Free Republic

The head of the largest U.S. energy industry group on Tuesday warned that Americans risk choosing the “wrong path” in the 2020 presidential election if they vote for a candidate seeking to fight climate change by banning drilling. The chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute said such proposals from Democratic candidates seeking to unseat Republican President Donald Trump pose a threat to the economy, and urged a room filled with nearly 800 energy executives to push back against them. The industry group also announced a multi-million dollar advertising campaign, focused on U.S. political swing states, that bills the oil...

Mind the Gap, the secretive group quietly reshaping big-money politics in Silicon Valley, is aiming to spend as much as $140 million to boost Democrats in the 2020 election ... one of the most powerful forces in Democratic politics. And the group is accomplishing this all behind the scenes — without any prior public scrutiny. This network of Silicon Valley donors raised $20 million for Democratic causes and congressional candidates in advance of the midterms. But the group has far greater ambitions in a presidential cycle: Mind the Gap told prospective donors last fall that it had already raised at...

No excerpt from Bloomberg allowed, story here. Another article, ungated: This $1 billion solar plant was obsolete before it ever went online. The article says taxpayers are liable for $737 million in loan guarantees. The waste in a Green New Deal could be in the trillions.

The purveyors of solar energy are working overtime to spin the now official failure of the Crescent Dunes thermal solar plant in central Nevada. The contracts to purchase the electricity from the constantly broken plant will be voided. Bloomberg Businessweek claims that Crescent Dunes was obsoleted by technological advances in the form of photovoltaic based solar plants. That is nonsense and misses the whole point of the Crescent Dunes project. It also misses the reality that all utility-scale solar is a failure — not marginal, not growing into being practical, but a total and complete failure. The scalable forms of...

Michael Bloomberg is wasting no time building out his campaign's ground game, with 500 organizers and staff in more than 30 states, including all 14 of the delegate-rich Super Tuesday states, his campaign told NBC News. The ramp-up — both in staff and in spending on TV ads — has been quick. Just six weeks after he announced his candidacy, the former mayor of New York now boasts more than 800 staffers on his payroll and over $100 million spent on advertising. The roughly 300 staffers working in the campaign's New York headquarters are set to move into a new...

In a 1981 interview on Today with Phil Donahue, a 39 year old Bernie Sanders says he is "not a capitalist." Sanders had just won his first term as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont. In explaining his case for Socialism he says, "Do I believe the profit motive is fundamental to human nature? The answer is no. I think the spirit of cooperation - that you and I can work together is better than compete against each other and destroy each other."

A majority of millionaires support a wealth tax on those worth $50 million or more, but their support declines for a tax on those worth $10 million, according to a new poll. Fifty-nine percent of millionaires said they would support a new federal tax on wealth over $50 million, according to the Q4 CNBC Millionaire Survey. Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s tax plan includes a wealth tax of 2% on wealth over $50 million and 6% over $1 billion. Forty-eight percent opposed a wealth tax on those worth over $10 million. Attitudes toward the wealth tax are also strongly dependent...

The nearly impossible has now become a near certainty. After weeks of choreographed indignation by Democratic leaders in Congress and “witnesses” offering no proof of impeachable wrongdoing; despite headlines and columnists screaming for his immediate ouster; and notwithstanding 24/7 attacks from media grumps still sore about 2016 President Trump is not only back in the game, but on his game. impeachment is starting to give the president’s poll numbers a shot of political adrenalin … and his detractors a fresh jolt of reality. Recent polling from Fox News confirms that the president’s job approval ratings (often a leading indicator of...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., criticized South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg over the weekend for holding a fundraiser at what has been called the "billionaire wine cave," but she wasn't exactly up front about the campaign contribution she received from billionaire Democratic donor and current 2020 candidate Tom Steyer. The freshman congresswoman railed against the one percent at a campaign rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., over the weekend and took some not-so-veiled shots at the Indiana mayor over the fiery spat he had with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at last week's Democratic debate. "For anyone who accuses us of instituting...

This Christmas season, decorate your trees and hang your stockings, and know that three kings come again, bearing gifts. But this time, 2,020 years later, these three kings bear gifts not for the baby Jesus, but for the Democratic Party. The biggest lie in American politics today is that Republicans are the party of the wealthy elite, and the Democrats are fighting for the little guy. While corporate political spending is split roughly down the middle between Democrats and Republicans, in all other categories the Democrats are way in front. Labor unions, which collect and spend at least $14 billion...

All of the Democratic presidential candidates who have qualified for next week’s debate say they will skip the event rather than cross a planned picket line at the venue. The seven candidates -- Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang -- all said Friday that they would not show up for the debate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles next Thursday if the Unite Here Local 11 goes forward with its protest of food service contractor Sodexo SA. The union, which represents about 150 Sodexo employees at the LMU campus, reached...

All of the presidential candidates who qualified for next week’s Democratic debate are threatening to skip the event in response to a labor dispute taking place at the debate venue, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), businessman Andrew Yang, former vice president Joe Biden, billionaire activist Tom Steyer, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg said Friday they would refuse to cross picket lines in solidarity with Unite Here Local 11, which represents food service workers at the university who have been negotiating for a collective bargaining agreement....

Forget grassroots movements. Two Democratic billionaires are currently trying to purchase the Democratic nomination for president. Billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg have already thrown millions around in their efforts to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Michael Bloomberg has used his philanthropic foundation to mask the candidate's purchase of political influence. The New York Times recently reported on how Bloomberg's foundation is strategically giving millions to certain cities across the country, and now the mayors of those cities are beginning to line up to endorse Bloomberg for president. (Via The New York Times) Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has assets totaling $9...

Brutal. That's the way to sum up the Daily Beast description of wealthy Democrat candidate for president, Tom Steyer. The purpose of their Saturday article by David De La Fuente was to shame the Democrats into including "candidates of color' at their next presidential debate but a big take away from the story was that it basically described Steyer as a scam artist. Not only were Democrats in general shamed in "Democrats Must Not Have an All-White Debate—and the White Candidates Should Say So" but what really stood out was the brutal slamming of Tom Steyer. Before we look at why De La...

As several people fall out of the Democratic presidential campaign clown car, a few hitchhikers hopped aboard the journey to their convention this summer in Milwaukee. However, those (Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg) bumming a ride represent everything that the radical left-wing of the Democratic Party now abhors. Steyer and Bloomberg embody toxic masculinity, white superiority, privilege, and class that Democrats have been railing against. They must not have gotten the memo that they are persona non grata in the Democratic Party today. They do not check any boxes in the liberal insidious game of identity politics. No matter how...

...A democratic socialist—Bernie Sanders—is among the top contenders to be the next Democratic nominee for U.S. President. His rival and fellow Senator, Elizabeth Warren, is also among the top tier of candidates, declaring herself a capitalist who wishes to transform American capitalism as we know it, with a wealth tax, a Green New Deal and the elimination of private health insurance. A more centrist candidate, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., illustrated the shifting winds when he recently declared that “neo-liberalism is the political–economic consensus that has governed the last 40 years of policy in the U.S. and U.K....

On Tuesday evening, Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang celebrated the opening of his office in Manchester, New Hampshire, by squirting whipped cream into supporters’ mouths. The “uncomfortable” interaction was captured on video by ABC News reporter Christopher Donato. As shown in the video below, Mr. Yang squirts the cream into one kneeling young man’s mouth and then celebrates by shaking the bottle and joking, “That’s a full-service presidential candidate!” And he wasn’t done there, to the obvious displeasure of who appears to be the candidate’s campaign manager Zach Graumann. The businessman then squirts more cream into another kneeling male supporter’s...

Billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer has qualified for the December Democratic presidential debate after amassing the support of more than 200,000 donors, his campaign said Tuesday. Steyer is the seventh candidate to qualify for the sixth primary debate, which is set to take place in Los Angeles on Dec. 19. The six other candidates include former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). Candidates faced the strictest criteria to date to qualify for the December debate. They must collect contributions...

Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer purchased the website domain of President Trump’s reelection campaign slogan and is using it to troll him. Steyer, a billionaire philanthropist, purchased and repurposed the URL bearing Trump’s signature catchphrase for 2020, “ Keep America Great.” When users visit the website, they are directed to a bright yellow page featuring the words “TRUMP IS A FRAUD & A FAILURE” in large letters across the screen. [ Read: Trump reveals 2020 slogan: 'Keep America Great!'] “Donald Trump failed as a businessman,” smaller text reads. “He borrowed billions, and left a trail of bankruptcy and broken promises....