BIDEN'S KLEPTOCRACY - THE COVID PROFITEERS - Coronavirus Bill Loaded with ‘Special Interest Pork,’ Liberal Goodies - 25 Hedge Fund Managers Made $32 Billion in Pandemic

 

Jim Banks: Coronavirus Bill Loaded with ‘Special Interest Pork,’ Liberal Goodies

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

SEAN MORAN

22 Feb 202116

4:28

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), wrote in a memo to RSC members Monday that the Democrats’ coronavirus bill is stuffed with “special interest pork and other liberal goodies.”

Republicans across the political spectrum have sounded the alarm over the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill, including Banks and House Budget Committee ranking member Jason Smith (R-MO).

For instance, during a hearing in February, Smith noted that only nine percent of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill goes towards vaccinations.

“Democrats are rushing to pass a nearly $2 trillion spending bill that will enact bailouts for state governments that lock down their citizens and radical policies that will destroy jobs and raise the cost of living for working-class Americans,” Smith said in a statement to Fox News on Sunday.

“But this is clearly where any sort of urgency on their part ends,” he added.

“This is all just further proof that COVID-19 is more the pretext than the purpose behind what Democrats are proposing. Their approach is the wrong plan, at the wrong time, for all the wrong reasons,” the Missouri conservative added.

In his letter to RSC members, Banks wrote that Democrats have been hoping the public has been too preoccupied on the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump to notice the Democrat majority in Congress loaded the bill with leftist carveouts.

He said the Democrat coronavirus bill is filled with “special interest pork and other liberal goodies.”

In Banks’ memo to RSC members, he noted the many ways the Democrat coronavirus bill contains leftist carveouts, including:

• Institutes a $15 per hour minimum wage, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) contended would result in 1.4 million job losses.
• Unemployment benefits would rise to $400 per week on top of regular payments. This would last for up to roughly a year and a half. The RSC contended that, under the plan, over half of Americans would get a raise for being unemployed, meaning that this might hurt employment.
• Democrats blocked an amendment that would ensure that federal benefits from COBRA health insurance are not used for abortion services.
• Stimulus checks could go to families in which a parent is an illegal alien.
• Allows subsidies for COBRA premiums to go to illegal immigrants.
• “Unconscionably” gives labor unions, including teachers unions that are fighting against school reopenings, access to Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding up to $10 million per union.
• Allows funding to go to colleges that have partnerships with owned or controlled companies by communist China. Democrats rejected a Republican proposal to fix this.
• Allows funding to go to colleges and universities that have partnerships with Confuscious Institutes.
• Provides $1.5 billion to Amtrak, even though the transportation company is sitting on “roughly $1 billion of unspent aid.”
• Provides a $350 billion bailout for state and local government despite limited declines in overall revenue in 2020.
• Eliminates the income restriction that prevented wealthy Americans from qualifying for the Obamacare premium subsidies.
• Expands eligibility for PPP funding for large nonprofits, labor unions, country clubs, and publicly-traded internet news organizations. Banks contended that this would crowd out small businesses’ access to PPP loans.
• Provide $50 million in funding for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) environmental justice grants, which the RSC believes is a “thinly-veiled kickback” to leftist environmental groups.
• Extends PPP funding to violent criminals, including those who have been found guilty of assault on a police officer and consensual sexual crimes.
• Grants $800 million in additional foreign food aid.

Smith told Axios Sunday the coronavirus bill amounts to a “Biden bailout bill.”

“Instead of stimulus, I call it for what it is — the Biden bailout bill. It’s an abusive process and a lot of reckless spending,” he said.

Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.

Allegedly Fake COVID-19 Vaccines Seized in Mexican Border State Clinic Came from Texas, Says Owner

Thomas F. Starke/Getty Images

GERALD TONY ARANDA

19 Feb 202118

1:50

The owner of a medical clinic in Mexico that was raided this week for allegations of selling fake COVID-19 vaccines claims they were genuine and purchased in McAllen, Texas.

The raid took place this week in a suburban clinic of the Monterrey Metropolitan area, where authorities arrested six individuals who are currently facing federal charges. Authorities received information about the sale of fake vaccines at the clinic for approximately $600. According to the Nuevo Leon Health Secretary Manuel de la O, the raid was tied to an investigation into a clandestine distribution network where authorities seized vials with the lot number 783201 with an expiration date of August 2024, however, the vials were not being kept at proper storage temperatures.

The owner of Spine Clinic by Imperium, Carlos Villarreal Aranda, said the day after in public interviews the vaccines were in fact real from McAllen. Villarreal claimed he took advantage of the recent winter storm to put the vaccines in an ice chest and move them from Texas to Nuevo Leon.

“Why? To vaccinate my family, the doctors and some friends that we had to help because they have chronic illnesses, but we are not a distribution network and we are not salesmen,” Villarreal said, claiming the allegations against his clinic are false.

Villarreal incorrectly claimed the vaccine is being freely sold in Texas during his defense. “We did not know it was a crime to use them here,” he said. The clinic owner has not publicly revealed where he purchased the doses.

Gerald “Tony” Aranda is a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.

25 Hedge Fund Managers Made $32 Billion in Pandemic

TIM SLOAN/AFP via Getty Images

JOHN CARNEY

22 Feb 20210

2:33

The year the pandemic threw tens of millions of Americans out of work was extraordinarily good for the bank accounts of the wealthiest hedge fund managers.

The top 25 hedge fund bosses made $32 billion, according to Institutional Investor’s annual Rich List. The list was published Monday.

The top earner was Izzy Englander of Millennium Management, who took home an estimated $3.8 billion in 2020. His flagship fund achieved a 26 percent return. The prior year he was number six on the list with $750 million and the year before that he was in fifth place at $975 million.

There were far more billion-dollar hedge fund paydays than in years past. This year all of the top ten made over $1 billion, The 10th place spot taken by Bill Ackman, whose Pershing Square Management earned a 70 percent return and who was paid an estimated $1.4 billion.

The year before only Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates and James Simons of Renaissance Technologies earned over a billion dollars.

Hedge funds overall returned 11.6 percent last year, their best performance in a decade. But they were outperformed by the S&P 500, which rose 16 percent last year.

The rest of the top ten:

• James Simons: $2.6 billion on a 76 percent return.
• Chase Coleman of Tiger Global Management: $2.5 billion on a 48 percent return.
• 
  
• Ken Griffin of Citadel: $1.8 billion on a 24 percent return.
• Steve Cohen of Point72 Asset Management: $1.7 billion on a 16 percent return.
• 
  
• David Tepper of Appaloosa Management: $1.7 billion on 13 percent return.
• 
  
• Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management: $1.6 billion on a 65 percent return.
• 
  
• O. Andres Halvorsen of Viking Global Investors: $1.5 billion on a 27 percent return.
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• Scott Shleifer of Tiger Global Management: $1.5 billion on a 65 percent return
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• Bill Ackman of Pershing Square CXapital Management: $1.4 billion on a 70 percent return.

Notice that two of the top ten underperformed the broader market.

Nearly 100,000 in U.S. Died from Coronavirus in Biden’s First Month in Office

SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

ALANA MASTRANGELO

20 Feb 20214,891

3:02

Nearly 100,000 people in the United States died from the Chinese coronavirus during President Joe Biden’s first month in office.

An estimated 99,763 people in the U.S. have died due to complications from the coronavirus during Biden’s first month in the White House, according to statistics provided by Johns Hopkins University.

When Biden first took office, the nationwide coronavirus death toll was 397,611. Just one month later, that number is on the cusp of 500,000, as  total numbers of coronavirus-related deaths in the United States reached 497,374 on Saturday.

“There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months,” said Biden last month, after being sworn into office.

The president’s remarks came after he signed an order mandating both masks and social distancing on federal property — an order that he and members of his family later violated.

As for the state of New York, the U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly launched an investigation into New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D)’s handling of the state’s nursing homes and other long-term care facilities during the pandemic.

New York Assemblyman Ron Kim — a Queens Democrat — added that Cuomo threatened his career over the ongoing nursing home scandal rocking the administration and warned that he could “destroy” Kim if he did not fall in line and vigorously defend officials involved in the fallout.

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said he “100 percent” believes that Cuomo threatened the New York Assemblyman, adding, “that’s classic Andrew Cuomo.”

“It’s a sad thing to say, Mika, but that’s classic Andrew Cuomo,” de Blasio said Thursday in an interview with Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“A lot of people in New York State have received those phone calls,” continued de Blasio. “The bullying is nothing new. I believe Ron Kim, and it’s very, very sad. No public servant, no person who’s telling the truth should be treated that way.”

“But yeah, the threats, the belittling, the demand that someone changed their statement right that moment, many, many times, I’ve heard that and I know a lot of other people in this state have heard that,” he added.

Meanwhile, the New York City mayor is recommending that his residents wear two masks at the same time, instead of one, according to a report by New York Daily News.

“Of all the things that we’ve learned in this crisis, maybe the most profound is the power of a mask,” said de Blasio during a Thursday press briefing. “What we’re saying today is, time to double up.”

“Two masks are better than one,” the mayor added. “Make it a double.”

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”

 

Kamala Harris Touts Wall Street’s Support for Joe Biden During VP Debate

 

JOHN BINDER

7 Oct 2020662

1:48

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) touted Wall Street’s support for Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden during the vice presidential debate Wednesday evening.

As Breitbart News reported this week, economists with Moody’s Analytics on Wall Street cheered a Biden presidency, citing their support for his globalist agenda centered on more free trade and more immigration to the United States.

At the debate, Harris touted that Wall Street support.

“Joe Biden economic plan, Moody’s, which is a reputable Wall Street firm, has said will create seven million more jobs than [President] Donald Trump’s,” Harris said.

In recent months, Wall Street and nearly all of the nation’s biggest banks have lined up support for Biden and Harris against Trump’s economic nationalist agenda.

Economists with Goldman Sachs, a huge donor to Biden and Harris, have issued a similar report where they say a “blue wave” on November 3 will help return the U.S. to an economic status quo.

Biden’s campaign has raked in nearly $280,000 from Goldman Sachs employees. Trump has taken less than $9,000 from Goldman Sachs employees this election cycle.

JPMorgan Chase employees have given three times as much campaign cash to Biden as Trump. Biden has taken nearly $380,000. At Morgan Stanley, Biden has taken more than twice as much as Trump, nearly $258,000 from the bank’s employees compared to Trump’s $96,010.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 

 

Before his first day in office Barack Obama had sucked in more bribes from banksters than any president in history.

 

During the economic meltdown caused by Obama’s crony banksters, and Obama’s first two years in office, banks made more money than eight years under pro-bankster administration of George Bush.

 

Both of Obama’s Attorney Generals, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, were chosen by the banks because they were from law firms that had long protected big banks from their victims.

 

"This is how they will destroy America from within.  The leftist billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of millions of migrants.  They have nothing but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of our communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers.  These people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY