Daily Archives: May 11, 2021

In the beginning there was a word. It stood for sensitivity and alertness to injustice in society, particularly racism to be awake. Righteous people strived to embody this word, and the progress it represented.

But then enemies of progress got ahold of the word and realized they could mold it to their dark fantasies. They extracted the word from its original context and repeated it over and over again, as they are wont to do. They started attaching the word to other, scary words, like radical and mob. Experts in linguistic distortion, they drained the word of its blood and turned it into a sort of verbal zombie to do their bidding.

It worked, for this word and for others.

This is how woke and its derivative not-a-real-word noun, wokeness, met its end. It had a good run. Its ideals remain a noble ambition. But at this point, its enemies have coopted it with such cynical tenacity that it no longer means anything. They use it to conjure some imaginary, frothing liberal mob that dares to ask for such outrages as equal voting rights and responsible policing. Or, really, anything that might challenge the rapidly slipping hold of white hegemony.

Simply put, the enemies of woke are scared. Wokeness is trying to destroy America, Sen. Ted Cruz recently said on Fox News (global headquarters of the wokeness cooption crowd). Wokeness is racism, tweeted pundit Dave Rubin. Pass it on.

Social conservatives, especially men, become adept practitioners of verbal jujitsu when demographic trends, historical awareness and basic decency turn against them. Unable to say whats really on their minds it should be difficult for Black people to vote; police should be able to kill at will; day care is for the weak they take a word from the other side and turn it into a bogeyman. Its a dark art, and theyre good at it.

As Tracy Westerman recently tweeted, Cancel culture, wokeness words used by conservatives to silence national conversations about racism, sexism, homophobia, bigotry.

Ah, yes. Cancel culture. Another linguistic boogeyman, this one designed to argue that you should be able to say anything about anyone at any time, no matter how cruel, insensitive or dangerous, and expect a book deal with a major publisher in return. As if respecting the marketplace (We decided not to publish your book), and basic guidelines of civility, equate to cancellation. This one is a contemporary take on the old saw political correctness, otherwise known as treating those who dont look and sound like you with decency.

Sometimes the right goes uptown with its verbal boogeymen. Take critical race theory, which is basically an academic theory that seeks to unpack institutional racism in the present and throughout the countrys history. It argues that racism exists on a historical continuum (it does), that we are still living with the consequences of slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow (we are) and that race is an idea created by society as a way to wield power (it is). Unlike in the old days, you wont get far anymore proclaiming your racism for all to hear. But you can always babble on about the threat of critical race theory. If youre in politics you can even try to ban it, as the state of Idaho is currently doing and a bill making its way through the Texas Legislature would. Critical race theory has been around for decades, but only recently has the time been so ripe to use it as a political cudgel.

Those who reference George Orwell some actually read him tend to go the lazy route and wax 1984. But in this case you neednt enter the realm of fantasy. In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, Orwell takes on political language that is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. Those on the right arent the only ones who do this, but again, theyre really good at it.

Its up to the rest of us to decode the noise, to interrogate the original spirit and meaning of a word or phrase, and to remember that this country, great as it is, has blood-stained roots.

Wokeness is dead. Long live the woke.

Vognar is a writer based in Houston.

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Opinion: Wokeness is dead, long live the woke - Houston Chronicle

Conservative: Hope Musk Kills It on SNL

Elon Musk is too funny for Saturday Night Live, snarks Damian Reilly at Spectator USA, but I hope he kills it with a brutal comedic assault on political correctness. The left insists Musk, a billionaire who happens to be popular among people on the right, should not have been asked to host this weekend. The clearly nervous producers told the cast they could skip work on the episode, in case contact with a successful plutocrat might give the woke darlings anxiety issues. But only comedians free of fear of being canceled are funny which is why SNL hasnt been in years. If the Tesla founder, having conquered space travel, cryptocurrency, electric vehicles and capitalism, decides to conquer comedy, I wouldnt bet against him. Would you rather have as Earths richest man a terminally bland corporate droid, a terrifying Middle Eastern dictator or a man who made the nose cone of his Starship rocket more pointy after watching Sacha Baron Cohens The Dictator?

Libertarian: Equity Attack on Advanced Math

Since its overriding concern is inequity, the California Department of Education has gone to war on accelerated math classes; it will prohibit any sorting until high school, keeping gifted kids in the same classrooms as their less mathematically inclined peers until at least grade nine, laments Reasons Robby Soave. The idea is that math is really about language and culture and social justice, and no one is naturally better at it than anyone else; in reality, math is certainly not something that all kids are equally capable of learning and enjoying. California is sabotaging its brightest students.

From the right: Enviros Latest Toll on Jobs

US Steel just canceled a $1.5 billion plan to make lightweight steel for vehicles in Braddock, Pa., reports Salena Zito at the Washington Examiner. Lost is the promise of cleaner air and more than 1,000 good-paying jobs. The company blamed a dragged-out delay from county officials and its own new focus on sustainability. The work will now likely go someplace where bureaucrats are less beholden (or aligned with) environmentalists. President Biden vows to protect union jobs and bring back manufacturing, as he claims a decarbonizing economy will create millions of jobs. Here, however, it meant zero jobs created and perhaps many destroyed.

Analyst: Two Bellwether Pennsylvania Votes

Urban progressivism is on the ballot in the May 18 primaries in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Charles F. McElwee relates at RealClearPolitics. Two-term Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto could lose reelection for not going far enough as a self-described progressive particularly on public-safety issues, while Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner may lose a second term for going too far as a progressive prosecutor. Backed by Democratic Socialists and the local SEIU, lead Peduto challenger Ed Gainey would redirect funding from police, while the mayor says most cops are good people and opposes (more) defunding. In Philly, voters especially in minority neighborhoods are moving against Krasner, who blames societal forces for rising crime and has softened prosecutions from shoplifting to gun crimes. Bronx-born challenger Carlos Vega wants reform that doesnt come at the expense of our safety.

Economist: The Moral Case for Capitalism

At Modern Age, economist Alexander William Salter praises Donald Devines new book The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order as a broad social-philosophical work that reevaluates the sources of capitalisms legitimacy. Devine notes that markets have ethical prerequisites, including respect for the human individual, prohibitions on coercion, theft and fraud and a positive attitude toward work. But, notes Salter, todays centralized political arrangements attack all of that. Devine shows the fault lines in the ongoing dispute between conservatives, as some have a new optimism for using state power to advance the common good, particularly as our cultural capital declines but in the end the question of capitalisms social and political consequences is an empirical one.

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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Hope Elon Musk kills it on SNL and other commentary - New York Post

In the first of a series, Sian Norris reports on the global network behind Spanish-founded anti-rights platform CitizenGO friends with the far-right Vox Party

Spains Peoples Party scored a resounding victory in Madrids snap-election, winning 65 seats of the 136-seat assembly. The total falls below the 69 seat threshold needed for a majority, meaning it must now rely on the far-right Vox Party to form a new Government.

The campaign of regional president Isabel Daz Ayuso was marked by division and polarisation, declaring the 4 May election was a choice between communism or liberty.

In the run-up to the vote, Christian conservative organisation CitizenGO hosted a petition asking Ayuso and her Peoples Party to commit herself to support an anti-LGBTIQ, anti-abortion agenda in order to secure the vote of CitizenGO supporters. The petition stated:

Sign this campaign and let Isabel Daz Ayuso know that without a commitment to your values, she will not have your vote I do not want to vote for a candidate who does not guarantee that she will defend life and who is lukewarm about abortion A candidate who does not dare to repeal the Trans and LGTBI laws of Madrid.

The petition reminds its readers that the far-right Vox candidate, Roco Monasterio, has promised in writing to defend what you believe. In fact, we hope that Roco Monasterio will push Ayuso to do the right thing. if Vox is strong in the Madrid Assembly, Ayuso will be braver and your values will be better represented.

But what is CitizenGO? What is its relationship to the Vox Party? And how are its international allies helping it spread an anti-rights ideology to democracies across the world?

CitizenGO is a community of active citizens working together to defend and promote life, family and liberty around the world, launching petitions that promote a conservative Christian agenda. Currently in the UK it is petitioning against shampoo brand Pantene for promoting LGBT ideology and against telemedicine abortion for women in early pregancy.

It was set up by Ignacio Arsuaga, founder of HazteOr Victimas de la Ideologa de Gnero (Make Yourself Heard Victims of Gender Ideology). It was accused of being a super-pac for Spains far-right Vox Party in 2019 when Arsuaga told an undercover journalist how CitizenGO was going to show bad things that have been said by the leaders of other parties, for example in favour of abortion or in favour of LGBT laws.

Were never going to ask people to vote for Vox, Arsuaga reportedly said. But the campaign is going to help Vox indirectly.

Beyond Arsuaga, the make-up of CitizenGO is a whos who of the global anti-rights movement.

It includes CEO lvaro Zulueta, a former risk manager at IBM and treasurer of HazteOr, whose wifes connection with the Spanish Royal family places him at the heart of high society.

An executive from IBM was revealed to be a CitizenGO donor when hackers leaked 15,000 of the networks documents. Zulueta was alleged to be a member of the Mexican religious sect El Yunque thats purpose is to combat the forces of the Revolution (the works of Satan) with all means availableand establish the kingdom of God in Mexico.

Alongside Zulueta is Luca Volont, CEO of Italian anti-abortion and anti-LGBTIQ organisation Fondazione Novae Terrae and, until recently, the Chair of Catholic think-tank Dignitatis Humanae Institute. Volont was formerly a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), putting him at the centre of European politics. He was recently sentenced to four years in prison for taking bribes from Azerbaijani politicians.

Then theres the US connection, via Brian Brown. The well-known family rights activist is the founder of the World Congress of Families a conference for anti-rights campaigners whose previous speakers include Hungarys Prime Minister Viktor Orbn and Italian politician Matteo Salvini who called the Congress the Europe we would like to see.

Board member Alexey Komov is close to Salvinis Lega Party and the Dignitatis Humanae Institute. He is the World Congress of Family Russian liaison.

Research by Neil Datta of the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development has identified Komov, Brown, Volont and Arsuaga as being personalities featuring in Agenda Europe.

The secretive network brought together Vatican surrogates, politicians, and anti-rights actors from organisations such as ADF International and CitizenGO, as well as many more, to try and change or pre-emptively strike against laws supporting LGBTIQ and abortion rights throughout the 2010s.

For example, its member Ordo Iuris drafted a 2016 law completely banning abortion in Poland and campaigned for the recent ban on abortion in cases of fatal foetal defect, while the Coalition for the Family and In The Name Of The Family organised constitutional referenda to try and prevent equal marriage in Romania and Croatia respectively successfully in the latter case.

CitizenGO and HazteOr developed the EU-wide One Of Us initiative, what Datta calls an Agenda Europe activity that sought to greatly advance the protection of human life from conception in Europe. It failed, but One Of US is cited by Agenda Europe in its leaked manifesto as a model for similar petitions at a national level for its secondary success in building a momentum towards a European federational of pro-life organisations.

Arsuaga claimed One of Us was the beginning of a far-reaching lobby, which wants to exert influence in the European Union.

The pair also petitioned against Spains liberalised abortion laws. Although the laws were not repealed, the campaign led to a legal change that means minors must get parental consent to have a termination. The change is an Agenda Europe aim, listed in its manifesto. According to researcher Ellen Rivera, HazteOr is implementing Agenda Europe directives locally.

CitizenGO is primarily funded by small online donations from its supporters in 2019 its income was 2,124,539. The website states under no circumstances does CitizenGO accept financial support from public institutions or private entities. You will not find ads on CitizenGO.

A 2014 hack revealed it received large donations from staff at IBM and Nestle, as well as billionaire businesswoman Esther Koplowitz and the founder of El Corte Ingls, Isidoro lvarez who donated 10,000. Eulens David lvarez donated 20,000.

Arsuaga told an undercover reporter in 2019 that board member Brian Brown paid for Darian Rafie, his partner at the conservative organisation ActRight, to provide CitizenGO with advice every couple of months or so on fundraising and technology. ActRight also allegedly funded a CitizenGO staff member in 2013.

The funding of Agenda Europe is harder to track, due to its secretive nature.

However, research by Neil Datta found the guest list of the 2013 summit included some wealthy funders of anti-rights movements as well as their financial managers. They included the Archduke Imre of Habsburg-Lorraine, as well as Vincente Segu, linked to Mexican billionaire Patrick Slim, and Oliver Hylton, the asset manager of Conservative donor Sir Michael Hintze.

The following year, Alexey Komov and Luca Volont attended the Summit. Along with his links to CitizenGO and World Congress of Families, Komov is a programme officer for a charitable foundation in Russia that supports socially conservative causes, founded by Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev. The latter set up Tsargrad TV, a channel supported by Putin and used by right-wing conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones of Americas Infowars.

Malofeev reportedly said Christian Russia can liberate the West from the new liberal anti-Christian totalitarianism of political correctness, gender ideology, mass-media censorship and neo-Marxist dogma.

Between them, Slim, Malofeev, Archduke Imre, his wife Archduchess Katherine, and Sir Michael Hintze are worth close to $8 billion.

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Wesley Barnett was just as surprised as anyone to learn from news reports that the Jan. 6 Trump rally that turned into a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol was funded by Julia Jenkins Fancelli, an heiress to the fortune of the popular Publix supermarket chain. But Barnett had extra cause for being startled: Fancelli is his aunt.

Barnett said he was at a loss to explain how his aunt who isnt on social media, lives part time in Italy and keeps a low profile in their central Florida town got mixed up with the likes of Alex Jones and Ali Alexander, the right-wing provocateurs who were VIPs at the Jan. 6 rally in front of the White House.

Over the last five years, it has become clear that former President Donald Trump has activated a new set of mega-donors who were not previously big spenders in national politics. Some of the donors appear to share the more extreme views of many Trump supporters, based on social media posts promoting falsehoods about election fraud or masks and vaccines. Whether they will deepen their involvement or step back, and whether their giving will extend to candidates beyond Trump, will have an outsized role in steering the future of the Republican Party and even American democracy.

ProPublica identified 29 people and couples who increased their political contributions at least tenfold since 2015, based on an analysis of Federal Election Commission records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. The donors in the table below gave at least $1 million to Trump and the GOP after previously having spent less than $1 million total. Most of the donations went to super PACs supporting Trump or to the Trump Victory joint fundraising vehicle that spread the money among his campaign and party committees.

In the current system of porous campaign finance rules and lax enforcement, a handful of ultra-rich people can have dramatic influence on national campaigns. Many of Trumps biggest backers, such as the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, or the Illinois packaging tycoons Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, arent shown in ProPublicas analysis because they gave millions to Republicans even before Trump. But several of the biggest new donors banking scion Timothy Mellon and his wife, Patricia; Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter and his wife, Laura; and Dallas pipeline billionaire Kelcy Warren and his wife, Amy now rank among such better-known, longer-running donors as Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, professional wrestling founders Linda and Vince McMahon, and casino mogul Steve Wynn.

For some new donors, the sudden increase in their political contributions may have as much to do with newly acquired wealth as with the ascent of Trump and his grip on the Republican Party. But others inherited fortunes or made them long ago, yet never made a splash in campaign finance records until now. Several of the donors have not spoken publicly about their support for Trump or have not been extensively covered before. ProPublica requested interviews with everyone named in this article and included comments from those who responded.

Things are diametrically different from when Trump was in office, Marlyne Sexton, who has given more than $2 million since 2015 after giving less than $115,000 before, said in a phone interview. Sexton, whose husband runs an Indianapolis-based property management company, attended a dinner with Trump in 2019, Politico reported.

People are afraid to walk down the street, its a joke, Sexton continued. Asked why people were afraid, she said, You can answer that for yourself, and if you cant then we probably dont agree. I cant help you understand that.

In addition to pledging $300,000 to fund the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, Julia Fancelli actually had a hotel suite reserved, according to organizers who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But in the end she did not attend, according to Caroline Wren, a Trump fundraiser involved in the planning.

Fancelli did not respond to requests for an interview, including one placed through the office of her familys foundation. Her estate manager, Schuyler Long, who also donated to Trump, declined to comment. In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported her involvement in the Jan. 6 rally, Fancelli said: I am a proud conservative and have real concerns associated with election integrity, yet I would never support any violence, particularly the tragic and horrific events that unfolded.

Publix distanced itself from Fancelli, whose father, George Jenkins, founded the chain. The company said she isnt involved in operations and doesnt represent the company in any way. Fancellis holdings in the privately held company arent known and she is not listed in financial disclosures as an owner of 5% or more of the companys stock.

Forbes has estimated the entire Jenkins familys wealth at $8.8 billion, ranking 39th in the country. Fancelli served as president of the familys foundation as of 2019, according to the organizations most recent tax filing. In addition to nonpolitical charities, the foundation also made a $30,000 grant to the Leadership Institute, which trains conservative activists.

Fancelli grew up with the rest of the Jenkins clan in Lakeland, Florida, and met her husband Mauro, a fruit and vegetable wholesaler, on a study abroad year in Florence, the local newspaper reported in 2018. Though the Jenkins family is prominent in Lakeland, Fancelli is not civically engaged and lives for much of the year in Italy.

In past elections, she generally gave a few thousand dollars at a time to the Republican National Committee and GOP congressional candidates, amounting to less than $200,000 total, according to FEC records. Her contributions took off starting in 2016. Since then shes given more than $2 million. Besides backing Trump, she was the largest donor to a super PAC supporting Michigan Republican Eric Esshaki, who lost to Rep. Haley Stevens.

Fancellis donations to Trump drew some notice. But until the Jan. 6 rally, the most news she made was for being a theft victim: In December 2020, a murder suspect stole three pieces of a silver tea set through the window of Fancellis modest house.

Fancellis son, Gregory, accompanied her to a Trump campaign luncheon in Palm Beach in 2019 and donated in his own name. My mother and I are big supporters of the president, he told a local reporter in October.

Unlike his mom, Gregory Fancelli is active in the Lakeland community. He works on restoring local houses and mosaics, as well as a planetarium designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the last with the help of a grant from the National Park Service in August 2020. He has donated money to a school board candidate through shell companiesnamed after fictional characters such as Tony Stark (better known as Iron Man) and a Ghostbuster, Peter Venkman.

He also occasionally posts online about politics, and in the months after Trump lost the election, his views appeared to harden. On Christmas Day in 2020, Fancelli said on Facebook that COVID-19 was a fake pandemic and argued with Facebook friends who referenced case numbers and people they personally knew who died of the coronavirus. It doesnt have the magnitude of a pandemic, unless you combine all the illnesses and flues and give it one name, Fancelli wrote. Definitely a very powerful scare tactic by the Chinese and the UN.

In other posts, Fancelli appeared to embrace Trumps rhetoric calling President Joe Biden soft on China and falsely claiming that the election was stolen. In March, Fancelli posted a video mocking Biden for tripping on the stairs to board Air Force One, mashing up the footage with video of Trump hitting a golf ball. To a friend who commented Fore more years! Fancelli replied, Fore more years of chinese puppetry!

Another friend commented, 80 million people voted for this? Fancelli replied, Some people voted for him, the rest is fraud.

Gregory Fancelli declined to be interviewed.

David and Leila Centner have never spoken publicly about their support for Trump and hadnt made a political donation (except two that were refunded in 2018) until they gave a combined $1 million to support Trumps 2020 campaign. Come Jan. 6, the Miami couple were VIP guests at the rally on the Ellipse, according to organizers. The couple declined to comment through a spokesperson.

David Centner started and sold several successful web businesses, then made a fortune on a company that processed highway tolls. In 2019, taking advantage of a provision in Trumps tax bill, the Centners reportedly invested $40 million in a fund to build affordable housing for teachers. The tax incentive, known as Opportunity Zones, was intended to entice investors into developing poorer neighborhoods. But many wealthy and well-connected people have foundwaysto use it to subsidize their preexisting projects.

After not being able to find a school that felt right for their daughter, the Centners started their own, the brightly colored Centner Academy in Miamis Design District.

Some school parents objected when Leila Centner used the building to host a campaign event for a conservative mayoral candidate. According to emails quoted in the Miami New Times, Centner responded to their concerns by saying, Please do not tell me what types of events I can host in my own building after hours.

In January, the school hosted an event with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the prominent antivaccine activist. David Centner introduced him as his hero and personal inspiration, according to a video of Kennedys talk.

In April, Centner instructed school employees not to get the COVID-19 vaccine. In a message to faculty and staff, she falsely claimed the vaccines dont prevent death or transmission of the disease, despite trials and research showing they do. She also cited a baseless conspiracy theory that merely being around other vaccinated people can cause reproductive problems in women.

We cannot allow recently vaccinated people to be near our students until more information is known, Centner said in the message to staff. She told employees who wished to get the vaccine that they should wait until the end of the school year and that they might not be allowed to return to their jobs.

Centners Facebook and Instagram posts are filled with misinformation urging people not to wear masks or get a COVID-19 vaccine. She falsely claimed that the media has covered up vaccine side effects ranging from rashes to death. She also has posted attacks on the nations top infectious disease adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as drug companies and other doctors. She has cited debunked studies claiming masks harm children and compared face coverings to the yellow stars that the Nazis ordered Jews to wear. Years ago, she posted a video now covered by a fact-checking warning about testing bottled water for pH levels and fluoride.

Centner is slated to speak next month at a mask-free, freedom-fighting conference featuring Trump adviser Roger Stone, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

Centner is not the only major new Trump donor who has promoted conspiracy theories. Michael and Caryn Borland of Newport Beach, California, have given a total of about $1.6 million since 2015. In the past theyd given less than $13,000. With their new high-roller status, they were guests at the 2020 GOP convention. Then-Vice President Mike Pence canceled a planned fundraiser at the Borlands Montana home after the Associated Press reported that the would-be hosts shared QAnon memes on Facebook and Twitter. The posts are no longer available.

This is not a forum for politics, Caryn Borland, a singer-songwriter of Christian music, later posted on her Facebook page. Whether they be my opinions or anyone elses. If you express any political opinions on this page they will be taken down immediately. The couple didnt respond to requests for comment.

The Borlands met while working in a grocery store and started a modest life together, according to David Wood, a film producer who worked with them on an ill-fated project. Then they inherited a fortune on Caryns side, Wood said. Her father was an executive of a California-based industrial materials company in the 1980s, according to corporate records, and court filings indicate that she has a multimillion-dollar trust in her maiden name. The trusts holdings include land assessed at $1.6 million in Arizona, according to tax records.

They were not even middle class, then they inherited a massive fortune, said Wood, who received a $10 million check from the trust for the film project in 2019. Amid a lawsuit, he agreed to return $4 million, according to court papers. I dont think they were completely prepared for it, Wood said. I dont know if anyone would be.

Some of the biggest new donors are less outspoken about their ideologies but gained tangible benefits from Trumps presidency.

Dallas billionaire Kelcy Warren welcomed the impact he anticipated Trump would have on his company, Energy Transfer Partners, which operates the Dakota Access Pipeline. Two days after the 2016 election, he told investors, Having a government that actually backs up what they say, that were going to support infrastructure, were going to support job creation, were going to support growth in America, and then actually does it? My God, this is going to be refreshing.

On Trumps fourth full day in office, he signed an executive order to help clear the way for the Dakota Access Pipeline, a thousand-mile link to North Dakotas oil fields. Energy Transfers stock price soared, and Warrens wealth climbed from $2.8 billion to $4.5 billion, according to Forbes. The magazine said the percentage gain was bigger than that of any other American that year.

The Dakota Access Pipeline became a high-profile controversy in 2016 when environmentalists and Native Americans rallied to the support of the local Standing Rock Sioux, who raised concerns that the pipeline would endanger their drinking water. With Trumps support, the pipeline was completed in April 2017 and started shipping oil the next month. But legal challenges continued, and a federal court in Washington eventually held that the Trump administration cut corners on the required environmental reviews.

Warrens company is now trying to convince a judge not to shut down the pipeline, arguing in an April court filing that the company stands to lose as much as $4.28 million a day. Some Democrats are calling on Biden to close the pipeline, but the current White House hasnt taken a position.

Warren and his wife are prominent philanthropists in Dallas (they developed a downtown park and named it after their son). But they were not major political donors until Trump came along, having spent less than $600,000 in total. Since 2015, however, theyve given more than $17 million. Warren declined to comment through a company spokesperson.

Another first-time mega-donor who benefited from Trumps actions was Roger Norman, a reclusive real estate investor in Reno, Nevada. In his first-ever interview, with a Reno TV news station in 2018, Norman recounted making and losing fortunes several times over, despite never learning to read or write.

Normans crown jewel is the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, 104,000 acres of desert that he and his partners bought for $20 million in 1998. Today its worth billions after becoming a hub for companies including Tesla, Google and Switch.

The site benefited from the Opportunity Zone program in Trumps tax bill, thanks to some influential friends. As The Washington Post reported in 2018, Treasury officials originally decided the area was too prosperous to qualify for the benefit. But Normans business partner recruited Nevada Republicans, including the governor and a senator, to lobby for the designation.

Norman then gave more than $2 million to support Trumps reelection, compared to the less than $100,000 in total political contributions hed made in the past. Youre a little late to that story, Im not donating anything now, Norman said in a brief phone conversation, declining to discuss the matter further.

Another new mega-donor turned a professional setback arising from his support for Trump into a new opportunity. Palmer Luckey built a prototype for a virtual reality headset as a teenager and sold his company, Oculus VR, to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. Forbes estimated the 21-year-olds cut at more than $500 million.

Luckey has credited Trumps book The Art of the Deal with inspiring him at age 13, according to The Wall Street Journal, and he sent Trump a letter in 2011 encouraging him to run for president. During the 2016 campaign, Luckey donated $10,000 to Nimble America, a pro-Trump group associated with misogynistic and white-supremacist online posts. Luckey has given conflicting accounts of whether he wrote some of the messages under a pseudonym. After an internal uproar at Facebook, the company placed Luckey on leave and fired him in 2017, the Journal reported.

Luckey deepened his political activism, expanding his giving and hosting a fundraiser for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. He started a new company, Anduril, that would cater directly to the Trump administration by making security technology for the southern border. The company raised $200 million from investors and won government contracts totaling almost $100 million.

Luckey didnt respond to requests for comment.

Luckeys sister, Ginger Luckey, is engaged to Matt Gaetz, the embattled Florida congressman and Trump ally. Their mother, Julie Luckey, who home-schooled Palmer, was slated to be a VIP guest for the Jan. 6 rally. Its not clear if she attended. She didnt respond to requests for comment.

Duke Buchan, a wealthy but little-known Wall Street investor, wasnt shy about coveting an ambassadorship after he and his wife gave the Trump Victory fund almost $450,000 each, the maximum amount allowable by federal campaign finance laws in 2016. One of the last vestiges of the spoils system, cushy diplomatic posts routinely go to campaign patrons. Buchan and his wife, joint donor Hannah Flournoy Buchan, declined to comment.

Buchan told friends that he viewed Trump as a disrupter and cheered the candidates attacks on political correctness, looking forward to saying Merry Christmas again, The New York Times reported in 2017. Buchan was rewarded with an appointment as ambassador to Spain, where he had studied abroad decades earlier. He reportedly complained that European Union regulations scuttled his plans to bring his polo ponies along. While in office, Buchan took part in the Trump administrations controversial efforts to oust Venezuelan president Nicols Maduro.

While ambassadorships are common rewards for big donors, Lynda Blanchard was unusually blunt about it. According to a person familiar with her appointment who asked not to be named in connection with the discussions, Blanchard explicitly reminded transition officials how much she donated. She and her husband gave more than $2 million to Republicans between 2015 and 2018, when Trump nominated her as ambassador to Slovenia, Melania Trumps native country. Blanchard didnt respond to requests for comment.

Blanchard, who founded a real estate investment firm, is now staking millions on her own candidacy for U.S. Senate in Alabama. She held a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago in March with a surprise appearance from Trump, but then he endorsed her rival: Rep. Mo Brooks, one of the leaders of the congressional effort to overturn the 2020 election results.

One new Trump-era mega-donor was rewarded with a less-conventional role in his administration. Ike Perlmutter, the Marvel Entertainment chairman who was one of Trumps largest overall backers and belongs to his Mar-a-Lago club, became an unofficial yet influential adviser on veterans issues. As ProPublica first reported in 2018, Trump gave Perlmutter and two associates sweeping influence over the Department of Veterans Affairs. They had a hand in policy and personnel decisions, even reviewing budgets and contracts.

Perlmutter, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has said he had no formal authority and sought no personal gain.

A liberal veterans group, VoteVets, sued the VA over Perlmutters role, alleging that it violated a Watergate-era sunshine law. In March, an appeals court said the case could proceed.

Though Perlmutter, 78, was drawn in by his personal relationship with Trump, he has become a bigger force in Florida Republican politics. Before backing Trump, he and his wife gave $2 million to a super PAC supporting then-presidential candidate Marco Rubio, and more recently hes become a major benefactor of Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely considered a leading contender for the partys 2024 presidential nomination if Trump doesnt run.

For other new mega-donors who got involved because of their personal ties to Trump, its less clear if their support will extend to other candidates.

Fellow Mar-a-Lago member Anthony Lomangino and his wife have given more than $3 million, plus $150,000 to help aides cover legal fees arising from the Robert Muellers Russia investigation. They had previously given less than $40,000 total. Lomangino, whose wealth derives from selling a recycling-collection company to industry giant Waste Management, declined to comment.

Vernon Hill, Trumps sometime banker and golf buddy, gave more than $2 million, 10 times more than hed ever given before. In 2020 he praised the federal governments small business relief program, which his bank, like many others, helped administer. Hill didnt respond to requests for comment.

Steven Witkoff, a New York real estate friend, gave more than $2 million and served as an informal adviser on tax cuts, opioids and reopening businesses during the pandemic. He has also since become a DeSantis backer. Witkoff didnt respond to requests for comment.

John McCall, the business partner of Trumps friend and purported hairspray supplier Farouk Shami, gave $1.7 million to Trump and the GOP since 2015, versus less than $20,000 previously. McCall didnt respond to requests for comment.

Link:

A New Group of Mega-Donors Now Holds Influence Over the GOP Thanks to Trump - Truthout

TODD: I would have loved to have watched the eyes of an NPR reporter grow like to basketball size when Rush employed one of his many valuable life lessons in answering her question of him, and heres Rush describing that and more.

RUSH: You know, if I could wave a magic wand and change people, it would be dont worry about what people think of you, particularly people that dont know you. People that dont know you, it doesnt matter what they think. You and what you think of yourself is what matters, and if somebody thinks things about you that arent true, forget it. Nothing you can do about it, and its a total waste of time to try to change that.

I occasionally get e-mails from people: Rush, dont you care what theyre saying about you on X? Why, its outrageous what theyre saying about you! Yeah, sometimes I do, but most of the time I dont. It happens too much to get worried about it and be affected by it. But I did an NPR interview. One of the questions that the reporter from NPR asked me was, You use terms like feminazi. You throw these things around. Dont you worry about it bothering people? This is the answer that I gave.

RUSH ARCHIVE: The fewest number of words you can use to convey a point, the more power the point has. Now, I understand people are going to be offended, but Ive had a policy all my life not to worry about offending people because its going to happen. Its a daily part of life. I think way too many people are way too sensitive walking around just waiting to be offended, and I think a bunch of people claiming theyre offended is really an attack on free speech.

It is the root cause of political correctness, which is nothing more than silencing things you dont want to hear when uttered by others, so, That offends me! I will not sit here and put up with that! I dont grant people that much power to offend me. Things said about me or the things I like Im not going to waste time being offended by it. Lifes too short, and its just words!

RUSH: Plus, my life is fulfilling. Im not wallowing in misery, thinking, Everybody else thinks Im a dork, because I know Im a dork, which is the attitude so many people have. Theyre just miserable. They get offended and they run around saying theyre offended, and they try to shut people up because theyre offending them and its just because theyve got nothing else to fulfill their lives! You know, theyre basically empty and meaningless. If you have a fulfilling life and youre occupied and doing what you like, these things are minor, especially when you know that it comes with the territory.

TODD: So as we enter into this experiment together of asking these absurd questions, making these absurd points in school board meetings, in zoning meetings, at dinner with friends, its not a natural dynamic in the world that Look, theres a bunch of people you probably dont like. I try not to hate anybody. I really do. I try really hard to not do that.

Theres people I dont like as much as others. Theres just people I dont like. Natural. Natural human equation. Whats not natural is multiplication of the numbers of dislikes on social media, et cetera. We need to be okay being uncomfortable, because we had better start making leftists uncomfortable by asking them questions, forcing them to live in the world that theyre created for us.

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Limbaugh Life Lesson: Dont Worry About What Other People Think - Rush Limbaugh

James McHenry was a Maryland delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He had been at the home of prominent socialite Elizabeth Willing Powel, which had become a prominent intellectual salon, especially during the heady days of the Convention.

The most popular guest of Mrs. Powels was Benjamin Franklin. One evening, according to McHenrys notes, A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.

This quote a republic if you can keep it enjoyed major hit status last January during the impeachment proceedings. Mrs. Powell was never given credit for asking the setup question. And usually, the quote was located, wrongly, on the steps outside the Convention on its last day.

And never did we hear the rest of the story. Upon hearing Franklins witty mark about the hard work of keeping the republic, the salonnire Mrs. Powell asked the next logical question:

And why not keep it?

Franklin responds: Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.

The dish to which he was referring was sheer naked power. When George Washington was elected the first president, Franklin wrote that The first man put at the helm will be a good one. Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards.

Thats not all. He continues: The executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy.

Here is where I part company with Franklin. We dont have to worry much about a monarchy. But we always have to worry about the strong man, about authoritarianism.

I wish people, in general, would be more concerned about authoritarianism than socialism or state communism (and no, these two things are not at all the same). Much as I despise the latter, the particular horror of Stalin was not so much his communism but his despotic and totalitarian reign of terror.

Authoritarianism has done more damage in history than any other ideology. Folks can complain about liberalism (or conservatism) all they want, but nothing has done more bloodletting in history than autocrats like Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Il Duce, Franco, and Pinochet (to name a few).

These authoritarian autocrats, interestingly, show up on the extremes of both left and right wings. All of them (Stalin in particular) adored Henry Fords model of assembly-line industrialization. All of them sacrificed goodness and kindness for the sake of wealth and domination. All of them right or left, communist or capitalist were adept in the dark arts of totalitarianism.

Nowadays, in some quarters, it is fashionable to complain about the soft totalitarianism of cancel culture, political correctness, entitlements, etc. This is laughable when soft totalitarianism is compared to the real totalitarianism of 20th-century strong men.

And all of these guys (authoritarianism is definitely a male phenomenon, which is not a compliment) were aided and abetted and welcomed with open arms by enthusiastic fanboys. Stalin (and his predecessor Lenin) was cheered by intellectual atheists. Hitler (along with Mussolini and Franco) was heralded by religious conservatives, who naively believed his promises of restoring traditional values. Mao and Pol Pot were deified by millions of abused and impoverished workers.

Without exception, the strong men of history betrayed their first fans. Stalin regularly rounded up and executed the most Marxist and atheist intelligentsia (e.g., Leon Trotsky). Hitler sent Evangelicals (and Roman Catholics and Orthodox and many others) off to concentration camps and the gallows (Im thinking especially of Dietrich Bonhoeffer here). Franco and Pinochet disappeared hundreds of thousands.

And Mao slaughtered his own poor farmers and factory workers. By the millions.

The Republic fashioned by the Constitutional Convention, as is true of all democracies, will always gravitate towards authoritarianism and despotism. Its just the nature of power, in a fallen world, to arrogate more power to itself: Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.

That is why we must always do the hard work of keeping the Republic. This requires a constant watch on the Executive. He must always be held accountable to the law like everyone else. He must not be permitted to flout decency and civility. He cannot be allowed the exploitation of single hot-button issues to manipulate entire constituencies. He must not be permitted to surround himself with a cadre of brownshirts who fall all over themselves to show simpering loyalty and subservience.

A President (or past or future President) cannot be permitted to construct his own narrative. Joseph Goebbels, Hitlers Minister of Propaganda (his real title!) was infamous for popularizing the technique of the Big Lie: if a strong man and his gang repeat a lie long enough, a critical mass of the population will soon come to believe it. Whats more, the Big Lie seems to get more effective the more outrageous it is especially if some people could make a lot of money off of it (which they did then and still do).

When German citizens heard whispers about the gas chambers at Auschwitz on one hand, and the loud Nazi denials on the other, newspaper editors and civic leaders and reasonable people said, Well, there are two sides to every story.

No, theres not. Truth and denial are not sides.

The horrifying truth of the Holocaust was conveniently disposed of under the rubric of suspecting liberal bias in Hitlers case, he was always scapegoating the usual liberal suspects, who were, of course, Jews and communists.

And there was another rubric at work: the almost religious devotion to the strong man. Loyalty to him was utmost, even if it meant swallowing the Big Lie.

Keeping the Republic is hard work. It isnt the easy and simplistic (and disastrous) tactic of single-issue voting Strong Men just adore single-issue voters. The best way to resist a wannabe autocrat is the grownup work of speaking truth to power and disbelieving his propaganda.

We must denounce, over and over again, the whole idea of party loyalty. Of all the poisons of the modern age, party loyalty to the point of repeating a Big Lie is most toxic to democracy.

We should demand courage not party loyalty of our Representatives and Senators, whether Republican or Democratic. If they are too afraid to stand up to a Strong Man or challenge his Big Lie, then they need to find another occupation that doesnt require that much honor.

Jonathan Tobias (janotec77@gmail.com) is the Professor of Systematic and Pastoral Theology at Christ the Saviour Orthodox Seminary near Pittsburgh, PA, and resides here in Edenton.

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Keeping the Republic is Hard Work | Editorial Columnists | dailyadvance.com - The Daily Advance