Trump Makes Second Attempt to Install Wall Street’s Lawyer, Jay Clayton, to Oversee Prosecutions of Wall Street SAY NO TO JAY CLAYTON!

TODD BLANCH = MATT GAETZ DEFENSE COUNSEL 

IN THE NY LAWSUITS, FALSIFICATION OF BUSINESS RECORDS, TODD BLANCH 

ARGUED IN OPENING ARGUMENTS & CLOSING ARGUEMENTS THAT TRUMP 

HAD NEVER MET STORMY DANIELS...WHICH WAS TRUMP'S IRRELEVANT 

ARGUMENT....DON'T GET LOST IN TRUMP'S LIES!

SAY NO TO JAY CLAYTON!

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Trump Makes Second Attempt to Install Wall Street’s Lawyer, Jay Clayton, to Oversee Prosecutions of Wall Street

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 18, 2024 ~

Last week President-elect Donald Trump announced the nomination of Jay Clayton to become U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York – the regional office of the U.S. Department of Justice that brings (or passes on bringing) criminal prosecutions against the Wall Street megabanks for their serial looting of the American people.

In Trump’s first term as President, Clayton was tapped by Trump to serve as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission – notwithstanding that Clayton had represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks in the prior three years as a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the oldest Wall Street go-to law firms. Clayton returned to Sullivan & Cromwell after his stint at the SEC and currently serves there as Senior Policy Advisor and Of Counsel.

When Clayton’s name was first announced by Trump to be SEC Chair in early January 2017, Senator Sherrod Brown, then the Democrat’s ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, issued the following statement:

“It’s hard to see how an attorney who’s spent his career helping Wall Street beat the rap will keep President-elect Trump’s promise to stop big banks and hedge funds from ‘getting away with murder.’ I look forward to hearing how Mr. Clayton will protect retirees and savers from being exploited, demand real accountability from the financial institutions the SEC oversees, and work to prevent another financial crisis.”

Our Revolution, the organization created by supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders after his failed bid for the Presidency, ramped up the heat against Clayton serving as SEC Chair with an email blast asking Sanders’ supporters to sign a petition against Clayton. The email message read in part:

“Clayton’s ties to Wall Street are deep. His law firm specializes in protecting Wall Street banks, and during the financial crisis he worked as a bailout attorney for Goldman Sachs, where his wife works today…The SEC chair is supposed to referee Wall Street banks, but Clayton has spent his entire career protecting their interests – and more than half of his family income currently comes from one of them. How can he be trusted to suddenly switch sides and put working Americans first?”

The link to the petition called this a “hostile takeover” of America. That hostile takeover now looks like a warm, cuddly blanket compared to what Trump is unleashing today. Saturday Night Live’s James Austin Johnson, playing Trump, described his cabinet picks as follows: “…I am very fastly picking the most epic cabinet of all time. They’re some of the most dynamic, free-thinking, animal killing, sexually criminal, medically crazy people in the country.” Saturday Night Live forgot to reference Fox News host Pete Hegseth, the man Trump has nominated to be Secretary of Defense and head the U.S. military and Pentagon, despite his tattoos espousing white supremacy rhetoric.

Most notable about the current Trump nomination of Clayton is that this is not the first time that Trump has attempted to put this deeply conflicted man – who has zero experience as a criminal prosecutor – in charge of the federal prosecutor’s office that handles criminal prosecutions of Wall Street. The first time was more of an attempted coup d’état rather than an appointment. Here are the hubristic details of what went down with Clayton in Trump’s last year in office as President – six months before Trump fueled the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

Shortly after 9 p.m. on June 19, 2020, the then U.S. Attorney General, William Barr, blindsided prosecutors in the Southern District of New York with the announcement that their boss, Geoffrey Berman, was stepping down as U.S. Attorney and would be replaced with the sitting SEC Chairman, Jay Clayton.

What Barr had not foreseen was that Berman had no intention of being ousted quietly. In fact, he would later write a tell-all book on the experience. Berman writes the following in Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department:

“Throughout my tenure as U.S. attorney, Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining — in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired.”

Two hours after Barr’s announcement, Geoffrey Berman released his own statement indicating that the U.S. Attorney General had just told a brazen lie to the American people. Berman’s statement was this: “I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was ‘stepping down’ as United States Attorney.  I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.”

The next day, Barr issued another statement indicating that President Trump was removing Berman from his post but would leave Berman’s Deputy in charge of the office on an interim basis. Barr had stated the prior Friday evening that he would be putting in Craig Carpenito, the sitting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, as acting head of the office until Clayton’s confirmation hearing. The acknowledgement by Barr that Berman’s Deputy would fill the post until a confirmation occurred appeased Berman and he agreed to step down.

The same day, then Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, released a statement indicating that he would not move forward on Clayton’s nomination without the standard policy of getting a go-ahead from the two Senators of the state where the new U.S. Attorney will serve, i.e., New York. That meant that Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand would have to give the greenlight to Clayton. Instead, Schumer released the following statement:

“Forty seven years ago, Elliott Richardson had the courage to say no to a gross abuse of presidential power. Jay Clayton has a similar choice today: He can allow himself to be used in the brazen Trump-Barr scheme to interfere in investigations by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, or he can stand up to this corruption, withdraw his name from consideration, and save his own reputation from overnight ruin.”

According to the New York Times, Senator Gillibrand had also stated that Clayton should withdraw his name from consideration.

That was the end of the Trump-Barr-Clayton attempted coup d’état on June 19, 2020. It was followed by the violent and deadly attempted coup d’état on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol building.

Now Trump’s plan to install Clayton in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is back and, incredibly, Clayton looks like one of the more reasonable Trump cabinet picks – on the mere basis that he hasn’t been accused of sexually assaulting anyone or having his body decorated with white supremacy images.

What Trump is attempting to do for Wall Street’s serial miscreants today is precisely what he is planning to do for himself at Main Justice – the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Trump has nominated his sycophant, Matt Gaetz, to be U.S. Attorney General and his defense counsel, Todd Blanche, to be Deputy Attorney General, a position that oversees the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Blanche represented Trump in the federal cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith and in the New York case where Trump was accused of attempting to illegally influence the 2016 election by paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, who testified in court that the two had sex in a hotel room. According to Daniels’ statements to the media, Trump’s wife, Melania, was caring for their four-month old son, Barron, at the time. The hush money trial ended with Trump being convicted on all 34 criminal felony counts – making him the first convicted felon in U.S. history to be elected President of the United States.

In the 2020 effort by Trump to install Clayton, mainstream media focused on the fact that the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District was actively investigating Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani, and Deutsche Bank, a major financial lender to Trump’s companies. That might have been relevant. But also noteworthy was the ongoing criminal investigations of two Wall Street megabanks.

Goldman Sachs was under investigation in one of the biggest financial frauds in history – a case involving a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund known as 1MDB. Goldman raised over $6 billion in bond offerings for 1MDB but, according to the Justice Department, $4.5 billion of that was “misappropriated” and used “to fund the co-conspirators’ lavish lifestyles, including purchases of artwork and jewelry, the acquisition of luxury real estate and luxury yachts, the payment of gambling expenses, and the hiring of musicians and celebrities to attend parties.” Goldman made more than $600 million in fees from the bond offerings, according to the Justice Department.

On June 6, 2020 Reuters reported that Malaysia would not accept $3 billion from Goldman to settle the case. On June 11 – just eight days before Berman was abruptly dismissed from his post — the New York Times reported the following:

“Goldman Sachs is trying to get federal prosecutors to ease up on the bank for its role in a brazen scheme to loot billions of dollars from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.

“Lawyers for the bank have asked Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to review demands by some federal prosecutors that Goldman pay more than $2 billion in fines and plead guilty to a felony charge, according to three people briefed on the matter.

“The bank has sought to pay a lower fine and avoid a guilty plea, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are continuing.”

What most Americans have never heard about in this famous case is that Clayton’s law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, was involved in making some of those luxury purchases on behalf of the gang of alleged criminals who looted 1MDB, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sullivan & Cromwell’s name makes seven appearances in the criminal complaint filed in court by the Justice Department.

While Sullivan & Cromwell is named 7 times in the complaint, the giant law firm Shearman & Sterling is mentioned 94 times. Shearman & Sterling has represented Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks on numerous occasions.

Something else that the public does not know is that a unit of JPMorgan Chase, a bank that has pleaded guilty to five criminal felony counts, is named 61 times in the 1MDB complaint for its role in wiring the looted funds. While the Justice Department did not bring charges against J.P. Morgan in the matter, the Swiss regulator, FINMA, found in 2017 that the bank had committed serious anti-money laundering breaches in its handling of monies belonging to 1MDB.

Just three months after the attempted Clayton coup, the U.S. Department of Justice gave JPMorgan Chase a deferred prosecution agreement for two criminal felony counts involving sprawling crimes in the trading of precious metals and U.S. Treasuries. But instead of the case being brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York – where JPMorgan’s trading desks are located – the case was inexplicably handled by the District of Connecticut.

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The Senate Race in Ohio Is the Sickest in U.S. History in Terms of Billionaire Money from Outside the State

OHIO: DON'T BE FOOLED BY THE $$$$!

DEFEAT BERNIE MORENO!

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The Senate Race in Ohio Is the Sickest in U.S. History in Terms of Billionaire Money from Outside the State 

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 18, 2024 ~

Senator Sherrod Brown

Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat and life-long Ohioan, is running for his fourth term in the U.S. Senate, after more than 17 years of proving consistently with his voice and actions that it’s the working class of Ohio that he stands up for in Congress.

It would seem that Brown’s reelection should be an easy win. Instead, it will be one of the most expensive Senate races in U.S. history with the outcome dependent on just how vile and vicious the attack ads funded by out-of-state billionaires are against Brown.

According to AdImpact.com, outside groups have reserved $92.8 million in ads they plan to run supporting Brown’s Republican challenger, Bernie Moreno, a man who has bragged about his early “lower-middle-class status,” but whom the New York Times describes as being “born into a rich and politically connected family” in Bogotá, Columbia.

How did Senator Brown end up with a target on his back? It comes down to two things. Republicans need to oust Brown to grab majority control of the U.S. Senate; and Brown is the Chair of the powerful Senate Banking Committee where key Presidential nominees need to get confirmed. Putting a right-wing Republican in the Chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee would grease the skids for a MAGA agenda.

The Club for Growth Action Super PAC played a major role in making sure Moreno won the Republican primary so he could go head-to-head with Brown in the general election. The billionaire-supported PAC ran ads during the primary touting Trump’s endorsement of Moreno while stating that “Bernie will stand up to liberal nut jobs.” See one of those ads here.

According to Federal Election Commission data, Club for Growth Action has raised $46.29 million from January 1, 2023 through April 30, 2024. Two billionaires are responsible for two-thirds of that money. Neither of those billionaires live or vote or work in Ohio, and yet their money could sway the outcome of the Senate election in Ohio.

The Club for Growth has pushed for things that the majority of Americans are against: the privatization of Social Security; the destruction of workers’ rights and unions; and the deregulation of dangerous industries.

The largest donor to Club for Growth Action is Jeff Yass, a billionaire who resides in Pennsylvania. From January 1, 2023 to June 7, 2024, Yass has donated $20.5 million to the Club for Growth Action Super PAC. The second largest donor is Richard Uihlein, who has chipped in $10.26 million.

Yass is Co-Founder of Susquehanna International Group (SIG), a hedge fund and global quantitative trading firm. In 2022, the nonprofit investigative news site, ProPublica, reported that Yass has “avoided $1 billion in taxes while largely escaping public scrutiny. He’s now pouring his money into campaigns to cut taxes and support election deniers.”

Richard Uihlein is an heir to the Schlitz brewing fortune. He and his wife, Elizabeth, founded Uline, a shipping supplies company. According to The Hill publication, the 2022 midterms marked Uihlein’s largest ever donations to political campaigns – a staggering $80.7 million.

But it’s not just right-wing Super PACs that Senator Brown is up against. According to FEC records, Moreno’s own primary campaign account, “Bernie Moreno for Senate,” is seeing a huge influx of donors who reside in New York, Florida, Texas, Virginia, and, peculiarly, Minnesota, many of whom have maxed out their individual donations to Moreno of $3300 for the primary and another $3300 for the general election.

Notable among this group are people employed by private equity firms such as Blackstone, Goldman Sachs (which owns a private equity arm), Elliott Management, Lone Star Funds, Fortress Investment Group and numerous others.

Private equity and hedge funds enjoy a craven tax break called “Carried Interest,” where billionaires can end up paying a lower tax rate than teachers, plumbers and factory workers in Ohio.

What Ohioans can do to outwit the swamp creatures in this election is to line up 10 neighbors or friends who were planning to sit out this election and drive them to the polls on November 5.

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Crypto Just Got Exponentially More Dangerous: Meet Fairshake ****CRYPTO IS A SCAM*****

JOHN DEATON, CRYPTO SCAMMER, VOTED 3 TIMES IN 20 YEARS! 

CARPET BAGGER MOVE TO MASSACHUSETTS TO RUN AGAINST 

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN! 

Don't believe his SCAM! MASS GOP embraced this SCAMMER because they 

refuse to INFORM THEMSELVES!

The CRYPTO SCAMMERS are invading elections! Don't fall for it!

CRYPTO is a FRAUD & SCAM! 

Called RAT POISON SQUARED by WARREN BUFFET...

IF YOU CONCEAL YOUR NAMES, YOU'RE A SCAM! 

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Crypto Just Got Exponentially More Dangerous: Meet Fairshake

Katie Porter, Target of Fairshake Attack Ads

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 11, 2024 ~

The first thing you need to know about crypto is that some of the smartest minds in investment and technology have studied crypto carefully and determined it’s a total sham.

In July 2019, NYU Professor and economist Nouriel Roubini summed up his findings like this:

“Crypto currencies are not even currencies. They’re a joke…The price of Bitcoin has fallen in a week by how much – 30 percent. It goes up 20 percent one day, collapses the next. It is not a means of payment, nobody, not even this blockchain conference, accepts Bitcoin for paying for conference fees cause you can do only five transactions per second with Bitcoin. With the Visa system you can do 25,000 transactions per second…Crypto’s nonsense. It’s a failure. Nobody’s using it for any transactions. It’s trading one sh*tcoin for another sh*tcoin. That’s the entire trading or currency in the space where’s there’s price manipulation, spoofing, wash trading, pump and dumping, frontrunning. It’s just a big criminal scam and nothing else.”

On June 1, 2022, more than 1,600 computer scientists, software engineers and technologists from around the world sent a letter to key members of the U.S. Congress and to the Chairs of the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees, disputing that crypto was a worthwhile financial innovation. Among the signatories to the letter were 45 experts who worked at Google; 19 from Microsoft; 11 from Apple; and Ph.Ds from the most prestigious universities in the world, including Oxford and MIT. These experts told Congress the following:

“We strongly disagree with the narrative — peddled by those with a financial stake in the crypto-asset industry— that these technologies represent a positive financial innovation and are in any way suited to solving the financial problems facing ordinary Americans…

“As software engineers and technologists with deep expertise in our fields, we dispute the claims made in recent years about the novelty and potential of blockchain technology. Blockchain technology cannot, and will not, have transaction reversal or data privacy mechanisms because they are antithetical to its base design. Financial technologies that serve the public must always have mechanisms for fraud mitigation and allow a human-in-the-loop to reverse transactions; blockchain permits neither.”

In February of last year, the Wall Street Journal gave the iconic investor, Charlie Munger, space for a 393-word OpEd on crypto. Munger, who died in November of last year at age 99, used the space to urge the U.S. to ban crypto, as China and numerous other countries have already done. Munger wrote this:

“…A cryptocurrency is not a currency, not a commodity, and not a security. Instead, it’s a gambling contract with a nearly 100% edge for the house, entered into in a country where gambling contracts are traditionally regulated only by states that compete in laxity. Obviously, the U.S. should now enact a new federal law that prevents this from happening.”

But even after the FTX crypto exchange and Sam Bankman-Fried and his colleagues perpetrated one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history, billionaire investors in crypto companies are still getting their way with far too many members of the U.S. Congress in exchange for fat political contributions.

In February and March, the crypto billionaires became exponentially more dangerous. They decided they were going to knock Congresswoman Katie Porter out of the running for a U.S. Senate seat. What was Porter’s transgression against crypto? In January 2022, Porter had joined with Senator Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats in Congress in investigating the inherent dangers between crypto, energy usage and dangerous heating of the planet. A press statement summarized their concerns as follows:

“Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, and the United States’ share of Bitcoin mining increased from 4% in August 2019 to 35% in July 2021. This share of mining is growing even more rapidly after China’s crackdown on cryptomining, which left 500,000 mining operations looking for new locations. This could push North America to represent over 40% of the total global computing power dedicated to mining Bitcoin. As more cryptomining operations proliferate in the United States, the extraordinary energy use raises alarms about massive carbon emissions and the impacts of this energy consumption on consumer energy prices. A recent study estimated that cryptomining in upstate New York raised annual electric bills by about $165 million for small businesses and $79 million for consumers.”

The famously outspoken Porter (armed with her whiteboard and Harvard Law degree) could have posed a bigger problem in the Senate than she already does for crypto in the House. So a small group of crypto billionaires decided to simply take Porter out of contention for a Senate seat by spending an acknowledged $10,041,118.54 on grossly misleading attack ads against Porter, falsely claiming she was taking money from Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Banks. Because Porter’s House term is up in January, she will no longer be a problem for crypto in either the Senate or House come next year.

The funding for the attack ads came from a Super Pac with the Orwellian, reverse-speak name of “Fairshake” – exactly what it did not want to give to Porter.

As of April 30, Fairshake has taken in $92.87 million in political contributions with the vast bulk of that coming from a handful of tightly-linked crypto interests related to the crypto exchange — Coinbase — according to records at the Federal Election Commission.  Coinbase and its payments arm, Coinbase Commerce, contributed over $51.5 million  — 55 percent of the total of all receipts at Fairshake thus far.

A major investor in Coinbase, Marc Andreessen, of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a/k/a AH Capital Management), chipped in $9.5 million. His partner in AH Capital Management, Ben Horowitz, added another $9.5 million.

Not wanting to look like pikers – given the huge sum contributed from publicly-traded Coinbase – AH Capital Management itself chipped in $19 million.

The Chairman and CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, handed Fairshake a cool $1 million. The Lead Independent Director on the Board of Coinbase, Fred Wilson, gave Fairshake $1,047,540.

Coinbase-related contributions to Fairshake represent 98.5 percent of its total receipts thus far.

Unfortunately, knocking out Porter does not appear to be game-over for Fairshake. Two other Senators who are crypto skeptics are running for re-election: Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chair of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, and Jon Tester (D-MT).

Fairshake has thus far spent just $40.6 million of its $92.87 million haul. 


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Crypto Tries to Recreate the Koch Money Machine to Pack Congress with Shills ****MASSACHUSETTS: PAY ATTENTION!****

 
MASSACHUSETTS: PLEASE PAY ATTENTION! 

A CRYPTO CARPETBAGGER IS RUNNING AGAINST SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN! 

JOHN DEATON HAS NO TIES TO MASSACHUSETTS, JUST MOVED TO RUN FOR OFFICE, NEVER PREVIOUSLY HELD ELECTED OFFICE, IS TOTALLY UNINFORMED, HIS COMMENTS  DEFINE HIS IGNORANCE - HE BLABBED ABOUT STATE SHELTER LAWS - NOT SOMETHING THAT PERTAINS TO A SENATOR & MUCH ELSE...

IN 20 YEARS, JOHN DEATON ONLY VOTED 3 TIMES!

JOHN DEATON, among others, is a CRYPTO FAKE & FRAUD! 

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Crypto Tries to Recreate the Koch Money Machine to Pack Congress with Shills

Editor’s Note: For watchdog Better Markets’ detailed analysis of crypto’s “track record of lawlessness, deception, fraud, and investor losses,” see here.

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 13, 2024 ~

As meticulously chronicled by Jane Mayer and numerous others, the billionaire owners of fossil fuels giant Koch Industries — Charles Koch and his late brother, David Koch – spent decades building the tentacles of what became known as the Kochtopus. It was, and remains, a sprawling network of Super Pacs, nonprofits, dark money groups, activist groups and think tanks deployed to push an anti-regulatory agenda in Congress – particularly when it comes to fossil fuels and climate change. Koch’s latest addition is an Orwellian voter-mining database and its dangerous appendages.

Crypto billionaires appear to have studied the Koch playbook carefully and are now rapidly rolling out a strikingly similar network. As we reported on Tuesday, a handful of crypto billionaires and their related crypto businesses had plowed $92.87 million (as of April 30) into a Super Pac, ironically called “Fairshake,” to defeat candidates for Congress who refuse to be toadies for the crypto agenda.

We obtained the $92.87 million receipt figure for Fairshake directly from records at the Federal Election Commission, where there is a lag in updating new donations to the public FEC website. According to Bloomberg News, subsequent to April 30, three prior big-money donors to Fairshake, crypto exchange Coinbase, venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz, and blockchain services company, Ripple, each donated $25 million to Fairshake. That additional $75 million would bring Fairshake’s current total to at least $167.87 million — making it one of the largest Super Pacs in the U.S.

The vast majority of Fairshake’s money comes either directly from the crypto exchange, Coinbase, or from its billionaire investors. One of those is Brian Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of Coinbase. Armstrong has been brazenly outspoken for the head of a publicly-traded company about threatening members of Congress to either get on board the crypto bandwagon or risk losing their seats in the November election.

On the Coinbase blog on June 3, Armstrong wrote this:

“Crypto voters won’t be taken seriously until we send a clear message to political candidates that it is bad politics to be anti-crypto. Therefore, the simple conclusion is that we need to support pro-crypto candidates on both sides of the aisle, and unceremoniously vote anti-crypto candidates out of office.”

Fairshake did just that in the spring primary in California. It spent over $10 million in attack ads against Congresswoman Katie Porter’s bid for a U.S. Senate seat, falsely claiming that she took campaign money from Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Banks. Porter was soundly defeated. Because her House term is up in January, Porter’s strong public-interest voice will be eliminated completely from Congress.

Like Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, crypto has also created a “grassroots movement” called StandwithCrypto.org. On its website, it’s sending a warning to the members of Congress that it plans to target. Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio who is running for reelection this year, is given an “F” rating, with the words “Strongly against crypto” next to his photo on the website.

The crypto tentacles also include a dark money nonprofit called Cedar Innovation Foundation. Its website shows that it is already running ads ordering Senator Sherrod Brown (who chairs the Senate Banking Committee) to get Securities and Exchange Commission Chair, Gary Gensler, to back off. The SEC has sued Coinbase for the unregistered sale of securities. The SEC scored a major win in court in March with the judge ruling that the case can move on to trial.

Cedar Innovation Foundation is so new and so dark that it could spend tens of millions of dollars this year without providing a hint of its donors, its officers, or even its address. One thing we do know, thanks to OpenSecrets.org, is that it has hired a highly experienced lobbying firm in Washington, D.C. – Mindset Advocacy LLC – which is also a lobbyist for – wait for it – units of Koch Industries.

Coincidentally – or perhaps not – crypto has a connection to fossil fuels. According to a 2022 report from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, crypto is driving energy consumption in the wrong direction if we are to stop the dangerous heating of the planet. The report revealed this:

“From 2018 to 2022, annualized electricity usage from global crypto-assets grew rapidly, with estimates of electricity usage doubling to quadrupling. As of August 2022, published estimates of the total global electricity usage for crypto-assets are between 120 and 240 billion kilowatt-hours per year, a range that exceeds the total annual electricity usage of many individual countries, such as Argentina or Australia. This is equivalent to 0.4% to 0.9% of annual global electricity usage, and is comparable to the annual electricity usage of all conventional data centers in the world.”

In a June 2021 Senate hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren revealed this about crypto:

“Cryptocurrencies have turned out to be a fourth-rate alternative to real currency. First, cryptocurrencies are a lousy way to buy and sell things. Unlike the dollar, their value fluctuates wildly depending on the whims of speculative day traders. You know, in just the last two months, the value of Dogecoin increased by more than ten-fold and then declined by nearly 60 percent. Now that may work for speculators and fly-by-night investors, but not for regular people who are looking for a stable source of value to get paid in and to use for day-to-day spending.

“Second, crypto is a lousy investment. Unlike, say, the stock market, the crypto world currently has no consumer protection — none.  As a result, honest investors and people trying to put aside some savings are at the mercy of fraudsters. Pump and dump schemes are outlawed in the case of ordinary stock, but they have become routine in crypto trading. One study found that the level of price manipulation in cryptocurrency is — and I quote — ‘unprecedented in modern markets’…

“Finally, there are the environmental costs of crypto. Many cryptocurrencies are created through ‘proof-of-work’ mining. It involves using computers to solve useless mathematical puzzles in exchange for newly minted cryptocurrency tokens. Such mining has devastating consequences for the climate. Some crypto mining is set up near coal plants, spewing out filth in return for a chance to harvest a few crypto coins. Total energy consumption is staggering, driving up demand for energy. If, for example, Bitcoin — just one of the cryptocurrencies — were a country, it would already be the 33rd largest energy user in the world — using more energy yearly than all of the Netherlands.

“And all those promised benefits – the currency that would be available at no cost to millions of unbanked families and that would provide a haven from the tricks and traps of big banks – well, those benefits haven’t materialized.”

Warren’s assessment of crypto’s lack of productive purpose was backed up in a letter sent on June 1, 2022 by 1600 of the smartest minds in technology to key members of congress and congressional committees. The authors wrote:

“We strongly disagree with the narrative — peddled by those with a financial stake in the crypto-asset industry— that these technologies represent a positive financial innovation and are in any way suited to solving the financial problems facing ordinary Americans….”

Raising more alarm bells is the fact that the Koch-related Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP Action) is also targeting Senator Sherrod Brown by running a $1 million ad campaign supporting his opponent, Bernie Moreno.

If ever there was a screaming call for campaign finance reform, it is now.


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Biden must put the blame for high prices where it belongs — on big corporations They have record profits, record share prices, and record monopoly power — which is why Biden must threaten them with real consequences unless they stop shafting consumers ROBERT REICH JUN 13 Friends, I’ve analyzed every poll and survey over the last two months, and they all tell the same basic story: Voters’ top issue is high prices and the cost of living — not jobs, not abortion, not immigration, not Biden’s or Trump’s age, not even the survival of democracy. Voters still don’t believe Biden will get prices down, but they believe Trump will. A significant number appear willing to vote for Trump and risk the future of democracy because they believe he will do better job lowering prices. Which is why Biden’s approval rating on the economy is deeply underwater while perceptions of Trump’s handling of the economy when he was president (marked by low inflation but huge job losses from COVID) are positive. What should Biden do? Put blame for high prices squarely where it belongs: on big corporations with monopoly power to keep prices high. And take those corporations on: Condemn them for price gouging. Threaten them with antitrust lawsuits, price-gouging lawsuits, even price controls. Criticize them for making huge profits and giving their top executives record pay while shafting consumers. And name names: PepsiCo, Tyson's, Kroger and Albertsons, Exxon-Mobil, and others. To be sure, the Biden administration has brought down the prices of prescription drugs like insulin and inhalers, reduced bank overdraft and credit card fees, and cracked down on “junk fees” levied by airlines, concert promoters, and more. Its Department of Justice has launched a lawsuit to combat price-fixing in the meat industry. And the FTC is suing to block the Kroger/Albertsons grocery mega-merger that would send grocery bills even higher. “We’re taking on corporate greed to bring down the price of gas, food and rent, eliminating junk fees,” Biden told a crowd of 1,000 supporters in Philadelphia recently. But Biden has not berated hugely profitable corporations for keeping their prices and profit margins sky high — unlike Senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who have made corporate price hikes central to their campaigns and are outrunning Biden in polls. Biden has not condemned specific corporations publicly, or threatened them with specific actions unless they lower their prices. Brown, who represents a state that Trump won handily in 2020, has cut several web ads proclaiming he is “cracking down on the companies that rip off Ohio.” Casey released a campaign ad showing corporate executives in suits sneaking into a grocery store under cover of night and switching out cereal boxes for smaller replacements. He has introduced a bill that would crack down on “shrinkflation” — a term for companies’ reducing the size of their goods but not cutting prices (Biden praised that legislation during his State of the Union address). Senate Democrats in tight races, like Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, are making similar pitches. Why isn’t Biden? Partly, I think, because he’s uncomfortable attacking corporations directly. It’s also because some economists close to his White House (such as Larry Summers) disagree that a major driver of inflation is corporations’ raising prices to juice profits. (Three years ago, Larry and I publicly debated a wealth tax on hugely profitable corporations. I was in favor; he against.) But the fact is, corporate profits have surged to record levels. Shares are trading at record levels. Corporations are buying back their stock at record levels. CEO pay is at record levels. Corporate concentration — monopoly power — is higher than ever. Concentration has increased in over 75 percent of U.S. industries since the late 1990s. Consumers are getting shafted, as corporations tell Wall Street they expect to be able to keep their prices and profits in the stratosphere. Most voters agree that big corporations are largely responsible for inflation. Nearly 6 in 10 say corporations’ being “greedy” is a major cause of inflation, including a majority of independent voters, according to a poll by Navigator Research. The Biden campaign’s internal polling has found similar results. With less than five months to go — and the cost of living being the #1 issue on voters’ minds — Biden should let ‘er rip. Please watch:

Charles Koch’s Money Is Being Used in Elections in Ways Only Orwell Could Have Imagined ALWAYS THE STICKY FINGERS OF KOCH!

KOCH = BIG POLLUTERS, worked to destroy the EPA to continue their pollution...

READ DARK MONEY by JANE MAYER about KOCH UNITING THE WEALTHY 

1% and concealing their involvement/conspiracy with 'charitable' pretense. 

DARK MONEY should be available from your local public library. Not new, 

but well worth reading to understand how the SNAKES conceal their involvement 

and protect their interests...such as opposing MEDICARE FOR ALL. 

Most of the 1% FREAKS stash their $$$$ offshore to avoid supporting government on any level...check out PARADISE PAPERS

FWIW - KOCH is still in RUSSIA!

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Charles Koch’s Money Is Being Used in Elections in Ways Only Orwell Could Have Imagined

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 4, 2024 ~

Charles Koch, Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries

On August 31, 2018 we broke the news that the fossil fuels conglomerate, Koch Industries, led by billionaire Charles Koch, had purchased i360 – an Orwellian political operation made all the more dangerous by the fact that it was affiliated with a billionaire who had been creating and funding political front groups for decades to push an anti-regulatory agenda and call it “liberty.” We wrote at the time:

“Quietly, and without any corporate press release on such an unusual acquisition, Koch Industries has purchased i360, a vast voter database and data harvesting operation. According to i360’s website, it has ‘1800 unique data points’ on 290 million American consumers as well as detailed information on 199 million voters from all 50 states. It brags that its data ‘shows you everything you need to know including the demographic and psychographic breakdown of your target market.’

“The propriety of a multinational industrial conglomerate with an anti-regulatory agenda having a stranglehold on a highly sophisticated voter data mining platform with unlimited funds to hire Ph.Ds., statisticians and computer scientists trained in artificial intelligence and machine learning, has yet to enter the national discourse.”

We decided to browse the most current Federal Election Commission (FEC) records and see what i360 has been up to lately. We learned that i360 has received $279,401.21 to conduct “surveys” for Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP Action), a Super Pac that hilariously calls itself a “grassroots” movement, notwithstanding that it’s funded by billionaires and multi-millionaires. According to FEC data, Koch Industries gave $25 million to AFP Action on May 19 of last year while Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, successor to the Koch-funded Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce (which folded its tent in 2019 after too much scrutiny) chipped in another $25 million eight days earlier. Alice, Rob and Jim Walton, billionaire heirs of the Walmart retail chain, each gave $5 million to AFP Action last year while former hedge fund titan, Stanley Druckenmiller, chipped in $1.5 million. (For those who have given $1 million or more thus far in the current election cycle, see here.)

Freedom Partners had a very large footprint in the Donald Trump administration.  In a document titled “Roadmap to Repeal: Removing Regulatory Barriers to Opportunity,” the Koch front group listed the laws and regulations it expected to be repealed in the first 100 days of Trump’s tenure as President. The Trump administration dutifully followed the prescribed agenda, repealing the Paris Climate Accord to the horror of our allies; passing tax cuts for the wealthy; and gutting federal regulations and the Environmental Protection Agency.

By the spring of 2018, 12 people who previously worked at Freedom Partners were working in the Trump administration. When we examined the makeup of Freedom Partners in 2018, we found that all but one of Freedom Partners’ 9-member Board of Directors was a current or former Koch company employee. The Board Chair of Freedom Partners at that time was the same Mark Holden that was the General Counsel of Koch Industries.

One of the Senate seats that AFP Action is currently targeting is that of Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the current chair of the Senate Banking Committee, who regularly calls out the moneyed interests’ attack on the working class. AFP Action is backing Republican Bernie Moreno, a man who has made “dubious claims” about his background in Bogotá, Columbia, according to The Guardian.

AFP Action attack ads against Senator Brown call him out for “a dangerous wide-open border.” What control the Chair of the Senate Banking Committee has over the border is not explained.

WACK-A-DING TENNESSEE MARSHA BLACKBURN defines the success of 

KOCH-FUNDED DISINFORMATION!                                                                      

Targeting immigrants was a very successful strategy used by i360 to elect right-wing Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn to the U.S. Senate in 2018, as explained in detail by Lee Fang at The Intercept in 2019. Fang writes:

“Then-Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn aired at least four different television advertisements and a wave of social media advertisements focused on immigration, often with false or inflammatory language. She ended up beating out Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, who had been leading in the polls for months.”

This would be far from a novel tactic by Koch-related groups. In 2010 we broke the story of how Donor’s Capital Fund, the dark money group with Charles Koch’s fingerprints all over it, had donated $17,778,600 to the Clarion Fund to distribute 28 million DVDs of a race-baiting, fear-mongering film just weeks before the 2008 presidential election — when the first black candidate in history, Barack Obama, was the Democratic presidential nominee. The DVD was stuffed into the Sunday edition of some of the biggest newspapers in America as well as distributed through a direct mail campaign.                                      

For additional background on how to prepare for what’s ahead in this election year, read our report: Charles Koch Attempts an Apology Tour after He and His Father Financed a Political Hate Machine for Six Decades.