Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! We’re just weeks away from The Burning Time giving way to The Season of Football.
Some links:
LinkSwarm for August 26, 2016
August 26th, 2016This Week in Clinton Corruption
August 25th, 2016Every week brings new evidence of Hillary Clinton’s corruption and proof she lied about her insecure, homebrew email server. So naturally the media is focused on something some athlete may or may not have done in Rio.
Now on to this week’s Clinton Corruption:
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 725 pages of new State Department documents, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which former Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state. In many instances, the preferential treatment provided to donors was at the specific request of Clinton Foundation executive Douglas Band.
The new documents included 20 Hillary Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to 191 of new Clinton emails (not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department). These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.
The Abedin emails reveal that the longtime Clinton aide apparently served as a conduit between Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton while Clinton served as secretary of state. In more than a dozen email exchanges, Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In many instances, Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation throughout Hillary Clinton’s tenure at State, coordinated closely with Abedin. In Abedin’s June deposition to Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of her job at the State Department was taking care of “Clinton family matters.”
Included among the Abedin-Band emails is an exchange revealing that when Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment. Abedin advised Band that when she went through “normal channels” at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened, however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight hours. According to the Clinton Foundation website, in 2005, Salman committed to establishing the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Program (CPISP) for the Clinton Global Initiative. And by 2010, it had contributed $32 million to CGI. The Kingdom of Bahrain reportedly gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. And Bahrain Petroleum also gave an additional $25,000 to $50,000.
Dallas Pension Fund Near Insolvenacy Thanks To Risky Investments
August 24th, 2016Dallas Police and Fire pension fund are near insolvency thanks to shady real estate deals:
The Dallas Police & Fire Pension (DPFP), which covers nearly 10,000 police and firefighters, is on the verge of collapse as its board and the City of Dallas struggle to pitch benefit cuts to save the plan from complete failure. According the the National Real Estate Investor, DPFP was once applauded for it’s “diverse investment portfolio” but turns out it may have all been a fraud as the pension’s former real estate investment manager, CDK Realy Advisors, was raided by the FBI in April 2016 and the fund was subsequently forced to mark down their entire real estate book by 32%. Guess it’s pretty easy to generate good returns if you manage a book of illiquid assets that can be marked at your “discretion”.
To provide a little background, per the Dallas Morning News, Richard Tettamant served as the DPFP’s administrator for a couple of decades right up until he was forced out in June 2014. Starting in 2005, Tettamant oversaw a plan to “diversify” the pension into “hard assets” and away from the “risky” stock market…because there’s no risk if you don’t have to mark your book every day. By the time the “diversification” was complete, Tettamant had invested half of the DPFP’s assets in, effectively, the housing bubble. Investments included a $200mm luxury apartment building in Dallas, luxury Hawaiian homes, a tract of undeveloped land in the Arizona desert, Uruguayan timber, the American Idol production company and a resort in Napa.
Despite huge exposure to bubbly 2005/2006 vintage real estate investments, DPFP assets “performed” remarkably well throughout the “great recession.” But as it turns out, Tettamant’s “performance” was only as good as the illiquidity of his investments. We guess returns are easier to come by when you invest your whole book in illiquid, private assets and have “discretion” over how they’re valued.
In 2015, after Tettamant’s ouster, $600mm of DPFP real estate assets were transferred to new managers away from the fund’s prior real estate manager, CDK Realty Advisors. Turns out the new managers were not “comfortable” with CDK’s asset valuations and the mark downs started. According to the Dallas Morning News, one such questionable real estate investment involved a piece of undeveloped land in the Arizona desert near Tucson which was purchased for $27mm in 2006 and subsequently sold in 2014 for $7.5mm.
It gets better: “Then the plot thickened when, in April 2016, according the Dallas Morning News, FBI raided the offices of the pension’s former investment manager, CDK Realty Advisors.”
Also: “And of course the typical pension ponzi, whereby in order to stay afloat the plan is paying out $2.11 for every $1.00 it collects from members and the City of Dallas effectively borrowing from assets reserved to cover future liabilities (which are likely impaired) to cover current claims in full.”
Want to guess which political party Richard Tettamant was affiliated with?
Go ahead. Guess.
(Hat tip: Jack Dean of Pension Tsunami.)
This Week in Clinton Corruption for August 19, 2016
August 19th, 2016Too much Clinton Corruption news to put off a roundup this week, so enjoy this rather than the usual Friday LinkSwarm:
At no time did the U.S. State Department ever say to Bill Clinton that any of his unbelievably lucrative speaking gigs represented a conflict of interest – even if there was reason to believe a foreign government or entities closely allied with a foreign government were paying. Recall the State Department praising the progress of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan as the president’s ally invited Bill Clinton to give two speeches in exchange for $1.4 million dollars. The State Department’s generous assessment of Jonathan’s human rights record stopped after the last speaking gig for Clinton.
Hey, guys, if you’re looking for murders, check out anyone who has ever crossed the Clintons. There are about 100 cases where some intern has slept with Bill or some lawyer knew too much or some investigator got too close and boom—he shoots himself in the back of the head at the top of a mountain at four in the morning.
The media cared about the sheer number of cases when 57 women said Bill Cosby raped them. If we brought the Hillary kill list down to 57, you’d be dealing with only the really, really spooky ones. Like the one last month where a DNC staffer, who may very well have supplied Julian Assange with the classified emails that brought massive embarrassment to the party, was shot in the back of the head in the middle of the night.
Seth Rich was talking to his girlfriend on the phone when a gunman came up behind him, shot him to death, and left without taking anything at all. Rich was in a nice neighborhood that I’m told hadn’t had a murder in six years. The Assange link got eye rolls from the left until he personally offered a $20K reward for any information leading to an arrest. A Dutch TV host pressed Julian on this and asked if it was a murder accusation directed at Hillary and the subject quickly died.
The list of victims goes on and on and on, and Google is happy to tell you how serious the accusations are and how tenuous the link is.
Some of the Clinton Body Count stuff is just stupid speculation (like random people killed near the Mena Airport, which ties into the whole CIA drug running/Octopus/Clinton conspiracy theory). But others do indeed make you go “Hmmmm.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Clinton vs. Powell's use of email pic.twitter.com/KtRklq3KUm
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) August 19, 2016
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Man Who Used to Work for Dan Backer: “How We Killed the Tea Party”
August 18th, 2016The headline on “How We Killed the Tea Party” overstates the case, but the movement isn’t what it once was, or could have been. And it does identify a major culprit:
As we watch the Republican Party tear itself to shreds over Donald Trump, perhaps it’s time to take note of another conservative political phenomenon that the GOP nominee has utterly eclipsed: the Tea Party. The Tea Party movement is pretty much dead now, but it didn’t die a natural death. It was murdered—and it was an inside job. In a half decade, the spontaneous uprising that shook official Washington degenerated into a form of pyramid scheme that transferred tens of millions of dollars from rural, poorer Southerners and Midwesterners to bicoastal political operatives.
What began as an organic, policy-driven grass-roots movement was drained of its vitality and resources by national political action committees that dunned the movement’s true believers endlessly for money to support its candidates and causes. The PACs used that money first to enrich themselves and their vendors and then deployed most of the rest to search for more “prospects.” In Tea Party world, that meant mostly older, technologically unsavvy people willing to divulge personal information through “petitions”—which only made them prey to further attempts to lighten their wallets for what they believed was a good cause. While the solicitations continue, the audience has greatly diminished because of a lack of policy results and changing political winds.
I was an employee at one of the firms that ran these operations.
After stating that, I wasn’t at all surprised to see this: “For 18 months ending in 2013, I worked for one of these consultants, Dan Backer, who has served as treasurer for dozens of PACs, many now defunct, through his law and consulting firm.”
Yep, Dan Backer, who I’ve been sounding the scam alarm about since 2014. Backer has been running scam PACs like Patriots for Economic Freedom, Conservative Action Fund, Stop Hillary PAC, and a host of others.
And Backer is now cashing in on Donald Trump’s name:
This cycle, Backer and MacKenzie have kept Trump’s lawyers busy. Despite Trump’s constant protests about “corrupt” super PACs, MacKenzie started “Patriots for Trump” and Backer founded “TrumPAC.” MacKenzie shuttered Patriots when the Trump campaign complained, although the Facebook page remains active. The campaign persuaded Backer to change TrumPAC’s name to “Great America PAC.” But the PAC begged off requests to shutter and “refund any funds raised” based on Trump’s candidacy. Jesse Benton, Great America’s chief strategist and formerly a Ron Paul operative, explained the PAC would remain active because Trump would need “a robust and effective finance organization … after he secured the nomination.” By law, the campaign can have no say in how this “finance organization” spends its money, though its website still prominently features the candidate and his trademark slogan. It pledged to raise $20 million dollars before the Republican convention.
And yes, I wrote about Great America PAC as well.
Evidently Scott MacKenzie is puling the same scam. “An analysis found 10 conservative PACs whose treasurer was Scott MacKenzie spent 92 percent of the $17.5 million they raised on operating expenses, and less than 1 percent on candidate support.”
The lesson, yet again, is never donate to a random email or mail solicitation, and when you do donate, use a candidate’s direct donation page.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Austin’s Murder Rate Up 80%
August 17th, 2016Well, this is not good news:
Three homicides in the past 10 days. According to data from the Austin Police Department, the city’s murder rate is up nearly 80 percent from the same time last year.
The Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday believes this upward trend is something the department needs to tackle immediately.
“All you have to do is turn on the news. It seems like every night for the past several weeks its led off with shootings in north and east Austin,” said Casaday of the deadly shootings. “It reminds me of, back in the 80s and 90s, when we had a huge crime wave here in Austin.”
Of the 23 murders so far in 2016, five are unsolved.
Let’s take a look at the individual homicides this year (at least those up on the austintexas.gov website), starting with the most recent:
So what is the cause of Austin’s rising murder rate? Possibly just random statistical variation. Possibly the result of understaffing the police department. I considered the possibility that a “Black Lives Matter” reduction in policing and/or a refusal to deport illegal alien offenders might be factors, it’s hard to see that from the data. (And I haven’t delved into last year’s murder stats for comparison yet.)
The city’s overall demographics are 47.1% white, 7.0% black, 36.5% Hispanic, and 6.8% Other. As elsewhere in the nation, crime victims and perpetrators of same are disproportionately black, with Hispanics slightly over-represented as both victim and perpetrator, and whites somewhat underrepresented for same.
George Soros Hacked
August 16th, 2016The big news this week is that, following hot on the heels of the DNC hack, is that George Soros got hacked. That’s pretty significant, given how thoroughly Soros has funded the American left.
Pretty much everyone knows that Soros is Mr. Moneybags to the left. However, few people realize just how how extensive his influence is. For one thing, Soros is big on ethnic grievance mongering, helping fund:
Organizations that depict America as a nation whose enduring racism must be counterbalanced by racial and ethnic preferences in favor of nonwhites:
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund calls itself “the nation’s leading Latino legal civil rights organization.” The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law provides “legal services to address racial discrimination.” The NAACP and its Legal Defense and Educational Fund uses “litigation, advocacy, and public education” to promote “structural changes” and “achieve racial justice in the United States” The National Council of La Raza charges that “discrimination severely limits the economic and social opportunities available to Hispanic Americans.”
Snip.
Organizations that promote open borders, mass immigration, a watering down of current immigration laws, increased rights and benefits for illegal aliens, and ultimately amnesty:
The American Immigration Council—formerly known as the the American Immigration Law Foundation—supports “birthright citizenship” for children born to illegal immigrants in the U.S. Casa de Maryland periodically sponsors “know your rights” training sessions to teach illegals how to evade punishment in the event that they are apprehended in an immigration raid. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center belongs to the sanctuary movement that tries to shield illegal aliens from the law. The Migration Policy Institute advocates a more permissive U.S. refugee admissions and resettlement policy, as well as more social-welfare benefits for illegals residing in the U.S. LatinoJustice PRLDF is a legal advocacy group that “protects opportunities for all Latinos … especially the most vulnerable—new immigrants and the poor.” The Immigration Policy Center states that “[r]equiring the 10-11 million unauthorized immigrants residing in the U.S. to register with the government and meet eligibility criteria in order to gain legal status is a key element of comprehensive immigration reform.” The National Immigration Forum opposes the enhancement of the U.S. Border Patrol and the construction of a border fence to prevent illegal immigration. The National Immigration Law Center works to help low-income immigrants gain access to government-funded welfare programs on the same basis as legal American citizens.
And that’s among the dozens of other categories of leftist groups Soros has funded.
In this election cycle, Soros dumped “more than $30 million in seed money to Black Lives Matter affiliated groups.”
Jihad watch also noted that Soros gave $50,000 to do opposition research on groups opposing Jihad:
Ironically, much of the Center for American Progress’ libelous and inaccurate “research” on the alleged purveyors of “Islamophobia” focused on the money we were all supposedly raking in, in an attempt to portray us as cynical profiteers only in it for the money. The CAP reports wildly exaggerated, misrepresented, and distorted the financial data, and meanwhile were making huge sums themselves to do it. Jihad Watch has never received a single grant as large as these that CAP received from Soros: the real cynical profiteers were Soros’ paid operatives.
Given all this, it’s a little disappointing that everything I’ve seen released so far just seems to be banal organizational detritus (although this doc seems to have some interesting funding information). Maybe more significant revelations are coming.
You can find the Soros docs themselves here.
This Week in Jihad for August 15, 2016
August 15th, 2016Welcome to the return of this week in jihad! (And by “this week” I mean “since the last time I did a roundup.”)
