Company that got millions from US taxpayers now profits Chinese owners

The good news is electric car battery maker A123 Systems is finally on track to turn a profit. 
The bad news is taxpayers don't figure to see any of the $133 million the federal government spent and the estimated $141 million in tax credits and subsidies secured from Michigan to help the company take off in 2009, only to see A123 Systems crash, declare bankruptcy in 2012 and then get purchased by a privately held Chinese conglomerate. 
"In the case of A123, they created some jobs and a year or two later those jobs were gone, so taxpayers weren't getting that money back," said Jarret Skorup, a policy analyst at Michigan's Mackinac Center, a free-market think tank. 
Earlier this month, CEO Jason Forcier announced that A123 Systems' parent company, the China-based Wanxiang Group, will spend $200 million to double the capacity of three lithium-ion battery plants, including two in suburban Detroit. 
Forcier told Crain's Detroit Business that A123 Systems is expected to generate $300 million in revenue this year and plans to double that amount by 2018. The company, Forcier said, will turn a profit for the first time in its history in 2015. 
"The strength of A123 has never been greater and we are honored to be expanding our existing customer relationships and establishing new ones at the same time," Forcier said in a company news release.

Huckabee: Gay Marriage Could Criminalize Christianity

The legalization of same-sex marriage would be a “very dangerous place” for America to go and could lead to civil disobedience, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee warns.
I have received an exclusive copy of a letter the Republican presidential candidate is sending to conservative leaders and pro-family activists around the nation.
Click here to join Todd on Facebook for conservative conversations!
In that letter, which you can read here, he vows to “fight to defend religious liberty at all costs.”
“I refuse to sit silently as politically driven interest groups threaten the foundation of religious liberty, criminalize Christianity, and demand that Americans abandon Biblical principles of natural marriage,” Huckabee wrote.
Huckabee also had a stern message for his fellow Republican contenders – urging them to join the fight to defend the Constitution.
“If you lack the backbone to reject judicial tyranny and fight for religious liberty, you have no business serving our nation as President of the United States,” he wrote.
Huckabee has mobilized an impressive group of conservative and religious leaders – many of whom signed his letter – including National Religious Broadcasters President Jerry Johnson, Dr. James Dobson, Tim and Donald Wildmon of American Family Association, Steve Strang of Charisma Media and Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel.
“This is not just about marriage,” Huckabee told me in a telephone interview. “This is about whether or not a government can begin to put limitations on the conscious and convictions of people who have faith.”
Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America, signed Huckabee’s letter. She said it’s “absolutely essential for Christians to stand and be counted.
“We strongly believe people of faith have to step forward and make a commitment,” she told me. “We fear God more than we fear man and I think that’s what Governor Huckabee is trying to say.”
Nance predicted that the legalization of gay marriage would lead to greater attacks on Christian Americans.
“We will see people of faith lose their jobs, pastors will be sued, churches will lose their tax exempt status,” she said. “Now is the time for us to speak up. We must obey God. We are not willing to bend one knee to man.”
That was the message sent earlier this week by the Southern Baptist Convention. Members passed a resolution opposing gay marriage and President Ronnie Floyd delivered a fiery declaration.
“The Supreme Court of the United States is not the final authority nor is the culture itself,” said the elected leader of the nation’s largest non-Catholic denomination. “The Bible is God’s final authority about marriage and on this book we stand.”
Huckabee said he was proud of Floyd’s stand and called his comments bold.
“When an individual is faced with a decision of bowing to Caesar or bowing his knee to God – he has to take his stand and get on his knees to God instead of Caesar,” Huckabee told me. “This is where we are rapidly heading.”
A direction that a growing number of Christians believe will lead them to engage in acts of civil disobedience.
“That does mean civil disobedience,” Huckabee told me. “It means we are obedient to a power that is not only higher than the current government, but a power that was the basis of our government.”
Huckabee said taking a stand comes with a price. He said some Christians might lose their jobs or their businesses or face lawsuits or government investigations.
“People are going to have to begin to be willing to lose things in order to preserve the country and their freedoms,” he said. “When people are told by their government what they can and can’t say, it’s one step away from being told what they can and can’t do. All other liberties begin to erode.”
Huckabee is a modern-day voice crying in the political wilderness. Religious liberty is under attack but many politicians have remained silent – fearful of the Republican Party’s powerful donor class.
It is refreshing to see a man practice what he preaches – a man willing to speak the truth regardless of the consequences.
Americans should pay heed to what Huckabee says. If generations of long-cherished traditions and convictions can be pushed aside by a small but vocal minority – then religious liberty will indeed be lost. And with it – the foundation of all our freedoms.

Ex-charity exec who helped expose $500G Clinton Foundation donation faces legal threats

EXCLUSIVE: A former charity executive who helped expose a questionable $500,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation is now being threatened by her old bosses with a lawsuit seeking tens of thousands of dollars, FoxNews.com has learned.
Sue Veres Royal, former executive director at the Happy Hearts Fund, was initially quoted in a May 29 New York Times article that said the charity lured Bill Clinton to a 2014 gala only after offering a $500,000 donation to The Clinton Foundation. His office previously had turned down the charity's invitations, but this time he accepted; the accompanying donation amounted to almost a quarter of the gala's net proceeds.
Veres Royal, who spoke to FoxNews.com about the fallout from that report, is now embroiled in a legal battle with the charity. She filed a formal complaint June 4 with the New York attorney general's Charities Bureau, as the charity itself threatened her with legal action for allegedly breaking her confidentiality agreement.
The Times report gave several behind-the-scenes details, including that founder Petra Nemcova explicitly told Veres Royal to offer the $500,000 "honorarium."
The Happy Hearts Fund’s legal team fired off a cease-and-desist order to Veres Royal the same day the Times report was published. The charity claimed she had breached a confidentiality agreement and gave “numerous falsehoods, inaccuracies and disparaging statements” about the organization to the Times. The letter demanded she no longer speak to the media or else they would seek damages.

Related Image

Expand / Contract

Former Happy Hearts Fund Executive Director Sue Veres Royal (Sue Veres Royal)

A Happy Hearts Fund spokesman said they are unable to discuss the situation concerning Veres Royal as they, too, are bound by a confidentiality agreement, but defended the 2014 award to Clinton.
"Because we know the strong impact of working together and because the Happy Hearts Fund and the Clinton Foundation have a shared goal of providing meaningful help to Haiti, we proposed a joint educational project with the Clinton Foundation. Any suggestion that this joint project is some kind of ‘honorarium’ or ‘fee’ is unequivocally false," the spokesman told FoxNews.com in a statement. According to the group, such partnerships have allowed the charity to build 113 schools since 2006 in nine different countries, with more opening this month.
However, Veres Royal said she was appalled not only by the 2014 Clinton donation but by details she had not known before the Times report was published -- most notably that the $500,000, which was supposed to go to causes in the ravaged country of Haiti, still had not been earmarked for any particular project by The Clinton Foundation.
“It’s disgusting to me that this organization is being used in this way,” Veres Royal said. “I have been to Haiti three times. I’ve seen how desperate the need is, and it’s disgusting to me that people are trying to do good while they’re sitting on half-a-million dollars. I think that’s a disservice to those people who have donated the money, and to the people of Haiti.”
The threat of legal action comes as the Happy Hearts Fund tries to limit the damage already caused to the organization's reputation after the revelations. Veres Royal said two conservative-leaning board members already have resigned after finding out about the exorbitant donation which, to Veres Royal’s knowledge, was never voted on by the board.

'It’s disgusting to me that people are trying to do good while they’re sitting on half-a-million dollars.'
- Sue Veres Royal

Veres Royal responded to the Happy Hearts Fund legal demand by claiming she was not in breach of her confidentiality agreement. She says she was not the source of the report, but was merely quoted on what she called a matter of public interest. It was at that point she then filed the formal complaint about HHF’s actions with the New York attorney general.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE COMPLAINT.
In the complaint, Veres Royal alleges the gala was used to shore up the rocky political fortunes of Haitian President Michel Martelly, a close ally and friend of Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, who was then dating Nemcova, a Czech model.
Martelly was at that time dealing with a number of corruption allegations, specifically over the location of education funds, Veres Royal said.
The complaint claims that Nemcova, who was an ambassador at-large for Haiti, “specifically instructed Veres Royal to ‘find a reason’” to honor Martelly and then pushed to get Clinton’s staff to agree for Martelly to be honored as well. Consequently, she claims, a “totally concocted” award -- for “Leadership in Education” -- was also presented to Martelly at the Clinton gala.
Bill and Hillary Clinton -- now a Democratic presidential candidate -- have been heavily involved in the reconstruction of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, though their role in the country’s recovery has come under scrutiny amid accusations of running a pay-to-play operation with Haitian reconstruction.

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to FoxNews.com’s request for comment.
Veres Royal’s complaint also alleges improper financial oversight and gross misrepresentation to the public about fundraising.
After she filed the complaint, HHF sent an email, seen by FoxNews.com, arguing again that Veres Royal was breaching a confidentiality agreement, and that HHF was entitled to over $30,000 in payments Veres Royal received as part of the agreement, as well as unspecified “injunctive relief and monetary damages."
Despite being under fire, and not having an attorney of her own, Veres Royal says she is going to keep pursuing her complaint, and will not back down under the threat of legal action:
“Although it’s been nerve-wracking to me, I feel it’s my ethical responsibility to do so.”

Democrat Cartoon

Supreme Court: Texas can refuse to issue Confederate flag license plate

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Texas' refusal to issue a license plate bearing the Confederate battle flag, rejecting a free-speech challenge.
The court said in a 5-4 ruling that Texas can limit the content of license plates because they are state property and not the equivalent of bumper stickers.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans had sought a Texas plate bearing its logo with the battle flag. A state board rejected it over concerns that the license plate would offend many Texans.
Justice Stephen Breyer said the state's decision to reject the group's plate did not violate its free speech rights. Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas and the court's other three liberal justices joined Breyer's opinion.
The Supreme Court has previously ruled that states can't force drivers to display license plates that contain messages with which the drivers disagree, Breyer said. "And just as Texas cannot require SCV (the Sons of Confederate Veterans) to convey `the state's ideological message,"' Breyer said, quoting from that earlier ruling, "SCV cannot force Texas to include a Confederate battle flag on its specialty license plates."
The state can prohibit some messages even though there are now nearly 450 specialty plates to choose from, he said. Those plates include "Choose Life" to the Boy Scouts and hamburger chains.
The Texas division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans sued over the state's decision not to authorize its proposed license plate with its logo bearing the battle flag, similar to plates issued by eight other states that were members of the Confederacy and by the state of Maryland.
A panel of federal appeals court judges ruled that the board's decision violated the group's First Amendment rights. "We understand that some members of the public find the Confederate flag offensive. But that fact does not justify the board's decision," Judge Edward Prado of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans wrote.
Texas' main argument to the Supreme Court is that the license plate is not like a bumper sticker slapped on the car by its driver. Instead, the state said, license plates are government property, and so what appears on them is not private individuals' speech but the government's. The First Amendment applies when governments try to regulate the speech of others, but not when governments are doing the talking.
Justice Samuel Alito said in dissent that the decision "threatens private speech that the government finds displeasing."
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia also dissented.

Spokane votes to remove Rachel Dolezal from police commission

The Spokane City Council has voted to remove Rachel Dolezal, the former Spokane NAACP president, from the city's volunteer police ombudsman commission.
The 6-0 vote came Thursday afternoon, KREM-TV reported.
On Wednesday, Mayor David Condon and Spokane Council President Ben Stuckart called for Dolezal and two others to step down from the five-member commission after an independent investigation found the three commissioners acted improperly and violated government rules.
The evidence and interviews confirmed workplace harassment allegations and "a pattern of misconduct" by Dolezal, the chairwoman, and two other commissioners, the report said. The council accepted the resignation of one of those commissioners and voted to give the other more time to respond.
Dolezal, 37, resigned as head of the NAACP's Spokane chapter this week after her parents said she was a white woman pretending to be black.
In May, the city hired lawyers to investigate whistleblower complaints filed by an unidentified city employee who staffed the police commission. The report said Dolezal abused her authority by trying to supervise the Office of Police Ombudsman personnel and she exhibited bias against law enforcement, despite rules requiring fairness and impartiality.
Dolezal's duties as commissioner and as NAACP president were in conflict because she actively engaged in protests of officer-involved shootings, the report also said.
In a statement Wednesday, Dolezal said she and the other two commissioners did nothing wrong and had reviewed their actions with lawyers.
Dolezal resigned her NAACP leadership post after her parents accused her of posing as black despite her Czech, German and Swedish ancestry. When asked by NBC's Matt Lauer earlier this week if she is an "an African-American woman," Dolezal said: "I identify as black."

House OKs Obama trade agenda on 2nd try, bill heads to Senate

The House on Thursday approved a key plank of President Obama's trade agenda after the push nearly imploded amid Democratic resistance last week, sending the bill to the Senate where it still faces an uncertain fate.
The 218-208 vote nevertheless marked a significant victory for Obama and his pro-trade supporters in both parties. The vote came after Obama huddled Wednesday evening with congressional allies to try to craft a way forward.
The bill would specifically give the president so-called "fast-track" authority to approve trade deals, which Obama wants to seal a 12-nation pact involving Japan and 11 other countries bordering the Pacific Ocean.
The mechanics of the vote are some of the most complicated in recent memory, in a legislative body notorious for esoteric procedural maneuvers. The vote failed in the House last week because another measure it was attached to was defeated by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans.
It was labor-aligned Democrats, in particular, who caused the biggest headaches for the White House. Democrats have fought the measure for months, for fear it would lead to the loss of U.S. jobs overseas. "Let's kill this donkey once and for all," Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., said before the latest vote.
On Thursday, House leaders moved to vote only on the "fast-track" measure, known as Trade Promotion Authority. The measure on the House floor would give Obama authority to negotiate global trade deals that Congress can approve or reject, but not change. Other recent presidents have had the same prerogative Obama seeks.
With the bill's approval, it heads back to the Senate where lawmakers would have to approve it in tact in order to send it to Obama's desk.
The issue has led to unusual alliances and factions on Capitol Hill, with some Tea Party-aligned Republicans and labor-aligned Democrats joining forces to resist it -- while pro-trade Democrats and GOP congressional leaders side with the White House.
The House debate and vote Thursday marked the beginning of an extraordinary rescue operation that the White House and GOP leaders in Congress hope will result in passage of both bills by the end of next week. The other bill, not addressed on Thursday, would renew an expiring program of aid for workers who lose their jobs because of imports.
"We are committed to ensuring both ... get votes in the House and Senate and are sent to the president for signature," House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a joint statement issued Wednesday in an attempt to reassure pro-trade Democrats whose votes will be needed.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi had no comment on the day's events. The California Democrat joined the revolt last week in which her party's rank-and-file lawmakers helped vote down the aid package that they customarily support, calculating their actions would prevent the entire trade package from reaching Obama's desk.
Supporters of the president's agenda argue that the United States must stay involved in international trade, in part because otherwise, countries like China will write the rules to their own advantage. The administration's immediate negotiating objective is a round of talks involving 12 countries in Asia, North America and South America.
Organized labor and other opponents of international trade deals say they cost thousands of American workers their jobs by shifting employment to foreign countries with low wages, poor working conditions and lax environmental standards.
Officials in Congress said Boehner and McConnell hope to have both the trade and the aid legislation to the president by the time lawmakers begin a scheduled vacation at the end of next week.

Sources: Clinton confidant who sent Libya memos paid $200G by Brock network

The Clinton confidant under scrutiny on Capitol Hill over detailed Libya memos he sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told lawmakers earlier this week he has been pulling in $200,000 a year from Clinton ally David Brock's media operation, congressional sources tell FoxNews.com.
The figure is far higher than initially reported.
While the payments to Sidney Blumenthal may not reflect any apparent conflict of interest, his work with Brock's liberal advocacy and media groups was a focus of his high-profile deposition on Tuesday before the House Benghazi committee. Republicans' rationale for the questioning was that his financial and political interests are important context, at a time when he was sending high-level guidance to Clinton.
Politico.com first reported that Republicans grilled Blumenthal on his work for Brock's groups. But while the report said Blumenthal was making more than $10,000 a month, congressional sources say he acknowledged during the deposition he actually had a $200,000-a-year contract.
The money was in addition to the $10,000 a month he was getting for work with the Clinton Foundation.
"He was getting, from Clinton, Inc., $320,000 a year," one source told FoxNews.com.
The Brock-founded groups are not actually part of the Clinton empire, though Brock is a Clinton ally. The source said Blumenthal has been working with Media Matters, American Bridge and Correct the Record. Another congressional source, though, told FoxNews.com the contract was specifically with Media Matters.
Though it's unclear exactly what Blumenthal was paid to do, Politico reported his work entailed giving high-level strategy and messaging guidance, and the Benghazi debate was likely part of that. The groups above have busily defended then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from GOP broadsides.
Emails related to this work surfaced in the package of documents delivered to the Benghazi committee ahead of Tuesday's session -- emails that weren't part of the initial package of documents handed over by the State Department.
One of those emails to Clinton linked several Media Matters posts on Benghazi, essentially defending the State Department.
FoxNews.com is told one of them read: "Got all this done, complete refutation on Libya smear." The email said, "Philippe can circulate these links." Philippe Reines was a senior adviser to Clinton.
Asked for comment on the deposition, and on Blumenthal's payments, Brock blasted the committee's latest inquiry.
"Despite the fact that the conclusions of nine congressional committee reports and the findings from an independent review board don't support his political agenda, Chairman [Trey] Gowdy keeps doubling down and expanding his taxpayer funded fishing expedition in the hopes of undermining Secretary Clinton's presidential campaign," Brock told FoxNews.com in an email. "This week's spectacle is the latest proof that he is failing."
FoxNews.com has reached out to Blumenthal's attorney for comment.
Blumenthal's deposition lasted most of the day on Tuesday. FoxNews.com is told the Brock work "came up," though the committee did not spend hours grilling him about it.
The committee sought to interview Blumenthal over his role sending detailed memos on Libya to Clinton in 2011 and 2012.   
The New York Times first reported on Blumenthal's memos and said the information was coming from "business associates" Blumenthal was advising, including former CIA official Tyler Drumheller.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the committee, told Fox News earlier this week that the memos themselves were actually sent by Drumheller. He said Blumenthal didn't write them, and was just passing on the "unvetted, uncorroborated, unsubstantiated intelligence."
After the deposition on Tuesday, Blumenthal said he answered every question over the course of nine hours. He said the emails were mostly "old news" and hopes he cleared up "misconceptions."
He said he wasn't involved in any of the administration's decision-making, and attributed his appearance before the committee to "politics."
Democrats were fuming over Tuesday's session and have called on Gowdy to release the transcript of the deposition. Further, they say the latest documents reveal no "smoking gun" about the Benghazi attacks, which killed four Americans.
[I]n fact, they hardly relate to Benghazi at all," Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement.
FoxNews.com is told Blumenthal only disclosed his payments from Brock's groups on Tuesday after he was specifically asked about them -- and that he didn't initially disclose them when asked about his sources of income.