Democrat Senator Calls For Social Media Censorship to Prevent Bank Runs
The first thought of the Democrat Party is to strip Americans of their right to free speech and the free flow of information.
THE GATEWAY PUNDIT
TGP reported on Sunday that a Democrat Senator called for social media censorship to prevent bank runs.
During the call on Sunday afternoon Rep. Massie reported that one Democrat Senator asked if there was a program in place to censor free speech at this time on social media.
The first thought of the Democrat Party is to strip Americans of their right to free speech and the free flow of information.
Just got off of a zoom meeting with Fed, Treasury, FDIC, House, and Senate.
A Democrat Senator essentially asked whether there was a program in place to censor information on social media that could lead to a run on the banks.
“During a conference call about the Silicon Valley Bank bailout yesterday, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) asked representatives from the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, and the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation (FDIC) if they had a way to censor information on social media to prevent a run on the banks, according to Republican members of the House of Representatives who were on the call.” Shellenberger wrote on Substack.
Header featured image (edited) credit: Phone with Social Media icons/org. TGP article
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The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
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After New York state regulators shut down Signature Bank Sunday, a series of woke videos produced by the company has gone viral, with critics noting it’s no wonder the bank went under if this was what they were concentrating on.
Grit Capital founder Genevieve Roch-Decter shared the videos, asking “Is it surprising that Signature Bank failed?”
“Their executive team spent millions of dollars to produce music videos & TV shows about themselves,” she continued, adding “Try not to cringe as you watch this.”
Is it surprising that Signature Bank failed?
Their executive team spent millions of dollars to produce music videos & TV shows about themselves
Signature bank recruiter: What’s your risk management experience? Candidate: Well, none I guess Recruiter: Let’s hear you sing Firework…
As we highlighted yesterday, this is the same bank that closed President Trump’s accounts two years ago, reasoning that it would not do business with Trump after the January 6th “rioting and insurrection” and calling for him to resign.
Header featured image (edited) credit: We Love actors/Twitter screen shot
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The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
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Jean-Pierre Triggered when Confronted about Biden SVB ‘Bailout’
Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors Rescued
BECKER NEWS
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is struggling to come to terms with descriptions of the Biden administration’s rescue of Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors as a “bailout.”
The failed bank, the second-largest in U.S. history, has exposed numerous business depositers to risk. These firms include: Circle ($3.3 billion), Roku ($487 million), BlockFi ($227 million), Roblox ($150 million), Ginkgo Bio ($74 million), iRhythm ($55 million), Rocket Lab ($38 million), SangamoTherapeutics ($34 million), LendingClub ($21 million) and Payoneer ($20 million).
According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, bank accounts are insured up to $250,000. However, the U.S. government has since stepped in to back billion’s of the banks deposits.
KJP was aboard Air Force One en route to San Diego on Monday when she was confronted with the infamous “B-word.”
REPORTER: “Republicans are saying this is a bailout.”
“Republicans are saying this is a bailout,” a reporter said.
“This is not a bailout, she objected. “This is not 2008 at all.”
“The funds are from fees on banks and not taxpayers, so this is very different than what we saw in 2008,” she added.
KJP repeated this objection throughout her airborne press gaggle, as if to will her narrative into reality.
But the Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the original “bailout” program administered under the Obama administration, begs to differ with the Biden Press Secretary.
“If your definition is government intervention to prevent private losses, then this is certainly a bailout,” Barofsky said.
Richard Squire, a professor at Fordham University’s School of Law and an expert on bank bailouts, expanded on the similarities and differences with the 2008 banking crisis.
“What they mean when they say this isn’t a bailout, is it’s not a bailout for management,” Squire said. “The venture capital firms and the startups are being bailed out. There is no doubt about that.”
Squire added that when top White House officials avoid the b-word, they are “trying to not be brushed with the tar of the 2008 financial crisis.”
“If we use a different term, we’re serving the interest of those who want to obscure what is really happening here,” Squire said.
On Tuesday, media streaming service Roku was reportedly ‘relieved’ to learn that the federal government was coming to its rescue.
“Roku has also claimed in a regulatory filing that the deposits with SVB were largely uninsured and it is unsure about the extent it would be able to recover them, but added that it believed it had enough cash for the next twelve months,” Zacks reported. “Its remaining balance of $1.4 billion is distributed across other large financial institutions.”
“The FDIC is acting as a receiver, which typically means it will liquidate the bank’s assets to pay back its customers, including depositors and creditors,” the report noted. “It will pay uninsured depositors an advanced dividend within this week and they will get a receivership certificate for the rest of their uninsured funds.”
Silicon Valley Bank on Friday became the second-largest bank in U.S. history to fail. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation shuttered its doors and is supervising the liquidation of its funds.
According to the Claremont Institute, records show that Silicon Valley Bank had pledged approximately $74 million to “Black Lives Matter” and associated groups.
The bank bailout poses a “moral hazard,” critics claim, due to its incentivization of risk-taking, as well as donations to activist causes that the federal government deems to be politically beneficial.
Header featured image (edited) credit: Jean-Pierre/org. BN article
Emphasis added by (TLB) editors
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The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
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Reuters reported on Wednesday that “India’s Oil Deals With Russia Dent Decades-Old Dollar Dominance”, which informed their audience that the growing trend of those two using national or third-party currencies like the UAE’s is something significant for everyone to pay attention to. To that outlet’s credit, it also reminded readers that IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath foresaw in the month after Russia’s specialoperation began that the West’s sanctions “could erode the dollar’s dominance”. (ER: So which part of the West was working against its own side?)
Lo and behold, that’s precisely what happened (ER: Surprise!), with India of all countries accelerating de-dollarization through its non-dollar-denominated energy deals with Russia. About them, Russia has since become India’s largest supplier over the past yearand now provides a whopping 35% of that country’s needs, which is also the world’s third-largest oil importer and fifth-largest economy. Their new energy ties, and particularly the growing de-dollarization dimension of their deals, are thus globally important.
None of what was just described is driven by any anti-American animus on India’s part since everything is purely motivated by the pursuit of that country’s objective national interests. Delhi had no choice but to gradually diversify away from dollar-denominated energy deals with Moscow due to Washington’s illegal sanctions. Its multipolar leadership wasn’t going to let the world’s most populous country slip into an economic crisis just to please the US by eschewing the import of discounted oil from Russia.
Had India complied with the US’ illegal sanctions, then the New York Times wouldn’t have recently admitted that those restrictions failed just like the West’s efforts to “isolate” Russia did as well. It was largely due to that South Asian Great Power’s truly independent grand strategy that this latest phase of the New Cold War didn’t decisively end in the Golden Billion’s victory over Russiaand the restoration of unipolarity, which would have been detrimental to India and every other developing country’s interests.
India therefore changed the course of history by remaining committed to the pursuit of its objective national interests, which to remind everyone, aren’t driven by any desire to harm the interests of third parties like the US. Its leading role in de-dollarization via its increasing number of non-dollar-denominated energy deals with Russia is also reshaping the global financial system by reducing that currency’s prior dominance and thus leading to a more multipolar state of affairs for everyone.
Even the US itself seems to have finally accepted that it can’t reverse this trend, which is evidenced by former Indian Ambassador to Russia Kanwal Sibal recently telling TASS that “Lately, the discourse from Washington has changed and India is no longer being asked to stop buying oil from Russia. In a recent visit to India, the US Treasury Secretary actually said that India can buy discounted oil from Russia as much as it wants so long as western tankers and insurance companies are not used.”
Nevertheless, radical liberal–globalistideologues like Color Revolution mastermind George Soros are still desperately clinging to the dream of restoring the US’ rapidly declining unipolar hegemony, hence why he de facto declaredHybridWar against India during the Munich Security Conference last month. It remains unclear whether he and his network have enough support in the Western Establishment to advance that regime change agenda, but his threat is still worrisome and should be taken seriously.
Reuters’ latest report about India’s role in accelerating de-dollarization might fuel interest among likeminded “Western Exceptionalists” in supporting his de facto Hybrid War against that country so observers should closely monitor related developments in order to assess whether this happens. In any case, those who sincerely support multipolarity should loudly applaud India for its indispensable role in comprehensively facilitating this process, especially its financial dimension as described in this analysis.
The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
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Notice we have the start of bank collapse in the US, revelations about J-6 and Covid origins before US government committee hearings, Matt Hancock’s messages opening up whole libraries of cans of worms in the UK, and historic detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran bringing at least a promise of peace to the Middle East – all virtually in the same week. Coincidence? And let’s not forget that Israel is imploding from the inside due to Netanyahu’s bizarre actions … dizzying.
Below, Zerohedge, and Celia Farber picking up Edward Dowd.
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Game Over: FDIC Shutters Silicon Valley Bank, Appoints Receiver
Update (1135ET): Game over for Silicon Valley bank.
*FDIC: SVB BANK CLOSED BY CALIFORNIA REGULATOR
*FDIC: SVB BANK IS FIRST INSURED INSTITUTION TO FAIL THIS YEAR
*FDIC CREATES A DEPOSIT INSURANCE NATIONAL BANK OF SANTA CLARA
*FDIC: NAMED FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE FDIC AS RECEIVER
*FDIC CREATES A DEPOSIT INSURANCE NATIONAL BANK OF SANTA CLARA
*SILICON VALLEY BANK INSURED DEPOSITORS TO HAVE ACCESS MONDAY
As we noted before, while the FDIC noted that SVIB had $175BN in deposits as of Dec 31, note that some $151.5BN of these are uninsured, which means they get exactly zero although a sizable number of them likely pulled their deposits in the past few days.
And just like that SVB is no more: a historic collapse which in many ways was faster than Lehman, and which has seen SIVB stock plunge from $763 to 0 in 16 months.
Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California, was closed today by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect insured depositors, the FDIC created the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara (DINB). At the time of closing, the FDIC as receiver immediately transferred to the DINB all insured deposits of Silicon Valley Bank.
All insured depositors will have full access to their insured deposits no later than Monday morning, March 13, 2023. The FDIC will pay uninsured depositors an advance dividend within the next week. Uninsured depositors will receive a receivership certificate for the remaining amount of their uninsured funds. As the FDIC sells the assets of Silicon Valley Bank, future dividend payments may be made to uninsured depositors.
Silicon Valley Bank had 17 branches in California and Massachusetts. The main office and all branches of Silicon Valley Bank will reopen on Monday, March 13, 2023. The DINB will maintain Silicon Valley Bank’s normal business hours. Banking activities will resume no later than Monday, March 13, including on-line banking and other services. Silicon Valley Bank’s official checks will continue to clear. Under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, the FDIC may create a DINB to ensure that customers have continued access to their insured funds.
As of December 31, 2022, Silicon Valley Bank had approximately $209.0 billion in total assets and about $175.4 billion in total deposits. At the time of closing, the amount of deposits in excess of the insurance limits was undetermined. The amount of uninsured deposits will be determined once the FDIC obtains additional information from the bank and customers.
Customers with accounts in excess of $250,000 should contact the FDIC toll-free at 1-866-799-0959.
The FDIC as receiver will retain all the assets from Silicon Valley Bank for later disposition. Loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.
Silicon Valley Bank is the first FDIC-insured institution to fail this year. The last FDIC-insured institution to close was Almena State Bank, Almena, Kansas, on October 23, 2020.
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Update (1030ET): In a hearing before the US House Ways & Means Committee Friday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the department is monitoring “a few” banks amid issues at SVB.
“There are recent developments that concern a few banks that I’m monitoring very carefully and when banks experience financial losses, it is and should be a matter of concern,”
Additionally, Reuters is reporting that SVB told its employees in a memo on Friday that they should work from home until further notice, stating according to a memo seen by the news service:
“SVB is undergoing a series of conversations that have not been concluded yet to determine next steps for the company.”
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Update (0900ET): CNBC’s David Faber reports that SVB has sought an adviser to find a buyer after attempts to raise capital have failed. However, Faber added that deposit outflows are outpacing any efforts to find a buyer…
Perhaps more problematically, SVB’s bonds (1.8s of 2031) are collapsing…
Bonds are extending losses after the stock was halted…
The fears of SVB’s collapse is contagious, dragging down others including Schwab, Western Alliance, and First Republic…
SVB Financial Group Chief Executive Officer Greg Becker held a conference call on Thursday advising clients of SVB-owned Silicon Valley Bank to “stay calm” amid concern about the bank’s financial position, according to a person familiar with the matter.
But a large number of VCs have suggested pulling cash sooner rather than later.
“This is a classic bank run, and when the bank run starts you don’t want to be the last guy there,” Ava Labs President John Wu said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
However, some VCs said they were standing by the bank.
“It is truly unfortunate that several GPs and companies are making a tough situation for SVB worse by pressing the panic button,” said G Squared founder Larry Aschebrook.
“SVB has supported entrepreneurs and GPs at all stages of their businesses and that partnership should run both ways.”
“We’ll have to see how this story develops but something always breaks hard during or after a Fed hiking cycle,” said Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank AG.
“Is this another mini wobble on this front or the start of something bigger?”
Michael ‘Big Short’ Burry also weighed in on Silicon Valley Bank last night.
“It is possible today we found our Enron,” the ‘Big Short’ investor said Thursday in a now-deleted Tweet
The Treasury Department is monitoring Silicon Valley Bank “very carefully,” White House Economic Advisor Bharat Ramamurti tells CNBC.
“I don’t want to say more than that right now, but I want to assure the viewers that this is something we are on top of,” he says, while adding that this is a “highly fluid situation”
“Let us get this straight: the largest US commercial bank was actively soliciting the clients of one of its biggest competitors, and the 16th largest US bank, knowing full well deposit flight would almost certainly lead to the collapse of a bank which courtesy of fractional reserve banking, had only modest cash to satisfy deposit demands: certainly not enough to meet $42 billion in deposit outflows.
“Of course, Jamie, who has suddenly emerged as a key figure in the Jeff Epstein scandal alongside Jes Staley, [brother of Peter Staley] knows this, and would be delighted with an outcome that kills two birds with one stone: take his name off the front pages and also make JP Morgan even bigger. Actually three birds: remember it was JPM that started that “Not QE” Fed liquidity injection in Sept 2019 when the bank “suddenly” found itself reserve constrained. We doubt that JPM would mind greatly if Powell ended his rate hikes and eased/launched QE as a result of a bank crisis, a bank crisis that Jamie helped precipitate.
“And while we wait to see if Dimon’s participation in the Epstein scandal will now fade from media coverage, and whether Powell will launch QE, we know one thing for sure: JPM was a clear and immediate benefactor of SIVB’s collapse because in a day when everything crashed, JPM stock was one of the handful that were up.”
The real victims of the SVB fallout are the depositors: startups (10 to 100 employees) who cannot make payroll, and will have to shut down or furlough *next week*
If these startups wait weeks/months for their deposits, we have destroyed a generation of US startups, *at random* https://t.co/mLRQzag1VI
The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
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Violent protests in Nigeria reveal that getting average people to embrace central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) might be more difficult than government officials would like.
Nigerians recently took to the streets to protest a cash shortage caused by government policies adopted in order to push the country into the adoption of its central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Protesters attacked bank ATMs and blocked streets, and demonstrations turned violent in some cities.
According to The Guardian, “Nigeria has been struggling with a shortage in physical cash since the central bank began to swap old bills of the local naira currency for new ones, leading to a shortfall in banknotes.” According to reporting by the news outlet, the protests erupted when bank customers couldn’t access their cash or change old banknotes for new ones. Tensions ratcheted up when the government set a February deadline to change old notes.
The problem is there aren’t enough new banknotes to go around, and that appears to be on purpose. Bloomberg called the policy “demonetization.”
According to the Associated Press, the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced the redesigned notes last fall. The plan was to recover about 85% of the total currency in circulation outside the banking system. The Nigerian central bank said the policy was implemented to remove counterfeit currency from the system and to discourage cash ransom payments to kidnappers and other criminals. But there is an underlying reason for the new policy that The Guardian only mentions in passing.
The policy was also to promote cashless transactions by limiting the use of cash for businesses.”
The AP report also noted that the central bank said the policy would help “make digital payments the norm.”
What these corporate news outlets failed to report is that Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Godwin Emefiele said, “The destination, as far as I am concerned, is to achieve a 100% cashless economy in Nigeria.”
The issue isn’t just the banknote swap. In December, the central bank limited cash withdrawals to 100,000 naira (US$225) per week for individuals and 500,000 naira ($1,123) for businesses.
Thanks But No Thanks
That seems to be the basic attitude of Nigerians when it comes to the central bank’s digital currency.
CBDCs exist as virtual banknotes or “coins” held in a digital wallet on a computer or smartphone. The difference between a central bank (government) digital currency and peer-to-peer electronic cash such as bitcoin is that the value of the digital currency is backed and controlled by the government, just like traditional fiat currency.
The Central Bank of Nigeria launched its CBDC, called the eNaira, in the fall of 2021. Last October, Bloomberg reported that only about 0.5% of Nigerians had adopted the digital currency.
Ironically, about 50% of Nigerians use cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. It’s not that they spurn digital currency. They just spurn the government’s digital currency.
Central Bank of Nigeria Deputy Governor Kingsley Obiora said people just need “a little push from the government,” and they will embrace the eNaira.
The government tried several schemes to incentivize the adoption of the CBDC, including offering a 5% discount to taxi drivers and passengers. It also lifted a restriction that required people to have a bank account in order to use the eNaira.
But with those soft approaches failing to achieve the desired results, the government turned to more coercive measures, including limiting bank withdraws and the currency switch – a policy that will effectively reduce the amount of cash in circulation.
War on Cash
Central bank digital currencies are part of a broader “war on cash.”
A cashless society is sold on the promise of providing a safe, convenient, and more secure alternative to physical cash. We’re also told it will help stop dangerous criminalswho like the intractability of cash.
But there is a darker side – the promise of control.
The elimination of cash creates the potential for the government to track and even control consumer spending. Digital economies would also make it even easier for central banks to engage in manipulative monetary policies such as negative interest rates.
ER: And to tie your money to other nefarious policies such as mandatory vaccination!
Nigeria isn’t the only country experimenting with CBDCs. In fact, most countries are interested in eliminating cash. China, India, and the US have all launched pilot programs to test CBDCs.
Imagine if there was no cash. It would be impossible to hide even the smallest transaction from the government’s eyes. Something as simple as your morning trip to Starbucks wouldn’t be a secret from government officials. As Bloomberg put it in an article published when China launched a digital yuan pilot program in 2020, digital currency “offers China’s authorities a degree of control never possible with physical money.”
The government could even “turn off” an individual’s ability to make purchases. Bloomberg described just how much control a digital currency could give Chinese officials.
The PBOC has also indicated that it could put limits on the sizes of some transactions, or even require an appointment to make large ones. Some observers wonder whether payments could be linked to the emerging social-credit system, wherein citizens with exemplary behavior are ‘whitelisted’ for privileges, while those with criminal and other infractions find themselves left out. ‘China’s goal is not to make payments more convenient but to replace cash, so it can keep closer tabs on people than it already does,’ argues Aaron Brown, a crypto investor who writes for Bloomberg Opinion.”
Economist Thorsten Polleit outlined the potential for Big Brother-like government control with the advent of a digital euro in an article published by the Mises Wire. As he put it, “the path to becoming a surveillance state regime will accelerate considerably” if and when a digital currency is issued.
Coming to America
Last year, the Federal Reserve released a “discussion paper” examining the pros and cons of a potential US central bank digital dollar. According to the central bank’s website, there has been no decision on implementing a digital currency, but this pilot program reveals the idea is further along than most people realized.
Ultimately, it would take a congressional act to establish a digital dollar as legal tender.
US officials toyed with the possibility of a digital dollar at the height of the pandemic. A Democratic proposal for stimulus payments in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic featured digital currency deposited into digital wallets.
But Americans don’t seem to be any more interested in digital currency than Nigerians. When the Fed solicited comments on CBDCs, more than 66% of the 2,052 commenters were either concerned or completely opposed to the idea of a digital dollar. According to the Cato Institute, “The most common concerns were over financial privacy, financial oppression, and the risk of disintermediating the banking system.”
Featured image, man with police: PIUS UTOMI EKPEI / AFP
Featured image, crowd: Reuters
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The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
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Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.
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Establishment media outlets, including NPR and The Washington Post, have been forced to issue major retractions in recent days, correcting misreporting on matters ranging from FBI whistleblowers to how President Joe Biden’s son Beau Biden died.
NPR was forced to issue a correction Saturday to clarify that Beau Biden died from brain cancer in 2015, not from injuries he received while stationed with the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, as stated in the original report.
The public outlet is not the only source to misrepresent Beau Biden’s death. The president himself has previously claimed that his late son died in Iraq, not from cancer.
NPR also walked back a claim in an article last month headlined “Speaker McCarthy leads first border trip in his new role. Critics call it a photo op.” The piece inaccurately reported that no Democrats attended a hearing at a Texas border town, bolstering critics’ claims that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans were using the border visit to generate media coverage.
“In fact, some Democrats attended,” NPR later clarified.
The New York Times, the Washington Post and Rolling Stone all issued corrections to articles over the weekend about a Democrat House Judiciary Committee report criticizing Republican whistleblowers and GOP-led House investigations.
The Times admitted Saturday it had incorrectly stated that FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend worked for the Center for Renewing America, largely funded by former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows’ Conservative Partnership Institute, in an article headlined “G.O.P. Witnesses, Paid by Trump Ally, Embraced Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theories.” The Times issued a correction stating: “The center is affiliated with the institute and sustained mostly by donations; it is not largely funded by the institute.”
Rolling Stone corrected an inaccurate claim regarding former FBI analyst George Hill, whose attorney Jason Foster says retired from the agency on “good terms.”
Rolling Stone reported originally that Hill’s FBI security clearance had been “revoked” when in fact it was in good standing. The magazine said it mistook Hill for another whistleblower, Steve Friend, whose clearance had been suspended for a review but not revoked either.
“This story has been corrected to reflect that Steven Friend’s security clearance was suspended and George Hill retired of his own volition,” Rolling Stone stated.
“Obviously, they couldn’t keep the details of George Hill’s and [Stephen Friend’s] cases straight,” Foster tweeted. “So, they just blended them together with some fiction out of thin air about how Hill had to retire because his clearance was revoked and he couldn’t find work anymore.”
Rolling Stone has been called out before for media ethics issues.
In November 2014, the magazine published an article titled “A Rape on Campus” claiming that a University of Virginia student was the victim of a fraternity gang rape. The story was retracted in April 2015, and the outlet lost a defamation lawsuit brough by a university official and settled other cases with the fraternity and some of its members.
The Columbia Journalism Review said at the time that “Rolling Stone needs a transparency lesson” and the outlet “damaged the credibility of an important movement” bringing attention to sexual assault.
The Washington Post, which still uses the slogan “Democracy Dies in the Darkness,” has issued an alarming number of corrections this year alone to stories dealing with conservatives.
Most recently, the outlet issued a correction to a Friday article headlined “Democrats challenge credibility of GOP witnesses who embrace false Jan. 6 claims,” stating: “An earlier version of this article erroneously said former FBI official Stephen Friend had not reported to a supervisor one of his concerns related to the use of a SWAT team in arrests related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riots. He said he did tell the supervisor, but he did not mention it in a written declaration.”
Previously, the Post issued an undated correction to a 2020 article headlined “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed,” which criticized the Arkansas Republican senator for speculating that COVID-19 originated from a Chinese lab leak. The theory has since been found credible by the Energy Department and the FBI, and the Post added to its article: “The term ‘debunked’ and The Post’s use of ‘conspiracy theory’ have been removed because, then as now, there was no determination about the origins of the virus.”
In January, the Post was forced to issue a correction to a story about conservative activist Chris Rufo, who said the paper published “flat-out lies” in an article headlined “DeSantis moves to turn a progressive Fla. college into a conservative one.”
“A previous version of this story called Christopher Rufo a Republican activist who denies the existence of systemic racism,” the Post wrote in a correction. “He is a conservative activist who has said American law is not currently discriminating against racial minorities.”
The recent corrections from these outlets follow several high-profile media corrections regarding claims about COVID-19 and the since-disproven Steele dossier alleging then-candidate Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.
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Over the past year, 18 US states have officially ended pandemic-era states of emergency – including the covid food benefit, while a December mandate from Congress will end aid in March for the other 32 states, along with the District of Columbia, the US Virgin Islands and Guam.
The collective return to pre-pandemic policies includes enhanced unemployment benefits and child tax credits, as well as a rollback adjustment to Medicaid that boosted enrollment.
Now, people are waiting up to nine hours in mile-long lines for free food – some of whom say they can only afford to eat once per day, while others say they limit expensive food items such as meat for specific family members, such as growing teenage boys.
“I thought, ‘Wow, the government is trying to kill us now,” said 63-year-old Danny Blair of Kentucky. Blair, who lives in a mobile home with his wife, survives on his Social Security disability check, the Washington Post reports.
“They are going to starve us out,” Blair continued, apparently unaware that government assistance provided during the pandemic wasn’t permanent.
Blair and his wife hop into their truck twice a month at 4 a.m. to ensure they get a few staples at the Hazel Green Food Project’s giveaway. On a recent Friday, they waited nine hours until local prisoners on work duty started loading bags of meat and vegetables, potato chips and cookies into vehicles in one of the nation’s most impoverished communities.
From the front to the back of the line, the sea of despair and hardship along this desolate Kentucky highway foreshadowed what may be in store for millions of Americans as the federal government ended the remaining pandemic increase in monthly food stamp benefits this week. -WaPo
As the Post frames it, the pullback of pandemic-related aid could pose a setback to the Biden administration’s efforts to ‘slash poverty’ while building a ‘healthier and more sustainable middle class’ – none of which were the stated goals of the temporary aid.
“We saw positive benefits from this and less hardship, including for families with children,” said Dottie Rosenbaum, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who points out that all the free money helped reduce childhood poverty rates in 2021. “We can expect that to reverse now.”
Following the reduction in benefits, the average SNAP recipient’s benefits are expected to drop by around $90 per month, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That said, an even greater reduction is in store for seniors and the working poor who receive assistance from other government programs, and will likely qualify for less.
In Kentucky, many seniors on food stamps saw their monthly benefit drop from $281 to $22 last year after the state ended the pandemic emergency in May, according to local food bank network, Feeding Kentucky.
Other states are preparing for the same
“We are bracing, and our agencies, member food banks, food pantries and soup kitchens are not prepared for what is about to hit them,” Said Ohio Association of Foodbanks executive director, Lisa Hamler-Fugitt. “This reduction, and end of the public health emergency, could not be coming at a worse time.”
Even before the benefits retired this month in Ohio, Hamler-Fugitt said demand at food banks soared last year as retail food prices rose by 11.4 percent nationwide, more than five times the historical annual average. She said Ohio charities and foodbanks served 3.1 million people in the last quarter of 2022, which she called a record and about 600,000 more than were served during the same period in 2021.
Now, Hamler-Fugitt expects many of the state’s 1.5 million recipients will also be scrambling to find food assistance, adding she projects the benefit reductions will remove $120 million from Ohio’s retail economy each month. -WaPo
“We estimate we would have to increase our distribution by 15 times to even begin to address this, and we don’t have the resources to do that,” said Hamler-Fugitt. “So hunger rates are going to increase among our seniors, and families, and our children are going to fall behind academically because they are not going to be able to concentrate on empty stomachs.”
Is this practical?
In Kentucky, GOP lawmaker Sen. Donald Douglas said during debates that it wasn’t practical to live “under a constant state of emergency.”
“Let’s ask yourself, should SNAP benefits be a way of life?” he asked. “Now we know it is for some. Should it be a way of life for adults?“
(TLB) published this article from ZeroHedge as compiled and written by Tyler Durden
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The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
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Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.
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Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.
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Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
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