[USA Today] The former CEO of the cryptocurrency firm FTX used two close executives to make tens of millions of dollars in donations to political candidates in the run-up to November's election, an indictment unsealed Thursday says.
Sam Bankman-Fried used one of those associates to be the company's face of donations to "center-left" candidates and causes, and the other to donate to Republican candidates and causes, according to the indictment.
To both parties? I’m shocked.
In all, Bankman-Fried and the two associates "made over 300 political contributions, totaling tens of millions of dollars, that were unlawful because they were made in the name of a straw donor or paid for with corporate funds."
The grand jury indictment, which supersedes a previous indictment from December, charges him with conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and defrauding the Federal Election Commission.
As twisted as it may sound, there is precedent for the return of donations. Even money donated to Dems, I'd have to say, "tough sh!t, Sammy". If voluntarily returned, then fine.
That this scumbag isn't in custody is a disgrace. But, neither is sociopath Elizabeth Holmes.
Stanford Univ. may have some egg on its face once all this is said and done.
#9
Looked like a mix. Ernst and Grassley were on the list. I got bored scrolling down after a while. Not sure if they were aware about the root of the donation. Not much of a quid pro quo opportunity if they were not aware. Probably an effort to cover all bases. $10K for the Dem and $1K for the Republican. The list ends up being a good smear tactic if the amounts are not disclosed.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/24/2023 23:38 Comments ||
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#10
Imo, my wife says it best: The Republicans don't win elections because the Democrats want to win them more.
[Breitbart] House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) on Tuesday requested Serbian politician Vuk Jeremić provide information on the Biden family’s business dealing with CEFC China Energy Co.
The request represents Comer’s ramped up efforts to ascertain whether President Joe Biden is compromised by the Chinese Communist Party to design legislation preventing influence peddling.
If Jeremić cooperates with Comer’s demand, the House Oversight Committee would have key data points further linking the Biden family to CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming, who paid Hunter a $1 million retainer fee for legal services in 2017. Hunter also received a large diamond from Ye worth an estimated $80,000 in February 2017.
According to the “Laptop from Hell,” Hunter and James had negotiated a deal with CEFC whereby Joe Biden (Big Guy) would receive a ten percent equity stake in the joint venture with CEFC. Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski has confirmed the “Big Guy” is Joe Biden.
Joe Biden has repeatedly denied being involved in the family business.
In a letter to Jeremić, the former diplomat who served as the president of the United Nations General Assembly from 2012 to 2013 and as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia from 2007 to 2012, Comer asked for information related to Hunter’s dealings with CEFC in which a court document redacted a name Comer believes could be Hunter Biden’s.
The sought information pertains to a past court proceeding related to Hunter’s former business partner Patrick Ho, former head of CEFC, who was convicted of international bribery and money laundering in 2018.
#1
Now we will have to hear the chants of Serbian disinformation. Not sure why he would have the info on Hunter’s Chinese dealing. Also assuming that Hunter is a CIA and/or CCP asset, providing info might prove detrimental.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/24/2023 10:44 Comments ||
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#2
Dunno if getting that close to the Bidens is as detrimental as getting close to the Clintons but I wouldn't want to risk it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/24/2023 11:37 Comments ||
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[Dawn] US President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. You're a lyin' dog-faced pony soldier. Of course Corn Pop is a real person.... ’s administration unveiled on Thursday a long-awaited overhaul of arms export policy with increased emphasis on human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... , backing off a Trump-era policy of giving more weight to commercial concerns.
As Rooters reported on Wednesday, the new Commercial Arms Transfer (CAT) policy covers a review of security assistance, government-to-government weapons transfers, and licensed commercial sales of US-origin military equipment and services overseen by the State Department as well as the Defence and Commerce departments, including firearms commonly available in the United States.
Defence companies and activist muppets scrutinise such policies for insight into the administration’s posture as it balances the commercial interests of exporters like Lockheed Martin Co and Raytheon Technologies against the country’s stated commitment to human rights.
One change is how the CAT policy addresses the possibility that arms from the United States could be used for major human rights violations, State Department officials said.
Under the new policy, a weapons transfer will not be approved if the State Department assesses the arms "more likely than not" will be used to commit or facilitate genocide, crimes against humanity, breaches of the Geneva conventions, or serious violations of international law.
Previous CAT policy had said such transfers would not be authorised only when Washington had "actual knowledge" that the arms would be used in such actions.
"We are looking at a policy of prevention when there is a risk of violation of human rights," one official said. The policy also allows deals to be canceled if rights violations are documented after they are announced.
The officials declined to specify countries or past deals that the new policy might affect.
[Breitbart] President Joe Biden is expanding the nation’s population of imported child workers, but the establishment media — and D.C. politicians — are hiding this child workforce from voters.
“One of the largest food sanitation companies in the United States illegally employed at least 102 children in dangerous jobs cleaning meatpacking and slaughtering plants,” said a New York Times report that did not mention most of the child workers are teenage economic migrants.
A report by the Associated Press downplayed the mention of the teenagers’ migrant origin, relegating it to the sixteenth paragraph. However, it quoted a labor department official saying:
[T]he Wage and Hour Division has seen around a 50% increase [emphasis added] in child labor violations since 2018, including minors working more hours than permitted in otherwise legal jobs, using types of equipment they shouldn’t while doing legal jobs, and children working where they should never be employed in the first place.
“The company, Packers Sanitation Services, allegedly employed minors as young as 13 to use caustic chemicals to clean ‘razor-sharp saws,’ head splitters and other dangerous equipment at meatpacking facilities in eight states,” the Washington Post, which buried the lede in the 17th paragraph, said, adding, “Many of the children spoke only Spanish, and at least some Labor Department interviews with minors were conducted in Spanish, investigators said.”
Most forms of child labor were outlawed in 1938 by Congress.
But since January 2021, roughly 320,000 more “Unaccompanied Alien Children” have been welcomed by Biden and his pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.
Roughly 75 percent of the young migrants are work-ready teenage boys. The vast majority quickly take a wide variety of low-wage jobs at factories, hotels, and farms. They work because they want to work, need to pay smuggling debts to the cartels, and because even small payments are a huge help to their families at home in Central America.
“Honestly, I think almost everyone in the system knows that most of the [migrant] teens are coming to work and send money back home,” Maria Woltjen, executive director and founder of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, told a ProPublica reporter. “They want to help their parents,” she said in a November 2020 article.
The growing workforce is so large that officials at the Department of Labor have begun investigating some of the many reports about teenage workers throughout the United States. On Friday, the agency announced that it was imposing a fine of $1.5 million on a staffing firm that supplied teenage workers to meatpacking plants around the country:
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the department assessed PSSI $15,138 for each minor-aged employee who was employed in violation of the law. The amount is the maximum civil money penalty allowed by federal law.
The division began the Packers Sanitation Services Inc. investigation in August 2022, and on Nov. 9, 2022, the Solicitor’s Office filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court of Nebraska based on evidence that the company – which provides cleaning services under contract to some of the nation’s largest meat and poultry producers – had employed at least 31 children, from 13 to 17 years of age, in hazardous occupations to clean dangerous powered equipment during overnight shifts at JBS USA plants in Grand Island, Nebraska, and Worthington, Minnesota, and at Turkey Valley Farms in Marshall, Minnesota. U.S. District Court Judge John M. Gerrard responded by issuing a temporary restraining order on Nov. 10, 2022, forbidding the company and its employees from committing child labor violations.
The agency statement did not say if the children were migrants or natives.
The media silence about the fast-growing child workforce is a strong contrast to media coverage during President Donald Trump’s presidency. Back then, the establishment media produced many emotional stories about migrants who were temporarily separated from their kids, often because the parents chose to leave their kids with relatives in the United States.
With Mayorkas’ loose border, migrants are increasingly visible at many United States workplaces, Jay Palmer, an Alabama-based immigration and human trafficking expert who works with lawyers on behalf of Americans and migrants, said.
“They’re working everywhere,” he said, adding that companies gain because they prefer cheap and compliant migrants and because some executives get bribes to ignore the illegal hiring.
But state and federal investigations are launched after complaints from Americans and from migrants who hope to get green cards from Mayorkas’s agency, Palmer said.
“It’s reactive,” he said, adding, “I’ve got a case right now where an HR manager is complaining that he feels like he might go to jail because he’s aware of third-party [staffing] contractors that are hiring illegals.”
Republican politicians face pressure from donors to say little or nothing about the exploitation of young migrants — or even about the employers’ hiring of illegal migrants. Instead, many GOP leaders — and Fox News — try to focus voters on border chaos, drugs, and the illegality of Biden’s border policies — despite the rising opposition to immigration among swing voters.
The staffing firm fined by the labor department is owned by the Blackstone investment firm, according to the Washington Post. Blackstone donated $34 million to the GOP for the 2022 elections.
Alongside the GOP, the media’s coverup of Biden’s child-labor policies is routine and nationwide. On February 11, for example, a Washington Post article tried to shift the blame for the growing child-labor workforce to Republicans, saying:
The Iowa bill, introduced by state Sen. Jason Schultz (R), would permit children as young as 14 to work in industrial freezers and meat coolers, provided they are separate from where meat is prepared, and work in industrial laundry.
At 15, they would be able to work as lifeguards and swimming instructors, perform light assembly-line work after obtaining a waiver from state officials, and load and unload up to 50 pounds of products from vehicles and store shelves with a waiver “depending on the strength and ability of the fifteen-year-old.”
However, a February 17 report by NBC News spotlighted the underlying cause in the tenth paragraph: “Advocates and lawyers for the children say some of the child workers for PSSI were unaccompanied minors who recently came across the southern border.[emphasis added].”
“People I spoke to there said it was common knowledge that there were children working at this facility and going to school during the day,” NBC reporter Julia Ainsley said on-air. “There were even some police reports where teachers and school officials said that there were children falling asleep in class because of their work overnight at the slaughterhouse.”
[WND] Voting machines have played an inordinate role in headlines in the last few years, since the oddly anomalous results of the 2020 presidential election were revealed to give Joe Biden narrow victories in states that appeared to be majority Republican.
Naturally there were questions about the accuracy of the counts by those machines, especially after some clearly wrong results were admitted, and corrected.
Commentators made accusations about failures and one of the voting machine behemoths, Dominion Voting Systems, immediately went to court, suing them for defaming the company's reputation. Some defendants responded with their own lawsuits against Dominion.
And now, as a result of one of those legal actions by Dominion against Fox News, it's been revealed in a report by Just the News that one of Dominion's own executives knew the system had failed.
It was Dominion Director of Product Strategy and Security Eric Coomer who admitted in an email that his company's technology was marred by a "*critical* bug leading to INCORRECT results."
[AmericanThinker] Why the 2020 Election was Unverifiable
Joe Biden acquired his job through a legal process. However, he did not earn enough verifiable votes to justify the certifications in six key swing states. This issue is addressed in my new book, but here is some of my reasoning. I have limited myself to one example of unverifiable votes for each of those swing states.
ARIZONA
At an Arizona Senate Committee hearing on January 24, 2022, we learned that precisely 95 percent of Maricopa County overseas military members (and their families) voted for Joe Biden. That is an amazing (as in phony) percentage, given that the overall county-wide vote was fairly even between Biden and Trump (51 to 49%). Winning the military vote in Maricopa County with a 90 percent margin strongly suggests the likelihood of fraud.
The findings were presented at the Committee hearing by Paul Harris, a corporate executive who had been asked to conduct the review during the Cyber Ninjas audit. These are key points from the presentation. (See video @ 1:53.)
GEORGIA
Garland Favorito is the head of VoterGA.org, and has a forty-year background in information technology. In a detailed press conference, Favorito and his cyber experts itemized fifteen categories of ballot irregularities found during their analysis of ballot images acquired from Fulton County, Georgia. (See video @ 27:00.)
The number of unsupportable ballots found for this one county is forty-five times larger than Biden’s margin of victory for the entire state. Here are just five of the 15 findings:
Although it takes one second to scan a ballot, there are over 4,000 ballots with precisely the same timestamp -- to the second. Not possible.
16,034 mail-in ballot authentication (sha) files were added several days after scanning. Also impossible.
There are no ballot images to support 17,724 final certified recount presidential votes.
There are no images to support 374,128 “certified” in-person votes, which is a violation of both federal and Georgia law.
132,284 mail-in ballot images have no authentication files.
MICHIGAN
Before the 2020 election, the Michigan Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, implemented an illegal procedure that seriously undermined the integrity of the election.
Benson announced that all signatures would be presumptively valid -- even if they were only slightly similar to registration signatures. The announcement was, effectively, an invitation to fraudsters to grab all the unused ballot applications they could find or buy; and fill them out and send them in.
Trump opposed Benson’s new procedure, and he ended up winning in court -- four months after the election. In March, 2021, State Court of Claims Judge Christopher Murray: “Nowhere in this state’s election law has the Legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid...”
By using an illegal standard for processing of signatures, and by announcing that new standard in advance so that fraudsters could exploit it, Benson effectively invalidated the Michigan election certification.
NEVADA
Three months before the 2020 election, the Democrat administration in Nevada passed a law that gutted election controls, and made the 2020 election impossible to certify with credibility.
Under the new Nevada law, all registered voters are automatically mailed ballots (not just applications). In 2020, this created mountains of unused ballots because lots of registered voters are not interested in voting, are not necessarily citizens, may have already moved to a new location, or are already “living” in the city cemetery.
Jay Greenberg, a journalist with NeonNettle.com News, reported that thousands of ballots were being mailed to inactive voters in Democrat Clark County: “The vote-by-mail envelopes are piling up in post office trays, outside apartment complexes, and on community bulletin boards in and around Las Vegas.”
Jenny Trobiani, a Clark County postal worker, wondered: “What’s going to happen with these things, they’re not secured at all and there are thousands of them just sitting here? This just seems fraudulent to me, something stinks here.”
How hard was it to cheat in the 2020 Nevada election? In Clark County you just had to walk into any large apartment building, go to the mailbox area, scoop up a handful of ballots, sign them, and mail them in. There was no ID required, and it was very hard to fail a signature test in Nevada. That is still true today.
The new Nevada law, coupled with its lack of an ID requirement, made the 2020 election unverifiable.
PENNSYLVANIA
When the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth certified the election on November 24, 2020, there were 202,377 more ballots cast than the number of people shown to have voted. This irrefutable fact is one of several reasons many Pennsylvania legislators wanted Vice President Mike Pence to delay counting the electoral votes on January 6, 2021.
On December 28, 2020 (well before the January 6th debacle), Pennsylvania Representative Frank Ryan issued a lengthy statement on behalf of himself and 16 other PA legislators. It had this title: “Numbers Don’t Add Up, Certification of Presidential Results Premature and in Error.”
A reading of the Pennsylvania Code (25 PA. Stat. §3154) suggests that the certification may have violated Commonwealth law. The statute states that, if there is a significant unidentified excess of votes cast over persons who voted, there must be an investigation before the votes are recorded.
There was no investigation. A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania secretary simply noted that four counties had not yet submitted their voter information.
Months after the election, the slowpoke counties finally submitted their voter information, and there no longer was a discrepancy of 202,377 votes. However, the remaining excess of ballots over voters was (and is) over 90,000, and that number exceeds Biden’s winning margin of 81,000 votes.
In other words, it is likely that the election was and remains illegal under Pennsylvania law, and unverifiable under any credible audit standard.
WISCONSIN
In an effort to spot possible irregularities, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty did a statistical analysis of the top ten voter turnout changes for Republican wards and Democrat wards. (See link @ pg. 78.) I have displayed the results graphically in Figure 1.
The very tall column to the right side of the Democrat wards is Madison Ward 124, and in some amazing way the voter turnout increased in that ward by 1,285 percent. That very unnatural increase could explain why Madison refused to provide ballot access to post-election auditors. (See link @ pg. 7.)
The sharp increase in Madison’s voter turnout could be due to incredible voter enthusiasm. But more likely, it is due to the 200 drop boxes that were placed in the Democrat stronghold for special voting days called “Democracy in the Park” (a two-day, Biden-promoted event of very questionable legality).
The Ward 124 anomaly has never been investigated.
CONCLUSION
Joe Biden is the legally-elected President of the United States. However, I believe he won several swing state elections that would not be certifiable if our elections were administered with credible election standards.
#3
One drop rule in effect? So, if any of those DNA services show a black connection, those liberal white females can continue to 'pass' for minority jobs?
#8
Talcum X has not been run out of town on a rail yet. It's up to the black community to do that.
Nobody's going to even breathe bad breath on Angela Davis.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/24/2023 9:47 Comments ||
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#9
Say it with me: "Blaxploitation. It's not just for movies anymore."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/24/2023 9:48 Comments ||
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#10
That's like Hitler finding out he was a Jew.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/24/2023 12:01 Comments ||
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#11
Re: #1 and small worlds
A shotgun she purchased was used to murder a Superior Court judge when I was a young'n. Said judge was the father (and grandfather) of our old next door neighbors.
#1
It's hard to explain how in the tank or local Dhimicrats Pravda Moscow on the Mississippi is. They can hardly hide their glee as they explain to us these criminals can't use those licenses to vote.
In the presidential election our Anoka county, 60% of the mail in ballots were fraudulent (mine was cloned too).
Making the media liars actually factual. To a point.
#2
Next up: Gun confiscation:
SF1723 contains the following & more of the same is in the House as 4 bills, HF14, HF15, HF396, & HF601
Registration of all firearms
Registration of all magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds
Registration of all 50 caliber firearms
Mandatory lost & stolen reporting Banning nearly all semi-automatic rifles
Not more than one gun purchases every 30 days
Police Chiefs would now issue permits to carry
You would be required to obtain a permit to own any firearm
Permits would require physical and mental health testing
Permits and firearm ownership would require liability insurance
Firearms could not be carried on any government property or inside any government facility – even with a permit to carry
It would be a crime to carry past a sign prohibiting carry at a private establishment
And many other restrictions on Second Amendment rights
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/24/2023 9:42 Comments ||
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#4
Implementing gun control and then removing enforcement of most criminal statutes for minorities in inner cities is working out well in metro areas. Using a gun in a robbery = no consequence. Using a gun in self defense = big consequence. Add some illegal aliens and fentanyl for good measure.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/24/2023 10:51 Comments ||
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#5
So, if you are a so-called straight john, why are you in a city situation involving guns?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/24/2023 10:54 Comments ||
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#6
I personally don't go where I don't belong. My right to go anywhere is not actually in the Constitution. Neither is my right to be stupid and get away with it.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/24/2023 10:55 Comments ||
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#7
Register them to vote while you're at it, commies.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/24/2023 12:02 Comments ||
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#8
Annoying that I paid extra for a verified license.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/24/2023 22:01 Comments ||
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#9
If you want to be cruel, make them pass the driver's test.
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.