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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Monday, October 31, 2016

Bungle in France's Refugee Jungle

France tries once again to clear away its refugee problem

Christopher Caldwell

French authorities spent this week razing the notorious Jungle migrant camp, which THE WEEKLY STANDARD visited last winter. The Jungle was a shocking place. What made it unusual in the recent history of European migration is that it resulted from an actual obstacle being placed in migrants' way. The obstacle was the English Channel. Whether migrants had been told (correctly) that England is a good place to work illegally, or whether they had girlfriends or relatives to join there, they wouldn't compromise on their dream of getting there.

They refused to just disappear into the world of hostels and soup kitchens and dishwashing jobs in the nearest big city. They stayed put in a place that was not prepared to receive them. They built an eyesore. They attacked the 18-wheel trucks slowing to carry freight through the Channel Tunnel to Britain. They became the occasion of foul-mouthed videos by Eastern European truck drivers. Worst of all, they became an embarrassment for politicians......To Read More....  

My Take - These European "leaders" and those in America who are so hot to accept these Muslim "refugees" are setting the table for disaster and violence.  Refugees never leave, and when they're here permanently they're not going to assimilate because they're Muslims and Muslims force change through any means they think will work, including violence, and especially violence.  That's history and that history is incontestable. 

Can You Feel The Bern? No? Try Venezuela!

Venezuela's crisis comes to a head in streets... - Venezuela’s political crisis comes to a head this week in a mass march on the Presidential Palace that raises the risk of a crackdown.   Thursday’s march is being mounted by an increasingly radicalised opposition, which is enraged by Venezuela’s deteriorating economy and the suspension of a constitutionally allowed referendum that sought to remove President Nicolás Maduro from office. The demonstration will be fiercely resisted by government supporters. In 2002, public protests outside the Miraflores Presidential Palace escalated into a brief coup. “It is a game of chicken. Will there be a crash, or will one side swerve out of the way first?” said Felipe Pérez, a former minister who sides with the opposition......

President threatens to jail opponents... - Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro threatened on Friday to jail his political opponents if they follow through on their vow of launching a legislative trial to remove him from power.  Shrugging off a partially-observed strike which the opposition called to raise pressure on him, the socialist president went on the counterattack.  Maduro sharpened the tone in a volatile political and economic crisis that has sparked food shortages and riots in the South American oil producer....

Cash, Venezuelans Start Weighing Them  - At a delicatessen counter in eastern Caracas, Humberto Gonzalez removes slices of salty white cheese from his scale and replaces them with a stack of bolivar notes handed over by his customer. The currency is so devalued and each purchase requires so many bills that instead of counting, he weighs them.  “It’s sad," Gonzalez says. "At this point, I think the cheese is worth more.”...


Sucralose Study Ripe for Scare-Mongering

By Ruth Kava — October 26, 2016

A recent article, published in the journal Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry reported that when people eat the non-nutritive sweetener sucralose (the sweetening ingredient in Splenda®) some of it is absorbed into the blood and then excreted by the kidneys in urine. Such a report is ripe for the scare-mongers, especially since the report found that the level of sucralose in the blood is higher in children than in adults. But is this something to be worried about? Unlikely......To Read More...

Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda - Medicinal chemists — organic chemists who study drugs — frequently develop an ability that is sometimes informally called "eyeball toxicology," or the ability to determine a rough idea of the toxicity of a substance just by seeing its chemical structure on paper. It is a form of intuition. The longer you do the job, the better you get at it. It would be reasonable to call this skill a "highly educated guess," which is acquired through years of studying the relationship between the structures of a variety of chemicals and their toxicity. It's not perfect, but we often get it right. It could just as easily called acquired toxicological judgement. Or, "that is one nasty looking molecule!"  ......
 
Sugar, Gallbladder Cancer Supposedly Linked, Study Claims -  As you're probably aware, everything from obesity to baldness is being blamed on high consumption of sugar. Now there's a new ailment to add to the list — gallbladder cancer — at least according to a new study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.  The gallbladder is a small sack (usually depicted as green) that's tucked away between lobes of the liver. Bile produced by the liver is collected and stored in the gallbladder. When a fat-containing food is consumed, the gallbladder contracts and sends the bile, through a series of ducts, into the small intestine where it helps digest fats so the body can absorb them. Gallbladder cancer can occur in the sack itself, in the collecting ducts in the liver, as well as in the ducts leading from the bladder to the small intestine (the "biliary tree" includes the whole set of ducts both within and outside the liver).......
 
Health Panel Applauds Approval of New Sweetener - The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a consortium of more than 250 scientists and physicians today applauded approval of the use of a new noncaloric sweetener, sucralose, by the federal Food and Drug Administration.This approval significantly broadens the dietary choices of Americans stated Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of ACSH.  Sucralose is made from table sugar, or sucrose, which is then slightly modified to make it even sweeter and able to resist metabolism by the body. The resulting compound is approximately 600 times sweeter than sugar, and thus can be used in truly tiny amounts to sweeten a wide variety of foods.......
 
Blog hits the right note on chemophobia - The American Council on Science and Health has been fighting chemophobia since its inception in 1978. Unfortunately the advent of the Internet, while providing much valid information, has also become a venue of inaccurate and fear-mongering sites. Thus, we were more than pleased to discover a blog on the website of Scientific American by chemistry Ph.D. student Chad Jones that debunks some pseudo-scientific fear-mongering on the site of Dr. Joseph Mercola about the synthetic sweetener sucralose (sold as Splenda).......
 
Will Sugar Substitute Psychos Like Psicose? Go ahead. Tell me you didn't already think of this image. Irony is a beautiful thing. But irony that causes multiple neurons to fire in people who have a tenuous grasp on reality is far better.  Artificial sweeteners have been accused of causing everything from cancer to autism to the Hindenburg disaster. "Crazy Joe" Mercola has referred to aspartame, perhaps the least toxic chemical you will ever find, as "By Far the Most Dangerous Substance Added to Most Foods Today.".......

Hillary's Climate of Hate

Just how vindictive can Crooked Grandma be?

Michelle Malkin

Who are the haters? Who are the autocrats? Who are the serial abusers of power?  Only one presidential candidate has wielded the sledgehammer of government against personal enemies.  Only one presidential candidate has exploited a spouse's public office to exact revenge on political dissenters.Only one presidential candidate has a quarter-century track record of taxpayer-subsidized demagoguery and class warfare.And as the most recent undercover investigation by James O'Keefe's Project Veritas revealed this past week, only one presidential candidate has been directly linked to a scheme to foment chaos and violence at her opponent's rallies.......To Read More...

Mocking Hillary, Trump, and (even) Gary Johnson

October 30, 2016 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

The horrid day is rapidly approaching. Yes, November 8 is when Americans will choose which Tweedledee/Tweedledum fire to jump into after two terms of Barack Obama’s slow-growth frying pan.

So let’s try to enjoy some gallows humor in advance

Hillary already has been the target of satire in one Nazi movie. This time she’s graduated to a Nazi movie featuring the head of the National Socialist Workers Party.


Speaking of Ms. Clinton, I can greatly sympathize with the disgust she felt when receiving this selfie from America’s laughingstock, Anthony Weiner.


Now let’s train our fire on one of Hillary’s long-time donors and supporters.

Here’s Doc Brown giving some very important instruction on how to save the nation from the big-government fake Republican who is running against the big-government all-too-real Democrat.


We even have some satire mocking the Libertarian nominee. Here are some excerpts from an article posted by the Onion, ostensibly written by Gov. Gary Johnson.
…there is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here for a third-party candidate to present a transformative new vision for our nation and win the support of voters all across the country. And frankly, I am just as disappointed as you are to realize I am in no way qualified to do that. …As it turns out, though, being a high-profile presidential candidate requires you to do a lot of stuff you don’t have to do when you’re only pulling in 1 percent of the vote, like know all about foreign affairs and domestic policy. …as you can probably tell by now, I am simply not up to the task. Not even close. …I’ve had to field questions on all kinds of subjects I just don’t have any clue about. It’s actually been pretty embarrassing. …What makes it really disappointing is that I truly believe libertarianism has valuable ideas to contribute to America’s political discourse. …But boy oh boy, am I ever doing a shitty job of communicating all that.
For what it’s worth, I suspect most Americans are relieved that Gary Johnson doesn’t know about places like Aleppo. That way, he’s less likely to invade and cause more instability and anti-American radicalism in the Middle East.

P.S. If you enjoyed the Hitler parody, other examples of this genre include:
And you can find more Hillary and/or Trump humor here, here, and here.

Why Didn't We Know?

“As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.” Quote by Vaclav Klaus, Former President of the Czech Republic

By Rich Kozlovich

The list below originated in the article Negative and Positive Results in Climate Research, to which I've posted a link in this blog. However, I really think these four questions are important enough they should be asked in any endeavor where science and research is a component, including pest control.

Actually, I think these four question could be adapted to almost any endeavor we undertake. In this case I'm applying these four questions specifically on the banning of DDT and peripheral claims about pesticides and chemicals in general.
  1. Was the failure to find material because you were asking the wrong questions?
  2. Was it because there was little or no material on the subject?
  3. Was there no material because it was being avoided?
  4. Was there no material because there was no issue or concern?
When DDT was banned any scientist who spoke out was condemned just as are the "climate deniers" today. But they were right. After thirty years of frustration by many honest researchers and scientists this DDT issue resurfaced because of an outpouring of a great deal of information that existed from the beginning.   Why didn't everyone know it before? Let's explore this.

Question 1. Was the failure to find material because you were asking the wrong questions?
Answer: Yes, it appears the vast majority of us were not only asking the wrong questions we didn't question the validity of banning DDT at all.
Question 2. Was it because there was little or no material on the subject?
Answer: No! There was abundant material to show the ban on DDT was not based on science but politics.
Question 3. Was there no material because it was being avoided?
Answer: Yes and no. That material was addressed, but it was being avoided by the press and many in industry and research.  The Litany of environmentalism demands we believe DDT was evil,  and denial was heresy.
Question 4. Was there no material because there was no issue or concern?
Answer: Yes and no again.  DDT wasn't - as one of the editors of one of our trade journals once said to me - a dead issue. And it certainly was of concern to those who knew the truth because the ban on DDT was then, and is now, foundational to the credibility and wealth of the environmental movement.
There was no material easily available - although it existed - because it was stifled by the activists though their allies and acolytes in the media, government, and researchers benefiting from government grant money.  But the group that takes the cake is industry.  Why industry? Because chemical companies want to sell more expensive products. DDT isn't in the mix for them, but neither are any of the products they produce when they go out of patent.  Chemical companies are at best leaky vessels as allies.
Viv Forbes said it best: The public has been misled by an unholy alliance of environmental scaremongers, funds-seeking academics, sensation-seeking media, vote-seeking politicians and profit-seeking vested interests.
That's all changed because of one thing and one thing only. The world now had access to all that information via the Internet.  Those who stood against Carson's science fiction claims about DDT and chemicals in general now had a platform. They didn't have to go begging to ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post or any of the major media outlets. The "mainstream" media were no longer the "guardians" of the world's information.  Those who knew the truth could go directly to the public and it started to hit the fan.

Before this the environmental movement was sacrosanct, just as is any religious movement is to it's adherents.  No challenge to their integrity, their scientific acumen, their policies or their real motives would be tolerated.  That's over with!

But it doesn't end there. My personal motto is what's supposed to be the motto of science - De Omnibus Dubitandum - question everything. I've added this - Lux et Veritas! Light and Truth. By questioning everything we have light.  Light leads to truth. But we still have a personal responsibility to look for it.
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” Galileo
It all starts with - personal responsibility - the courage to be the rock in the current - the willingness to be unliked!  Best wishes to all who take that road!

Resignation letters piling up at FBI

James Comey's wife urged director to take powerful action

Joe Kovacs About | Email | Archive

The decision by FBI Director James Comey to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server and her mishandling of classified material came after he could no longer resist mounting pressure by FBI agents described as “mutinous.”  In an article for Britain’s Daily Mail, bestselling author Ed Klein reports some of Comey’s top deputies were in on the mutiny, according to a source close to the director.

“The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,” said the source, who Klein says has known Comey for nearly 20 years, goes to Catholic mass with him each week, and spends family outings together.  “Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,” said the source. “They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist."........“The people he trusts the most have been the angriest at him. And that includes his wife, Pat.......

“He talks about the damage that he’s done to himself and the institution [of the FBI], and how he’s been shunned by the men and women who he admires and work for him. It’s taken a tremendous toll on him. It shattered his ego. He looks like he’s aged 10 years in the past four months.”......Read more

Lynch advised Comey against letter to Congress: report

By Harper Neidig

Attorney General Loretta Lynch advised FBI Director James Comey not to send a letter to Congress informing them of the discovery of new emails related to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, The New Yorker reported early Saturday.   A source in the Obama administration told the magazine that Lynch argued for following the Justice Department’s practice of not taking actions that could influence the outcome of an election......To Read More...

Dollar and Yuan Cash In on the Global Money-Printing Trend



There is little doubt that the rapid expansion of both dollar-denominated debt and monetary quantities since the financial crisis will lead us into a currency crisis. We just don’t know when, and the dollar is not alone. All the major paper currencies have been massively inflated in recent years. With the dollar acting as the world’s reserve currency, where the dollar goes, so do all the other fiat monies.
Until that cataclysmic event, we watch currencies behave in increasingly unexpected, seemingly irrational ways.

The fundamentals for Japan are not good, yet the yen remains the strongest currency of the big four. The eurozone risks a systemic collapse, overwhelmed by political and financial headwinds, yet the euro’s exchange rate has proved relatively impervious to this deep uncertainty. The British economy is strongest, yet sterling is the weakest of the four majors.....To Read More.....

Negative and Positive Results in Climate Research

“Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.”  Dr. Tim Ball

Marston Bates

A friend was doing research on a climate topic peripheral to his normal research. He had difficulty finding information, especially data, so asked for some links. He thought it was his inexperience or unfamiliarity with the subject that created his difficulties. He confronted the nemesis of too much modern research, namely the need for positive results. It is parallel to the question frequently asked after I make a public presentation. How come we haven’t heard any of this before?

The answer is, “Ask yourself that question.”

The information exists, so either you did not know where to look, or someone did not want you to know? Or, the data doesn’t exist or is inadequate for the claims made, and there is no basis for the proposed policies.

Western society and science are imbued, to its detriment, with the need for positive results. It likely began with the policy of students not failing in school. I became fully aware of this problem in research when talking with a colleague doing a doctorate in mathematics at Oxford. He obtained his early degrees, started his doctorate but took a university job before its completion. He continued work on it because, as I understand, it involved creating a new theorem. He worked for two years on two possible solutions and then, during the summer, returned to Oxford for discussion with his supervisor. Remember, this in pre-internet and email days......To Read More...

The article the Arizona Bar doesn't want you to see - they got it removed from Forbes after two hours!

By Rachel Alexander, on October 30th, 2016 |

If you follow this website, you know about the depths of corruption within the Arizona State Bar. It's gotten so bad that one of the former members of the Bar's Board of Governors wrote an op-ed for Forbes recently exposing it. Well, within a couple hours after the article was posted on the Forbes site, it was removed!

When the author inquired about it, he discovered that the Bar had complained to Forbes - on frankly bogus pretenses. Well, that's OK, we'll just post it here for everyone in Arizona to read. And perhaps re-post it on other sites, and re-post it again and again. We've learned that the Arizona Bar disciplinary judge William O'Neil "is a member of the Barnett family, which is basically a one family crime syndicate that everyone in Pinal County knows."

While throwing the book at innocent conservative Republican attorneys, disbarring many of them, he hired a bailiff who had seven felony convictions, and after another buddy put through a crooked short sale for him to benefit O'Neil's mother-in-law, O'Neil rewarded him by letting him continue to practice law in prison after killing a woman in a DUI!  So we're basically up against organized crime, but there are now enough of us fighting back, through legislative reform and media exposure, that they can't keep us silent any longer through threats and squelching free speech..........Full Story.........

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Observations From the Back Row

By Rich Kozlovich

I subscribe to Johan Goldberg's weekly newsletter G-File (You can subscribe here.  It's free) because I've been reading his stuff ever since I read his book,  Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change, which I thought was brilliant.  But I found his G-File a bit different.  He has a lot of insights to offer so I find his comments are worth reading, but I have to say, I think he a bit wierd. At any rate he made some cogent observations on Friday's newsletter saying:

"It used to be a vicious slander to suggest that Democrats were socialists in disguise. But we spent the last year watching Democrats fall all over themselves to insist there’s no meaningful distinction between them and their socialist brethren."

I got a chuckle out of that because just a few years ago the mainstream media would have gone ballistic over that.  But now.....they embrace it as much as do the Democrats.  When Jack Kennedy was running for President of the United States his candidacy would fried if this became publically accepted ......and now..... Bernie Sanders, an open socialist, is embraced and loved by millions of Democrats, especially young educated Democrats.....and it seems some Republicans.  

What conclusions can be drawn from that?  It appears no one reads history books any longer, and public education along with "higher" education is in the midst of rewriting history and ignoring any events that don't enhance leftist narratives.  What's worse - they're not even paying attention to current events  - Venezuela Is No Longer a Democracy.

Which of course bring us to this:  What will Trump do as President?  Who knows, but we do know what Hillary will do.  As Joseph Farah makes clear in this article,  Hillary hates America and Americans, whatever she does it will not bode well for America. 

Hillary Clinton’s 38-Year History of Sleaze and Corruption is so well recorded and so ignored it seems hardly possible this can't be a conspiracy - but it's a vast left wing conspiracy by Democrats and the propaganda arm of their party - the mainstream media which practices Distract, Deny, and Lie: The Liberal Media Strategy to Stealing an Election, all the while sociopathologicaly transferring their own guilt by accusing conservatives of doing the very things of which they really are guilty.

And the Clinton crowd is activly involved in all this voter fraaud as an Undercover Video Proves Hillary Clinton and Democrat Leaders “Personally” Involved in Election Fraud! All in support of a woman who clearly must have emotional problems.  Hillary’s rages at all those around her and Hillary F. Clinton Curses Those Who Keep Her Safe.  What's wrong with the minds of her supporters?  Hillary is Such a Nasty Marxist.

If this issue of an FBI investigation had been brought up in days gone by her run for the Presidency would have been finished and she would have been in indicted, and that would include the corruption surrounding the Clinton Foundation.  Now it appears this thing is so deep the FBI is Reopening Clinton Email Case!  Even leftist Camille Paglia says ‘The woman is a disaster! And Comey will once again be under the microscrope. Reopening Email Investigation Stain on Clinton AND Comey.


I think it's reasonable to believe we can be sure if she takes power the left will start attacking Christianity with gusto, and they will use the instruments of state power to do it, and I believe she will win because fraud in the process will so massive Trump can't win.  A Rigged Election: How the Left Blatantly Violates Election Law, and Voting shenanigans in almost all swing states, and it appears there's actual tampering at the voting stations - Shock Reports of Votes being changed from Trump to Clinton.
In this article, Pastors, they're coming after you!, we see an attitude by local governments that's becoming wide spread, and should make everyone concerned, whether or not one is religious.  But never fear: Since it appears the need to "believe" has a genetic component to it the left will not leave society without a "religion" to believe in and follow.  It's called the Church of Perpetual Grievance, and feminism is one of the influential orders of that church.   Patrice Lewis explains in her article,  'Science is hard, Barbie' why this "secular religious order" is just another leftist scam.

But it isn't just religion these corrupt official will be attacking with the instruments of state power.  This article, with my comments, High-dollar Paxton prosecution puts Collin County judge on hot seat, demonstrates the depth of corruption of these prosecutors. 

Another powerful order in this secular religious movement are the green groups, and there's only one letter difference being "green" and "greed", and being a big time capitalist doesn't mean being conservative, as is noted by Paul Driesson in, Billionaire crony corporatist schemes.  

Environmentalism is nothing short of a fascist religious movement imposing it's will on everyone, Without Consent!  This Week in Ridiculous Regulations and the level and insanity of federal regulations under Clinton will get worse. 

Hillary will support all they love and embrace no matter how vile and terrible the consequences may be to society.  As James Dillingpole writes: Rachel Carson, environmentalism's answer to Pol Pot.  Hillary will continue this pattern, as all leftists in power have done since the French Revolution. We know DDT  is a Case Study in Scientific Fraud, and Baby Boomers are Living Proof That Pesticides Are Safe , but Hillary and a corrupt EPA will continue down this path to destroy pesticide use in this nation, and the reason we're suffering from this plague of bed bugs.

Ron Arnold shows how and why it's "Hillary’s Secret Plan to Attack Climate Skeptics, as was exposed by Wikileaks, and how well funded the green movement really is - and how well disguised that funding can be.

Israel will not fare well if Hillary's elected, as it appears she shares Obama's views on Israel, and Jews, and will seemingly support the Muslim led U.N. initiatives from UNESCO.Which of course brings me to the question: Don't these people see and fear the national Suicide of Western Nations Allowing Themselves to be Taken Over by Muslim Invaders?

It's gotten so bad Swedish Seniors are Kicked Out of Retirement Home to Make Way for Muslim Migrants and there are now Muslim No Go Zones in Europe, when will we start having them here? And make no mistake about this - Muslim Refugees in Europe Cheer ISIS Attacks for a reason.  It's part and parcel of Islam - it's who they are and that's not going to change.  Liberal Jews have to teach their kids to deal with anti-Semitism on liberal campuses.  So Why Are Jews Democrats?

And since the platform of the Democratic Party supports abortion and gay marriage, which are condemned by the Catholic Church I would really like to know why Catholics are Democrats.  Seems a bit heretical to me.  Don't you think?

The Obama administration, and I include Hillary in all of this, has been ....well..... stupid! The nation really avoided a bullet when Mr. Kerry, who lives in Wonderland wasn't chosen to be President of the U.S.   Then we have Loretta Lynch 'Pleads Fifth' on Secret Iran 'Ransom' Payments.  All the while CAIR Says Talking About Islamic Terror is Islamophobic, hoping to prevent anyone from criticizing all the insanity promoted by the world's leftist leaders creating a Crisis of a Nation Divided because all these insane leftist concepts have proven disastrous everywhere in the world. 

As for racial issues under the Obama years - no one mentions The 131 Black Men Murdered by Black Lives Matter  because that would be 'racist'.  Yet black youths are running amok among civilized people as a Philadelphia flash mob turns violent, Temple University students beaten up,  and neither Obama, Loretta Lynch, or that racist Eric Holder, have said anything.  And of all people - Colin Powell has come out in support of Hillary in spite of the fact Hillary Clinton's 'People Have Been Trying to Pin' Email Scandal on Him. 

So the question we should be asking about Powell is this.  Is he stupid, insane or cowardly.....or all three!  Having once been a hero doesn't give you a pass of the rest of life....and he's used up all of his passes. 

I would love to see his views on one of the greatest jurists to sit on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas Who Is Building a Majority By Dissent.  I notice neither he or Obama, Lynch, Holder, the Black Congressional Caucus or any of these so-called black leaders have said one word in Thomas' favor.  Well, maybe that's because he's not a thug like Trayvon Martin, who Obama likened as a son. 

Leftism is irrational misanthropic and morally defective - Death with dignity? European countries are now euthanizing the mentally ill.    And one thing we had better understand....the bill for all this leftist insanity is coming due in this next administration, including the Pension Debt Hurricane That Will Swamp Taxpayers

Well, that's my observations from the back row for this week.  Does anyone besides me think we've lost our minds and this is all so frightening?  I hope so!

Pastors, they're coming after you!

Michael Brown

In fact, it sounds like a “shock” headline designed to get your attention.  Who, after all, is this ambiguous “they” I’m referring to, and why are “they” coming after “you” – referring obviously to Christian leaders? And what, pray tell, are “they” coming to do to “you”?  So I’ll admit it. I did come up with the title of this article for shock value, but the fact is, you need to be shocked.  In other words, the title may be sensational, but it is only sensational because it is true.

Consider this Oct. 26 headline on Fox News: “State of Georgia demands pastor turn over sermons.”
Yes, “A lay minister who is suing the Georgia Department of Public Health for religious discrimination has been ordered by the state’s attorney general to relinquish his sermons to the government, according to federal court documents.”.........Read more

'Science is hard, Barbie'

Patrice Lewis About | Email | Archive

Amidst the comical shenanigans we all find amusing with social justice warriors, gender-fluidists, cultural appropriationists and other scions of an enlightened age, one stands out as particularly comical: feminist biologists.

As a former biologist myself, I find this concept fascinating. What, you may legitimately ask, is “feminist” biology? According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (quoted on Wikipedia), “Feminist biology is an approach to biology that is concerned with the influence of gender values, the removal of gender bias, and the understanding of the overall role of social values in biological research and practices.”

This may be one definition dressed up in fine linen, but getting down to brass tacks, you’ll find “feminist biology” is yet another way of extracting money from the government to discover victimhood where there wasn’t any before.......... Read more

Colin Powell renews his 'ghetto pass'

Carl Jackson About | Email | Archive

This week former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who endorsed Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012, endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Approximately two weeks ago the National Museum of African American History and Culture in our nation’s capital dissed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas by ignoring his existence, thereby implying that he shouldn’t serve as a role model for all blacks. If the Smithsonian Institution isn’t careful, some blacks might get the impression that black leftists are worthy of praise but those within the black community that are diverse in thought are not. It’s almost as if we’re being trained how to think by both white and black liberal elitists.

It takes courage to take a stand as a black conservative in the public square. You don’t receive accolades from BET, MTV, or the E channel for coming out of the closet as a black conservative – and now we can add the freakin’ (can you tell I’m a little upset?) Smithsonian to the list. In fact, it’s just the opposite. There’s no lifetime achievement award bestowed upon you by the NAACP; you’re more likely to be treated as a pariah by fellow blacks throughout your entire life. Nevertheless, as Dr. Laura Schlessinger used to say on her radio program, “Just because you’re the only voice crying in the wilderness, it doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”............Read more at

Reality check: Hillary hates America, Americans

Joseph Farah About | Email | Archive

There have been a lot of “firsts” in the 2016 presidential campaign. But we need to be sure we don’t have one more – the election of a president whose own staff recognizes that she hates America and Americans.

It’s astonishing, really, that we are the brink of that strong possibility, according to the polls.
I’ve known Hillary Clinton hates America and average Americans for a long, long time – longer than I care to remember, quite frankly. I’ve been involved in covering her and her nefarious husband since the early 1990s.

I won’t bore you with the long-forgotten details of that era, except to say that the Clinton White House maintained files on its “enemies,” kept an actual “enemies list” in partnership with the Democratic National Committee, spread poison about its “enemies,” like me, to the press, made successful “suggestions” for political audits of its “enemies” to the IRS and instigated massive black ops efforts against those “enemies."........Read more

Was Hillary’s Secret Plan to Attack Climate Skeptics Exposed by Wikileaks?

By Ron Arnold @ Left Exposed

On Tuesday, October 25, 2016, Wikileaks released a series of emails sent between Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, and the infamous “social change” media activist, David Fenton. The emails revealed a $3 million plan to attack the Wall Street Journal and Fox News Channel to put them ‘on the defensive’ about their realistic climate stand. The goal was to scare conservative politicians into supporting new government global warming rules and bans.

The series of emails WikiLeaks hacked from Podesta’s account shows that David Fenton thanked Podesta for a meeting on February 19, 2015. Fenton and sent him two emails documenting their conversation.

The first email said: “Here is the [Fenton Communications] plan to go after [the Wall Street Journal] and Fox [News Channel] on climate. I have 500,000 [dollars] of this pledged if I can raise another million.”

The plan, attached to the email, used “guerilla tactics,” budgeting $350,000 for groups including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace for civil disobedience and social media campaigns, and $600,000 for advertisements in the Wall Street Journal and on the Fox News Channel. It would involve the creation of websites that disseminated true-believer views about climate change, and directly challenged the reporting in Rupert Murdoch’s Fox media.
Fenton’s email said:
“Fox News is the biggest single factor keeping almost 40% of Americans from believing humans are changing the climate, while only 10% know that 97% of climate scientists agree we are warming the earth at our peril. In some ways, the effect of the Wall Street Journal is even worse, as it sows regular confusion among its 3 million daily subscribers – business leaders and investors among the most influential people in the country.” [Murdoch’s companies also own the Wall Street Journal and he heads 21st Century Fox.]
Fenton continued his increasingly desperate email plea: “Unless and until the Journal and Murdoch are put on the defensive on climate change, opening political space for conservatives to come forward, it is unlikely that bipartisan efforts on climate change will be achieved in time.”
Part of Fenton’s plan involved “public shaming” of Murdoch so that his six children, who have more fanatic views on climate change, would have “leverage with their father”.

Clinton’s campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of the Wikileaks emails, but has attacked what it said were Russian state actors involved in obtaining them. A Clinton campaign source dubbed the Wikileaks website a “propaganda arm of the Russian government” seeking to help elect the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, a conspiracy theory that serves as its own public shaming.

Fenton’s proposal to Podesta and its prime goal to “make Murdoch’s climate denial a major issue,” and “bring the scientific facts on climate change to his audiences,” was ironically released a day after an unwelcome story ran in London’s Daily Mail with the headline “Exposed: How top university helped secure £9million of YOUR money by passing off rivals’ research as its own… to bankroll climate change agenda.” So much for the integrity of “scientific facts on climate change.”
The Daily Caller covered the story for Americans:
“The UK government gave $11 million dollars to the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP) in exchange for research that the organization reportedly never actually did. Many papers CCCEP claimed to have published to get government money weren’t about global warming, were written before the organization was even founded, or were written by researchers unaffiliated with CCCEP. The government never checked CCCEP’s supposed publication lists, saying they were “taken on trust.”
According to The Daily Mail, “Academics whose work was misrepresented reacted with fury. Professor Richard Tol, a climate change economics expert from Sussex University, said: ‘It is serious misconduct to claim credit for a paper you haven’t supported, and it’s fraud to use that in a bid to renew a grant. I’ve never come across anything like it before. It stinks.’ ”

How could such a scandal begin? The chairman of the CCCEP since 2008 has been Lord Nicholas Stern, a militant global advocate for drastic action to combat climate change. He is also the president of the British Academy, an invitation-only society reserved for the academic elite. It disburses grants worth millions to researchers – and to Lord Stern’s own organization. Do we see the seeds of corrupt power here? Is this the beginning of another ClimateGate for the U.K.?

Meanwhile, the WikiLeaks emails between David Fenton and John Podesta show us only a proposal for a multi-million dollar attack against people with opposing but honestly held opinions, who are not given the right to those opinions – a signature mindset increasingly visible among intolerant progressives.

Fenton concluded his WikiLeaks email:
“We have let Rupert Murdoch get away with this atrocious behavior for too long. It’s time to make his endangerment of national and economic security a prominent, inescapable issue.”
Fenton is no scientist. His climate opinions are second hand, “taken on trust” from government science. Government science has been seen as the same type of oxymoron as military intelligence.

Evidently, Podesta did not take Fenton’s razzle-dazzle on trust. There is no evidence that Fenton’s $3 million campaign ever went ahead. To the contrary, climate change seems to be the poor stepchild of the 2016 election’s leading issue awards. If, somehow, the Fenton fantasy was actually put into action, it left the Wall Street Journal and Fox unscathed in their climate realism. Certainly, Rupert Murdoch doesn’t seem to be taking climate policy advice from his six offspring. So, perhaps David Fenton’s Wikileaks email plans are what the Roman Empire once referred to as brutum fulmen – harmless thunderbolt.

But do not underestimate the man. Fenton is remembered as the one who engineered the phony 1989 Alar “poison apples” scam with the Natural Resources Defense Council to wrongfully disparage hundreds of blameless orchardists into bankruptcy.

He gloated about it.

The Battle at UNESCO

The Muslim Bloc may have won the battle, but did Israel win the war?

Ari Lieberman

By now it should be clear to all but the blindest (or rabidly disingenuous) that the United Nations is an organization that has been co-opted by the nefarious interests of Muslim nations and their despotic third world allies. It is an organization rife with prejudice and hypocrisy. An organization that can undeniably and without equivocation be described as today's greatest purveyor of Judeophobia, historical revisionism and conspiracy theories. This fact is best illustrated by three resolutions passed this year by United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that deny the indisputable Jewish nexus to the holy city.

On April 12, the 58-member body voted in favor of an asinine and wholly one-sided resolution that referred to Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem exclusively by their Muslim names and designated the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, as a “Muslim holy site of worship.” To add insult to injury, the resolution also adopted wild conspiracy theories including a claim that Israel was “planting Jewish fake graves in other spaces of the Muslim cemeteries.”.....To Read More.....

High-dollar Paxton prosecution puts Collin County judge on hot seat

By   /   October 25, 2016  /   News  /   2 Comments

The Collin County Commissioners Court voted 5-0 Monday in support of a resolution to challenge excessive payments to the special prosecutors in the securities fraud case pending against Attorney General Ken Paxton.  But on Dec. 6, the commissioners’ attorney is due in an appellate court to argue the exact opposite: that the county should keep paying to prosecute Paxton, and that the courts should dismiss a taxpayer lawsuit meant to stop the million-dollar payments.......To Read More.....

My Take - Another case of prosecutors out of control - a case of political abuse of the system by leftists in powerful positions. This was true in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker case, the Senator Ted Stevens case, the Tom Delay case (both of their careers destroyed by these illegal actions), and it's true here. This is an expanding pattern of the criminalization of politics, as was those States Attorneys General who launched a fraud investigation against the Competitive Enterprise Institute over it's position regarding Anthropogenic Climate Change, along with Exxon Mobile. 

Fortunately CEI and Exxon are initiating legal action against this conspiracy.  These corrupt prosecutors may face criminal action at some point because it's a violation of federal law “for two or more people  to agree together to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person in any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).”  That is in effect what these 20 Attorney's General were doing, along with their allies in the green movement.

Hans Bader, a senior attorney at the  Competitive Enterprise Institute, called these actions Ethical Breaches and Selective Applications of the Law, Fabricating Law, Usurping Legislative Powers and Predatory Practices. 

This is just one more example of collusion, corruption and conspiracy within the legal system in order to promote a political position. 

Pension Debt Hurricane Will Swamp Taxpayers

Jesse Hathaway

A new report published by Moody's Investment Services estimates the current total cost of state governments pension program liabilities at about $1.25 trillion. By the end of the current fiscal year, state government's pension liabilities will increase by another $500 billion, or about $1.39 billion in additional promised entitlements for government employees each day. Lawmakers have a responsibility to take seriously the pension hurricane warning, because taxpayers will be the ones paying the bill when promises come due and the money isn't there in the future.........To Read More....

A Rigged Election: How the Left Blatantly Violates Election Law

Jim Lakely

Heartland friend James O’Keefe dropped his third video today (and he promises more) exposing corruption in the election process. [See the whole series here.] It contains a confession from long-time Democratic operative Bob Creamer — husband of sitting Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) — that he and others at lefty political action committees (PACs) are communicating directly with Hillary Clinton and the DNC to coordinate their activities against Donald Trump............

The left’s rules were recently applied viciously by corrupt prosecutors in Wisconsin upon their fellow non-connected conservative citizens in the infamous “John Doe investigations.” Milwaukee County’s Democratic district attorney John Chisholm directed an investigation of conservative activists in the Badger State, accusing them of illegally coordinating with Gov. Scott Walker in his recall campaign. The investigation featured raids on the Wisconsin homes of these Tea Party patriots in the middle of the night, scaring their children. George Will has a great account of this outrage from 2014:........To Read More.....

Mr. Kerry in Wonderland

By Sol W. Sanders @ American Center for Democracy

There is an old disputed argument that extensive air travel causes physical injury and distorts cognitive thinking. [Stewardesses did remark that during the changeover in the mid-20th century from internal combustion and jet-prop engines interrupted their menstrual cycle.] Secretary of State John Kerry, like his predecessor Sec. Hillary Clinton, is in constant motion, most of it to foreign parts.

Perhaps that is the explanation of recent comments by Kerry to a group of University of Chicago political science students. The Secretary was presenting his case for the success of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy.

Syria, he said, had proved that Pres. Obama’s famous red line had been drawn and was a success. He said it had ushered in the program of exporting the chemical weapons of the Assad regime. This statement would depend on your definition of chemicals since it is certain that Assad and his Russian and Iranian and Hezbollah allies continue to use chlorine gas in abundance. Also, Kerry ignored the Russian air attacks on civilian targets including medical facilities – nothing as barbaric seen since the 1930s.

Obama’s “deal” with Iran to postpone their introduction of nuclear weapons, however, effective it may be, is another of Kerry’s victories. Again, he ignores that within weeks, Tehran had boasted of developments in intercontinental ballistics missiles tests – their only utility, of course, would be to deliver weapons of mass destruction including nuclear. Nor is there any elucidation of the accusation that billions of dollars in payments to Iran at the same time as the release of American citizens, would go to fund the world’s number one terrorist state.

Kerry also skirted the highly staged gift that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – a badge marked “reset” in English and Russian. But the Cyrillic transliteration was “peregruzka”, Russian for “overload.” A significant mistake!

What the Obama Administration believed was to be the beginning of a new cooperative era turned into Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea, his sponsorship of the Russian-speaking minority toward the destruction of Ukraine, and hints at similar operations in the Baltic states. That was after Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20% of America’s uranium holdings to Russia [while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation]. This transfer was supposed to be another clever maneuver to halt Moscow’s expanding its own production of uranium as a fuel for nuclear weapons.

Kerry claimed the U.S. had preserved freedom of the seas by what must be described by others as a tepid response to China’s claims in the South China Sea. Beijing – despite the denunciation of its sovereignty claims by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague – has moved now from an unsubstantiated claim to negotiations with Washington on how its claims are to be compromised.

Perhaps most egregious of Kerry’s maneuvers has been his courtship of the Vietnamese Communist regime. Ignoring its persecution of religious and other political prisoners, he argues that a stronger Vietnam in tacit alliance with the U.S. against China’s encroachments in Southeast Asia might be sustained. But the elaborate courtship of the chairman of Hanoi’s Communist Party rather than its government figures reminds us of Kerry’s past. He was, after all, a flamboyant supporter of the cutoff of military aid to a South Vietnam’s army, which had performed well after the American withdrawal. He and his friends assured us there would be no human catastrophe. Tell that to the families of a million South Vietnamese who went into fetid political prisons – tens of thousands never to exit- the thousands who lost their lives trying to flee by sea from the new regime, and the murder of prominent anti-Communist leaders without trial.

The Mad Hatter told Alice that the truthfulness of his statements was of his choosing. Kerry obviously, has taken that advice.

* This commentary has been posted on yeoldecrabb.com on October 29, 2016.

Billionaire crony corporatist schemes

Financing “green” companies and pressure groups, to get richer off taxpayers and consumers

Paul Driessen

Shady cash from Vladimir Putin’s Russian energy oligarchs and other rich donors is being laundered through Bermuda-based lawyers and middlemen to “green” pressure groups, lobbyists and spinmeisters – to promote “green energy” schemes that bring billions of dollars from government agencies (and thus from us taxpayers and consumers) to a cabal of billionaires and crony companies. At the epicenter are hedge fund millionaire Nathaniel Simons, his wife Laura and their secretive Sea Change Foundation.

“Investors” become even wealthier, as billions of dollars are transferred annually to environmentalists, scientists, politicians, bureaucrats and crony-corporatists in Renewable Energy & Climate Crisis, Inc. The alleged “urgency” of replacing fossil fuels with “eco-friendly renewable energy” (to prevent catastrophic manmade climate change) drives and excuses operations that define or barely skirt “corrupt practices.”
 
The arrangements are too convoluted to explain in one article. Even the US Senate’s “Billionaires’ Club” report, Environmental Policy Alliance’s “From Russia with Love” study, and articles by investigative journalists like Ron Arnold and Lachlan Markay (here, here and here) barely scratch the surface.

The arrangements are too convoluted to explain in one article. Even the US Senate’s “Billionaires’ Club” report, Environmental Policy Alliance’s “From Russia with Love” study, and articles by investigative journalists like Ron Arnold and Lachlan Markay (here, here and here) barely scratch the surface.

Washington is out of control. The IRS targeting conservative groups, Clinton Foundation and national security scandals, FBI pseudo-investigations and whitewashing, bureaucrats imposing $1.9 trillion in economy-crushing regulations that ruin families and communities – with virtually no perpetrators ever held accountable.

Here we are talking about radically and fundamentally dismantling the energy system that powers the American free enterprise, transportation, communication and healthcare systems … replacing it with expensive, subsidized, unreliable, land-hungry wind, solar and biofuel energy – and using vindictive government power to bankrupt and impoverish disfavored factions, while enriching favored allies.
 
Imagine the trillions of dollars required for the USA to accept the wind industry’s “vision” of 4,000,000 megawatts of electricity from 500,000 to 1,250,000 mega turbines in our Great Lakes and along our Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. Picture the multi trillions required to achieve 50% renewable energy by 2027 and a “100% carbon-free economy” by 2050. Envision the potential billionaire profits!

As the investigators reveal, the billionaires’ green network transfers millions of dollars from individual, corporate and “charitable foundation” donors … through tax-exempt “educational” nonprofits that do not have to disclose donor names … to activist and pressure groups that work to influence elections, legislation, regulations, legal actions and public perceptions on energy and environmental issues. A lot of money originates with Russian and other foreign interests that want to protect their monopoly revenues.

Many wealthy donors and foundations that bankroll these operations also have venture capital firms that invest in “green” energy companies which benefit from the laws, policies, regulations and lawsuits – and from government contracts, grants, guaranteed loans, subsidies, feed-in tariffs, and mandates for energy systems, ethanol blends or wind and solar electricity. In turn, US money can end up in the coffers of radical Australian groups that block coal exports to India, thereby keeping its people mired in poverty.
 
Coal billionaire/climate activist Tom Steyer and other club members invest in for-profit prisons where inmates make ultra-low-cost solar panels. Warren Buffett funneled millions through his family foundation to the secretive Tides Foundation to pressure groups campaigning against the Keystone and Sandpiper Pipelines, thereby benefitting his railroad and tank car companies that haul oil. Others support North Dakota pipeline protesters who destroyed equipment, mutilated cattle and harassed local residents.
 
One of the most clandestine, devious arrangements involves firms owned or controlled by Nathaniel Simons and Laura Baxter-Simons. Tax records reveal that their Sea Change Foundation gives tens of millions a year to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Food and Water Watch, US Climate Action Network, League of Conservation Voters, Center for American Progress, White House counselor John Podesta’s Progressive Policy Institute – and Sierra Club, which received millions from Sea Change for its “Beyond Natural Gas” campaign, to battle drilling, fracking, pipelines and hydrocarbon use. 
 
The Simons regularly give millions to Sea Change. Other donors include the Gates Foundation, eBay’s Omidyar Network Fund, David Rockefeller’s personal foundation and the Walmart Foundation. Sea Change also gets money from hedge funds incorporated in Bermuda and headed by Simons’ father Jim, a major Democratic donor whose net worth is over $12 billion.

But much of Sea Change’s funding comes through Bermuda-based Klein, Ltd., whose sole purpose is to channel money covertly to Sea Change and thence to environmental advocacy and “educational” groups. Klein is a shell company that exists only on paper. Its only officers are employees of Bermuda law firm Wakefield Quin, its address is the same as WQ’s, and its registered business agents work for Wakefield.

A sizable portion of Klein’s funds come from the IPOC Group, an international growth fund owned by Russian minister of telecommunications and Putin friend Leonid Reiman; Spectrum Partners, a Moscow-based energy investment firm with major assets in Russian oil and gas; Rosneft, the Russian-government-owned oil and gas giant that is one of Wakefield’s largest clients; and other Russian companies.

Their motives are easy to discern. US fracking has battered Russia’s income, economy and ruble. One way to reverse this is to support groups that oppose drilling, fracking and pipelines – and support wind, solar and biofuel projects that Simons views as the foundation of a future “low-carbon US economy.”

That’s why Hillary Clinton told German bankers in 2013 that US energy development is “up against” Russian “oligarchs” who are funding “phony environmental groups.” She supports fracking, she claimed, while publicly saying her regulations won’t leave many places where the practice will be tolerated.

Nat Simons also runs venture capital firms Elan Management and its offshoot Prelude Ventures, which invest in “green energy” companies that benefit from policies that his Sea Change operations promote. At least seven companies in Prelude’s portfolio (including prison-labor solar company Suniva) have received bounteous federal funding from the Energy, Defense, Agriculture and Justice Departments, National Science Foundation and other agencies. Many WQ clients have ties to the Russian government.

Klein, Ltd. director and Wakefield Quin senior counsel Nicholas Hoskins is also a director in the IPOC Group and VP of a London-based investment firm whose president is a member of Putin’s inner circle and used to chair the board of Russia-owned oil company Rosneft. He also serves as director of a holding company with extensive shares in an oil company owned by Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev.

WQ senior counsel Roderick Forrest operates Medallion Investments and Meritage Investments, hedge funds owned by Nat Simons. Forrest and Hoskins are also tied closely to Spectrum Partners and Marcuard-Spectrum, Moscow-based firms with significant assets in Russian oil and gas.

All these subterranean networks and connections came to light thanks to tax records and the sources cited earlier in this article. It’s no wonder the Senate report called Sea Change “shadowy” and its operations “a deceitful way to hide the source of millions of dollars … attempting to effect political change.”

On the personal front, Simons commutes to work across San Francisco Bay on the “Elan,” a 54-ft, 1,550-HP, gas-guzzling yacht – and manages his household staff and 6,700-sq-ft home via Elan Household LLC. Ms. Baxter-Simons fired their 9-months-pregnant housekeeper after she requested maternity leave. But their planet-focused ethical star shines bright in environmentalist skies.

On this Halloween eve, it is truly frightening to grasp the extent to which America’s politicians, policies, laws, regulations, energy, economy, jobs and future are controlled by a cabal of stealthy billionaires – who receive billions from state and federal government agencies, and use those riches to become even wealthier, more powerful, and more in control of our lives, livelihoods, living standards and liberties.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and other books on the environment.
 

Left Exposed Profile: Center for Public Integrity

Ron Arnold, @ Left Exposed

The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is a foundation-funded, non-profit investigative journalism corporation registered in Washington, D.C. CPI, founded by disgruntled television investigative reporter Charles Lewis, states its mission is “to serve democracy.” In practice, the organization works more like the journalism arm of leftist activist groups. Invariably, the targets of its investigations are institutions and individuals that oppose its progressive-left view of “integrity” – be they nonprofit groups, conservative/libertarian donors, or Republican politicians.

CPI describes itself as “strictly non-partisan,” but zealously promotes Democrats, particularly President Barack Obama and his climate change policy. The CPI website’s Climate Change Lobby page contains only hostile attacks on climate realists – such as the libertarian Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute – which question Obama’s climate-alarmism orthodoxy. CPI does not attack pro-Obama climate change lobbyists for exaggeration or scare mongering but instead give praise and approval to alarmist pressure groups such as Bill McKibben’s 350.org and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
 
Controversies

Illegal Report Sources

In November 2010, CPI published a report on bluefin tuna overfishing titled “Looting the Seas.” Politico reported that “to obtain key information for the project, reporters accessed a database maintained by an intergovernmental fisheries regulatory body with a password given by a source, likely breaking the law.”

CPI’s own lawyer and an outside law firm both determined that CPI’s staff likely broke the law in obtaining information for the report. In addition, one of the experts quoted in the associated documentary was paid $15,000 as a project consultant to CPI. The investigative methods used to produce the report became a point of contention within the organization when CPI employee John Solomon made a number of accusations against the team that had worked on the series.

Activist Journalism

The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and Politico all ran stories in August 2011 exposing coordination between CPI and Greenpeace on a CPI story about supposed Koch Industries wrongdoing. According to Politico:
Last Wednesday, the Center for Public Integrity published a tough look at Koch Industries’ lobbying against post-Sept. 11 attempts to tighten safety regulations on its chemical businesses. 
Shortly afterward, Greenpeace published its own report on essentially the same topic.
The timing was enough to prompt Koch Facts, the Koch Industries website that rebuts reporting about the company, to declare the two reports “a coordinated campaign against Koch that has been underway for some time.”
Politico also reported in December 2011 that Pew Charitable Trusts, a funder of the “Looting the Seas” report, hosted a screening of a CPI documentary and then organized a call to action with other NGOs for the protection of bluefin tuna.

Liberal columnist Alex Beam of the Boston Globe wrote of CPI’s obsession with the Koch brothers:
I’ve been hanging out on the website of the Center for Public Integrity which calls itself a “nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization.’’ At the CPI, it seems as if every day is Fear the Dread Koch Brothers Day. 
Last week, the Center noted that the Kochs – pronounced like the drink “Coke’’ – who own a vast pile of refineries and chemical plants, have been resisting post-9/11 security regulations. In April, in a lengthy report on “Koch’s web of influence,’’ the Center wrote that “Koch Industries is spending tens of millions to influence every facet of government that could affect its global empire.’’ 
No Koch misstep evades the gimlet eyes of the Integrity People! Earlier this summer, they noted that “a foreign subsidiary of Koch Industries has been fined $4,700 by the Federal Election Commission for making 12 illegal donations totaling $26,800 to seven non-federal committees over a four-year period.’’ Where did this “investigative news organization’’ glean this tidbit? Hilariously, the Koch baddies reported the infraction voluntarily to the FEC.
In 2008, CPI published a report on tobacco that was both funded by and promoted by an advocacy group called Tobacco Free Kids.”

Betrayal of a Rich Donor

According to a March 9, 2008 article in the New York Times Magazine, Lewis’ departure from CPI surprised and upset billionaire donors Herb and Marion Sandler – who were also the founding funders of John Podesta’s leftist think tank, the Center for American Progress. The Sandlers’ foundation had just sunk three grants totaling $350,000 into CPI’s coffers to help pay Lewis’ $187,000 salary and felt betrayed. According to the story:
“They [the Sandlers] are keenly interested in the management of nonprofits, and they are struck by how badly managed most of them are,” says Chuck Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, an investigation-oriented nonprofit that got a few small grants [$350,000] from the Sandlers a few years ago. “They have almost a fetish about it. They have an absolute infatuation with focusing on management. Who are the leaders? What is their background? Is it getting bigger or smaller? They rigorously chew over what they are about to do, much more than others do.” … 
“So that’s one part of their philanthrocapitalist approach: They want their money to go to organizations they feel are well run and led by people they can count on to keep them that way. They want some control. This is true, it turns out, even when they’re not the biggest donors. Lewis, for instance, had been running the center for about 12 years when the Sandlers showed up and made a relatively small grant. “Chuck was a terrific leader,” Herb recalls.
But the Sandlers felt the center needed a better management structure, and so they began working with him on that. When Lewis decided a few months later that the time had come for him to leave, the Sandlers were furious and took his departure as a betrayal. “We had put in an enormous amount of effort,” Marion says.
For his part, Lewis felt he should be able to quit without giving the Sandlers advance notice and was angered by their reaction. There were hurt feelings all around. “They are high-maintenance donors,” Lewis says now.”

Attacking Republicans, Protecting Democrats

In January 2008, the Media Research Center exposed a Center for Public Integrity attack against President George W. Bush. The report, titled “Iraq – The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War,” made headlines across the nation. Excerpts from the Human Events report, “The Center for Public Integrity and a Media Scam,” exposed CPI’s highly partisan, selective condemnation tactics – such as CPI’s one-sided “study” claiming Bush deliberately lied about weapons of mass destruction:
The Establishment Media howled the study’s lead “finding”: 935 false statements by Bush Administration officials in the two-year period leading up to the launch of the War. The Associated Press, CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post and – of course – the New York Times were all exhilarated to once again climb aboard the “Bush Lied – People Died” Express. … 
President Bush said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq immediately prior to our invading Mesopotamia. Saddam Hussein indeed at one point had them – we know this because he had used them, twice, on the Iranians and the Kurds. His every move right up to the moment we went in was calculated to foster the appearance that he had them still, lest his neighbors think him weak and vulnerable. 
But in we went, and we found nothing.  We had the wrong information.  This is not a lie — this is an error of fact. … According to the CPI study itself, at least 532 of the “false statements” cited – more than half the grand total – had to do with assertions that Iraq indeed had these weapons. So let us trip down memory lane and revisit some other “false statements” on the subject made at the very same time as those made by the Bush Administration, by non-Bush administration individuals. 
“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program.  He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”  — Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002. 
“We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction. “[W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime … He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he has continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction … So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real …” — Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003. 
“Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.”  — Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002. 
“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” — Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002.
“The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons.” — Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002.

Background & History

The Center for Public Integrity was incorporated in the District of Columbia on March 30, 1989 by Charles Lewis, a former producer for ABC News and CBS News 60 Minutes. Lewis recruited two trusted journalists, Alejandro Benes and Charles Piller – whom he had met through his television work – to serve on the board of directors while he ran the nascent CPI from his home.

All three, according to Lewis’ 2014 book 935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity, had grown frustrated and dissatisfied with what was being done in the name of investigative journalism by established news organizations. They chose the name “public integrity” as a way of underlying the “ultimate purpose of investigative journalism” which is “to hold those in power accountable and to inform the public about significant distortions of the truth.”

Lewis led the group for 15 years and left the lasting stamp of his activist liberalism on the organization until he abruptly departed in January 2005. As of 2016, Lewis holds a position at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C. His faculty profile identifies him as a professor and executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

CPI’s board of directors chose television journalist Roberta Baskin as Lewis’s successor. She led the organization until May 24, 2006, when she was replaced by interim executive director Wendell Rawls, who was in turn succeeded in 2007 by William Buzenberg, a vice president at American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio. In 2010 The Huffington Post Investigative Fund merged into the CPI, and eight Huffington Post journalists moved to CPI.

In April 2011, with support from the Knight Foundation, the organization’s all-time top donor, CPI launched iWatchnews.org as its main investigative reporting website. In August 2012, CPI stopped using iWatchnews.org and returned to its original domain. In December 2011, CPI eliminated 10 staff positions in order to compensate for a $2 million budget shortfall. Buzenberg and other senior staffers also took salary cuts. CPI board chairman Bruce Finzen said the budget would be “reduced between $2 and $3 million, more like $2.5 million. The budget for next year will be in the $6 to $7 million range.” Buzenberg stepped down from CPI at the end of 2014, at which time Peter Bale, former vice president and general manager of digital operations at CNN International, was named CEO.

CPI releases its reports for publication in media outlets throughout the U.S. and around the globe. CPI lists on its official website its donors’ names without amounts or earmarks. CPI’s annual reports are also posted on the organization’s website. In 1997, CPI launched the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). This international network, based in Washington, D.C., is not incorporated or recognized by the IRS, and is solely a project under the tax exemption of CPI. It includes 165 investigative reporters in more than 65 countries. Its website publishes The Global Muckraker, focused on issues such as “cross-border crime, corruption, and the accountability of power.” In 2013, the consortium reported having 160 member journalists from 60 countries but does not reveal any international financial transactions.

The organization claims it has 66 employees on a $5.6 million payroll (2014) and 19 volunteers, making it one of the largest private non-stock investigative journalism corporations in America.

Government Influence

The Center for Public Integrity is cited in 692 Congressional Research Service Policy Reports from 1995 to 2016. (Paywall)
Source: Legistorm.

Finances

Financial data from Center for Public Integrity 2014 Form 990, most recent available in 2016
  • Grants received $9,313,650
  • Program Service Revenue (contractual services) $39,235
  • Investment income $207,489
  • Other revenue (gifts, honoraria) $56,624
  • Total revenue $9,616,998
  • Salaries and employee benefits $5,632,462
  • William Buzenberg Executive Director compensation, $237,944
  • Robin Heller Chief Fundraiser compensation $203,521
  • Gerard Ryle Director, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists compensation $198,380
  • Total fundraising expenses $861,330
  • Total assets $8,650,411
  • Total liabilities $863,793
  • Net assets $7,786,793

Network Interactions

Visit the Muckety Map for the Center for Public Integrity for an interactive social network diagram.

30 Most Important CPI Donors 1998-2014

From 1998 to 2014, 103 foundations gave CPI 442 grants totaling $58,280,008
Only a selection of top dollar donors is listed. Most significant are in bold:
  1. JOHN S. AND JAMES L. KNIGHT FOUNDATION $6,774,000
  2. JOHN D & CATHERINE T MACARTHUR FOUNDATION $6,338,000 (Lewis won a “genius” grant)
  3. FORD FOUNDATION $6,250,000
  4. PARK FOUNDATION INC $3,530,000
  5. CARNEGIE CORPORATION OF NEW YORK $2,742,400
  6. OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE (Soros) $2,169,430
  7. FOUNDATION TO PROMOTE OPEN SOCIETY (Soros) $2,025,000
  8. OMIDYAR NETWORK FUND INC (e-Bay) $2,000,000
  9. J HOWARD PEW FREEDOM TRUST (Pew Charitable Trusts) $1,874,000
  10. THE ANNENBERG FOUNDATION $1,015,000
  11. WILLIAM & FLORA HEWLETT FOUNDATION $925,000
  12. JOYCE FOUNDATION $745,000
  13. ROCKEFELLER BROTHERS FUND INC $625,000 (major climate alarm funder)
  14. NATHAN CUMMINGS FOUNDATION $532,500
  15. W K KELLOGG FOUNDATION $525,000
  16. SCHUMANN CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY INC $500,000
  17. SANDLER FOUNDATION $350,000 (major Democratic Party ally and donor)
  18. SURDNA FOUNDATION INC $315,000
  19. V KANN RASMUSSEN FOUNDATION $300,000 (funded skeptic prosecution workshop)
  20. DAVID AND LUCILE PACKARD FOUNDATION $250,000 (major climate alarm funder)
  21. TIDES CENTER $177,301 (major wide-spectrum leftist group incubator and mentor)
  22. ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION $150,000 (major climate alarm funder)
  23. ROCKEFELLER FAMILY FUND INC $145,000 (major climate alarm funder)
  24. PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS $100,000 (major wide-spectrum anti-industry funder)
  25. THE HEINZ ENDOWMENTS $100,000 (major progressive project funder)
  26. NOVO FOUNDATION (Warren Buffet) $100,000
  27. ARCA FOUNDATION $75,000 (Reynolds Tobacco heiress funded Tides creation)
  28. SUNLIGHT FOUNDATION $70,000
  29. BARBRA STREISAND FOUNDATION $65,000
  30. TIDES FOUNDATION $28,000 (major wide-spectrum leftist group funder)
Source: Foundation Search