If I were tracking the 2024 Republican Presidential Primaries the way I tracked the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primaries (I’m not; the Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update was a huge pain in the ass and I don’t have the time to spend on it), Vivek Ramaswamy is exactly the sort of fringe candidate I’d give some time and attention to.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the millionaire entrepreneur and author of Woke, Inc., told National Review on Monday that he is “strongly considering” a run for president and expects to make a decision “very soon.”
Ramaswamy said he’s been drawn to the idea of running to address a “national identity crisis” that has left Americans hungry for purpose, meaning, and identity.
“We are at a point in our national history when the things that used to fill that void — faith, patriotism, hard work, even family — have disappeared,” he said, adding that in its absence, “wokeism, climate-ism as an ideology, radical gender ideology, Covidism” have become secular religions that fill that “black hole of identity.”
Conservatives have gotten too good at pointing out the problem and “trying to stamp out the poison without actually addressing the real problem,” said Ramaswamy, who has been dubbed the “CEO of Anti-Woke Inc.” The solution, he says, is to “fill that identity void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep, that it dilutes the secular agendas to irrelevance.”
Those such as President Biden who deliver a vision of national unity by beginning in the middle and calling for compromise are doing it wrong, Ramaswamy said. In order to build unity, the country must return to the “extremism of the ideas that set America into motion: free speech, unbridled meritocracy,” he said.
“I think most people believe these ideals and most people think their neighbors and their colleagues believe these ideals to be true as well, but they can’t be sure anymore, because they don’t feel free to talk about it,” he said. “And so that’s been one of the hallmarks for me, is to start talking openly, again, to lead the way by actually doing it.”
Ramaswamy founded biotech company Roivant Sciences in 2014 and served as its CEO until 2021. That year, he published Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, which says that despite “rosy promises of a better, more diverse, environmentally-friendly world,” stakeholder capitalism “robs us of our money, our voice, and our identity.”
In May 2022, Ramaswamy announced the launch of his new financial firm, Strive, which would focus on “excellence capitalism” rather than encouraging American corporations to get involved in social or environmental issues.
The Ohio-based firm was created to solve what it says is a fiduciary problem created by investment companies such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, which have used clients’ funds to “exercise decisive influence over nearly every U.S. public company to advance political ideologies that many of their clients disagree with.”
“Over the last two years, I have traveled the country and listened to the concerns of everyday Americans who want to be heard in the places where they shop, work and invest,” Ramaswamy said in a statement at the time. “We want iconic American brands like Disney, Coca-Cola and Exxon, and U.S. tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Google to deliver high-quality products that improve our lives, not controversial political ideologies that divide us. The Big 3 asset managers have fueled this polarizing new trend in corporate America, and that’s why we’re going to compete with them head-on to refocus American companies on the shared pursuit of excellence over politics.”
In September, Ramaswamy published his second book, Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.
He told National Review on Monday that he has been working to create a space for open conversations about a return to American ideals in recent years.
“I wasn’t free to speak as an elite CEO or the other environments I had been in, but I purposefully stepped aside from my job as a CEO to make this my mission over the last three years, to start talking openly,” he said.
He wants to “revive the American dream in the 21st-century context,” a vision that is of personal importance to Ramaswamy who has “lived the full arc of the American dream” as a first-generation Indian American. Ramaswamy, who attended Harvard for undergrad before attending Yale Law, is the son of a General Electric engineer and a geriatric psychiatrist.
Another box he checks is “Can self-fund,” as he is reportedly worth $500 million. That’s the sort of money that can easily get you to the finish line…in a senate or governor’s race. As Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg proved, spending $50 to $200 million
Is he a better speaker than Steyer or Bloomberg? That’s a pretty low bar, but yes:
That’s the latest video from his YouTube channel. Which, as of this writing, has 44 views.
So you can begin to see the scope of the problem.
Ramaswamy is a guy who might make a serious candidate for a lower-level job, but who wants to run for President as an outsider message candidate. In that sense, he’s a lot like Andrew Yang was for Democrats in 2020. But while Yang’s message was a bit eclectic for Democrats, Ramaswamy’s seems to be a lot closer to the default position for Republicans. It’s hard to see the necessary war against radical social justice being a wedge he can use to calve votes from higher profile and more experienced candidates.
It would be great if there were a Republican candidate in the 2024 Presidential race who was running to destroy wokeness…and who was also a proven elected leader of a large, successful state.
Like, say, Florida.
That’s the sort of candidate a majority of Republicans could get behind…
“Biden’s job growth is mostly immigrants working for low wages.” Also this: “The Department of Homeland Security has been issuing an unknown number of two-year work permits to illegal immigrants, which will keep them in the workforce suppressing wages and fanning the flames of discontent amongst Americans unable to find jobs until the next presidential election.” What the hell?
“Disinformation Inc: State Department bankrolls group secretly blacklisting conservative media.”
The Department of State has funded a deep-pocketed “disinformation” tracking group that is secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media, likely costing the news organizations vital advertising dollars, the Washington Examiner can confirm.
The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged “disinformation,” the Washington Examiner reported . This same “disinformation” group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government, raising concerns from First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress.
“Any outfit like that engaged in censorship shouldn’t have any contact with the government because they’re tainted by association with a group that is doing something fundamentally against American values,” Jeffrey Clark, ex-acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, told the Washington Examiner. “The government or any private entity shouldn’t be involved with this entity that’s engaged in conduct that is either legally questionable or at least morally questionable.”
GDI compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” that it feeds to corporate entities, such as the Microsoft -owned advertising company Xandr, emails show. Xandr and other companies are, in turn, declining to place ads on websites that GDI flags as peddling disinformation.
The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that it is on this exclusion list. The list includes at least 2,000 websites and has “had a significant impact on the advertising revenue that has gone to those sites,” said GDI’s CEO Clare Melford on a March 2022 podcast.
GDI has identified that the 10 “riskiest” news outlets for disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.
Another huge story that the news media has done it’s best to ignore: a toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The blew it up to prevent a BLEVE and ended up releasing Phosgene gas. That’s carrying your World War I reenactment too far.
90-year California Democratic Senator old Dianne Feinstein to retire after 2024. But…
A few hour later she was evidently unaware she had retired. Increasingly, “crazy” or “senile” seem to be the two most common flavors of the Democratic Party…
More lawsuits are pouring in against the Biden administration’s recent decision to redefine firearms with pistol braces as short-barrelled rifles (SBR) under the National Firearms Act (NFA), with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Gun Owners of America (GOA) filing a joint lawsuit seeking to block the rule.
The lawsuit, State of Texas v. ATF, was filed in the Federal Southern District Court of Texas on Thursday, joining two other lawsuits filed in federal district courts in Texas. Those include a challenge filed by attorneys with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty in the Northern District, and a challenge filed in the Eastern District by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF).
GOA called their lawsuit “the most comprehensive” among those filed, writing, “Our complaint makes clear that the agency’s rule violates the Second Amendment ‘text, history and tradition’ standard set forth by the Supreme Court in its recent Bruen case.” GOA also said their case argues the rule violates several other constitutional provisions, including being an “invalid” exercise of taxing authority.
Paxton also released a statement on the lawsuit, saying he is hopeful they prevail in blocking the rule.
“This is yet another attempt by the Biden Administration to create a workaround to the U.S. Constitution and expand gun registration in America,” Paxton said in the release. “There is absolutely no legal basis for ATF’s haphazard decision to try to change the long-standing classification for stabilizing braces, force registration on Americans, and then throw them in jail for ten years if they don’t quickly comply. This rule is dangerous and unconstitutional, and I’m hopeful that this lawsuit will ensure that it is never allowed to take effect.”
Today, Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) jointly filed a lawsuit challenging the Biden Pistol Brace Ban with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
This new rule, which took effect on January 31st of this year, will force Americans to register or destroy their approximately 40 million lawfully owned brace firearms within 120 days, or face possible felony charges.
Erich Pratt, GOA’s Senior Vice President, issued the following statement:
“Millions of Americans are facing a very tight deadline to destroy or register their lawfully owned property under this draconian new rule. We hope the court will hear the pleas of gun owners across the country who will be irrevocably harmed by this rule, and GOA stands ready to fight it at every turn.”
Sam Paredes, on behalf of the board for GOF, added:
“This rule will have some of the most wide-reaching impacts nationwide in the tyrannical history of gun control. We the People will not tolerate this abuse.”
Having a state Attorney General join your lawsuit tends to do wonders to establish standing to sue the federal government. Like bump stocks, ATF has decided to retroactively make an entire class of widely-owned firearms accessory illegal, along with turning millions of lawful gun owners into felons for continuing to possess the same accessories they had already lawfully purchased. The composition of the Supreme Court has changed since Gundy v. United States was decided, and the current court may be much more inclined to reign-in delegation of congressional powers to regulatory agencies.
Greetings, and welcome to a Christmas Eve Eve LinkSwarm! It got down to 14°F yesterday, and only up to a balmy 30°F or so today. In addition to trying to stay warm, I’ve been working finishing up my latest Lame Excuse Books catalog, which went out earlier this evening. (Drop me a line if you want a copy.) Due to that, I think I’m going to break this LinkSwarm into two parts.
House passes pork-filled omnibus spending bill that 18 Republican senators let escape the senate. The amount of bad stuff in here will probably require multiple links tomorrow…
Gov. Gavin Newsom, newly inaugurated Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and legislative leaders are pledging decisive action on California’s homelessness crisis, which raises a pithy question: Why did it erupt during a period of strong economic growth?
The reasons often offered include a moderate climate, the availability of generous welfare benefits, mental health and drug abuse. However, a lengthy and meticulously sourced article in the current issue of Atlantic magazine demolishes all of those supposed causes.
Rather, the article argues persuasively, California and other left-leaning states tend to have the nation’s most egregious levels of homelessness because they have made it extraordinarily difficult to build enough housing to meet demands.
Author Jerusalem Demsas contends that the progressive politics of California and other states are “largely to blame for the homelessness crisis: A contradiction at the core of liberal ideology has precluded Democratic politicians, who run most of the cities where homelessness is most acute, from addressing the issue.
“Liberals have stated preferences that housing should be affordable, particularly for marginalized groups … But local politicians seeking to protect the interests of incumbent homeowners spawned a web of regulations, laws, and norms that has made blocking the development of new housing pitifully simple.”
Demsas singles out Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area as examples of how environmentalists, architectural preservationists, homeowner groups and left-leaning organizations joined hands to enact a thicket of difficult procedural hurdles that became “veto points” to thwart efforts to build the new housing needed in prosperous “superstar cities.”
While thriving economies drew workers to these regions, their lack of housing manifested itself in soaring rents and home prices that drove those on the lower rungs of the economy into homelessness.
Benjamin Netanyahu manages to form new government in Israel. It only took two months since the election!
Mayor Adler’s legacy in Austin:
I just came home today from a 4 day business trip in Austin. Homeless and drug addicts were everywhere. Girls looked like guys, guys looked like girls. In my hotel last night I was woken 3 times from separate bouts gunfire. What happened to this great city?
For some reason, Democratic Party elites have gone all-in on forcing radical transexism down America’s throats. Fortunately, there are promising signs of widespread resistance to mutilating children for the approval of radical social justice warriors.
A federal court on Friday blocked a Biden administration mandate that would force religious hospitals and doctors to facilitate gender transitions against their sincerely held moral convictions.
The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision to block enforcement of the rule on the grounds that “intrusion upon the Catholic Plaintiffs’ exercise of religion is sufficient to show irreparable harm,” the filing reads.
Catholic nuns, clinics, a university, and hospitals were among the plaintiffs in the case, represented by the Becket Fund. The plaintiffs all provide medical care for transgender patients but refuse to provide gender-transition surgeries because they believe them to be harmful. Their grant of permanent injunctive relief from the lower court was preserved Friday.
Friday’s ruling, which originated in North Dakota, is one of a twin set of cases challenging the Biden mandate. The second, which originated in Texas, was decided in August by the Fifth Circuit court, which also permanently blocked the rule. The plaintiffs in the Texas case included Christian medical associations of thousands of doctors who are now protected from federal encroachment into their practices.
“We now have two different federal court of appeals saying the Biden administration is permanently blocked from forcing religious doctors and hospitals” to perform gender transitions in violation of their conscience, Luke Goodrich, attorney with the Becket Fund, said during a call with reporters.
Litigation was first initiated in 2016 over implementation of Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an antidiscrimination clause that would have compelled religious medical institutions that receive federal funding to perform and cover gender transitions, according to the plaintiffs. Section 1557 prohibits a federally funded or administered health program or activity from denying benefits to an individual on the basis of sex as outlined in Title IX. The Biden administration doubled down on the 2016 principle in a revised rule.
Second, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky brings the wood.
In an appearance on The Ingraham Angle, Paul raised the issue of doctors carrying out transgender surgeries on children, and the propaganda that has prompted a massive increase in Americans feeling they do not have the ‘right’ body.
“Who is responsible for telling a four-year-old that we need to talk about their gender and whether they’re in the appropriate body?” Paul asked.
“Who’s talking about giving picture books to six-year-olds with illustrations of surgery to remove their genitalia?” the Senator continued.
“It’s Democrat politicians and woke left-wing people,” Paul asserted.
“There’s not one Republican — look, Republicans are not perfect. But Republicans are not pushing your child to have surgery to remove their genitalia as early as elementary school. No Republican is pushing this,” Paul reiterated.
“These are crazy left-wing Democrats. It was also crazy left-wing Democrats who were for the lockdown across America,” Paul continued.
The mad enthusiasm for transexism is going to be as inexplicable to future generations as pet rocks or healing crystals.
Except neither of those trends mutilated children for life.
Governor Ron DeSantis said in his victory speech that, not only did he win the Florida gubernatorial race, but he has also “rewritten the political map.” It is difficult to argue with that assessment. He beat Democrat Charlie Crist by 20 percentage points and flipped Democratic strongholds such as Miami-Dade County.
A particularly potent force in his campaign has been culture-war issues — battles DeSantis won by going on the offensive. “We fight the woke in the legislature,” he said in his speech. “We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”
As with Trump, DeSantis’s political aggressiveness wins him admirers. The tactics that some conservatives consider morally or philosophically dubious appear only to intensify his popularity.
In March, the Republican Florida legislature passed the Parental Rights in Education Act, preventing teachers from instructing kindergarten through third-grade students in gender identity and sexuality. “I would say when you oppose a parent’s rights and education bill, which prevents six-, seven-, eight-year-olds from having sexuality, gender ideology injected in their curriculum, you are the one that’s waging the culture war,” DeSantis said in defense of the bill. DeSantis also signed the Stop W.O.K.E. (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act, preventing critical race theory from being promoted or advanced in schools and corporations.
When Walt Disney executives criticized the education law as a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, DeSantis retaliated by questioning whether the corporation’s 50-year-old “independent special district” status should go under “review” to ensure that it is “appropriately serving the public interest.” Charles C. W. Cooke warned about the dangers of this move. Yet, however short-sighted, it was undoubtedly effective culture-war politics. DeSantis’s enemies fell into the trap: Democrats revealed their hypocrisy by rushing to the defense of big business.
DeSantis has also won the PR fight on immigration. His morally dubious decision to fly asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard revealed Democrats’ hypocrisy. His hard line on immigration does not dampen support among Hispanics. According to a Telemundo/LX News poll, DeSantis had a 51 percent to 44 percent lead over Crist among Hispanic voters. A bilingual pollster who conducted the survey explained: “There are lots of Hispanic voters in this state who really like the governor’s style, this strongman who won’t back down.”
On transgenderism, DeSantis has been utterly fearless. He stated that, in children, most “dysphoria resolves itself by the time they become adults” and “it’s inappropriate to be doing basically what’s genital mutilation.” While other Republican states have tried to use legislation to stop gender experiments, DeSantis appointed a state medical board that banned doctors from prescribing puberty blockers, hormones, and gender-transition surgeries. This way, his enemies can’t claim that politicians are interfering in the medical profession. Rather, it’s medical professionals keeping politics out of health care.
FTX’s new CEO and liquidator, John Ray III, who also oversaw the unwinding and liquidation of Enron, admits that “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”
And just in case his shock at FTX’s fraud of epic proportions was not quite clear enough, he adds that “from compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”
Snip.
Below we excerpt some of the most notable highlights from the affidavit, which we embed at the bottom of the post and which everyone should read to get a sense of just how massive Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud was.
I have over 40 years of legal and restructuring experience. I have been the Chief Restructuring Officer or Chief Executive Officer in several of the largest corporate failures in history. I have supervised situations involving allegations of criminal activity and malfeasance (Enron). I have supervised situations involving novel financial structures (Enron and Residential Capital) and cross-border asset recovery and maximization (Nortel and Overseas Shipholding). Nearly every situation in which I have been involved has been characterized by defects of some sort in internal controls, regulatory compliance, human resources and systems integrity.
Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.
For purposes of managing the Debtors’ affairs, I have identified four groups of businesses, which I refer to as “Silos.” These Silos include:
(a) a group composed of Debtor West Realm Shires Inc. and its Debtor and non-Debtor subsidiaries (the “WRS Silo”), which includes the businesses known as “FTX US,” “LedgerX,” “FTX US Derivatives,” “FTX US Capital Markets,” and “Embed Clearing,” among other businesses;
(b) a group composed of Debtor Alameda Research LLC and its Debtor subsidiaries (the “Alameda Silo”);
(c) a group composed of Debtor Clifton Bay Investments LLC, Debtor Clifton Bay Investments Ltd., Debtor Island Bay Ventures Inc. and Debtor FTX Ventures Ltd. (the “Ventures Silo”);
(d) a group composed of Debtor FTX Trading Ltd. and its Debtor and non-Debtor subsidiaries (the “Dotcom Silo”), including the exchanges doing business as “FTX.com” and similar exchanges in non-U.S. jurisdictions. These Silos together are referred to by me as the “FTX Group.
Each of the Silos was controlled by Mr. Bankman-Fried. Minority equity interests in the Silos were held by Zixiao “Gary” Wang and Nishad Singh, the co-founders of the business along with Mr. Bankman-Fried. The WRS Silo and Dotcom Silo also have third party equity investors, including investment funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds and families. To my knowledge, no single investor other than the co-founders owns more than 2% of the equity of any Silo.
Much, much more at the link, including an eye-dropping, deeply incriminating Twitter thread by founder Sam Bankman-Fried about the step-by-step decisions they made that weren’t really illegal because they had such good intentions.
BlackRock’s energetic focus on ESG investing is affecting its bottom line. The index fund’s performance is deteriorating, and risks are accumulating. In the face of this situation, UBS Wealth Management recently downgraded ratings for BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) by now listing it as a “Neutral” recommendation rather than a “Buy.” The bank also cut the target stock price to $585 from $700.
The new recommendations were made based entirely on BlackRock’s reckless ESG positioning. UBS says that stubborn insistence on this course could also trigger increased regulatory inspections and investor withdrawals.
Thus, the company pressuring countless firms to adopt more “woke” positions has suddenly found a boomerang coming in its direction. Investors and analysts are now telling BlackRock that ESG shenanigans are bad business and want it stopped.
Another one of those things that makes you go “Hmmmm“: “The Funeral Business Is Booming (And Not Because Of COVID)…We’re having to do at one point of time 20 percent more funerals which is unheard of…the third quarter of this year, we did 15% more calls than we did in the third quarter of 2019.”
Jay Leno is expected to make a full recovery after getting seriously burned in a gasoline fire from one of his many cars. Conan O’Brien should call him up and go “Jay, when I said ‘die in a fire,’ I meant it figuratively, not literally!”
“This was a close call,” said one Republican leader in Washington. “We were worried that we would achieve massive victories tonight, but we thankfully snatched defeat from the jaws of victory to achieve a much more proper and sensible red trickle, like the proper gentlemen we are.”
Blue cities bleed, more Democrats violating election laws, another Democratic congressional staffer exposed for carrying water for Red China, Elon Musk takes over and immediately starts cleaning house at Twitter, and more transexual lunacy. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
As polling continues to show crime is a top issue for voters, the number of homicides has skyrocketed nationwide.
In fact, homicide rates rose by an average of nearly 10% in 50 of the most populated U.S. cities between the third quarter of last year and the third quarter of this year — and are still rising — according to a new study.
WalletHub compared 50 of America’s largest cities based on per capita homicides for the third quarter (July through September) of each year since 2020, using locally published crime data to compile its findings.
According to WalletHub, these were the ten cities with the highest homicide cases per 100,000 residents from July through September:
St. Louis, Mo. (19.69)
Kansas City, Mo. (14.86)
Detroit, Mich. (13.24)
Baltimore, Md. (12.45)
New Orleans, La. (10.99)
Milwaukee, Wisc. (10.46)
Memphis, Tenn. (9.99)
Philadelphia, Pa. (9.36)
Norfolk, Va. (7.78)
Chicago, Ill. (7.71)
The top prosecutors in most of these cities are backed by progressive megadonor George Soros, a billionaire who’s spent the last several years injecting tens of millions of dollars into local district attorney races nationwide, backing candidates who support policies such as abolishing bail, defunding the police, and decriminalizing or deprioritizing certain offenses.
In St. Louis, for example, Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner is one of the first prosecutors bankrolled by Soros’ financial network of organizations and affiliates, heavily funded by these sources in 2016 and again in 2020.
Amid high homicide figures, Gardner has declined more cases and issued fewer arrest warrants than her predecessor, charging fewer felonies and prosecuting thousands of fewer cases as a result. She has also deferred prison sentences for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies as part of her reform initiatives.
Gardner has said this is part of her “platform to reduce the number of cases unnecessarily charged in order to focus on the more difficult cases for trial.”
Last year, Gardner came under fire after three murder cases under her purview were dismissed in one week due to prosecutors in her office not showing up for hearings or being unprepared.
Her campaign website boasts that she’s “made jail and prison a last resort, reserved for those who pose a true public safety risk,” while limiting “the arrest and detention of people accused of misdemeanors and low-level felonies.”
Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner is another Soros-funded prosecutor.
Soros spent almost $1.7 million through the Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC to help Krasner in 2017, pouring more than five times as much money into the race as Krasner himself. Four years later, Krasner received a combined $1.259 million from Soros-funded groups for his reelection.
During his tenure, Krasner has cut the future years of incarceration by half and slashed the length of parole in probation supervision by nearly two-thirds compared to the previous DA. He has also made a priority of not prosecuting people who are illegally in possession of guns unless they hurt or kill people.
The top prosecutors in New Orleans, Milwaukee, Norfolk, and Chicago have also been backed by Soros-linked money. Many of the others are self-described progressive prosecutors.
According to some experts, progressive prosecutors pursuing soft-on-crime policies have contributed to the spike in homicides and other violent crime.
“Prosecutors in most major cities have failed the people they serve by refusing to prosecute criminals, including those charged with violent crimes,” Tristin Kilgallon, associate professor of pre-law and history at the University of Findlay, told WalletHub. “Countless violent crimes have been committed by those who have been released back into the streets due to recent ‘bail reform’ initiatives or by prosecutors who declined to pursue charges.”
“Texas Secretary of State Finds ‘Serious Breaches’ in Harris County 2020 Election Audit. Auditors found multiple chain of custody issues and violations of state and federal law requiring maintenance of records in the state’s largest county.”
Issues found by auditors relate primarily to the county’s extralegal “drive-thru” voting initiated by then-interim County Clerk Chris Hollins.
Auditors found that for at least 14 polling locations the county does not show chain of custody for the Mobile Ballot Boxes (MBB) and that there were multiple MBBs created for some voting locations. Auditors say the MBBs from the polling locations “were not the MBBs ultimately tabulated.” They also note that they have been able to locate some missing MBBs, but have not been given an explanation as to why the originals were not tabulated. Each MBB can hold 9,999 ballots.
Another issue found by auditors is that poll book and provisional voting data provided by the county do not match the number of cast vote records on some of the devices.
Ennis also noted that after upgrading voting systems the county does not appear to have retained “any equipment or computers that provide relevant reports or alternatively, can read the MBBs” from 2020 or recover the cast vote records stored in them as required by both state and federal election codes.
Why, it’s almost like the Democrats running Harris County wanted to commit election fraud…
Speaking of election fraud, Facebook has been fined $25 million for breaking Washington State election law.
According to court documents, King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North found Meta to be in violation of Washington’s political disclosure law 822 separate times between 2019 and 2021 and issued the maximum possible fine for each instance, which totaled up to $30,000 per violation.
Meta was also ordered to “come into full compliance” with the state’s election transparency laws within the next 30 days as well as pay the attorney’s fees for the case, which Ferguson has requested be tripled for a total of $10.5 million. The final total will be decided by North at a later date.
According to The Seattle Times, the state’s election transparency laws, which have been in place since 1972, require ad sellers to “disclose the names and addresses of political buys, the targets of such ads and, the total number of viewers of each ad.” The judge found that Meta had intentionally violated the standards.
Washington Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson said “that he had “one word for Facebook’s conduct in this case – arrogance.”
He told the Times, “It intentionally disregarded Washington’s election transparency laws,” Ferguson said. “But that wasn’t enough. Facebook argued in court that those laws should be declared unconstitutional. That’s breathtaking.”
When Pennsylvania Democrats insist that a candidate who suffered a life-threatening stroke in May is recovering well and “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office,” that candidate must look and sound fine to prove they’re telling the truth. Last night, in the lone debate in the Pennsylvania Senate race, John Fetterman looked and sounded very, very far from fine. But you can judge for yourself by watching the whole debate here.
I expected Fetterman’s debate performance to be a Rorschach test, with Democrats insisting that he was fine and hand-waving away any problems, and Republicans pointing to every verbal misstep, pause, or oddly worded answer. But by the end of the hour, there was little debate, no pun intended. John Fetterman’s ability to hear, understand, process information, and speak appears to still be severely impacted by his stroke. Perhaps the worst moment of the night came when one of the moderators asked him about a statement he made in 2018 opposing fracking, and how he could square that past stance with his current claim that he always supported fracking. After a long pause, presumably from reading the moderator’s question from the monitor, Fetterman said, “I, I, I do support fracking and . . .” and then for a moment, Fetterman’s head shook, and his mouth moved, but no words came out. Then he picked up again: “I don’t . . . I don’t. I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.” With everyone watching likely mortified and embarrassed to watch Fetterman struggle to finish the sentence, the moderator mercifully moved on to the next question.
Elon Musk took over Twitter late Thursday and fired company CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, senior legal representative Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett.
Musk, the world’s richest man, acquired the social media giant through a $44 billion purchase. He reportedly had until Friday to complete the deal.
In a video tweet that went viral, Musk appeared at Twitter’s corporate offices Wednesday carrying a sink, implying that employees would need to accept that he was now in charge.
This is a good start, but all the people on the Safety and Trust Council need to be fired, and all accounts suspended or banned need to be restored.
Rishi Sunak is the new UK Prime Minister, and Nigel Farage is not impressed:
A House Democratic staffer was fired after her outreach to other congressional aides allegedly on behalf of the Chinese embassy was revealed this week, National Review has learned. After an investigation found that the staffer had acted improperly, her boss, Representative Don Beyer, swiftly removed her.
“Congressman Beyer was totally unaware of these activities prior to being contacted by the House Sergeant At Arms,” Aaron Fritschner, his deputy chief of staff, told National Review in a statement this morning. “As soon as he learned of them, he followed every directive he was given by security officials. The staffer in question is no longer employed by the office of Congressman Beyer.”
Fritschner added that Beyer, who has a hawkish record on China, was “deeply upset” upon learning about the activities of the now-former staffer, Barbara Hamlett.
Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr, a Democrat, was found to exhibit such misconduct that comprise more than 100 incidents over a period of about two years.
The misconduct “encompassed repeated acts of dishonesty; the blatant and systematic disregard of due process, the law, court orders, and local rules; the disrespectful treatment of court staff and litigants; and the abuse of capias warrants and the court’s contempt power,” stated the court’s per curium opinion. “That misconduct warrants an indefinite suspension from the practice of law.”
According to auditor’s records, Harris County has not yet recovered more than $1 million paid for a since-canceled COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract tied to the felony indictments of County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s staff.
In addition, invoices indicate that the contractor paid more than half a million of the taxpayer funds to data firms assisting progressive candidates with campaigns and voter turnout.
In 2021, the county awarded an $11 million contract to Elevate Strategies, owned by highly-connected Democratic strategist Felicity Pereyra. Pereyra had previously worked for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and Commissioner Adrian Garcia’s (D- Pct. 2) campaign when he ran for mayor of Houston.
After revelations that Hidalgo’s staff had sought to alter experience requirements for potential vendors, and had instructed the purchasing department to disqualify the University of Texas Health Science Center, Hidalgo announced she would cancel the contract. But the public later learned that the county paid out $1.4 million to Pereyra’s firm after the date of cancellation.
During a March 2022 meeting of the Harris County commissioners court, First Assistant County Attorney Jay Aiyer told commissioners that Elevate Strategies had repaid about $200,000 and he expected another $1 million in repayment soon.
In response to queries from FOX26 political reporter Greg Groogan, the county attorney’s office responded that they had recovered $600,000, but refused to comply with an open records request and appealed to Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office in an effort to keep the repayment amounts out of the public eye.
Attorney and former Houston mayoral candidate Bill King sought records from the county auditor, which showed that while the county had paid $1.425 million, Elevate Strategies has only returned $208,000.
Among invoices Elevate Strategies submitted to the county are expenditures of $538,057 for software and canvassers from known Democratic voter turnout groups Civis Analytics and NGP VAN EveryAction.
Founded by Dan Wagner, former chief analytics officer of Obama for America, Civis Analytics has worked to increase voter turnout for a variety of progressive candidates and organizations including Battleground Texas. The group touts data collection that can be compiled into individual voter records for use in political campaigns.
Likewise, NGP VAN’s website advertises the company as “the leading technology provider to Democratic and progressive campaigns and organizations.”
Last year, Hidalgo defended the use of political campaigning groups, saying they had the tools to conduct the outreach. But Rice University professor and political analyst Mark Jones told The Texan there is not a great deal of overlap between the kinds of residents targeted.
“Those are companies focused exclusively on likely voters, which is not the same thing as a vulnerable population that would be the target of a COVID vaccine outreach campaign,” said Jones. “The Civis Analytics and NGP data sets are not designed to reach those targets. They are designed to reach people who are likely to turnout in the 2022 county judge election.”
Jones also noted that Elevate Strategies contract lists as a sub-contractor the Texas Organizing Project, which is another group that conducts canvassing and campaigning on behalf of Democratic candidates, including Hidalgo.
Go that? Lina Hidalgo approved over $1 million in funding for a company who’s primary job is getting Democrats (including herself) elected, paid them money after the contract was cancelled, and when told to give the money back, the Democrat company kept more than $1 million, and then Hidalgo’s office tried to cover it up.
Hidalgo doesn’t just need to be voted out of office, she and her cronies need to be sent to prison for abusing taxpayer money by spending it for partisan political advantage.
Higher inflation, widespread corruption in the federal government, the Bank of England makes Liz Truss blink, and Muslims take exception to Dearborn Public School’s gay agenda. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Journal reviewed more than 31,000 financial disclosure forms and analyzed more than 850,000 financial assets and 315,000 trades to shed light on any conflicts of interest among more than 12,000 senior career bureaucrats and political appointees. Its investigation found that “thousands of officials across the U.S. government’s executive branch disclosed owning or trading stocks that stood to rise or fall with decisions their agencies made.”
“Across 50 federal agencies ranging from the Commerce Department to the Treasury Department, more than 2,600 officials reported stock investments in companies while those companies were lobbying their agencies for favorable policies, during both Republican and Democratic administrations,” the Journal reports. “When the financial holdings caused a conflict, the agencies sometimes simply waived the rules.”
The federal employees weren’t even subtle about it. Per the Journal, “More than five dozen officials at five agencies reported trading stocks of companies shortly before their departments announced enforcement actions against those companies, such as charges or settlements.”
That’s sus.
To get an understanding of how shady this behavior is, consider examples from a few specific agencies. At the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, the Journal found that “more than 200 senior officials… or nearly one in three, reported that they or their family members held investments in companies that were lobbying the agency.”
Similar corruption plagues the Department of Defense, where, per the investigation, “officials in the office of the secretary or their family members collectively owned between $1.2 million and $3.4 million of stock in aerospace and defense companies, on average, during years the Journal examined. Some owned stock in Chinese companies while the U.S. considered blacklisting the companies.”
Sometimes there’s a major story out there you don’t have time to really pay attention to, and such is the case with the UK “mini-budget”/Bank of England story. Basically, new UK PM Liz Truss and her Chancellor of the Treasury Kwasi Kwarteng went “We’re going to cut taxes despite soaring inflation” and the Bank of England (which evidently said that UK pension funds were hours from collapse last week) went “No you’re not.” Well, Truss just blinked, Kwarteng is out, and now the UK government is going to raise taxes.
Here’s a video explainer of the complexities of the Bank of England intervention in the bond market.
I’ll still trying to wrap my mind around the phrases “pension fund margin call” and “unlimited quantity” of short term repo liquidity reserves.
The Biden administration’s new technology restrictions are already causing disruptions in China as US semiconductor equipment suppliers are telling staff based in the country’s top memory chip maker to leave, according to WSJ, citing sources familiar with the matter.
State-owned Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. has seen US chip semiconductor equipment companies, including KLA Corp. and Lam Research Corp., halt business activities at the facility. This includes installing new equipment to make advanced chips and overseeing highly technical chip production.
The US suppliers have paused support of already installed equipment at YMTC in recent days and temporarily halted installation of new tools, the people said. The suppliers are also temporarily pulling out their staff based at YMTC, the people said. –WSJ
It’s hard to overemphasize how badly screwed China’s chip industry is with this latest move. Semiconductor equipment not only needs regular maintenance, but extremely specialized expertise when something goes wrong and your yields crash, wizards who can look at a wafer defect chart and determine by experience what’s gone wrong with which tool. Without support and spare parts from the western semiconductor equipment giants, expect yields to start crashing in a matter of months, if not weeks, especially if Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron join the pullout.
The IRGC may be mobilizing retired servicemembers and other affiliated officers to suppress protests in Tehran on October 15.
Protesters have killed more Iranian security personnel in the current protest wave than in any previous wave in the regime’s history according to regime statistics.
Anti-regime protests occurred in at least 11 cities in seven provinces.
Social media accounts that are representing themselves as youth groups organizing and coordinating protests called for countrywide unrest on October 15.
Snip.
Social media accounts that are representing themselves as youth groups organizing and coordinating protests called for countrywide unrest on October 15. Dozens of social media accounts are presenting themselves as provincial components of a broader youth movement aimed at overthrowing the regime. The movement does not appear to have a central headquarters or hierarchy—at least on social media—and some of these groups’ rhetoric is notably disjointed from the others. These accounts claim to have a presence in multiple Iranian cities, including Tehran, Karaj, Neyshabour, Hamedan, Shiraz, and Ahvaz. Some of these accounts called for protests in Khuzestan on October 14, which did materialize in three different cities across the province on that date. Another account claimed that it had activated “sabotage groups” to destabilize the regime on October 14. The Tehran Neighborhood Youth group currently has the most followers and has posted for the longest period of time, possibly suggesting that it inspired copycat accounts based in other cities.
Some of these groups are presenting themselves as having moved from protest organization to coordinating phase one insurgency attacks.
In private, Democratic party officeholders are super racist.
But they’ll arrest parents and take their children if you fail to bow to their transexual madness. “Virginia Democrat Bill Would Criminally Prosecute Parents Who Don’t Affirm Their Kids As Transgender. Previous attempt at the bill was co-sponsored by a senator who served jail time for having sex with a teenager.”
A Virginia Democrat lawmaker says she will introduce legislation to have parents criminally prosecuted if they do not “affirm” their child as transgender. Teachers and social workers would report parents to Child Protective Services under the bill envisioned by state Delegate Elizabeth Guzman (D-Fauquier).
Guzman told WJLA that “It could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that CPS charge could harm your employment, could harm their education, because nowadays many people do a CPS database search before offering employment.”
Guzman, a social worker, went public with her plans to introduce the bill a week after The Daily Wire reported that a National Association Of School Psychologists official named Amy Cannava boasted that she was working with an unnamed state delegate matching Guzman’s description to craft such legislation. “I want to see a kid in a home with food and shelter and insurance and support, but I also don’t want to lose kids to death,” Cannava said, adding that “I will not deny the fact that I have put parents in their place in my office or at school.”
Cannava is also affiliated with a group called the Pride Liberation Project that said it would pick up trans and gay teens who didn’t like their parents, and “work with other supportive adult organizations in the region to find you someone who can provide you a kind and affirming home.”
A similar bill was quietly introduced in 2020 by Guzman and four other Democrats immediately after they took control of the legislature in the 2019 elections. It redefined the term “abused or neglected child” to include one whose parent “inflicts, threatens to create or inflict, or allows to be created or inflicted upon such child a physical or mental injury on the basis of the child’s gender identity or sexual orientation.”
The sole Senate sponsor of the 2020 bill was Joe Morrissey, who served prison time for contributing to the delinquency of a minor after sleeping with his teenage secretary. He accepted a plea deal after initially being indicted on possession of child pornography and other charges.
You know who else hates rolling out the gay agenda to public schools? Muslims.
The only religious people the left is truly scared to offend are Muslims. Criticizing Muslims is completely off the table according to the left’s rules of engagement, so if Muslims are upset about something, the amount of twisting, back-bending, and acrobatics the left will perform in order not to offend them will be something to see.
So when hundreds of Muslim parents, upset at gay porn in the school libraries, showed up to a school board meeting in Dearborn, Mich., and it devolved into shouting and chaos with board members running away and gay protesters being chased to their cars, the fallout was absolutely hilarious. The headline in the Detroit Free Press after the event went haywire was “LGBTQ and Faith Communities Struggle for Unity.” BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Can you imagine what the headline would have been if it were a Baptist church chasing gay protesters to their cars? “Fascist White Supremacist Book Burners Bash Gay Man in Parking Lot,” or “Rabid Religious Zealots Terrorize Gay Man Defending Right to Read,” or something equally terrible. I don’t know about you, but I’m enjoying this disaster.
Enjoy this thread and all the videos in it. I know I did.
Shouting between various factions as groups take over Dearborn public schools board meeting. Board members have left. Unclear if they are coming back or if meeting will restart. Heavy police presence. pic.twitter.com/XIMEqIRR1X
Problem: Too many Germans are voting for a rightwing party the left disapproves of. Solution: Ban it. Thank God banning other political parties in Germany has never had any negative consequences…
Speaking of things that could never possibly have any negative consequences, Balarus dictator and Putin toady Alexander Lukashenko decrees that all price increases are forbidden. Enjoys those coming goods shortages, Belarussians. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Florida Surgeon General releases study showing heightened cardiac death rates for men ages 18-39 after taking the Flu Manchu mRNA vaccine. So Twitter banned him. Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before The Narrative. (They later reinstated him.)
Ukrainian troops shoot down a cruise missile with a MANPADS.
Alex Jones ordered to pay $965 million to Sandy Hook families. As I noted last week, Alex Jones is an unreliable loon, but that judgment seems excessive and punitive merely for running his mouth.
