Tag: corruption

Google Likes To Say Fact-Checkers It Uses Are “Independent.” But It Also Funds Them.

In a world where censorship dons the cloak of fact-checking, the recent allocation of grants by the Global Fact Check Fund raises brows. The fund, which is a joint effort of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) housed at the Poynter Institute and the technology behemoth Google, along with its subsidiary YouTube, has been touted as a guardian of truth. With $875,000 in grants divided among 35 organizations across 45 countries, it aims to arm them with modern websites, manpower, and training to identify misinformation. However, the initiative comes with its own set of problematic undertones.

The broad strokes painted by the fund’s mission statement include terms such as “increasing quality, volume, frequency, scale, and impact of fact-checking abilities” – a seemingly lofty aim. The IFCN’s director, Angie Drobnic Holan, frames it as a crusade against misinformation, stating, “Misinformation is on the march in many parts of the world. This important funding will enable fact-checking organizations to become better at their work, stronger in their capabilities and wider in their reach.”

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Feds charge Virginia sheriff with selling badges for campaign contributions

The sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia faces federal charges in an alleged scheme to hand out deputy badges in exchange for campaign contributions, Reuters reported.

“In an indictment unsealed on Thursday in the Western District of Virginia, Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Howard Jenkins, 51, is accused of abusing his position by engaging in a scheme to appoint volunteers to serve as auxiliary deputy sheriffs in exchange for bribes,” reported Sarah Lynch. “Through this alleged scheme, prosecutors said he accepted at least $72,500. Three of the men who accepted deputy sheriff appointments — Rick Tariq Rahim, 55, of Great Falls; Fredric Gumbinner, 64, of Fairfax; James Metcalf, 60, of Manassas are also charged in the case.”

According to the report, Jenkins also allegedly accepted a bribe from Rahim to approve a petition to restore his right to carry a gun, in violation of the state’s residency requirements.

“The indictment alleges he authorized auxiliary deputy sheriffs to carry concealed firearms in any state without obtaining permits, encouraged them to pay bribes through other individuals, and disguised the payments as firearms purchases,” said the report. “Undercover FBI agents helped investigate the scheme by posing as people who were interested in becoming auxiliary deputy sheriffs, with one of them even pretending to have a criminal record.”

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Biden Admin Stiffing COVID Vaccine-Injured Americans Over Medical Claims

In April 2021, Adele Fox received a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. Within a few hours, the 60-year-old resident of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, started feeling shooting pains in her legs, arms, and neck. The pain didn’t abate over the next few days. Instead, it got worse and was accompanied by nausea and debilitating fatigue.  

Within a few weeks, neurologists affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital diagnosed her with several serious conditions they say were a result of her COVID-19 vaccine, including small-fiber neuropathy (which causes a painful tingling in the extremities) and Sjögren’s Syndrome (which leaves patients pained and fatigued, and in extreme cases, can damage internal organs).  

This shot, which was supposed to get Fox back to normal, instead left her with diminished ability to work and enjoy life. Persistent physical therapy and experimental treatments she’s taken since have done little to alleviate her symptoms.  

“I used to do so much, and now it’s a struggle,” she says. “Sometimes you just get down.” 

With her medical bills mounting and her condition not improving, Fox sought compensation for her damaged health. Federal liability protections prevent the vaccine-injured from directly suing vaccine manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson. Instead, claimants have to go to the federal government for compensation.  

But as Fox would soon learn, the government has two starkly different injury programs for vaccines. One operates like a civil court with a neutral judge, lawyers on both sides, and a guaranteed right of appeal. In recent decades, it has approved about 75% of claims and pays out hundreds of millions of dollars per year.  

The other, which handles COVID-19 vaccines, has rejected almost every claim brought to it, awarding less than $10,000 since the pandemic. And in a nation nearly numb to the pandemic’s toll and its scandals, the program is adding seething frustration atop lasting injury to Fox and people like her in a little reported aftermath to the government’s much criticized performance on vaccines – ranging from erratic booster advice to broad-brush vaccine mandates that cost people their jobs. 

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Pfizer Vaccine Batches in the EU Were Placebos, Say Scientists

Scientists have uncovered startling evidence that a substantial portion of the batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine deployed in the European Union may in fact have consisted of placebos – and that the German regulator knew this and did not subject them to quality-control testing.

The scientists, Dr. Gerald Dyker, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Ruhr University Bochum, and Dr. Jörg Matysik, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Leipzig, are part of a group of five German-speaking scientists who have been publicly raising questions about the quality and safety of the BioNTech vaccine (as it is known in Germany) for the last year and a half.

They recently appeared on the Punkt.Preradovic online programme of the German journalist Milena Preradovic to discuss batch variability. Their starting point was the recent Danish study showing enormous variation in the adverse events associated with different batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or BNT162b2 per its scientific codename. The below figure from the Danish study illustrates this variation.

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Hunter Biden’s 7% Solution: Using Addiction To Excuse Corruption

Below is my column in the Messenger on the use of Hunter Biden’s addiction as the final line of defense to corruption allegations. This week, President Joe Biden is continuing to deny that he had any knowledge of his son’s business dealing despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In the meantime, pundits are insisting that this is really not a story of millions of dollars being sent to the Biden family from foreign sources or the direct use of Joe Biden to shake down (apparently successfully) a Chinese officials with ties to foreign intelligence. Rather, it is now portrayed as “a story of a father’s love for his son.” In other words, it is just like “On Golden Pond” if the father and child were working together to extract millions in actual gold from the pond. Here is the column:

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1890 story, The Sign of the Four, there is a scene in which Sherlock Holmes prepares to give himself an injection of cocaine in front of a curious Dr. Watson. Holmes explained: “It is cocaine, a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?” Watson wisely demurred — but the 7% solution has not lost its appeal to others as a diversion.

Last year, I wrote a column suggesting that there was a notable shift among Biden associates and some media figures in addressing the Hunter Biden scandal. In the wake of the release of new evidence of Hunter Biden’s alleged influence-peddling efforts, the Biden team has fully retreated to what I called the “Seven-Percent Solution” to the scandal.

In 2022, I wrote:

“The president and the press have been shifting to a new defense. As the father recently insisted of his son, ‘He fought an addiction problem. He overcame it. He wrote about it.’

“The family and the media have been cultivating the angle for months as they anticipated possible criminal charges. … With possible criminal conduct exposed, all that’s left is the addiction defense.”

One of the most vocal with this recent rollout was former U.S. senator Claire McCaskill (D.-Mo.), who became irate on MSNBC and declared that “Everybody needs to back off!” because Hunter was an addict and “suffering from these diseases.”

Of course, such suffering did not prevent him from allegedly shaking down foreign figures for millions of dollars in exchange for access to his father.

The Biden defense team invoked much the same explanation when confronted with a story about a WhatsApp message that purportedly showed Hunter threatening a Chinese businessman with ties to China’s Communist Party if he did not send Biden millions of dollars. He repeatedly referenced the fact that his father was sitting next to him, and suggested his father would be involved in the threatened response if the money was not transferred.

According to testimony made public last week, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley told the House Ways and Means Committee in May: “[W]e obtained a July 30th, 2017, WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, where Hunter Biden wrote: ‘I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.’”

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Joe Biden jokes about having ‘sold a lot of state secrets’ amid alleged Ukrainian bribery scandal

On Friday, President Biden joked that he “sold a lot of state secrets” during a meeting with Prime Minister Modi of the Republic of India, whose comments were made as Biden is actively being accused of taking an illegal bribe from a Ukrainian official. 

President Biden started off the meeting, which included White House senior officials and technology company CEOs, joking to Prime Minister Modi about “sharing” a lot of “very important things.”

“Okay.  We — I was just thanking the — anyway, I started off without you, and I sold a lot of state secrets and a lot of very important things that we shared,” Biden said to Modi.

The meeting focused on the United States’ relationship with India and how the two nations are working together to develop and design new technology, which will include combined-efforts from American astronauts, Indian astronauts, entrepreneurs, scientists, and students.

President Biden announced that the US is “launching a new program between India and America” in which the two countries will innovate new technology that will tackle so-called “climate change.”

“It’s about exploring the universe.  It’s about lifting people out of poverty; curing cancer and other serious diseases; preventing pandemics; and giving our citizens — all our citizens real opportunity,” Biden said during the meeting.

“So my message today is really simple: We’ve got to keep it up, and we have to make sure we aim even higher,” Biden added.

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Media Use Failed Russia ‘Coup’ To Knock Bombshell Biden Scandal Off The Front Page 

Last Thursday, House Republicans released two explosive testimonies from IRS whistleblowers that, if true, further suggest President Joe Biden sold his political power for profit from our enemies abroad via his son Hunter’s business dealings. Moreover, they allege the Department of Justice has done everything in its power to for years protect the Bidens, even to the point of massively interfering in an American election.

This story is huge — bigger than Monica Lewinsky and Watergate combined. If confirmed, it means that the sitting President of the United States is potentially compromised by our nation’s adversaries, and the intelligence apparatus are enabling his corruption. We have no choice but to tear it down.

Yet you wouldn’t know any of that from the headlines this weekend. Sunday’s premiere, front-page stories in each of America’s biggest newspapers — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Washington Post — were all about the quick and unsuccessful “coup” in Russia. Mentions of the Biden scandal were scant. The New York Times’ only featured Biden scandal article, titled “The Real Lesson From the Hunter Biden Saga,” reads like satire, dismissing all the mounting allegations against the president and even praising him as a “model of … love and support” for people with drug-addicted family members.

It’s pretty interesting that almost immediately after the publication of the IRS whistleblower testimonies, the White House and State Department began sounding alarm bells over a “coup” that was over almost as soon as it started. Naturally, the corporate media was grateful to be handed a distraction story on a silver platter. The short-lived mutiny has not only dominated the headlines this weekend but was also granted wall-to-wall coverage on every major TV news channel. CNN, in particular, has really taken advantage of the Russia “coup,” using it as an opportunity to extol Biden for his “mastery of foreign policy.”

None of this is to say that this alleged attempted coup against the Kremlin isn’t newsworthy. The story has its place in the “world news” section. However, a foreign uprising that may or may not impact a war America has no business participating in should not be commanding the front pages for days on end, especially when we have far bigger fish to fry.

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Biden Admin Says Its COVID Spending for Schools Will Boost Test Scores. Districts Used the Funds for Staff Bonuses.

Decades-low eighth-grade reading and math scores are no reason to be discouraged, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Wednesday, because the Biden administration’s “historic” COVID-era school spending is poised to turn the tide. In many districts, a large portion of those funds have already been spent on lucrative staff bonuses.

A National Assessment of Educational Progress report published Wednesday found that math and reading scores among U.S. 13-year-olds are at their lowest levels in decades. Cardona responded to those findings by praising “positive results” in student achievement, arguing that the “historic investments and resources” provided by President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan would “reverse the damage.” In school districts across the country, however, a large portion of those funds did not go to more tutoring or new school materials. Instead, they funded bonuses for teachers and administrators.

In North Carolina, for example, the Wake County Public School System from March 2020 to April 2023 spent 78.5 percent of its total pandemic relief funding on salaries and employee benefits, according to the district. Chicago Public Schools—a district where union teachers repeatedly refused to return to the classroom during COVID—similarly spent 77 percent of its pandemic money on staff bonuses, salaries, and benefits. In Tennessee, meanwhile, the state’s comptroller found that a district funneled nearly $28,000 to one administrator alone. And in Nebraska, Lincoln Public Schools attempted to use COVID relief dollars to issue across-the-board teacher bonuses, but the state’s Department of Education said no.

The use of so-called emergency COVID funds to pay for five-figure staff bonuses reflects the stark divide between Republicans and Democrats on education policy. Democrats generally balk at school choice, shooting down taxpayer funding for charter schools in favor of additional public school spending. For Republicans, that spending is already at an all-time high with little to show for it and showcases the need to pursue alternative options rather than funneling more money to powerful teachers’ unions working to pay out their members.

“It turns out the hundreds of billions in taxpayer money that was ‘direly needed to safely reopen schools and improve infrastructure’ was a lie,” Nicki Neily, founder and president of parental rights group Parents Defending Education, said in response to districts’ using federal COVID funds to pay for staff bonuses. “The same teachers’ unions that kept schools closed are now misusing the taxpayers’ money to smooth things over with their growingly dissatisfied members through bonuses and raises. What a slap in the face to families.”

The Department of Education did not return a request for comment.

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House Dem Stacey Plaskett took campaign money from Jeffery Epstein AFTER his conviction of soliciting prostitution of a minor

Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic congressional delegate representing the US Virgin Islands, won her election in 2014. She may owe her victory in part to Jeffery Epstein’s donations, which were found to have come in after his conviction of solicitation of prostitution of a minor in 2008.

Emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show that Plaskett, in communications with Epstein’s previous assistant, Lesley Groff, seeking support from Epstein. “If you would share this invitation with Jeffrey I’d be much appreciative. I would be grateful for his support and the support of those that he may direct to assist me,” Plaskett wrote in the July 12, 2018 email.

The amount of money that Epstein gave to Plaskett, according to the email, was $5,400. Half was to go to her primary and half to the general election. 

On June 8, Plaskett conceded that it was a “bad fundraising decision” on the show, Analyze This, on WTJX-FM in the Virgin Islands. 

However, the real start to the connection with Epstein started in 2014 with the Virgin Islands governor’s wife, Cecile de Jongh. 

De Jongh was the First Lady of the Virgin Islands at the time, but also served as Epstein’s office manager. It appears that the idea to help Plaskett may have come originally from de Jongh. She insisted, back in 2014, that Epstein needed to help Paskett.

De Jongh wrote to Epstein in 2014, “Your help is needed. We are trying to get Stacey Plaskett elected to Congress. Shawn Malone (current senate president) is running against her in the Democratic primary in August.”

“Shawn is the one that came after you in the senate hearing last week. He is nasty and needs to be defeated and we would have a friend in Stacey,” the 2014 email continued. 

DeJongh then inquired to Epstein, because of the legal limit of $2,600 in individual campaign donations, “Do you think any of your friends would give to her campaign,” asking for $75,000 in total donations.

The emails were revealed as part of court documents in the lawsuit the Virgin Islands filed against JP Morgan.

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Legacy Newspapers Bury Hunter Biden Bombshell On Page 15

The Friday print editions of The New York Times and The Washington Post relegated their reporting on Thursday’s explosive Hunter Biden revelations from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblowers to the bottom of page A15 of their newspapers.

Both papers placed stories about the visit of the Indian Prime Minister, the Titan submarine, a tornado in Texas, Donald Trump and the Arab-Israeli conflict ahead of their coverage of the IRS whistleblower testimony, which alleges that Hunter Biden leveraged his father’s political influence for personal financial gain and that Department of Justice (DOJ) officials had interfered with the investigation. The whistleblower documents included text messages allegedly from Hunter Biden, in which he said President Joe Biden was “sitting here” with him while Hunter conducted business activities with a Chinese associate.

The NYT ran a story on the bottom of page A15 titled “Hunter Biden Used Father’s Name to Pressure Associate in ’17, Documents Show,” referring to Hunter’s alleged promise to a Chinese businessman to “make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction,” as alleged in the testimony. The Post reported in their business section that an “IRS whistleblower says Justice Dept. slowed and stifled Hunter Biden case,” also on the bottom of page A15.

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