Month: June 2023

More than $1.3 billion U.S. tax dollars were sent to Russia and China over the past five years (since 2017), according to a new analysis released today by Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and OpenTheBooks.com auditors. This amount likely doesn’t reflect the total amount because federal agencies do not follow the trail of tax dollars to their final destination.

Senator Ernst and Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) are leading the charge to create transparency and accountability for the taxpayer dollars that are being handed out in China and Russia. Today, they are introducing the Tracking Receipts to Adversarial Countries for Knowledge of Spending (TRACKS) Act that would require every penny from a government grant paid to any organization in China and Russia to be tracked and publicly disclosed.

Senator Ernst and OpenTheBooks determined more than $490 million from U.S. grants and contracts were paid to organizations in China over the past five years and another $870 million were paid to entities in Russia.

“Holding firms responsible to publicly report where and how they use their grants and contract awards can deputize private citizens and make them part of the solution. Radical transparency is revolutionizing U.S. public policy and is the information machine for democracy. Everyone has a stake in a more transparent, effective government.”

Some of these projects in Russia and China funded by taxpayer dollars already tracked down include:

• $58.7 million from Department of State, including $96,875 for gender equality through exhibition of New Yorker magazine cartoons

• $51.6 million from Department of Defense, including $6 million for tech support of the military “deployment and distribution command” software – delivering equipment and supplies anywhere our military is deployed, even though the DOD Inspector General warned the Pentagon about using Chinese IT companies on DOD projects

• $4.7 million to a Russian company for health insurance that was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022

• $4.2 million from Health and Human Services, including $770,466 to a state-run lab in Russia to put cats on treadmills

• $2.4 million on Russian alcohol and addiction research

• $2 million funneled to China’s state-run Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct dangerous experiments on bat coronaviruses and transgenic mice

• $1.6 million to Chinese companies from National School Lunch Program, which means taxpayer dollars from the CARES Act meant for American farmers went to Chinese ag exporters

• $1.45 million for pandemic virus tracking in Russia

• Subsidies for the Russian space program by funding the Russia Space Agency and vendors

* * *

And while it’s great that the US is tracking “every penny” paid to adversarial countries, why doesn’t the government also track every penny spent to friendly countries – what little is left of them – not to mention domestic recipients? Last time we checked, the Pentagon – the biggest money laundering machine in the world, far greater than bitcoin ever could be – which can only account for 39% of its $3.5 trillion in assets and racked up $35 trillion in accounting changes in just one year, and has never passed a full audit. Maybe instead of worrying so much about the few billions going to the Wuhan lab – what’s done is done – someone can rein in the trillions in untracable spending and money laundering that takes place right under the noses of America’s elected bureaucrats.

Authored by Lawrence Wilson via The Epoch Times,

President Joe Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act on Saturday, suspending the debt ceiling for 19 months and bringing a monthslong political battle to a close.

The compromise legislation negotiated by Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support this week, averting a potential default on the nation’s financial obligations.

“Passing this budget agreement was critical. The stakes could not have been higher,” Biden said in a Friday evening address to the nation from the Oval Office.

Congressional leaders in both parties, eager to avoid financial disaster, endorsed the bill.

McCarthy referred to the legislation in historic terms, calling it the biggest spending cut ever enacted by Congress. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, “We’ve saved the country from the scourge of default,” after the bill passed the Senate on June 1.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) both supported the bill.

Biden vs. McCarthy

The president’s signature ends a monthslong cold war with McCarthy over terms for raising the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling.

The Financial Responsibility Act suspends the debt ceiling until Jan. 1, 2025, cuts non-defense discretionary spending slightly in 2024, and limits discretionary spending growth to 1 percent in 2025.

The agreement also contains permitting reforms for oil and gas drilling, changes to work requirements for some social welfare programs, and clawbacks of $20 billion in IRS funding and $30 billion in unspent COVID-19 relief funds, among other provisions.

President Joe Biden hosts debt limit talks with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other congressional leaders in the Oval Office at the White House on May 9, 2023. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

In the absence of congressional action to allow additional borrowing, the United States would have lacked the ready cash to pay all of its bills on June 5, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Yellen announced in January that the country was in danger of reaching its limit.

McCarthy then said Congress would not increase the limit without an agreement from the White House to cut spending. Biden said he would not negotiate over lifting the limit because that would put the full faith and credit of the United States at risk.

The impasse was broken in late April when the House passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act, authorizing a $1.5 trillion increase in borrowing along with spending cuts and other measures favored by Republicans.

Biden then agreed to negotiate with McCarthy, resulting in the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

Opposition

A vocal minority of lawmakers in both parties opposed the bill.

Some Republicans believed the agreement conceded too much to Democrats. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) nearly blocked the bill in committee, but it cleared by a single vote.

Some Democrats opposed the agreement because it cuts discretionary spending and changes work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). They said those provisions would hurt working Americans and those in need.

​​House Rules Committee member Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) speaks at the Capitol on Jan. 30. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A group of Senate Republicans led by Lindsey Graham (R-N.C.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) initially opposed the bill due to concerns about the level of defense spending. They were brought on board by assurances from Schumer and McConnell that emergency defense appropriations could be added later if needed.

The bill passed the House by a vote of 314 to 117 on May 31. Forty-six Democrats and 71 Republicans voted no.

The Senate passed the measure 63 to 36 the next day. Four Democrats, one Independent, and 41 Republicans voted no.

Mixed Reactions

Outside the Capitol, some observers applauded the bipartisan effort while others echoed the complaints of congressional dissenters.

“This kind of compromise is exactly how divided government should work,” Kelly Veney Darnell, interim CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center, said in a June 2 statement.

EJ Antoni, a research fellow at The Heritage Institute, said “conservatives have little to celebrate with this deal, and much about which to complain.” According to Antoni, the bill doesn’t actually cut spending. He called it “left-wing legislation” in a statement published June 1.

Navin Nayak, counselor at the Center for American Progress, endorsed the legislation unenthusiastically, saying it was imperfect but necessary in a May 31 statement. Nayak said the Mountain Valley Pipeline, green-lighted by the bill, puts the safety of thousands at risk and the added work requirements will increase hunger in America.

Congress must now work the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act into a federal budget and the dozen appropriations bills required to fund the government in the coming year.

The 2024 fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

Washing State has fired their anti-racist ‘director of the Office of Equity’ for being a huge racist, according to findings from an internal investigation obtained by The Center Square.

Hired in 2021, Dr. Karen Johnson was fired on May 17 by Gov. Jay Inslee after an internal investigation launched in November – and published nine days later – found that she engaged in “inappropriate conduct,” which included “inappropriate or insensitive comments,” including ethnic remarks.

For example, Johnson, pictured above, told one female employee that she couldn’t wear her hair in braids because it was “cultural appropriation.” (Oh?)

More specific allegations via The Center Square;

• Dr. Johnson accusing certain OFM employees of being paternalistic during a meeting, then getting “infuriated” and telling her staff to log off the meeting when Chief Financial Officer David Schumacher indicated that she did not know what the term meant and the dictionary definition was read.
• Dr. Johnson “alluding” to employees that she received messages from God and telling specific people that “God had instructed her to hire them and that they would be disappointing God by not accepting the role.”
• Dr. Johnson, who is Black, telling a Mexican employee that “this may take some time for me because I generally distrust Mexican people. Mexican people have the option of being White when it is convenient for them.”

The investigation, which involved more than a dozen witnesses and 2.649 pages of documentation, also found that Johnson “was disorganized and lacked adequate structure and process,” and publicly criticized employees.

In a letter to the law firm which conducted the investigation, Johnson said: “If this decision means that, by default, what has been said about me without me stands as fact, so be it,” adding “I must keep a clear conscious by not participating in this triangulating behavior, one of my non-negotiables. My truth is that I am more than willing to make myself available to meet with you and the person(s) bringing the allegation(s)/concern(s), as is my custom. Seeking reconciliation is more important to me than seeking to prove who is right. My destiny depends on this decision and destiny demands that I move forward.”

Investigators also found that since the office was set up in 2021, five out of 17 employees resigned. “Each of the individuals who resigned attributed their decision to leave, at least in part, to a chaotic, overburdened, and disrespectful workplace culture created by Dr. Johnson.”

Employees raised several concerns, including a lack of organizational process and procedures, micromanagement, and a lack of work-life balance, as well as “inappropriate or insensitive comments.”

One employee was “publicly chastised” for attending a meeting they had been invited to at the governor’s office without getting permission or notifying Johnson, and another reported being “shamed” by Johnson in a private meeting and in public.

Investigators said several people raised concerns of “biased and insensitive conduct,” including stereotyping and bias based on gender, bias against Mexicans, and tokenism related to military veteran status. –Seattle Times

Two employees “were told to wear makeup, specifically lipstick,” according to the report – a claim denied by Johnson.

According to Johnson, “the staff she was given did not have the skill set needed to operate with emotional maturity. Her staff operated like they needed a boss to tell them what to do. They could not operate at the speed of trust with character and competence.”

Also, at least two of them were Mexican – so Johnson would “generally distrust” them.

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via AntiWar.com,

The Secretary of State called for Washington to continue to put militarism before diplomacy…

The US will focus its efforts on arming Ukraine and not attempting to bring the war to a negotiated settlement, America’s top diplomat said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out a plan to massively expand Kiev’s military before talks begin.

In a speech delivered in Finland on Friday, Blinken stated, “The United States – together with our allies and partners – is firmly committed to supporting Ukraine’s defense today, tomorrow, for as long as it takes.” He continued, “We believe the prerequisite for meaningful diplomacy and real peace is a stronger Ukraine, capable of deterring and defending against any future aggression.”

Blinken dismissed the idea of even a temporary pause in the fighting. “Some countries will call for a ceasefire. And on the surface, that sounds sensible – attractive, even. After all, who doesn’t want warring parties to lay down their arms? Who doesn’t want the killing to stop?” He said. “But a ceasefire that simply freezes current lines in place and enables Putin to consolidate control over the territory he’s seized…It would legitimize Russia’s land grab. It would reward the aggressor and punish the victim.”

The Secretary of State offered an ambitious vision of Kiev’s future military capabilities. “America and our allies are helping meet Ukraine’s needs on the current battlefield while developing a force that can deter and defend against aggression for years to come.” He added, “That means helping build a Ukrainian military of the future, with long-term funding, a strong air force centered on modern combat aircraft, an integrated air and missile defense network, advanced tanks and armored vehicles, national capacity to produce ammunition, and the training and support to keep forces and equipment combat-ready.”

It is unclear how long it would take to build the deterrence force envisioned by Blinken. American arms stockpiles are dwindling as Washington attempts to transfer Kiev enough military equipment to keep its army fighting. The US additionally has plans to significantly increase arms transfers to Taiwan.

Blinken claimed, “Our support for Ukraine hasn’t weakened our capabilities to meet potential threats from China or anywhere else – it’s strengthened them.” In November, the Wall Street Journal reported, “US government and congressional officials fear the conflict in Ukraine is exacerbating a nearly $19 billion backlog of weapons bound for Taiwan, further delaying efforts to arm the island.”

Additionally, the White House may not have the support it needs in the Capitol for such a massive military buildup in Ukraine. Blinken asserted that “in America, this support is bipartisan.” However, at the beginning of May, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said future support for Ukraine would be contingent on success in Kiev’s long-planned counteroffensive.

Since McCaul’s statement, Ukraine has slowly lost more territory to Russian forces, including Bakhmut. Zelensky committed endless resources to the city in a months-long battle despite the advice from his Western backers. The White House is now preparing for the counteroffensive to fail.

Washington’s strategy, as laid out by Blinken, calls for arming Ukraine and weakening Russia. “Russia is significantly worse off today than it was before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – militarily, economically, geopolitically,” he stated, adding, “President Putin has diminished Russian influence on every continent.”

However, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the commander of US European Command, told Congress in April that Moscow’s ground forces are “bigger today” than before Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine last year.

While the White House has attempted to isolate the Kremlin, Moscow has weathered Western sanctions by developing relationships in the global south. On Friday, Russian officials met with prospective members of the BRICS coalition, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE. In September, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said in a meeting with Putin, “The relationship between countries that are sanctioned by the US, such as Iran, Russia or other countries, can overcome many problems and issues and make them stronger.”

Blinken justified the Biden administration’s commitment to a militaristic approach by claiming the White House attempted to engage the Kremlin in meaningful diplomacy before the invasion of Ukraine. “President Biden told President Putin that we were prepared to discuss our mutual security concerns – a message that I reaffirmed repeatedly – including in person, with Foreign Minister Lavrov.” The Secretary of State continued, “We offered written proposals to reduce tensions. Together with our allies and partners, we used every forum to try to prevent war, from the NATO-Russia Council to the OSCE, from the UN to our direct channels.”

In April 2022, Biden administration official Derek Chollet admitted that the White House refused to negotiate with the Kremlin on Putin’s core concern, Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. “We made clear to the Russians that we were willing to talk to them on issues that we thought were genuine concerns,” Chollet said, adding that the administration didn’t think that “the future of Ukraine” was one of those issues and that its potential NATO membership was a “non-issue.”

In an interesting plot twist as we wade deeper into the 2024 election cycle, YouTube on Friday announced it will stop deleting content arguing that “widespread fraud, errors or glitches” affected the 2020 or other past presidential elections. 

“In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm,” the platform said in a blog post.  

The policy change elicited howls from the left, including an Orwell-flavored protest from an advocacy group called “Free Press.” The group’s Nora Benavidez told AFP that YouTube’s “dangerous decision to immediately stop removing content… which continues to sow hate and disinformation that threatens our democracy must be reversed immediately.”   

In its announcement, YouTube said it had removed “tens of thousands” of election-related videos but that, effective immediately, the 2020 election is fair game for anyone who wants to take a shot at it. The company’s policing of election discussions began in December 2020, after the safe harbor date for state vote certifications had passed.

YouTube gave me a strike and deleted my video for showing election fraud claims from both Dems & Repubs—just raw history, no commentary… https://t.co/4NvpTTLnAK pic.twitter.com/OFMPVTPLAH

— Matt Orfalea (@0rf) June 2, 2023

YouTube’s ham-handed censorship regime clobbered those who merely reported about claims of 2024 election misdeeds. “Their efforts were so aggressive that at one point YouTube actually censored a video released by the January 6 committee,” notes Robby Soave at Reason.  

“We recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today’s changed landscape,” said YouTube, the San Bruno, California-based social media titan and subsidiary of Alphabet’s Google. In March, YouTube restored Donald Trump’s account, which had been blocked from adding new content in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot.

Don’t think for a second YouTube is turning into a free speech utopia: People searching for information about elections will continue to be steered toward “content from authoritative sources,” with dissident voices nudged from search results and suggestions.  

What’s more, YouTube will curiously keep banning election-fraud claims relating to the 2021 German federal election, and the 2014, 2018, and 2022 Brazilian Presidential elections. 

YouTube said certain election content is still forbidden: 

“Content aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means, or eligibility requirements for voting; false claims that could materially discourage voting, including those disputing the validity of voting by mail; and content that encourages others to interfere with democratic processes”

As we wrote in May, YouTube has been removing videos about Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, with the the Google-owned video platform then explaining that its policies prohibit videos about “criminal and terrorist organizations.”

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned consumers not to use off-brand versions of weight-loss drugs Ozempic, Rybelsus, and Wegovy because they may not have the same ingredients.

Those off-brand versions of the drugs are possibly unsafe or ineffective, the federal regulator said in a notice this week. Officials said they received reports of problems linked to “compounded” versions of semaglutide, the drug’s active ingredient.

“Drug compounding is the process of combining, mixing, or altering ingredients to create a medication tailored to the needs of an individual patient,” the agency said. “Compounding includes the combining of two or more drugs. Compounded drugs are not FDA-approved, and the agency does not verify the safety or effectiveness of compounded drugs.”

Compounding is sometimes allowed in pharmacies during drug shortages, according to the FDA. However, those drugs have not met certain standards under the U.S. Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, said the agency.

Compounded semaglutide can contain a version of the ingredient that is not approved for human use, said the FDA. It also warned that reports have indicated some versions of compounded semaglutide contain salt, which changes the drug.

“The agency is not aware of any basis for compounding using the salt forms that would meet the [Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act] requirements for types of active ingredients that can be compounded,” the FDA said.

“Patients should be aware that some products sold as ‘semaglutide’ may not contain the same active ingredient as FDA-approved semaglutide products and may be the salt formulations,” said the notice, adding that drugs “containing these salts, such as semaglutide sodium and semaglutide acetate, have not been shown to be safe and effective.”

Sales of semaglutide products—particularly Ozempic—have soared in the past few years after the drug was shown to spur fast and significant weight loss. The drugs manufactured by Novo Nordisk include the brands Ozempic and Rybelsus, which are approved to treat diabetes, and Wegovy, which is approved by the FDA to treat obesity.

Several weeks ago, Novo Nordisk promised to boost its supply of Wegovy. However, in the company’s first-quarter earnings report, the firm said that it would “temporarily” reduce U.S. supply.

Demand for the medications has outstripped supply. As of May, Ozempic and Wegovy remain on the FDA’s list of drug shortages. When drugs are in short supply, compounding pharmacies are permitted to produce versions of those medications.

Consumers should only use drugs containing semaglutide with a prescription from a licensed health care provider and obtained from a state-licensed pharmacy or other facilities registered with the FDA, the agency said.

The FDA said it has received “adverse event reports” after patients received compounded versions of semaglutide. It then warned that “patients should not use a compounded drug if an approved drug is available to treat a patients” and that “patients and health care professionals should understand that the agency does not review compounded versions of these drugs for safety, effectiveness, or quality.”

Furthermore, “Purchasing medicine online from unregulated, unlicensed sources can expose patients to potentially unsafe products that have not undergone appropriate evaluation or approval, or do not meet quality standards,” said the notice.

Officials in states like Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and West Virginia have threatened to take action against pharmacies that make compounded, unauthorized versions of Ozempic and Wegovy, according to reports.

Read more here…

Further proving we haven’t learned our lessons from the “free stuff” era of Covid “relief” that taxpayers funded and continue to pay for via out of control inflation, the government announced last week it is working on a way to reward people who don’t pay their bills “help struggling homeowners meet their mortgage obligations”.

The program comes from the Federal Housing Administration, who posted a proposal for feedback on an initiative called “the Payment Supplement Partial Claim”, which as the government’s press release says, “would allow mortgage servicers to use the FHA Partial Claim both to bring a borrower’s mortgage current and to provide temporary reductions to their monthly mortgage payments for up to five years.”

Ironically, the Department is citing high interest rates as a reason for implementing the program, stating “The rapid and steep interest rate increases of the past year have limited the effectiveness of some of FHA’s existing loss mitigation options in assisting borrowers.”

Interest rate hikes were, of course, due to out of control inflation, which was the result of government “freebies” for those who couldn’t pay their bills to begin with.

Sigh.

The release continues: “FHA’s widely used loan modification option, which has historically reduced borrowers’ monthly payments to levels they can afford, is no longer as effective as it once was because borrowers are forced to modify at market rates that may be higher than their current rates.”

It says that it’ll “allows homeowners experiencing a hardship who are unable to obtain a significant payment reduction with other loss mitigation options to keep their existing interest rate and reduce their monthly payment temporarily using funds from the FHA Partial Claim, which is a subordinate zero interest lien. The homeowners then pay FHA back when they sell their home or refinance.”

Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner Julia Gordon commented: “Many homeowners continue to experience hardships due to health or financial difficulties that occurred during the pandemic, and these challenges have been exacerbated for these and other borrowers by current economic uncertainties.”

She continued: “When we saw that our existing loan modifications were no longer providing adequate payment relief, our team painstakingly explored every possible alternative to provide relief in the current rate environment, resulting in this innovative proposal.”

Maybe next the government can just give people who don’t pay their mortgage direct access to the Fed’s discount window?