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Flap’s Links and Comments for May 18th on 11:48
These are my links for May 18th from 11:48 to 11:52:
- Why Is Soros Spending Over $48 Million Funding Media Organizations? – It’s a scene journalists dream about – a group of coworkers toasting a Pulitzer Prize. For the team at investigative start-up ProPublica, it was the second time their fellow professionals recognized their work for journalism’s top honor.
For George Soros and ProPublica’s other liberal backers, it was again proof that a strategy of funding journalism was a powerful way to influence the American public.
It’s a strategy that Soros has been deploying extensively in media both in the United States and abroad. Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $48 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news – journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.
And that number is an understatement. It is gleaned from tax forms, news stories and reporting. But Soros funds foundations that fund other foundations in turn, like the Tides Foundation, which then make their own donations. A complete accounting is almost impossible because a media component is part of so many Soros-funded operations.
This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.It turns out that Soros’ influence doesn’t just include connections to top mainstream news organizations such as NBC, ABC, The New York Times and Washington Post. It’s bought him connections to the underpinnings of the news business. The Columbia Journalism Review, which bills itself as “a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms,” lists several investigative reporting projects funded by one of Soros foundations.
The “News Frontier Database” includes seven different investigative reporting projects funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute. Along with ProPublica, there are the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New Orleans’ The Lens. The Columbia School of Journalism, which operates CJR, has received at least $600,000 from Soros, as well.
Imagine if conservative media punching bags David and Charles Koch had this many connections to journalists. Even if the Kochs could find journalists willing to support conservative media (doubtful), they would be skewered by the left.
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Indeed the Kochs would be skewered.
- Why Don’t We Hear About Soros’ Ties to Over 30 Major News Organizations? – When liberal investor George Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio , it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.
Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists' ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”
This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.
The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.
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- Why Is Soros Spending Over $48 Million Funding Media Organizations? – It’s a scene journalists dream about – a group of coworkers toasting a Pulitzer Prize. For the team at investigative start-up ProPublica, it was the second time their fellow professionals recognized their work for journalism’s top honor.
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Flap’s Links and Comments for May 12th on 10:38
These are my links for May 12th from 10:38 to 13:38:
- Mitt Romney: No apologies for Mass. RomneyCare plan – Mitt Romney offered no apologies and instead delivered a full-throated defense of his Massachusetts health care plan Thursday in a much-anticipated health care policy presentation at the University of Michigan.
“I recognize that a lot pundits around the nation are saying that I should just stand up and say this whole thing was a mistake, that this was a boneheaded idea, and I should just admit it: it was a mistake, and walk away. I presume that a lot of folks think that if I did that it would be good for me politically, ” Romney said as he flipped through slides of a PowerPoint presentation he prepared himself. “There’s only one problem with that: it wouldn’t be honest.”
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Mitt Romney is putting lipstick on the pig of RomneyCare….
- Why Don’t We Hear About Soros’ Ties to Over 30 Major News Organizations? – When liberal investor George Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio , it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.
Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists' ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”
This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.
The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.
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Because they are too busy going after the Koch Brothers…..ta da….
- Flap’s Links and Comments for May 12th on 10:28 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Links and Comments for May 12th on 10:28 #tcot #catcot
- Kochs Get Slammed for Donating Money to Education | The Weekly Standard – Kochs Get Slammed for Donating Money to Education
- Unlikely Cheri Daniels Will Mention 2012 in Speech Tonight – By Katrina Trinko – The Primary Event – National Review Online – Unlikely Cheri Daniels Will Mention 2012 in Speech Tonight
- Dilbert May 6, 2011 – Respect and Admiration | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Dilbert May 6, 2011 – Respect and Admiration #tcot #catcot
- Mitt Romney: No apologies for Mass. RomneyCare plan – Mitt Romney offered no apologies and instead delivered a full-throated defense of his Massachusetts health care plan Thursday in a much-anticipated health care policy presentation at the University of Michigan.
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Flap’s Links and Comments for April 18th on 06:22
These are my links for April 18th from 06:22 to 06:53:
- Koch Derangement syndrome: Contango Confusion – The basic problem with a site like Think Progress is that its "reporters," ill-informed, uneducated, inexperienced amateurs like Lee Fang, try to write about subjects of which they have no understanding. Worse yet, they slander the very people who do understand those topics–the people who produce products and make our economy go.
There is another level of irony here. Koch Industries is a classic example of an American company that doesn't just push paper, but actually makes products. Its business is production, not "speculation." Think Progress, on the other hand, is funded by one of the world's most successful speculators: George Soros. Soros has made billions by manipulating markets, without ever producing anything. He is the definitive speculator and market manipulator (in particular, currency markets) of the 20th century. If Soros bothered to read what his minion Lee Fang wrote, he no doubt would burst out in laughter at Fang's ignorance. But that, apparently, doesn't bother Soros. He is happy to promote ignorance as long as it advances his own selfish political interests.
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Read it all as Power Line blog fisks Lee Fang of Think Progress
- Koch Derangement Syndrome: De-Fanging Think Progress’ Attack Dog – The name Lee Fang is far from a household name. However, from his perch at the Soros-funded think tank Center for American Progress, Fang has the dubious distinction of promulgating questionable Koch Industries political conspiracies perhaps more than any other person.
Along the way, Fang has made a laughable number of errors in his reporting on Koch. However, he might have outdone himself with his latest piece on the Kochs' supposedly manipulative oil speculation practices. Over at Powerline, they have thoroughly dissected Fang's article and the level of ignorance exposed is breathtaking. I encourage you to read the whole Powerline post as it gets into quite a lot of detail about commodity speculation, but this addendum to the post should give you a general feel for how bad it it is:
I wrote the book on manipulation (The Law, Economics, and Public Policy of Market Power Manipulation, Kluwer, 1996). I've also published 10 scholarly articles in economics journals and law reviews on the subject. My next book (Structural Models of Commodity Price Dynamics, Cambridge UP, forthcoming) is all about the determinants of contango, backwardation, storage, etc. Based on 25 years of scholarly research and market experience, I can say that Fang the Farcical knows not the first thing about either manipulation or commodities pricing. You would think that Soros could have found a junior assistant trader to teach Fang the basics. But then there wouldn't have been a story, would there?
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Koch DerangementSyndrome indeed
- Card Check: California Moves To Force Unionization On Workers Via Intimidation & Coercive Tactics – In recent weeks, the California state Senate passed legislation on a party-line vote that would eliminate the secret ballot in union organizing elections for farm workers. The legislation, SB 104 by Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, would allow farm workers to form a collective bargaining union through a majority sign up – essentially instituting “card check” at the state level. And of course, Big Labor is ecstatic, trying to portray the vote in the state Senate as a victory for workers. But sometimes the truth just slips out and the real intentions are revealed. A key strategist for the farm workers union in California was quoted as saying, “this is about power.”
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- Koch Derangement syndrome: Contango Confusion – The basic problem with a site like Think Progress is that its "reporters," ill-informed, uneducated, inexperienced amateurs like Lee Fang, try to write about subjects of which they have no understanding. Worse yet, they slander the very people who do understand those topics–the people who produce products and make our economy go.
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Flap’s Links and Comments for April 15th on 19:19
These are my links for April 15th from 19:19 to 19:30:
- Left-Wing Non-Disclosure Group (Co-Founded By Barack Obama) Attacking Kochs For Non-Disclosure – There's something else, though. Demos has never disclosed its donors, but one of its co-founders and original trustees was none other than the young Illinois state senator Barack Obama, who as president has been very critical of non-disclosure groups. Obama criticized the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, saying that it will invite a "new stampede of special interest money" into the political system. He also said during last year's election that "secret donors'" money could be flowing into Republican coffers. Recently, some of his own allies have started their own non-disclosure political action committees.
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Not really surprising, now is it?
- Koch Derangement syndrome: New York Times partially corrects a non-transparent attack dog – On April 4 the New York Times carried an op-ed column by one David Callahan that read much like Soros-sponsored attacks on the Koch brothers that we’ve been seeing for some time. He wrote, in part, “Though some of their organizational ties are public, many are unknown, thanks to a provision in the tax code that allows the Koch brothers and other donors, on both the left and the right, to conceal the recipients of their largess, even as they get to write it off on their taxes.” Callahan is a senior fellow at Demos, a left-wing group that receives funding from George Soros through his Open Society Institute.
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Read it all.
The hypocrisy on the LEFT is really beyond belief.
- Three largest online poker sites indicted and shut down by FBI – The founders of the three largest online poker sites were indicted on Friday in what could serve as a death blow to a thriving industry.
Eleven executives at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and a number of their affiliates were charged with bank fraud and money laundering in an indictment unsealed in a Manhattan court. Two of the defendants were arrested on Friday morning in Utah and Nevada. Federal agents are searching for the others.
Prosecutors are seeking to immediately shut down the sites and to eventually send the executives to jail and to recover $3 billion from the companies. By Friday afternoon Full Tilt Poker’s site displayed a message explaining that “this domain name has been seized by the F.B.I. pursuant to an Arrest Warrant.”
The online gambling industry has taken off over the last decade, drawing an estimated 15 million Americans to bet online.
In 2006 Congress passed a law curtailing online gambling. Most of the leading sites found ways to work around the law, but prosecutors allege that in doing so they broke the law.
“These defendants concocted an elaborate criminal fraud scheme, alternately tricking some U.S. banks and effectively bribing others to assure the continued flow of billions in illegal gambling profits,” Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement.
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Surprised that Holder and Obama actually enforced the law.
- Left-Wing Non-Disclosure Group (Co-Founded By Barack Obama) Attacking Kochs For Non-Disclosure – There's something else, though. Demos has never disclosed its donors, but one of its co-founders and original trustees was none other than the young Illinois state senator Barack Obama, who as president has been very critical of non-disclosure groups. Obama criticized the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, saying that it will invite a "new stampede of special interest money" into the political system. He also said during last year's election that "secret donors'" money could be flowing into Republican coffers. Recently, some of his own allies have started their own non-disclosure political action committees.
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Flap’s Links and Comments for March 28th on 14:08
These are my links for March 28th from 14:08 to 16:10:
- Harry Reid urges GOP to ditch Tea Party – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday urged Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to ditch members of the Tea Party and cut a deal with Democrats to avert a government shutdown.
Reid insisted it is those GOP internal divisions that are threatening to shut down the government after April 8, in less than two weeks.
“For the sake of our economy, it’s time for mainstream Republicans to stand up to the Tea Party and rejoin Democrats at the table to negotiate a responsible solution that cuts spending while protecting jobs," he said.
Last week Reid put $7.5 billion in discretionary cuts and $3.5 billion in mandatory savings on the table as a counteroffer to the $51 billion in additional cuts the GOP is seeking.
This week Democrats are mulling raising the offer to $20 billion. But Democratic aides insist it is the divided GOP that must make the next move and come back to the negotiating table, not Democrats who must continue to negotiate with themselves and up their offer.
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Harry Reid is going senile.
Cut the damn budet, Dingy Harry – end of story
- Is Media Matters breaking the law in its ‘war’ on Fox News? – Media Matters, the George Soros-backed legion of liberal agit-prop shock troops based in the nation's capital, has declared war on Fox News, and in the process quite possibly stepped across the line of legality.
David Brock, MM's founder, was quoted Saturday by Politico promising that his organization is mounting "guerrila warfare and sabotage" against Fox News, which he said "is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”
To that end, Brock told Politico that MM will “focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests …" Murdoch is the founder of Fox News and a media titan with newspaper, broadcast, Internet and other media countries around the world.
There is nothing in the Politico article to suggest that Brock, who was paid just under $300,000 in 2009, according to the group's most recently available tax return, plans to ask the IRS to change his organization's tax status as a 501(C)(3) tax-exempt educational foundation.
Being a C3 puts MM in the non-profit, non-commercial sector, and it also bars the organzation from participating in partisan political activity. This new, more aggressive stance, however, appears to run directly counter to the government's requirements for maintaining a C3 tax status.
Since Brock classifies Fox News as the "leader" of the Republican Party, by his own description he is involving his organization in a partisan battle. High-priced K Street lawyers can probably find a federal judge or a sympathetic IRS bureaucrat willing to either look the other way or accept some sort of MM rationale such as that it is merely providing educational information about a partisan group.
But in the IRS application for 501(C)(3) tax-exempt educational foundation status, Section VIII, Question I asks the applicant: "Do you support or oppose candidates in political campaigns in any way?" (Emphasis added).
Under Brock's definition of Fox News, it appears he is setting MM on a course of actively opposing all Republican candidates. Brandon Kiser at The Right Sphere blog argues that this new statement of MM's mission means it must change its tax status.
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I don't think Media Matters is to impressed with the media exposure of their "WAR on Fox News." Probably neither are Rupert Murdoch's numerous law firms that are more than likely preparing lawsuits.
- The battle to define Charles and David Koch – The LEFT Exposed – When it comes to the suddenly infamous Koch brothers, there’s one thing the conservative Weekly Standard and liberal filmmaker Robert Greenwald can agree on: The Kochs, Charles and David, have been a boon to the American political left.
“For progressives confused at the heated opposition to their do-gooder agenda, the Kochs became convenient scapegoats,” asserts the Weekly Standard’s Matthew Continetti this week in a long cover story defending the Kochs. Liberals in the media have “ascribed every bad thing under the sun to the brothers and their checkbooks. Pollution, the Tea Party, global warming denial—the Kochs were responsible,” Continetti writes, asserting that in recent months “whenever you turned on MSNBC or clicked on the Huffington Post you’d see the Kochs described in terms more applicable to Lex Luthor and General Zod.”
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Fancy that: A George Soros funded "War" against the Koch Brothers = some grassroots outrage…. RIGHT
- Harry Reid urges GOP to ditch Tea Party – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday urged Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to ditch members of the Tea Party and cut a deal with Democrats to avert a government shutdown.
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Flap’s Links and Comments for March 23rd on 09:13
These are my links for March 23rd from 09:13 to 09:44:
- California Prison cell phone bill? Wimpy – State Sen. Alex Padilla, flanked by law enforcement officials, stood on the Capitol's steps Tuesday before an array of cell phones confiscated from prison inmates and declared that smuggling had become an epidemic.
It is, Padilla said, a "clear and present danger to public safety" as inmates use smuggled phones to harass victims and witnesses and plot other crimes. He called to the podium a woman who said she received harassing calls from her husband's murderer.
Padilla et al. made a compelling case for a crackdown on smuggling cell phones – nearly 11,000 were confiscated last year. But the bill that cleared the Senate Public Safety Committee two hours later is rather wimpy. It makes smuggling nothing more than a misdemeanor, even for prison employees who are the sources of many illicit phones.
Last year, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar Padilla bill – the first anti-smuggling bill to reach his desk after several died in the Legislature – on grounds that it was too weak and that smuggling cell phones should be a felony.
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Of course, this should be a felony. But, do you really expect any public safety laws to pass while Jerry I appointed Rose Bird Chief Justice Brown is Governor?
I mean really.
Brown will start letting felons out of the prisons to balance his budget in order to pay of his union cronies.
And, when these criminals start reoffending, Brown will either shrug it off or blame the Republicans.
- The Koch Brothers: Anatomy of a Smear – The Center for American Progress is generally regarded as a front for the Obama administration. Its President and CEO is John Podesta, formerly Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff and the chairman of Barack Obama's transition team. CAP is lavishly funded by George Soros and several other left-wing billionaires. It runs, among other things, a web site called Think Progress, which cranks out a steady stream of slimy hit pieces for the benefit of the Obama administration and the far left.
Soros apparently believes that only left-wing billionaires should be able to participate in public discourse, so his Center for American Progress, through its web site, has carried on a bizarre vendetta against Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Industries. The Kochs are two of the very few billionaires who are active in politics on the conservative/libertarian side, a phenomenon that apparently drives left-wing billionaires wild with rage. I'm not sure why; maybe they think the Kochs are traitors to their class. In any event,Think Progress has stalked the Koch brothers with video cameras and produced one false, over-the-top attack on the Kochs after another, some of which we have had fun dissecting here.
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- California Prison cell phone bill? Wimpy – State Sen. Alex Padilla, flanked by law enforcement officials, stood on the Capitol's steps Tuesday before an array of cell phones confiscated from prison inmates and declared that smuggling had become an epidemic.