Wednesday, April 10, 2024

WHY DO THE FILTHY RICH WANT MORE OF THE OBAMA - SOROS MEAT PUPPET JOE BIDEN??? - Joe Biden Makes Case for Reelection: ‘Elect Me. I’m in the 20th Century’

 

The Brainwashing of America

America was once a nation of free-thinking individualists priding themselves on the constitutional idea that God ordained and endowed each person as an end unto himself with rights to think, act, believe, and behave according to personal thoughts, conscience, and individual interest. According to the Declaration of Independence, those “inalienable rights” include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Therefore, because government’s power is derived from the consent of the free, the job of those running the country is to “secure,” not undermine those rights and freedoms.

Our nation’s Founders knew that the nature of individualism is what stimulates the kind of spirit that brings about the sort of advances America has achieved since its founding. Yet, by trusting humans to think, act, and live according to their beliefs, the framers left the door wide open for enemies of liberty to infiltrate the minds and hearts of the easily influenced.

Brainwashing is defined as “the process of pressuring someone into adopting radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible means.” In case you haven’t noticed, that is the kind of pressuring presently threatening the “blessings of liberty.” From smooth-talking Marxists to leftist media outlets to communist legislators, trusting Americans are being forcibly pressured to relinquish political, social, and religious ideals and to embrace the dysfunctional regimentation being imposed on them by those who intrinsically despise this nation. This process is being successfully accomplished through climate panic, collectivism, illegal immigration, lack of election integrity, constitutional disrespect, as well as the demonization of whole swaths of good Americans.

Those who diligently pressure Americans into “adopting radically different beliefs” are slick salesman types who have been elevated to positions of global influence and celebrity status. The loudest voices are those with smooth didactic ability to propagandize regular folks with rhetorical footwork so persuasive that if words were dance steps they would blow away Fred and Ginger on the dance floor.

What would the men who framed our Constitution have to say about an American president calling the document they drafted with much prayer, counsel, and heated debate, “a deeply flawed… charter of negative liberties?” What would Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, John Jay, Jefferson, Madison, and George Washington think about an American president suggesting that the nation that prides itself on freedom is in dire need of having government do things on the individual’s behalf?

Lest we forget, blood was shed to gain what America once deemed sacrosanct. Therefore, what would those who died to protect freedom have say about militant haters being let loose on cities, terrorizing citizens, chanting “death to America,” toppling historic statues, and setting landmarks on fire?

Would the Framers shrink back in shame as current leaders chide victims, justify violence, and mark those who disagree with all things un-American the reason for the insurgency they sanction? Yet, rather than righteous indignation, the national temperament exudes a sense of corporate guilt for crimes none of us committed.

Rather than anger, good people seem to be owning the accusations and in turn acquiescing to abuse like mistreated pets.

Riots are purposely incited by implicit suggestions that retaliation for things like racism is justified. Police are disrespected, shot, and killed. Terrorist states are enriched, and foreign wars financed with tax money siphoned from government coffers. Our border, language, and civilization is being decimated, and Third World diseases infect our citizens. Meanwhile, everyday Americans are portrayed as inherently evil. To ensure voters’ voices are drowned out at the ballot box, instead of forbidding illegal entry, our government presses beaten-down taxpayers to feed, clothe, enrich, and accommodate hordes of illegals that include swindlers, murderers, and rapists. As stunned citizens lick the wounds inflicted by government, progressives support an invasion of military-aged men armed with tactical game plans printed in Chinese.

One amendment at a time, the Constitution is being slowly dismantled by radical activists. In place of resistance to lost freedom, it seems as if Americans dutifully line up in obedience to mandated edicts. And while criminals roam free, we act helplessly as fellow citizens are denied due process and rot in jail, and submissively step aside while squatter’s rights are given precedence over private property ownership.

As Americans yield control, convinced what they’re being told is true and that corrupt perpetrators have their best interests at heart, the national tenor exudes a sense of jaded defeat. Every time reeducation expert Barack Obama applies coercive persuasion tactics to insult Caucasians, prolifers, the First and Second Amendment, non-transgender military, Christians and patriots, rather than rise up in opposition to false accusation, confused Americans retreat into silence and become suspicious of colleagues and friends.

Either Americans sense an air of powerlessness, are distracted, or they don’t understand how fragile freedom really is. Or maybe it’s just that a large portion of the electorate is so enamored with eloquent propagandizing that the ability to distinguish ill intent has been clouded by Al Green tunespithy remarks, and political charisma.

Americans appear desensitized; there’s barely a whimper of protest at what would have embarrassed or infuriated us in the past. When a high-ranking military commander or government official shows up at a lectern dressed like woman, there is minimal societal recoil. So too when a sham of a president shows up at the podium with a stack of index cardsCurrently that president is at 50% in the national polls. This is a man whose skill set includes licking melting ice-cream off the side of a waffle cone and taking directives from a Marxist puppeteer through a receiver reminiscent of televangelist Peter PopoffSave thought control or the reality of mind melding, how is that even possible?

Rather than exhibit righteous indignation over the embarrassing spectacle of a president that’s been foisted on us or anger over being portrayed as selfish, extremist, racist, dangerous, and unfair by his mentor, it’s as if a large number of Americans have been “fundamentally transformed” into broken stallions. Instead of the pluck and determination that formerly embodied the American spirit, progressive pundits, politicians, and past presidents have successfully convinced a whole generation of Americans that free speech and patriotism is the biggest threat to democratic ideals. The level of indoctrination is so constant it appears as if many people are open to the idea that founding principles like individual liberty, personal achievement, and love for God, and country must be abolished.

With that in mind, the current mood of restrained capitulation should be of utmost concern. As this trend progresses, where, pray tell, is the spirit that gave a ragtag band of freedom fighters the courage to hide in trees and take shots at the most powerful standing army in the world -- and win? Instead of refusing to submit, Americans like automatons mask up, line up, and take "shots" of a different kind. Like it or not, our nation stands on the precipice of losing all that is sacred. That’s why, those who have enjoyed the “blessings of liberty” must rouse from the fevered dream they’ve been lulled into and refuse to submit to the sort of tyranny our Constitution was drafted to prevent.

Jeannie hosts a blog at www.jeannieology.us


Joe Biden Makes Case for Reelection: ‘Elect Me. I’m in the 20th Century’

President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kis
Alex Brandon/AP

President Joe Biden, 81, made the case on Wednesday for his reelection, arguing he is ready for four more years because “I’m in the 20th century.”

While speaking with reporters next to the president of Japan at the White House, Biden said, “Elect me. I’m in the 20th Century,” before correcting himself, saying, “the 21st century.”

It is not the first gaffe or inaccurate statement delivered by Biden, whom special counsel Robert Hur described as “an elderly man with a poor memory.” Numerous times, and perhaps several times during each speech, Biden makes embarrassing gaffes.

He has:

  • Stated his favorite memory of 2023 was the alleged improvement of the U.S. economy
  • Claimed he never met with Hunter Biden’s associates, despite photo evidence
  • Said Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”
  • Maintained he only had six grandchildren, ignoring Hunter Biden’s out-of-wedlock child
  • Declared twice that his son died in Iraq

To decrease the number of mistakes, White House aides give Biden note cards and suggest he stay on a pre-written script, Reuters reported in January. His planned words are typically fully “crafted and vetted” by a host of advisers.

That strategy appeared to be deployed during his press conference on Wednesday. Asked about the Hamas/Israel war, Biden appeared to read answers from his note cards:

Biden’s public appearances will do little to calm worries about his mental fitness. Polling shows bad signs for the president:

  • Quinnipiac: Only about one-quarter of voters say Biden is physically or mentally fit to serve a second term
  • Fox News: 54 percent of Democrat primary voters prefer an alternative to Biden
  • FiveThirtyEight: Joe Biden is the least popular president in modern history
  • CNN: Majority say there is “no chance” they would vote for Biden in 2024

Despite the challenges, Biden claimed the American people can trust his words.

“No one ever doubts I mean what I say,” Biden told donors in September. “The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.”

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.

THE BILLIONAIRE PARTY PILES ON THE DARK MONEY BRIBES

The 2024 general election may well prove the role of money in American politics has never been larger or less transparent. 
In November’s election, an unprecedented amount of money will come from partisan nonprofit groups to influence voters on everything from the race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to various statewide ballot initiatives.
Epoch Times Photo (Illustration by The Epoch Times,, Shutterstock)
At the end of 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, a handful of groups announced plans to spend nearly $1 billion on the presidential race.
An Epoch Times analysis shows most of the spending will go toward Biden and his Democratic Party. Nine groups—American Bridge 21st Century, Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, Climate Power, League of Conservation Voters, MoveOn, Republican Voters Against Trump, Service Employees International Union, Unite the Country, and VoteVets—have said they will spend nearly $800 million on this cause. 

Joe Biden’s America: Wealthiest 1% Set Record with $44 Trillion Total Net Worth

President Joe Biden attends the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the
Carolyn Kaster/AP

The wealthiest one percent in President Joe Biden’s America set a record with a net worth of $44 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter, U.S. Federal Reserve data revealed.

Biden casts his administration as opposed to the widening wealth gap, even though a majority of Americans still live paycheck to paycheck, a recent LendingClub study found, raising concerns that so-called “Bidenomics” failed to help average Americans.

A majority of voters are “worse off financially” under Biden, up 25 points since he assumed office in 2021, a Fox News poll found Wednesday.

The fourth quarter gains resulted from stock holdings, thanks to an end-of-year rally, CNBC reported:

The total net worth of the top 1%, defined by the Fed as those with wealth over $11 million, increased by $2 trillion in the fourth quarter. All of the gains came from their stock holdings. The value of corporate equities and mutual fund shares held by the top 1% surged to $19.7 trillion from $17.65 trillion the previous quarter.

While their real estate values went up slightly, the value of their privately held businesses declined, essentially canceling out all other gains outside of stocks.

The quarterly gain marked the latest addition to an unprecedented wealth boom that began in 2020 with the Covid-19 pandemic market surge. Since 2020, the wealth of the top 1% has increased by nearly $15 trillion, or 49%. Middle-class Americans have also seen a rising wealth tide, with the middle 50% to 90% of Americans seeing their wealth increase 50%.

A U.S. Federal Reserve chart shows the wealth of the top one percent in America.

A U.S. Federal Reserve chart shows the wealth of the top one percent in America.

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.

Unfortunately for his electoral prospects, however, Biden’s attempts to present himself as a “man of the people” have become increasingly strained. “Middle-class Joe” has been displaced by “Genocide Joe” in public consciousness, as he has become indelibly associated with the war crimes being committed by Israel in Gaza, armed and financed by the Biden administration.

An election for the billionaires

Former President Donald Trump, left, and President Joe Biden on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. [AP Photo/Associated Press]

There are two presidential elections taking place in the United States in 2024. The voting by the American population, which culminates on Election Day on November 5, will receive the bulk of the media attention.

Far more decisive, however, is the second election, which is going on right now, in which a relative handful of billionaires and corporate oligarchs decide which of the candidates of the two established capitalist parties, Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican ex-President Donald Trump, will better serve their class interests.

As of March 31, the Biden campaign had more than double the cash on hand of Trump and the Republicans, $192 million compared to $93.1 million. The Biden campaign is touting the fact that its war chest is the highest total amount amassed by a Democratic candidate in US history. It includes $26 million raked in two weeks ago in Manhattan, where three Democratic presidents—Biden, Obama and Clinton—and an array of Hollywood and Broadway performers appeared before an audience with ticket prices that topped out at $500,000.

Trump’s efforts were given a boost at a record fundraiser Saturday night, held at the estate of hedge fund billionaire John Paulson in Palm Beach, a short distance from Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago compound. The price of admission ranged up to $800,000, and the 117 guests ponied up a total of $50.3 million in campaign pledges, nearly double the Biden total at Radio City Music Hall.

“Tonight, we raised an historic $50.5 million for the re-election of President Trump,” Paulson wrote in a statement to the media Saturday evening. “This sold-out event has raised the most in a single political fundraiser in history. This overwhelming support demonstrates the enthusiasm for President Trump and his policies.”

The enthusiasm of the assembled billionaires was no doubt fueled by Trump’s 2017 tax cut for the wealthy and by the fact that the exemption for “pass-through” corporations, worth $700 billion to private equity firms and other speculative ventures, will expire in 2025, the first year of the new presidency. Trump’s open embrace of fascist violence is seen by an increasing section of the ruling elite as necessary to crush social opposition to its policies of austerity and war.

If money is any indication, however, there is even more “enthusiasm” among the billionaires for Democrat Joe Biden, whose war against Russia is seen as critical to the global interests of the American ruling elite. Dominant sections of the capitalist class see Trump as too erratic on foreign policy and recognize that Biden’s occasional anti-corporate demagogy is purely for show, a means of deluding the population and defusing popular resistance to the war policies of American imperialism.

Unfortunately for his electoral prospects, however, Biden’s attempts to present himself as a “man of the people” have become increasingly strained. “Middle-class Joe” has been displaced by “Genocide Joe” in public consciousness, as he has become indelibly associated with the war crimes being committed by Israel in Gaza, armed and financed by the Biden administration.

Biden continues to collect multimillion-dollar amounts at closed-door meetings with wealthy supporters on virtually every campaign swing. On Monday, for example, he traveled to Wisconsin to unveil his latest political swindle, a proposed reduction in college student loan repayment, which will provide little actual benefit. Air Force One then touched down at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, so Biden could attend a fundraiser that collected $2.5 million from about two dozen individuals (roughly $100,000 apiece).

The co-hosts of this affair were Michael Pratt, who runs GCM Grosvenor, a $77 billion hedge fund specializing in “alternative,” i.e., socially “progressive” investments, and Laura Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs and daughter of the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade. 

Over the weekend, Politico published a revealing account of the 2024 campaign headlined, “Big-dollar fundraisers are back,” which noted that both parties are relying on small affairs where Trump and Biden schmooze with the super-rich to raise the bulk of their campaign funds. This is particularly important for the Democrats, the website reported, citing the comments of former Obama fundraiser Ami Copeland.

For Biden, burying Trump in cash is central to his general election strategy. He’s started with a sizable financial advantage over the former president, and hosting splashy, high-dollar fundraisers helps to further pad that edge. “His cash advantage is existential,” Copeland said, because “it’s the thing working the best on the campaign right now.”

The fundraising for both campaigns seems inversely related to their actual support, given that polls and media accounts generally concede that Biden and Trump are the two most unpopular political figures in America. Small-donor fundraising, which was up substantially in 2016 and 2020, driven initially by support for the self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders and later by opposition to (or support for) Trump’s fascist demagogy, has slowed significantly this year.

The massive domination of money is only one aspect of an electoral process that is completely undemocratic and aimed at excluding any opposition to the capitalist two-party system. The Democratic Party in particular has taken the lead in waging an “all-out war” on third party and independent candidates, which will be focused on challenging their efforts to meet massive signature requirements to gain a place on the ballot.

This is the state of American democracy in 2024: One of the two major parties is controlled by the perpetrator of an attempted fascist coup to overturn the 2020 election, while the other party will renominate the president responsible for an ongoing war against nuclear-armed Russia and the first genocide of the 21st century.

The Socialist Equality Party entered the 2024 elections to provide a genuine choice for the working class, Joe Kishore for president and Jerry White for vice president, running on a socialist and antiwar program.

In a statement posted on X/Twitter Monday responding to the massive domination of money over the election, Kishore wrote:

As Marxists have long explained, the state is not a neutral arbiter but an instrument of class rule. It is controlled by a ruling class that supports the genocide in #Gaza and an escalating global war, while waging a war on the social and democratic rights of the working class at home.

The Socialist Equality Party campaign is aimed at developing a movement in the working class. The existential questions confronting workers in the US and throughout the world will not be resolved by tinkering around the edges, by hoping for “change” within the existing political structure. The working class has to take up the fight against the entire social and economic system of capitalism. This is the essential question, and the only way to oppose the drive of the ruling class to world war, dictatorship and capitalist barbarism.

The central issue in the 2024 elections is to bring the class questions of jobs, living standards, social benefits, democratic rights and war before the widest possible audience and to win the most politically advanced sections of workers and youth to the program of revolutionary Marxism.


GET THIS BOOK ON AMERICA’S RULING CLASS KLEPTOCRACY

On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake BY SARAH CHAYES

· Hardcover : 432 pages

· ISBN-10 : 0525654852

· ISBN-13 : 978-0525654858

· 

Sarah Chayes uses her considerable analytical skills to tell the story of corruption in America and the scale of our current corrupt systems, exemplified by the network of Corporations, politicians, enabling lawyers and other agencies who have effectively corroded in the furtherance of their profit, all that was good and just and egalitarian in US society. Please read, please vow to support the changes she calls for. Our morality, our souls are at stake.

 

On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake

 

From the prizewinning journalist, internationally recognized expert on corruption in government networks throughout the world, author of Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security ("I can't imagine a more important book for our time,"--Sebastian Junger; "Required reading,"--Tom Friedman; "compelling, fascinating . . . a call to action,"--The Huffington Post), a major, unflinching book that looks homeward to America, exploring the insidious, dangerous networks of corruption of our past, present, and precarious future.

Now, bringing to bear all of her knowledge, grasp, sense of history and observation, Sarah Chayes writes in her new book, that the United States is showing signs similar to some of the most corrupt countries in the world. Corruption, as Chayes sees it, is an operating system of sophisticated networks in which government officials, key private-sector interests, and out-and-out criminals interweave. Their main objective: not to serve the public but to maximize returns for network members.
From the titans of America's Gilded Age (Carnegie, Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, et al.) to the collapse of the stock market in 1929, the Great Depression and FDR's New Deal; from Joe Kennedy's years of banking, bootlegging, machine politics, and pursuit of infinite wealth, as well as the Kennedy presidency, to the deregulation of the Reagan Revolution, undermining the middle class and the unions; from the Clinton policies of political favors and personal enrichment to Trump's hydra-headed network of corruption, systematically undoing the Constitution and our laws, Chayes shows how corrupt systems are organized, how they enforce the rules so their crimes are covered legally, how they are overlooked and downplayed--shrugged off with a roll of the eyes--by the richer and better educated, how they become an overt principle determining the shape of our government, affecting all levels of society.

 

Top reviews from the United States

 

5.0 out of 5 stars The 21st century successor to Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair

Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2020

Verified Purchase

Reading Sarah Chayes's descriptions of Gilded Age and modern kleptocracy from Reagan to Trump, I couldn't help remembering Upton Sinclairs' observation that he had aimed for the nation's heart with his novel _The Jungle_ but hit its stomach. Chayes's history of the Gilded Age, in my opinion, is at least as good if not better than Howard Zinn's and Thomas Frank's, and some of her detailed descriptions of American corruption from 1873 to present often made me feel physically ill.

Not a few money-obsessed Democrats come in for scathing criticism alongside the expected bevy of Republicans (including the heirs to the Dixiecrats). It is not a matter of party or class per se: Chayes argues, correctly I think, that the Great Depression and World War II not only enabled the fulfillment of many of the goals of the strikers and protestors of the six decades from 1873 to 1933 but also taught most Americans a kind of social empathy that has been systematically and deliberately attacked by networks of moneyed interests from 1980 to the present day.

Some readers may be a bit put off by Chayes's reliance on Greek and Christian allegories for thematic continuity, but I appreciated them. In any case, she more than redeems herself by drawing from her personal experiences in "third world" nations to expose, again and again, the hubris of Americans like Trump, whose infamous comment about "shithole" African countries reveals so much of the kleptocratic mindset and his personal psychopathy.

Chayes offers many specific ideas for digging ourselves out of the quagmire of kleptocracy and corruption, but no simple solutions. Given climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, will we survive long enough to pursue them, let alone turn the tide?

 WHERE DID ALL OF JOE BIDEN'S LOOT COME FROM???

Jesse Watters : WOW, this is just OUTRAGEOUS!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgDVORGTg_A

 

 

There it is.  That's the issue.  To begin, you have the corrupt family Biden.  They've been scamming us and our system well for almost fifty years.  The man is supposedly worth over 250 million dollars.  How is this possible on his salary?  It's not.  So where did his wealth come from?  Not from being a brilliant businessman. DAVID PRENTICE

 

“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton Foundation  (TWO GAMER LAWYERS - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS) (WHAT ABOUT THE CHINA BIDEN PENN CENTER?)  and the Obamas (TWO GAMER LAWYERS - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS) book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family (FOUR GAMER LAWYERS - JOE, HUNTER, JAMES, FRANK - OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS AND LARRY FINK OF BLACKROCK)  corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the (GAMER LYING LAWYER )Warren  and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption (ADD GAMER LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS (OWNED BY GEORGE SOROS) AND HER LAWYER HUSBAND AND THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY, (GAMER LAWYER) CHUCK SCHUMER, OWNED BY LARRY FINK OF BLACKROCK WHO OWNS A BIG PIECE OF THE ‘BIG GUY’ JOE, AND GEORGE SOROS’ RENT BOY (GAMER LAWYER) TONY BLINKEN, AS WELL AS CON MAN (GAMER LAWYER) ADAM SHIFF AND HIS CORRUPTNESS (GAMER LAWYER) BOB MENENDEZ STILL EVADING PRISON, AND NOT BE VERY LEAST, (GAMER LAWYER) ERIC SWALWELL, THE CHINESE SPY AND HO CHASING BRIBES SUCKER, AND OF COURSE, PREDATOR LAWYER AND COVID LIAR (GAMER LAWYER) ANDREW CUOMO.

    BRIAN C JOONDEPH


Lifelong Democrats Are Turning to Trump. Roseanne Barr Explains Why

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFMXMx2xPSs

It certainly worked for Biden in 2020, and his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, arguably the most corrupt and weaponized in history—that’s saying something with Obama’s “wingman,” Eric Holder in the running—is working hard to keep that organization up and running:


Biden Admin Gives $6.6 Billion to Project Run By Ex-Solyndra CEO

Brian Harrison led green energy company to bankruptcy after receiving $500 million in Obama admin loans

former Solyndra head Brian Harrison (Twitter/@AZRegents)
April 8, 2024

The Biden administration is giving $6.6 billion to a semiconductor project run by the former CEO of Solyndra, the failed solar energy company at the center of an Obama-era scandal over government misspending.

Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC’s Arizona subsidiary, whose president is former Solyndra head Brian Harrison, will receive $6.6 billion to build a factory in Phoenix, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced Monday.

Harrison was CEO of Solyndra when it declared bankruptcy in 2011 after receiving over $500 million in loans from the Obama administration.

The funding could fuel criticism from Republicans over the Biden administration’s energy spending. The Department of Energy’s loan office has poured billions into companies with an array of financial and legal problems, leading to investigations by GOP lawmakers.

President Joe Biden touted the funding to TSMC in a press statement on Monday. The company said it will invest an additional $65 million into its manufacturing compound in Arizona, where it already has two factories and is building a third.

"Thanks to this investment, TSMC will also build a third chip factory in Phoenix, increasing its total investment in Arizona to $65 million and creating over 25,000 direct construction and manufacturing jobs, along with thousands of indirect jobs," Biden said.

The funding comes from the CHIPS and Science Act, which was signed by Biden in 2022 and is intended to boost U.S. chip manufacturing and counter China’s dominance of the semiconductor industry.

Harrison, who is overseeing TSMC’s projects in Arizona, said he was involved in securing the federal financing in a media interview last August.

"We’re in the process of applications for the CHIPS Act funding," he told CNBC.

Harrison joined TSMC Arizona in 2021 and has served as president since last April, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was CEO of Solyndra from 2010 to 2011.

Solyndra received over $500 million in loans from the Obama administration under a 2009 stimulus program. During Harrison’s tenure, the company declared bankruptcy and defaulted on the loans. Federal investigators also reportedly seized Solyndra records from Harrison in 2011, but no charges were ever brought against him or other executives at the company.

An inspector general investigation found that Solyndra executives provided misleading information to Department of Energy officials during the loan negotiations in 2009 and later "while drawing down loan proceeds." The IG report said the "actions of certain Solyndra officials were, at best, reckless and irresponsible or, at worst, an orchestrated effort to knowingly and intentionally deceive and mislead the Department."

Republicans held up Solyndra as an example of reckless government spending. In 2012, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney held a press conference outside the company’s headquarters, calling it a "symbol" of "failure."

In the wake of the scandal, the Obama administration scaled down the operations of the Department of Energy’s loan programs office, which had issued the funding.

But now the Biden administration has revived and expanded the office—giving it a massive $400 billion budget for green energy loans.

The spending has come under fire from Republicans, who have noted that the loan office’s director, Jigar Shah, appears to have conflicts of interest with some of the loan recipients.

"Solyndra is going to look like chump change compared to the amount of money that’s been wasted by this administration," Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) warned in December.

The Department of Commerce did not respond to a request for comment.

The DOJ sued DISH network for $3.3 billion but dismissed the suit after its chair donated to Biden

Two sayings are pertinent to this essay. The first is that correlation does not imply causation. Just because two events seem connected doesn’t mean they are. The second is that timing is everything. Think about both as you consider the Department of Justice’s decision to dismiss a massive corporate fraud lawsuit a short time after the corporation’s founder made a sizable donation to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

DISH Network is an American satellite network. In 2015, the DOJ sued DISH under the False Claims Act. The suit was based on Whistleblower Vermont National Telephone Company, Inc.’s allegation that DISH and its affiliates were allegedly using fraud to get small business discounts for wireless spectrum licenses. As recently as November 2023, a federal judge kept the case alive in the face of DISH’s motion for a judgment on the pleadings (i.e., DISH contended that the DOJ’s complaint contained within it the seeds of its own destruction).

On December 15, 2023, less than one month after the federal court refused to dismiss the DOJ’s suit, one of DISH’s founders, Charlie Ergen, along with his wife, Candy, donated a total of $113,200 to keep Biden in the White House…and, inevitably, to keep his currently constituted Department of Justice in power.

Image: A downed DISH receiver by frankieleon. CC BY 2.0.

On January 10, 2024, only three-and-a-half weeks after Ergen sent his money to Biden, and while the fraud suit was still pending, DISH received $50 million in taxpayer funds when the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced an $80 million round of five grants. The other four grantees divided the remaining $30 million in grant money.

A mere two days after the $50 million grant, the attorney for Vermont Telephone, which had triggered the DOJ’s initial action against DISH, complained that the DOJ was putting pressure on Vermont Telephone to enter into “an unethical settlement” or it would dismiss the suit:

The move to dismiss the case scrapped plans to depose the Ergens about their knowledge of the allegedly fraudulent scheme, prompting Vermont Telephone’s attorneys to accuse the Justice Department of political interference.

“[I]t appears that the effect — if not the purpose — of the DOJ’s rush to seek dismissal of this case is to protect Mr. Ergen from being questioned under oath,” Ross wrote in a Feb. 8 letter to the lead DOJ attorneys handling the case, according to a copy reviewed by The Post.

“We do not believe it is a coincidence that Mr. Ergen, his wife (who also is scheduled to be deposed next week), and DISH’s Political Action Committee collectively contributed in excess of $5 million to Democratic candidates and causes between 2008 and 2022,” he added.

“With the upcoming election, this case looks like just the latest example of the DOJ’s two-tiered justice system under which the well-heeled, politically connected are treated one way, while everyone else is treated differently.”

The last item in this chronology is that on March 8, the DOJ moved to dismiss the case. You can read more details about the whole case, from its inception to the motion to dismiss, in this New York Post article. Indeed, the article is worth reading as an expose about how corporate money and politics work in D.C., with most money flowing to Democrats but surprisingly large sums keeping individual Republicans afloat.

As I noted at the start of this post, just because there seems to be a connection between things, that doesn’t mean there is a connection. The chronology suggests that, once Ergen started throwing large sums of money at a sitting president whose re-election campaign is in trouble, that same president told his Department of Justice to lay off his good friend. It could just be, though, that the case has been kicking about for years so that the DOJ decided it was time to unload it because it was hogging resources without any discernable benefit to the American people.

But as always, timing is everything, and the appearance of impropriety can be just as powerful as actual impropriety. We’ve long known that Garland’s DOJ is driven by politics, not principle. Now, we have the strong suggestion that it can be bought, too.

 demented.  In the process, they’re insulting America’s poor and black citizens, branding them too stupid to obtain identification necessary for daily life. Reasonable people might call that racist.

Reasonable people might also think our republic is better off if people who can’t get identification, and can’t be bothered to get to the polls on election day, don’t vote. Obviously, people who have legitimate reasons for being unable to be present on election day, like our military serving overseas and the handicapped, must be allowed absentee ballots, but with effective safeguards and verification.

Using taxpayer resources and the power of the federal government to violate Supreme Court decisions and enable vote fraud on a never before imagined scale is among the most un-American, anti-republican acts of a thoroughly corrupt administration. Reasonable people might call that tyrannical. And they’d be right, and consistent. They’re absolutely perpetuating “the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”

That’s great for “our democracy—a permanent, one-party, Democrat/socialist/communist state, but terrible for our constitutional, representative republic. I wonder if Garland has heard about that?

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor. 

Graphic: X screenshot