Tag: billionaires

US To Bring Back Pirates To Seize Russian Yachts

Centuries ago, whenever Kings and Queens wanted to quietly wage an unofficial war against their enemies, they issued something called a “Letter of Marque” to private sailors known as Privateers.

The Letter would legally authorize these Privateers (which was just a polite way of saying ‘Pirate’) to seize other kingdom’s ships and cargo while at sea.

It was essentially government-sanctioned theft.

Well, the United States Congress is bringing back this practice.

A recent bill that was introduced would “authorize the President of the United States to issue letters of marque and reprisal for the purpose of seizing the assets of certain Russian citizens.”

So, if the bill passes, children can once again legitimately dream of becoming a pirate when they grow up.

The last time the US authorized privateers was during the War of 1812.

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Wisconsin Special Counsel Finds Facebook’s Zuckerberg Violated Wisconsin Election Bribery Laws

After roughly six months of investigation into Facebook’s role in the 2020 election, a special counsel appointed by Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos last August submitted a report Tuesday. That report finds that Facebook head honcho Mark Zuckerberg’s grant funds violated Wisconsin’s bribery laws. And while the report found a plethora of areas of concern, it pulls up short of questioning the outcome of the election.

During the 2020 election, Zuckerberg funneled nearly $9 million in grant funds “solely to five Democratic strongholds in Wisconsin,” reports the Federalist. Last August, the Office of Special Counsel was created to investigate concerns about election integrity and the 2020 election. Retired state Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman was appointed as special counsel to head the investigation. An interim report was delivered to the state assembly on November 10, 2021. Tuesday’s report was the follow-up to that report and noted that this report “is final in the sense that it provides a list of recommendations with time for the Legislature to act before the close of its session in March.”

And while the report addresses “the numerous questionable and unlawful actions of various actors in the 2020 election,” it dances around the elephant in the living room, with Gableman stating early on that the report does not call for another look at the re-count that occurred in late 2020 or to challenge the contentious certification of the 2020 presidential election. And to drive that point home, the report ends by saying that even if Wisconsin were to “decertify the certified electors in the 2020 presidential election” — which the report explains as an arduous process — “this action would not, on its own, have any other legal consequence under state or federal law,” adding, “It would not, for example, change who the current President is.”

But if the 2020 election were found to be rife with fraud or tampering, then either the certification deserves another look or “election integrity” is a meaningless word combo. And according to Gableman’s report, Zuckerberg broke the law and played a $9 million role in election fraud and tampering.

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Mississippi Audit: Hundreds Of Thousands Of Mark Zuckerberg’s Election Funds Were Stolen And Misused

Three people were arrested in Mississippi in the last two weeks in another chapter in the story of the harm done to our elections by so-called “Zuckbucks,” this time with alleged embezzlement and fraudulent spending.

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg poured millions into a nonprofit called the Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL, in 2020. That nonprofit then gave more than $350 million in private funds to elections offices around the country. CTCL said its goal was to provide funding for the “safe administration” of elections during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Once the 2020 election was in the rearview, journalists and academics started turning over the stones of CTCL’s spending. What they found wasn’t pretty.

As The Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway details in her book “Rigged,” CTCL focused its funding on Democratic counties (no surprise, given that CTCL’s leadership consisted of former Democratic staffers). While the money was supposed to be spent on pandemic-related items, Hemingway has written that much of it went to “measures that allowed elections offices to hire activists to work the election.”

That, of course, is just the spending we know about. CTCL “has been reluctant to share information about how its operation was run,” says Hemingway. Even when CTCL has described its spending, the Mississippi arrests show CTCL itself may not even know what they paid for or where it ended up.

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