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Biden 2020 Run Backed By $145 Million In ‘Dark Money’

Biden 2020 Run Backed By $145 Million In ‘Dark Money’

President Biden’s campaign received a record-breaking amount of anonymous donations to outside groups backing him, which means the public "will never have a full accounting of who helped him win the White House," according to Bloomberg.

In total, $145 million in so-called dark money donations, "a type of fundraising Democrats have decried for years," backed the Biden campaign – and combined with his $1.5 billion record-breaking haul. Of note, Biden’s campaign called for banning certain types of nonprofits from spending money to influence elections, and that any organization spending over $10,000 to benefit a candidate register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and disclose its donors.

They didn’t specifically call on their own supporters to do so, however.

That amount of dark money dwarfs the $28.4 million spent on behalf of his rival, former President Donald Trump. And it tops the previous record of $113 million in anonymous donations backing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.

Democrats have said they want to ban dark money as uniquely corrupting, since it allows supporters to quietly back a candidate without scrutiny. Yet in their effort to defeat Trump in 2020, they embraced it. –Bloomberg

One such dark money recipient, Priorities USA Action Fund designated by Biden as his preferred vehicle for outside spending, backed Biden with $26 million originally (and anonymously) donated to its nonprofit arm, Priorities USA.

Priorities USA Chairman Guy Cecil deflected when asked about the funds, saying in a statement "We weren’t going to unilaterally disarm against Trump and the right- wing forces that enabled him."

Another entity funneling dark money to benefit Biden was the Future Forward PAC, which spent $104 million backing Biden. While they received tens of millions from known sources, such as $46.9 million from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, $3 million from Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, and $2.6 million from Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt – they received $61 million from Future Forward USA Action – none of which requires disclosure of sources.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a nonprofit that sponsors progressive advocacy, donated a total of $55 million in the 2020 election cycle to Democratic super-PACs, including Priorities USA Action Fund and Future Forward PAC, FEC records show. That total was much more than the $3 million it gave in 2018.

Amy Kurtz, executive director of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, said the surge of money to the group, which doesn’t disclose the names of its donors, included people who previously gave to Republicans or had not been engaged in politics.

The flood of dark money to Democrats and progressive groups has complicated their effort to reform the system. –Bloomberg

According to former FEC general counsel Larry Noble, Biden benefited from a campaign finance law loophole – though Noble also noted that dark money is hardly the largest source of cash contributed to campaigns when wealthy donors can simply write eight-figure checks to super-PACs (which have heightened disclosure requirements). Meanwhile, joint fundraising committees can bring in lots of donations as high as $830,500.

That said, donors who wish to remain anonymous can give to political nonprofits, such as Defending Democracy Together – which spent $15.6 million in support of Biden – none of which has to be reported to the FEC. Moreover, donors can give money to nonprofits which then give money to super-PACs, such as in the case of Priorities USA.

Big donors — individuals or corporations — who contributed anonymously will have the same access to decision makers as those whose names were disclosed, but without public awareness of who they are or what influence they might wield.

“The whole point of dark money is to avoid public disclosure while getting private credit,” said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, which advocates for reducing the influence of money on politics. “It’s only dark money to the public.” –Bloomberg

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Democrats benefited from $326 million in dark money this election cycle – over twice the $148 million that supported Republicans. In some states, Democrats heavily relied on dark money to purchase attack ads against Trump in battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Not all Democrats are happy with the flood of dark money in the 2020 election cycle.

"Dark money is toxic to democracy — period," said Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. "The fact that progressive groups have learned to fight back using similar tactics is no excuse for continuing the plague of dark money in America."

Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/24/2021 – 16:40

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Expert: Biden Actions Against American Oil, Gas Energy Production Could Kill as Many as 1 Million Jobs


Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of Policy, Economics and Regulatory Affairs at the American Petroleum Institute (API), said in an interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday with host Matt Boyle that if President Joe Biden puts a permanent ban on oil and gas development on federal waters and land, it could cost 1 million American jobs.

Boyle asked Macchiarola about the significance of Biden revoking the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline and putting a 60-day pause on federal land leasing in his first days in office. 

“I think the first four days of the Biden Administration have given a clear picture of what the next four years could look like,” he said. “President Biden comes into office with a real economic headwind and a difficult labor market but at the same time he inherited an energy [landscape] that’s stronger because of America’s shale revolution.”

“We’ve produced lower household energy costs as a result of U.S. energy and less reliance on foreign energy sources,” Macchiarola added.

“The president has a choice to make: He can maintain U.S. leadership and maintain and support our economic recovery with American energy or he can pursue policies that destroy jobs and at the same time increase energy imports,” he further asserted.

“The first few days should concern all Americans because the administration is clearly taking actions that are going to harm the economy and cost Americans jobs,” Macchiarola said.

As Breitbart News reported, shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline will cost 11,000 jobs directly and as many as 60,000 indirect jobs.

The federal ban presents an even more staggering number, Macchiarola asserted.

“The full scale ban of development on federal lands you can bet the impact could be up to a million jobs in the United States,” he said.

The Keystone decision also affects our relationship with Canada and the U.S. economy.

“Two of the major components of the inauguration address and of the priorities of the new administration, No. 1 is rebuilding alliances and No. 2 strengthening our economy,” Macchiarola said. “With this decision that heads in the opposite direction on both of those priorities.”

It could also cost the U.S. $2 billion in wages, he said.

Macchiarola also spoke to the potential for Biden’s policies to endanger U.S. energy independence.

“This shale revolution has unlocked resources that we never thought we’d be able to get to and that’s meant more jobs in the United States, lower energy costs and greater energy security,” Macchiarola said.

“For the first time in 2019 in 67 years [the U.S.] became a net exporter of energy rather than a net importer,” he noted. “That’s a huge deal. And abandoning federal leasing heads in a different direction.”

For example, federal land and waters accounted for 22 percent of oil production and 12 percent of natural gas production in 2019.

“That’s the difference between energy independence and energy security and reliance on foreign sources,” Macchiarola said.

He cited the irony of Biden’s nomination of Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM) to serve as secretary of the Department of the Interior. 

Half of the energy produced in New Mexico comes from federal land and two thirds of the natural gas in the state comes from federal land.

API produced a study last year that showed a federal land ban could cost up to 5 percent of all jobs in the state.

“These decisions are sweeping,” Macchiarola said. “They’re broad and they will really have negative impacts on our economy and our labor market at really the worst possible time.”

“If [Biden’s] priority is to bring back jobs in the United States and to grow our economy then they really need to rethink these policies, particularly the policy with respect to a leasing bans on federal lands for oil and gas development.”

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‘Your Order Is A Direct Attack’: Native American Tribe Condemns Biden Administration’s Secretarial Order

On Thursday, January 21, the day after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, a Native American tribe issued a blistering letter to Biden’s Acting Secretary of the Interior, Scott de la Vega, blasting his Secretarial Order No. 3395. As Energy In Depth reports, the Order “temporarily suspends delegations of authority regarding leasing and permitting on federal lands, […]

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Facebook Colludes With Politifact To Tag Gateway Pundit COVID/WHO Press Release As False; Twitter then Removes Source Post

A Gateway Pundit article has now been flagged by the big tech and far left conspirators of Politifact as “false” despite their “fact check” article confirming some of the information.

The original article, posted on Wednesday, was in regards to the World Health Organization sending out a memo warning about the high rate of false positives from the Covid tests, which led to inflated numbers of supposed Covid cases, which, of course, was all Orange Man’s fault because Orange Man Bad. Miraculously, though, just as Biden is taking over, the WHO comes out and lets everyone know.

To further scrub the existence of the memo from public knowledge, Twitter has removed the original source tweet from Andy Swan, which included the actual screen shot from the WHO webpage:

Ironically enough, the Politifact article makes some inadvertent concessions which seemingly support the notion that countless false positives were occurring:

The article links to a tweet by user Andy Swan, which in turn references a Jan. 20 notice that the WHO released to lab technicians.

Did the WHO really make such an admission? No. This article was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

The notice cautions lab technicians that positive results should be interpreted with care and in the context of other information, such as clinical observation and patient history, to reduce the risk of false positives.

The notice — dated Jan. 13 and published on the site Jan. 20, according to the timestamp on it — is written in highly technical language. But five virologists, most of whom work in COVID-19 testing labs, told us that the gist of it was to remind lab technicians to carefully read the user manuals that come with PCR tests, the most widely used diagnostic tests for the coronavirus.

“This is not new information. This is essentially a reminder from the WHO to testing laboratories,” said Jonathan Jarry, a science communicator with the McGill University Office for Science and Society. “This notice is not an admission that the PCR test for COVID-19 does not work or is wildly inaccurate.”

Here’s the link to the actual article on the WHO webpage, which they apparently knew about for a week before posting, which, by *SHEER COINCIDENCE*, didn’t appear until just after Biden was sworn in.

Now why do you suppose the WHO would put out such an advisory? They wouldn’t be doing so if there weren’t a large number of false positives.

The author of the Politifact hit piece is Noah Y. Kim, who appears to be a far left apologist, and has targeted most of his “fact checking” toward conservatives while seemingly giving a free pass to the misinformation and false news that comes from the left. Kim claims to be a former editor at crazed leftist site The Atlantic, but his bio on that website only shows two stories to his credit. One of his more well known articles was for the Boston Globe, in which he chided hypocritical white liberals who are hesitant to welcome black families into the suburbs. That article was picked by several other outlets, including MSN.

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Report: McConnell Privately Says He Wants Trump Gone – DC Elites Pressure Republicans to Impeach Private Citizen Trump

The Republican Party continues to crap all over its voting base.

First it was GOP leader Liz Cheney voting to impeach Trump over a bucket of lies.
Now Mitch McConnell is reportedly saying he wants Trump gone.

These people REALLY hate their voters.

Bring on the Trump Patriot Party!

CNN reported:

As the House prepares to send articles of impeachment to the Senate on Monday, CNN has learned that dozens of influential Republicans around Washington — including former top Trump administration officials — have been quietly lobbying GOP members of Congress to impeach and convict Donald Trump. The effort is not coordinated but reflects a wider battle inside the GOP between those loyal to Trump and those who want to sever ties and ensure he can never run for President again.

The lobbying started in the House after the January 6 attack on the Capitol and in the days leading up to impeachment. But it’s now more focused on Sen. Mitch McConnell, the powerful minority leader who has signaled he may support convicting Trump.

“Mitch said to me he wants Trump gone,” one Republican member of Congress told CNN. “It is in his political interest to have him gone. It is in the GOP interest to have him gone. The question is, do we get there?”
McConnell had proposed delaying the trial until February, but with the articles coming to the Senate on Monday, the process will likely be set in motion sooner.

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Biden LGBT Rights Order Charges Into Culture War

An executive order on LGBT rights signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday signals the start of a bitter cultural clash that will loom large over his presidency.

Biden’s directive broaches almost every aspect of domestic policy, from housing to refugee resettlement to transgender student athletes. The order requires every federal agency to make clear that civil rights laws banning sex discrimination also ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, citing the Supreme Court’s landmark gay rights ruling in June 2020.

Many changes resulting from Biden’s order, like a ban on anti-gay discrimination in renting, are unlikely to cause controversy. Other mandates will accelerate long-simmering cultural disputes, like those allowing trans students to participate in women’s sports or use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice. While Biden says his focus is fixed on the coronavirus pandemic and economic stimulus, cultural conflict is poised to play a defining role in the coming years of his presidency.

The Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County is the basis for Biden’s directive. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bans discrimination "because of sex" in employment. The question for the justices was whether that sex discrimination ban also covers sexual orientation and gender identity. A six-justice majority led by Justice Neil Gorsuch said it does. Gorsuch wrote that it is "impossible" to discriminate against LGBT workers without discriminating in some way "because of sex."

Biden’s order says the logic of Bostock—that discrimination against LGBT people is necessarily discrimination "because of sex"—should apply to every other federal law and regulation that bans sex-based discrimination. The order thus requires any agency that enforces statutes banning sex discrimination to likewise prohibit bias against LGBT people.

For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development administers a sex non-discrimination law called the Fair Housing Act. Under Biden’s order, HUD will enforce that law to ban LGBT bias when selling homes or renting apartments. The Immigration and Nationality Act likewise promises assistance to refugees regardless of sex, meaning Biden’s order also guarantees protections for gay and transgender migrants.

All told, the list of forthcoming changes is a long one.

"Biden’s executive order is the most substantive, wide-ranging executive order concerning sexual orientation and gender identity ever issued by a United States president," said Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign. "By fully implementing the Supreme Court’s historic ruling in Bostock, the federal government will enforce federal law to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in employment, health care, housing, and education, and other key areas of life."

While many new policies will likely enjoy broad support, some may inflame the hottest cultural disputes. Biden’s Education Department will be a flashpoint.

The Education Department administers Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in federally-funded schools. The department, consistent with Biden’s order, will make rules requiring any school that takes federal dollars to allow trans students access to their preferred bathrooms and locker rooms. Another rule granting trans-women access to women’s sports will almost certainly be promulgated. The order expressly contemplates those steps.

"Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love. Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports," the order reads.

Critics say those moves are tantamount to repealing Title IX, which was passed to put women on equal-footing with men in athletics.

"This isn’t equality, and it isn’t progress. President Biden’s call for ‘unity’ falls flat when he seeks to hold those receiving federal funds hostage if they don’t do tremendous damage to the rights, opportunities, and dignity of women and girls," said Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Christiana Holcomb.

The Trump administration took the same view, arguing Bostock shouldn’t apply to Title IX because Title IX serves a different and unique purpose—protecting girls and ensuring equal athletic opportunities for women. Forcing women’s athletic leagues to accept transgender competitors would defeat the law’s purpose, the Trump Education Department argued in a 2020 memorandum.

In the months following Bostock, two federal appeals courts sided with transgender students challenging bathroom access policies, an early indication that many courts are ready to apply the case to education.

Implementing Biden’s order will take time. In the short term, agencies will issue advisory notices to forewarn employees or industry leaders about the new enforcement practices. That will give schools, banks, and employers time to implement changes on their own without formal government action.

Agencies will then move to enshrine the new policy in an official rule. Crafting rules is time-consuming. Agencies must give adequate notice of a change and allow a public comment period. Settling the finer points is likewise slow work, often involving officials from different parts of the government. For example, former education secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded an Obama-era "Dear Colleague" letter on campus sexual assault in 2017, but a long-promised rule setting due-process requirements for campus tribunals wasn’t finalized until 2020.

And whatever changes are achieved may be stymied in court. Advocacy groups and Republican attorneys general are sure to file legal challenges to the new rules. It’s not clear if they’ll ask judges to halt Biden’s policies on a national basis. Conservatives castigated so-called nationwide injunctions during the Trump administration, though with Biden in the White House they may be back in style.

Justice Samuel Alito foresaw a long slog in his wide-ranging 54-page dissent in Bostock.

"Although the Court does not want to think about the consequences of its decision, we will not be able to avoid those issues for long," Alito wrote. "The entire federal judiciary will be mired for years in disputes about the reach of the Court’s reasoning."

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‘This Is the Time to Protect Life’: Kansas Takes Huge Step Toward Banning Abortion

Republicans on Friday pushed a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Kansas Constitution through the state House, a reminder of election setbacks for pro-abortion Democrats on the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide. The vote was 86-38 on a measure that would overturn a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court decision that declared access…

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Tit for Tat: Biden Gets 1st Taste of Treatment He Gave Trump, And It’s Not Pleasant

Welcome to President Joe Biden’s America, where rioting has taken over the cities of Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, and thousands of Americans have died from COVID this week under his watch. On Wednesday, the day of Biden’s inauguration, leftist rioters attacked the headquarters of Portland’s Democratic Party. Likewise, in Seattle, similar rioting went on for…

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