Monthly Archives: February 2022

Exactly Where Did The Money Go?

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On Wednesday, The Washington Examiner reported that Black Lives Matter shut down all of its online fundraising streams late Wednesday afternoon. California recently threatened to hold the charity’s leaders personally liable over its lack of financial transparency.

The article reports:

The move comes less than a week after a Washington Examiner investigation found that BLM has had no known leader in charge of its $60 million bankroll since its co-founder resigned in May. California and Washington recently ordered BLM to cease all fundraising activities in their blue states due to the failure of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the legal entity that represents the national BLM movement, to report information about its finances in 2020, the year it raised tens of millions amid the racial protests and riots that followed George Floyd’s killing.

…The California Department of Justice told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday that “BLMGNF is prohibited from soliciting donations so long as its status is listed as delinquent.”

Despite the notice, BLM accepted a $1 donation from a Washington Examiner reporter based in California on Wednesday morning.

The California DOJ said Wednesday afternoon that it would not confirm or deny an investigation into BLM so as to “protect its integrity.”

BLM also received notice from the state of Washington on Jan. 5 to “immediately cease” all fundraising activities in the state. Washington warned the charity that it could face fines of $2,000 for each violation, but as recently as Monday, the charity accepted a $1 contribution from a Washington resident.

In April 2021, Townhall reported:

On Thursday, Facebook decided to censor a New York Post article about Black Lives Matter co-founder, Patrisse Cullors, a “trained Marxist” who has come under heavy criticism for the hypocrisy in her buying a $1.4 million home in a largely white neighborhood. The piece in question, by Isabel Vincent, from April 10, reported that “Marxist BLM leader buys $1.4 million home in ritzy LA enclave.”

On January 29, 2021, The New York Post reported:

Black Lives Matter transferred millions to a Canadian charity run by the wife of its co-founder to purchase a sprawling mansion that had once served as the headquarters of the Communist Party, public records show.

M4BJ, a Toronto-based non-profit set up by Janaya Khan and other Canadian activists, snagged the 10,000 square foot historic property for the equivalent of $6.3 million in cash in July 2021, according to Toronto property records viewed by The Post.

Khan is the wife of Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Global Foundation Network and a self-avowed Marxist.

It seems as if there might be a number of valid reasons for shutting down the online fundraising streams for Black Lives Matter.

 

The Consequences Of Giving Up Energy Independence

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In October 2021, I posted an article about the potential for Russia to use its supply of natural gas and its pipeline to Europe as a political weapon. This was not possible under the Trump administration because under President Trump America had achieved energy independence. America was capable of exporting natural gas to Europe as needed. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

On Wednesday, The Daily Caller reported the following:

The flow of natural gas through a key Russian-controlled pipeline suddenly stopped Wednesday as tensions continue to increase between Russia and the West.

The Yamal-Europe pipeline’s liquified natural gas (LNG) flows, which are operated by Russian state-run firm Gazprom and have usually been pumped westward from Russia to Germany through Poland, were halted early Wednesday, European data showed, according to Reuters. The sudden stoppage reportedly represented a setback after leaders expected the pipeline to return to its normal flow pattern.

In December 2021, Gazprom slowed the pipeline’s gas flows, which represent 10% of the region’s supply, and the company reversed the flow direction from westward to eastward. The sudden reversal sent natural gas prices, which had already spiked amid a European energy crisis, even higher.

Gazprom and the Russian government said that the alteration was a “commercial” decision and that customers would continue to receive purchased gas. But geopolitical tensions between Russia and members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have increased over the last several weeks, potentially putting Europe’s energy supply at risk.

Gazprom is located in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest publicly-listed natural gas company in the world and the largest company in Russia by revenue. Does anyone actually believe that Gazprom does not do the bidding of the Russian government? Does anyone actually believe that Gazprom would be in business if they did not adhere to the wishes of the Russian government?

The article concludes:

On Jan. 25, the White House announced it would help facilitate greater non-Russian natural gas flows into Europe. Such imports would come from North Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the U.S.

“We are collaborating with governments and market operators on supply of additional volumes of natural gas to Europe from diverse sources across the globe,” President Joe Biden said in a joint statement with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Jan. 28. “LNG in the short-term can enhance security of supply while we continue to enable the transition to net zero emissions.”

Gazprom didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Support From The People Who Know

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On Wednesday, 100% Fed Up posted an article about one group of people who have come out to help the Canadian truckers.

The article reports:

Polish immigrants arrived in Ottawa today with truckloads of Polish food for the Canadian truckers – #TruckersForFreedom – protesting the trucker vaccine mandate.

Thousands of Canadians have already come out in support of these truckers and what they stand for, lining the streets and highways to cheer on the convoy.

Among all of the support the truckers are getting, some of the most impactful support came from a group of Polish women, who were interviewed by Laura Lynn Tyler Thompson, former co-host of The 700 Club Canada.

Pulling up with trucks and crates filled with 1,550 Polish sausages, pączkis (polish donuts), and bread, these women came prepared to feed as many truckers as possible with all their delicious food.

When asked by Thompson why they brought all of this food, one of the women, Bernadette, replied,

“Because we stand behind them. We come from [a] communist country, and we came here because we didn’t want to have oppression. We wanted to live in the free country, and for the last two years, we’re living like prisoners. We are being told to stay at home, we’re told not to go to the restaurant, not to go to the church! I mean, this is unbelievable during communism times we were able and free to go to the church… I really can’t take it anymore.”

Wow. The backlash to the overreach of the Canadian government is amazing. Hopefully the backlash will spread to America in an obvious way. Please follow the link above to read the entire article and see the pictures. It is encouraging to see the people who have lived under tyranny protest the beginnings of tyranny in a supposedly free country.

The Predictable Truth

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The White House and the media have worked very hard to sell the idea that the economy is in good shape and that inflation really isn’t that bad; and if it is that bad, it’s because the economy is growing. They have also attempted to convince Americans that the supply line crisis is due to Covid. Hopefully Americans are waking up to the fact that neither one of those things is true.

On Wednesday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article that provides a much more honest assessment of where the American economy actually is. It is a rather long article, so I suggest that you follow the link and read the entire article. I will try to summarize some of the major points.

The article reports:

The business and financial wires are melting down today as ADP Payrolls, the nation’s largest private sector payroll providing service, releases data from January showing a drop of 301,000 jobs.  [ADP Raw Data Here]

The financial, economic and business pundits are completely caught off guard and using the words “shocked”, “unexpected” and “surprised,” within their analysis.  These employment numbers just don’t align with an economy growing at 6.9%, as measured by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).  However, for CTH readers who have carefully scrutinized the economic claims and looked at the bigger picture through the prism of kitchen table checkbook economics, these results are not a surprise.

Every sector of the employment picture on Main Street USA is hit.  The pundits, following the narrative first seeded by the White House on Monday, are pointing to Omicron as the justification inside their review.  That’s nonsense.  For the better part of seven months these same pundits first claimed Delta, then shifted to Omicron as a way to explain the structurally weak economy.  All of that is nonsense.

What we are witnessing are the outcomes of massive inflation now hitting the labor market.  A drop in demand, and a subsequent drop in the employment of goods and services, is an unavoidable outcome of inflationary pressure on wages.

Let me say it again, on a macro level, natural consumer DEMAND has dropped – we are only now starting to see it surfacing in the statistical measures.

This is why White House spokesperson Jen Psaki made that weird statement on Monday.

The article concludes:

We are in the inflation hurricane right now.

The good news is… if domestic demand continues naturally contracting, due to unsustainable inflation, eventually prices will have to stabilize. It seems counterintuitive, but a strong cash position is valuable despite inflation right now.

Inflation will continue hitting wages hard, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. If you have prepared to ride out this storm of inflation, we should see things start to turn around in about six months. Unfortunately, between now and then, there will be significant job losses as inventories continue to build and sales get stagnant.

Prices on fast turn consumable goods like food, fuel, energy etc. will never return to their pre-inflationary price. The high prices on highly consumable products are here to stay and will never decline. Unfortunately, there are several indicators that those prices will go even higher throughout the next six months until they plateau mid-summer.

However, on the backside of this inflationary hurricane, the prices on long-term durable goods will start dropping sooner as consumer demand continues to focus on prioritization of spending and employment becomes more tenuous.

Please read the entire article. It includes a couple of charts that illustrate exactly what is happening to our economy under the economic policies of the Biden administration.

Spreading Lies In The Name Of Human Rights

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On Monday, The Wall Street Journal posted an editorial about a recent report by Amnesty International. The more than 200-page report accused Israel of being an apartheid state. When you consider that Arabs in Israel have more freedom than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East, this is an amazing accusation.

The editorial notes:

Perhaps you thought Israel had long ago established its right to exist as a Jewish state. Guess again. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran want to eliminate Israel as we know it, but who would have thought they’d find allies in Amnesty International?

Perhaps we should have known this given some of Amnesty’s sympathies with the global left. But the nonprofit advocate for political prisoners is going far beyond that with its 211-page report labeling Israel an “apartheid” state that deserves the world’s opprobrium and sanction. The report is embargoed until Tuesday, but we’ve obtained the draft from a source other than Amnesty. It deserves condemnation for its bias and lack of understanding about why Israel survives amid hostile neighbors.

…The Amnesty report is a long indictment of Israel that attempts to show it is an apartheid state in how it treats Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. “Israel has established and maintained an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis—wherever it has exercised control over Palestinians’ lives since 1948,” says the report summary.

No one was claiming to be a Palestinian in 1948, but that doesn’t stop Amnesty International from attempting to undermine Israel’s right to exist. As I have reported before, Walid Shoebat once stated, “One day during the 1960s I went to bed a Jordanian Muslim, and when I woke up the next morning, I was informed that I was now a Palestinian Muslim, and that I was no longer a Jordanian Muslim.”

The editorial concludes:

The Amnesty report is especially ill-timed in an era when Israel and Arab states are negotiating new deals for commerce and travel since the Abraham Accords. A fair assumption is that Amnesty’s drafters hope to block such progress by inflaming world opinion with the “apartheid” slander. Amnesty also calls on the United Nations to sanction Israel, and the International Criminal Court to investigate and hold Israelis criminally responsible.

We assume the Biden Administration will denounce this calumny and oppose all efforts to use it as a cudgel against America’s best friend in the Middle East.

Don’t count on the Biden administration coming to Israel’s rescue.

When The Spin Is Obvious…

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On Monday, The Daily Wire posted an article with the following headline, “Say What? Trudeau Claims Canadians Are ‘Disgusted’ Over Truck Convoy Protesters.”

The article includes the following tweet:

Actually, the reason people are protesting in the nation’s capital is that they are disgusted by the way the Canadian politicians are acting.

The article notes:

As The Daily Wire reported on Saturday, large crowds gathered in Ottawa to protest against the nation’s vaccine mandates, particularly against truckers in the nation:

Video of the massive Freedom Convoy 2022 rally in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, illustrate how people showed up in massive numbers from daylight through night to protest against the Canadian government’s vaccine mandates. Those mandates would force unvaccinated Canadian truckers crossing into the United States to quarantine once they’ve returned home.

Freedom Convoy spokesman Benjamin Dichter told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, “We’ve seen Canada go from a country of Justin Trudeau’s promises of ‘sunny ways’ into dark authoritarian oppression and control. We want two things: we want to get rid of the vaccine mandates and the passports. And the passports, that’s the really concerning one. Yesterday it was my first time ever crossing the border in my truck with my digital passport, and I held my phone up to the border agent to give him the QR code. You know what he said to me? ‘Oh, it’s okay, I don’t need it.’”

“So what do you mean, you don’t need it?” Richter recalled asking, adding that the agent replied, “Your phone already popped up on my screen and is correlated with your passport.”

“Think of that,” Richter said. “Can you believe that? So they know everybody who’s coming up to the border before they’re there and they’re tracking them. Maybe it’s outlandish, but what’s to prevent the government from introducing that across Canada and not limiting it to just borders?”

Don’t believe the spin. The world is watching and supporting the truckers. Please follow the link to read the entire article.

Elections Have Consequences–Sometimes The Voters Don’t Like Those Consequences

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On Monday, Hot Air posted an article about the quality of life in Portland, Oregon.

The article reports:

I know you’ll be shocked to hear this but voters in the city which saw a string of nightly riots, beatings and even a murder by an Antifa mob over the past 18 months feels quality of life is on the decline. An annual survey of registered voters in Portland and the surrounding area funded by the Portland Business Alliance found 88% of respondents felt that way. The poll also included a right-track, wrong-track question which found that nearly 3/4 of respondents in Portland felt the city was going in the wrong direction.

Maybe the voters need to ask themselves who voted for the current leadership of Portland. However, it does seem as if the voters have learned their lesson.

The article concludes:

In other words, even in the city of Portland, voters have rejected “defund the police.” It never made sense that it was necessary to cut police funding in order to fund other priorities. The activist left has now lost this argument in the city that was probably most prone to agree with it.

Finally, it looks like voters haven’t forgotten who was pushing those issues. City Councilwoman Jo Ann Hardesty who has been the loudest proponent of defunding the police is going to be facing a tough reelection. Just 18% of respondents support her while 54% say they are ready to vote for someone else.

I think all Americans have learned in the recent past that elections have consequences.

This Is Disconcerting

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On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Biden administration has disclosed that it possesses almost one billion records of firearm purchases by Americans.

The article reports:

The Biden administration is in possession of nearly one billion records detailing American citizens’ firearm purchases, far more than Congress and the public has been aware of, according to new information from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The ATF disclosed to lawmakers that it manages a database of 920,664,765 firearm purchase records, including both digital and hard copy versions of these transactions. When a licensed gun store goes out of business, its private records detailing gun transactions become ATF property and are stored at a federal site in West Virginia. The practice has contributed to the fears of gun advocacy groups and Second Amendment champions in Congress that the federal government is creating a national database of gun owners, which violates longstanding federal statutes.

The article concludes:

More than half-a-million traces were performed in 2021, according to the ATF, and just under half a million in 2020. The ATF, however, says it does not have the ability to determine if the database actually helps solve crimes. The ATF’s National Tracing Center “has no ability to determine the successful prosecution of hundreds of thousands of crime gun traces it completes annually, nor does it have any way to link a trace for a specific prosecution for a particular year,” the agency informed Congress.

Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group that has closely tracked the ATF’s database, told the Free Beacon that it is becoming clear the Biden administration is on its way to creating a national gun registry.

“Make no mistake—this is clear evidence that a partial national gun registry exists,” Johnston said. “If the American people don’t stand up for their rights now, Biden’s anti-gun ATF will be able to track gun owners, infringe on our rights, and potentially even confiscate our firearms.”

Do we have anyone in Washington who has read the U.S. Constitution and is protecting the rights of Americans?

Looking At The Numbers

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On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about President Biden’s promise to promote equity as President.

A website called thoughtCo.com defines the difference between equity and equality as follows:

Key Takeaways: Equity vs. Equality

  • Equality is providing the same level of opportunity and assistance to all segments of society, such as races and genders.
  • Equity is providing various levels of support and assistance depending on specific needs or abilities.
  • Equality and equity are most often applied to the rights and opportunities of minority groups.
  • Laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provide equality, while policies such as affirmative action provide equity.

There are a number of problems with equity–the most obvious being determining who decides the level of assistance or the specific needs or abilities. If reparations is ‘equity’, who decides which people were harmed by slavery (does slavery include indentured servants?) and which people did the harm (were your ancestors in America during slavery? did your ancestors fight to free the slaves?). As you can see, equity is complicated and does not have fixed guidelines and is thus open to major abuses.

The New York Post article reports:

Joe Biden began his presidency with a promise to advance equity, which means favoring some races and ethnicities over others to shrink outcome disparities. Like many of his fellow liberal Democrats, Biden is tethered to the belief that black upward mobility won’t happen without coddling and special treatment from the government. Donald Trump’s record complicates such claims. 

One of the most underreported stories of the Trump presidency is the extent to which black economic fortunes improved. The mainstream media presented Trump daily as a bigot whose policies would harm the interests of racial and ethnic minorities. Meanwhile, black economic advancement occurred to an extent unseen not only under Barack Obama but going back several generations — until the pandemic shutdowns brought progress to a halt. 

Over the first three years of Trump’s presidency, blacks (and Hispanics) experienced record-low rates of unemployment and poverty, while wages for workers at the bottom of the income scale rose faster than they did for management. Whether that was the goal of the Trump administration or an unintended consequence is a debate I’ll leave to others. But there is no doubting that the financial situation of millions of working-class black Americans improved significantly under Trump’s policies. 

I am reminded of the John F. Kennedy quote, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. Putting a businessman in the White House benefited all Americans. I am hoping we can do that again.

Why Cultures Matter

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On Monday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article that illustrates one of the really negative aspects of Sharia Law.

The article reports:

A five-year-old girl who was raped by a stranger has been murdered by her family in a so-called ‘honour killing’, according to reports.

The young girl’s parents allegedly killed their daughter in ‘cold blood’ after she was kidnapped and raped by an unidentified man in the Al-Shahba area of Syria on November 18.

The child’s body was found in a garbage container in Manbij, north Syria, on January 27 before being transferred to Al Furat Hospital which lies in eastern Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) have said that Internal Security Forces have arrested several family members of the girl.  

The girl’s parents have denied killing their daughter and investigations are ongoing, the SOHR added.

The article concludes:

Just days after the video of Eida’s murder emerged on social media, a 16-year-old girl was strangled to death by her father in another so-called ‘honour killing’ after she was raped by a relative.

The girl was identified as Aya Muhammad Khalifo by the Violations Documentation Center in northern Syria.   

Following the murders, hundreds of women protested against the ‘honour killings’ in the city of Hasakeh by marching down streets. 

Protester Evin Bacho, a member of the Kurdish feminist group Kongra Star, said: ‘We condemn these crimes in the name of tradition or religion.’

Honor killing is an acceptable practice under Sharia Law. Honor killings have happened in America in Islamic communities that practice Sharia Law. This is a practice that should never be condoned here or anywhere else. Western culture would have taken the five-year-old girl who was raped and worked to help her heal from the trauma. Sharia Law says she has dishonored her family (despite the fact that she was the victim–not the perpetrator) and deserves to die. Cultures matter.

Interesting, But I Don’t Expect Much

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On Sunday, Breitbart reported the following:

US Attorney Doc: IRS Issued Grand Jury Subpoena to JPMorgan for Hunter, James Biden Bank Records In Probe into Biden Family’s China Connections

The article notes that there is a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden going back as far as May 2019. I hope he can sell enough paintings to pay his legal fees.

The article reports:

The document, dated May 20, 2019, is a subpoena compelling JPMorgan Chase bank to appear in U.S. District Court in Delaware. “YOU ARE COMMANDED to appear in this United States district court at the time, date, and place to testify before the court’s grand jury,” the document — a subpoena to JPMorgan Chase Bank’s subpoena processing office based in Indianapolis — says. “When you arrive, you must remain at the court until a judge or a court officer allows you to leave.”

The document lists a courtroom in the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington, Delaware, as the location that JPMorgan Chase Bank officials were compelled to appear and commands a response by June 25, 2019.

The article concludes:

“This wide-ranging grand jury subpoena suggests that Joe’s son and brother received transfers from an account with the Bank of China. The question that remains is why Bill Barr directly intervened to ensure that the U.S. Attorney in Delaware’s investigation into Joe’s family was kept from the public for over 17 months until after the election, as previous reporting has confirmed. David Weiss and Bill Barr—or someone with a conscience inside the Justice Department—should answer that question for the American people,” Ziegler said in a statement to Breitbart News.

The aforementioned Politico story suggests Weiss took steps to keep his investigation from going public in 2019 because he did not want it coming out in the middle of an election, and a subsequent Wall Street Journal piece in December 2020 suggests that Barr did the same.

It is unclear if JPMorgan Chase Bank cooperated with this subpoena. It is worth noting that the bank’s outside counsel firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP announced it hired former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch shortly after receiving this subpoena. It is unclear if Lynch had any involvement on this specific matter, however, she has worked on similar matters involving JPMorgan Chase Bank compliance.

It is also unclear where this criminal investigation stands.

If we really had ‘equal justice under the law’, I suspect we would know whether of not the bank cooperated with the subpoena.  With the story out in the media (even though the mainstream media won’t cover it), the bank may be forced into compliance.