A little nuance…
Tag: corruption
33 Problems With Media In One Chart
One of the hallmarks of democratic society is a healthy, free-flowing media ecosystem.
In times past, that media ecosystem would include various mass media outlets, from newspapers to cable TV networks. Today, the internet and social media platforms have greatly expanded the scope and reach of communication within society.
Of course, journalism plays a key role within that ecosystem. High quality journalism and the unprecedented transparency of social media keeps power structures in check—and sometimes, these forces can drive genuine societal change. Reporters bring us news from the front lines of conflict, and uncover hard truths through investigative journalism.
That said, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley and Carmen Ang detail below, these positive impacts are sometimes overshadowed by harmful practices and negative externalities occurring in the media ecosystem.
The graphic above is an attempt to catalog problems within the media ecosystem as a basis for discussion. Many of the problems are easy to understand once they’re identified. However, in some cases, there is an interplay between these issues that is worth digging into. Below are a few of those instances.
The Fed Is Quietly Handing Out $250 Million To A Handful Of Happy Recipients Every Single Day
The Fed’s QE may be over, and QT may be just starting (it won’t last long), but don’t think the Fed free money giveaway is ending any time soon. In fact, for a handful of happy, mostly anonymous counterparties, the real free-money bonanza has just begun!
Case in point: the Fed’s reverse repo facility. While one can debate for hours why there is a record $2.330 trillion in cash parked at the Fed’s overnight facility and what it means for systemic plumbing problems, the fact is that there is a record $2.33 trillion in cash parked at the Fed’s overnight facility, doing nothing.
Well not nothing: it was nothing when rates were zero, but at 1.55% which is the current reverse repo rate, that $2.33 trillion is a golden goose for the 108 counterparties that are parking cash at the facility, a mixture of money market funds, banks, GSEs and various other financial intermediaries.
How big is this particular Golden Goose? The chart below shows the payment in interest that the Fed makes day on this record $2.33 trillion in funds: as of today it amounts to just over $100 million every single day! That’s right, more than $100 million in interest payments on funds parked with the Fed, which is by definition the world’s only risk-free counterparty!
Media And Fact Checkers Caught Erasing All Evidence Of Hillary Clinton “Covering Up” Pedophile Ring at State Department
The Pizzagate topic has been one of great controversy, and for good reason – if true, the implications of the allegations are huge. It would shatter our illusions of powerful people including Presidents, high ranking politicians and those we trust to run our countries. These people would be, under the definitions of our systems, criminals committing heinous and unforgivable crimes.
So is there any truth to the allegations? Mainstream media has been operating as a branch of the Democrat Party’s PR department for years now, so there is no point listening to them about anything. But there was a time in the past when the occasional nugget of truth would be allowed to slip out between the wall-to-wall propaganda.
Take, for instance, this NBC news report that Hillary Clinton, while she was Obama’s secretary of state, shut down an investigation into an elite pedophile ring in the State Department. According to the report presented by Chuck Todd, Clinton shut down the investigation in order to avoid scandal and protect the careers of high ranking officials.
NBC even provided internal State Department memos to back up claims of the Hillary Clinton elite pedophile ring cover-up.
The NBC News report is disturbing enough, but what happened after NBC broadcast news of the Clinton “cover up” is perhaps even more disturbing.
The network deleted the footage and social media networks blacklisted the video from their platforms. Chuck Todd, who presented the report, has refused thousands of requests for comment. Nobody at NBC or the mainstream media wants to acknowledge the report even went to air.
And it gets even worse. Fact checkers including Politifact and Factcheck.org and have been employed to deny the undeniable, claiming as one that NBC did not report that Hillary Clinton “covered up” evidence of a pedophile ring in the State Department.
FOIAs Reveal Progressive Money Fueling FBI, DOJ, Leftist Activist and Election Official Coordination
A strange constellation has emerged through public records requests of coordination between progressive funders, federal authorities, corporations, state election officials, and leftist organizations.
Freedom of information requests have uncovered oddball and opaque relationships between some state election officials, federal officials, corporations, progressive activists, and those trying to influence the conduct of those same election officials. These relationships extend to junkets that include baseball games, travel, and even data exchanges between state officials and outside progressive groups.
The story begins with a series of freedom of information act requests aimed at a number of states to see if any election officials are tempted to apply for now-illegal money from the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Technology and Civic Life. Such grants and the wild expenditures of these funds altered the course of the 2020 election. (Read The Real Kraken, What Really Happened to Donald Trump in the 2020 Election at PJ Media.)
The FOIAs were submitted by the Public Interest Legal Foundation—with which I am associated—and were aimed broadly at election officials across the United States.
While no election official in a state that now prohibits private funding of elections has applied for new funding, something stranger, and more dangerous has emerged from the public information requests.
In one email, we find that the Democracy Fund—a hyper-funded progressive money source—is organizing state officials and third parties to discuss election administration.
Texts Between EU, Pfizer Bosses Vanish Amid Questions About Billion-Dollar Vaccine Deal
Text messages exchanged between the European Union‘s boss and Pfizer’s CEO just before they sealed a lucrative COVID vaccine deal have vanished, a letter released Wednesday revealed, in the latest chapter of what Europeans are calling “delegate.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged over a year ago that she had been in regular contact with Pfizer boss Albert Bourla while they worked out a deal for 1.8 billion doses of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine. But after a reporter sought the text messages, the commission, which is the EU’s executive body, said they are gone, according to a letter published by the EU watchdog.
“The Commission can confirm that the search undertaken by the President’s cabinet for relevant text messages corresponding to the request for access to documents has not yielded any results,” European Union Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said in a letter to the agency’s ombudsman, according to Reuters.
The well-traveled road from member of Congress to foreign agent
Earlier this month, a bipartisan bill was introduced in Congress that, among other important provisions to combat undue foreign influence in politics, would ban former members of Congress from lobbying on behalf of foreign governments.
New Quincy Institute research finds that this congressional action is long overdue as the revolving door from Congress to lobbying on behalf of foreign interests has been spinning feverishly.
It’s no secret that when members of Congress leave office, they turn to one profession above all others: lobbying. Year in and year out, it’s the same story of former elected officials selling their connections and knowledge of how to make things happen (or not happen) in Washington to high-paying special interests. While this lobbying is often done on behalf of American interests — like big pharmaceutical, banking, or weapons firms — former lawmakers have been lobbying on behalf of foreign interests more and more often in recent years.
We analyzed Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings since 2000 and found that at least 90 former members of Congress have registered as foreign agents, representing nearly half (87) of all countries in the world, and the trend has only become more pronounced in recent years. This raises critically important questions for U.S. national interests and highlights the importance of legislation to combat the potential risks of former members of Congress working for foreign interests.
Joe Biden paid his son’s bills for prostitutes
Data found on Hunter Biden’s laptop reveal that the US president’s son spent over $30,000 on escorts from a “model agency” with offices in Kiev and Moscow, the Washington Examiner reported on Monday.
According to the report, Hunter Biden racked up his five-figure bill between November 2018 and March 2019, in between Joe Biden’s terms as vice president and president of the US. Throughout this period, Joe Biden wired his son a total of $100,000 to help pay his bills, although it is unclear whether the senior Biden knew what his son was spending the money on.
Text messages on the hard drive of Hunter’s laptop purportedly showed conversations with ‘Eva,’ an employee of an “exclusive model agency” named ‘UberGFE’. In one February 2019 exchange, Hunter told Eva that he had problems wiring her money due to her use of a Russian .ru email address.
Hunter said that this address was “flagged” by his bank, and resulted in his account being frozen.
Prior to the exchange with Eva, Joe Biden sent Hunter $5,000 via CashApp, three hours before Hunter filmed himself arguing with an escort over payment. With Hunter seemingly unable to meet the $9,500 charge for 16 hours in the girl’s company, she messaged him looking for the remaining balance for six weeks, until the exchange with ‘Eva’, the report alleges.
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One Year After His Death, John McAfee’s Corpse is Still Being Held by Gov’t, Fueling Claims of a “Cover Up”
It has been an entire year since John McAfee died — allegedly by suicide — in a Spanish prison and since that day, authorities have refused to release his body.
Since his death last June, the internet has abounded with conspiracy theories over how John McAfee died. Adding fuel to the conspiracy fire was the fact that the Spanish government — who was holding him on charges of tax evasion to be extradited to the United States — has held his body and refused to allow the family to see it.
After suspiciously holding his body for 7 months, in February a Spanish court ruled that McAfee took his own life. This ruling by the judge confirmed the findings of the original autopsy which declared his death a suicide.
As she did with the original ruling, McAfee’s widow, Janice McAfee, has appealed the ruling, insisting her husband was murdered.
Joy Athanasiou, a lawyer for McAfee’s daughter – identified only as Jen – told the financial news site MarketWatch that Janice immediately appealed the decision to a higher court at the time, though she noted that there was no timetable yet on when the higher court would rule on the appeal.
“At this point, we don’t really know much aside from the ruling. It’s been a long, strange process,” Athanasiou told MarketWatch.
Adding credence to Janice’s claims is the fact that McAfee himself said he was “content” in jail and had no plans to kill himself “like Epstein.”
Hellbound and Down 
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