Another half year gone. In one way, it seems impossible that it’s flown by so quickly. In another, I certainly feel tired enough for that, and then some…
There’s a zillion Biden corruption links I could have added to this week’s LinkSwarm, so feel free to share your favorites in the comments.
U.S. Attorney David Weiss wanted to bring charges against President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden in Washington, D.C., IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley said on Friday — and when he was reportedly barred from doing so, he told six witnesses.
Shapley testified on the matter last month, telling the House Oversight Committee that Weiss revealed in an October 2022, meeting that he had actually wanted to charge Hunter Biden in two federal districts but that he had been denied — and when Attorney General Merrick Garland denied that had ever happened, Shapley publicly named the witnesses he said Weiss had told.
“He surprised us by telling us on the charges, ‘I’m not the deciding official on whether charges are filed,’” Shapley told the committee when he testified in late May. “He then shocked us with the earth-shattering news that the Biden-appointed D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves would not allow him to charge in his district.
Shapley explained that by not allowing Weiss to file charges in D.C., Graves had effectively barred Weiss from seeking charges on crimes allegedly committed during 2014 and 2015 — including “foreign income from Burisma [Holdings] and a scheme to evade his income taxes through a partnership with a convicted felon … The purposeful exclusion of the 2014 and 2015 years sanitized the most substantive criminal conduct and concealed material facts.”
It was at that same meeting in October 2022 that Weiss said his request for special counsel authority had been denied, Shapley said. He was instead told to go through the regular process — which would have once again pitted him against a Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the race-conscious admissions policies of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
“The Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the six-justice majority.
However, universities may still consider an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. Roberts clarified that this does not mean universities can simply establish through application essays or other means the regime declared unlawful by the Court. It means, explained Roberts, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.”
Of course our elite liberal institutions are furious, since they desperately want to discriminate the basis of race.
Paragraph 2: National Geographic magazine (now owned by Disney) laid off its last remaining staff writers. Paragraph 14: “Among those who lost their jobs in the latest layoff was Debra Adams Simmons, who only last September was promoted to vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion at National Geographic Media.” Usually it takes longer for DEI to destroy a company… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Speaking of Disney disasters, Indiana Jones and the Dial Up Internet of Depravity: “What a fucking incomprehensible calamity of a film this is. I mean, I’d be lying if I said I went into it expecting great things, but Jesus Fucking Mother of Christ, this was worse than anything I could have imagined.”
“7 Simple Ways To Get Away With A Massive Foreign Bribery Scheme.” “Get one of your immediate family members elected to a powerful office: Like your father, for one completely random example.”
Busy as hell and I have a cold, but I soldier on. LinkSwarm! Russian coup! Texas! Pedophiles! Portland! Braaaaiiiinnnnnns!
I cover the world!
“The owner of the Wagner private military contractor made his most direct challenge to the Kremlin yet on Friday, calling for an armed rebellion aimed at ousting Russia’s defense minister. The security services reacted immediately by calling for the arrest of Yevgeny Prigozhin…Prigozhin claimed early Saturday that his forces had crossed into Russia from Ukraine and had reached Rostov, saying they faced no resistance from young conscripts at checkpoints and that his forces ‘aren’t fighting against children.'” Unconfirmed reports of fighting elsewhere in Russia. Developing…
The City of Dallas is requiring employees to undergo taxpayer-funded transgender reeducation training any time one of their co-workers comes out as “transgender.”
According to internal documents obtained from the City of Dallas by The Dallas Express, “non-transitioning” employees are being forced to undergo reeducation training “to support an inclusive and productive workplace environment for all employees.”
The City of Dallas’ “gender transition toolkit” explains that a transitioning employee should find a “trusted” supervisor or manager as a “first point of contact” to help them through their workplace transition.
The document includes a list of gender terms and definitions. It then moves on to require employees to work with gender-confused co-workers, allowing the “transitioning” employee to use whichever bathroom or locker room at work they feel most comfortable with, ignoring the comfort of other employees.
Speaking of pedophiles: “A former CNN television producer who had pleaded guilty to luring a 9-year-old girl into illegal sexual acts was sentenced Tuesday to more than 19 years in prison and an additional 15 years of supervised release during a U.S. District Court hearing in Vermont. John Griffin of Stamford, Connecticut, pleaded guilty in federal court in December to using interstate commerce to entice and coerce the girl to engage in sexual activity at his Vermont ski house.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
In the summer of 2020, Portland, Oregon, became the poster child for American urban disaster zones. During the day, tens of thousands of citizens protested peacefully against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But everything changed after dark. Nonviolent demonstrators with jobs, school assignments, and kids to raise went home; hundreds of anarchists swarmed in to take their place and waged a low-grade insurgency against the city. They fought pitched battles with the cops—throwing rocks, frozen water bottles, fireworks, buckets of excrement, and even Molotov cocktails. They attacked coffeehouses, immigrant-owned restaurants, mom-and-pop retail stores, banks, museums, churches, bus stops, and the Multnomah County Democratic Party headquarters with baseball bats, crowbars, and hammers. Most were military-age white males wearing all-black clothing and hiding their faces. The violence kept up, night after night, week after week, and month after month, into the winter, long after the rest of America had calmed down. My city had become the most politically violent place in the country, and I got worried e-mails from people I knew around the world—even in the Middle East!—asking me if I was okay and why on earth this was happening.
A crime wave followed. Shootings and homicides exploded 300 percent between 2019 and 2022, robberies rose 50 percent in 2022 alone, vehicle thefts hit record highs, and work-order requests for graffiti removal shot up 500 percent between 2020 and 2022. The City of Roses suffered 413 shootings in 2019 but 1,306 in 2022 and nearly twice as many homicides as San Francisco, though Portland is only three-fourths its size. Meantime, statewide crime actually declined from 2019 to 2021.
The homelessness crisis also intensified. The slow-motion collapse of Oregon’s mental-health infrastructure, a dramatic surge of cheap and deadly fentanyl and a far more potent and addictive form of psychosis-inducing meth, and a crippling housing shortage led to the formation of more than 700 tent cities in residential neighborhoods and business districts across the city.
But while it’s too soon to declare that Portland’s troubles have passed, the worst may now be over. Despite ongoing woes, Portland looks and feels much better than it did in dystopian 2020. The riots stopped, and the crime wave seems to have peaked, with shootings down by nearly 40 percent and homicides down more than 50 percent in the early months of 2023. A sober mood shift has taken over the city. Voters passed a ballot measure to restructure city government, while the three newest elected officials on the city council are steering Portland in a different direction. The city, county, and state are taking steps to reverse the decline.
Portland is suffering a serious livability crisis. Eighty-eight percent of respondents in early 2022 told the Portland Business Alliance that the quality of life is worsening. Portland is hardly the most dangerous city in America: the homicide rate in St. Louis is more than four times higher, with 65 murders per 100,000 people, compared with Portland’s 15 in 2022. Portland’s rate peaked at more than double the national average, but of all the cities with higher crime rates than Portland, only Chicago gets as many national headlines. That’s probably because Portland’s increase in crime was the worst in the country. No other city’s homicide rate rose so spectacularly. And unlike St. Louis, Baltimore, and other notorious hot spots, Portland was recently a destination city that touted its high quality of life as a reason to move there.
Of late, though, rather than attracting new residents, Portland has actually lost population, either to the suburbs or out of state. “I’ve never seen money move out of here,” commercial real-estate salesman Stu Peterson told Willamette Week. “Nobody ever wanted to leave Oregon. It’s a beautiful place. Most evacuees are high-wage earners who are fed up with the crime, taxes, and homelessness, in that order. There’s an ugly spiral.” Real-estate agent Justin Harnish described a client who left downtown Portland for the suburb of Lake Oswego after she saw a woman stab another woman in the face with scissors.
Accompanying the crime wave is a drastic staff shortage at the Portland Police Bureau. Portland now has fewer than 800 sworn officers, a smaller number than it had decades ago, when the city was barely half the size it is now. And with the surge in violent crime, the police have little time to deal with anything that isn’t life-threatening. Prioritizing shootings and other emergencies, they’re forced to neglect break-ins, stolen cars, vandalism, and just about everything else. The traffic police unit has been defunded, reduced to a single full-time traffic cop—not for ideological reasons but because the city has no one to staff that division.
Part of the blame rests with the months of demoralizing anti-cop violence in 2020, but Portland would probably be short of police officers anyway. Every city agency, from fire and rescue to the transportation bureau and the public defender’s office, faces staff shortages now. And while a shrunken police force didn’t cause Portland’s crime wave on its own, a police department that can barely react to anything but emergency calls aggravates the problem. Criminals behave as though they can get away with essentially anything and commit far more crimes than they would if they were investigated, arrested, and prosecuted swiftly. The Woodstock neighborhood, where Joe Biden won 88 percent of the vote, is considering hiring its own private security force.
Snip.
I spent more time talking to my neighbors that year than I ever had before or have since. A lot of us suddenly became friendlier outside our houses, and we weren’t talking about sports and the weather. Residents and business owners alike worried about where things were headed and expressed dismay at the city’s inability to defend itself. I didn’t talk with a single person who thought that everything was okay, that city hall was on top of it, or that the anarchists were not a menace. And nobody could understand why the homeless camps at the elementary school down the street or at the park hadn’t been cleared. No, I didn’t conduct my own scientific public opinion survey, but it was obvious that regular people were nearing the end of their rope and that the status quo was bound to be upended.
In 2021, that’s exactly what happened. A tsunami of outrage inundated the mayor, the city council, and the police bureau. Phones rang nonstop. Furious citizens shouted at meetings. Newspaper editors published scathing letters, and journalists at mainstream outlets covered distressed neighborhoods and interviewed disgruntled citizens while largely ignoring the activist set that booed every conceivable solution and told civilians that the problems were in their heads. Lawsuits against the city proliferated. Polls showed city council members languishing on political death row, with approval ratings in the teens.
Though most residents still wanted accountability for bad cops and citizen oversight of the police bureau, the complaints were primarily about crime, about how the police hardly ever show up anymore, and about disorder dragging neighborhoods down. Even some of the fashionable middle-class neighborhoods endearingly satirized in the Portlandia comedy series were enduring weekly gunfire.
In the fall of 2022, 82 percent of Portland respondents in an Oregonian poll said that they wanted more cops. If some Portlanders felt overpoliced a few years ago, hardly anyone felt that way after the chaos, with a mere 15 percent saying that they wanted fewer officers in 2021.
Before the city council elections got going in 2022, voters fired repeated warning shots in public opinion surveys. An overwhelming 85 percent of respondents said that they found the city council ineffective, with a clear majority describing it as “very ineffective.” For a while, it looked as though Portland was gearing up to fire every single official in a landslide election.
Two city council members, Dan Ryan and Jo Ann Hardesty, ran for reelection last year. Ryan managed to defy expectations and win despite the temper in the city, though it’s easy to understand why: he set aside his ideological views and changed with the times. Though he first ran during a special election in early 2020 on a campaign promising to cut police funding, he soon reversed himself. Anarchists vandalized his home seven times because he refused to cut the police budget.
Hardesty didn’t fare as well. Pushing bills to defund the police and opposing the cleanup of homeless camps, she put herself wildly out of step with her constituents. Mingus Mapps, a moderate on the council who had easily dispatched the left-wing populist Chloe Eudaly two years earlier, endorsed Hardesty’s challenger, Rene Gonzales, and bluntly said: “It is time to put ideology aside and elect people who will fight for Portland. I need colleagues who use debate, reason, and logic to solve our many crises.” Gonzales said, “Our once beautiful city is struggling in ways that were unfathomable a short time ago. . . . City hall’s ineffective, ideologically driven policies are ruining the city we used to proudly call home.” Gonzales won, and Portland replaced the city council’s last progressive firebrand with a centrist. It was the kind of event that marks the end of an era.
Sounds a lot like Austin, except for the sobering-up part. (Also, it’s good to read Michael Totten again. He seemed to disappear from view for several years. Probably because he was writing for The Bulwark…)
Speaking of Portland, the homeless drug addict who said that living on the streets of Portland was “too easy” is now back with her family and getting treatment. They thought she was dead…
As you may recall, Biden owed a whopping $1.2 million tax liability for 2017 and 2018, but despite multiple warnings he was flouting the law, Biden didn’t pay back the tax bill until 2021, well after the Justice Department and IRS opened investigations into President Joe Biden’s son. Prosecutors are reportedly set to recommend probation as punishment, not jail time.
Of course, this blatant display of a two-tired justice system (one for Democratic Party Royalty and their rich backers, another for everyone else) is the point.
Under Justice Department policy, even with a plea agreement, the government is supposed to seek a plea to the “most serious,” readily provable “offense that is consistent with the nature and full extent of the defendant’s conduct.” Hunter Biden committed tax offenses that could have been charged as evasion, which is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment for each count. Furthermore, he made a false statement that enabled him to obtain a firearm; that’s a ten-year felony under legislation pushed through by then-senator Joe Biden to show how very serious Democrats are about gun crime.
Biden apologists have tried to minimize that transaction as a “lie and try” case, which they say is often not prosecuted. But such non-prosecution (though it shouldn’t happen) occurs because of what you’d infer from the “try” part — i.e., the liar got caught and failed to obtain the gun. Hunter’s case, to the contrary, is a lie and succeed case. He got the gun. What’s more, he was then seen playing with it while cavorting with an “escort” (see the New York Post’s pictorial, if you’ve got the stomach for it). Shortly afterwards, he and his then-paramour — Hallie Biden, the widow of his older brother — managed to lose the gun near a school (it was later found by someone else).
Those are the kinds of gun cases that get charged by the Justice Department even if the suspect hasn’t, in addition, committed tax felonies by dodging taxes on the millions of dollars he was paid, apparently for being named Biden. Yet after refusing for years to appoint a special counsel despite the five-alarm conflict of interest attendant to investigating the president’s son ( . . . and family . . . and the president himself), the Biden Justice Department is permitting Hunter Biden to dispose of the case with misdemeanor tax charges that will allow for a probation sentence, and diversion — essentially, no prosecution — on the gun felony that would result in imprisonment for most Americans who engaged in similar conduct.
Here’s Tucker Carlson, contrasting how different Biden’s treatment was from Biden’s political enemies.
Ep. 5 As in most of the developing world, it's safer to be the president's son than his opponent. pic.twitter.com/AtRRaxYSjs
More Biden corruption comes to light, California gets even more crazy, and two former European Prime Ministers step out of the spotlight in different ways.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer revealed Thursday that he expects there is evidence of at least $20-$30 million being made in illegal payments by foreign nationals to the Biden family.
Appearing on Fox Business, Comer stated “We have more bank records coming in but we’re gonna exceed $10 million this week but I think we’ll get up to $20-$30 million.”
He further noted that it is becoming clear that the Bidens potentially engaged in bribery, influence peddling, and money laundering.
“This is going to be hard for Biden to explain, this is not going to go away, and I think eventually the mainstream media is going to start asking the real questions,” Comer added.
“They know there’s something wrong here. They know all the allegations have merit, because of where Joe Biden was, because of what we’ve seen on tape before, where Joe Biden bragged about firing that prosecutor,” he added,
“They know that this family created these shell companies. They know this family was money-laundering, they were profiting off Joe Biden’s influence,” Comer asserted, adding “The media knows that – they’re just not covering it.”
“I can assure you: there is more money that we’re going to be able to identify, that was transferred between foreign nationals in other countries and the Biden family,” Comer further emphasized, adding “I think, eventually, the mainstream media will turn on Joe Biden and start asking the real questions: ‘What did your family do to receive all this money?’”
Speaking of Biden family corruption: “House Oversight Panel Subpoenas Former Hunter Biden Associate Devon Archer…[The committee] is particularly interested in Archer’s involvement in the family’s international business deals, which included countries like China, Russia, and Ukraine.” Archer was in Global Seneca Partners with Hunter Biden and John Kerry’s stepson.
“Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison stepped down this week as the progressive-run city struggles with homicides, a drug crisis, and a troubling rise in violence involving teenagers.” Time to pull this out again:
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s longest-serving prime minister, dead at 86. Berlusconi revived Italy’s economy, but then couldn’t keep it out of the PIIGS. But for a whilehe kept the wolves at bay.
Also stepping out of the spotlight this week: Former UK Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned from Parliment. Other than getting Brexit accomplished, Johnson’s tenure seemed all sizzle and no steak.
In April 2023, an unelected Board in California voted to force trucking companies to buy zero-emission trucks. This technology is at early-stage adoption in limited segments, and infrastructure buildout is lagging behind what is required to support electrification in our industry. The Board unanimously advanced the Advanced Clean Fleet rule to accompany California’s equally tough electric vehicle sales mandate regulation, the Advanced Clean Truck rule, that would require truck manufacturers to sell zero-emission vehicles. These two regulations together are designed to create an artificial electric vehicle market sooner rather than later.
This new rule was made at the behest of the environmental lobby, which pushed for unrealistic targets and unachievable timelines that will undoubtedly lead to higher prices for goods delivered to the state and fewer options for consumers. ATA has strongly opposed this rule from the outset and testified at a hearing in Sacramento to express the trucking industry’s concerns directly to the Board.
Snip.
Today’s clean diesel trucks can spend 15 minutes fueling anywhere in the country and then travel about 1,200 miles before fueling again. In contrast, today’s zero-emission trucks:
Have significantly less range of about 150-330 miles between charging or refueling;
Need to be charged or refueled more often and for longer periods of time leading to unproductive downtime;
Cost two to three times more than a comparable clean-diesel truck; and
Weigh thousands of pounds more, reducing payload capacity and requiring more trucks and drivers to move the same amount of freight.
Also: “The California Energy Commission estimates that 157,000 chargers will need to be installed by 2030 to support California’s heavy-duty vehicle electrification goals.” Assuming there’s enough Lithium in the world for the batteries… (Hat tip: TPPF.)
Hope for San Francisco? Residents replace drug-addicted transients on their local sidewalks with large planters.
If you want to look at a big story the mainstream media continues to suppress, the entire contents of Hunter Biden’s infamous “Laptop from Hell” are now online.
And not only his laptop, but stuff from his iPhone as well.
There are the salacious photos you would expect (pics of his dick and what appear to be naked, under-aged girls, pics of a woman giving him a blowjob in-between puffs on her cigarette, etc., all censored).
Some of it is suggestive of Biden Family corruption, like the famous “Big Guy” memo.
Some of it is innocuous: Map snaps, pics of food, pics of sunsets, vacation photos, pictures of kids (presumably some his own, and presumably ones he’s not having sex with), etc.
Some of it is just weird. There seem to be dozens of pictures of a flashlight beam shining through what I assume are crack pipe fumes in a darkened room.
Arty
There’s no doubt this is a rich treasure trove for bloggers and investigative reporters with some free time to dig through. (Alas, that’s not me right now, because books.)
The Biden family and its business associates created a complicated web of more than 20 companies, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee — a system, GOP lawmakers say, that was meant to conceal money received from foreign nationals.
Sixteen of the companies were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, the committee said in a press conference on Wednesday. The Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received more than $10 million from foreign nationals’ and their related companies, the records show. These payments occurred both while Biden was in office as vice president and after his time in office ended.
In what Representative Nancy Mace called an act of “financial gymnastics,” many payments were routed from foreign companies to the Biden family’s business associates’ companies which then doled out payments to the Bidens in incremental payments to different bank accounts in an alleged attempt to hide the source of the funds.
At least nine Biden family members received payments, according to committee chairman James Comer. That includes Hunter Biden; James Biden; James Biden’s wife, Sara Jones Biden; the late Beau Biden’s wife, Hallie Biden; Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle; Hunter Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen; and “three children of the president’s son and the president’s brother.”
Much of the money came from Chinese nationals and companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Multiple Biden family members received money after it passed through an associate’s account. Comer said of the countries the Biden family was influence peddling in, China is “the most reputable.”
The committee revealed Wednesday that records suggest the Biden family and its associates’ business dealings in Romania “bear clear indication of a scheme to peddle influence” from 2015 to 2017.
At the time, then-Vice President Biden spoke out against Romanian corruption while the Biden family received more than a million dollars from a company controlled by a Romanian national, Gabriel Popoviciu. Popoviciu, who has been accused of corruption, sent the money through a Biden family associate, according to the committee. Sixteen of the seventeen payments involved in the deal occurred while Biden was still in office. The money “stops flowing from the Romanian national soon after Joe Biden leaves the vice presidency,” Comer said.
The Bidens also received “millions of dollars from China,” with Comer saying it is “inconceivable that the president did not know” about the payments.
Comer said the information revealed Wednesday is the result of subpoenas to four different banks and stressed that the committee is still early in its investigation and believes there are as many as 12 banks with records relevant to its investigation.
Naturally, the mainstream media are doing their very best to ignore these revelations…
You might have noticed a meme floating around the media about how Britons could become “no better off than people living in Poland”. “If the UK continues with the same level of growth it has seen for the last decade,” writes Sam Ashworth-Hayes, “Poland will be richer than Britain in about 12 years’ time”:
It sounds like an absurd idea that in 2040 we might see complaints in the Polish press about a flood of British plumbers undercutting wages, or Brytyjski Skleps lining the rougher areas of Warsaw, but it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.
This talking point has also appeared in the Telegraph, the Express and the Financial Times. It often comes with a sense of vague alarm and bewilderment. Poland? The post-communist place? Don’t they live entirely off vodka and potatoes? Don’t they have horses clippety-cloppeting down the streets selling women’s underwear pinched off a truck in Germany? Poland?
Having lived in Poland for nine years, I can say that I am not at all surprised by these projections. To be clear, that is all they are — projections. A lot can change in nine years, in Britain and in Poland.
Still, I think a lot of British people would be surprised by how much better things can be in the land of Lech Wałęsa and John Paul II. Equally, a lot of Polish people would be surprised by how much worse things can be in Britain — given that a lot of Poles of my acquaintance appear to think that getting rich in the U.K. is as easy as walking outside with a wheelbarrow and catching the banknotes that rain down from the sky.
Britain has had minimal economic growth for years. Poland has long been enjoying some of the highest economic growth in Europe. It even emerged from the pandemic better off than other European nations with, as Paweł Bukowski and Wojtek Paczos wrote for the LSE, “a relatively lax approach to economic lockdown and a bit of sheer luck”.
Institutions often seem to work better as well. I can generally visit a GP on the day I call. Britons often have to wait for more than a week. Maternal mortality is higher in the UK — and infant mortality is about the same, despite Britain being much richer overall. Actually, Polish life expectancy as whole is just a touch shorter than British life expectancy, despite the nation having a lot more smokers.
Polish kids have ranked higher on the PISA education rankings than British kids — ranking, indeed, the third highest in Europe in science and maths, and the fourth in reading comprehension. Poland is a more peaceful place than Britain, with murder and rape generally being rarer (granted, statistics in the latter case are famously difficult to trust). Terrorism, for reasons I leave to the reader, has been almost non-existent in Polish society.
Some Polish achievements are more difficult to quantify. In Britain, the 20th century was marked by a curious habit of ripping down beautiful buildings and constructing ugly ones. Poland, meanwhile, has been beautifully renovating and reconstructing many of its urban spaces, pursuing a philosophy of “preservation meets modernisation”. Warsaw and Kraków are famous enough, but travellers could also visit lovely towns and cities like Wrocław, Toruń and Gdańsk — or my own, Tarnowskie Góry.
Also, Poland seems to have actual conservatives who aren’t afraid to push for the right policies, instead of timid functionaries scared of their own shadow.
Last quarter, Disney+ lost 2.4 million subscribers. But this quarter is different! This quarter, Disney+ lost 4 million subscribers.
Related. “They got these ulterior motives, and you know, it’s about this this sort of political shit. And, yeah, I guess that’s part of it. But a lot of it is just these guys are just fucking stupid.”
One quarter of the year gone! Career criminals coddled by Soros Stooges, crazy woman who thinks she’s a man murders children, lots of Flu Manchu fraud, and Botox makes you crazy(er). It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Everyone and their dog is covering the ham sandwich Trump indictment, so I’ll leave that to others. I will note that Alan Dershowitz is not impressed. “Based on what we know about this case, it may be one of the weakest cases in my six years of experience.”
On the morning of Election Day last November, William French went to his local polling place in Freeland, Pennsylvania, to cast his vote. But the qualified and registered voter wasn’t allowed to. The disabled U.S. Army veteran was told that the precinct had run out of paper for ballots and he had to come back later in the afternoon.
So that’s what he did, returning at 3:30 p.m. But the precinct still didn’t have ballots. Election workers told him to return yet again. But by nightfall, it was too difficult. French has endured 17 surgeries on his destroyed leg and uses a cane to walk. But the sidewalks are a mess, and he was worried about the risk of falling and further injury.
That same morning, Melynda Reese and her husband went to their polling location in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania. But only Reese’s husband was allowed to vote, and for the same reason: The precinct had run out of paper. They came back at 4:00 p.m. and were told there would be a lengthy wait.
Reese is a corrections officer and her husband’s primary caregiver. He had recently suffered two cardiac arrests and a stroke. He required regular medication and attention and couldn’t be left alone. Long waits were also too much to bear. The couple returned at 6:30 p.m., and saw a line that stretched so long that they knew they couldn’t wait. Around 9:15 p.m., an election official called Reese and told her that ballots were finally available and she could vote. But her husband had just taken his sleeping pills and she couldn’t leave him unattended.
French and Reese are just two of the thousands of voters affected by poor election administration in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. The two just sued Luzerne County, its Board of Elections and Registration, and its Bureau of Elections in federal court for violations of their constitutional right to vote.
“Voters in Luzerne County through no fault of their own, were disenfranchised and denied the fundamental right to vote. William French and Melynda Reese are two of those voters. They bring suit to vindicate the denial of their sacred right to vote, to make sure voters are not disenfranchised in the future, and to bring integrity back to elections in Luzerne County,” said Wally Zimolong, lawyer for French and Reese.
The House Oversight Committee is investigating the explosive claims by Dr. Gal Luft, a former Israel Defense Forces lieutenant colonel with deep intelligence ties in Washington and Beijing, who says he was arrested to stop him from revealing what he knows about the Biden family and FBI corruption — details he told the Department of Justice in 2019, which he says it ignored.
Luft, 56, first made the claims on Feb. 18 on Twitter, after being detained at a Cyprus airport as he prepared to board a plane to Israel.
“I’ve been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the U.S. The U.S., claiming I’m an arms dealer. It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. I’ve never been an arms dealer.
“DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim, and Hunter Biden.
“Shall I name names?”
Luft remains in jail awaiting extradition to the US over what he says are trumped-up charges of arms trafficking to China and Libya, and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Luft claimed that he tried to reach out to the DOJ about the Chinese energy company CEFC paying Hunter $100,000 and James Biden, Joe’s brother, $65,000 “in exchange for their FBI connections and use of the Biden name to promote China’s Belt and Road Initiative around the world.”
James O’Keefe has not allowed his forced exit from Project Veritas to stop him. His new journalism outfit, O’Keefe Media Group (OMG), just released a video uncovering evidence of what O’Keefe calls a possible “money-laundering scheme” for the Democrats. Some individuals reportedly appear to have donated thousands of times over a relatively short period to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to ActBlue and Biden for President, based on Federal Election Commission records.
“FEC data shows that some senior citizens across the U.S. have been donating thousands of times per year,” O’Keefe began. “Some of these individuals’ names and addresses are attached to over $200,000 in contributions. We went and knocked on a few of their doors to corroborate the data that we received from a group of citizen journalists called Election Watch in Maryland.” The video then showed O’Keefe visiting someone who is listed as donating over $217,000, through 12,000 separate contributions. This money was earmarked for various entities through leftist platform ActBlue over three years’ time. Some of the donations were made with variations of the person’s name and address, O’Keefe stated.
The data he obtained was state and FEC data, O’Keefe said. “We’re wondering if these donors are victims of what appears to be a money-laundering scheme, or [if] these residents actually participated in the scheme. We’re making phone calls, we’re knocking on doors, these are things that you can do, we hope you do that.” There are “bizarre amounts of data” on homes and individuals making many thousands of dollars of donations, O’Keefe said, urging others to help him investigate.
The first person shown opening the door to O’Keefe, a Marylander listed as donating $32,000 in 3,000 different contributions, said he was unaware of the donations but advised O’Keefe as a solution to hit Donald Trump “with a bat.” The man added, “I want to see a scar on his f**king head. Now stop f**king with me,” and slammed the door.
Another donor, Cindy, according to O’Keefe, supposedly donated over $18,000 in 1,000+ donations to ActBlue in 2022, which would necessitate donating “three times a day, every day, for the whole year.” When asked if she’d donated over $18,000, Cindy responded with a quick laugh, “I doubt that. No, I don’t think so… I wish I could have donated $18,000 to Biden’s presidency.”
Meanwhile Carolyn Lenz, in Tucson, Ariz., told OMG that she “absolutely [did] not” donate over 18,000 times for $170,000+ to ActBlue. She looked at the data showing “she” donated multiple times a day, often in $5 to $15 increments, and insisted that the donations were not hers. “They must be” fraudulent, Lenz said.
After rejecting her in 2018, the voters of Alameda County, California selected Pamela Price as their new District Attorney last year. Price had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from George Soros for her two campaigns. That probably tells you most of what you need to know, since Soros only funds candidates who are soft on crime and willing to empty the jails as much as possible. Price quickly proved herself no exception, seeking to cut a plea deal with a killer who had been arrested for one triple murder for hire, was accused in the murder of a court witness, and several other violent crimes. Rather than the 75 years to life sentence that Delonzo Logwood was eligible for, Price wanted to cut him loose after fifteen years. Thankfully, a County District Judge stepped in and rejected the deal out of hand. (Free Beacon)
A California judge this week blocked a newly-elected progressive prosecutor’s effort to slash a triple murderer’s sentence.
Alameda County district judge Mark McCannon rejected District Attorney Pamela Price’s plea deal for a 31-year-old man jailed for a 2008 triple murder-for-hire, among other crimes. Price, who took office in November and has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the progressive billionaire George Soros, attempted to sentence Delonzo Logwood to just 15 years in prison, though he was eligible for a sentence of 75 years to life.
You can’t keep a bad man down. Keith Chastain, 38, is a one-thug crime spree.
Chastain racked up an impressive array of arrests in Fresno County, California, (of course). Between Feb. 19 and March 21, he was arrested 10 times for a menagerie of crimes encompassing 15 misdemeanors and 18 felonies, including:
six stolen cars
fraud
DUI (duh)
drugs (duh)
vandalism
Chastain was hit with three additional charges — DUI, trespassing, and auto theft — but those were dropped when cops failed to file the charges in time.
Snip.
“Unfortunately, this is not as unique of a situation as it seems,” Tony Botti, spokesman for the Fresno County Sherriff’s office, stated. “California has watered down the laws so much over the years for property criminals and repeat offenders that they are not held accountable like they should be. Sadly, it is our community members who suffer due to these soft-on-crime policies.”
According to court documents, Edwin Maldonado spent many months thumbing his nose at what he was ordered by the court to do.
His punishment for that is more like a prize.
“You’ve got someone who was rewarded for being a failure, and this guy was a failure over 1,000 and some odd times,” said Andy Kahan with Crime Stoppers.
First, Maldonado gets a felony charge for drug possession. A few weeks later, he’s charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. He makes his $30,000 bond and walks out of jail.
“I’ve certainly had clients hauled back into court on violations, maybe two or three times that have been alleged,” said criminal defense attorney Emily Detoto.
Associate Judge Tiffany Hill presided over a bond revocation hearing for Maldonado.
“For obvious reasons, you are not abiding by your rules and conditions period, and God knows what he was doing when he wasn’t where he was supposed to be,” Kahan said.
According to court documents, Maldonado failed to comply with any of his bond conditions for eight months.
According to his GPS monitor, he left his curfew zone 847 times, was called 453 times about his whereabouts, and had more than 1,000 GPS monitor violations.
A suspect arrested and charged in a recent brutal “jugging” robbery in Houston that left a woman paralyzed was out on a $100 bond for a weapons-related charge.
On the morning of February 13, Nung Truong, 44, withdrew money from a bank ATM but was followed for approximately 24 miles by two suspects. Surveillance video released by the Houston Police Department shows a black male bumping into Truong and causing her to drop her belongings. The suspect initially fled with an envelope but returned seconds later to body-slam Truong to the ground before taking $4,300 in cash.
A mother to three children aged 13, 15, and 20, Truong is now paralyzed and unable to walk or care for herself.
Last Friday, Houston Police arrested Joseph Harrell, 17, and Zy’Nika Ayesha Woods, 19, for the attack and charged both suspects with Aggravated Robbery with Serious Bodily Injury.
According to court records, on January 26, 2023, Harrell had been granted a General Order bond of $100 for Unlawful Possession of a Weapon. He also faces charges of Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon related to an incident in February in which he threatened another victim with a gun. Harrell is currently being held in the Harris County jail on bonds totaling $240,000.
Snip.
Although Harrell’s Unlawful Possession of a Weapon charge was assigned to Harris County Court 2 under Judge Paula Goodhart, his bond was signed by Judge David Singer.
Elected to Harris County Criminal Court 14 in 2018, Singer lost in the March 2022 Democratic primary election and his term ended December 31, 2022. As a one-term judge, Singer is not eligible under state code to serve as a visiting judge.
The 11th Administrative Judicial Region confirmed to The Texan that Singer is not listed as a visiting judge.
The Harris County Office of Court Management emailed the following statements to The Texan:
“David Singer was appointed as associate judge pursuant to Section 54A.002 of the Texas Government Code and the Local Rules for Harris County Criminal Courts at Law. His start date was Jan. 1, 2023.”
Finland gets the green light to join NATO, with Turkey and Hungary approving their membership. Sweden’s application is still under negotiation. As I noted previously, tangling with the Finns has not been a source of happiness for Russia.
Poor priorities. “European Ammo Maker’s Growth Stymied By TikTok Data Center Sucking Up Electricity.”
LA City Council member Mark Ridley-Thomas convicted of taking bribes. “He was convicted of one count of bribery, one of conspiracy, one count of honest services mail fraud, and four counts of honest services wire fraud. The jury acquitted him on 12 other counts.”
Veterans Affairs assistant secretary Kurt DelBene is married to Rep. Suzan DelBene (Wash.), chairwoman of the DCCC. It’s a big club, and you’re not in it. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Federal prosecutors announced a 58-year-old Plainview man is facing 102 years in prison after pleading guilty to stealing $4 million in federal relief funds passed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Friday, Andrew Johnson pleaded guilty in the Northern District of Texas to three counts of bank fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, and one count of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from unlawful activity, according to a news release published by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
Johnson swindled millions from the Paycheck Protection Program passed in the early weeks of the pandemic to help stave off the economic effects of business closures, government restrictions, and shelter-in-place mandates. As part of the fraud, Johnson applied for and received forgiveness for 27 bogus loans.
He spent more than $3.5 million of the stolen funds on “home renovations, vacations, clothing, cosmetic surgery, college tuition, cars, wedding expenses, and equipment for an unrelated business venture,” according to the DOJ.
After an investigation that took longer than a year, the Office of the City Auditor in Austin said it found Central Texas Allied Health Institute (CTAHI), a nonprofit City of Austin contractor, committed fraud against Austin Public Health and falsified health records.
According to the investigative report, CTAHI misrepresented over $1.1 million in financial transactions across three contracts with Austin Public Health and was incorrectly paid roughly $417,000 between December 2020 and September 2021 because of fraudulent contract claims. The report also claimed CTAHI falsified its COVID-19 vaccine contract performance by overstating vaccination totals and fabricating patient data.
“This is up there with some of the biggest cases we’ve investigated on my team,” said Brian Molloy, chief of investigations at the Chief of the City Auditor.
CTAHI, President Todd Hamilton, and Dr. Jereka Thomas-Hockaday — both of whom were named in the report — denied the claims made in the report in a statement Thursday.
Snip.
CTAHI’s three contracts with Austin Public Health were for COVID-19 testing, workforce development, and COVID-19 vaccines, according to the city. Between December 2020 and September 2021, the city said CTAHI submitted 23 claims for reimbursement to APH under the workforce development and COVID-19 vaccine contracts.
Flu Manchu is the fraud fount that just keeps giving… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
NHL might stop pushing gay pride after backlash from players and fans. “Philadelphia Flyer’s player Ivan Provorov didn’t want to participate in a ‘Pride’ event during warmups…Soon, other players also refused to participate after Povorov showed it could be done, and some entire team organizations dropped their planned LGBT pride events. And thanks to this one man’s stand, the NHL is considering dropping the whole ‘Pride’ push.”
Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel and coiner of Moore’s Law, is dead at age 94. Semiconductors have radically changed just about every facet of the world.
A Chinese company based out of Hong Kong which paid at least $3 million to several members of the Biden family has since been revealed to have ties with the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
According to the Daily Caller, State Energy HK Limited sent $3 million via wire transfer to Robinson Walker LLC, a company run by an associate of the Biden family named John Robinson Walker. The wire transfer took place in March of 2017, shortly after Joe Biden’s term as Vice President came to an end, according to a report released on Thursday by the House Oversight Committee.
One of the direct subsidiaries of State Energy HK is State Energy Group International Assets Holdings Limited (SEIAH). At the time of the wire transfer, SEIAH’s chairman was Ren Qingxin, who previously worked for the CCP as a representative at a business organization.
Shortly after the $3 million transfer, Ren was succeeded in his leadership position by Lei Donghui, who had been a member of the CCP since 2002, where he served as Secretary General of the International Engineering Business Bureau of China State Construction (CSC). CSC has since been designated by the Department of Defense as a “Communist China military company.”
Subsequently, the $3 million sent to Robinson Walker was then transferred to four different members of the Biden family: Joe Biden’s son Hunter, brother James, daughter-in-law Hallie, and a fourth unidentified family member, the Oversight Committee reports. The transfers were sent in several transactions, both to the family members directly and to several of their companies, including Owasco PC, JBBSR Inc, and RSTP II, LLC.
The previously-unknown involvement of Hallie – the widow of Biden’s elder son Beau, who later became Hunter’s girlfriend after Beau’s death – has proven to be one of the biggest bombshells yet in the GOP’s investigations into Biden family corruption.
Dutch Farmer’s Party poised to win 16 or 17 seats in parliament thanks to opposing that country’s mad global warming anti-meat mandates. “The Boer-Burger Beweging (BBB), or Farmer-Citizen Movement, is set to become the largest party in the country’s senate, winning more seats than Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s ruling conservative VVD party.”
Red Guards come to Maine. “Kristen Day said students affiliated with one of RSU 14’s Civil Rights Teams harassed her daughter. When her daughter refused to speak about her sexuality, two students affiliated with the club began to bully her and call her homophobic.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Eric Weinstein on Joe Rogan about what really happened with Kayne West. He suggests that West’s Hitler comments were simply him trying to channel Thomas à Kempis.
Mutiny! Bank runs! Twitter files! It’s a ginormous LinkSwarm full of interesting (and alarming) links!
And I finally get a chance to talk more about the FTX scandal.
The Twitter files revelations continue to roll out. And Democrats aren’t happy that the workings of their thought police apparatus are being unmasked.
As one might expect, the Judiciary hearing on the “weaponization” of federal agencies, featuring Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger as witnesses was full of fireworks, facts, and ad hominem friction.
Out of the gate, Ranking Member Democratic Del. Stacey E. Plaskett labeled the two “so-called journalists” as dangerous and a “threat” to former Twitter employees.
She claimed that Republicans brought “two of Elon Musk’s ‘public scribes'” in “to release cherry-picked out-of-context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative – Elon Musk’s chosen narrative – that is now being parroted by the Republicans” for political gain.
“I’m not exaggerating when I say you have called two witnesses who pose a direct threat to people who oppose them,” Plaskett said after the video.
Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, had a simple response to her accusations:
“It’s crazy what you were just saying.”
“You don’t want people to see what happened,” Jordan continued.
“The full video, transparency. You don’t want that, and you don’t want two journalists who have been named personally by the Biden administration, the FTC in a letter. They say they’re here to help and tell their story, and frankly, I think they’re brave individuals for being willing to come after being named in a letter from the Biden FTC.”
Taibbi was having none of it.
Matt Taibbi epic comeback:
"Ranking Member Plaskett, I'm not a 'so-called journalist'. I've won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I've written 10 books including 4 NYT Best Sellers." pic.twitter.com/crXlWjScEr
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 9, 2023
As Glenn Greenwald chimed in from Twitter: “To Democrats, “journalist” means: one who mindlessly and loyally endorses DNC talking points. ”
Unshaken, Matt Taibbi continued, when he was allowed to respond, laid out what he and Shellenberger had found in their research of The Twitter Files:
“The original promise of the Internet was that it might democratize the exchange of information globally. A free internet would overwhelm all attempts to control information flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of government everywhere,” Taibbi said.
“What we found in the Files was a sweeping effort to reverse that promise, and use machine learning and other tools to turn the internet into an instrument of censorship and social control. Unfortunately, our own government appears to be playing a lead role.”
Taibbi pointedly added that “effectively, news media became an arm of a state-sponsored thought-policing system.”
“It’s not possible to instantly arrive at truth. It is however becoming technologically possible to instantly define and enforce a political consensus online, which I believe is what we’re looking at.”
Democrats only response to Taibbi and Shellenberger’s facts was to get personal…
Snip.
As we detailed earlier, journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger are testifying before the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government today. Both journalists were involved in the ‘Twitter Files’ disclosures, in which we learned that the government was directly involved in censoring disfavorable speech.
“Our findings are shocking,” writes Shellenberger at his blog. “A highly-organized network of U.S. government agencies and government contractors has been creating blacklists and pressuring social media companies to censor Americans, often without them knowing it.”
Ahead of the appearance, Taibbi released his prepared remarks. He also dropped a new and related Twitter Files mega-thread on ‘THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX’ which will be submitted to the Congressional record which, according to Taibbi, ‘contains some surprises.’
But Twitter was more like a partner to government. With other tech firms it held a regular “industry meeting” with FBI and DHS, and developed a formal system for receiving thousands of content reports from every corner of government: HHS, Treasury, NSA, even local police…
But equally concerning was how those driving The Narrative used NGOs that agreed with them as Arbiters of Truth.
We came to think of this grouping – state agencies like DHS, FBI, or the Global Engagement Center (GEC), along with “NGOs that aren’t academic” and an unexpectedly aggressive partner, commercial news media – as the Censorship-Industrial Complex.
Who’s in the Censorship-Industrial Complex? Twitter in 2020 helpfully compiled a list for a working group set up in 2020. The National Endowment for Democracy, the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, and Hamilton 68’s creator, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, are key…
Twitter execs weren’t sure about Clemson’s Media Forensics Lab (“too chummy with HPSCI”), and weren’t keen on the Rand Corporation (“too close to USDOD”), but others were deemed just right.
NGOs ideally serve as a check on corporations and the government. Not long ago, most of these institutions viewed themselves that way. Now, intel officials, “researchers,” and executives at firms like Twitter are effectively one team – or Signal group, as it were:
The Woodstock of the Censorship-Industrial Complex came when the Aspen Institute – which receives millions a year from both the State Department and USAID – held a star-studded confab in Aspen in August 2021 to release its final report on “Information Disorder.”
The report was co-authored by Katie Couric and Chris Krebs, the founder of the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Yoel Roth of Twitter and Nathaniel Gleicher of Facebook were technical advisors. Prince Harry joined Couric as a Commissioner.
Why the fuck is Prince Harry on a committee deciding how free American citizens should be censored?
Their taxpayer-backed conclusions: the state should have total access to data to make searching speech easier, speech offenders should be put in a “holding area,” and government should probably restrict disinformation, “even if it means losing some freedom.”
Snip.
The same agencies (FBI, DHS/CISA, GEC) invite the same “experts” (Thomas Rid, Alex Stamos), funded by the same foundations (Newmark, Omidyar, Knight) trailed by the same reporters (Margaret Sullivan, Molly McKew, Brandy Zadrozny) seemingly to every conference, every panel.
The #TwitterFiles show the principals of this incestuous self-appointed truth squad moving from law enforcement/intelligence to the private sector and back, claiming a special right to do what they say is bad practice for everyone else: be fact-checked only by themselves. While Twitter sometimes pushed back on technical analyses from NGOs about who is and isn’t a “bot,” on subject matter questions like vaccines or elections they instantly defer to sites like Politifact, funded by the same names that fund the NGOs: Koch, Newmark, Knight.
#TwitterFiles repeatedly show media acting as proxy for NGOs, with Twitter bracing for bad headlines if they don’t nix accounts. Here, the Financial Times gives Twitter until end of day to provide a “steer” on whether RFK, Jr. and other vax offenders will be zapped.
Well, you say, so what? Why shouldn’t civil society organizations and reporters work together to boycott “misinformation”? Isn’t that not just an exercise of free speech, but a particularly enlightened form of it?
The difference is, these campaigns are taxpayer-funded. Though the state is supposed to stay out domestic propaganda, the Aspen Institute, Graphika, the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, New America, and other “anti-disinformation” labs are receiving huge public awards.
Meant to cover this back in February, but FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, in additional to all those federal fraud charges, was charged with “12 new counts, including illegally making over 300 political contributions to the tune of tens of millions of dollars through straw donors and using corporate funds.” The overwhelming majority went to Democrats and left-leaning causes. “Bankman-Fried was the second largest individual donor during the 2022 US midterm elections, contributing $39 million to various Democrat causes.” Also: “FTX’s former CEO wanted to give at least $1 million to a pro-LGBTQ political action group, but couldn’t find anyone bisexual or gay at the company whom he trusted, the document said.”
Speaking of Bankman-Fried: “The previously sealed names of two people who co-signed Sam Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bail package have been publicly released. The guarantors were identified in the unredacted bonds as Andreas Paepcke, a Stanford research scientist, and Larry Kramer, former dean of Stanford law school…How the fuck did these Stanford faculty members get so rich as to guarantee that size of a bail?”
Speaking of crypto, Silvergate, a California bank that was a heavy player in the crypto space, is shutting down and liquidating after huge bank runs in the crypto-winter. Want to guess who was a big booster of Silvergate? Would you believe Sam Bankman-Fried?
When China began to require Western corporations to establish Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cells, businesses brushed off the move as benign. For example, when HSBC HBA 0.0% became the first international financial institution at which workers established a Chinese Communist Party cell in its investment banking venture in China in July, the bank stated that the CCP committee does not influence the direction of the firm and has no formal role in its day-to-day activities. But the CCP may have begun to flex its muscle in other ways. This week, the CCP cell inside the Beijing office of Big Four accounting firm EY demanded that party members wear CCP badges at work in the run-up to China’s annual parliamentary meetings.
Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California, was closed today by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect insured depositors, the FDIC created the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara (DINB). At the time of closing, the FDIC as receiver immediately transferred to the DINB all insured deposits of Silicon Valley Bank.
All insured depositors will have full access to their insured deposits no later than Monday morning, March 13, 2023. The FDIC will pay uninsured depositors an advance dividend within the next week. Uninsured depositors will receive a receivership certificate for the remaining amount of their uninsured funds. As the FDIC sells the assets of Silicon Valley Bank, future dividend payments may be made to uninsured depositors.
Silicon Valley Bank had 17 branches in California and Massachusetts. The main office and all branches of Silicon Valley Bank will reopen on Monday, March 13, 2023. The DINB will maintain Silicon Valley Bank’s normal business hours. Banking activities will resume no later than Monday, March 13, including on-line banking and other services. Silicon Valley Bank’s official checks will continue to clear. Under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, the FDIC may create a DINB to ensure that customers have continued access to their insured funds.
As of December 31, 2022, Silicon Valley Bank had approximately $209.0 billion in total assets and about $175.4 billion in total deposits. At the time of closing, the amount of deposits in excess of the insurance limits was undetermined. The amount of uninsured deposits will be determined once the FDIC obtains additional information from the bank and customers.
SVB was a bank that primarily counted venture capital firms and technology startups as clients. It achieved financial stardom during the COVID-19 pandemic because major cash deposits from the booming firms increased its deposits from $60 billion in the first quarter of 2020 to over $200 billion in December 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported. Its securities portfolio rose from roughly $27 billion in 2020’s first quarter to approximately $127 billion at the end of 2021.
The fact that most of SVB’s assets were seemingly secure — they were mainly longer-term government bonds — led many investors to feel the bank was secure. Those feelings would be dashed in just two days. The bank suddenly announced Wednesday that it needed to raise over $2.2 billion, sending its stock plunging by more than 60% in a matter of days.
The government securities bought by SVB pay a fixed rate, so when market interest rates were raised, a gap began to grow between how much the securities were worth on the open market and what they were valued on the bank’s books. The unrealized losses in SVB’s securities portfolio in December had grown to more than $17 billion, a number expected to grow, as the securities could only be sold at a loss.
Crack the whip: unacceptable because of origins in slavery
Waiter or waitress: server should be used instead
Biological gender, biological sex, biological woman, biological female, biological man, or biological male
Illegal immigrant or illegal alien
Cake walk: “originated during slavery” and thus perpetuates “racist motifs”
In reference to illegal migration: onslaught, tidal wave, flood, inundation, surge, invasion, army, march, sneak and stealth
Anchor baby
Chain migration: this is a term used by “immigration hard-liners”
Peanut gallery: “the cheapest seats often occupied by Black people and people with low incomes”
Third-world countries: too “derogatory”
Oh, it does not end there. Politico reporters are also not allowed to say that a transgender person “identifies as” a certain gender, or describe the current situation at the border as a “crisis.” The guide also warned reporters to make sure not to portray migrants as a “negative, harmful influence.”
Want some more? “Pro-choice” is frowned upon in favor of “abortion rights supporter,” and (of course) “pro-life” is outlawed, with “anti-abortion” taking its place. “Late-term abortion” is also a no-no; reporters are told to use “abortion later in pregnancy.”
College student accused of stealing more than half a million dollars via credit card fraud working part-time at a mall jewelry store where most of the items are under $50. She marked up items, then returned them at the original price and somehow pocketed the difference. She made eight fake transactions totally more than $540,000. As though somehow the store wasn’t going to notice something funny going on.
I’m pro-life but this is stupid. “Texas Lawmaker Looks to Restrict Online Access to Materials Assisting or Facilitating Abortion.” You can’t ban access to information you don’t like, that’s prior restraint and illegal under the U.S. Constitution.
Speaking of violating rights, a judge was suspended for not allowing a defendant access to legal council. Again. The dumbass in question was Kenton County District Judge Ann Ruttle in Kentucky.
In addition to getting over a cold, I spent most of the non-work day trying to assemble a pressure washer so I could attach a water-jetting attachment so I can clean out a blocked exterior line so I can run my dishwasher without it overflowing my sink.
The result of all this labor is that I still need to call a plumber. So enjoy yet another abbreviated LinkSwarm.
Hmmmmmm! “Hunter Biden Business Partner Flips, Now ‘Cooperating’ With GOP Investigators.”
Eric Schwerin, a close business associate of Hunter Biden who also dealt with Joe Biden’s business and tax affairs, is now working with House GOP investigators looking into Biden family dealings – particularly in Ukraine and China, where the family collected millions of dollars, Just the News reports.
Eric Schwerin, a close business associate of Hunter Biden who also dealt with Joe Biden’s business and tax affairs, is now working with House GOP investigators looking into Biden family dealings – particularly in Ukraine and China, where the family collected millions of dollars, Just the News reports.
“He is cooperating with us,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) told the outlet.
“His attorneys and my counsel are communicating on a regular basis. Now, I feel confident that he’s going to work with us, and provide us with the information that we have requested,” Comer continued. “I think that Schwerwin is going to be a very valuable witness for us in this investigation.”
Of note, Schwerin, the former president of Hunter Biden’s now-dissolved investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, visited the White House at least 19 times from 2009 to 2015, according to White House visitor log records reviewed by The Epoch Times and first reported by the New York Post.
Patrick L. Wojahn, the Democratic mayor of College Park, MD, resigns over child porn charges. Name that party: His political affiliation only shows up in the 19th paragraph of the piece. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Illnesses to Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein and John Fetterman mean that Democrats have temporarily lost their senate majority. That will teach you to rely to Octagenerians and visibly impaired stroke victims to carry your water. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta submits $5.5 billion bid for NFL’s Commanders.” He should move them to Austin and change the name back to the Redskins, just to spite them.
Did MacKay get Tulipmania wrong? It turns out he was also an enthusiast for the far more destructive “Railway Bubbles” that struck England in the 19th century.
