Congratulations on making it to the end of a difficult but exhilarating 2024, and I hope you had a Merry Christmas! Christmas week is always slow, so this will be a smaller LinkSwarm than usual, and thank goodness for that. More Biden misdeeds, lots of Russian stuff blows up, two horrible gay pedophiles go to prison forever, and Democratic judges going out of their way to punish the victims. Let’s dig in!
President Joe Biden is transferring more student loan debt onto American taxpayers with only weeks left until he departs the Oval Office.
The Biden administration announced Friday that it is giving $4.28 billion of student debt relief to almost 55,000 more public service workers including teachers, nurses, and law enforcement officials.
“From Day One of my Administration, I promised to make sure that higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” Biden said in a statement.
“Because of our actions, millions of people across the country now have the breathing room to start businesses, save for retirement, and pursue life plans they had to put on hold because of the burden of student loan debt.”
The Department of Education is forgiving the debt through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, a policy that permits the forgiveness of remaining student loans for public employees who have made 120 monthly payments.
Federal bureacurats are simply more equal than mere citizens…
Remember how Biden commuted and pardoned some of the worst people in the world earlier this month? Well, he found worse ones still.
President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row, reclassifying their sentences to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from allowing their executions when he returns to office in January.
The 37 men were all convicted of murder. Their sentences will be reclassified from execution to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the White House.
The men whose sentences are being reclassified include Shannon Agofsky, who murdered a bank president, dumped his body in a lake, and then killed another man in prison; Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks, who escaped from prison and killed two women while on a 17-day crime spree; Ricky Allen Fackrell, a white supremacist who killed a prison inmate; and Daryl Lawrence, who killed a police officer during a bank robbery.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in statement. “But guided by my conscience and my experience, . . . I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
Biden only left three men on federal death row: Robert Bowers, the gunman who shot and killed eleven worshipers at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue in 2018; Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine people at a black church during a Bible study in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber.
Biden’s so opposed to the death penalty he only refused to commute sentences for those criminals the public would pay attention to…
Do blue state Democratic officials think they can defy the federal government on deporting illegal aliens? A hard rain is gonna fall.
Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson said Thursday that incoming border czar Tom Homan is starting with Democratic Chicago to deport illegal immigrants in order to set a precedent for other cities threatening to block his efforts.
Since President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Homan as border czar, the former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director has warned Democratic mayors to step aside as some have threatened to refuse cooperation with ICE on mass deportations.
Snip.
Hanson argued that Homan’s focus on Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson will set a precedent, emphasizing that the incoming border czar is listening to Democratic constituents concerned about illegal immigration in their city.
Snip.
I know the most obnoxious, the most crazy, the most nullification advocate in one of the second or third largest cities is Chicago, that crazy Mayor Johnson,’” Hanson continued. “‘So we’re going to tell him first, you try to stop the federal government and you think you’re South Carolina 1832 or you think you’re firing on Fort Sumner. You’re going to regret it because you were breaking federal law and we have a lot more federal laws that you would want us to follow in your interest than you do federal laws to break.’”
“That’s going to be interesting because what Homan is basically doing is talking over the mayor’s head to the black constituencies of Chicago and saying, don’t worry, your mayor doesn’t, he’s going to break the law, but I’m going to follow it and I’ll put him in jail for your benefit so that you don’t have to worry about Venezuelans and Colombians shooting you or taking over your social services,” Hanson added.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to continue military support for Ukraine, the Financial Times reported on Dec. 20, citing undisclosed sources.
Three officials familiar with discussions revealed that Trump intends to keep supplying US military equipment to Ukraine after his inauguration.
Trump’s foreign policy team also informed European officials that he plans to push NATO allies to raise their defense spending to 5% of their GDP. NATO member states currently follow a goal of allocating 2% of their GDP to defense spending.
A Georgia couple was sentenced to 100 years in prison without parole after adopting two boys and sexually abusing them.
William and Zachary Zulock will each spend the rest of their lives behind bars, after pleading guilty to aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation, incest, and sexual exploitation of children. Each were sentenced on Dec. 19.
Sanders said he first encountered some of these services while investigating Kremlin-funded disinformation efforts in Ukraine, as they are all useful in assembling large-scale, anonymous social media campaigns.
According to Sanders, all 122 of the services he tested are processing transactions through a company called Cryptomus, which says it is a cryptocurrency payments platform based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Cryptomus’ website says its parent firm — Xeltox Enterprises Ltd. (formerly certa-pay[.]com) — is registered as a money service business (MSB) with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC).
Sanders said the payment data he gathered also shows that at least 56 cryptocurrency exchanges are currently using Cryptomus to process transactions, including financial entities with names like casher[.]su, grumbot[.]com, flymoney[.]biz, obama[.]ru and swop[.]is.
These platforms are built for Russian speakers, and they each advertise the ability to anonymously swap one form of cryptocurrency for another. They also allow the exchange of cryptocurrency for cash in accounts at some of Russia’s largest banks — nearly all of which are currently sanctioned by the United States and other western nations.
An analysis of their technology infrastructure shows that all of these exchanges use Russian email providers, and most are directly hosted in Russia or by Russia-backed ISPs with infrastructure in Europe (e.g. Selectel, Netwarm UK, Beget, Timeweb and DDoS-Guard). The analysis also showed nearly all 56 exchanges used services from Cloudflare, a global content delivery network based in San Francisco.
“Purportedly, the purpose of these platforms is for companies to accept cryptocurrency payments in exchange for goods or services,” Sanders told KrebsOnSecurity. “Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to find any goods for sale with websites using Cryptomus, and the services appear to fall into one or two different categories: Facilitating transactions with sanctioned Russian banks, and platforms providing the infrastructure and means for cyber attacks.”
“Wells Fargo Exits Net-Zero Banking Alliance After Texas Probe Into Anti-Energy Policies Attorney General Paxton has ended a review of the bank and allowed state governmental entities to do business with Wells Fargo again.”
Another day, another fake hate crime hoax. “A Tennessee college revealed that racist messages found written on campus were fabricated by a student in an apparent attempt to make Donald Trump supporters look bad. Rhodes College confirmed to Fox News Digital that a student had admitted to leaving the messages strewn about campus that were found over Thanksgiving break and were being investigated as a hate crime. Instead, it turned out to be yet another race hoax.”
Georgia woman arrested for evicting squatter from her house. And then the judge scolded her for her “privilege.” Sounds like a whole lot of people need federal equal protection lawsuits filed against them. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Lazy Thanksgiving Weekend Video Blogging” continues here at BattleSwarm, with a random Ryan Long comedy bit on activists.
“I feel like vegans are the most hated activist group vegans get so much shit. People will be like ‘FUck you. You’re like that pedophile. They’re like ‘behind him there’s a vegan!'”
“If you watch certain YouTube videos, investigators demanded your data from Google.”
“Investigators have approached Google and said ‘We want to know who watched certain videos, give that information up.’ So as Chase [DiBenedetto] writes, if you’ve ever jokingly wondered if your search or viewing history is going to put you on some kind of watch list, your concern may be more than warranted.”
“Google was ordered to hand over the names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity of YouTube accounts and IP addresses that watched certain YouTube videos, which was part of a larger criminal investigation by federal investigators.”
It turns out the feds had sent a link to this video to a single “suspected cryptocurrency launderer,” but was able to get a warrant for personal details on everyone who watched it.
Also, it wasn’t some sort of illegal video, either. They were “public YouTube tutorials on mapping via drones and augmented reality software. Forbes says the videos were watched more than 30,000 times, presumably by thousands of users unrelated the case.” But the government now has their personal data. And the past five years has shown that if the deep state gets your data, they won’t hesitate to abuse it to advance their interests.
Google says they “push back” against overbroad demands. But given how woke Google has become, how hard do you think they’re going to push aback against data demands targeting the right?
“This is the latest chapter in a disturbing trend where we see government agencies increasingly transforming search warrants into digital dragnets.”
“It’s unconstitutional, it’s terrifying, and it’s happening every day.”
“When you’re on the internet, your actions are being tracked by all kinds of entities.”
“The scary part is they’ve got this information on you to begin with, but we’ve known that for a while.”
“Your car is snitching on you, and so on so is your smartphone, and now so is Google, on occasion.”
“‘We want the information on tens of thousands of people,’ and suddenly you realize ‘OK, this is an extremely broad search. Couldn’t you narrow it a little better than that?'”
Asking for such information in a search warrant is an overly-broad abuse of power and violation of privacy rights, and also suggests sloppy investigative technique on the part of the feds.
Here’s hoping the courts quash such requests in he future.
Congratulations on surviving the first 1/6th of 2024! The Big Guy is exactly who we knew he was all along, Houston police screw up, some big crime stories, Wayne LaPierre is found guilty, and the world’s saddest Oompa Loompa. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Remember when Joe Biden told the American people that his son didn’t make money in China?” asked Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) in a video posted to X. ““Well, not only did he lie about his son Hunter making money in China, but it also turns out that $40,000 in laundered China money landed in Joe Biden’s bank account in the form of a personal check.”
Today, a U.S. District Court issued its final judgment in Texas v. Garland, which was a challenge to the U.S. House’s proxy voting rule under the Quorum Clause of the Constitution. In its final judgment, the Court concluded that U.S. House members must be physically present for their vote to comply with the Constitution’s Quorum Clause. Attorneys from the Texas Public Policy Foundation argued the merits at trial in January of this year.
The lawsuit was originally filed with the State of Texas in response to Congress’ unlawful passage of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in December 2022. The U.S. Constitution requires a quorum, or a majority, of House members to be physically present for the U.S. House of Representatives to conduct business. As less than half of the members were present when the legislation was passed, with the rest voting by proxy, this legislation never should have passed, and the president should not have signed it.
“This meticulous, 120-page opinion was written after a full trial on the merits,” said TPPF senior attorney Matt Miller. “The Court correctly concluded that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 violated the Quorum Clause of the U.S. Constitution because a majority of House members was not physically present when the $1.7 trillion spending bill was passed. Proxy voting is unconstitutional.”
This basically says that every bit of that $1.7 trillion spending was unconstitutional, along with any laws, etc. passed in that omnibus. Just how do you back out all that money that’s been spent, assuming this is upheld?
Record meth bust in Eagle Pass. “The U.S. Customs and Border Protections (CBP) have seized six and a half tons of methamphetamine, over 13,000 pounds, at the Eagle Pass Port of Entry, making it the largest ever seizure in a single enforcement action.”
Mitch McConnell announced on Wednesday that he will step down as the Senate Republican leader in November, ending his tenure as the longest-serving Senate leader in history.
“This will be my last term as Republican Leader of the Senate,” the 82-year-old veteran of the chamber said to his colleagues on the Senate floor. “I’m not going anywhere… It’s time for the next generation of leadership.”
He’ll leave the senate when his term ends in 2027. You can condemn him as the ultimate swamp creature, or praise him for his effectiveness at things like getting Trump’s Supreme Court picks confirmed. It’s two sides of the same coin. I’m not sure he was as effective as Trent Lott or Howard Baker.
Houston Police Department Chief Troy Finner called it a “dark day” at a press conference for the Houston Police Department, announcing that 4,107 adult sexual assault cases were wrongly closed without investigation.
A case management code “suspended for lack of personnel” was used, which led to closing the cases without actually investigating them.
Finner said he was first made aware the code even existed in 2021 and instructed HPD’s special victims division to stop using the code; however, he found out on February 7, 2024 that it continued. HPD first began using the code in 2016.
He said he immediately ordered a review of all cases suspended using this code dating back to 2016, which will take at least 30 days to complete. While the number of cases they have today is 4,017, he says it is “fluid and subject to change.”
60 Minutes gets to enjoy some of that vibrant Muslim diversity in Sweden to the sides of their faces.
60 Minutes goes to Sweden to make a heart warming special about diversity, but see a different situation, then this happens. pic.twitter.com/oUd2ZuJ0RV
“After five days of deliberations, a jury in New York on Friday held the National Rifle Association liable for financial mismanagement and found that Wayne LaPierre, the group’s former CEO, corruptly ran the nation’s most prominent gun rights group. The jury determined that LaPierre’s violation of his duties cost the NRA $5,400,000, though he already repaid roughly $1.5 million to the organization.” Here’s the thing: While they prosecution was unquestionably politically motivated, LaPierre did run a crooked ship. In the long run, forcing Wayne and his corrupt cronies from office has done the NRA a huge favor.
Argentine President Javier Milei just ended his country’s budget deficit in nine weeks. If Trump and the Republicans manage to control both houses of congress next year, there’s no reason they can’t balance the budget…assuming they have the will.
“Austin Fire Department Chaplain Dismissed for Comments on Transgender Athletes Sues for Free Speech Violation. A chaplain for the Austin Fire Department was dismissed from his position after expressing beliefs on his personal blog about protecting women’s sports.”
After a volunteer chaplain of the Austin Fire Department (AFD) was fired for posting on his personal blog that men and women are biologically different and should not compete against each other in sports, a lawsuit was filed in an effort to protect his rights to free speech and religious freedom.
The Alliance Defending Freedom said in a press release that it filed a motion Tuesday on behalf of Dr. Andrew Fox, who served in a voluntary capacity as chaplain for AFD before he was dismissed in 2021.
Unlike APD, AFD public and union leadership has been infected by social justice. Dr. Fox appears to have a very strong case on viewpoint discrimination grounds.
White TV host tries to race-bait Jerry Seinfeld for hosting “mostly” white male comedians on his show. It doesn’t go well for him.
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bipartisan bill into law authorizing the release of grand jury transcripts from an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. The new legislation, signed by the Florida governor on Thursday, will allow a public release of the jury’s transcripts from the 2006 probe into Epstein’s abuse of underage girls. The new measure goes into effect July 1.”
Weird Austin crime story: “Prominent local businessman arrested in Austin, accused of arson.”
A prominent Austin businessman and founder of Continental Automotive Group, or CAG, was arrested Thursday on charges of Felony Arson and a State Jail Felony offense of Burglary.
Dorsey Bryan Hardeman, 75, is accused of starting a fire at a downtown Austin building on Sunday, according to an arrest affidavit.
According to Travis County court records, Trey Collins with the Minton, Bassett, Flores & Carsey firm has been retained as the attorney representing Hardeman. Sam Bassett told KXAN the office has just begun its work and “it is premature to comment. However, we will provide Mr. Hardeman an appropriate and vigorous defense.”
The affidavit said the Austin Fire Department responded to a building fire at the former Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop on 400 Nueces St. on Feb. 25.
Once the fire was contained, fire investigators determined the incident to be incendiary and found metal shavings on the ground below the door suggesting the door lock had been drilled out, records state.
The affidavit states fire investigators watched video surveillance from the building, which showed an older man entering the building with a red container consistent with a plastic gas tank.
Multiple cameras inside the building show a man pouring liquid from the red container and dropping multiple matches on the ground, the affidavit said.
Records show the man arrived at the location in a white 4-door Mercedez SUV.
Investigators interviewed the owner of Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop who told AFD Hardeman was the owner of the property next door and had previously asked about purchasing the property at 400 Nueces St.
This is not what people refer to as “the perfect crime.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Remember Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me? It turns out McDonalds didn’t destroy his liver, a decade of alcoholism did.
Happy New Year, everyone! The Biden Recession bites deeper, Israel dirtnaps a top terrorist, Harvard’s chief plagiarist finally steps down, and the crypto CEO who wasn’t there. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The monthly nonfarm payrolls (from the Establishment Survey) may have been weak at 216K but the far more accurate Household Survey showed that the number of Employed workers actually collapsed by an unprecedented 683K, the biggest drop since the US economy was shutdown by covid!
Even scarier, while the monthly grind higher in the payrolls number (pulled from the far less accurate Establishment Survey) means that US jobs hit a record high every month with bizarre consistency and in December this was certainly the case, the total nonfarm employment number rose to an all time high 157.232 million, the abovementioned collapse in US Employment (per Household survey) meant that there were only 161.183 million employed people in the US, the lowest since June, with the now traditional divergence between these two surveys glaringly obvious.
A senior Hamas leader was killed Tuesday in a drone strike in Beirut, Lebanon, during a meeting between Palestinian factions at a Hamas office.
Saleh al-Arouri, deputy chairman of Hamas’s political bureau and commander of the terror group’s military wing in the West Bank, and at least five others died from the explosion, which occurred near Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut, Lebanese state media reported. Several more were injured. Following the blast, Hamas blamed Israel for the “Zionist raid” amid its ongoing war with the Jewish state. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike.
Many Israeli officials declined to comment. However, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich posted a statement on X shortly after the attack: “Surely your enemies will perish, O Israel.”
In November, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated he ordered the nation’s Mossad spy agency to eliminate Hamas leaders around the world after the militant group’s coordinated October 7 attack. Netanyahu’s office also declined to comment about the explosion.
Al-Arouri, whom Hamas described as “one of the architects” of the terror attack on Israel, had close ties with Yahwa Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza. Al-Arouri is the most senior Hamas leader to have been killed since the war began in early October.
A good chunk of the Epstein files have finally been released. Some revelations: Bill Clinton “likes them young” and Donald Trump didn’t have sex with at least one girl who was asked under oath about it.
Harvard President Claudine Gay finally does the right thing and resigns in wake of burgeoning plagiarism scandal.
A three act farce: Act 1: “Ohio governor Mike DeWine (R.) on Friday vetoed a bill that would have banned both transgender procedures for minors and trans student-athlete participation in school sports in the state.” Act 2: Turns out DeWine has taken taken over $40,000 in donations from pro-child-genital-mutilation hospitals. Act 3: “Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine issued an “emergency” executive order Friday banning child gender-transition surgeries after receiving intense backlash last week for vetoing a bill with a broader but similar mandate.” Ohio’s Republican legislature can and should override DeWine’s foolish veto.
Robert F. Kennedy, jr. qualifies for the presidential ballot in Utah.
Last month, American Values 2024, a super PAC supporting the third-party candidate, announced a plan to spend nearly $15 million to get Kennedy on the ballot in ten states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York and Texas. All are important to winning the 2024 race.
I don’t see RFK Jr. doing even as well in Utah as Egg McMuffin did in 2016, and of the other states, only Arizona, Colorado, Michigan and Nevada might have any effect on the election, all four of which went (however fraudulently) for Biden in 2020.
Ricky Gervais has a great idea: He and Dave Chappelle should co-host the Oscars. That would indeed be a smash ratings success, and I would watch the Oscars for the first time this century.
This is the only way for us to live in peace,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbot. “The citizens of Austin have been at war with the people of Texas for many years now, and to end the bloodshed for future generations, we are willing to recognize Austin as its own separate and sovereign land.”
The resolution brought much-needed relief to the war-torn area, where battle lines had been drawn along the border of Austin. “The weirdo hipsters of Austin can stand down now,” said Texas Senator Ted Cruz in a statement acknowledging the resolution. “The people of Austin can now stop patrolling the perimeter of the city in armored tanks and go back to driving electric vehicles, painting strange murals nobody understands, and hating everything the United States stands for.”
Here’s a story I’m covering just for the “What the hell?” factor.
The Tron blockchain has overtaken Bitcoin as the cryptocurrency network most favored by groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, which are designated as terror organizations by the U.S., U.K. and other jurisdictions, Reuters reported on Monday.
There has been a sharp rise in cryptocurrency seizures from Tron wallets since 2021 and a decline in those from Bitcoin wallets, Reuters’ analysis found.
Israel has made 87 such seizures from Tron wallets this year, two-thirds of the total number going back to July 2021. These include 39 from wallets the country said in June were owned by Lebanon-based Hezbollah and 26 in July from Hamas ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
“Earlier it was Bitcoin and now our data shows that these terrorist organizations tend to increasingly favor Tron,” Mriganka Pattnaik, CEO of blockchain analysis firm Merkle Science, said.
The things that jump out at me are:
Evidently there’s a cryptocurrency called “Tron,” because nothing says “Cool” quite like a 41 year old Disney movie.
Hezbollah and Hamas have been using it, because financing an illegal terrorist network across international borders is one of the few use cases for the anonymous transactions that cryptocurrency currently supports. But that doesn’t seem to matter, since…
Israel was still able to seize the money, which seems to suggest that whole “anonymous, untraceable” appeal of cryptocurrency has some fairly sizeable holes in it.
Tron evidently is worth about 10 cents per coin, which seems slightly higher than the going rate for Dogecoin right now. Bitcoin is somewhere around $38,000.
How terrorist networks came to use cryptocurrency would be a really, really cyberpunk story if it weren’t so dull…
No job yet, but my dogs and I are all doing fine. Israel’s land incursion into Gaza is still pending, more Democratic Party graft, another House Speaker aspirant drops out, and media flame outs at Disney and Apple. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Tanks line up at Gaza border as ground invasion appears imminent.” I swear I’ve seen some variation of this headline every day this week, though.
“Israel Evacuates Northern City as Tensions Flare along Lebanon Border.” I keep checking Livemap, and I’m not seeing the sort of activity I would expect if Hezbollah were really getting ready to throw-down with the IDF, but I’m sure they want Israel to think they’re ready to act when the Gaza operation proper gets under way.
“U.S. Navy Destroyer Intercepts Missiles Launched from Yemen, ‘Potentially’ Targeting Israel, Pentagon Says.” I’ve got to wonder how much of Iran’s GDP is spent building crappy missiles to target Israel from its various client states.
“President Joe Biden received a $200,000 personal check from his brother shortly after James Biden received a “shady” loan in the same amount, House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) revealed Friday.” If it seems like there’s news of shady Biden influence peddling every week, it’s only because there is…
Speaking of shady Democrat financial shenanigans, alleged multi-billion dollar crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried allegedly gave $1 million in stolen customer money to Beto O’Rourke.
On Monday, former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh testified that FTX had used stolen customer money from Alameda Research to make political donations, even after learning it owed $13 billion to customers. In short, Sam Bankman-Fried was using customer funds to make political donations to Democrats, according to Singh’s testimony.
One of those Democrats was failed Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke, who in November of last year reported returning a $1 million donation from SBF just four days before the November election because he was ‘uncomfortable receiving such a large, unsolicited donation.’
In truth, the adderall-addicted SBF (or one of his employees) fat-fingered what was supposed to be a $100,000 donation, and instead ended up being $1 million.
In January, the Washington Free Beacon reported that O’Rourke kept the $100,000.
House lawmakers are warning that the Biden administration’s $27 billion green energy “slush fund” at the Environmental Protection Agency could be used to finance Democratic political allies and Chinese solar companies, according to a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund will be responsible for distributing $27 billion to nonprofit groups and the green energy technology sector by next September.
Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee said the short deadline for doling out the money will make it difficult for the agency to conduct proper vetting of grantees. They also noted that some EPA officials previously worked for nonprofit groups that stand to benefit from the funding and questioned how the EPA will prevent money from going to Chinese companies that dominate the solar industry.
“Hardworking Americans are facing record high energy costs as a result of the administration’s massive tax-and-spend agenda, which has driven inflation across the board,” House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.) told the Free Beacon. “Energy and Commerce Republicans won’t stand by and let President Biden use this $27 billion slush fund to line the pocket of his political friends or use it on technology that is produced in China.”
The only questions is which parts of the federal government aren’t being used as a slush fund for Democratic Party cronies. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The mother of Soros-backed Orleans Parish DA Jason Williams was carjacked.
“State Audit Finds Harris County Violated Texas Election Law in 2022. In a preliminary report, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office found that Harris County did not provide statutorily mandated supplies of ballot paper.”
Southern Poverty Law Center is “deeply saddened by the tragic loss of Leonard Cure.” Cure was pulled over by a cop for driving 100 MPH, failed to comply, and was shot only after two different taser jolts failed to stop him and he started choking the police officer while yelling ‘Yeah, Bitch!” Leonard Cure was a classic case of “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” and richly deserved his dirt-napping.
Apple TV has problems with The Problem and cancels John Stewart’s interview show. “When Stewart broke the news to the staff, he informed them that potential show topics discussing China, artificial intelligence, and the 2024 presidential campaign were points of contention for the Apple executives.”
Are cheap Chinese knockoff tool batteries just as good as Milwaukee-brand batteries? Not so much.
I saw Peter Gabriel perform in Austin on Wednesday, on pricey tickets bought well before my most recent job ended. This is pretty close to the end of his tour, but he’ll be in Houston Saturday.
“Those terrorists may want to die, but they apparently don’t want to die badly enough to come to Texas.”
It’s surprisingly dusty for October.
Pakita, a dog in Argentina, spent nearly three years in an animal shelter after being mistaken for a stray. The shelter owners eventually found her true owner and arranged a reunion. Initially hesitant, Pakita's excitement grew as she recognized her owner's scent. Credit: Jukin pic.twitter.com/qdgXBiWogE
Below is the tip jar, if you’re so inclined. Thanks to everyone who donated to the Non-Homeless Blogger Fund. I’m bad at thanking people individually the way I should, but let me know if you want public recognition in this space or not.
Happy Good Friday! The Biden Recession continues it’s downward spiral…
…a deep dive into how the Russian Conspiracy Hoax has corrupted institutions, Chicago doubled down on failure, and unions want to take your packages away. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Small Businesses File For Bankruptcy At Record Pace, Surpassing COVID Crash.” So much for a Biden presidency helping the little guy…
They could either keep doing what reporters had done since the beginning of time, confining themselves to saying things they could prove. Or, they could adopt a new approach, in which you can say anything is true or confirmed, so long as a politician or intelligence official told you it was.
We know how that worked out. I was never invited back, nor for a long time was any other traditionally skeptical reporter, while Nance — one of the most careless spewers of provable errors ever to appear on a major American news network — became one of the Peacock’s most familiar faces.
I don’t know Malcolm and don’t mean to get nasty about this, but: even before that January 2017 broadcast, he had an extraordinary record, one that should have scared away any retraction-averse producer. On August 20th, he went on with Joy Reid and said the Green Party’s Jill Stein “has a show on Russia Today.” This wasn’t true, as Stein quickly pointed out, but MSNBC refused to acknowledge the error. Media watchdog FAIR repeatedly asked for a correction, as did friend Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept, but they refused to budge.
This may not seem a big deal, but at the time it was still weird and something of a pioneering move for a major news organization to just refuse to fix a clear error.
Nance went on to make a lot more, some I would classify as important. A tweet of his in late 2016 was a major source for the pre-election misconception that the Wikileaks-leaked emails of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta were “riddled with forgeries” and “#blackpropaganda.” He would regularly make all sorts of claims without evidence, like that the K.G.B. had “been surveilling Donald Trump since 1977,” and that “little” comes from Trump’s mouth that isn’t “carefully planned to benefit the Russian Republic,” and all sorts of other nonsense.
I was quiet until he said Glenn “shows his true colors as an agent of Trump and Moscow,” “reports in to his masters in Russia,” and is “deep in the Kremlin pocket.” This was outrageous. I was shocked MSNBC didn’t fire him on the spot. Still, I voiced objections in a measured way I hoped might get through, either to Nance or to someone at the network. “I’ve been on the air with Malcolm Nance and he seemed like a nice guy,” I tweeted, “but this awful practice of calling people traitors and foreign agents based on no evidence has really gotten out of hand.”
Nance’s response was “Ok, you’ve convinced me. You need to be blocked. #Bye.” He remained a regular guest on the network, which didn’t cool on booking him until the Russia story fell apart with the release of the Mueller report the next year.
The Nance situation was symbolic of what happened at the network from the beginning of Trump’s term, really beginning in early 2017. It went from being a place where you had to be at least in the ballpark of demonstrably true to being a place where the factual standard was, “Whatever dogshit drops out of the mouth of any hack or spook.”
Moreover the network didn’t just re-report this stuff, it became the favored launching pad for all the most blatant blue-Anon disinformation, like California congressman Adam Schiff saying he had “more than circumstantial” evidence of collusion, or former Obama defense official Evelyn Farkas suggesting the Trump administration would try to destroy evidence if they “found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff’s dealing with Russians.” Farkas later testified under oath that she “didn’t know anything” about collusion.
Snip.
As we later found out, among other things via Jeff Gerth’s gigantic piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, the FBI said nothing about many stories it knew to be wrong, including the influential New York Times exposé, “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.” The possibility that officials can lie to us in this way — leaking, asking that attribution be limited to uncheckable “sources familiar with the matter,” then saying nothing as stories start taking water — is exactly why we don’t stick our necks out for such people.
Snip.
the network doubled down, seemingly hiring as contributors every unemployed prosecutor or natsec official they could find, especially from failed Russiagate probes. They’d already spent on names like ex-CIA head John O’Brennan, former assistant FBI counterintelligence chief Frank Figliuzzi, House Intel Director of Investigations and future congressman Dan Goldman (who met Adam Schiff in an MSNBC green room), and federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner. Now, they added cadaverous Mueller sidekick Andrew Weissmann and, astonishingly, Weissmann’s deputy, the fired FBI lawyer Lisa Page. They also began bringing in Page’s lover, fellow FBI firee Peter Strzok, as a commentator.
America became familiar with Page and Strzok after their texts — referring to the Trump-Russia investigation as an “insurance policy,” and ripping “sandernistas,” among other things — became public. These were living monuments to press excesses of the Trump era. As Gerth wrote, Strzok quietly reported to bosses after the Times’s “repeated contacts” story came out, saying, “We are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.” Strzok in other words was exactly the kind of person to whom Rachel might have been referring when she rhapsodized about FBI “not saying anything” to dissuade us from believing errors.
Page on April 10, 2017 got a text from Strzok, saying he wanted to talk to her “about [a] media leak strategy with DOJ.” This was a day before a Washington Post story that cited “law enforcement and other U.S. officials” in saying the secret FISA court found probable cause to believe former Trump aide Carter Page (no relation) was an “agent of a foreign power.” Whoever leaked this was sabotaging not just the Post, but every downstream media org picking up the story, because the story at its roots was wrong: Carter Page was not an “agent of a foreign power,” as the FISA court had been misled, by Steele and the FBI. MSNBC was one of the first outlets to regurgitate this thing.
When sources lie to you, you should be mad. At minimum, you should be ripping their names out of your Rolodex (or modern equivalent). MSNBC did the opposite, hiring seemingly everyone who’d helped them down this reputation-tarnishing path.
MSNBC bet everything on its switch in 2017, and though it paid handsomely at first — in spring of 2017 they became the first cable network in two decades to unseat Fox for the #1 spot, with Rachel owning the top-rated non-sports program on cable — the collapse of the Mueller investigation triggered a long, frankly earned, post-trout-fishing slide. No doubt the indictment of Donald Trump will reanimate things, but prior to that it was grim, as Fox was beating CNN and MSNBC combined by the end of January. The ratings picture for March showed that MSNBC’s top show was The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, rated 11th, followed by The Beat With Ari Melber at 16th.
After all this, after throwing away all their standards, clowning themselves with years of wrong stories, doling out rice bowls to the procession of spooks who now clog their airwaves, and watching as their ratings predictably collapsed, now they want to give me a hard time. Not because I got anything wrong, but because they don’t like my opinions, or where things like the Twitter Files reports came from.
Stuck on stupid. “Far-Left Democrat Brandon Johnson Wins Chicago Mayoral Race.”
Johnson, 47, is a Cook County commissioner, a former social studies teacher, and a paid lobbyist for the radical Chicago Teachers Union. He ran as a decidedly far-left activist, and was backed by Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America.
Johnson campaigned on promoting racial justice and uplifting the working class. He is an opponent of charter schools. In order to pay for a variety of new social programs, he has called for increased taxes on large corporations, wealthy residents, and suburbanites who visit the city. During his campaign, Johnson promised $1 billion in new spending.
Because Lori Lightfoot’s administration wasn’t enough of a disaster…
Speaking of unions behaving badly, the Teamsters are planning a UPS strike.
Yet another reason for the Trump charges to be thrown out. “The progressive daughter of judge presiding over Donald Trump’s hush money case in Manhattan who worked for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden…Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter, Loren, 34, works for progressive digital strategies firm Authentic Campaigns. She was a digital director for Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign and has worked for a slew of other Democratic campaigns.”
Dispatches from the Soros-funded decline of New York City: “On Saturday, the New York Police Department announced that a man who shot a thief in self defense will be charged with attempted murder despite being shot twice and having to wrestle the firearm away from the thief.” (Update: Soros tool Alvin Bragg changed his mind.) (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
“Texas Bill Would Create State-Issued Gold-Backed Digital Currency.” This would be a super-interesting story if I thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell of this passing and the Federal Reserve not quashing it.
Here’s hedge fudge manager/university professor Patrick Boyle goes into detail of just how it went down.
“Silvergate’s importance in the recent crypto boom is possibly best described by a now-deleted testimonial from the bank’s website: ‘Life as a crypto firm can be divided up into before Silvergate and after Silvergate.It’s hard to overstate how much it revolutionized banking for blockchain companies.’ The testimonial was written by a millennial who still lives in his parents’ basement playing video games and has had some recent run-ins with the law. His name is Sam Bankman Fried.”
“If we go back ten years, Silvergate was a small San Diego based real estate lender that transformed itself into the go-to bank for the crypto industry.”
“Silvergate invited in crypto entrepreneurs and asked them what problems they were trying to solve and how the bank could be helpful. After this, the bank transformed itself and grew rapidly. It went public in late 2019 at a share price of $13, and a year later the stock price had risen by 1,580% as it became a key interchange point between dollars and cryptocurrencies.”
“Major Silverlake clients included Paxos, bitFlyer, Kraken and also innovators in atonal rock music – Mars Junction…” [This is an inside joke. Mars Junction is the band of Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss, AKA the WInklevoss Twins of Facebook investing controversy] “…who also had some involvement in the Crypto industry. FTX and Alameda were also big customers.”
“The bank’s growth mirrored the growth of the crypto industry, and it declined alongside that industry too, announcing in a regulatory disclosure earlier this week that it plans to wind down operations in the face of ‘turmoil in digital currency markets.'”
Last week Silvergate had announced that they would be unable to file an annual report with the SEC on time due to a weakening in their capital position. They announced that they might be forced to close at that time, blaming growing problems, in part on pending investigations into their operations. The filing confirmed that Silvergate is being investigated by the US Department of Justice.”
“Customers rushed over the last few months to pull money out of Silvergate. In January they reported that customers had withdrawn more than $8 billion, forcing them to sell held-to-maturity assets to fund the run, accruing losses on the sale of those securities of $718 million dollars.”
Why was Silvergate so important in the world of crypto? Well, people who trade cryptocurrencies often want to use dollars to buy crypto, or they want to sell crypto and receive dollars and the dollar side of those transactions is where things get bogged down. If you are transferring large sums of money to buy crypto, you need to deal with the US banking system, who might ask you a lot of questions relating to anti money laundering regulations. Crypto people hate questions like this. Similarly, if you just sold some crypto and want to deposit the dollars you received, most banks will have a long list of questions about the source of your funds, and there is a really good chance that they will simply refuse to do the transaction. It is going to be a struggle for a US regulated financial institution to show their regulator that they have done enough due diligence to be sure that your funds are not the proceeds of crime. And the last thing a bank needs is to be accused of money laundering; they would rather just simply not deal with suspicious transactions.
“For this reason, stablecoins like Tether and Terra exist – or existed.” If you weren’t paying attention, the value of theoretically stable Terra crashed hard last year.
“If you can convert your dollars into crypto once, you can then buy stablecoins that are supposed to always be worth a dollar, and then instead of buying and selling crypto, with actual dollars you buy and sell crypto with dollar-denominated stablecoins, your money can stay ‘on chain.’ The problem with that, is that you have to trust the stablecoin issuers, and they, for some reason, don’t always seem trustworthy. They won’t really tell you where the money is.”
“They’ll sometimes announce that they are going to be audited by a top 12 auditor (I’m not really sure what a top 12 auditor is – but when you hear that – you know you are getting number 12 on the list), and you start to wonder if Friehling & Horowitz made that list.” Friehling & Horowitz were Bernie Madoff’s auditors.
“If you have deposited your dollars with a crypto exchange or a stablecoin provider, they still need to deposit them somewhere. They need a bank too. Now (of course), another way of dealing with this banking issue, might be to lie to your bank about what your account is being used for (SBF and the team at FTX did that), but the technical term for ‘lying to your bank’ is Bank Fraud (as Sam Bankman-Fried just found out) – and you can get in trouble for that.”
“There was significant demand for a “crypto friendly bank” and Silvergate was willing to fill that role, when no other bank was willing to take that risk. Silvergate weren’t just crypto friendly either, they built their own payments network called the Silvergate Exchange Network to (according to their marketing documents) enable the efficient movement of U.S. dollars between participants 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.”
“As you might imagine, Silvergate (being the only bank that would deal with them) attracted a lot of big crypto customers, as these customers were able to open up accounts without lying too much.”
“Silvergate dealt with most of the big players in the industry and they were an actual US regulated bank with excruciatingly detailed audited financial statements and capital regulation. This meant that your money was safe at Silvergate, unlike at the other venues we just went over.”
“The beauty of dealing with these crypto customers, crypto exchanges, [was] that because you don’t have any real competition in this space, you don’t really have to pay them any interest on their deposits. You could take the billions of dollars they deposit with you, put it all in treasuries, and you get to keep all of the interest. You’ll probably have to spend some of the profits on lawyers to keep the regulators at bay, but overall you might have a profitable business. But that’s boring right? And no one gets involved in crypto for a boring life…”
“They had a product called SEN Leverage direct lending, where they would lend people money collateralized with bitcoin. Exchanges could also borrow dollars collateralized with bitcoin for corporate treasury and other business purposes. In January, they announced that total SEN Leverage commitments were $1.1 billion dollars and that all of their SEN Leverage loans ‘continued to perform as expected, with no losses or forced liquidations.’ So, as crazy as that business might sound, it was not really the source of their problems.”
“As of September, 2022 their balance sheet showed about $11.4 billion of ‘securities,’ meaning bonds: Treasury securities, mortgage-backed securities, agency bonds and so on and $1.4 billion of ‘loans,’ meaning the Bitcoin loans and some other real-estate lending. They had $13.2 billion worth of deposits at the end of September, most of them being from crypto companies – so non-interest paying deposits, the best kind.”
“The problem for Silvergate was that when FTX was exposed as being insolvent, crypto investors were considerably less willing to leave their cash on exchanges.”
“They asked for their money back from the exchanges, meaning that the crypto companies had to ask for their money back from Silvergate, so Silvergate was faced with a good old fashioned bank run – driven not by a loss of faith in Silvergate, but by a loss of faith in crypto exchanges. By the end of December, noninterest bearing deposits at Silvergate fell from $13.2 billion dollars to just $3.9 billion dollars.” Yowzers! It’s hard to expect any bank to survive an outflow of 2/3rds of their deposits in such a short period of time.”
“There is a good chance that if you had an account at a crypto exchange, that exchange banked with Silvergate, and if you closed your account and cashed out, the cash came from a deposit at Silvergate.”
“There were other FTX related problems too. When prosecutors started looking into the collapse of FTX, their attention was drawn to their banker – Silvergate, for hosting accounts connected to Sam Bankman-Fried. Now, a big problem for Silvergate, was that – with their money all tied up in bonds or lent out, Silvergate had to come up with around 9 billion dollars to pay out these withdrawals.”
“Their accounts show that by the end of December they had sold half of their bonds and had controversially borrowed $4.3 billion from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, a government institution that is in place to give short-term secured loans to banks that have a short-term liquidity problem.” That, and the FTX connection, attracted the attention of Washington D.C.
In September Silvergate had shown 3.1 billion dollars’ worth of bonds as being “held to maturity” and 8.3 billion dollars’ worth of bonds as being available for sale. The difference between these two classifications (from an accounting perspective) is that the available for sale bonds have to be marked to market – or held on the books at their fair market value, while the “held to maturity” bonds could be marked at their cost price. By the end of December there were no “held to maturity” bonds left on the balance sheet, meaning that they had either been sold, or reclassified as available for sale. One way or another, interest rates had gone up a lot in 2022, and these bonds were worth a lot less than they were being carried on the balance sheet at.
So they might have skated by if rising interest rates hadn’t wrecked their mark-to market.
The sale resulted in a loss of $751.4 million during the fourth quarter of 2022 and in addition, the company recorded a $134.5 million dollar impairment charge related to an estimated $1.7 billion dollars of securities it “expects to sell in the first quarter of 2023 to reduce borrowings.” This is because reclassifying some of the bonds to “available for sale” meant that they now had to be marked to market and that the loss had to be recognized under GAAP accounting rules. Silvergate also had to write down a $196 million dollar investment in “certain developed technology assets related to running a block-chain-based payment network” that it had bought in January 2022. So, all in, there was a net loss of over a billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2022.
“Bank capital requirements are ‘risk-based’ and need to be kept above 4% to be ‘adequately capitalized’ and above 5% to be considered ‘well capitalized.’ Different types of assets have different risk weights, and this is done to keep deposits safe.”
“A bank that makes a lot of mortgage and business loans might have a capital requirement of around 8%, and assets like bitcoin have a 100% capital requirement, meaning that a bank would need to have $100 of capital for every $100 of bitcoin on its books.”
“In September Silvergate was fine, as despite the Bitcoin loans, most of their money was in high quality bonds that had zero risk weights. But when their deposits went out the door and they had to sell assets and realize a billion-dollar net loss, they were left in a situation where an additional $19 million-dollar loss would but their capital below 5% and they would no longer be considered well capitalized.”
“Last week Silvergate announced that they had sold additional debt securities in January and February to repay the company’s outstanding advances from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco and that they ‘expect to record further losses related to the other-than-temporary impairment on the securities portfolio.’ These additional losses they said would ‘negatively impact the regulatory capital ratios of the company and could result in the bank being less than well-capitalized.” And that’s when Brunhilda strode on stage to give her farewell.
“This announcement caused the stock price to half that day and according to Bloomberg caused Coinbase, Galaxy, Paxos and other crypto firms to announce that they would stop accepting or initiating payments through Silvergate. These customers leaving were the final nail in the coffin, as they reduced deposits even further.”
“A bank run, on a real bank, caused by crypto related losses and crypto volatility.”
“Matt Levine at Bloomberg argues that one way to think about the rise and fall of Silvergate is that the crypto boom was at its heart a low-interest-rate phenomenon. People started speculating in crypto because interest rates were below the rate of inflation, and so Silvergate was hugely exposed to interest-rate risk simply because of its exposure to its crypto customers.”
“Rising interest rates caused the deposits to evaporate at the same time as the assets backing those deposits fell in value. Levine argues that (with hindsight), Silvergate’s risk management – a year ago – should have been laser-focused on the risk of rising interest rates crushing both its assets and its customers, and it should have hedged that risk one way or another.”
I know all this is long and a bit detailed and technical, but I wanted to point it out as an example of how a cascading chain of events (much like the Piper Alpha disaster) caused a failure, mainly how massive fraud on the basis of one crypto space player and rising interest rates ended up bankrupting a real bank in the real world.
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.
For more funny and enjoyable moments, please follow 
