Tag Archives: politics

Naked Extortion

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This is the new fund-raising technique of the Progressive-Democratic Party—new for Party, but a much older mechanism for other families. The not very veiled threat comes from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY):

The era of unbridled corruption visited upon the country by the Trump cartel will soon come to an end[.]

Then,

Expected targets for House Democrats include companies that have made large donations to Trump or Trump’s projects and those tied to Trump’s family members or children of the president’s senior aides, including Steve Witkoff and Howard Lutnick.

The threat made explicit: Cooper Teboe, a Silicon Valley donor adviser and Progressive-Democratic strategist said it straight out:

His advice to companies who’ve been publicly cozying up to Trump and ignoring Democrats: “Get right with God.”
“You’re going to be totally f—ed next year or you’re going to figure it out this year and you’re going to make amends—and amends are going to be much more costly than they were previously[.]”

Companies are starting to pay the vig:

Meta Platforms and others are writing big checks for [Progressive-]Democrats ahead of the midterms, according to people familiar with the matter, a counterbalance to the tens of millions they gave to the White House ballroom and Republican initiatives.

Companies like Paramount Skydance and Kalshi are accepting Party-designated consiglieri—excuse me, Progressive-Democrat advisors—into their management teams to “help” them run their businesses.

Nice company ya’s got there. Be too bad if somethin’ was to happen to it.

Believability

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The Wall Street Journal spent several column inches and a potful of pixels writing about how Michigan’s socialist Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Senate, Abdul el-Sayed, is trying to walk back some of the heat he delivered in the primary.

In the last week, the fiery progressive distanced himself from Hasan Piker after the controversial left-wing streamer suggested that American Jews’ support for Israel could put them at risk. El-Sayed in a Fox News interview also cast himself as focused on kitchen-table issues—not the culture war.

The short and sweet of it is this.

El-Sayed spoke from his heart when he was campaigning and hobnobbing with Piker. Now he’s just covering his political behind and tossing his colleague under the bus.

El-Sayed’s words today are not believable.

Money Laundering and Elections

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Non-profits organized and licensed as 501(c)(3) entities get donations to them characterized as tax deductions, and they are prohibited from engaging in any form of political campaign for or against a candidate. Non-profits organized and licensed as 501(c)(4) entities, on the other hand, are allowed to engage in political campaigns, including direct partisan politics.

So far, everything’s jake.

However.

Quite a number of 501(c)(3)s sent all of their donations to 501(c)(4)s explicitly to help fund politicians’ campaigns and to allow their donors’ donations engage in those direct partisan politics. That’s strictly, narrowly legal.

Here are three examples, though, of something more nefarious.

  • Democracy Matters Foundation provided 96% of its 2024 expenditures to its affiliated(!) 501(c)(4), Democracy Matters, some $31.38 million
  • Guarantee Our Votes Project spent just 0.2% of its $13,919,873 on 2024 legal and office expenses; the remainder went to donations like $13.85 million to America Works USA
  • America Votes Education Fund in 2024 gave $20,748,002 to its 501(c)(4) affiliate(!) America Votes. It claimed a token $532 in office expenses and $274 in fundraising expenses that year, and it had no paid employees

Should that sort of thing be legal? It looks like money-laundering to me.

A Remaining Question

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GSA says it has discovered more than $13 billion in suspected fraud by federal contractors since March.

Since then, the task force has announced a litany of fraud busts, spanning multiple agencies.

That’s just a small sample of the $250 billion in public funds fraud that the newly formed anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance (R) has found.

Left unaddressed, though, is what will GSA, DoJ, and the respective Department Secretaries and Agency Directors will do about those bureaucrats who enabled, if not actively facilitated, all of that fraud, whether out of personal ideology, crookedness, or incompetence? These also need to tracked down, prosecuted, and if convicted jailed for a good long time.

The Cat’s Out of the Bag

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One of President Donald Trump’s (R) advisors, Jared Kushner, met with Progressive-Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY), ostensibly to seek out areas of “common ground” in advance of Jeffries’ ascension to House Speaker in January.

The Left has been ripping at its collective bodice ever since news of the meeting broke. I also disagree with the usefulness of the meeting, but for different reasons. The first is that Jeffries cannot be trusted to keep any agreement, formal or tacit, out loud or unspoken, with a President or a Party whose members he’s spent his time in the House smearing as unpatriotic threats to democracy and/or personally dishonest.

This corroborates my position:

Jeffries said the only way the Democrats and the Trump administration would come to agreements on issues would be if Republicans were willing to give ground to Democrats on cost-of-living issues, which is the Republican’s top priority.

Nothing about his party giving ground to Republicans on any question. Nothing about compromise at all. This is Jeffries’ statement that he will lead Party to pass legislation without Republican input that isn’t Republican surrender. This is Jeffries’ statement that he and Party will simply dictate legislation and non-Party Representatives can go hang.

This is corroborated by Party’s commitment to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate as soon as they get a majority there, enabling Party to impose its will on us Americans wholly independently of any other party input and utterly without compromise.

That arrogance makes Jeffries and Party entirely untrustworthy.