign investors out of tens of millions of dollars, according to documents filed in a Texas court. Farallon Capital Partners L.P., a fund run by Farallon Capital Management, the multibillion-dollar hedge fund founded by Democratic donor Tom Steyer, became a limited partner in a project to build a large shopping mall near Seattle, Wash., in the mid-1990s after it guaranteed a line of credit for the project.

Environmental groups cringe as some trade unions support oil and gas drilling, pipelines PITTSBURGH (AP) -- After early complaints that out-of-state firms got the most jobs, some local construction trade workers and union members in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia say they're now benefiting in a big way from the Marcellus and Utica Shale oil and gas boom.That vocal support from blue-collar workers complicates efforts by environmentalists to limit the drilling process known as fracking."The shale became a lifesaver and a lifeline for a lot of working families," said Dennis Martire, the mid-Atlantic regional manager for the Laborers' International Union,...

A top building trades union is launching a midterm-election assault on House Democrats who oppose construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. A letter distributed Friday by the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) to the districts of 27 House Democrats calls for union members to make sure their representative "feels the power and the fury of LIUNA this November." Their crime: signing a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry last month urging him to reject Keystone, which would carry oil sands from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries.

Terry O’Sullivan, president of the 600,000-plus-member Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), often referred to as the Laborers’ Union, said that if Obamacare is not fixed, then “it needs to be repealed.” At a convention in Las Vegas of the AFL-CIO, with which the Laborers’ Union is affiliated, O’Sullivan took to the podium to endorse a proposition and then launched into a criticism of Obamacare, how it is hurting union members’ health coverage, and demanded it be fixed, adding that if it is not fixed, labor will make the issue a “big fricking deal.” … He continued, “We can’t...

Statement of Terry O’Sullivan, General President of LIUNA, On Delay of Keystone XL Pipeline Construction Washington, D.C. (November 10, 2011) – Terry O’Sullivan, General President of LIUNA – the Laborers’ International Union of North America – made the following statement today in response to the U.S. State Department delay of the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline: Environmentalists formed a circle around the White House and within days the Obama Administration chose to inflict a potentially fatal delay to a project that is not just a pipeline, but is a lifeline for thousands of desperate working men and women. The...

After watching a two-week shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, transportation advocates and congressional staffers are concerned that the federal gas tax could become the next confrontational issue that Democrats and Republicans push to the brink. The Senate and House are in the process of considering a long-term highway bill. Passing a short-term extension while they work out the details of a longer measure would normally be considered routine, but so was a short-term extension of FAA funding. That all changed July 23, when 4,000 FAA workers were furloughed for nearly two weeks as the House and Senate could not...

  There are few things quite like a mass arrest to serve as a reminder of the Mafia's continuing presence in American life. The mob roundup last Thursday morning, the largest in U.S. history, at once underscores the large dent that the Justice Department has been making in organized crime and how entrenched many of their operations have been. Some 800 FBI agents, U.S. marshals, state police and New York City cops fanned out and arrested nearly 120 wise guys and associates named in an 82-page, 16-count indictment for acts of murder, racketeering, money-laundering, loan-sharking, extortion and other offenses...

Bill Clinton's memoir will hit bookstores later this month, but one story you're not likely to read in its pages involves Clinton's friendship with Arthur A. Coia. The debonair former president of the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) was one of the Democratic Party's biggest contributors when Clinton was in office. In the first four years of the Clinton administration alone, LIUNA gave $4.8 million to Democrat candidates and the Democratic Party. Although Clinton had contact with Coia no fewer than 120 times, their association is an awkward memory for the former president given the latter's ties to...