Tag Archive for: bribery

Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez and Wife Indicted on Bribery Offenses

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife will be indicted Friday morning on bribery offenses in the Southern District of New York.

“A press event will be held today at 11:00 a.m. to announce the unsealing of an indictment charging Robert Menendez, U.S. Senator from New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, with bribery offenses in connection with their corrupt relationship with three New Jersey businessmen,” the Twitter account for the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Of New York said in a statement.

Per the indictment, “Over $480,000 in cash — much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe — was discovered in the home.”

The Menendez indictment also says Menendez, who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, provided sensitive U.S. Government information” to Egypt.

READ THE INDICTMENT HERE: 

(DAILY CALLER OBTAINED) — … by Henry Rodgers

Menendez denied the allegations in a statement shortly after the press conference.

In 2015, The Daily Caller broke news of prostitution allegations against Menendez that ended up picking up the attention of the FBI.

Menendez also threatened to call the police on the Daily Caller when asked about the Green New Deal in 2019.

(This is a developing story. More information will be added as it becomes available.)

AUTHOR

HENRY RODGERS

Chief national correspondent. Follow Henry Rodgers On Twitter.

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How Green Investors Pay the Media to Promote ‘Climate Change’

A logo for The Associated Press is seen at its headquarters in New York on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. AP’s earnings rose 30 percent last year as the news cooperative recorded a huge tax gain and cut costs to help offset a revenue downturn reflecting the long-running financial woes plaguing newspapers and other media. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)

AP takes millions from groups leveraged in green investments to promote the need for green investments.


The Associated Press revealed last year that it had scored $8 million to promote claims of global warming. The AP impartially described this massive conflict of interest as an illustration of “how philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism”.

“This far-reaching initiative will transform how we cover the climate story,” its executive editor claimed. That is no doubt true. And an incredibly damaging admission.

The philanthropic quid-pro-quo saw five organizations fund the AP’s dedicated team of “more than two dozen journalists” to cover “climate issues” that the wire service would then plant in papers around the country to terrify Americans into supporting ‘green’ taxes and subsidies.

The Associated Press did not bother to explain to its readers or the newspapers that run its stories why these organizations were impelled to throw millions at it except sheer benevolence.

Nor did it explain why they might be particularly interested in convincing Americans that the climate sky is falling and that our economy must be dismantled and ‘greened’: raising energy prices and putting millions out of work. The paragon service of journalism did not even bother explaining to its readers what one of the five, Quadrivium, was beyond a Latin word.

Quadrivium is the pet project of James Murdoch and his wife, the ‘black sheep’ of Clan Murdoch, who left the family business in a huff “due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets“. Quadrivium seeks to reach “a majority of the public” to generate “urgent action” on the bipartisan passage of a US climate strategy.”

The proposed template is the “carbon rebate plan” which would tax Americans through their carbon use and then promise to pay some of the money back to them. The plan comes from the Climate Leadership Council whose board includes Kathryn Murdoch: James’s wife.

CLC’s partners include major banks, JP Morgan, Santander and Goldman Sachs, energy companies, BP, Shell and Conoco, who believe that the proposal will be good for them.

The AP has helpfully promoted the CLC’s carbon tax plan in puff pieces like “Carbon tax plan worthy of bipartisan support”. Its editorial board described the CLC as a “group of venerable Republicans” and claims that taxing Americans for the benefit of special interests would be “a quintessentially conservative plan”. That was a strange new respect from the AP which has relentlessly tried to associate Republicans and conservatives with Nazis.

The “venerable Republicans” currently on CLC’s board include not only Kathryn Murdoch, but also a former Goldman Sachs executive focusing on climate finance, a board member of the Brown Advisory Sustainable Investing Advisory Board and a founding managing partner of “Qiming Venture Partners: one of China’s premier VC firms” that was an early investor in TikTok.

That is what ESG looks like underneath the Gen Z activists being paid to scream in the streets even as the AP is being paid to scream more respectably in stories planted in local papers.

Serious journalism would ask questions or at least mention some of this in passing. The AP instead acts as a mouthpiece without even enough lingering self-respect to disclose any of that.

James Murdoch has put a lot of  money into green projects. His foundation joined a consortium of investors piling into BlackRock’s $250 million climate fund. He’s also on the board of directors of Tesla, and a potential candidate to succeed Musk, and the EV car company’s business model depends on a government subsidized climate panic.

Lupa Systems, Murdoch’s venture capital fund, also has some investments in environmental startups. The AP might have mentioned this to its readers before writing an article congratulating itself for taking cash to promote Murdoch’s views. But it’s not just Murdoch.

The Rockefeller Foundation, which is another of the Big 5 funding AP’s climate propaganda, put $500 million into green energy abroad. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, another of the AP’s climate sugar daddies, has numerous climate initiatives, and these include the Climate Finance Fund. The Foundation refuses to invest in companies that drill for gas or oil.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, set up by the eccentric tycoon as a tax shelter, was quickly hijacked after his death. Delaware, where it was incorporated, appointed a board that sold off Hughes Aircraft to GM. But HMMI’s original emphasis on medical research has more recently declined into wokeness. Last year, HMMI announced a $2 billion investment to increase “diversity” in science. HMI appears to be a major investor in Kreido Biofuels,

And finally there’s the fifth of the AP’s big five climate funders: the Walton Family Foundation.

The foundation of the Walmart heirs has four board members. Lukas Walton, Sam Walton’s grandson, also serves as its Environment Program Committee Chair. Lukas’ $4 billion Builders Version organization directs 90% of its investments into ESG. S2G Ventures, its capital fund, declares that its mission is “investing in a humane and healthy planet.” It has an extensive portfolio of ‘green’ companies including Bluestar Energy Capital, a green energy investment company, Common Energy, a solar power company, Electric Hydrogen, and Carbon America which focuses on carbon capture.

Those investments seem likely to do better if Mr. and Mrs. America, or at least the CEOs and financiers who take the media seriously, keep reading about the threat of “climate change”.

The AP is taking money from organizations heavily leveraged in green investments to promote the need for green investments. And it fails to disclose the financial interests that its funders have in promoting global warming hysteria.

The closest that it gets to addressing the inherent conflict of interest comes when Brian Carovillano, AP’s vice president for grants, concedes that, “this is a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

The AP’s benefit is obvious. What’s the benefit to the donors?

Instead of answering that question, the AP story simply notes that Brian Carovillano had to “get used to the idea that funders weren’t just being generous; they had their own goals to achieve.”

The AP echoes Carovillano’s insistence that the money comes “without strings attached; the funders have no influence on the stories that are done”. Except that the whole point of the grant is for the service to produce stories on the topic that the funders are interested in. Since the AP is not about to report that there are more polar bears than at any time since the 1960s or that climate doomers keep changing the date when everyone will die every few years, the content is predictable. The AP would like to benefit from repeat business from these massive foundations, so it’s going to produce the kinds of stories that will bring more money flowing its way.

That’s the way to maintain the “mutually beneficial arrangement” aimed at helping the Associated Press pay the bills while helping its generous donors fulfill their “goals”.

In recent years, Democrats and the media have targeted conservative groups like the Heartland Institute claiming that they act as “fronts” for oil companies. The AP promoted documents stolen from the Heartland Institute about its funders and has spent years running hit pieces on Heartland without revealing that the wire service is a paid shill for green special interests.

The AP’s arrangement sheds light on the media’s financial agenda in promoting green programs that would destroy the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of Americans. While the media has its biases, these are not wholly organic. The ability of special interests to capture the media at the source by targeting wire services like the AP shows how what we read about the environment is being manipulated by networks of special interests with billions at stake.

The next time you see an AP story about “climate change”, you know who’s paying for it.

Democrats have proposed an investigation of Heartland and the oil companies. It may be time for an investigation of the AP and the financial interests funding its global warming propaganda.

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: FDA Exec Exposes Close Ties Between Agency and Big Pharma

*CLICK HERE TO TWEET OUT THE VIDEO*


Project Veritas released Part Two of its video series on the FDA today, which features FDA Executive Officer, Christopher Cole, speaking about the inner workings of the agency — including the FDA’s conflicts of interest, overspending, and why it’s hard for those within the agency to speak out on such abuses.

Here are some of the highlights from today’s video:

  • FDA Executive Officer, Christopher Cole: “The drug companies, the food companies, the vaccine companies. So, they pay us hundreds of millions of dollars a year to hire and keep the reviewers to approve their products.”
  • Cole on FDA fees: “Congress approved user fees for [the] FDA. Basically, we charge the industry millions of dollars in order to hire more drug reviewers and vaccine reviewers which will speed up the approval process. So, they [pharmaceutical companies] make more money.”
  • Cole: “They [FDA] tone down the impact of the user fees on their operations because they know they’re dependent on the drug companies, and the vaccine companies, and these other companies for their agency to operate.”
  • Cole on blowing the whistle: “There’s not an incentive to speak out in government, surprisingly. You would think there would be, but there’s not. It’s better just to just not say anything and just ignore it.”

You can watch the full video by HERE.

Cole’s LinkedIn page lists him as an Executive Officer within the agency’s Countermeasures Initiatives, which plays a critical role in ensuring that drugs, vaccines, and other measures to counter infectious diseases and viruses are safe. He made these revelations on a hidden camera to an undercover Project Veritas reporter.

A spokesperson for FDA issued a statement yesterday saying, “The person purportedly in the video does not work on vaccine matters and does not represent the views of the FDA.”

This statement appears to contradict a phone call released Wednesday afternoon by Project Veritas wherein Cole reiterated that he is “a manager in the office that helps oversee the approval of the COVID vaccines for emergency approval.”

Will the FDA clarify this situation? Only time will tell…


*CLICK HERE TO TWEET OUT THE VIDEO*


EDITORS NOTE: This Project Veritas video report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Study calls on US DOE to stop bribing states to adopt Common Core

The United States Department of Education (USED) should be prohibited from making adoption of national English and math standards known as Common Core a condition or incentive for receipt of federal funding, and both USED and organizations like the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, whose dues are paid with taxpayer funds, should make public the amount of time and money they have invested in promoting Common Core according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

“Common Core fundamentally alters the relationship between the federal government and the states,” says former Texas Commissioner of Education Robert Scott, the author of A Republic of Republics: How Common Core Undermines State and Local Autonomy over K-12 Education. “States are sacrificing their ability to inform what their students learn.”

To read the full study click here.

Three federal laws explicitly prohibit the federal government from directing, supervising, funding, or controlling any nationalized standards, testing, or curriculum. Yet Race to the Top (RttT), a competitive $4.35 billion federal grant program, gave preference to states that adopted or indicated their intention to adopt Common Core and participated in one of two federally funded consortia developing assessments linked to Common Core.

USED subsequently made adoption of Common Core one of the criteria for granting states conditional waivers from the accountability provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

In his preface for the paper, Iowa’s U.S. Senator Charles Grassley writes that when gov­ernment makes “decisions that affect a child’s education, these decisions should be made at a level of government close to the parents and students who are affected.” He goes on to criticize how what began as a plan to develop standards that states could adopt voluntarily has become a subject of federal coercion.

Scott notes that the adoption of new standards normally takes years from the time they are initially written by panels of educators, made available for extended periods of public review, and revised until they are adopted. But because of RttT’s deadlines, these periods were reduced to a few months or even weeks.

As a result of the rushed process, states adopted Common Core without knowing about assessments; the outcomes for which students, and in some cases teachers, will be held accountable. Other unknowns include what the passing score will be, who will set it, and whether it will be the same from state to state.

The three most populous states – California, Texas and Florida – also have systematic processes for adopting textbooks. These reviews happen on a regular cycle and would be disrupted and often expedited due to the need to adopt instructional materials aligned with the new standards in time for them to be implemented.

The expedited process by which Common Core was adopted in most states meant teachers had no opportunity to inform the standards’ content. In some states, the new standards are substantially different than what had been taught. In many cases, teachers will be teaching material in different grades than it had been before.

Scott describes all the “learning on the go” Common Core will require as a very expensive gamble. The one-year cost of new technology, instructional materials and teacher professional development is estimated at $10.5 billion for the 45 states and the District of Columbia, which have adopted the standards. With ongoing expenses, the cost is expected to rise to about $16 billion.

Scott also describes why Texas chose not to adopt Common Core while he served as commissioner of education. Disruption of the textbook adoption cycle, the lengthy process of making the standards available to the public and seeking approval from the state Board of Education, and the cost of changing procedures and parts of the education code were among the reasons for the decision not to adopt.

Texas would have been in line for a $700 million RttT grant, but “it costs more than $300 million per day to run public schools in Texas,” Scott says. “Giving up substantial autonomy to direct education policy in return for roughly enough money to run the schools for two days was not a trade-off we were willing to make.”

This report is co-sponsored by the American Principles Project, the Pacific Research Institute, and the Civitas Institute. Pioneer’s extensive research on Common Core national education standards includes:  Common Core Standards Still Don’t Make the Grade,The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers, and National Cost of Aligning States and Localities to the Common Core Standards. Recent national media coverage includes op-eds placed in The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard.

ABOUT THE PIONEER INSTITUTE:

Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.