Did The Defense Industry Really Give More To Bernie Sanders Than Any Other 2020 Candidate?!

Despite his frequent votes against defense bills, Senator Bernie Sanders has collected more presidential campaign contributions from defense industry sources than any other candidate, including Donald Trump. That’s according to data on 2020 funding at the OpenSecrets.org website, which is sponsored by the Center for Responsive Politics.

[12-2019] Defense Industry Gives More To Bernie Than Any 2020 Candidate (originally published at American Conservative)

Links to “Amy Klobuchar”, not “Bernie Sanders”?! According to OpenSecrets, Joe Biden received the most from the MIC. Donald Trump came in second, with Bernie Sanders in third place. OpenSecrets doesn’t distinguish between employers and employees!?*

H/T: Stephen Gardner’s interview with Winslow T. Wheeler

Related:

*Top 20 Recipients (Joe Biden and Donald Trump):

METHODOLOGY: The numbers on this page are based on contributions from PACs and individuals giving $200 or more.

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U.S. Government Seeks Extensive Oversight over TikTok

Source.

The U.S. government, through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), proposed a draft agreement last summer that would grant it extensive access and control over TikTok‘s operations. This move comes as an attempt to address national security concerns related to the Chinese-owned app. A draft agreement, sourced from Forbes, outlines the following potential powers for the U.S. government:

U.S. Government Seeks Extensive Oversight over TikTok

Beijing claims Chinese ministry official is CIA recruit, second arrest China lays at feet of US spy agency in a month

China’s top anti-espionage agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), announced on Monday it has arrested an official it says is a spy for the CIA.

Beijing claims Chinese ministry official is CIA recruit, second arrest China lays at feet of US spy agency in a month

Related:

[2017] Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations

Welfare Queens and Welfare Fraud

The Rise and Reign of the Welfare Queen

Researcher links government assistance program to much earlier origins of welfare stereotypes

How Bill Clinton’s Welfare Reform Changed America

But based on several studies of TANF and its beneficiaries, “it barely reaches even the poorest Americans, and has all but ceased doing the work of lifting people out of poverty,” according to the Atlantic. “‘Welfare reform’ didn’t fix welfare so much as destroy it, and if similar changes were applied to Medicaid and food stamps, they would likely do the same.”

Americans believe benefits fraud is common for SNAP

Experts say that deliberate SNAP fraud is uncommon because of the rigorous application process and multi-step eligibility review. In 2016, the Congressional Research Service determined that for every 10,000 households participating in SNAP, about 14 contained a recipient who was investigated and determined to have committed fraud.

The Truth About Food Stamps

Who Is Really Responsible for Welfare Fraud?

In other words, don’t take a single example or casual observation of welfare fraud and claim it represents the tens of millions of poor who receive welfare benefits.

While welfare fraud committed by the poor appears to be low, the federal government has long recognized businesses being the true criminals.

While these are some of the better known examples of large scale welfare fraud, they are not the only ones. The above cases alone represent over $25 Billion in welfare fraud recovery. The criminals having the greatest impact committing welfare fraud against the government are not the poor, but the privately owned businesses that take advantage of them.

Brett Favre Is The Welfare Queen Republicans Warned Us About

Updates:

Biggest Perpetrators of Welfare Fraud Are Private Companies, Not ‘Welfare Queens’

DOJ eyeing Americans ‘like ATMs,’ spending over $6 billion to aid civil asset forfeitures, watchdog says

The Department of Justice is shelling out more than $6 billion to private companies to manage its asset forfeiture investigations, raising alarm from one nonprofit law firm that accuses police of “treating ordinary Americans like ATMs” and seizing their cash.

DOJ eyeing Americans ‘like ATMs,’ spending over $6 billion to aid civil asset forfeitures, watchdog says

H/T: Steve Lehto

Senators Warren & Graham Want To Create New Online Speech Police Commission

The regulation will continue until internet freedom improves, apparently. Last year we wrote about Senator Michael Bennet pushing a terrible “Digital Platform Commission” to be the new internet speech police, and now we have the bipartisan free speech hating duo of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham with their proposal for a Digital Consumer Protection Commission.

Senators Warren & Graham Want To Create New Online Speech Police Commission

An Open Letter to RFK Jr. on Israel/Palestine

This article was originally written as a private letter addressed to Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his campaign manager, former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). Unanswered since it was sent in early June 2023, it is now published as an open letter.

An Open Letter to RFK Jr. on Israel/Palestine

Related:

Israel’s One-State Reality

When a U.S. president demanded inspections of a nuclear facility in the Middle East (and failed)

The Battle of the Letters, 1963: John F. Kennedy, David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, and the U.S. Inspections of Dimona