Tag: corruption

“Grandma of the Police Officers Association” in California Arrested for Importing Fentanyl From China and Other Countries

As the drug crisis in America rages on as opioids and fentanyl pour across our unsecured border from the Mexican drug cartels supplied by Chinese “pharmaceuticals,” an unsuspecting trafficker has emerged.

San Jose Police Officers Association police union executive Joanne Marian Segovia was arrested on Wednesday for attempting to import a synthetic opioid called Valeryl fentanyl.  If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in federal prison.

Police union president Sean Pritchard told the New York Post that Segovia was like “the grandma of the POA…this is not the person we’ve known, the person who has worked with fallen officers’ families, organized fundraisers for officers’ kids…”

Segovia was allegedly importing packages of drugs from China, Canada, India and other countries and disguising them as common items such as makeup, chocolates, and food supplements.  She has received at least 61 packages at her home from 2015 through 2023.

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UN Security Council Won’t Probe Nord Stream Bombing

The UN Security Council voted Monday against a Russian effort to get an independent investigation into the bombings of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that connect Russia to Germany.

The only members of the Council that voted in favor of the resolution were Russia, China, and Brazil. The remaining 12 members abstained from the vote, including the US, the likely culprit of the attacks.

The resolution had little chance of passing since it needed at least nine votes in favor and no veto from any of the five permanent members of the Security Council: the US, China, Russia, Britain, and France.

Russia has been pushing for an international inquiry into the Nord Stream sabotage since investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a bombshell report in February that alleged President Biden ordered the bombings.

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New Analysis Shows How The CDC Spread False Information That Exaggerated The Severity of COVID-19

Academics from the University of California, San Francisco have published a new paper titled “Statistical and Numerical Errors Made by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) During the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

The paper outlines 25 instances when the CDC reported statistical or numerical errors. Twenty (80%) of these instances, according to the researchers, “exaggerated the severity of the COVID-19 situation.”

They also explain how the CDC was notified about the errors in 16 (64%) instances and later corrected the errors, at least partially, in 13 (52%) instances.

As the paper points out, it’s quite ironic that “inaccurate and misleading information” labels were put on various scientific papers, posts made by experts in the field, and more throughout the pandemic yet the CDC themselves have been outed multiple times for spreading misinformation.

In fact, the Biden administration collaborated with Big Tech to actively censor and put labels on content they knew, admittedly, was “true content” with an army of federal censors.

The researchers explain,

“Many entities rely on the CDC for trusted information, as does the lay public. For instance, YouTube links to the CDC website on all videos discussing COVID-19, supporting CDC policy positions. Spotify links select podcast episodes to the CDC website as well. Many universities, healthcare facilities, daycares, churches, businesses, schools, sports programs, and camps defer to CDC guidance for COVID-19 precautions. For this reason, it is imperative the CDC avoids errors in their statements, or, if errors are made, that they are rapidly corrected. We set out to identify numerical errors or objectively false statements made by the CDC.”

As you can imagine, this was a daunting task. US federal agencies put out a plethora of information on their websites, social media accounts, scientific publications, press releases, emails, and more. The authors sought to compile errors they previously identified, or errors brought to their attention by other observers.

All errors were presented at a meeting with all authors present. The errors were discussed, reviewed and accepted only if three authors all felt the errors were clearly false. A fourth author, not involved in the collection, made the final determination whether the included errors were false.

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“Something Very Dramatic Has Changed”: Matt Taibbi Says Democrats Ditched Free Speech

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi – of recent “Twitter Files” fame – has exposed the fact that civil liberties are no longer popular among Democrats. Taibbi appeared on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” to reiterate his perspective that the modern Democratic Party no longer represents the values of the everyday American. 

“About all of this — Matt, how do you feel about all of this? I know before you started discovering this bad behavior, you identified as a Democrat, and now you’ve got all of your friends, quote-unquote, in the media attacking you for exposing this,” Bartiromo asked.

“Yeah, it’s funny, I mean, I was raised in a traditional ACLU liberal, I believed in free speech all my life. That was one of the things, frankly, that attracted me to the Democratic Party when I was a kid, the idea that we were the party that believed in letting everybody have a say, and we’ll just make a better argument, and that’s how the system works,” Taibbi said.

He continued, “Apparently, something very dramatic has changed in politics in America, and there’s been a shift. There’s no question about it anymore, that now the parties have had a complete reversal on how they read these issues.”

Taibbi leads a team of journalists, including Michael Shellenberger, who have been given access to Twitter Files, revealing a startling network of government agencies, think tanks, and Twitter personnel coordinating efforts to attack the First Amendment. 

What we’ve learned from the Twitter Files is the ever-expanding coalition of groups working with the government and social media to target and censor Americans, including government-funded organizations.

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Biden’s IRS goons dropped by Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi’s house while he was testifying before Congress … I wonder why?

While one of the journalists behind the Twitter Files was testifying about his finding in front of Congress, he was also being harassed by government goons who showed up to his house unannounced.

Matt Taibbi was in DC in early March to testify about the evidence he found of the government’s abuse of its relationship with Twitter and big tech to censor speech and control what Americans saw on their social media feeds. Meanwhile, the IRS had sent their folks out to Taibbi’s home to make an unscheduled visit.

TOTALLY NOT AN INTIMIDATION TACTIC!

The Wall Street Journal reported that Taibbi was visited because his previous tax returns from 2018 and 2021 had been rejected.

But they decided that an in-person visit was warranted instead of an electronic communication like you would normally expect.

It’s “not clear” why.

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Shoddy Research Reinforces Anti-Vaping Narrative

In 2019, The Journal of the American Heart Association published a study suggesting that nicotine vaping doubles the risk of a heart attack. The authors claimed e-cigarette use is “independently” associated with a heightened risk of myocardial infarction, which is “similar” to the risk among cigarette smokers.

Three years later, the World Journal of Oncology published a study that claimed vapers face about the same cancer risk as smokers. The authors said “prospective studies should be planned to mitigate the risk.”

Both studies were later retracted, largely because they shared the same glaring weakness: The researchers failed to consider whether the medical problems that survey respondents reported were diagnosed before or after they began vaping, a minimum requirement for inferring a causal relationship. As University of Louisville researchers Brad Rodu and Nantaporn Plurphanswat showed in a 2022 Internal and Emergency Medicine article, that failure is characteristic of studies that allege a link between vaping and smoking-related diseases, including several articles that so far have not been retracted.

In all of these cases, the researchers seemed so eager to discredit vaping as a harm-reducing alternative to smoking that they overlooked a fundamental methodological flaw. So did the peer reviewers and journal editors.

This sort of tendentiously sloppy research compounds a problem that harm reduction advocates have been decrying for years: Although the evidence indicates that vaping is far less dangerous than smoking, most Americans think vaping is just as dangerous, if not more so. And while public health officials could help correct that misconception, which undermines the lifesaving potential of e-cigarettes, they frequently contribute to the confusion by obscuring the difference between these two modes of nicotine consumption.

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North Carolina Using Eminent Domain To Seize Homes and a Church for Electric Car Factory

VinFast is the first company to develop electric vehicles in its native Vietnam, and it’s now making inroads into the American market. Last year, it announced it would build a factory in North Carolina that would manufacture both electric cars and batteries. Then, last week, the company said it would not be able to begin production at the facility until 2025, rather than the initial summer 2024 target.

An upstart company needing extra time to fulfill its promises is hardly news. But in this case, a lot hangs in the balance, as the North Carolina government has pledged to use eminent domain to evict multiple homeowners, businesses, and a church.

When Gov. Roy Cooper announced the deal in March 2022, he called the project “transformative” and said it would “bring many good jobs to our state.” CNBC cited the project when it named North Carolina America’s Top State for Business, marveling that Cooper, a Democrat, was able to strike such business-friendly deals with a General Assembly dominated by Republicans.

While it was only founded in 2017, VinFast has the backing of Vietnam’s wealthiest citizen and has been valued somewhere between $20 billion and $60 billion. For the North Carolina factory, the company pledged to spend $4 billion and create 7,500 jobs within five years. In exchange, the state promised incentives totaling $1.2 billion, including $450 million toward site preparation; $400 million from Chatham County, where the facility would be located; and a $316 million grant over 32 years in which the company is reimbursed for the state income tax money its employees pay.

But taxpayer money isn’t the only thing the state is giving away. As part of its site preparation process, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) also planned roadway improvements to accommodate the traffic a new factory would create. Those plans would require displacing a total of 27 homes, five businesses, and Merry Oaks Baptist Church, which has stood on its spot since 1888.

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They’re Rebooting “Axis Of Evil” On The 20th Anniversary Of The Iraq Invasion

The western political/media class has suddenly resurrected the phrase “Axis of Evil” in recent days to refer to the increasing intimacy between Russia and China, just in time for the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Famed Iraq War cheerleader Sean Hannity appears to have kicked things off last week, saying on his show that “a new Axis of evil is emerging” between China, Russia and Iran, a slogan that has since been echoed numerous times this week.

On Tuesday former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told Fox News that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are “two dictators that have said they are unlimited partners,” asserting that “This is the new Axis of Evil, with Iran being their junior partner.”

Also on Tuesday Representative Mike Lawler tweeted, “Xi’s meeting with Putin in Moscow is deeply concerning and highlights the growing threats posed by this new axis of evil,” and on Thursday he tweeted, “We are dealing with a new axis of evil and failure to stop Putin in Ukraine will have far-reaching implications as Russia pushes further into Eastern Europe and China moves against Taiwan.”

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For Five Straight Years, The Pulitzer Prizes Have Rewarded Misinformation

The way the Pulitzer Prizes work seems simple enough – an Ivy league university hands out annual awards that ostensibly recognize important journalism. In practice, however, my former colleague Phil Terzian, a Pulitzer finalist who has served on the nominating committee, described the inner workings of the Pulitzers this way:

The Pulitzer Prizes are a singularly corrupt institution, administered by Columbia University and the management of the New York Times largely for the benefit of the New York Times and a limited number of favored publications and personalities. Any citizen who thinks that the annual distribution of awards has something to do with quality probably believes that the Oscar for Best Picture goes to the most distinguished film of the year. If you’re a connoisseur of unrestrained self-praise, may I recommend the citations when the Times awards itself the Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service.

While the Pulitzer Prizes have always been little more than self-dealing masquerading as journalistic beauty pageant, it was a lot easier to believe in this manufactured prestige back when journalism was at least slightly more competent and concerned with the appearance of objectivity. In fact, a spin through the last five years of Pulitzer recipients reveals some interesting choices that add up to a clear pattern.

In 2018, a Pulitzer for national reporting was given to The New York Times and Washington Post for reporting on the Donald Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia. A 2019 Pulitzer for “Explanatory Reporting” was given to The New York Times for reporting on Trump’s taxes.

The 2020 Pulitzer for commentary was given to Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times for the 1619 Project. In 2021, a public service Pulitzer was given to The New York Times for its coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic “that exposed racial and economic inequities, government failures in the U.S. and beyond.” In 2022, the Washington Post won a public service Pulitzer for its coverage of January 6.

Every one of these major stories was badly handled by the media writ large, served activist political narratives, frequently involved credulously regurgitating actual misinformation, or some combination thereof. While there is always reason to be suspicious of Pulitzers, historically most of the objections to the awards handed out never rose beyond the level of newsroom gossip.

The Pulitzers always reflected journalism’s skewed priorities. However, this many high-profile failures in such a short time underscores the rapid and catastrophic descent of American journalism into radical political activism and makes winning a Pulitzer look definitively like a mark of ignominy.

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