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Apr 7, 2023 09:02:03 #
Liberal Group Running Massive Election Bribery Scheme in Supreme Court Race
https://newstalk1130.iheart.com/featured/common-sense-central/content/2023-02-27-liberal-group-running-massive-election-bribery-scheme-in-supreme-court-race/
It starts with a text from a random number and an offer that sounds too good to be true.
“Hi! It’s Wisconsin Takes Action,” the mysterious texter begins. We are helping to elect a progressive majority to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. We are offering an opportunity for you to earn $250-plus by talking to your friends and family about voting.”
It’s not nearly that simple and in fact amounts to Election Bribery, a felony in Wisconsin punishable by a maximum sentence of more than three years in prison.
The texts have been sent to thousands of Wisconsinites, many of whom have jumped at the chance to, in the words of one Wisconsin Takes Action organizer, “not only get paid…but also to influence a really important election.”
Those who respond to the text expressing interest in the offer are given instructions to log in to a live training session on Zoom in which organizers explain how the program works. A video recording of one such training session the day after the Supreme Court primary reveals that people aren’t just talking to their friends and family about voting, but rather adding their names and contact information to Wisconsin Takes Action’s database and then repeatedly contacting them to ensure that they vote for liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz.
This was made abundantly clear during the hour-long training session.
“The primary was just last night for the Supreme Court so we know who will be on the ballot in the general election,” said one organizer who introduced himself as Christian. “We have Dan Kelly, the conservative former Supreme Court justice and then Janet Protasiewicz—the progressive circuit court judge currently—and she is the progressive candidate who just won the primary.
“Of course, Wisconsin Takes Action is focused on putting forth progressive ideas and implementing progressive laws, so, you know, we really are looking forward to her as the candidate for this upcoming election.”
To get her elected, Christian explained, the group is using a technique called “relational organizing.”
“It’s really simple. In traditional organizing in campaigns, we may think about campaign offices, someone making a call to a constituent and telling someone to go vote, someone they don’t know. In relational organizing, you’re talking to people who you do know and that’s really effective because you talking to your father to go vote or your sister or your friend is a lot more effective than me telling them to go vote because I don’t know them. But with you, there’s a lot more connection or relationship built and more reason for them to be compelled to go vote.”
However, people who take part in this relational organizing campaign—whom the group calls “community mobilizers”—are paid per person who they deliver to the Wisconsin Takes Action database and, ultimately, to the polls to cast a vote for Protasiewicz.
This is in direct violation of Wisconsin Statute § 12.11, which provides that “any person who offers, gives, lends or promises to give or lend...anything of value...to, or for, any elector, or to or for any other person in order to induce any elector to go or refrain from going to the polls, vote or refrain from voting [or] vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular person" commits felony election bribery.
In its Zoom training, the Wisconsin Takes Action staffers made it abundantly clear that they were offering money only if their mobilizers would induce their friends and family to go to the polls and vote, preferably for Protasiewicz.
The election bribery works this way: People on the Zoom call were told that they would first get $30, payable in gift cards to various retailers or a Mastercard debit card, to download an app through the Empower Project, a left-wing organization that, according to its website, helps “progressive organizations and nonprofits… activate, build, and expand their activist bases and organizational reach on a meaningful scale.”
Once the app is downloaded, mobilizers load it up with the names and contact information of 75 people they plan to convince to vote for Protasiewicz. The Empower app will then randomly and automatically select 15 of those 75 to serve as a control group to test how well the relational organizing system works. The mobilizer won’t contact those 15, and the Empower Project will after the election see if they voted even without the mobilizer’s communication.
The other 60 people, though, will be active voter contacts, and the mobilizer will be paid $1 each for adding their names to the database and then immediately contacting them to ask them if they plan to vote. Mobilizers will only be paid if they load 60 people and then contact them. If they do, they will receive a $60 gift card from retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Kroger or digital services like Uber, Uber Eats and Xbox or a $60 prepaid Mastercard.
“You can earn $250-plus,” Christian explained during the Zoom training session. “We’ll ask you to make a list of 75 people today and then talk to them about voting four times each. Today will be your first attempt reaching out to those folks on that list you built. Each time you talk to them you’ll earn a gift card for each round of outreach you take part in.”
According to a slide from the Zoom training session, mobilizers have from February 22nd to March 19th to build their lists of 75 voters and make an initial contact with 60 of them. That earns them their first $60 gift card. They then have to contact each of the 60 again between March 20th and March 30th and try to convince them to early vote. That will earn the mobilizer an additional $65. Between March 31st and April 2nd, they have to contact each of the 60 again and make sure they have a plan to vote. That earns an additional $70. Finally, on either the day before the Supreme Court election, April 3rd, or Election Day itself on April 4th, they must contact each of the 60 voters again and get them to the polls if they haven’t voted already.
If participants do all of this, they will earn a total of $270. But as Christian explained, that isn’t all.
“You not only can make $270 for a total, you can earn way above that,” he said. “We’ve had volunteers make $500-plus on our campaign. From now until March 19th, you will get $30 for every person you know in your personal network to simply download the app and join our campaign. That’s really simple, really easy to make that cash, but also to have a huge impact on this election because then they can become a mobilizer like you.”
All gift cards are emailed directly to the mobilizers, who are quite literally being paid by the vote to deliver votes for Protasiewicz in an obvious and brazen election bribery scheme.
Wisconsin Takes Action’s own website makes it clear what it expects of its community mobilizers: “We want you to encourage the people in your network to check their voter registration status, get registered to vote, encourage them to vote for the progressive Supreme Court candidate.”
This is in direct violation to Wisconsin Statute § 12.11’s prohibition on giving any person anything of value in exchange for inducing electors to go to the polls and vote for a specific candidate.
Wisconsin Takes Action has not yet responded to a request for comment about its program and whether the group believes it comports with state law.
The group itself is brand new in Wisconsin, as its website was created on January 27th and its Twitter account was started at around the same time. Still, it proudly listed in a slide during its Zoom training a number of large liberal organizations as partners, including the Black Lives Matter PAC, Freedom Action Now, One Fair Wage, End Citizens United, Wisconsin Conservation Voters, and Nextgen America. Two large labor unions were also listed as partners: The American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
On the Zoom call was Sachin Chheda, a former Wisconsin Democratic Party staffer and longtime Democrat operative who most recently helped run the City of Milwaukee’s voter turnout initiative ahead of the 2022 midterms. Called “Milwaukee Votes 2022,” the initiative was unlawfully run by GPS Impact, a Democrat strategy firm whose express goal is to help “Democrats, progressive organizations, and elected officials win in red states.” Chheda has also refused to answer repeated requests for comment on his involvement with Wisconsin Takes Action.
The primary force behind Wisconsin Takes Action, though, is the Organizing Empowerment Political Action Committee (PAC). Strangely, that organization’s website is nothing more than a placeholder page with a “Contact Us” form. During the 2022 midterm election cycle, Organizing Empowerment spent more than $300,000 in support of Democratic Senate candidates, including $250,000 in support of Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Mastro (and $35,000 against her Republican opponent), plus an additional $14,000 in support of Mandela Barnes and $600 each to support Georgia’s Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff (who wasn’t running).
Interestingly, Organizing Empowerment spent far more on salaries and “unclassifiable” other items, nearly 98 percent of which—more than $1.1 million—went to Verdugo Strategies, a company whose website consists solely of a landing page that is very similar in appearance to that of Organizing Empowerment. Verdugo Strategies is owned by Greg Diamond, a self-described “campaign hack” who worked as Senior Operations Director for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin from June, 2020 to April, 2021 before launching Verdugo Strategies in July, 2021.
He has not yet responded to requests for comment either on his involvement in Wisconsin Takes Action or the massive payment Organizing Empowerment made to him last year.
While Organizing Empowerment is the main force behind Wisconsin Takes Action, none of the group’s organizers on the Zoom training call seemed to know much about how it was funded or who would be paying for the community mobilizers’ gift cards.
“Who is paying for this?” asked one mobilizer.
“Ummm, so this is just like our firm, umm, it’s like a nonprofit, uh, that is like overseeing and like donors donate to that,” an organizer answered. “Then we as Wisconsin Takes Action are just, like, put into place to organize. But in terms of like, who the donors are, I’m not sure.”
“Okay, so you get donors to your nonprofit and then you turn around and pay us volunteers to go out and hopefully drum up a lot of votes this voting season.”
“Yeah, we’re just paying people to reach out to people about voting,” the organizer answered.
“Vote!” interrupted another mobilizer who was being trained. “We’ll talk about it because we need to vote.”
Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to matter to Wisconsin Takes Action who its mobilizers are actually talking to about voting.
“To reach out to people, you really only need their name and phone number,” the organizer explained. “Also, because you don’t need to know them at all, we’re paying just to reach out to people. As long as you can send a text to somebody with a number, that’s going count as outreach.”
This directly contradicts Wisconsin Takes Action’s assertion that it is merely paying people to talk to friends and family about voting; it is clear that the aim is to deliver anyone and everyone to cast their ballots for Protasiewicz by illegally paying mobilizers to induce them to vote. This is the very definition of election bribery under Wisconsin Statute 12.11, and Wisconsin Takes Action is promising even more of it in the 2024 presidential election.
“This type of organizing is almost brand new,” an organizer said during last week’s training session. “The first time it was utilized was in 2020, and then it was only used in the Georgia runoff [Senate] elections. They did it last cycle in Nevada in the last election cycle and it worked really well.”
This is claim supported by the fact that the only donations Organizing Empowerment made in 2020 were in Georgia and nearly all of its spending in 2022 was in Nevada. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race can be seen as something of a test run; if the election bribery scheme works as well here as it did in Nevada, then, the organizer, explained, the plan is to expand the effort into every single swing state to deliver the next year’s presidential race as well.
“Now they’re planning to do it for this and then for all swing states in 2024 potentially.”
https://newstalk1130.iheart.com/featured/common-sense-central/content/2023-02-27-liberal-group-running-massive-election-bribery-scheme-in-supreme-court-race/
It starts with a text from a random number and an offer that sounds too good to be true.
“Hi! It’s Wisconsin Takes Action,” the mysterious texter begins. We are helping to elect a progressive majority to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. We are offering an opportunity for you to earn $250-plus by talking to your friends and family about voting.”
It’s not nearly that simple and in fact amounts to Election Bribery, a felony in Wisconsin punishable by a maximum sentence of more than three years in prison.
The texts have been sent to thousands of Wisconsinites, many of whom have jumped at the chance to, in the words of one Wisconsin Takes Action organizer, “not only get paid…but also to influence a really important election.”
Those who respond to the text expressing interest in the offer are given instructions to log in to a live training session on Zoom in which organizers explain how the program works. A video recording of one such training session the day after the Supreme Court primary reveals that people aren’t just talking to their friends and family about voting, but rather adding their names and contact information to Wisconsin Takes Action’s database and then repeatedly contacting them to ensure that they vote for liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz.
This was made abundantly clear during the hour-long training session.
“The primary was just last night for the Supreme Court so we know who will be on the ballot in the general election,” said one organizer who introduced himself as Christian. “We have Dan Kelly, the conservative former Supreme Court justice and then Janet Protasiewicz—the progressive circuit court judge currently—and she is the progressive candidate who just won the primary.
“Of course, Wisconsin Takes Action is focused on putting forth progressive ideas and implementing progressive laws, so, you know, we really are looking forward to her as the candidate for this upcoming election.”
To get her elected, Christian explained, the group is using a technique called “relational organizing.”
“It’s really simple. In traditional organizing in campaigns, we may think about campaign offices, someone making a call to a constituent and telling someone to go vote, someone they don’t know. In relational organizing, you’re talking to people who you do know and that’s really effective because you talking to your father to go vote or your sister or your friend is a lot more effective than me telling them to go vote because I don’t know them. But with you, there’s a lot more connection or relationship built and more reason for them to be compelled to go vote.”
However, people who take part in this relational organizing campaign—whom the group calls “community mobilizers”—are paid per person who they deliver to the Wisconsin Takes Action database and, ultimately, to the polls to cast a vote for Protasiewicz.
This is in direct violation of Wisconsin Statute § 12.11, which provides that “any person who offers, gives, lends or promises to give or lend...anything of value...to, or for, any elector, or to or for any other person in order to induce any elector to go or refrain from going to the polls, vote or refrain from voting [or] vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular person" commits felony election bribery.
In its Zoom training, the Wisconsin Takes Action staffers made it abundantly clear that they were offering money only if their mobilizers would induce their friends and family to go to the polls and vote, preferably for Protasiewicz.
The election bribery works this way: People on the Zoom call were told that they would first get $30, payable in gift cards to various retailers or a Mastercard debit card, to download an app through the Empower Project, a left-wing organization that, according to its website, helps “progressive organizations and nonprofits… activate, build, and expand their activist bases and organizational reach on a meaningful scale.”
Once the app is downloaded, mobilizers load it up with the names and contact information of 75 people they plan to convince to vote for Protasiewicz. The Empower app will then randomly and automatically select 15 of those 75 to serve as a control group to test how well the relational organizing system works. The mobilizer won’t contact those 15, and the Empower Project will after the election see if they voted even without the mobilizer’s communication.
The other 60 people, though, will be active voter contacts, and the mobilizer will be paid $1 each for adding their names to the database and then immediately contacting them to ask them if they plan to vote. Mobilizers will only be paid if they load 60 people and then contact them. If they do, they will receive a $60 gift card from retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Kroger or digital services like Uber, Uber Eats and Xbox or a $60 prepaid Mastercard.
“You can earn $250-plus,” Christian explained during the Zoom training session. “We’ll ask you to make a list of 75 people today and then talk to them about voting four times each. Today will be your first attempt reaching out to those folks on that list you built. Each time you talk to them you’ll earn a gift card for each round of outreach you take part in.”
According to a slide from the Zoom training session, mobilizers have from February 22nd to March 19th to build their lists of 75 voters and make an initial contact with 60 of them. That earns them their first $60 gift card. They then have to contact each of the 60 again between March 20th and March 30th and try to convince them to early vote. That will earn the mobilizer an additional $65. Between March 31st and April 2nd, they have to contact each of the 60 again and make sure they have a plan to vote. That earns an additional $70. Finally, on either the day before the Supreme Court election, April 3rd, or Election Day itself on April 4th, they must contact each of the 60 voters again and get them to the polls if they haven’t voted already.
If participants do all of this, they will earn a total of $270. But as Christian explained, that isn’t all.
“You not only can make $270 for a total, you can earn way above that,” he said. “We’ve had volunteers make $500-plus on our campaign. From now until March 19th, you will get $30 for every person you know in your personal network to simply download the app and join our campaign. That’s really simple, really easy to make that cash, but also to have a huge impact on this election because then they can become a mobilizer like you.”
All gift cards are emailed directly to the mobilizers, who are quite literally being paid by the vote to deliver votes for Protasiewicz in an obvious and brazen election bribery scheme.
Wisconsin Takes Action’s own website makes it clear what it expects of its community mobilizers: “We want you to encourage the people in your network to check their voter registration status, get registered to vote, encourage them to vote for the progressive Supreme Court candidate.”
This is in direct violation to Wisconsin Statute § 12.11’s prohibition on giving any person anything of value in exchange for inducing electors to go to the polls and vote for a specific candidate.
Wisconsin Takes Action has not yet responded to a request for comment about its program and whether the group believes it comports with state law.
The group itself is brand new in Wisconsin, as its website was created on January 27th and its Twitter account was started at around the same time. Still, it proudly listed in a slide during its Zoom training a number of large liberal organizations as partners, including the Black Lives Matter PAC, Freedom Action Now, One Fair Wage, End Citizens United, Wisconsin Conservation Voters, and Nextgen America. Two large labor unions were also listed as partners: The American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
On the Zoom call was Sachin Chheda, a former Wisconsin Democratic Party staffer and longtime Democrat operative who most recently helped run the City of Milwaukee’s voter turnout initiative ahead of the 2022 midterms. Called “Milwaukee Votes 2022,” the initiative was unlawfully run by GPS Impact, a Democrat strategy firm whose express goal is to help “Democrats, progressive organizations, and elected officials win in red states.” Chheda has also refused to answer repeated requests for comment on his involvement with Wisconsin Takes Action.
The primary force behind Wisconsin Takes Action, though, is the Organizing Empowerment Political Action Committee (PAC). Strangely, that organization’s website is nothing more than a placeholder page with a “Contact Us” form. During the 2022 midterm election cycle, Organizing Empowerment spent more than $300,000 in support of Democratic Senate candidates, including $250,000 in support of Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Mastro (and $35,000 against her Republican opponent), plus an additional $14,000 in support of Mandela Barnes and $600 each to support Georgia’s Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff (who wasn’t running).
Interestingly, Organizing Empowerment spent far more on salaries and “unclassifiable” other items, nearly 98 percent of which—more than $1.1 million—went to Verdugo Strategies, a company whose website consists solely of a landing page that is very similar in appearance to that of Organizing Empowerment. Verdugo Strategies is owned by Greg Diamond, a self-described “campaign hack” who worked as Senior Operations Director for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin from June, 2020 to April, 2021 before launching Verdugo Strategies in July, 2021.
He has not yet responded to requests for comment either on his involvement in Wisconsin Takes Action or the massive payment Organizing Empowerment made to him last year.
While Organizing Empowerment is the main force behind Wisconsin Takes Action, none of the group’s organizers on the Zoom training call seemed to know much about how it was funded or who would be paying for the community mobilizers’ gift cards.
“Who is paying for this?” asked one mobilizer.
“Ummm, so this is just like our firm, umm, it’s like a nonprofit, uh, that is like overseeing and like donors donate to that,” an organizer answered. “Then we as Wisconsin Takes Action are just, like, put into place to organize. But in terms of like, who the donors are, I’m not sure.”
“Okay, so you get donors to your nonprofit and then you turn around and pay us volunteers to go out and hopefully drum up a lot of votes this voting season.”
“Yeah, we’re just paying people to reach out to people about voting,” the organizer answered.
“Vote!” interrupted another mobilizer who was being trained. “We’ll talk about it because we need to vote.”
Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to matter to Wisconsin Takes Action who its mobilizers are actually talking to about voting.
“To reach out to people, you really only need their name and phone number,” the organizer explained. “Also, because you don’t need to know them at all, we’re paying just to reach out to people. As long as you can send a text to somebody with a number, that’s going count as outreach.”
This directly contradicts Wisconsin Takes Action’s assertion that it is merely paying people to talk to friends and family about voting; it is clear that the aim is to deliver anyone and everyone to cast their ballots for Protasiewicz by illegally paying mobilizers to induce them to vote. This is the very definition of election bribery under Wisconsin Statute 12.11, and Wisconsin Takes Action is promising even more of it in the 2024 presidential election.
“This type of organizing is almost brand new,” an organizer said during last week’s training session. “The first time it was utilized was in 2020, and then it was only used in the Georgia runoff [Senate] elections. They did it last cycle in Nevada in the last election cycle and it worked really well.”
This is claim supported by the fact that the only donations Organizing Empowerment made in 2020 were in Georgia and nearly all of its spending in 2022 was in Nevada. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race can be seen as something of a test run; if the election bribery scheme works as well here as it did in Nevada, then, the organizer, explained, the plan is to expand the effort into every single swing state to deliver the next year’s presidential race as well.
“Now they’re planning to do it for this and then for all swing states in 2024 potentially.”
Apr 5, 2023 11:52:31 #
Just another elected office purchase by George Soros.
Apr 5, 2023 11:51:00 #
letmedance wrote:
So as we see once again it is money that wins elections.
Exactly my point! Unfortunately, but not at all surprisingly, that fact went right over the heads of the Dem Useful Idiots here.
Check out Black and White Photography section of our forum.
Apr 5, 2023 00:48:26 #
Appeals court orders Stormy Daniels pay Trump $122K in legal fees hours after arraignment
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/stormy-daniels-ordered-to-pay-trump-122k-in-legal-fees-hours-after-arraignment/
Former President Donald Trump secured a legal victory against Stormy Daniels hours after his arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday in connection to a “hush money” payment made to the porn star during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ordered Daniels to pay Trump $121,972 in legal fees stemming from a 2018 defamation lawsuit that she filed against him that was later dismissed.
“Alvin Bragg shut down New York City, brought in 38,000 NYPD officers, and will spend an estimated $200,000,000 of NYC funds, for a totally legal $130,000 NDA.
On top of all that, the 9th Circuit Court just awarded me $122,000 — over the $500,000 already awarded, from Stormy ‘Horseface’ Daniels!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday.
Daniels had claimed that after a 2011 interview with In Touch Magazine, during which she alleged that she had an affair with Trump in 2006, an unnamed man approached her and appeared to threaten her, saying, “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story” and “That’s a beautiful little girl.
It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom,” a reference to her daughter.
Her interview was not published by the magazine.
In 2018, Trump accused Daniels of lying about the “nonexistent man” and his threats, calling it “a total con job,” prompting Daniels to sue him.
The Ninth Circuit ruled that the fees demanded by Trump were “reasonable,” according to a court filing.
The nearly $122,000 in legal fees awarded to Trump on Tuesday are on top of some $300,000 Daniels was ordered to pay when the lawsuit was dismissed.
“BREAKING!!! the 9th Circuit just awarded Trump $121,962.56 in attorney fees from Stormy Daniels. Order just released. This in addition to the roughly $500k she already owes him,” the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., wrote in a tweet Tuesday.
“LOL glad she’s out there saying her T-shirt sales are booming she’ll be able to afford to pay Trump!” he added.
The former commander-in-chief’s attorney, Harmeet Dhillon, also tweeted her congratulations to Trump on Tuesday.
“Congratulations to President Trump on this final attorney fee victory in his favor this morning,” Dhillion said.
“Collectively, our firm obtained over $600,000 in attorney fee awards in his favor in the meritless litigation initiated by Stormy Daniels.”
Daniels has vowed that she would “go to jail” before paying any money to Trump.
“I will go to jail before I pay a penny,” Daniels said last year after a federal appeals court upheld a ruling that she must pay Trump $300,000 in attorneys’ fees.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/stormy-daniels-ordered-to-pay-trump-122k-in-legal-fees-hours-after-arraignment/
Former President Donald Trump secured a legal victory against Stormy Daniels hours after his arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday in connection to a “hush money” payment made to the porn star during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ordered Daniels to pay Trump $121,972 in legal fees stemming from a 2018 defamation lawsuit that she filed against him that was later dismissed.
“Alvin Bragg shut down New York City, brought in 38,000 NYPD officers, and will spend an estimated $200,000,000 of NYC funds, for a totally legal $130,000 NDA.
On top of all that, the 9th Circuit Court just awarded me $122,000 — over the $500,000 already awarded, from Stormy ‘Horseface’ Daniels!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday.
Daniels had claimed that after a 2011 interview with In Touch Magazine, during which she alleged that she had an affair with Trump in 2006, an unnamed man approached her and appeared to threaten her, saying, “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story” and “That’s a beautiful little girl.
It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom,” a reference to her daughter.
Her interview was not published by the magazine.
In 2018, Trump accused Daniels of lying about the “nonexistent man” and his threats, calling it “a total con job,” prompting Daniels to sue him.
The Ninth Circuit ruled that the fees demanded by Trump were “reasonable,” according to a court filing.
The nearly $122,000 in legal fees awarded to Trump on Tuesday are on top of some $300,000 Daniels was ordered to pay when the lawsuit was dismissed.
“BREAKING!!! the 9th Circuit just awarded Trump $121,962.56 in attorney fees from Stormy Daniels. Order just released. This in addition to the roughly $500k she already owes him,” the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., wrote in a tweet Tuesday.
“LOL glad she’s out there saying her T-shirt sales are booming she’ll be able to afford to pay Trump!” he added.
The former commander-in-chief’s attorney, Harmeet Dhillon, also tweeted her congratulations to Trump on Tuesday.
“Congratulations to President Trump on this final attorney fee victory in his favor this morning,” Dhillion said.
“Collectively, our firm obtained over $600,000 in attorney fee awards in his favor in the meritless litigation initiated by Stormy Daniels.”
Daniels has vowed that she would “go to jail” before paying any money to Trump.
“I will go to jail before I pay a penny,” Daniels said last year after a federal appeals court upheld a ruling that she must pay Trump $300,000 in attorneys’ fees.
Apr 5, 2023 00:08:33 #
Apr 5, 2023 00:02:52 #
This thread is mistitled, it should properly read, "George Soros, The Democrat Party Owner, Buys Another Elected Seat in Government".
Soros-Backed Fund Spends Millions to Turn Wisconsin Supreme Court Liberal
https://legalnewsline.com/stories/640255552-soros-backed-fund-spends-millions-to-turn-wisconsin-supreme-court-liberal
A political committee backed by billionaire George Soros is spending millions of dollars to defeat the conservative candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in hopes of placing Judge Janet Protasiewicz on the bench and flipping the court majority to the liberal side.
A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund has spent more than $4 million so far on internet and TV ads focused on the Supreme Court election, first opposing conservative candidate Judge Jennifer Dorow in the primary, then against Daniel Kelly in the general election. Better Wisconsin’s spending helped ensure that Protasiewicz, who has the support of the national Democratic Party, is competing against an archconservative abortion opponent who may be unpopular with suburban and female voters.
A Better Wisconsin received $500,000 from State Victory Action, a Raleigh, N.C. fund, on Jan. 31. The Soros PAC contributed $834,000 of the $1.5 million State Victory Fund raised in 2022, according to Opensecrets.org. Better Wisconsin also received $100,000 from the Toolbox Fund in Arlington, Va., a group formed in July 2022 by a consumer-products plaintiff lawyer that reported exactly that amount in contributions in 2022.
Democrats nationwide are pouring millions of dollars into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Republican critics say the Milwaukee judge, a former prosecutor, has been too easy on criminals in some egregious cases. Democrats see control of the state’s highest court as an essential brake against the Republican-controlled legislature. Adimpact Politics estimated more than $13 million has been spent on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race since the primary, $8.3 million by Democrats and $4.9 million by Republicans.
The support from Soros could elicit comparisons between Protasiewicz, a longtime prosecutor before she became a judge, and progressive prosecutors the billionaire philanthropist has backed in elections nationwide, including Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Critics have accused Soros of promoting prosecutors who fail to pursue cases against violent criminals and ignore the rights of victims.
A Better Wisconsin started criticizing the conservative Supreme Court candidates last year, describing Kelly and Dorow as “extreme” and threats to women’s health. In a March 6 news release about controversial blog posts Kelly made, Communications Manager Lucy Ripp said: “At every turn Dan Kelly shows us, in his own words, he doesn’t share the views on the issues or the values of the vast majority of the people of Wisconsin.”
“The danger with Dan Kelly is that the extremism he spews in his blog posts isn’t just talk. He’s shown us throughout his career, including his short time on the court before losing in 2020, that his extremism on these issues informs his actions.” Executive Director Chris Walloch cited “Kelly’s extremism on issues like abortion access and his shilling for right-wing special interests” in a March 3 post.
A Better Wisconsin Together, the group’s “issue advertising” arm, has run television ads urging viewers to “Tell Jennifer Dorow and Dan Kelly they’re too extreme on opposing access to abortion care,” and saying about Kelly, “He’s too extreme.”
While legally a nonpartisan election, Protaziewicz is supported by the Democratic Party, which has transferred at least $2.5 million to her campaign since she won the primary. Kelly has drawn support from conservative entities including WMC Issues Mobilization Council – for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce – which has reportedly spent more than $3 million on advertisements supporting him.
Soros-Backed Fund Spends Millions to Turn Wisconsin Supreme Court Liberal
https://legalnewsline.com/stories/640255552-soros-backed-fund-spends-millions-to-turn-wisconsin-supreme-court-liberal
A political committee backed by billionaire George Soros is spending millions of dollars to defeat the conservative candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in hopes of placing Judge Janet Protasiewicz on the bench and flipping the court majority to the liberal side.
A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund has spent more than $4 million so far on internet and TV ads focused on the Supreme Court election, first opposing conservative candidate Judge Jennifer Dorow in the primary, then against Daniel Kelly in the general election. Better Wisconsin’s spending helped ensure that Protasiewicz, who has the support of the national Democratic Party, is competing against an archconservative abortion opponent who may be unpopular with suburban and female voters.
A Better Wisconsin received $500,000 from State Victory Action, a Raleigh, N.C. fund, on Jan. 31. The Soros PAC contributed $834,000 of the $1.5 million State Victory Fund raised in 2022, according to Opensecrets.org. Better Wisconsin also received $100,000 from the Toolbox Fund in Arlington, Va., a group formed in July 2022 by a consumer-products plaintiff lawyer that reported exactly that amount in contributions in 2022.
Democrats nationwide are pouring millions of dollars into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Republican critics say the Milwaukee judge, a former prosecutor, has been too easy on criminals in some egregious cases. Democrats see control of the state’s highest court as an essential brake against the Republican-controlled legislature. Adimpact Politics estimated more than $13 million has been spent on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race since the primary, $8.3 million by Democrats and $4.9 million by Republicans.
The support from Soros could elicit comparisons between Protasiewicz, a longtime prosecutor before she became a judge, and progressive prosecutors the billionaire philanthropist has backed in elections nationwide, including Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Critics have accused Soros of promoting prosecutors who fail to pursue cases against violent criminals and ignore the rights of victims.
A Better Wisconsin started criticizing the conservative Supreme Court candidates last year, describing Kelly and Dorow as “extreme” and threats to women’s health. In a March 6 news release about controversial blog posts Kelly made, Communications Manager Lucy Ripp said: “At every turn Dan Kelly shows us, in his own words, he doesn’t share the views on the issues or the values of the vast majority of the people of Wisconsin.”
“The danger with Dan Kelly is that the extremism he spews in his blog posts isn’t just talk. He’s shown us throughout his career, including his short time on the court before losing in 2020, that his extremism on these issues informs his actions.” Executive Director Chris Walloch cited “Kelly’s extremism on issues like abortion access and his shilling for right-wing special interests” in a March 3 post.
A Better Wisconsin Together, the group’s “issue advertising” arm, has run television ads urging viewers to “Tell Jennifer Dorow and Dan Kelly they’re too extreme on opposing access to abortion care,” and saying about Kelly, “He’s too extreme.”
While legally a nonpartisan election, Protaziewicz is supported by the Democratic Party, which has transferred at least $2.5 million to her campaign since she won the primary. Kelly has drawn support from conservative entities including WMC Issues Mobilization Council – for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce – which has reportedly spent more than $3 million on advertisements supporting him.
Apr 4, 2023 11:37:36 #
LOLOLOL
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/busted-actblue-unfairly-targets-union-members-with-layoffs-employees-say/
Democratic fundraising juggernaut ActBlue slashed 17 percent of its workforce on Monday, less than two months after its union gleefully announced it had struck a landmark collective bargaining agreement with the company that raised the bar on how employees should be treated.
The ActBlue union is singing a different tune now that 32 of the 54 employees terminated during Monday's layoffs were members of its bargaining unit. The union said its members were being unfairly punished for the "financial difficulties" of ActBlue, adding that the layoffs put the organization's progressive accolades at risk and will jeopardize its ability to finance the Democratic movement in the 2024 elections. The union alleged that ActBlue management refused to reduce its own bloated pay to stave off the layoffs, saying that doing so would have been "oppressive."
"We are disappointed in Leadership and the Board’s refusal to take pay cuts or stipend freezes," the union said in a statement Monday. "Prioritizing executive profit over rank and file workers’ livelihoods does not live up to [ActBlue’s] progressive values."
ActBlue’s leadership is handsomely compensated. At least 11 employees raked in over $200,000 in 2021, tax forms show. The company hired its first black female CEO in January after its prior leader stepped down after a 14-year stint. The new ActBlue CEO, Regina Wallace-Jones, is the former mayor of East Palo Alto, Calif., and has also held executive positions at Facebook, Yahoo, Ebay, and Lendstreet.
ActBlue said Monday the layoffs were part of a "restructuring" effort to ensure it can best deliver a strategic fundraising advantage to Democrats. The union’s allegations of ActBlue financial difficulties come as somewhat of a shock, however. ActBlue is the predominant fundraising vehicle for the progressive movement, having raised nearly $12 billion for left-of-center groups and politicians at the local, state, and national levels since 2004. ActBlue charges a flat 3.95 percent fee on every dollar it raises, which has enabled the organization to accumulate a veritable boatload of cash as it solidified its monopoly in the progressive fundraising scene.
ActBlue reported sitting on a cash reserve of $68.7 million at the end of 2022, according to its latest available Federal Election Commission filing.
But that’s just half of the picture. ActBlue Technical Services, the nonprofit organization that manages ActBlue’s technology infrastructure, reported holding net assets of $92.8 million at the end of 2021, according to its latest available financial disclosure.
ActBlue said Monday that it offered its laid-off staffers eight weeks of pay and benefits. They will also be able to opt-in for the opportunity to have their contact information shared with prospective employers, the company said.
ActBlue did not return a request for comment.
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/busted-actblue-unfairly-targets-union-members-with-layoffs-employees-say/
Democratic fundraising juggernaut ActBlue slashed 17 percent of its workforce on Monday, less than two months after its union gleefully announced it had struck a landmark collective bargaining agreement with the company that raised the bar on how employees should be treated.
The ActBlue union is singing a different tune now that 32 of the 54 employees terminated during Monday's layoffs were members of its bargaining unit. The union said its members were being unfairly punished for the "financial difficulties" of ActBlue, adding that the layoffs put the organization's progressive accolades at risk and will jeopardize its ability to finance the Democratic movement in the 2024 elections. The union alleged that ActBlue management refused to reduce its own bloated pay to stave off the layoffs, saying that doing so would have been "oppressive."
"We are disappointed in Leadership and the Board’s refusal to take pay cuts or stipend freezes," the union said in a statement Monday. "Prioritizing executive profit over rank and file workers’ livelihoods does not live up to [ActBlue’s] progressive values."
ActBlue’s leadership is handsomely compensated. At least 11 employees raked in over $200,000 in 2021, tax forms show. The company hired its first black female CEO in January after its prior leader stepped down after a 14-year stint. The new ActBlue CEO, Regina Wallace-Jones, is the former mayor of East Palo Alto, Calif., and has also held executive positions at Facebook, Yahoo, Ebay, and Lendstreet.
ActBlue said Monday the layoffs were part of a "restructuring" effort to ensure it can best deliver a strategic fundraising advantage to Democrats. The union’s allegations of ActBlue financial difficulties come as somewhat of a shock, however. ActBlue is the predominant fundraising vehicle for the progressive movement, having raised nearly $12 billion for left-of-center groups and politicians at the local, state, and national levels since 2004. ActBlue charges a flat 3.95 percent fee on every dollar it raises, which has enabled the organization to accumulate a veritable boatload of cash as it solidified its monopoly in the progressive fundraising scene.
ActBlue reported sitting on a cash reserve of $68.7 million at the end of 2022, according to its latest available Federal Election Commission filing.
But that’s just half of the picture. ActBlue Technical Services, the nonprofit organization that manages ActBlue’s technology infrastructure, reported holding net assets of $92.8 million at the end of 2021, according to its latest available financial disclosure.
ActBlue said Monday that it offered its laid-off staffers eight weeks of pay and benefits. They will also be able to opt-in for the opportunity to have their contact information shared with prospective employers, the company said.
ActBlue did not return a request for comment.
Check out Software and Computer Support for Photographers section of our forum.
Apr 2, 2023 20:49:08 #
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/petrodollar-dusk-petroyuan-dawn:-what-investors-need-to-know
While most investors were trying to gauge the Federal Reserve’s next moves in light of recent bank failures last week, something interesting happened in Moscow.
During a three-day state visit, Chinese President Xi Jinping held friendly talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a show of unity, as both countries increasingly seek to position themselves as leaders of what they call a “multipolar world order,” one that challenges U.S.-centric alliances and agreements.
Among those agreements is the petrodollar, which has been in place for over 50 years.
In case you’re wondering, “petrodollars” are not a real currency. They’re simply dollars being used to trade oil. Early in the 1970s, the U.S. government provided economic aid to Saudi Arabia, its chief oil-producing rival, in exchange for assurances that Riyadh would price its crude exports exclusively in the U.S. dollar. In 1975, other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) followed suit, and the petrodollar was born.
This had the immediate effect of strengthening the U.S. dollar. Since countries around the world had to have dollars on hand in order to buy oil (and other key commodities such as gold, also priced in dollars), the greenback became the world’s reserve currency, a status formerly enjoyed by the British pound, French franc and Dutch guilder.
All things must come to an end, however. We may be witnessing the end of the petrodollar as more and more countries, including China and Russia, are agreeing to make settlements in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. This could have wide-ranging implications on not just a macro scale but also investment portfolios.
Dawn For The Petroyuan?
Putin couldn’t have been more explicit. During Xi’s state visit, he named the Chinese yuan as his favored currency to conduct trade in. Ever since Western sanctions were levied on the Eastern European country for its invasion of Ukraine early last year, Russia has increasingly depended on its southern neighbor to buy the oil other countries won’t touch.
In just the first two months of 2023, China’s imports from Russia totaled $9.3 billion, exceeding full-year 2022 imports in dollar terms. In February alone, China imported over 2 million barrels of Russian crude, a new record high.
https://www.usfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/COMM-trade-between-china-russia-03242023.png
Except that now, the yuan is presumably being used to make these settlements.
As Zoltar Pozsar, New York-based economist andinvestment researchdirector at Credit Suisse, put it recently: “That’s dusk for the petrodollar… and dawn for the petroyuan.”
U.S. Dollar Still The World’s Reserve Currency, But Its Dominance Is Slipping
Before you dismiss Pozsar’s comment as an exaggeration, consider that other major OPEC nations and BRICS members (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are either accepting yuan already or strongly considering it. Russia, Iran and Venezuela account for about 40% of the world’s proven oilfields, and the three sell their oil in exchange for yuan. Turkey, Argentina, Indonesia and heavyweight oil producer Saudi Arabia have all applied for admittance into BRICS, while Egypt became a new member this week.
What this suggests is that the yuan’s role as a reserve currency will continue to strengthen, signifying a broader shift in the global power balance and potentially giving China a bigger hand with which to shape economic policies that affect us all.
To be clear, the U.S. dollar remains the world’s top reserve currency for now, though its share of global central banks’ official holdings has slipped in the past 20 years, from 72% in 2001 to just under 60% today. By contrast, the yuan’s share of official holdings has more than doubled since 2016. The Chinese currency accounted for about 2.8% of reserves as of September 2022.
https://www.usfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/COMM-total-global-foreign-reserves-03242023.png
Russia Diversifying Away From The Dollar By Loading Up On Gold
It’s not all about the yuan, of course. Gold has also increased as a foreign reserve, especially among emerging economies that seek to diversify away from the dollar.
Last week, Russia announced that its bullion holdings jumped by approximately 1 million ounces over the past 12 months as its central bank loaded up on gold in the face of Western sanctions. The bank reported having nearly 75 million ounces at the end of February 2023, up from about 74 million a year earlier.
Long-Term Implications For Investors
The implications of the dollar potentially losing its status as the global reserve are numerous. Obviously, there may be currency risks, and a decrease in demand for U.S. Treasury bonds could result in rising interest rates. I would expect to see massive swings in commodity prices, especially oil prices, which could be an opportunity if you can stomach the volatility.
~excerpt~
The rest of this article is pitching gold as an investment so I've left it out of this post as it's not the point of my posting the piece.
While most investors were trying to gauge the Federal Reserve’s next moves in light of recent bank failures last week, something interesting happened in Moscow.
During a three-day state visit, Chinese President Xi Jinping held friendly talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a show of unity, as both countries increasingly seek to position themselves as leaders of what they call a “multipolar world order,” one that challenges U.S.-centric alliances and agreements.
Among those agreements is the petrodollar, which has been in place for over 50 years.
In case you’re wondering, “petrodollars” are not a real currency. They’re simply dollars being used to trade oil. Early in the 1970s, the U.S. government provided economic aid to Saudi Arabia, its chief oil-producing rival, in exchange for assurances that Riyadh would price its crude exports exclusively in the U.S. dollar. In 1975, other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) followed suit, and the petrodollar was born.
This had the immediate effect of strengthening the U.S. dollar. Since countries around the world had to have dollars on hand in order to buy oil (and other key commodities such as gold, also priced in dollars), the greenback became the world’s reserve currency, a status formerly enjoyed by the British pound, French franc and Dutch guilder.
All things must come to an end, however. We may be witnessing the end of the petrodollar as more and more countries, including China and Russia, are agreeing to make settlements in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. This could have wide-ranging implications on not just a macro scale but also investment portfolios.
Dawn For The Petroyuan?
Putin couldn’t have been more explicit. During Xi’s state visit, he named the Chinese yuan as his favored currency to conduct trade in. Ever since Western sanctions were levied on the Eastern European country for its invasion of Ukraine early last year, Russia has increasingly depended on its southern neighbor to buy the oil other countries won’t touch.
In just the first two months of 2023, China’s imports from Russia totaled $9.3 billion, exceeding full-year 2022 imports in dollar terms. In February alone, China imported over 2 million barrels of Russian crude, a new record high.
https://www.usfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/COMM-trade-between-china-russia-03242023.png
Except that now, the yuan is presumably being used to make these settlements.
As Zoltar Pozsar, New York-based economist andinvestment researchdirector at Credit Suisse, put it recently: “That’s dusk for the petrodollar… and dawn for the petroyuan.”
U.S. Dollar Still The World’s Reserve Currency, But Its Dominance Is Slipping
Before you dismiss Pozsar’s comment as an exaggeration, consider that other major OPEC nations and BRICS members (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are either accepting yuan already or strongly considering it. Russia, Iran and Venezuela account for about 40% of the world’s proven oilfields, and the three sell their oil in exchange for yuan. Turkey, Argentina, Indonesia and heavyweight oil producer Saudi Arabia have all applied for admittance into BRICS, while Egypt became a new member this week.
What this suggests is that the yuan’s role as a reserve currency will continue to strengthen, signifying a broader shift in the global power balance and potentially giving China a bigger hand with which to shape economic policies that affect us all.
To be clear, the U.S. dollar remains the world’s top reserve currency for now, though its share of global central banks’ official holdings has slipped in the past 20 years, from 72% in 2001 to just under 60% today. By contrast, the yuan’s share of official holdings has more than doubled since 2016. The Chinese currency accounted for about 2.8% of reserves as of September 2022.
https://www.usfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/COMM-total-global-foreign-reserves-03242023.png
Russia Diversifying Away From The Dollar By Loading Up On Gold
It’s not all about the yuan, of course. Gold has also increased as a foreign reserve, especially among emerging economies that seek to diversify away from the dollar.
Last week, Russia announced that its bullion holdings jumped by approximately 1 million ounces over the past 12 months as its central bank loaded up on gold in the face of Western sanctions. The bank reported having nearly 75 million ounces at the end of February 2023, up from about 74 million a year earlier.
Long-Term Implications For Investors
The implications of the dollar potentially losing its status as the global reserve are numerous. Obviously, there may be currency risks, and a decrease in demand for U.S. Treasury bonds could result in rising interest rates. I would expect to see massive swings in commodity prices, especially oil prices, which could be an opportunity if you can stomach the volatility.
~excerpt~
The rest of this article is pitching gold as an investment so I've left it out of this post as it's not the point of my posting the piece.
Apr 2, 2023 17:27:52 #
What does the Fed say on this:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A067RX1A020NBEA#
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A067RX1A020NBEA#
Apr 2, 2023 16:04:37 #
The US dollar's hegemony in international markets continues to deteriorate partly due to the Global South's refusal to enforce western sanctions against Russia
https://thecradle.co/article-view/23132/brics-nations-working-on-fundamentally-new-currency-russian-official
The Deputy Chairman of Russia’s State Duma, Alexander Babakov, said on 30 March that the BRICS bloc of emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – is working on developing a “new currency” that will be presented at the organization’s upcoming summit in Durban.
“The transition to settlements in national currencies is the first step. The next one is to provide the circulation of digital or any other form of a fundamentally new currency in the nearest future. I think that at the BRICS [leaders’ summit], the readiness to realize this project will be announced, such works are underway,” Babakov said on the sidelines of the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership for Development and Growth Business Forum.
Babakov also stated that a single currency could likely emerge within BRICS, and this would be pegged not just to the value of gold but also to “other groups of products, rare-earth elements, or soil.”
BRICS member states account for more than 40 percent of the global population and around a quarter of the global GDP. In recent months, the group has been positioning itself as the Global South’s alternative to the G7 group of nations.
Several nations in West Asia and North Africa have expressed interest in joining the bloc, including Saudi Arabia and Algeria. Last year, Iran officially applied to join BRICS.
Earlier this month, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor revealed that global interest in BRICS is “huge,” adding that she had 12 letters from interested countries on her desk, including the UAE, Egypt, Argentina, Mexico, and Nigeria.
The news of a possible BRICS currency comes as a growing number of nations across the world are moving away from conducting trade in US dollars as a result of Washington’s policy of economic coercion.
This week alone, the ASEAN group of nations discussed dropping the US Dollar, Euro, Yen, and British Pound from financial transactions and instead moving to settlements in local currencies. Similarly, Brazil – the largest economy in Latin America – reached an agreement with China to enable import and export transactions between both nations to take place without using the US dollar.
Former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill this month called on BRICS to expand and challenge the greenback’s dominance, highlighting that Washington’s economic hegemony destabilizes other nations’ monetary policies.
“The US dollar plays a far too dominant role in global finance,” he wrote in a paper published in the Global Policy journal. “Whenever the Federal Reserve Board has embarked on periods of monetary tightening, or the opposite, loosening, the consequences on the value of the dollar and the knock-on effects have been dramatic.”
https://thecradle.co/article-view/23132/brics-nations-working-on-fundamentally-new-currency-russian-official
The Deputy Chairman of Russia’s State Duma, Alexander Babakov, said on 30 March that the BRICS bloc of emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – is working on developing a “new currency” that will be presented at the organization’s upcoming summit in Durban.
“The transition to settlements in national currencies is the first step. The next one is to provide the circulation of digital or any other form of a fundamentally new currency in the nearest future. I think that at the BRICS [leaders’ summit], the readiness to realize this project will be announced, such works are underway,” Babakov said on the sidelines of the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership for Development and Growth Business Forum.
Babakov also stated that a single currency could likely emerge within BRICS, and this would be pegged not just to the value of gold but also to “other groups of products, rare-earth elements, or soil.”
BRICS member states account for more than 40 percent of the global population and around a quarter of the global GDP. In recent months, the group has been positioning itself as the Global South’s alternative to the G7 group of nations.
Several nations in West Asia and North Africa have expressed interest in joining the bloc, including Saudi Arabia and Algeria. Last year, Iran officially applied to join BRICS.
Earlier this month, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor revealed that global interest in BRICS is “huge,” adding that she had 12 letters from interested countries on her desk, including the UAE, Egypt, Argentina, Mexico, and Nigeria.
The news of a possible BRICS currency comes as a growing number of nations across the world are moving away from conducting trade in US dollars as a result of Washington’s policy of economic coercion.
This week alone, the ASEAN group of nations discussed dropping the US Dollar, Euro, Yen, and British Pound from financial transactions and instead moving to settlements in local currencies. Similarly, Brazil – the largest economy in Latin America – reached an agreement with China to enable import and export transactions between both nations to take place without using the US dollar.
Former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill this month called on BRICS to expand and challenge the greenback’s dominance, highlighting that Washington’s economic hegemony destabilizes other nations’ monetary policies.
“The US dollar plays a far too dominant role in global finance,” he wrote in a paper published in the Global Policy journal. “Whenever the Federal Reserve Board has embarked on periods of monetary tightening, or the opposite, loosening, the consequences on the value of the dollar and the knock-on effects have been dramatic.”
Apr 2, 2023 16:03:25 #
BRICS nations working on ‘fundamentally new currency’: Russian official
The US dollar's hegemony in international markets continues to deteriorate partly due to the Global South's refusal to enforce western sanctions against Russia
https://thecradle.co/article-view/23132/brics-nations-working-on-fundamentally-new-currency-russian-official
The Deputy Chairman of Russia’s State Duma, Alexander Babakov, said on 30 March that the BRICS bloc of emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – is working on developing a “new currency” that will be presented at the organization’s upcoming summit in Durban.
“The transition to settlements in national currencies is the first step. The next one is to provide the circulation of digital or any other form of a fundamentally new currency in the nearest future. I think that at the BRICS [leaders’ summit], the readiness to realize this project will be announced, such works are underway,” Babakov said on the sidelines of the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership for Development and Growth Business Forum.
Babakov also stated that a single currency could likely emerge within BRICS, and this would be pegged not just to the value of gold but also to “other groups of products, rare-earth elements, or soil.”
BRICS member states account for more than 40 percent of the global population and around a quarter of the global GDP. In recent months, the group has been positioning itself as the Global South’s alternative to the G7 group of nations.
Several nations in West Asia and North Africa have expressed interest in joining the bloc, including Saudi Arabia and Algeria. Last year, Iran officially applied to join BRICS.
Earlier this month, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor revealed that global interest in BRICS is “huge,” adding that she had 12 letters from interested countries on her desk, including the UAE, Egypt, Argentina, Mexico, and Nigeria.
The news of a possible BRICS currency comes as a growing number of nations across the world are moving away from conducting trade in US dollars as a result of Washington’s policy of economic coercion.
This week alone, the ASEAN group of nations discussed dropping the US Dollar, Euro, Yen, and British Pound from financial transactions and instead moving to settlements in local currencies. Similarly, Brazil – the largest economy in Latin America – reached an agreement with China to enable import and export transactions between both nations to take place without using the US dollar.
Former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill this month called on BRICS to expand and challenge the greenback’s dominance, highlighting that Washington’s economic hegemony destabilizes other nations’ monetary policies.
“The US dollar plays a far too dominant role in global finance,” he wrote in a paper published in the Global Policy journal. “Whenever the Federal Reserve Board has embarked on periods of monetary tightening, or the opposite, loosening, the consequences on the value of the dollar and the knock-on effects have been dramatic.”
The US dollar's hegemony in international markets continues to deteriorate partly due to the Global South's refusal to enforce western sanctions against Russia
https://thecradle.co/article-view/23132/brics-nations-working-on-fundamentally-new-currency-russian-official
The Deputy Chairman of Russia’s State Duma, Alexander Babakov, said on 30 March that the BRICS bloc of emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – is working on developing a “new currency” that will be presented at the organization’s upcoming summit in Durban.
“The transition to settlements in national currencies is the first step. The next one is to provide the circulation of digital or any other form of a fundamentally new currency in the nearest future. I think that at the BRICS [leaders’ summit], the readiness to realize this project will be announced, such works are underway,” Babakov said on the sidelines of the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership for Development and Growth Business Forum.
Babakov also stated that a single currency could likely emerge within BRICS, and this would be pegged not just to the value of gold but also to “other groups of products, rare-earth elements, or soil.”
BRICS member states account for more than 40 percent of the global population and around a quarter of the global GDP. In recent months, the group has been positioning itself as the Global South’s alternative to the G7 group of nations.
Several nations in West Asia and North Africa have expressed interest in joining the bloc, including Saudi Arabia and Algeria. Last year, Iran officially applied to join BRICS.
Earlier this month, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor revealed that global interest in BRICS is “huge,” adding that she had 12 letters from interested countries on her desk, including the UAE, Egypt, Argentina, Mexico, and Nigeria.
The news of a possible BRICS currency comes as a growing number of nations across the world are moving away from conducting trade in US dollars as a result of Washington’s policy of economic coercion.
This week alone, the ASEAN group of nations discussed dropping the US Dollar, Euro, Yen, and British Pound from financial transactions and instead moving to settlements in local currencies. Similarly, Brazil – the largest economy in Latin America – reached an agreement with China to enable import and export transactions between both nations to take place without using the US dollar.
Former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill this month called on BRICS to expand and challenge the greenback’s dominance, highlighting that Washington’s economic hegemony destabilizes other nations’ monetary policies.
“The US dollar plays a far too dominant role in global finance,” he wrote in a paper published in the Global Policy journal. “Whenever the Federal Reserve Board has embarked on periods of monetary tightening, or the opposite, loosening, the consequences on the value of the dollar and the knock-on effects have been dramatic.”
Check out Panorama section of our forum.
Apr 2, 2023 09:46:28 #
India-Bangladesh trade using rupee instead of US dollar soon
https://www.bd-pratidin.com/en/economy/2023/04/01/6273
Bangladesh could soon start trading with India using rupee instead of US dollar, trial for which has been done by Bangladesh Bank recently, reports UNB.
The ministry of commerce has placed a written recommendation at the last cabinet meeting regarding the possibility and opportunity of using rupee instead of dollar.
Currently Bangladesh exports goods to India worth around USD 2 billion.
“The use of rupee will start with Bangladesh's $2 billion trade with India. Bangladesh Bank has almost finished all kinds of trials in this regard. Trading in rupee will be introduced in both countries only after bilateral decision on some issues,” an executive director of Bangladesh Bank told the news agency.
Wishing anonymity, he said that banking systems in India and Bangladesh have to sign separate agreements on using rupee.
Meanwhile India-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IBCCI) has submitted the total trade account to the central bank in the form of a proposal. This initiative is being taken to overcome the existing dollar crisis, sources said.
Bangladesh Bank spokesperson Md Mezbaul Haque said that India-Bangladesh trade, using rupee instead of US dollar, is still in the experimental stage. Some issues still need to be settled.
In response to a question whether there will be a fixed annual dollar quota for opening LCs, he said, LCs will be opened according to the needs of businessmen. But the only source of rupees is from the export earnings of Bangladeshi goods in India.
Currently India is trading in rupees with Russia, Mauritius, Iran and Sri Lanka.
https://www.bd-pratidin.com/en/economy/2023/04/01/6273
Bangladesh could soon start trading with India using rupee instead of US dollar, trial for which has been done by Bangladesh Bank recently, reports UNB.
The ministry of commerce has placed a written recommendation at the last cabinet meeting regarding the possibility and opportunity of using rupee instead of dollar.
Currently Bangladesh exports goods to India worth around USD 2 billion.
“The use of rupee will start with Bangladesh's $2 billion trade with India. Bangladesh Bank has almost finished all kinds of trials in this regard. Trading in rupee will be introduced in both countries only after bilateral decision on some issues,” an executive director of Bangladesh Bank told the news agency.
Wishing anonymity, he said that banking systems in India and Bangladesh have to sign separate agreements on using rupee.
Meanwhile India-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IBCCI) has submitted the total trade account to the central bank in the form of a proposal. This initiative is being taken to overcome the existing dollar crisis, sources said.
Bangladesh Bank spokesperson Md Mezbaul Haque said that India-Bangladesh trade, using rupee instead of US dollar, is still in the experimental stage. Some issues still need to be settled.
In response to a question whether there will be a fixed annual dollar quota for opening LCs, he said, LCs will be opened according to the needs of businessmen. But the only source of rupees is from the export earnings of Bangladeshi goods in India.
Currently India is trading in rupees with Russia, Mauritius, Iran and Sri Lanka.
Apr 2, 2023 09:31:54 #
‘Window into history’: Tapes detail LBJ’s stolen election
https://apnews.com/article/lbj-stolen-election-tapes-box-13-mangan-5a81206d635d632daa9dbe6219ac3848
The story was a blockbuster: A former Texas voting official was on the record detailing how nearly three decades earlier, votes were falsified to give then-congressman Lyndon B. Johnson a win that propelled the future president into the U.S. Senate.
The audio recordings from Associated Press reporter James W. Mangan’s interviews for the 1977 story were posted this week on the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum’s archival website, Discover LBJ. After Mangan’s death in 2015 at the age of 87, his family found the labeled cassette tapes at his San Antonio home and donated them last summer to the library on the campus of the University at Texas at Austin.
Luis Salas, the former South Texas election judge, told Mangan for the story: “Johnson did not win that election; It was stolen for him. And I know exactly how it was done.”
The story, which made front pages across the country, pulled back the curtain on the razor-thin victory that had drawn suspicions ever since election officials in rural Jim Wells County announced the discovery of uncounted votes in a ballot box known as Box 13 in the days after the 1948 Democratic primary Senate runoff. And now, at a time when election fraud is rare but former President Donald Trump and his allies amplify baseless allegations blaming it for his 2020 loss, the tapes and story show what compelling evidence of actual fraud looks like.
Mangan’s son, Peter, said listening the tapes was like getting “a little window into history.”
On one cassette, he said, it sounds like his father is in his car, reciting what he’d just been told.
“You can hear cars going by and he’s kind of, you can tell he’s a little excited, because I think he finally got the goods,” Peter Mangan said.
Mark Lawrence, the library’s director, said the recordings are “deeply connected to one of the big mysteries and controversies that’s hung around LBJ for decades.” In a 1984 oral history that Salas gave to the library, he said one of the reasons he finally decided to talk was because he had been quite ill.
Mangan said in a 2008 AP story that as he worked to convince Salas to go on the record, he told him: “If you die, history will never know what happened.”
Lawrence said much is now known about Box 13, thanks to both Mangan’s 1977 story and research done later by LBJ biographer Robert Caro, who “essentially reaffirmed” Mangan’s story and built on it.
“The kinds of irregularities we can see were at work in the 1948 Senate race in Texas were, I think it’s fair to say, pretty widespread across American history and all regions of the country to one extent or another but certainly in the South and along the Mexican borderlands, as recently as the 1940s,” Lawrence said.
Salas told Mangan that the powerful South Texas political boss George B. Parr — who wielded control with favors and coercion — ordered that some 200 votes be added to Box 13. Salas said he then watched as the fraudulent votes were added in alphabetical order, with the names coming from people who hadn’t voted in the election.
The new votes gave Johnson the primary victory over then-Gov. Coke Stevenson by an 87-vote margin. Johnson — subsequently bestowed with the nickname “Landslide Lyndon” — went on to easily defeat the Republican in the general election, long before the GOP became the dominant force in Texas politics.
Johnson, elected to the U.S. House in 1937, had run for U.S. Senate in 1941 and lost to then-Gov. Wilbert Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel in an election widely accepted by historians to have been corrupt, Lawrence said.
“The standard story that gets told, and I think there’s an awful lot to it, is that when LBJ’s second chance comes along in 1948, he’s determined not to have the election stolen from him again,” Lawrence said.
Lawrence said the 1948 Senate victory “catapults” Johnson to national attention. Johnson became then-President John F. Kennedy’s vice president and was sworn in as president Nov. 22, 1963, after Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Johnson was elected president in 1964. He decided not to run again in 1968 and died of a heart attack in 1973 at the age of 64.
Lawrence said that while the Box 13 incident shows that “LBJ was willing to do what he had to do to maintain political power,” he was also a man who, “when he had the opportunity, he was more inclined to act on principle.” Lawrence noted Johnson’s efforts to “ensure that people were able to vote in fair and equitable elections.”
In 1965, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed practices designed to disenfranchise Black voters by banning literary tests and poll taxes. The act also gave the federal government the authority to take over voter registration in counties with a pattern of persistent racial discrimination, although that is no longer the case after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the requirement in 2013.
James Mangan retired from AP on Jan. 1, 1989, after a 36-year career with the company that took him to cities across the U.S. and to Europe. With each move, Peter Mangan said, his father held on to the Box 13 tapes.
“He always kept these,” he said, “so I know they must have been important to him.”
https://apnews.com/article/lbj-stolen-election-tapes-box-13-mangan-5a81206d635d632daa9dbe6219ac3848
The story was a blockbuster: A former Texas voting official was on the record detailing how nearly three decades earlier, votes were falsified to give then-congressman Lyndon B. Johnson a win that propelled the future president into the U.S. Senate.
The audio recordings from Associated Press reporter James W. Mangan’s interviews for the 1977 story were posted this week on the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum’s archival website, Discover LBJ. After Mangan’s death in 2015 at the age of 87, his family found the labeled cassette tapes at his San Antonio home and donated them last summer to the library on the campus of the University at Texas at Austin.
Luis Salas, the former South Texas election judge, told Mangan for the story: “Johnson did not win that election; It was stolen for him. And I know exactly how it was done.”
The story, which made front pages across the country, pulled back the curtain on the razor-thin victory that had drawn suspicions ever since election officials in rural Jim Wells County announced the discovery of uncounted votes in a ballot box known as Box 13 in the days after the 1948 Democratic primary Senate runoff. And now, at a time when election fraud is rare but former President Donald Trump and his allies amplify baseless allegations blaming it for his 2020 loss, the tapes and story show what compelling evidence of actual fraud looks like.
Mangan’s son, Peter, said listening the tapes was like getting “a little window into history.”
On one cassette, he said, it sounds like his father is in his car, reciting what he’d just been told.
“You can hear cars going by and he’s kind of, you can tell he’s a little excited, because I think he finally got the goods,” Peter Mangan said.
Mark Lawrence, the library’s director, said the recordings are “deeply connected to one of the big mysteries and controversies that’s hung around LBJ for decades.” In a 1984 oral history that Salas gave to the library, he said one of the reasons he finally decided to talk was because he had been quite ill.
Mangan said in a 2008 AP story that as he worked to convince Salas to go on the record, he told him: “If you die, history will never know what happened.”
Lawrence said much is now known about Box 13, thanks to both Mangan’s 1977 story and research done later by LBJ biographer Robert Caro, who “essentially reaffirmed” Mangan’s story and built on it.
“The kinds of irregularities we can see were at work in the 1948 Senate race in Texas were, I think it’s fair to say, pretty widespread across American history and all regions of the country to one extent or another but certainly in the South and along the Mexican borderlands, as recently as the 1940s,” Lawrence said.
Salas told Mangan that the powerful South Texas political boss George B. Parr — who wielded control with favors and coercion — ordered that some 200 votes be added to Box 13. Salas said he then watched as the fraudulent votes were added in alphabetical order, with the names coming from people who hadn’t voted in the election.
The new votes gave Johnson the primary victory over then-Gov. Coke Stevenson by an 87-vote margin. Johnson — subsequently bestowed with the nickname “Landslide Lyndon” — went on to easily defeat the Republican in the general election, long before the GOP became the dominant force in Texas politics.
Johnson, elected to the U.S. House in 1937, had run for U.S. Senate in 1941 and lost to then-Gov. Wilbert Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel in an election widely accepted by historians to have been corrupt, Lawrence said.
“The standard story that gets told, and I think there’s an awful lot to it, is that when LBJ’s second chance comes along in 1948, he’s determined not to have the election stolen from him again,” Lawrence said.
Lawrence said the 1948 Senate victory “catapults” Johnson to national attention. Johnson became then-President John F. Kennedy’s vice president and was sworn in as president Nov. 22, 1963, after Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Johnson was elected president in 1964. He decided not to run again in 1968 and died of a heart attack in 1973 at the age of 64.
Lawrence said that while the Box 13 incident shows that “LBJ was willing to do what he had to do to maintain political power,” he was also a man who, “when he had the opportunity, he was more inclined to act on principle.” Lawrence noted Johnson’s efforts to “ensure that people were able to vote in fair and equitable elections.”
In 1965, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed practices designed to disenfranchise Black voters by banning literary tests and poll taxes. The act also gave the federal government the authority to take over voter registration in counties with a pattern of persistent racial discrimination, although that is no longer the case after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the requirement in 2013.
James Mangan retired from AP on Jan. 1, 1989, after a 36-year career with the company that took him to cities across the U.S. and to Europe. With each move, Peter Mangan said, his father held on to the Box 13 tapes.
“He always kept these,” he said, “so I know they must have been important to him.”
Apr 2, 2023 09:30:19 #
https://apnews.com/article/lbj-stolen-election-box-13-mangan-c818e478ec509c65585d3094bda69f96
In 1977, Associated Press reporter James W. Mangan’s exclusive interview with a South Texas election judge who detailed certifying false votes for Lyndon B. Johnson nearly three decades earlier made headlines across the country.
With the win by an 87-vote margin in the 1948 Democratic primary runoff, Johnson, then a congressman, easily defeated his Republican opponent to take a seat in the U.S. Senate, and he eventually ascended to the presidency.
Mangan spent three years pursuing the story, which pulled back the curtain on the victory that had drawn suspicions ever since election officials in rural Jim Wells County announced the discovery of uncounted votes in ballot box known as Box 13.
Headlines across the U.S. that accompanied the story included: “Polling Official: Phony Votes Stole ’48 Runoff for LBJ”; “LBJ’s election to Senate ‘stolen’”; “Texan Claims Fix in LBJ Election.”
Here’s the story that ran July 31, 1977:
___
A former Texas voting official seeking “peace of mind” says he certified enough fictitious ballots to steal an election 29 years ago and launch Lyndon B. Johnson on a path that led to the presidency.
The statement comes from Luis Salas, who was the election judge for Jim Wells County’s notorious Box 13, which produced just enough votes in the 1948 Texas Democratic primary runoff to give Johnson the nomination, then tantamount to election, to the U.S. Senate.
“Johnson did not win the election; It was stolen for him. And I know exactly how it was done,” said Salas, now a lean, white-haired 76; then a swarthy 210-pound political henchman with absolute say over vote counts in his Mexican-American, South Texas, precinct.
The controversy over that runoff election has been a subject of tantalizing conjecture for nearly three decades, ever since U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black abruptly halted an investigation, but the principals have been silent. George B. Parr, the South Texas political boss whom Salas served for a decade, shot himself to death in June 1975. Johnson is dead and so is his opponent. Salas, retired from his railroad telegrapher’s job, is among the few living persons with direct knowledge of the election.
Johnson’s widow, Lady Bird, was informed of Salas’ statements and said through a spokeswoman that she “knows no more about the details of the 1948 election other than that charges were made at the time, carried through several courts and finally to a justice at the Supreme Court.”
The Associated Press interviewed Salas frequently during the past three years, seeking answers to questions that, save for rumors, were left unanswered. Only recently did Salas agree to tell his full version of what happened. In his soft Spanish accent, Salas said that he decided to break his silence in quest of “peace of mind and to reveal to the people the corruption of politics.”
Salas says now that he lied during an aborted investigation of the election in 1948, when he testified that the vote count was proper and above board. “I was just going along with my party,” he says.
He told the AP that Parr ordered that 200-odd votes be added to Johnson’s total from Box 13. Salas said he saw the fraudulent votes added in alphabetical order and then certified them as authentic on orders from Parr.
The final statewide count, including Box 13 votes, gave Johnson an 87-vote margin in a total tally approaching 1 million and earned him the tongue-in-cheek nickname: “Landslide Lyndon.”
Texas Democrats were split in 1948. Johnson, then 39, a congressman, represented “new” Democrats in his bid for the U.S. Senate. His primary opponent was Coke R. Stevenson — 60 years old, three times Texas governor, never beaten and the candidate of the “old” wing of the party. They called him “Calculating Coke.”
The vote in the July primary was Stevenson 477,077, Johnson 405,617. But a third candidate, George Petty, siphoned off enough votes to deny Stevenson a majority, forcing a runoff between Stevenson and Johnson, set for Aug. 28, 1948.
In the interim, Johnson intensified his campaign. One of the places he went stumping was the hot, flat, brush country of South Texas, George B. Parr country, where the Mexican-American vote seemed always to come, favoring Parr’s candidate, in a bloc.
The power had passed to Parr from his father, Archie, a state senator who had sided with Mexican-Americans in a 1912 battle with Anglos over political control in Duval County. The younger Parr was known as the “Duke of Duval.”
Salas said he was Parr’s right-hand man in Jim Wells County from 1940 to 1950, but quit over Parr’s failure to support a fellow Mexican-American who had been charged with murder.
“We had the law to ourselves there,” Salas said. “It was a lawless son-of-a-bitch. We had iron control. If a man was opposed to us, we’d put him out of business. Parr was the godfather. He had life or death control.
“We could tell any election judge: ‘Give us 80 per cent of the vote, the other guy 20 per cent.’ We had it made in every election.”
The night of the runoff, Jim Wells County’s vote was wired to the Texas Election Bureau, the unofficial tabulating agency: Johnson 1,786, Stevenson 769.
Three days after the runoff, with Stevenson narrowly leading and the seesaw count nearly complete, Salas said, a meeting was called in Parr’s office 10 miles from Alice. Salas said he met with George B. Parr; Lyndon Johnson; Ed Lloyd, a Jim Wells County Democratic Executive Committee member; and Bruce Ainsworth, an Alice city commissioner. Lloyd and Ainsworth like Johnson and Parr, now are dead.
Salas told the AP:
“Lyndon Johnson said: ‘If I can get 200 more votes, I’ve got it won.’
“Parr said to me in Spanish: ‘We need to win this election. I want you to add those 200 votes.’ I had already turned in my poll and tally sheets to Givens Parr, George’s brother.
“I told Parr in Spanish: ‘I don’t give a damn if Johnson wins.’”
“Parr then said: ’Well, for sure you’re going to certify what we do.”
“I told him I would, because I didn’t want anybody to think I’m not backing up my party. I said I would be with the party to the end. After Parr I and I talked in Spanish, Parr told Johnson 200 votes would be added. When I left, Johnson knew we were going to take care of the situation.”
Salas said he saw two men add the names to the list of voters, about 9 o’clock at night, in the Adams Building in Alice. He said the two were just following orders and he would not identify them.
The AP interview then produced this exchange:
Q. When you told Parr you would certify the votes, he said he would get someone else to actually add the names?
A. Yeah. And I actually saw them do it. I was right there when they added the names.
Q. Were all 200 names in the same handwriting?
A. Oh, yeah. They all came from the poll taxes, I mean, from the poll tax sheet.
Q. But some were dead?
A. No one was dead. They just didn’t vote.
Q. So you voted them?
A. They voted them.
Q. You certified?
A. I certified. So did the Democratic County chairman. I kept my word to be loyal to my party.
Q. Had some of those names already voted?
A. No, they didn’t vote in that election. They added ’em. They made a mistake of doing it alphabetically.
Q. They added them alphabetically, as though they had walked in to vote alphabetically?
A. Yeah, that’s what I told George B., and he wouldn’t listen to me. I said: ‘Look at the A, you add 10 or 12 names on that letter. Why don’t you change it to the other, C or D or X, mix ‘em up?’ George said, ‘That’s all right.’ George was stubborn. He would not listen to anybody. But it was stupid. They went to the poll tax list and got those names. For instance, on the A they got 10 or 12 names.
Q. People who had not voted?
A. That’s right. they went on the B the same way, until they complete 200, and I told George, ‘That’s wrong.’
Q. While they were doing it you told him?
A. Yeah, and he said: ‘It’s OK.’
Q. They should have changed the handwriting?
A. How? Only two guys? How they going to change it? The lawyers spotted it right away, they sure did.
Six days after the runoff, with Stevenson still holding a narrow lead in the statewide count, a second telegram was sent, changing Jim Wells County’s vote to: Johnson 1,988, Stevenson, 770.
Johnson gained 202 votes; Stevenson 1. They came from Box 13.
The next day, the official statewide vote canvass gave Johnson 494,191 and Stevenson 494,104.
Stevenson protested. Johnson said that if Stevenson had evidence, it was his duty to go to a grand jury. “I know that I did not buy anybody’s vote,” Johnson said.
Stevenson went to federal court in Fort Worth and, on Sept. 14, Judge T. Whitfield Davidson signed a temporary restraining order forbidding certification of Johnson as the Democratic nominee. The judge ordered an on-the-spot probe of voting in Jim Wells County.
When that inquiry began, on Sept. 27, reporters from around the country showed up in Alice. By then it was national news.
The same day, in Washington, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Black agreed to hear Johnson’s petition to lift the injection. Johnson’s attorney was Abe Fortas, in later years a Johnson appointee to the high court.
Stevenson was in Alice that day; Johnson was on President Harry S. Truman’s campaign train. During a campaign stop in Temple, Tex., Truman brought Johnson to his side and publicly endorsed him as the next senator from Texas. Also on the train at San Antonio that day, according to Salas, were Parr, who had received a presidential pardon from Truman in 1946 after serving nine months on an income tax conviction, and Lloyd, the Jim Wells County executive committeeman.
Salas told the AP he was summoned the next day by Lloyd and told: “Luis, everything is all right. We talked to Truman on the train. Don’t worry about the investigation.”
Two days later, Justice Black, in an order he dated himself in longhand, voided the temporary injunction against putting Johnson’s name on the ballot and ended the investigation. Black said, “It would be a serious break with the past” for a federal court to determine an election contest.
Stevenson had lost; Johnson had won.
That ended Stevenson’s political career. He retired to his Hill Country ranch, insisting until he died in 1975 that the election had been stolen from him. Johnson became a power in Congress, and 15 years later he was president.
In 1977, Associated Press reporter James W. Mangan’s exclusive interview with a South Texas election judge who detailed certifying false votes for Lyndon B. Johnson nearly three decades earlier made headlines across the country.
With the win by an 87-vote margin in the 1948 Democratic primary runoff, Johnson, then a congressman, easily defeated his Republican opponent to take a seat in the U.S. Senate, and he eventually ascended to the presidency.
Mangan spent three years pursuing the story, which pulled back the curtain on the victory that had drawn suspicions ever since election officials in rural Jim Wells County announced the discovery of uncounted votes in ballot box known as Box 13.
Headlines across the U.S. that accompanied the story included: “Polling Official: Phony Votes Stole ’48 Runoff for LBJ”; “LBJ’s election to Senate ‘stolen’”; “Texan Claims Fix in LBJ Election.”
Here’s the story that ran July 31, 1977:
___
A former Texas voting official seeking “peace of mind” says he certified enough fictitious ballots to steal an election 29 years ago and launch Lyndon B. Johnson on a path that led to the presidency.
The statement comes from Luis Salas, who was the election judge for Jim Wells County’s notorious Box 13, which produced just enough votes in the 1948 Texas Democratic primary runoff to give Johnson the nomination, then tantamount to election, to the U.S. Senate.
“Johnson did not win the election; It was stolen for him. And I know exactly how it was done,” said Salas, now a lean, white-haired 76; then a swarthy 210-pound political henchman with absolute say over vote counts in his Mexican-American, South Texas, precinct.
The controversy over that runoff election has been a subject of tantalizing conjecture for nearly three decades, ever since U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black abruptly halted an investigation, but the principals have been silent. George B. Parr, the South Texas political boss whom Salas served for a decade, shot himself to death in June 1975. Johnson is dead and so is his opponent. Salas, retired from his railroad telegrapher’s job, is among the few living persons with direct knowledge of the election.
Johnson’s widow, Lady Bird, was informed of Salas’ statements and said through a spokeswoman that she “knows no more about the details of the 1948 election other than that charges were made at the time, carried through several courts and finally to a justice at the Supreme Court.”
The Associated Press interviewed Salas frequently during the past three years, seeking answers to questions that, save for rumors, were left unanswered. Only recently did Salas agree to tell his full version of what happened. In his soft Spanish accent, Salas said that he decided to break his silence in quest of “peace of mind and to reveal to the people the corruption of politics.”
Salas says now that he lied during an aborted investigation of the election in 1948, when he testified that the vote count was proper and above board. “I was just going along with my party,” he says.
He told the AP that Parr ordered that 200-odd votes be added to Johnson’s total from Box 13. Salas said he saw the fraudulent votes added in alphabetical order and then certified them as authentic on orders from Parr.
The final statewide count, including Box 13 votes, gave Johnson an 87-vote margin in a total tally approaching 1 million and earned him the tongue-in-cheek nickname: “Landslide Lyndon.”
Texas Democrats were split in 1948. Johnson, then 39, a congressman, represented “new” Democrats in his bid for the U.S. Senate. His primary opponent was Coke R. Stevenson — 60 years old, three times Texas governor, never beaten and the candidate of the “old” wing of the party. They called him “Calculating Coke.”
The vote in the July primary was Stevenson 477,077, Johnson 405,617. But a third candidate, George Petty, siphoned off enough votes to deny Stevenson a majority, forcing a runoff between Stevenson and Johnson, set for Aug. 28, 1948.
In the interim, Johnson intensified his campaign. One of the places he went stumping was the hot, flat, brush country of South Texas, George B. Parr country, where the Mexican-American vote seemed always to come, favoring Parr’s candidate, in a bloc.
The power had passed to Parr from his father, Archie, a state senator who had sided with Mexican-Americans in a 1912 battle with Anglos over political control in Duval County. The younger Parr was known as the “Duke of Duval.”
Salas said he was Parr’s right-hand man in Jim Wells County from 1940 to 1950, but quit over Parr’s failure to support a fellow Mexican-American who had been charged with murder.
“We had the law to ourselves there,” Salas said. “It was a lawless son-of-a-bitch. We had iron control. If a man was opposed to us, we’d put him out of business. Parr was the godfather. He had life or death control.
“We could tell any election judge: ‘Give us 80 per cent of the vote, the other guy 20 per cent.’ We had it made in every election.”
The night of the runoff, Jim Wells County’s vote was wired to the Texas Election Bureau, the unofficial tabulating agency: Johnson 1,786, Stevenson 769.
Three days after the runoff, with Stevenson narrowly leading and the seesaw count nearly complete, Salas said, a meeting was called in Parr’s office 10 miles from Alice. Salas said he met with George B. Parr; Lyndon Johnson; Ed Lloyd, a Jim Wells County Democratic Executive Committee member; and Bruce Ainsworth, an Alice city commissioner. Lloyd and Ainsworth like Johnson and Parr, now are dead.
Salas told the AP:
“Lyndon Johnson said: ‘If I can get 200 more votes, I’ve got it won.’
“Parr said to me in Spanish: ‘We need to win this election. I want you to add those 200 votes.’ I had already turned in my poll and tally sheets to Givens Parr, George’s brother.
“I told Parr in Spanish: ‘I don’t give a damn if Johnson wins.’”
“Parr then said: ’Well, for sure you’re going to certify what we do.”
“I told him I would, because I didn’t want anybody to think I’m not backing up my party. I said I would be with the party to the end. After Parr I and I talked in Spanish, Parr told Johnson 200 votes would be added. When I left, Johnson knew we were going to take care of the situation.”
Salas said he saw two men add the names to the list of voters, about 9 o’clock at night, in the Adams Building in Alice. He said the two were just following orders and he would not identify them.
The AP interview then produced this exchange:
Q. When you told Parr you would certify the votes, he said he would get someone else to actually add the names?
A. Yeah. And I actually saw them do it. I was right there when they added the names.
Q. Were all 200 names in the same handwriting?
A. Oh, yeah. They all came from the poll taxes, I mean, from the poll tax sheet.
Q. But some were dead?
A. No one was dead. They just didn’t vote.
Q. So you voted them?
A. They voted them.
Q. You certified?
A. I certified. So did the Democratic County chairman. I kept my word to be loyal to my party.
Q. Had some of those names already voted?
A. No, they didn’t vote in that election. They added ’em. They made a mistake of doing it alphabetically.
Q. They added them alphabetically, as though they had walked in to vote alphabetically?
A. Yeah, that’s what I told George B., and he wouldn’t listen to me. I said: ‘Look at the A, you add 10 or 12 names on that letter. Why don’t you change it to the other, C or D or X, mix ‘em up?’ George said, ‘That’s all right.’ George was stubborn. He would not listen to anybody. But it was stupid. They went to the poll tax list and got those names. For instance, on the A they got 10 or 12 names.
Q. People who had not voted?
A. That’s right. they went on the B the same way, until they complete 200, and I told George, ‘That’s wrong.’
Q. While they were doing it you told him?
A. Yeah, and he said: ‘It’s OK.’
Q. They should have changed the handwriting?
A. How? Only two guys? How they going to change it? The lawyers spotted it right away, they sure did.
Six days after the runoff, with Stevenson still holding a narrow lead in the statewide count, a second telegram was sent, changing Jim Wells County’s vote to: Johnson 1,988, Stevenson, 770.
Johnson gained 202 votes; Stevenson 1. They came from Box 13.
The next day, the official statewide vote canvass gave Johnson 494,191 and Stevenson 494,104.
Stevenson protested. Johnson said that if Stevenson had evidence, it was his duty to go to a grand jury. “I know that I did not buy anybody’s vote,” Johnson said.
Stevenson went to federal court in Fort Worth and, on Sept. 14, Judge T. Whitfield Davidson signed a temporary restraining order forbidding certification of Johnson as the Democratic nominee. The judge ordered an on-the-spot probe of voting in Jim Wells County.
When that inquiry began, on Sept. 27, reporters from around the country showed up in Alice. By then it was national news.
The same day, in Washington, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Black agreed to hear Johnson’s petition to lift the injection. Johnson’s attorney was Abe Fortas, in later years a Johnson appointee to the high court.
Stevenson was in Alice that day; Johnson was on President Harry S. Truman’s campaign train. During a campaign stop in Temple, Tex., Truman brought Johnson to his side and publicly endorsed him as the next senator from Texas. Also on the train at San Antonio that day, according to Salas, were Parr, who had received a presidential pardon from Truman in 1946 after serving nine months on an income tax conviction, and Lloyd, the Jim Wells County executive committeeman.
Salas told the AP he was summoned the next day by Lloyd and told: “Luis, everything is all right. We talked to Truman on the train. Don’t worry about the investigation.”
Two days later, Justice Black, in an order he dated himself in longhand, voided the temporary injunction against putting Johnson’s name on the ballot and ended the investigation. Black said, “It would be a serious break with the past” for a federal court to determine an election contest.
Stevenson had lost; Johnson had won.
That ended Stevenson’s political career. He retired to his Hill Country ranch, insisting until he died in 1975 that the election had been stolen from him. Johnson became a power in Congress, and 15 years later he was president.
Apr 1, 2023 16:57:19 #
pbearperry wrote:
This attached photo explains how the anti- gun crowd minds work.
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