Tag: news

A spokesman for Blackstone said the data  “is fully anonymized and includes best-in-class privacy and compliance protections.” 

…social capital – our connections, loyalties, memberships, obligations and bonds – will become more valuable and financial capital will become not only less valuable, but an actual liability…

A growing number of digital media players, including Axios, are joining the late-year dealmaking frenzy…

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Poll workers in Georgia who raised concerns about election irregularities were informed this week that their contracts are not being renewed, according to letters obtained by Epoch Media Group.

Bridget Thorne and Susan Voyles say they witnessed abnormal actions taken during the election in Fulton County. They’ve spoken to news outlets and state legislators about what they saw.

In the new letters, Dwight Brower, elections consultant for the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections, informs the women that Georgia law enables officials to appoint poll managers, and managers must be reappointed for each election event.

“There are many factors (management skills, performance, actions, behavior, etc.) considered prior to making reappointments for each primary or election. Unfortunately, a decision has been made to not reappoint you in a poll management or other poll positions in Fulton County,” Brower wrote.

“I see it as a direct consequence of my being honest,” Voyles told NTD, which is part of Epoch Media Group.

“In that oath, we say that I will, to the best of my abilities, make sure there is no fraud, deceit—it kind of goes on down like this,” Voyles added. “So I saw what I was doing was an extension of my job as a poll manager. In other words, I had seen fraud I had seen deceit, I had seen the things that in our poll reading we were warned to stay away from and to report if we see them. I did, and in this case, at this point, the truth was not received well.”

A Fulton County spokeswoman didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Garland Favorito, co-founder of watchdog group Voters Organized for Trusted Election Results in Georgia, told NTD that the poll workers being terminated is worrisome.

“It’s a tremendous concern, not just for me, but for all the voters in the state of Georgia who are informed about this situation. Because basically, these whistleblowers, who are trying to correct the fraud in Fulton County, have now been terminated,” he said. “And the people who actually appear to have committed the fraud on election night, by illegally scanning 20,000 ballots into the Fulton County system after they told the monitors that we’re not going to scan anymore, those people appear to still be able to count the votes for the upcoming U.S. Senate race. So everyone is asking, ‘Why?’”

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement on Friday that Fulton County should rehire Voyles and Thorne.

“I condemn in the strongest terms the decision by Fulton County elections officials to fire two poll managers purely for raising concerns about the November elections,” the Republican said. “Though we have found no credible evidence of widespread fraud, it is important that individuals can raise their voice when they believe they have seen wrongdoing. Retribution against whistle blowers poses a threat to the continued strength and vibrancy of our democracy.”

Voyles said in her affidavit and subsequent testimony to state lawmakers during a public hearing on the election that she found a batch of “pristine” ballots that were all marked exactly the same. She said approximately 98 percent of that batch were for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

“In my 20 years’ of experience of handling ballots,” she said, “I observed that the markings for the candidates on these ballots were unusually uniform, perhaps even with a ballot-marking device.”

Thorne told NTD earlier this month that she saw the ballots from early voting dumped in the election warehouse in Fulton County.

“Being a precinct manager, it was just upsetting just to see people dumping these ballots out into suitcases and there was no security. There was no chain of command,” she said. “I could have walked out of the building with a whole suitcase of ballots if I wanted to. There was nobody holding me accountable.”

Across multiple days, ballots weren’t verified as real, she alleged, recounting seeing two workers printing ballots late one night.

“And I just realized, anybody could print any kind of ballot they wanted here, they had access,” she added.

They’re among a number of witnesses who have said they saw irregularities unfold before, during, and after the election.

Thorne Redacted by Zerohedge Janitor on Scribd

Carlos Silva, a registered Democrat, and Robin Hall said in affidavits that they saw ballots similar to the batch Voyles talked about. Silva and two others said they saw ballots cast for Trump being placed in stacks for Biden.

“I noticed they all had a perfect black bubble and all were Biden select,” Silva wrote in a sworn affidavit. “I heard them go through the stack and call out Biden’s name over 500 times in a row.”

And Debbie Fisher, a poll observer in Cobb County, told NTD that she saw people enter the precinct at a library and receive absentee ballots, which are supposed to be sent by mail.

“They merely filled out an affidavit saying they had not voted and then they were allowed to vote like everyone else,” Fisher said.

Georgia officials have insisted the election was run smoothly, even as they misrepresented a supposed burst pipe on Election Day and reported thousands of new ballots, mostly for President Donald Trump, during a hand audit. They have also challenged accusations surrounding video footage that showed ballot counting observers and media leave State Farm Arena on election night, and workers resume counting with no oversight.

Officials announced this week they’d conduct a statewide signature audit to try to restore faith in the election process.

“Frankly, there’s been no investigatory rationale for it. At this point, it has become such a drumbeat of disinformation, we now feel obligated to restore confidence in the process by doing it,” Gabriel Sterling, voting systems implementation manager for the Secretary of State’s office, told reporters.

Even as they’ve defended the election, state officials have targeted Fulton County.

Officials are seeing “managerial sloppiness” and “chain of custody” issues in the county, Sterling said last month. Raffensperger said the county “cut corners” during the second recount, leading to a Dominion Voting Systems server crash.

Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Rob Pitts told reporters at State Farm Center that he’s “still not clear as to why” officials like Raffensperger “continue to pick on Fulton County, Georgia.”

“We’re the largest county in the state of Georgia, the largest of 159. I cannot speak to what the other 158 counties in Georgia are doing. But I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that within Fulton County, Georgia, there was no hanky panky whatsoever with respect to the recent election, zero,” he said.

Ivan Pentchoukov and NTD’s Cindy Drukier and Melina Wisecup contributed to this report.

Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal joins Real Vision senior editor Ash Bennington to share his market wrap-up of 2020. They monitor the price dislocations at the close as the S&P 500 was under pressure all day ahead of Tesla’s historic entry into the index. Pal looks back at the year that was from equities to the bond market to crypto to gold, silver and copper. He sees emerging markets breaking out in 2021, specifically identifying opportunities in Iran. In the intro, Real Vision editor/reporter Haley Draznin touches upon Coinbase filing for an IPO as Bitcoin surges to all-time highs.

Seattle’s “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” is back, apparently, after what was previously referred to as CHOP drove headlines this summer after police belatedly moved to dismantle large portions of it. It has managed to survive, in it’s current form emerging recently at Cal Anderson Park as more of a homeless shelter occupying a public park.

But the central irony no doubt missed by those advocating it as some kind of model far-Left utopia is that this week the encampment has erected a large “border wall” after the city announced authorities plan on clearing the area. 

Newsweek reports Friday that a “border wall barricade has been erected around Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP)” just ahead of an expected showdown with police. “Photos shared on social media on Thursday showed the block surrounded by wooden pallets forming a makeshift wall,” Newsweek noted.

So apparently Antifa believes not only in borders clearly demarking zones between its claimed territory and others, but is enforcing it with a very literal wall. This from the same people which deem Trump’s prior vows to “build the big, beautiful wall” as “racist”.

Prior signs put up in front of the “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” or CHOP in June in Seattle, Washington. Getty Images.

Among the “demands” to the city by those inside the camp are that Seattle stop all evictions, and that essentially low-income people receive free housing with no conditions.

Fresh hay on the hillside to deal with that old classic PNW mud problem pic.twitter.com/Xdm0icVNyD

— Nikki West (@Nikki__West) December 18, 2020

A similar standoff and ‘autonomous zone’ is currently the source of controversy and ongoing showdowns with police in Portland.

TRASHED: Here’s another entrance at Cal Anderson Park. Saw people dropping off wooden pallets in pick up trucks. Clearly building make shift wall to keep city crews out during Wednesday’s planned sweep. #seattle #CapitolHill #CalAndersonPark pic.twitter.com/qmfd2bNJyt

— Jonathan Choe Journalist KOMO News (@choeshow) December 15, 2020

Seattle’s mayor, Jenny Durkan, has described the CHOP encampment as a “political occupation” and has vowed to dismantle it.

Man walks by barricades surrounding homeless encampment on Nagle Pl. Seattle, WA 12/17/20 pic.twitter.com/g4UR5wR5pE

— Nikki West (@Nikki__West) December 18, 2020

Police began entering Cal Anderson Park to evict the squatters on Friday morning, according to multiple reports.

The small tent village and the inhabitants appear to have been surviving on donations. There have been social media efforts urging that supporters go there to drop off food items.

* * *

Perhaps CHOP should consult others with more experience with “the wall”?

Authored by Alexander Sammon via The American Prospect,

Committee assignments are one of the least eye-catching parts of politics, but they’re also one of the most important ways in which actual political power is wielded. Certain committees in the House, like Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Appropriations, have outsized influence and money power. (They are often called the “money” committees, not just because they’re where the action is but because members can earn lots of money in campaign contributions from industries with business before them.)

Deliberations over the next several days will be extremely important for progressives in the House, as they angle to lock down seats on these powerful committees for their members. To that end, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was expected to secure a prized position on the Energy and Commerce Committee, a seat vacated by outgoing New Yorker Eliot Engel. Among other issues, the committee has jurisdiction over health care and climate change issues, a natural for a Congresswoman who has championed Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

Ocasio-Cortez was expected to cruise comfortably to the position. She was the first to raise her hand for the seat, and she won the backing of dean of the New York delegation, Rep. Jerry Nadler. But last week, as Politico reported, Long Islander Kathleen Rice made an out-of-nowhere, last-second bid for the seat, interrupting the process. Rep. Rice is a backbencher from the party’s right flank who, in 2018, refused to support Nancy Pelosi for Speaker. Without the support of Nadler, and with the famous opposition of steering committee leader Pelosi, Rice’s attempt didn’t seem to be serious.

But in a surprise, last-second Steering Committee meeting on exclusive committee assignments Thursday, which was scheduled at 10 p.m. the night before, centrist Democrats put on a show of support for Rice and against AOC, in what looks to have been a process-defying attempt to keep AOC out of the seat. Fellow New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries came out in support of Rice, contra Nadler, as did Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Diana DeGette (D-CO), author of a book called Chemicals Used in Hydraulic Fracturing.

Most vocal in his opposition to Ocasio-Cortez’s candidacy was Texas’s Henry Cuellar, the caucus’s most conservative member. After Ocasio-Cortez was nominated and seconded, Cuellar opposed, commenting: “I’m taking into account who pays their dues and who doesn’t work against other members whether in primaries or in other contexts,” according to a source with knowledge of the meeting. After Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) called for a vote on the two candidates came an unusual outcome: Rice crushed AOC 46-13.

A similar situation existed with the Energy and Commerce Committee seat vacated by incoming New Mexico Senator Ben Ray Lujan. That seat was expected to go to progressive Texan Sylvia Garcia, but was contested by her moderate colleague from Texas, Lizzie Fletcher. Garcia, the other priority for progressives in Energy and Commerce, was left off the slate without even a vote. Fletcher, who has a troubling track record on unions, got endorsed by Pelosi. The Texas AFL-CIO famously opposed Fletcher’s candidacy for Congress, even against a Republican incumbent.

The result is both a resounding and surprising defeat for progressives, who just days ago had no reason to believe both Ocasio-Cortez and Garcia would be left off the committee, or even that this would be settled this week.

Many of the representatives that came out most forcefully against Ocasio-Cortez have close ties to oil and gas, especially Cuellar. But perhaps more important was Cuellar’s personal opposition to AOC, as evidenced by his statement. Ocasio-Cortez backed Cuellar’s primary challenger, 27-year-old progressive Jessica Cisneros, in March’s primary. Cuellar won narrowly, with backing from the Koch political network and some last minute campaigning from Speaker Pelosi herself, despite the fact that Cuellar regularly votes against the Democratic caucus and has routinely fundraised for Republicans. According to multiple people familiar with the proceedings, Ocasio-Cortez’s recent interview with The Intercept, where she said Speaker Pelosi needed to go, though there was no one to replace her, loomed over the proceedings.

Rice’s triumph is especially surprising, given that she is not known to be well-liked within the caucus. She made powerful enemies of Pelosi and Nadler, and was shut out of a much-desired spot on the House Judiciary Committee just two years ago, because of her refusal to back Pelosi’s speakership in 2018. It’s unclear how her selection might influence her vote this time around. AOC, meanwhile, voted for Pelosi’s speakership.

It’s not the first time Ocasio-Cortez has been frozen out of Energy and Commerce. In 2018, she made a play for a vacant seat, only to be turned away on the grounds that it couldn’t go to a freshman. It was given to sophomore Tom Suozzi instead.

Sylvia Garcia, meanwhile, was expected to be a priority for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, given that it was once held by Lujan, a Latino. But in a meeting last week, it was Cuellar, who again voiced opposition, leading some to believe that the seat would not be filled by a representative from the state at all.

There are plenty of committee assignments left to be announced, and progressives did win a handful of priority appointments on the money committees. New York Rep. Ritchie Torres got a spot on Financial Services, and Adriano Espaillat made it onto Appropriations. But the treatment of AOC and Garcia looks like a shot across the bow that will have progressives on high alert. If other committee assignments go this way, it will become an open question as to whether a newly united progressive bloc will oppose Pelosi’s speakership come January 3.

During a show this week Fox News’ Tucker Carlson urged President Trump to pardon Julian Assange, saying that while the president “probably does want to pardon” the WikiLeaks founder who remains in detention awaiting an extradition trial in London, there are also “sinister people” who want him to stay confined for life.

Tucker interviewed Assange’s fiancée Stella Moris who directly appealed for President Trump to “show mercy” and drop the pending extradition case against Assange before he leaves office in January.

“Whatever you think of Julian Assange and what he did, he is effectively a journalist. He took information and he put it in a place the public could read it,” the primetime Fox host said.

“He may die in prison,” Tucker continued. “The current president Donald Trump has the power to pardon Julian Assange.” He also emphasized the growing calls from multiple corners and across the political spectrum for him to do so. There’s also been widespread rumors and speculation that Trump is deeply considering it.

If extradited to the United States Assange faces breach of state secrets-related charges which could bring a sentence 175 years in prison. The legal consensus is that he’s certainly facing life in prison, likely at a harsh federal maximum security facility such ADX Supermax in Florence, Colorado.

In the appearance, which is no doubt meant to get Trump’s attention via his favorite news channel Fox, Moris said that “Julian doesn’t face a fair trial in the US.”

“He will be tried in Alexandria, Virginia where the jury pool will be composed of the people who live in Virginia who have a preponderance of people who work for security contractors and the Deep State,” she added. 

“Essentially once he gets to the US he will be in the hands of the Deep State. That’s why I pleaded with the President to show the mercy the Deep State will not show Julian if he is extradited,” Moris, a 37-year-old South African born lawyer who holds Spanish and Swedish nationality said.

It was only revealed this year that Moris and Assange have two sons together, Max and Gabriel, after beginning a relationship years ago when she served on Assange’s defense team during his time at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.