[Red State] I checked the Wikipedia entry for Rosemont Seneca Partners a couple of weeks ago when I was writing an article about Hunter Biden and referencing Eric Schwerin, the president of the investment company. Hunter was one of the co-founders of the company. Joe Biden has constantly maintained he knew nothing about his son’s business, but Schwerin acted as something like a business manager, in some respects, over Biden’s affairs, according to the emails on Hunter’s laptop.
As my colleague Mike Miller reported earlier, Schwerin also sat down with Joe Biden at the Obama White House, and visited the White House nearly 20 times — yet another instance of Joe Biden’s claim being proven false.
But, it sounds like another effort to obscure the facts and relationships might be underway in this matter.
That Wikipedia entry for Rosemont Seneca Partners that I had previously been able to check just got deleted earlier this week (Wednesday) — on the basis that it was "not notable," just as the investigation into Hunter Biden seems to be coming to a head. Talk about an effort to control information. They made clear that it was about stopping "conspiracy" theories about Hunter Biden.
[ZH] For many years now I have been pointing out that there is a false public perception of the relationship between governments and corporations. In the past the belief has been that government is supposed to keep private business in check while private business is supposed to limit government intrusion through the assertion of property rights. But when it comes to major corporations there is no such game of balance.
In reality, international conglomerates like Disney generally do whatever they please because they are PARTNERS with government.
For whatever reason, certain companies are afforded special treatment by state and federal institutions and what this does is create problems. This is not a free market system, rather, it is socialist and monopolistic. Subsidies and incentives can sometimes be used to encourage business growth, but when they are afforded to only a tiny handful of mega-corporations the result is the opposite; the growth of competition is stifled and small to medium businesses will never be able to compete with the giants that have already garnered government protection.
It’s interesting to me that the political left, which was once supposedly anti-big business, is now suddenly so enamored with corporate oligarchy to the point that they rabidly defend it as long as those companies espouse woke rhetoric. What this confirms is something that conservatives have always known — That leftists don’t have any concrete principles or morals, they only care about winning no matter the cost.
I 2020 I published an article suggesting a potential solution to Big Tech and woke corporate censorship of conservative ideas: That solution would be for conservative state governments to take away the very incentives and subsidies that they often use to entice these businesses into setting up shop within their borders. That is to say, all they have to do is take away the special goodies that these corporations never should have been handed in the first place.
At the time, I thought that no state government would actually have the guts to carry out such a strategy, but things have changed. Corporations like Disney have now crossed the line into the realm of open indoctrination; asserting that they will upend any Florida law that prevent the sexualization and indoctrination of children into the leftist fold. Disney picked a fight; they strutted around as if they owned the state, and now they are paying the price by losing the very subsidies that made them successful.
This in itself is not the overt use of government power as a means to oppress the rights of businesses. These corporations have no right to such subsidies and they are not entitled to special treatment. Taking it away is not a violation of any business’ rights or of private property rights. Subsidies are something that certain corporations have come to expect, and maybe that should change.
In my recent article on Elon Musk’s ongoing plan to buy out the leftist hive mind known as Twitter, I made this argument: The rest at the link
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/24/2022 00:00 ||
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#1
My suggestion to Businesses.
Stick to Business and leave the Social, Political BS to the radicals. They are just trying to stir the pot and divide us during elections and/or for Blackmail $$$$$$.
Exxon is a good example of how businesses should handle the inciteful for profit radicals.
I’ve been traveling and not writing much these past two weeks. Some brief thoughts about the second phase of the war, Russia’s offensive to retake the Donbas, and implications. Thread. (map from Nathan below). 1/ pic.twitter.com/CLGRZimeLx
[PJMedia] America these last 14 months resembles a dystopia. It is becoming partly the world of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and partly the poet Homer’s land of the Lotus-Eaters.
Nothing seems to be working. And no one in control seems to care.
The once secure border of 2020 vanished. Two-million people have crossed the southern border illegally in the last 12 months. Millions more are on the way.
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Posted by: Frank G ||
04/24/2022 14:10 ||
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That's only a small part of the common denominator. The rest is this entire escapade is and has been intentional. They aren't incompetent, they are enemies.
Because how else would an enemy behave? Subvert and destroy trust in virtually every institution? Emasculate, sometimes literally the young men? Ruin the economy? Collapse oil and gas production? All while pouring billions of of non-audited, yea impossible to audit dollars into the Ukraine. Let's not forget the tax increases and their 21% pay raise.
Hubert Humphrey and Tip O'Neil aren't even vague memories, these people are the new commissariat. How many ways and times do they have to tell us what their plans are?
[Rudaw] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... launched its first military operation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the newly-established autonomous Kurdistan Region in the fall of 1992 with the involvement of thousands of troops, hoping to remove the Kurdish rebels on its borders with Iraq and Iran. Three decades on, Ankara launched the latest phase of its Operation Claw against the group in the Region last week. Some questions that emerge are why is the Ottoman Turkish army conducting a fresh campaign now? And what can it change on the ground?
A Kurdish politician who used to be close friends with the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan decades ago, said that Turkey’s latest operation is a preparation for its alleged full-scale operation, expected to commence in 2023, to regain control of Iraqi land which used to be part of the Ottoman Empire.
The PKK was formed in 1978, stating its goal of obtaining increased political and cultural rights for Kurds in Turkey. It spent the first six years fighting other Turkey-based Kurdish political parties, to pave the way for its dream of leading the Kurdish movement in the country. In 1984, the PKK began its armed struggle against Ankara inside the country while boosting its camps in what is now the Kurdistan Region, following an agreement with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
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Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/24/2022 02:31 ||
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"You really should think more, ideally
Like me, Dr. Jim al-Khalili!
Your eyeballs are vital,
For minds that are idle
Might not fund the Beeb quite so freely."
#6
Critical thinking is not taught in gummint schools. Doing actual background research in a subject is not taught in gummint schools. Many people around me think my ability to observe things going on around me (learned as a reporter) and draw conclusions from the observations is some kind of parlor trick or super-human power.
I spend a lot of time trying to nudge people around me in the right direction without acquiring the reputation of being a pedant or "know it all."
And I'm a guy whose personal intellectual strength is that I know how much I don't know.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/24/2022 7:57 Comments ||
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/\ ....strength is that I know how much I don't know.
First step in the road to Humility. I continue to visit there often.
#9
Criticalthinking is not taught in gummint schools.
Hell, reading, writing and arithmetic are not taught in gummint schools. Just look at the high school graduation rate and standardized test scores for any of our big city school districts. The percentage of kids below grade level is appalling.
#10
The glazed over expression on my kids faces and "TMI" when something more complex than small-talk requires context and history is increasingly common. The grand-kids just avoid whole ranges of topics, because they literally have a very short attention span for complex stuff. They aren't stupid, far from it, but they are very ignorant and don't know it.
HG Wells and the mindless surface dwellers (Eloi) sadly seems more prescient than I imagined years ago. Worse, the Chinese as Morlocks is increasingly worrisome.
#12
Many people around me think my ability to observe things going on around me (learned as a reporter) and draw conclusions from the observations is some kind of parlor trick or super-human power.
I've noticed this in my own life as well. An increasing number of people *can't* have an interesting conversation with you about (for example) the modern historical roots of the current conflict in Ukraine because they lack the skills necessary to know that they should consciously have a worldview with which to organize the information in the world around them. In fact, I encounter many who find the idea of thinking hard about what one should believe to be innately offensive.
Say what you will about the old communists: they didn't have this problem. They even read books and quaint things like that.
Long and dense with details that answer the many questions we had at the time. More at the link, so grab your stimulating beverage of choice and get comfortable.
[PoliticalInsider] The road to Al Qaeda’s control of the Syrian province of Idlib actually started hundreds of miles across the Mediterranean in Libya.
In March 2011, after heavy lobbying from bigwigs including Secretary Crooked Hillary Clinton ...former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away. Politix is not one of her talents, but it's something she keeps trying to do... , President Obama authorized a bombing campaign in support of the jihadist insurgency fighting the government of Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffy
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If AQ is on your side, well then, you need to switch sides...That said...
This is thought provoking on a couple of levels.
Since 2011 we have had almost no trouble out of AQ and we don't seem to have continued the targeting of their leadership...nor are we diligently pursuing the prosecution of the 9/11 planners in GTMO.
Did we make a deal with the AQ devil? And what did we get in return? Did AQ offer OBL up as a martyr as their part of the bargain?
#2
IIRC Islamic State stepped up as #1 Boogie man, at least until Oblahblah called them the "JV Team". AQ seemed happy to let IS take the hits while AQ did R&R/Hudna?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/24/2022 11:06 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Some things appear to change very little indeed. 
[PJMedia] America these last 14 months resembles a dystopia. It is becoming partly the world of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and partly the poet Homer’s land of the Lotus-Eaters.
