Free Republic

Several of the richest U.S. corporate executives have either paid a fraction of their cumulative wealth in federal taxes of nothing at all, according to a new report from the nonprofit media outlet ProPublica.What Happened: In its coverage, ProPublica said "America's billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell."However, ProPublica did not offer evidence that the executives being spotlighted were violating the U.S. tax code.The...

The average national gas price on Wednesday hit $3 per gallon for the first time since 2014. Costs have been on the rise since a cyberattack over the weekend forced Colonial Pipeline to temporarily shut down operations. The pipeline delivers nearly half of all fuel along the East Coast. “Areas including Mississippi, Tennessee and the east coast from Georgia into Delaware are most likely to experience limited fuel availability and price increases, as early as this week,” AAA spokesperson Jeanette McGee said Tuesday in a news release. “These states may see prices increase three to seven cents this week.” As...

Apparently, liberal billionaires like abortion megadonor Warren Buffett aren’t allowed to remain silent on toxic racial politics without enraging the easily triggered liberal media. Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders February 27. Bloomberg News reported Feb. 25 that Buffett had stayed quiet in 2020 amidst “a heated presidential election” and “a racial reckoning that sparked nationwide protests.” The outlet hoped that Buffett would have “a chance to break his silence with the release of his annual letter Saturday.” When the letter was released, Bloomberg News was enraged the billionaire still chose to steer...

Billionaire Warren Buffett encouraged investors to maintain their faith in America’s economy and the businesses his Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate owns in a reassuring letter to his shareholders Saturday. Buffett hardly even addressed the coronavirus that ravaged many businesses last year, instead focusing on the long-term prospects for the railroad, utility and insurance businesses and stocks that belong to Berkshire Hathaway. But he said U.S. business will thrive over time in spite of the pandemic. “In its brief 232 years of existence, however, there has been no incubator for unleashing human potential like America. Despite some severe interruptions, our country’s economic...

Warren Buffett, the 90-year-old “Oracle of Omaha,” remains a firm believer in the American dream, saying in his closely watched annual shareholder letter to “never bet against America.” “In its brief 232 years of existence ... there has been no incubator for unleashing human potential like America,” the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway wrote in the letter released Saturday. “Despite some severe interruptions, our country’s economic progress has been breathtaking. Our unwavering conclusion: Never bet against America.” Buffett shared a fact in the letter to illustrate Berkshire’s American credentials. He said the conglomerate owns the biggest amount of U.S....

Even before Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, he and his team were calling for an end to the Keystone Pipeline. The fourth leg of the energy project, Keystone XL, has been delayed, then resumed, and now delayed again by three presidents since 2015.It attracted opposition from environmentalists, becoming a symbol of the battle over climate change and fossil fuels. At least that’s the story we’ve been hearing from mainstream media, environmental groups, and the Biden administration. But Donald Trump Jr. has a different, more lucid take on what’s been happening.Also worth noting it doesn’t end oil transportation it just...

The Tides Network is a powerful instrument leveraged by billionaires working to change America, while shielding their philanthropic dollars from public scrutiny. Here’s how it works...In any case, what’s clear is that there is now a sophisticated and complex structure underneath what many assume to be an organic and spontaneous social movement, one with deep pockets and ambitious goals. “After over fourteen years of learning and over 700 million dollars invested ... "the collapse we have been expecting is surely underway,” reads the NoVo Foundation’s website.

This time four years ago, Warren Buffett was publicly campaigning for Hillary Clinton, even planning a trolley ride to the polls with Omaha voters. The billionaire’s schedule looks a little different ahead of the 2020 election, however. Notably, it lacks any public political engagements. Buffett has yet to raise funds or campaign for this year’s Democratic presidential nominee, former vice-president Joe Biden

Warren Buffett has given up his long-held conviction against buying gold — and he’s meanwhile getting out of Goldman Sachs. The totemic tycoon revealed in filings late last week that he has scooped up more than 20 million shares of mining giant Barrick Gold Corp. even as he unloaded nearly all of his nearly 2 million shares in Goldman Sachs. The 89-year-old investing icon’s sudden embrace of the precious yellow metal — which has has previously derided as “useless,” saying that “anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head” at the idea of investing in it — took many...

Gov. Gavin Newsom has appealed directly to investor Warren Buffett to support demolishing four hydroelectric dams on a river along the Oregon-California border ... which would be the largest dam removal in U.S. history. The dams are owned by PacificCorp, an Oregon-based utility that is part of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. conglomerate. The $450 million project would reshape California’s second-largest river and empty giant reservoirs. ... Newsom supports a 2016 agreement under which PacifiCorp would transfer its federal hydroelectric licenses for the dams to a nonprofit coalition, the Klamath River Renewal Corp., that was formed to oversee the demolition. ......

Warren Buffett once said that “diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.” The take-away: Load up on what you know. Even if it’s a tech stock, apparently. A recent peek into Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A, BRK.B, $214 billion portfolio underscores that the Oracle of Omaha is following his own advice, considering how much stock Berkshire has accumulated in Apple AAPL. Buffett, thanks to Apple’s stellar run, now owns more than $91 billion’s worth of the iPhone maker, which constitutes 43% of the total Berkshire pie, according to figures cited by the...

DES MOINES, Iowa – On September 19, 2019, a federal grand jury returned an Indictment charging defendants, Jessica Rae Reznicek and Ruby Katherine Montoya, with one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, four counts of use of fire in the commission of a felony, and four counts of malicious use of fire, announced United States Attorney Marc Krickbaum. Montoya was recently arrested in the District of Arizona and detained pending court proceedings to determine her appearance in the Southern District of Iowa. Reznicek appeared in Des Moines on October 1, 2019 and was conditionally released pending trial. Trial...

Main Street investors have increased their buying of stocks during the current market downdraft. Where is all the selling pressure coming from? Wall Street short sellers are attacking the market to make a killing, tank the economy, and get Trump out of office. Trump must reinstate the uptick rule to stop this now! Recent data shows that main street investors have increased their buying of stocks during the current dramatic downturn. And yet the market is tanking—the Dow closed down 9.99% today. Where is all the selling pressure coming from? It is from short sellers who are using the coronavirus...

Warren Buffett warns coronavirus will affect business, but he 'certainly won’t be selling' stocks

Founded in 1881, The Buffalo News will have its third owner in its nearly 140-year history, thanks to a sale to Lee Enterprises. Spectrum News reports that the sale, for $140 million in cash, includes the Berkshire Hathaway Media Group publications with print and digital operations of 30 daily newspapers and more than 49 paid weekly publications and 32 other print products. Lee has managed the BH Media Group since the summer of 2018. For The Buffalo News, the sale announced Wednesday morning signals the end of a 40-year ownership by Warren Buffett. Lee Enterprises will be the third owner...

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...

"Legendary investor and Berkshire Hathaway founder and CEO Warren Buffett said it’s high time companies stop acting as moral arbiters, social activists and SJWs — social justice warriors — and instead focus their efforts on their primary responsibility: making money for their shareholders. This comes alongside the announcement that Berkshire Hathaway is pouring about $30 billion into wind turbines and infrastructure in Iowa. The plan, according to Buffett, is to turn the state into “the wind capital of the world, the Saudi Arabia of wind.” Among the corporate consensus these days is a call to be “doing well by doing...

In western Massachusetts, a group of a dozen or so climate activists tried to stop a trainload of coal heading for a power plant in New Hampshire…by standing on the railroad tracks in front of the train. Evidently they thought the train could, and would, screech to a halt. This short video is dark and doesn’t show much, but it conveys some sense of why this was a poor idea:

Former National Security Council official and Russia expert Fiona Hill on Thursday testified that she heard Russian President Vladimir Putin at a 2011 conference describe American fracking as a "great threat" to Russia, a position he has emphasized ever since. The recollection came out at a point in the impeachment hearing when Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas was asking Hill about Putin's propaganda efforts in the United States, at the center of which is the television channel RT, which pushes anti-fracking messaging. Hill agreed that Russia saw the growth of U.S. fracking as a threat given that it undermines Russia's...