Free Republic

Santorum: Obama's healthcare law a scheme to get Democrats reelectedBy Jonathan Easley - 01/05/12 12:55 PM ET Rick Santorum called President Obama's healthcare law a scheme to "hook" voters, who would reelect Democrats because they will have become dependent on the government for handouts. “ObamaCare is a game-changer that makes every single citizen dependent on the U.S. government for their life,” Santorum said at a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire on Thursday. “That’s how they see you … as people to hook, as people to become dependent on them. There’s a push to get more and more people dependent. Why?...

Alleged Mastermind behind billion dollar ponzi scheme may have amnesiaby Brandon Hartman Posted: Dec 22, 2011 2:53 PM EST MEXIA - A native of Mexia that allegedly swindled investors out of $7 billion dollars claims he can't remember any of the events that led to his arrest. R. Allen Stanford was supposedly beaten by another inmate while being locked away in Conroe's Joe Corley Detention Center on September 24th 2009. His attorneys claim that since the event, he has been unable to answer even the most basic questions.

Notre Dame football legend "Rudy" charged in alleged pump-and-dump stock schemeUpdated: Friday, December 16, 2011, 4:36 PM Daniel Ruettiger, the former walk-on football player at the University of Notre Dame who inspired the 1993 film “Rudy,” agreed to pay $382,000 to resolve U.S. regulatory claims he defrauded investors in his sports-drink company by touting fake taste tests and sales. Ruettiger and 12 others generated more than $11 million in illicit profits by artificially pumping up the stock of Rudy Nutrition, the firm Ruettiger founded, the SEC said in a complaint filed today at U.S. District Court in Las Vegas. The...

Those who do not learn from the past (and lets face it that’s most of us) are condemned to repeat it. When I was 15 years old my parents made me read the biography of Charles Ponzi. They felt that if I learned about this scammer it would help protect me in the future, when I would hopefully make my fortune. What I learned from that book, is that if something is too good to be true, it generally is. While I can’t say that I’ve never been scammed, I will say that I haven’t been scammed too badly, other...

‘Scaring seniors’ with simple truths JACOB SULLUM jsullum@reason.com Last Modified: Sep 14, 2011 09:40AM At the Republican presidential debate in Tampa, Fla., on Monday night, Mitt Romney said Rick Perry has needlessly “scared seniors” by calling Social Security “a Ponzi scheme.” Romney, more sensitive to the anxieties of retirees, prefers to say “the American people have been effectively defrauded out of their Social Security” (as he puts it in his 2010 book No Apology) because Congress has spent the program’s surplus revenue instead of saving it to pay for future benefits — the sort of crime for which bankers “would...

The Wall Street Journal editors took both Mitt Romney and Rick Perry to task for their stance on Social Security. They believe both GOP presidential contenders are wrong on the issue. Perry’s wrong for pointing out the obvious, but not taking it further, and Romney erred by repeating Democrat talking points – that the program can go on without significant reforms. The key point is that, unlike a Ponzi scheme, Social Security can be reformed and it will have to be if current workers are to receive any return on their current taxes. Everyone serious knows what the reform options...

The Kyoto Protocol committee has blocked Romania from selling carbon credits over concerns about irregularities in the country's carbon emissions data, Romania's environment ministry said Sunday. In December, Romanian Environment Minister Laszlo Borbely said the country hoped to earn some 1.5 billion euros ($2.2 billion) from selling carbon offsets. But the committee that monitors Kyoto Protocol compliance decided to suspend Romania from the programme due to "irregularities observed" in Bucharest's 2010 greenhouse gas emissions data, the environment ministry statement said. The suspension has immediate affect, and Bucharest must put in place an "adequate" system for monitoring emissions before it can...

The anti-government “throw-the-bums-out” crowds have had their chance to speak out on how to curtail the deficit and what to do with those hated entitlements that are the antithesis of the America they pine for. A recent WSJ/NBC News poll provided a glimpse of just how dependent on big government entitlements Americans have become–even among the Tea Party. Not that this should be a surprise to anyone watching the slow shift of the American mindset from citizen, to consumer, to ward of the State over the past century. According to the Wall Street Journal who co-sponsored the poll, “Americans across...

When Bernie Madoff popped up in the news again last week, this time when it was alleged that his bankers at JP Morgan Chase saw red flags in his actions but failed to tell the authorities, I felt that familiar feeling again--nothing. Because I don't hate Bernie Madoff. Why should I? SNIP I shed no tears for Madoff, but nor do I clench a fist. Madoff didn't do anything to me. However, if I were forced to join an investment fund that I knew to be a Ponzi scheme and made to watch helplessly as my dollars were sucked out...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve launched an unorthodox new policy on Wednesday, committing to buy $600 billion more in government bonds by the middle of next year in an attempt to breathe new life into a struggling U.S. economy. The decision, which takes the Fed into largely uncharted waters, is aimed at further lowering borrowing costs for consumers and businesses still suffering in the aftermath of the worst recession since the Great Depression. The U.S. central bank said it would buy about $75 billion in longer-term Treasury bonds per month as part of the new program. It said it...

Petrol and power prices have risen sharply in New Zealand after the government introduced a controversial emissions trading scheme. The government has pressed ahead with plans to slash the nation's carbon output, despite widespread opposition and New Zealand's larger neighbour Australia shelving its own scheme. Motorists were hit by a 3c (1.4p) rise in the price of a litre of petrol overnight, while householders face a 5 per cent increase in gas and electricity prices. It was the first step in a complex scheme, universally referred to as "the ETS", to slash carbon emissions back to 1990 levels. Some disgruntled...

We should all know by now that the Obama administration’s plan to spend up to $200 million on civilian trials for terrorists is dangerous. It’s also wasteful. Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is a site perfectly suited to such trials—and detentions. If not there, then Adak, in the middle of the Aleutians would do just fine. The Washington Post shows us why that $200 million is also a waste of money. The U.S. Coast Guard should play an important role in our homeland security. After all, that was the stated reason for moving the Coast Guard out of the U.S. Transportation Department...

Entitlements: While a massive health care entitlement is fashioned in secret, another one, Social Security, is running deficits decades earlier than expected. We've been kicking the can down the road. We're out of road. As Bernie Madoff found out, any Ponzi scheme depends on a continuous inflow of new cash and new customers or the ever-expanding pyramid will totter and collapse. Social Security, dependent as it was on new workers paying the expanding benefits of retirees, is about to, much sooner than expected. As Ed Morrissey over at HotAir.com reminds us, Peter Orszag, now director of the Office of Management...

Trust funds that support Medicare and Social Security have eroded due to the recession and will run out of money earlier than expected, government officials say. Medicare, the government health care program for seniors, is projected to run out of money in 2017, two years earlier than previously predicted, according to the 2009 annual report by program trustees. Social Security, the government assistance program for seniors and the disabled, is projected to become insolvent by 2037, four years earlier than trustees predicted a year ago.

Obama will travel to Copenhagen next month to attend the climate change conference, ending weeks of uncertainty over whether he would go and after intense pressure from Europe for his presence. Obama will offer to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020, a 30 per cent reduction by 2025 and a 42 per cent drop by 2030... After he attends the summit on December 9, he will fly to Oslo to collect his recently awarded Nobel Peace Prize the following day, and then return to the US. Obama conceded during his trip to China...

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis slams James O'Keefe for dressing up like a pimp because that is what "a black and brown organization would go for."

Please read this and give me your opinions, I don't like the way it reads and need some clarification....

(IsraelNN.com) Ali Al-Kurd, a money-changer in eastern Jerusalem, promised his investors a 26 percent annual profit. He disappeared several weeks ago, and 100 million shekels – some say 200 million – are gone. The story, broken by Israel’s business weekly Globes, began seven years ago, according to some reports. Ali Al-Kurd, son of a wealthy businessman, began paying between 21 and 26 percent annual interest rates, in regular monthly payments, on investment sums that reached as high as $1.2 million. He held lavish meetings with potential investors, spoke vaguely of various opportunities in Israel and elsewhere, but “when you left...

Our late colleague Jim Boulet last year unearthed the facts here and here and here on how the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) ‘localism' schemes could shut down or inhibit talk radio. Last Thursday, Ishmael Jones, nom de plume of a former officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) clandestine service, gave his take on the danger radio ‘localism' poses to free political speech in his American Thinker article "What the CIA's Censors Can Teach Us about Plans to Muzzle Talk Radio" here. Here is Ishmael Jones on this Administration and their possible ‘localism' approach to shutting down political speech on...

Bernie Madoff's Victims (So Far) HSBC "has emerged as one the largest victims of Bernard Madoff’s alleged fraud with potential exposure of about $1bn to the investment manager’s collapsed venture...HSBC’s exposure stemmed from loans it provided to institutional clients, mainly hedge funds of funds, that wanted to invest with Mr Madoff. HSBC’s direct exposure is believed to be about $1bn in loans provided to clients who invested some $500m of their own funds in Mr Madoff’s venture. Under the typical terms of these deals, if the US authorities recover any funds from Mr Madoff, HSBC will be paid first, with...