Democratic senator keeps breaking conflicts-of-interest law over and over and over again

Members of Congress keep struggling to comply with a decade-old financial disclosure and transparency law — the latest, two federal lawmakers who were late reporting stock and U.S. Treasury transactions.

For the third time in 14 months, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) missed a 45-day disclosure deadline imposed by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act.

Carper was as much as two weeks late in reporting his spouse’s U.S. Treasury bill purchases and sales totaling up to $345,000, as well as a PayPal stock sale up to $15,000, according to a June 30 federal financial report reviewed by Raw Story. The STOCK Act only requires legislators to disclose their own, their spouse’s and dependent children’s transactions in broad ranges.

“There was a clerical error,” Natasha Dabrowski, Carper’s communications director, told Raw Story. “Senator Carper is working with the Ethics Committee so he can fully resolve the matter.”

The STOCK Act — passed in 2012 to stop insider trading, curb conflicts-of-interest and enhance transparency — requires prompt reporting of most purchases, sales and exchanges of stocks, bonds, commodity futures and cryptocurrency by key government officials, particularly members of Congress.

Keep reading

Michigan Democrats’ ‘Hate Speech’ Law Could Imprison People For Saying ‘Frightening’ Words

In an unprecedented move, Michigan Democrats have passed a new law, House Bill 4474, which seeks to enforce prison sentences for those found guilty of uttering words deemed to be ‘frightening’ or ‘intimidating’.

The bill expands the definition of hate crimes to include intimidation or harassment based on a wide range of individual characteristics, including race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, physical or mental disability, age, ethnicity, and national origin.

Under the terms of the proposed law, a person can be found guilty of a hate crime if they are found to have intentionally intimidated or harassed another person based on any of the above-listed characteristics. Intimidation and harassment under this law can take many forms, including causing physical contact, damaging property, or making threats that could cause another individual to feel frightened, threatened, or harassed.

According to critics, the bill’s broad definition of hate crimes, including the use of ‘frightening’ words, raises concerns about potential infringement on free speech. The law could have far-reaching implications, potentially criminalizing harsh words or expressions of opinion if they are perceived as intimidating or harassing, particularly if they are based on the characteristics listed in the bill.

Keep reading

Rhode Island senator arrested, accused of keying car with anti-Biden bumper sticker

State Senator Josh Miller was arrested on Thursday, accused of keying a car in the Garden City shopping center parking lot that was sporting a bumper sticker reading “Biden sucks.”

Body-worn camera videos released by the Cranston Police Department showed Miller initially denied keying the man’s car when stopped by police at Garden City, but at his home later Thursday night acknowledged he did so because he felt he was being threatened by the man.

The arrest report says the alleged victim returned to his car parked near Ben & Jerry’s Thursday afternoon and heard a scratching sound coming from the passenger side.

“Upon checking, he observed a large scratch on his passenger side rear door and a male, later identified as Joshua Miller, quickly walking away, holding keys in his right hand and gripping a single key which he says was pointing towards his vehicle,” Officer Alberto Diaz wrote in the report.

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

House Democrats want taxpayers to cover costs of abortion travel, lodging, ‘escorts’

House Democrats want taxpayers to pick up the tab for a host of abortion-related services, including travel, hotels, childcare, “escorts” and “doula care,” as part of a bill timed to the one-year anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson.

The Abortion Justice Act, sponsored by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts Democrat, would circumvent the Hyde Amendment’s ban on federal funds for abortion by earmarking $350 million annually for grants to “increase abortion access or support individuals who need abortion access.”

That includes covering “both the direct costs of the care and associated costs of travel, lodging, and childcare,” as well as “patient navigators,” “linguistically appropriate and culturally competent legal assistance,” “the full spectrum of doula care,” and “escorts to support abortion seekers as they access care.”

Keep reading

Fact Check: Nearly 100 Percent of Political Contributions From Fact Checkers Go to Democrats

It all started during the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States, when the political and mainstream media establishments began seeding the narrative that Donald Trump was always lying, and Hillary Clinton was telling the truth, and therefore a new tier of information and speech policing was now needed to save society from itself. Enter the fact checkers.

Since then, political “fact-checkers” have enjoyed a type of privileged status alongside the corporate MSM, and they now wield great power as the arbiters of truth. Along with the MSM, Big Tech firms and partisan foundations have also ploughed hundreds of millions of dollars into building this new arm of the censorship industrial complex.

However, critics have rightly pointed out how political “fact-checking” is in fact a fraudulent enterprise. Far from being objective, the evidence show that this new industry is non-transparent, totally unaccountable, as well as being politically and ideologically weaponised. Rather than elevate debate and discourse, it serves as a blunt tool of mass-censorship by the Establishment who use their army of paid fact-checkers to suppress and marginalise any unfavored viewpoints and opinions, as well as suppressing any inconvenient information which could threaten the established order, or undermine government policy.

The “Fact checkers” constantly represent themselves as being unbiased, authoritative arbiters of “The Science”, election integrity, overseas wars, and the overall public discourse.

By now, the whole ‘fact checker’ industry has been thoroughly exposed as a fraud, and now we have the receipts that the entire operation is completely partisan…

Keep reading

Don’t Bring Back Public Housing

One of the biggest frustrations about getting old is hearing younger people propose ideas that were debunked decades ago—and then getting “eyes glazed over” looks from them after explaining that we’ve already been there and done that. Proposers of such ideas rarely change their minds after I say, “Dude, I was there and remember—and it was a disaster.”

The latest “old is new again” proposal is for the government to just build housing—as in public officials buying the land, choosing the design, finding a developer, and then serving as landlord. The impetus is the nation’s affordable-housing crisis. Advocates have changed the terminology. They are proposing that “we” build “social housing” rather than “public housing projects,” but it’s the same blighted idea.

“Public housing is ready to make a comeback,” wrote Daniel Denvir and Yonah Freemark in left-leaning Slate. They say current efforts to up-zone property (allowing developers to build higher-density projects with fewer regulations) yield only modest results. They rehash the debate on the Left—between YIMBYs (Yes In My Back Yarders) and those who claim that new building promotes gentrification.

“But this debate is often impoverished,” they add. “As policymakers continue to confront this crisis, it is time for them to reconsider an obvious but long-taboo solution: building new public housing.” Of course, this time the government will do it better than the last time by—get this—avoiding income restrictions and opening the units to all comers.

Keep reading

Biden Energy Secretary Granholm Admits False Testimony About Owning Stocks

President Joe Biden’s secretary of energy revealed she gave false personal financial testimony during her Senate confirmation hearing in 2021.

Jennifer Granholm lied to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) during an April 2021 testimony.

“Do you own individual stocks, Madam Secretary?” Hawley asked Granholm in that hearing.

“No,” replied Granholm, “I’m invested in mutual funds.”

Hawley lamented the Biden administrator’s perjury in a Friday Twitter post: “She lied to me.”

Biden’s energy secretary claims her unequivocal denial of stock ownership was just a mistake on her part.

Fox News further reported:

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm admitted in a letter Friday that she made a false statement when she recently told lawmakers she didn’t own any individual stocks.

While Granholm divested from a variety of stocks in 2021, she acknowledged in the letter — which was sent to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee leadership — that she maintained shares of six companies. On April 20, however, Granholm testified under oath that she had sold all of her shares of individual companies.

“As you know, as part of the confirmation process before this Committee, in 2021 I divested from assets that could be in conflict with my official duties,” Granholm wrote in the letter obtained by Fox News Digital. “I did, however, retain assets that were determined by Government ethics officials to not conflict with my official duties.”

Keep reading