Free Republic

The committee hosting the Democratic National Convention has used the city's gas pumps to fill up and apparently avoided paying state and federal fuel taxes. The practice, which began four months ago, may have ended hours after its disclosure. An aide to Mayor John Hickenlooper released a statement Tuesday evening saying that Denver 2008 Host Committee members would pay market prices for fuel and would also be liable for all applicable taxes. However, Public Works spokeswoman Christine Downs told City Council members just hours before that host committee members were fueling up at the city pumps. The city does not...

Rep. Rangel Files Ethics Charges Against Himself Wednesday, July 23, 2008 WASHINGTON — House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., filed an ethics complaint against himself Wednesday with the House Ethics Committee. The move is believed to be unprecedented. The Washington Post recently ran articles and an editorial raising questions about Rangel's potential involvement in raising money for an academic center named in his honor at City College of New York.

One of the most liberal members of Congress in Florida Robert Wexler (Obamapropagandist and notorious leftist) is not a resident of his district. He has lived in Maryland since the late 90s. He claims to live in a house in Del Ray (owned by his mother-law) in an active adult community where no children are allowed, though he has three children). You can't live there with kids, it's against the rules of the community. Another example of Democrat hubris - I am above the law. It seems he has no connection to Florida at all. Clearly it's a phantom residence,...

Menino: Bodybuilding Firefighter Should Quit Albert Arroyo Did Not Show Up To Work Monday BOSTON (WBZ) ― The Boston firefighter who claimed to be permanently disabled - but then competed in a body building contest was a no-show at work on Monday and now he might lose his job altogether. Albert Arroyo was ordered to return to work by Fire Commissioner Roderick Frazer. He sent a letter to Arroyo late last week ordering his return to work on Monday. Arroyo did not show up for his shift and he did not contact anyone with a reason for his absence. "The...

According to the Fox O'Reilly Factor He lists his mother-in-laws' residence in an elderly area that doesn't allow children...Wexler has three teenagers. He actually lives in Maryland and claims to own a home in Florida which is a lie. I wonder where he pays taxes? If at all.

Five Koreans ― four men and one woman ― had been abducted by several unidentified kidnappers who had disguised themselves as police officers in a U.S.-Mexico border city on July 14, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Tuesday. The official, asking not to be identified, said the abductors have demanded $30,000 in ransom, but declined to give details about the whereabouts of the South Korean nationals and their condition. "As far as I know, the kidnappers have contacted one of the families of the hostages and asked if they were willing to meet their demands...

WASHINGTON -- Former Gov. Edwin Edwards and former Insurance Commissioner Jim Brown are among the more than 2,000 people convicted of federal crimes awaiting word on whether President Bush will give them a pardon or commute their sentences during his final months in office. Edwards, who turns 81 on Aug. 7, will be eligible for release from the Federal Detention Center in Oakdale on July 6, 2011. He's serving a 10-year sentence for corrupting the state's riverboat casino licensing process. "I'm hopeful," said former Gov. David Treen, who joined former U.S. Sen. J. Bennett Johnston in filing the request on...

Mayor Menino, tear down this wall. The firewall of low-level graft and back-scratching hackery for which Boston has become famous. It is the only thing protecting a chump like faux-firefighter Albert Arroyo. Everybody knows the story of Albert Arroyo. One day he claims to be “totally and permanently disabled.” Fifteen days later, he’s a top contender in a body building competition - caught on videotape. And yesterday, Mr. Mayor, the “Hardest Non-Working Man In City Government” ignored the commissioner’s order to show up for work. Arroyo may be known for his bulging biceps and six-pack abs, but right now he’s...

Illinois should go to a military strongman form of government. Instead of the pretense of representative democracy, we should submit to one of those charismatic, totalitarian dictators with the Captain Kangaroo get-up who makes people disappear. After all, isn't that what the "Chicago 9" are doing? The Chicago 9 are the nine Chicago Democrats who live within about five squares miles of one another and who control more than $70 billion worth of government and more than 125,000 public sector jobs in Illinois. [The 9: Daley, Blagojevich, (Lisa) Madigan, White, Hynes, Giannoulias, Jones, (Mike) Madigan, Stroger] It was reported last...

The FBI is investigating state Sen. Don Perata's role in the hiring of a Washington lobbyist to push for a road project sought by a major Perata contributor, documents show. At the urging of the powerful Oakland Democrat, local agencies in 2000 hired former Georgia congressman Dawson Mathis to lobby the Federal Aviation Administration regarding a multimillion-dollar expressway that today links Oakland International Airport with the Harbor Bay Business Park in Alameda. The park's developer, Ron Cowan, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Perata and other politicians, and for years he had sought this access road. Mathis' hiring...

With scant weeks to go before the curtain rises on the $41 million Democratic National Convention in Denver, planners find themselves millions in the hole. It's not difficult to see why. Renovating the convention hall at the Pepsi Center already has cost $6 million more than they budgeted, and the work is far from done. In renting offices, the party took top-shelf space in downtown Denver at $100,000 a month, only to discover it needed only half the space, and then filled the offices with rented furniture costing $50,000 a month. A small fortune was spent to make this a...

I don't know if this has received Freeperization yet, but Atlas Shrugged has an interesting post about Obama's evidently very-rich-yet-unemployed donors. Surely this will be followed up on by the MSM?

Unions have been decrying outsourcing for years. The word "outsourcing" has been used as a boogieman to blame declining union jobs upon for the last decade. Unions, for their part, claim to desire to stand up against outsourcing -- especially that of outsourcing jobs overseas -- and wish to push the home grown alternatives to outsourcing jobs, namely keeping them in the country and under the control of the union. Yet what have we discovered here on the blog? Why that the nation's largest union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has outsourced the design of one of their own...

HARRISBURG -- As the pivotal 2006 legislative election season began, top Democratic House aides, using state resources, undertook a wide-ranging opposition research campaign into both Democratic and Republican office seekers, e-mails show. The project was spearheaded by Eric Webb, director of the Democratic Office of Member Services, who, on Jan. 31, sent e-mails to state employees advising them to begin digging up information on 35 declared and potential candidates for the state House. "We are mainly looking for bad things: liens, bankruptcies, homicides ... you get the picture," Mr. Webb advised a dozen House colleagues via their state e-mail accounts....

Excerpt - LITTLE ROCK - Taking steps to keep one of its own out of the Legislature, the Democratic Party of Arkansas changed its rules Saturday and refused to certify former state Rep. Dwayne Dobbins for the November general election ballot. At their state convention, Democrats approved a rewrite of party rules to disqualify any person who has resigned from public office as a provision of a plea agreement to avoid felony prosecution from being certified for the ballot. Dobbins, of North Little Rock, was the only candidate to file this spring for the House seat he resigned in 2005...

One of Congress' strongest supporters of the Foothill tollway's controversial southern extension steered taxpayer money to and lobbied for the project while holding a financial interest in a connected tollway. Financial disclosures for Rep. Gary Miller, a land developer who represents Orange, San Bernardino and Los Angeles Counties, show he purchased $20,000 in Foothill/Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency bonds in 2000. The bonds pay investors a fixed rate and are repaid by drivers' tolls. The Eastern and Foothill (241) toll roads run from the 91 freeway to Irvine and Rancho Santa Margarita. The proposed southern extension, known as Foothill South, is...

Charles Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, is intent on raising $30 million for a new academic center in his New York district -- a center with his name on it. After securing an earmark and two other federal grants totaling some $2.6 million for the project, the Democratic congressman wrote letters on his congressional stationery to businesses with interests before his committee. They sought meetings to help him fulfill his "personal dream" of seeing the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service completed. ...Until roughly the 1960s, people had to die before a grateful nation memorialized...

Next time you step on a glob of tar on a beach in Santa Barbara County, you can thank the oil companies that it isn't a bigger glob.

"Friends, red-necks, suckers, and fellow hicks," he would say, . . . "That's what you are. And me - I'm one, too . . . Oh, I'm a sucker, for I fell for that sweet-talking fellow in the fine automobile . . . But I'm standing here on my own hind legs, for even a dog can learn to do that, give him time. I learned. It took me a time but I learned, and here I am on my own hind legs." And he would lean at them. And demand, "Are you, are you on your hind legs? Have...

California Proposes Sales Tax Hike To Fund Transport, Government Services July 18, 2008 11:32 a.m. ESTVittorio Hernandez - AHN News WriterSacramento, CA (AHN) - To close California's $17.2 billion budget deficit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger considered on Thursday hiking the state sales tax and using funds intended for transportation and government services.State legislators proposed the two measures, which the governor initially described as bad ideas, but he did not rule out adopting the measures to avoid a cash crisis in California.The lawmakers plan to close the budget gap by collecting $5.6 billion income tax increase on the rich and borrowing $1.1...

NASHVILLE -- A federal court jury convicted former state senator John Ford of all six charges in connection with his $850,000 in consulting work for two major TennCare contractors. Ford, 66, is already serving a 5 1/2 year sentence for a separate conviction on federal bribery charges in Memphis. He faces up to 20 years in the Nashville case but sentencing will not occur for several weeks, possibly months. The middle Tennessee jury deliberated a total of eight hours -- six on Thursday -- before returning to the courtroom where it sat since the trial began on July 1. The...

the first steps have been taken to file a lawsuit against Ontario County and its district attorney. It stems from a case involving a Greece engineer who was acquitted of putting in faulty septic systems and Walter Casper, who is now serving time for his wife's murder. “I know the DA's office in Ontario County didn't present all the information that was out there and available.” Defense attorney Mark Young has piles and piles of paperwork from that case. His client, engineer Dave Simpson of Greece, was charged with six counts of filing a false instrument. Young was determined to...

North Charleston Police busted an elaborate auto theft ring, and a Lowcountry pastor is one of their main suspects. Hason "Tory" Fields, a pastor at Union Baptist Church downtown, has been arrested and charged with four counts of possession of a stolen vehicle. But Fields told Live 5 News Wednesday he's completely innocent. "I have never stolen a car in my life," Fields said. Fields is out of jail after he says he posted roughly $7,500 in bond. After a month-long investigation involving North Charleston Police and five other agencies Fields is one of five people arrested so far in...

Yesterday was finally the end of the days this year when you were working to pay the government its exorbitant fees. That's right, July 16 was Cost of Government Day for the average American. Grover Norquist , author of the recent book "Leave Us Alone," has once again crunched the numbers and determined how long it takes most of us to finally pay off our own personal bloated government debt and begin, at last, to make money for ourselves. This year Americans have worked until today, July 16, to pay for the total costs of federal, state and local government....

REYNOSA -- Two Rio Grande Valley residents remained in a Reynosa jail Wednesday, accused of kidnapping a local businessman, Mexican authorities said. Police arrested the two Valley residents along with a Reynosa resident Tuesday after the trio retrieved a $50,000 ransom for the man, whom police suspect they kidnapped July 9 in Reynosa. The ransom was left at a mall on the city's south side. Authorities declined to identify the victim but said he was a Reynosa resident. Once in police custody, the three suspects led investigators to the hostage, who appeared badly beaten and malnourished, said Ernesto Eduardo Saenz...

Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, says he plans to file an ethics complaint — against himself. The move comes after a Washington Post reporter wrote a story raising questions about the New York Democrat’s efforts to raise money for an academic facility in Harlem that will bear his name. The story suggested that Rangel violated House rules by sending out letters bearing an official congressional letterhead seeking funds for the Rangel Center, to be located at the City College of New York, from Donald Trump and other wealthy individuals. At a press conference...

When he got caught accepting improper VIP mortgages from Countrywide Financial as part of its CEO's effort to keep his firm's Senate Banking Committee skids well lubricated, Sen. Christopher Dodd declared indignantly, "I don't believe I did anything wrong." No doubt he sincerely believes that. He believes he is entitled to cut-rate loans because he's Chris Dodd, born into a political culture where the rules of decent society and the law passed for ordinary Americans do not apply. And after 34 years of full immersion in that warped world, right and wrong are entirely foreign concepts, particularly when incumbency and...

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, called on the House ethics committee to investigate his role in raising funds for the "Rangel Center" at City College in New York. In a combative press conference this morning, Rangel went after the Washington Post for reporting that he was sending out letters on official congressional letterhead soliciting funds for the center from corporations and wealthy individuals with business before his panel. "The review should be done as soon as possible so as to clear up any misunderstandings regarding my efforts to cnnvene meeting to discuss partnerships between...

Federal authorities have launched an investigation into New Jersey's largest state worker union, and of Gov. John Corzine's ex-girlfriend, Carla Katz, who until recently was its head, ABC News has learned. As first reported by the Star-Ledger, investigators served document and record subpoenas yesterday on the Communications Workers of America in Washington, D.C. The investigators are looking into allegations that Katz misappropriated union funds, sources confirmed for ABC News. These allegations were first raised in the union's own probe into Katz' management of Local 1034, sources confirmed to ABC News. They were made public last week when the organization's governing...

HARRISBURG - The tentacles of the Bonusgate scandal have spread to past presidential politics. Buried deep in the grand jury report, released last week, that led to the indictment of 12 people are details of what is described as a "massive" effort by House Democrats to oust the independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader from the ballot in 2004. * * * In light of the grand jury revelations of political work conducted with taxpayers' money, the candidates and reform advocates want a federal investigation into the ballot challenges, which they now think were the result of the criminal conspiracy that...

Mexican authorities arrested two Rio Grande Valley residents for their alleged involvement in a kidnapping ring that terrorized the border city of Reynosa. Tamaulipas State Police told Action 4 News that three suspects were arrested in a kidnapping case on Tuesday evening. Police recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars, jewelry and other valuables. The group was allegedly arrested following an investigation into the July 9 kidnapping of a Reynosa businessman. The suspects were identified as: Agustín Edmundo Torres Flores (San Juan, Texas) Cantalicia Cantú (McAllen, Texas) Francisca Dianey Martínez Hernández (Reynosa, Tamaulipas) Action 4 News reporter Victor Castillo will have...

  Private jets, Bugatti cars, a shark-filled aquarium and enough bank accounts to paper the new luxury yacht - the extraordinary capacity of some African leaders and their families for apparent self-enrichment has been laid bare in a French lawsuit over allegedly stolen state money. Following an inquiry last year by the French fraud body OCRGDF, an anti-corruption campaign group has accused a string of African politicians of plundering vast sums from the often struggling economies of their countries. (edit)The richest parts of France are teeming with homes, cars, boats and other expensive baubles belonging - in practice, at...

MONTERREY, Mexico - Suspected drug gang hitmen shot dead a senior police commander in the violent Mexican state of Sinaloa on Wednesday, despite the arrival of hundreds of police reinforcements as killings surge. Gunmen shot dead Sinaloa's state police commander Salomon Diaz as he drove through a suburb of Culiacan, the state's capital and home to one of the country's main trafficking cartels. "He was shot in the stomach by gunmen with AK-47s," said a police spokesman who declined to be named. President Felipe Calderon has sent some 25,000 troops across Mexico to fight drug gangs but it has failed...

A man who was found with his head severed by a chainsaw was fighting to stay in a block of 70 flats in Hampshire cleared for redevelopment. David Phyall, 50, was the last tenant at the Atlantic Housing Ltd housing association flats in Eastleigh. His body was found by police on 5 July, who said his death was not suspicious. Post-mortem tests showed he died of a "complete transection of the neck". An inquest was opened and adjourned at Winchester Coroner's Court on Friday. A spokesman for the coroner said: "As far as we know nobody else was involved. "There's...

A few days ago I posted a story on a recent article in the New York Sun by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute, that focused on how the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) had not fully funded the pension plan of their rank and file members while they had over funded the pension plan of the Union's chief officers. Well, today at noon (CT) I was included as part of a conference call on the pending release of the full study upon which that earlier article in the Sun was based, written by by Diana Furchtgott-Roth. This...

Recent attacks are a troubling sign innocents aren't off-limits MEXICO CITY — Many Mexicans have long shrugged off the violence shaking their country by telling themselves it only affects those involved in the narcotics trade and corrupt law enforcement officers. But innocent civilians, once considered largely off-limits, now find themselves increasingly targeted. In the past five days, two attacks in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa claimed the lives of perhaps more than a dozen people with no apparent connection to the drug trade — including at least four teens, a 12-year-old girl and a father-and-son team of university accounting...

Toll road opponents today will ask the Sunset Advisory Committee of the Texas Legislature to abolish the Texas Department of Transportation, saying the agency has become too corrupt and too dysfunctional to fix, 1200 WOAI news reports. "We want to see elected leadership at the helm of Tex-DOT," says long time toll road opponent Terri Hall, the founder of the citizen action group Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom. "We are done with this unelected beaurocracy that is just an arm of private road building companies and the lackeys of this governor." The idea of eliminating TexDOT and establishing a...

WASHINGTON - A former vice president of imaging and printing services at the Hewlett Packard Company (HP) pleaded guilty today to stealing trade secrets, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello for the Northern District of California. Atul Malhotra, 42, of Santa Barbara, Calif., was charged on June 27, 2007, in a one count information with theft of trade secrets. According to court documents, from Nov. 17, 1997, to April 28, 2006, Malhotra was employed by International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) as director of sales and business development in output...

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel is soliciting donations from corporations with business interests before his panel, hoping to raise $30 million for a new academic center that will house his papers when he retires. ... ...a project that caused controversy last year when he won a $1.9 million congressional earmark to help start it. Republican critics dubbed the project Rangel's "Monument to Me." ... The congressman has corralled more federal money as well, securing two Department of Housing and Urban Development grants totaling $690,500 to help renovate the college-owned Harlem brownstone that will house the center.

EXCLUSIVE: NEW YORK — NBA referee Tim Donaghy made repeated phone calls to a second referee at the same time he provided inside information to professional gamblers during the course of the 2006-2007 season, according to court documents and phone records obtained by FOXNews.com. The records show Donaghy placed 134 calls to referee Scott Foster — more than the 126 calls Donaghy made to his bookie — between October 2006 and April 2007, the period during which he has confessed to either betting on games or passing on game information to gamblers. The majority of the phone calls lasted no...

U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has remained largely unhurt by the controversy over his “sweetheart” deal with mortgage lender Countrywide. But CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla finally bucked the media trend of ignoring the scandal and brought the loan up in an interview with the former Democratic presidential hopeful July 14. Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in the wake of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s July 13 announcement that the federal government would take actions to prevent the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) from failing. “Squawk Box” co-host Quintanilla asked Dodd...

Todd Stuart McGuire, a longtime Jefferson County Democratic Party supporter, was charged July 2 with voter fraud. He's accused of either repeating a vote or impersonating his wife, Rebekah, by casting her ballot in a Feb. 6, 2007, special election. Both charges are Class C felonies and carry a maximum penalty of five years in jail and/or a $10,000 fine, according to charging documents. Neither the McGuires nor Todd McGuire's attorney Ben Critchlow could be reached for comment last week or Monday. Todd McGuire is scheduled to appear in Jefferson County Superior Court at 8:30 a.m. Friday, July 18. The...

HARRISBURG -- If the grand jury is correct, the 12 people indicted in a sprawling political corruption case aren't just the center of a court battle. They're the opening shots of a cultural conflict. The grand jury empanelled by state Attorney General Tom Corbett portrayed Suite 626 in the state Capitol as the center of a taxpayer-financed political machine aimed at helping former Rep. Mike Veon and other House Democrats get re-elected. Allegations in the 90-page report, anticipated for more than a year by state lawmakers and their employees, are "a symbolic event of a much larger picture," said...

Those ever-vigilant, ever-principled, non-partisan politicos known as Democrats were caught with their hands in the cookie jar in Pennsylvania. Twelve of them, to be exact. Philly Daily News: A SORDID TANGLE of corruption, cash and sex rocked the Statehouse yesterday in a political scandal that left one current and one former legislator and 10 current and former staff members facing criminal charges. Among the accusations leveled by two state grand juries: Former top legislative staffer Mike Manzo got his lover, a twenty-something former rural beauty queen, a $29,000 job and $7,000 bonus mostly for doing her schoolwork. State Attorney General...

It's the top story in Pennsylvania. Twelve Democrat state leaders facing corruption charges in a massive scandal dubbed "Bonusgate." If it were twelve Republican state leaders, I guarantee you would have heard all about it by now. Via the Philly Daily News: A SORDID TANGLE of corruption, cash and sex rocked the Statehouse yesterday in a political scandal that left one current and one former legislator and 10 current and former staff members facing criminal charges. Among the accusations leveled by two state grand juries: Former top legislative staffer Mike Manzo got his lover, a twenty-something former rural beauty queen,...

It seemed an ideal marriage, a scientific partnership that would attack mental illness from all sides. Psychiatrists would bring to the union their expertise and clinical experience, drug makers would provide their products and the money to run rigorous studies, and patients would get better medications, faster... --snip-- An analysis of Minnesota data by The New York Times last year found that on average, psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from makers of newer-generation antipsychotic drugs appear to have written three times as many prescriptions to children for the drugs as psychiatrists who received less money or none. The drugs...

Obama's Liberal Shock Troops By JOHN FUND July 12, 2008 While he is a skilled candidate, Barack Obama's ability to surprise, stun and sweep over the vaunted Clinton Machine to capture the Democratic nomination was rooted in his background as a community organizer. He's now turning those skills to the general election. But liberals aren't just on the march on the presidential level. This year, liberal activists are spending parts of the fortunes of their wealthy donors to transform politics at the state and local level. In 2005, billionaire investor George Soros convened a group of 70 super-rich liberal donors...

IN PRINCE GEORGE'S County, it's an open secret that one of the quickest shortcuts to easy money is to be a friend of County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D). Through relentless investigating over the past several years...Post reporters have detailed the multifarious ways in which FOJs have benefited: by fat "consulting" contracts for which they do precious little work; by "charity" grants bestowed according to no known criteria; by county jobs for which they seem modestly qualified. Mr. Johnson's relaxed ways with taxpayers' money have made Prince George's a byword for lax ethical standards. Now Ms. Thompson and Mary Pat...

Rep. Charles Rangel defiantly defended having four rent-stabilized apartments Friday as Republicans, critics and constituents railed against what they called a sweetheart deal. "I don't see anything unfair about it, and I didn't even know it was a deal," said Rangel, 78, who chairs the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and is the dean of the New York congressional delegation. "I did not negotiate or ask for a lower price, and I'm paying the legal rent." [Snip] Nellie Bailey, director of the Harlem Tenants Council, accused Rangel of "the height of hypocrisy." She said he has failed to help...

As a state senator from the South Side, Barack Obama once arranged for a $200,000 state grant to jump-start an urban venture capital fund for a non-profit group run by Rev. Jesse Jackson. The grant was the very sort of faith-based initiative now at the center of an uncomfortable rift between Jackson and Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. The money was spent, but the promised investment pool for job-poor neighborhoods never materialized, an example of the mixed record for Obama and other officials in getting results from such programs. Obama's embrace of this approach, championed by President George W....