CALIFORNIA’S POLITICIANS SPREAD CORRUPTION ACROSS THE NATION

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For example, in a typical case of Silicon Valley Mafia corruption; The United States Patent Office, public records, NDA’s, document leaks and hundreds of other sources say that a plaintiff built and deployed the first companies and technologies that Google, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Tesla and the Silicon Valley cartel are based on. Those companies, and their oligarch bosses, never paid to use plaintiff’s products.

Google, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Tesla and the Silicon Valley cartel spend billions of dollars a year, in collusion, in order to manipulate elections so that they can put candidates in office who will kick-back government treasury funds to those companies.

The FBI, GAO and other forensic investigators have proven that Google, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Tesla and the Silicon Valley cartel are owned by almost all of the top Senators and political officials in California and those Senators and political officials steer billions of investigation blockades, tax breaks, contracts and other exclusive gifts to those companies.

Billions of citizens have railed against the failure of Congress to regulate or punish these companies for their corruption and harms to society. Many in Congress won’t allow them to be punished because Congress people make most of their profits off payola from these companies. It is mobster-ism!

So you have a little pack of companies, coordinated by the NVCA, that rig elections, buy Senators that are supposed to represent us and destroy Democracy. Together they hire Gawker, Gizmodo, Fusion GPS, Black Cube, In-Q-Tel and a horde of other attack services to attack and  “take out” competitors…Not good, right? We would like to see them in jail and made to pay for the collusion-based damages they caused.

Our proof is based on the investigation records of the most potent intelligence agencies, super cops and investigative journalists in the world.

You have probably heard of “The Offshore Leaks”, “The Panama Papers”, “The Pandora Papers”, “The Swiss Leaks”, “The Sony Pictures Hack”, “The Luanda Leaks”, “The Bahamas Leaks”, “The Paradise Papers“, etc.

The Congressional political corruption in those leaks made the Mob look like school-boys. Now we are ENDING POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN AMERICA FOREVER!

What you might not know is that EVERY bank and international CPA firm has been hacked. Different state agencies, seeking to embarrass each other, have a leaking war going on. The public has only seen 10% of what the international journalists (Like ProPublica, ICIJ, Transparency International, The Guardian, etc.) have in their hands. The three videos on this page explain the whole ruckus. ( A.- How Political Corruption Works, B. – ABC-TV Plus, C. – The Elon Musk Story )

The Government hired a team to build America’s back-up energy plan “in case the Middle East had problems”. The Government convinced them to invest years of their time and their life savings in this Government sponsored program. At the last minute, the government didn’t pay what they had promised that team and sent the money, instead, to a White House political campaign financier oligarch. Federal and news investigators later discovered that the oligarch, and his staff, were sleeping with, giving jobs to and paying the White House staff that made all of the funding decisions. It was felony-class organized crime.

It is a tough pill to swallow to find out that your Senators and elected officials are either financed by, friends, with, sleeping with, dating the staff of, holding stock market assets in, promised a revolving door job or government service contracts from, partying with, personal friends with, photographed at private events with, exchanging emails with, business associates of or directed by; our business adversaries, or the Senators and politicians that those business adversaries pay campaign finances to, or supply political digital search manipulation services to. Criminal U.S. Senators coordinated and profited in these schemes. Their own family members have now supplied evidence against them to federal authorities. Imagine finding out that Senator So-And-So secretly owned your competitor, fed them exclusive inside information, helped them run hit-jobs on you, their constituent, and got them exclusive funding!!!!

 

It may surprise you to learn that the #1 way to bribe a politician, especially a Senator, is with stock market shares. Some politicians are only supposed to get paid about $100K but they make $100M with stock market shenanigans arranged for them by the people they are selling graft to.

DEMAND THAT IT BE AGAINST THE LAW FOR ANY POLITICIAN, OR THEIR FAMILY, TO OWN STOCKS AND: 1.) MOST POLITICAL CORRUPTION WILL END, 2.) CROOKED WEASELS WILL STOP RUNNING FOR OFFICE, 3.) REGULAR PEOPLE WILL GET THE GOVERNMENT SERVICES THEY EXPECT.

Any politician that tries to prevent laws that stop criminal stock market bribes is a lying criminal who is getting stock market bribes from Google, Tesla, Netflix, Facebook and the rest of the big tech cartel!

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“The United States Department of Energy is comprised of two groups of people: One group are the fresh-faced naive college kids, hired on the cheap, often relatives of insiders, who were just plucked out of some Ivy League frat house. They sincerely believe they are working on social justice things and woke energy-for-all schemes. The other group are the old bosses and insiders who own the stock market stocks of each and every company they regulate and fund. The old bosses have all been promised revolving door payola bribe jobs in each and every company they regulate and fund. Old bosses with sign-off authority are friends with the current seated President in the White House, who covertly approves all of the old boss decisions via a web of relay aides. The college kids do vast amounts of work, calculations, studies and reports but everything they do is shoved into a box in storage and ignored if it competes with or reduces the valuation of the venture capital companies that funded the President’s political campaign. So these nerd kids do all this work, that is never actually considered, because the old bosses will never allow anything to get funded or supported that competes with the President’s campaign financiers. The nerd kids are fired, or transferred to the mail room, as soon as they look like they are starting to figure out how the scam works.

For example, Obama and Biden’s political financiers own all of the lithium mines in the world. Toyota and Honda fuel cell cars make those lithium mines obsolete. The kids at DOE found that there is not enough lithium in the world to cover more than a small percentage of the electric cars in the Obama/Biden plan and that almost all the lithium is in countries that will do anything to screw over the U.S. To get that lithium, child slave labor is used and the lithium batteries blow up as they age and the smoke from their fires causes cancer. The U.S. lithium supply inside the U.S. is so minimal that it barely counts. By the time the lithium gets into all the cars, the cars will cost so much, nobody will buy them. Toyota, KIA and Honda fuel cell cars get their hydrogen from water and organic waste, which is endless. World lithium is already running out, but the DOE old bosses are pushing it to make the White House financiers happy. The United States Department of Energy is not a “Department”, it is a political slush-fund!

DOE “kids” and our contractors have told DOE this in writing for over 20 years, every year, But DOE insider old bosses hide any information that exposes the scheme and reduces their insider stock market trading valuations…”

– Testimony to Congress, The FBI, The DOJ, The FTC, The FEC. The GAO and InterPol

 

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This news article describes the key insider trading and political bribery of the matter:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren blasts ‘brazenness’ of California lawmakers who flouted a federal law meant to stop congressional insider trading and the utter lack of federal enforcement

  • Sen. Elizabeth Warren called out the “brazenness” of California lawmakers who flouted a federal disclosure law in order to hide the bribes they took from insider trading.
  • An Insider investigation found that dozens of members of Congress violated the STOCK Act.
  • The “Conflicted Congress” project found members of Congress trading stocks in industries they’ve criticized.

Said one of the witnesses: “…I was a White House And Congressional Advisor. I was asked to participate in a criminal stock market manipulation, involving stimulus funds, that public figures had put together. I reported the crime. Federal officials then ran reprisal attacks on me using taxpayer-paid resources. According to the FBI and Congressional investigators, they spent over $30M buying media attacks. Now I want my damages, losses and monies-owed paid and I want the FBI to reveal what they found out from interviewing the attackers (ie: their 302 forms) because that reveals who paid the attackers. The feds defrauded me out of my life savings and got me to invest in their project that they had already covertly hard-wired to some Senator’s Big Tech financiers. Now the Feds have blockaded my rights to a lawyer, a jury trial and coverage of my damages, as political reprisal for speaking out…”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren denounced the “brazenness” of members of Congress who have flouted a federal law meant to stem insider trading in Congress and called for stronger enforcement in response to a new Insider investigation.

“Conflicted Congress,” a five-month Insider investigation, found 48 members of Congress and 182 senior-level congressional staffers have violated the “STOCK” Act. The 2012 federal conflict-of-interest law requires members and staff to disclose their stock trades and seeks to prevent those in the halls of power from personally cashing in on the information they learn behind closed doors.

The investigation found dozens of cases of lawmakers trading stocks in industries and companies, like big tech firms, pharmaceutical companies, and fossil fuel producers, that they directly oversee or have publicly criticized.

“We need both tougher laws and enforcement of those laws,” the Massachusetts Democrat told Insider in an interview at the Capitol. “The American people should never have to guess whether or not an elected official is advancing an issue or voting on a bill based on what’s good for the country or what’s good for their own personal financial interests.”

Warren called out the “brazenness of people who think it’s okay to be in a position of trust to represent the people of this country, and at the same time to be working to advance your own financial interests,” adding, “it’s just wrong.”

When it comes to financial wrongdoing, Congress acts as its own policeman, resulting in little accountability and massive cover-ups in many cases.

Warren, a consumer protection lawyer who taught at Harvard Law School, has consistently advocated for stronger financial transparency requirements for members of Congress and government officials. In 2020, she re-introduced a bill to ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks.

Warren told Insider that for now, the solution “starts with just enforcement.”

Musk was named Time’s 2021 “Person of the Year” after Musk’s PR people paid off Time editors. At the time, Warren tweeted: “Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.”. Democrats including Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) decried the choice of Musk for the Time honor. Both accused the billionaire of not paying his fair share in taxes.  “We can’t believe Time Magazine just named Elon Musk its ‘Person of the Year,’” Jayapal said in a statement.  “The richest person in the world and yet he avoids paying his taxes while working families struggle to put food on the table and pay rent.”

Musk surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the richest man in the world this year. His net worth is over $290 billion.

According to a report released by ProPublica in June, the billionaire paid $68,000 in federal income taxes in 2015, $65,000 in 2017 and no federal income taxes in 2018.

Brown accused Musk of “union-busting” following a 2019 National Labor Relations Board ruling that Tesla acted illegally for firing an employee pushing to unionize.

“A billionaire who has been found guilty of illegal union-busting [National Labor Relations Board] should probably not be @TIME’s Person of the Year,” Brown tweeted.

The back and forth between the businessman and the senator comes the same day that six current and former Tesla employees filed a lawsuit in Alameda County, Calif., alleging sexual harassment in the workplace and after another murder victim was found in Tesla’s factory.

“Bring the charges, pull them out. Make it clear publicly,” she said. “The strongest enforcement is to make known what they are doing and for the voters to retire them forcibly.”

One of the most powerful lawmakers in the U.S. defended the right of congresspeople to trade stocks. She, Feinstein, Reid, Harris and other California politicians own Silicon Valley companies Google, Facebook, Netflix, Apple, Facebook, Tesla, SpaceX and YouTube and get them federal cash. They defund their competitors and put hit-jobs on those competitors, who are their own constituents. These politicians block government actions that would regulate these companies and laws designed to control the corruption and public safety hazards of these companies.

When asked about the issue during a press conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that “We’re a free market economy” and lawmakers “should be able to participate in that.” That reply was an insincere, pandering, smoke-screen of a lie!

Pelosi’s own stock portfolio, which gained over $65 million in value between 2019 and 2021, has often been the subject of scrutiny. The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which was passed in 2012, is designed to combat insider trading by lawmakers, who many across the spectrum argue have too much access to inside information to be able to trade stocks ethically. In October, the Federal Reserve banned its officials from owning individual stocks. In March 2020, four senators were accused of insider trading and investigated by the Justice Department when they sold off stocks ahead of the COVID-19-induced economic downturn.

Voices across the spectrum, especially on the right but also on the left, criticized Pelosi’s comments and questioned her position. Many argue that lawmakers since have access to information that the public does not, and because they also have the ability to write and pass policy, they shouldn’t be allowed to buy and sell individual stocks and other assets. Some on the right highlighted silence from other progressives in response to Pelosi’s statement despite their previous opposition to the practice.

Nancy Pelosi owns more than $500,000 in Apple stock, according to her financial disclosure reports. Pelosi is also the speaker of the House. Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike have introduced multiple antitrust bills that would affect Big Tech companies.

The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, called Pelosi personally in June and told her not to move ahead on these bills. The House Judiciary Committee passed six of these bills in June. Not one of them has seen movement on the House floor in six months, with some reports pinning the inaction on the speaker.

Back in January, Pelosi’s husband, Paul, bought at least a quarter million in “call” options for Apple, which is a more sophisticated way of betting on a stock going up in value.

Paul Pelosi also bought at least half a million in call options for Tesla, which stood to get subsidized by the Build Back Better bill his wife shepherded through the House.

The Pelosis are already very rich, and nobody but the Pelosis themselves knows the motivations of Nancy Pelosi or the calculations of Paul Pelosi. But still, it ought to raise eyebrows that the speaker of the House keeps taking actions that benefit her stock portfolio.

Yet Pelosi said on Wednesday that there should be no restrictions on her ability to buy and sell stocks in the companies she’s regulating, subsidizing, protecting, and taxing.

This is especially rich because Pelosi has a long history of entangling her policymaking with her family’s profit-making.

Peter Schweizer, in his book Throw Them All Out, documented how Pelosi and her husband have gained insider status and made millions betting on companies that were directly involved in pending legislation.

Back in 2009, I wrote about businessman William Hambrecht, who went into business with Paul Pelosi, hired Paul Jr., and finagled a Financial Services Committee hearing on legislation that would increase business for Hambrecht’s company.

Congressmen and senators and their husbands and wives should be barred from buying and selling stocks, if not owning stocks. At the least, the stocks should be held in a blind trust. Better they should have to divest all their stocks and roll the money into a few select mutual funds.

Maybe we should compensate them for this sacrifice by paying them more, but the people subsidizing, regulating, taxing, exempting, and protecting corporations shouldn’t at the same time be investing in them.

The truth is that no one should trade individual stocks, unless you want to lose your money. Just put what you can in an index fund, and you’ll be fine.

But unlike you, members of Congress are often privy to information the general public doesn’t have, and when they trade on that information, it creates serious conflicts of interest.

Only occasionally is a member of Congress found guilty of that kind of securities fraud; former representative Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) was in 2019 (but he was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump). The California Senators sabotaged Zap, Fisker, XP, Apterra and a host of competitors to Tesla because those Senators own Tesla and are financed by Elon Musk.

But even if they aren’t found guilty of breaking the law, at a minimum it can create the appearance of corruption.

And so, when a U.S. senator frantically dumps $1.6 million in stocks just before the market tanks because of the pandemic (and calls his brother-in-law, who immediately dumps his own stocks), people might conclude that their elected representatives must be corrupt.

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution to this problem: Ban members of Congress and staffers from trading individual stocks. For the time they serve in Congress, they can put their holdings into mutual funds.

It isn’t like that’s some kind of hardship. Over time, the stock market tends to rise! They’ll make money.

A better way to look at this issue might be to ask why it’s important for members of Congress to be allowed to trade individual stocks. Is this some kind of foundational freedom that no American should be denied even for a temporary period? Did generations of brave American service members lay down their lives so your congressman could take a chance on Tesla shares going up next year?

Being a lawmaker is a privilege and a public trust. And it comes with some sacrifices. This doesn’t seem like a particularly onerous one, and it would be easier to enforce than the Stock Act — which doesn’t seem to get much enforcement at all. No complex reporting requirements, no deadlines, and no questions about whether a trade really was based on nonpublic information. Just a simple rule that says that as long as you’re in Congress you can’t buy or sell individual stocks.

The corruption in politics involving stock market payola is MAFIA level crime that the politicians make special laws to exclude themselves from arrest over. Any citizen can legally arrest any politician.

IF YOU SEE CORRUPTION, REPORT CORRUPTION:

Post a public web page with all of the details and evidence of the political corruption. Then invite all of the press, public, Inspector General’s, FBI, SEC, FTC and law enforcement to that web page. This will prevent cover-ups and stone-walling and protect you from getting ignored! Never assume that the agencies that are supposed to help you, will help you!

 

What you can expect to see in the future is a set of material called “THE ENERGY PAPERS“. These materials document an organized-crime using taxpayer dollars to pay quid pro quo to politicians and their tech oligarch financiers. The papers document how bribes, payola and insider deals financed Solyndra, Ener1, Tesla, Abound and others. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt and Larry Page are exposed ordering hit-jobs” on competitors and maintaining covert business ownership’s with U.S. Senators.

There are three groups of people at the FBI, FTC, GAO, OSC, SEC, etc. They are: #1. The Good Guys, #2. The Worker Bees and #3. The Bad Guys, who run cover-ups and protect dirty Senators. We hang out with numbers 1 and 2.

IF YOU SEE CORRUPTION, REPORT CORRUPTION (LINK)

 

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( Also try the link at: abc-tv-plus.mp4 )

 

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Do You Have Tips Or Information About The Tech Cartel’s Illicit Actions?

Send them to all of our contacts at the following addresses, at the same time, to bypass  cover-ups. Also, Post a public web page with all of the details and evidence of the political corruption. Then invite all of the press, public, Inspector General’s and law enforcement to that web page. This will prevent cover-ups and stone-walling and protect you from getting ignored! Never assume that the agencies that are supposed to help you, will help you!

 

(1.)

ICIJ @ THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY
910 17TH STREET NW,
7TH FLOOR,
WASHINGTON, DC 20006, USA

TEL: 202-466-1300;
FAX: 202-466-1101
E-MAIL: contact@icij.org

(2.)

The SEC
The Inspector General

(3.)

Margrethe Vestager, European Union Competition Commissioner
Gunther Oettinger, European Union Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society
Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission President
European Commission
Rue de la Loi / Wetstraat 200
1049 Brussels
+32 (0) 2 29 62496

(4.)

The FBI
David J. Johnson, Special Agent in Charge, FBI
CC: Peter D. Cair
450 Golden Gate Avenue, 13th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102-9523
Phone: (415) 553-7400
Fax: (415) 553-7674
E-mail: san.francisco@ic.fbi.gov

(5.)

The Guardian
witness@theguardian.com

(6.)

ACLU
125 Broad Street, 18th Floor,
New York NY 10004
212-549-2500

(7.)

GAO
1 (800) 424-5454 or
e-mail at fraudnet@gao.gov

(8.)

Federal Trade Commission
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20580
Telephone: (202) 326-2222
antitrust@ftc.gov

(9.)

The SEC
100 F Street NE
Washington, D.C. 20549-5631.
You may also send a fax to 202-772-9235.
https://www.sec.gov/complaint/tipscomplaint.shtml

(10.)

IRE
141 Neff Annex
Missouri School of Journalism
Columbia, MO 65211
573 882 2042
info@ire.org

(11.)

Cironline
1400 65th St., Suite 200
Emeryville, CA 94608
Phone: 510-809-3160 (main line)
Fax: 510-849-6141
lwilliams@cironline.org
msmith@cironline.org

(12.)

ProPublica
155 Avenue of the Americas
13th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10013
Phone: 1-212-514-5250
Fax: 1-212-785-2634
suggestions@propublica.org
info@propublica.org

INTERNATIONAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS HAVE UNCOVERED THIS ROUTING OF THE PAYMENTS, MONEY LAUNDERING AND TAX EVASION OF THE ATTACKERS HIRED BY THE U.S. POLITICIANS:

 Diagram Of The Crime Empire

An Inconvenient Truth: How Tesla Became a Trillion-Dollar Company Through Corruption, Bribery And Cronyism

Astonishing story about the rise of green technologies using political payola

Elon Musk and his cartel hired attackers to take us out after our products turned out to be safer, lower cost, longer range and better in every way. He couldn’t compete. He chose to cheat rather than compete. We chose to file criminal referrals on him and his cartel with the FBI, SEC, FTC, Congress and Interpol and sue his cronies in Washington, DC and get them fired for corruption…

By Ilya Pestov and The Justice Alliance

After the news that Hertz decided to buy 100 000 Tesla cars for more than $4 billion, Tesla capitalization has already increased almost by $200 billion. I am not talking about the market irrationality anymore, but I feel a bit curious. Hertz has recently emerged from bankruptcy and has not received any wholesale discount from Musk. How and why is Hertz going to buy such expensive cars? The answer is simple — with taxpayers’ money.

Apparently, the White House has recently passed the Budget Reconciliation Bill, which would cost $1.75 trillion for US citizens. There are plenty of benefits for the so-called ‘clean energy’ in it, particularly, 30% of tax deductions for ‘qualified commercial electric vehicles’. It means that after buying Tesla cars Hertz will receive $1.26 billion of tax cashback. In fact, there are also some benefits for the installing of electric vehicle charging stations. Hertz has already announced plans to make thousands of charging stations.

Lithium, Cobalt and rare earth mines are owned by Kleiner Perkins, Goldman Sachs and Department of Energy/White House insiders. That is what power’s Elon Musk’s cars. Many say that Tesla was just a front for invading foreign nations for their lithium batter mines (which are operated with child labor).

It is important to mention that common people have also an access to tax benefits that the public pays for with their April income taxes and the compensation limits are increased from $7500 to $12 500. As an example, instead of paying $15 000 income tax you may buy Tesla Model S and pay just $2500. It is like a pretty bonus from Tesla or a good discount on electric vehicles. Seems to be a good motivation to refuse internal-combustion engines, doesn’t it?

Moreover, Tesla also gets ZEV credits and other benefits for manufacturing its products. That way, the US government restructures the automotive market literally by hand and picks the winners and losers. Do you know what I find the most interesting in this story? The fact that the new bill was published on October, 28th but Hertz announced buying of Tesla cars on October, 25th. As you can understand, the decision was made much earlier.

You may already know that Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who gave Tesla their money, and his Silicon Valley friends at McKinsey Consulting, who provided the staff for the Department of Energy, were all in the pocket of Kleiner Perkins, where Al Gore works. Chu has now been replaced by an actress named Jennifer, who laughs at any suggestion that her job involves protecting America by keeping gas prices low and who owns the very companies that she is giving government funds to.

Now I would like to tell you about one very interesting character in the US establishment named Al Gore. This is the former US Vice President under Clinton, the presidential candidate in 2000 and the Nobel Peace Prize winner for the film An Inconvenient Truth (2006) about global warming.

His film and book have actually became the foundation for modern climate policy and the public demand for renewable energy sources. One should notice keep in mind that along with the awareness of internal concern for the ecology Al Gore was one of the first who realized the commercial potential in projects devoted to the protection of the environment.

Two years before ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ Al Gore together with Goldman Sachs Chief Asset Manager David Blood has run a new investment company Generation Investment Management. As a result, they both defined terms sustainable investing and ESG.

The former presidential candidate, as we could see, was very good at technology and finance. In 2007, he was suddenly invited to become a partner in Kleiner Perkins — one of the oldest and largest venture funds of Silicone Valley. John Doerr, one of Kleiner Perkins chief partners, joined the advisory board of Generation Investment Management.

J. Doerr, as Al Gore, stood for the innovations in clean energy to struggle with climate change. On the TED conference in 2007, he quoted his daughter “your generation created this problem, you better fix it”. That reminds me on Greta Thunberg’s words which would be told later. So that J. Doerr and Al Gore had a similar vision of the future and the month after mentioned partners’ rotation Kleiner Perkins fund invested into Silver Spring Networks. Biden’s daughter, Ashley, left her hand-written diary for journalists to find where she reveals the same thoughts (in addition to her naked shower play with Joe Biden)

By great coincidence, this deal happened a year before the US Department of Energy had announced a $3.4 billion grant program for smart grid developers. In fact, $560 million of this amount was spent to utilities serviced by Silver Spring Networks, which works exactly with smart grids. 6 years later Silver Spring Networks successfully entered an IPO.

David Blood, Al Gore and John Doerr

Luck literally pursued Kleiner Perkins. In 2008, the fund invested tens of millions dollars in a start-up hybrid cars manufacturer Fisker Automotive. After that, in September 2009, the company received a low-interest $529 million loan under the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) direct loan program from the same US Department of Energy.

Congress passed ATVM in 2007 after a drop in sales in the big three (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler). The volume of the borrowed capital was $25 billion. The goal of the program was to help the US auto industry to reduce fuel costs because Americans were tend to choose more fuel-efficient Japanese cars. That is, the problem devoted not to ecology issues, but much more to fuel saving.

Again, ATVM passed in 2007, but the allocation of funds began only 2 years later on a competitive basis. In February 2009, 8 months before the government loan to Fisker Automotive, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins became a member of the Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Council. The funny thing is that Fisker did not even have manufacturing facilities in the USA and the assembly of their Karma models took place in Finland.

The Obama-Biden administration appointed a venture capitalist from Kleiner Perkins as a member of an economic advisory board. They also signed a government loan for help American automotive industry to a company (without any manufacturing capacity in the United States) that Kleiner Perkins has invested in.

That trick was obviously noticed by the public. Some companies have sued the Department of Energy, Mitt Romney even called on Congress to open an investigation into the loan to Fisker Automotive, pointing out that its investors included Al Gore, who sponsored Obama’s presidential campaign. Nevertheless, somehow all those worries dwindled away as federal cover-ups went into full swing.

Fisker’s plans to start the manufacture at a closed GM plant in Delaware at the expense of a government loan, which GM itself did not receive, deserved special attention. These plans caused some questions among local residents, and then current Vice President Joe Biden, who served as Senator from Delaware from 1973 to 2009, assured people that the budget money for Fisker would be paid off, and the company will eventually return “billions-billions” dollars to everyone.

Running ahead, the budget money didn’t return to taxpayers because Fisker went bankrupt in 2013. From the bankruptcy documents, which fell into the journalists’ hands only 7 years later, it turned out that Hunter Biden (Joe Biden’s son) was an investor of Fisker. However, this fact also faded into oblivion without preventing Biden from gaining 58.8% of the votes in Delaware during the 2020 presidential election.

Let us turn back to Tesla. Only $8.4 billion were allocated from the $25 billion program of help to the American auto industry. Only 5 companies received money, although 108 applications were received. Almost $6 billion went to Ford with a democratically oriented management, $1.5 billion were given to Nissan, about half billion — to Fisker and Tesla and, finally, $50 million came to a less known VPG company.

Just one of the first results in Google on the “Chrysler republican” query.

Surprisingly, the credit limit has not been exhausted, large manufacturers like General Motors or Chrysler did not receive money, but two unprofitable startups from California, selling several hundred cars each, did. We already know the main lobbyists of Fisker — they are Al Gore and John Doerr, who invested in Fisker through Kleiner Perkins. But were they acquainted with Elon Musk? A brief search immediately gave a positive answer to that question.

In 2013, Al Gore, while talking about his new Tesla S in an interview to Yahoo Finance, called Elon Musk his friend. More than that, his son Al Gore III has been in charge of Policy & Business Development at Tesla since 2015. After learning that I immediately went to have a look at the Generation Investment Management profile on CB Insights. It turned out that the Gore fund had invested in Musk’s SolarCity in 2011 and Gore III worked there as a Policy Officer.

Then in 2016, Tesla acquired SolarCity. An unprofitable service company that didn’t even produce solar panels was taken over for a suspiciously large amount of money. Recently it turned out that Elon Musk has faced a $9.4 billion fine for this deal, although the final court decision had not been made yet. It is important that after the takeover in 2018, Al Gore became suddenly nominated for the post of chairman of the Tesla board of directors.

SolarCity’s valuation was really high

Al Gore rejected that offer but I did not doubt more about his close connection with Tesla. At the same time, I was interested in their possible contacts before receiving the lobbied state subsidies of 2009. That’s why I decided to change the angle and check whether Tesla has a relationship with Kleiner Perkins. Then it turned out that Elon Musk had been friends with John Doerr for a very long time.

In 2006, when Tesla looked for money in round С, Kleiner Perkins fund offered $50 million, while VantagePoint offered $70 million. Despite the huge difference in bids, Musk wanted to strike a deal with Kleiner Perkins but on the condition that John Doerr would sit on the board of directors. Unfortunately, J. Doerr had many other obligations and was forced to refuse. That’s why Musk chose VantagePoint, as he told in an interview.

I went on and learned that the vice president of Tesla in 2006–2017 was Diarmuid O’Connell. As I remember, he was responsible for national security issues under former Secretary of State Colin Powell. He also spoke about Iraq chemical weapons and showed test tube to legitimize the military invasion of Iraq at the UN in 2003.

I wondered how he appeared in that story. However, I didn’t have to look for an answer for a long time, so let us meet Colin Powell, a member of the advisory board of Kleiner Perkins, a strategic partner of the fund in 2005.

There was no direct investment from the fund in the company, nevertheless it seems that there was another strong connection between Kleiner Perkins and Tesla. Is Al Gore really not a government subsidy beneficiary for Tesla? My confirmation bias did not allow this thought to get along in my head. Searching for keywords, I came across publications in Yahoo Finance and Insider Monkey. The articles mentioned Gore’s earlier investment in Tesla.

Keeping in mind that the journalists could simply make a mistake, I began to study which funds were invested in Tesla at earlier stages and whether Al Gore was involved. Finally, I came across an interview with the managing partner of Capricorn Investment Group on the blog of the Japanese financial holding Nomura. He said that Capricorn financed the filming of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ movie.

Capricorn was founded by Jeffrey Skoll, the former eBay president and billionaire. The fund invested in Tesla together with SpaceX at early stages. Mr Gore brought in $35 million! Can you imagine? “That’s a big wad of cash for someone who reported barely $2 million in assets in 2000, when his job as vice president came to an end”, as the New York Times wrote in 2008.

As a result, Al Gore was the direct beneficiary of providing state loans under the ATVM program for Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors, in which he owned shares through venture funds Kleiner Perkins and Capricorn Investment Group.

When I proved it, I wanted to learn more about Al Gore’s bio. It has been revealed that after losing the election, in 2001, he became a vice president of Metropolitan West Financial — a company with more than $65 billion in assets under management. The company was managed by former heads of Drexel Burnham Lambert. That was a bankrupt investment bank, which history was very similar to Lehman Brothers.

The same year Mr Gore also joined the Google Advisory Board, in which he invested together with Kleiner Perkins in 1999. Probably that was the time when he met John Doerr. Then, in 2003, the former US presidential candidate became a member of Apple’s board of directors. In addition, the founders of Google were also early investors in Tesla.

It is clear that Albert Gore had many connections in political and financial communities. In 2006, he started a charitable organization The Alliance for Climate Protection. The company launched a $300 million (sic!) ad campaign to mobilize Americans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately. As a result, an “inconvenient truth” was told to everyone.

In 2009, Gore appeared before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to support Obama’s economic recovery plan. Then the government had passed the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included an $80 billion stimulus package to promote green energy initiatives. Newspapers called the bill the “biggest energy bill in history”.

The person who owns stakes in Tesla and Fisker first knocks out government loans and then pushes a law according to which manufacturers of electric vehicles should pay fewer taxes, and buyers of electric vehicles should receive tax deductions. Can you imagine?

Surely, Al Gore was not the only one who acted in this process. In 2006, Nick Pritzker, the brother of Hyatt founder, invested in Tesla. His niece Penny Pritzker became the 38th US Secretary of Commerce in Barack Obama’s cabinet, and his nephew was the Governor of Illinois. In general, Pritzker is one of the richest families in the US.

Among of early investors in Tesla there is Steve Westley, a politician and businessman. He has already joined the company’s board of directors in 2007. More than that, during the 2008 presidential election, Westley acted as a co-chairman of California’s Obama for America campaign. Currently, he is a member of the US Department of Energy advisory board.

Al Gore, John Doerr, Nick Pritzker, Steve Westley, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Larry Page — all of them were so-called donors and beneficiaries to the Obama campaign. I mentioned only the names from the public access. Let me remind that these people are only mentioned in the context of the Tesla story while the whole green initiative and the Recovery and Reinvestment Act affects a much larger number of companies and investors.

The rapid development of electric vehicle companies is taking place in a distorted market environment. Their commercial success is mainly driven by government incentives unavailable for ICV cars manufacturers.

The US government is literally restructuring the auto market by hand in order to make one guy: Elon Musk, massively rich.. In that case the active discussions about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions could probably be nothing more than a part of a program to reallocate money in the US establishment since Nancy Pelosi, George Soros and The Feinstein family are the true owners of the stock profits from Elon Musk.

However, the question remains whether this is really a good thing, because there is no full consensus in the scientific community regarding the general belief in the environmental friendliness of electric vehicles and the beneficiaries are always the same 50 people associated with Nancy Pelosi.

————————————————————————————–

Join The ANTI-CORRUPTION PARTY. They Are Ending This Kind Of Political Corruption

Join millions of citizens that are working on ending this political corruption, cronyism, black-listing and insider trading by public officials.

WE, THE PEOPLE are solving this problem. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Green Party Advocates and ALL other party member are working with us to end these social crimes.

The Process:

LAWS YOU NEED TO FORCE YOUR POLITICAL REPRESENTATIVES TO MAKE

These are the steps that the you, The Public, must demand to strengthen public integrity by eliminating corrupt financial conflicts in Congress.

Congress must be ordered to eliminate both the appearance and the potential for financial conflicts of interest. Americans must be confident that actions taken by public officials are intended to serve the public, and not those officials. These actions counter-act the actions taken by Administration staff and Department of Energy officials in illicit coordination with U.S. Senators.

We experienced all of the damages from each of the abuse-of-power issues listed below. Your public officials are being paid BRIBES through their family stock market holdings.

CUT THEM OFF – Demand that Congress make it a felony for any politician, judge or regulator to own stocks, or to let their family own stocks. If they want to get rich, they can go into another line of work.

If you can get these laws made, it will end 90% of American corruption. Politicians won’t allow these laws to be made because it will cut off their corruption. Thus: You have to force the politicians to make these laws and leverage them with investigations and recall elections.

These are the actions needed to resolve this corruption:

  • Ban individual stock ownership by Members of Congress, Cabinet Secretaries, senior congressional staff, federal judges, White House staff and other senior agency officials while in office. Prohibit all government officials from holding or trading stock where its value might be influenced by their agency, department, or actions.
  • Apply conflict of interest laws to the President and Vice President through the Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act, which would require the President and the Vice President to place conflicted assets, including businesses, into a blind trust to be sold off
  • Require senior Department of Energy government officials, employees, contractors and White House staff to divest from privately-owned assets that could present conflicts, including large companies like Tesla, Google, Facebook, Sony, Netflix, etc., and commercial real estate.
  • Make it a felony to not respond to a filing by a citizen within 48 hours. Former White House and Energy Department staff use ‘stone-walling’ to intentionally delay responses for a decade, or more.
  • Apply ethics rules to all government employees, including unpaid White House staff and advisors.
  • Require most executive branch employees to recuse from all issues that might financially benefit themselves or a previous employer or client from the preceding 4 years.
  • Create conflict-free investment opportunities for federal officials with new investment accounts managed by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board and conflict-free mutual funds.
  • Close and lock the Revolving Door between industry and government and stop tech companies from buying influence in the government or profiting off of the public service of any official.
  • Lifetime ban on lobbying by Presidents, Vice Presidents, Members of Congress, federal judges, and Cabinet Secretaries; and, multi-year bans on all other federal employees from lobbying their former office, department, House of Congress, or agency after they leave government service until the end of the Administration, but at least for 2 years ( and at least 6 years for corporate lobbyists).
  • Limit the ability of companies to buy influence through former government officials.
  • Require income disclosures from former senior officials 4 years after federal employment.
  • Prohibit companies from immediately hiring or paying any senior government official from an agency, department, or Congressional office recently lobbied by that company.
  • Prohibit the world’s largest companies, banks, and monopolies (measured by annual revenue or market capitalization) from hiring or paying any former senior government official for 4 years after they leave government service.
  • Limit the ability of companies to buy influence through current government employees.
  • Prohibit current lobbyists from taking government jobs for 2 years after lobbying; 6 years for corporate lobbyists. Public, written waivers where such hiring is in the national interest are allowed for non-corporate lobbyists only.
  • Prohibit corporate outlaws like Google, Tesla, Facebook, Linkedin, Netflix, Sony, etc., from working in government by banning the hiring of top corporate leaders whose companies were caught breaking federal law in the last 6 years.
  • Prohibit contractor corruption by blocking federal contractor and licensee employees from working at the agency awarding the contract or license for 4 years.
  • Ban “Golden Parachutes” that provide corporate bonuses to executives for federal service.
  • Publicly expose all influence-peddling in Washington.
  • Strengthen and expand the federal definition of a “lobbyist” to include all individuals paid to influence government.
  • Create a new “corporate lobbyist” definition to identify individuals paid to influence government on behalf of for- profit entities and their front-groups.
  • Radically expand disclosure of lobbyist activities and influence campaigns by requiring all lobbyists to disclose any specific bills, policies, and government actions they attempt to influence; any meetings with public officials; and any documents they provide to those officials.
  • End Influence-Peddling by Foreign Actors such as that which occurred in the ENER1, Severstal, Solyndra and related scandals.
  • Fire the Fed officials that own, trade and pump stocks using the Fed itself for profiteering.
  • The most senior officials in the U.S. Government are the worshipers of Elon Musk, investor’s in Elon Musk’s companies and suppliers, deciders of the financing for Elon Musk, suppliers of staffing to Elon Musk, recipients of political campaign financing by Elon Musk and Musk’s covert Google And Facebook partnership, social friends of Elon Musk and the attackers of Elon Musk’s competitors. Make this a felony.
  • Combat foreign influence in Washington by banning all foreign lobbying.
  • End foreign lobbying by Americans by banning American lobbyists from accepting money from foreign governments, foreign individuals, and foreign  companies to influence United States public policy.
  • Prohibit current lobbyists from taking government jobs for 2 years after lobbying; 6 years for corporate lobbyists. Public, written waivers where such hiring is in the national interest are allowed for non-corporate lobbyists only.
  • End Legalized Lobbyist Bribery and stop lobbyists from trading money for government favors.
  • Ban direct political donations from lobbyists to candidates or Members of Congress.
  • End lobbyist contingency fees that allow lobbyists to be paid for a guaranteed policy outcome.
  • End lobbyist gifts to the executive and legislative branch officials they lobby.
  • Strengthen Congressional independence from lobbyists and end Washington’s dependence on
    lobbyists for “expertise” and information.
  • Make congressional service sustainable by transitioning Congressional staff to competitive salaries that track other federal employees.
  • Reinstate the nonpartisan Congressional Office of Technology Assessment to provide critical scientific and technological support to Members of Congress.
  • Level the playing field between corporate lobbyists and government by taxing excessive lobbying beginning at $500,000 in annual lobbying expenditures, and use the proceeds to help finance Congressional mandated rule-making, fund the National Public Advocate, and finance Congressional support agencies.
  • De-politicize the rulemaking process and increase transparency of industry efforts to influence federal agencies.
  • Require individuals and corporations to disclose funding or editorial conflicts of interest in research submitted to agencies that is not publicly available in peer-reviewed publications.
  • Prevent McKinsey-type sham research from undermining the public interest by requiring that studies that present conflicts of interest to undergo independent peer review to be considered in the rule-making process.
  • Require agencies to justify withdrawn public interest rules via public, written explanations.
  • Close loopholes exploited by powerful corporations like Google, Facebook, Tesla, Netflix, Sony, etc., to block public interest actions.
  • Eliminate loopholes that allow corporations, like Tesla and Google, to tilt the rules in their favor and against the public interest.
  • Restrict negotiated rule-making to stop industry from delaying or dominating the rule-making process by ending the practice of inviting industry to negotiate rules they have to follow.
  • Restrict inter-agency review as a tool for corporate abuse by  banning informal review, establishing a maximum 45-day review period, and blocking closed -door industry lobbying at the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
  • Limit abusive injunctions from rogue judges, like Jackson, et al, by ensuring that only Appeals Courts, not individual District Court judges , can temporarily block agencies from implementing final rules.
  • Prevent hostile agencies from sham delays of implementation and enforcement by using the presence of litigation to postpone  the implementation of final rules.
  • Empower the public to police agencies for corporate capture.
  • Increase the ability of the public to make sure their interests are considered when agencies act.
  • Create a new Office of the Public Advocate  empowered to assist the public in meaningfully engaging in the rule-making process across the federal government.
  • Encourage enforcement by allowing private lawsuits from members of the public to hold agencies accountable for failing to complete rules or enforce the law, and to hold corporations accountable for breaking the rules.
  • Inoculate government agencies against corporate capture such as Google undertook against the White House.
  • Provide agencies with the tools and resources to implement strong rules that reflect the will of Congress and protect the public.
  • Boost agency resources to level the playing field between corporate lobbyists and federal agencies by using the proceeds of the tax on excessive lobbying and the anti-corruption penalty fees to help finance Congress-mandated rule-making and facilitate decisions by agencies that are buried in an avalanche of lobbyist activity.
  • Reform judicial review to prevent corporations from gaming the courts by requiring courts to presumptively defer to agency interpretations of laws and prohibiting courts from considering sham McKinsey studies and research excluded by agencies from the rule-making process.
  • Reverse the Congressional Review Act provision banning related rules that prevent agencies from implementing the will of Congress based on Congress’ prior disapproval of a different, narrow rule on a similar topic.
  • Improve judicial integrity and defend access to justice for all Americans.
  • Strengthen Judicial Ethics Requirements.
  • Enhance the integrity of the judicial branch by strengthening rules that prevent conflicts of interest.
  • Ban individual stock ownership by federal judges.
  • Expand rules prohibiting judges from accepting gifts or payments to attend private seminars from private individuals and corporations.
  • Require ethical behavior by the Supreme Court by directing the Court to follow the Code of Conduct that binds all other federal judges.
  • Boost the transparency of Federal Courts.
  • Enhance public insight into the judicial process by increasing information about the process and reducing barriers to accessing information.
  • Increase disclosure of non-judicial activity by federal judges by requiring the Judicial Conference to publicly post judges’ financial reports, recusal decisions, and speeches.
  • Enhance public access to court activity by mandating that federal appellate courts live-stream, on the web, audio of their proceedings, making case information easily-accessible to the public free of charge, and requiring federal courts to share case assignment data in bulk.
  • Eliminate barriers that restrict access to justice to all but the wealthiest individuals and companies.
  • Reduce barriers that prevent individuals from having their case heard in court by restoring pleading standards that make it easier for individuals and businesses that have been harmed to make their case before a judge.
  • Encourage diversity on the Federal Bench.
  • Strengthen the integrity of the judicial branch by increasing the focus on personal and professional diversity of the federal bench.
  • Create a single, new, and independent agency dedicated to enforcing federal ethics and anti-corruption laws.
  • Support stronger ethics and public integrity laws with stronger enforcement.
  • Establish the new, independent U.S. Office of Public Integrity, which will strengthen federal ethics enforcement with new investigative and disciplinary powers.
  • Investigate potential violations by any individual or entity, including individuals and companies with new subpoena authority.
  • Enforce the nation’s ethics laws by ordering corrective action, levying civil and administrative penalties, and referring egregious violations to the Justice Department for criminal arrest and enforcement.
  • Receive and investigate ethics complaints from members of the public.
  • Absorb the U.S. Office of Government Ethics as a new Government Ethics Division tasked with providing confidential advice to federal employees seeking ethics guidance.
  • Consolidate anti-corruption and public integrity oversight over federal officials, including oversight of all agency Inspectors General, all ethics matters for White House staff and agency heads, and all waivers and recusals by senior government officials.
  • Remain independent and protected from partisan politics through a single Director operating under strict selection, appointment, and removal criteria.
  • Provide easy online access to key government ethics and transparency documents, including financial disclosures; lobbyist registrations; lobbyist disclosures of meetings and materials; and all ethics records, recusals, and waivers.
  • Maintain a new government-wide Office of the Public Advocate, which would advocate for the public interest in executive branch rule-making.
  • Enforce federal open records and FOIA requirements by maintaining the central FOIA website and working with the National Archives to require agencies to comply with FOIA.
  • Strengthen legislative branch enforcement.
  • Expand an independent and empowered ethics office insulated from congressional politics.
  • Expand and empower the U.S. Office of Congressional Ethics, which will enforce the nation’s ethics laws in the Congress  and the entire Legislative Branch, including the U.S. Senate.
  • Conduct investigations of potential violations of ethics laws and rules by Members of Congress and staff with new subpoena power.
  • Refer criminal and civil violations to the Justice Department, the Office of Public Integrity, or other relevant state or federal law enforcement.
  • Recommend disciplinary and corrective action to the House and Senate Ethics Committees.
  • Boost transparency in government and fix Federal Open Records laws, public official and candidate tax disclosure.
  • Disclose basic tax return information for candidates for federal elected office and current elected officials.
  • Require the IRS to release tax returns for Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates from the previous 8 years and during each year in federal elected office.
  • Require the IRS to release t ax returns for Congressional candidates from the previous 2 years and during each year in federal elected office.
  • Require the IRS to release tax returns and other financial information of businesses owned by senior federal officials and candidates for federal office.
  • Require the IRS to release tax filings for nonprofit organizations run by candidates for federal office.
  • Disclose the Cash behind Washington Advocacy and Lobbying.
  • Prevent special interests from using secret donations from corporations and billionaires to influence public policy  without disclosure.
  • Require nonprofit organizations to list donors who bankrolled the production of any specific rule-making comment, congressional testimony, or lobbying material, and to reveal whether the donors reviewed or edited the document.
  • Require individuals and corporations to disclose funding or editorial conflicts of interest in research submitted to agencies that is not publicly available in peer-reviewed publications.
  • Prevent sham research, like that from DNC shill McKinsey Consulting, from undermining the public interest by requiring that studies that present conflicts of interest to independent peer review to be considered in the rule-making process.
  • Improve the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
  • Close the loopholes in our open records laws that allow federal officials to hide tech industry and Silicon Valley oligarch industry influence.
  • Codify the default presumption of disclosure and affirmatively disclose records of public interest, including meeting agendas; government contracts; salaries; staff diversity; and reports to Congress.
  • Require all agencies to use a central FOIA website that is searchable and has downloadable open records databases with  all open FOIA requests and all records disclosed through FOIA.
  • Strengthen FOIA enforcement by limiting FOIA exemptions and loopholes, and by giving the National Archives the authority to overrule agency FOIA decisions and to compel disclosure.
  • Extend FOIA to private-sector federal contractors, including private federal prisons and immigration detention centers, and require large federal contractors to disclose political spending.
  • Make Congress more transparent by ending the corporate lobbyists leg up in the legislative process. The public deserves to know what Congress is up to and how lobbyists influence legislation.
  • Require all congressional committees to immediately post online more information, including hearings and markup schedules, bill or amendments text, testimonies, documents entered into the hearing record, hearing transcripts, written witness answers, and hearing audio and video recordings.
  • Require Members of Congress to post a link to their searchable voting record on their official websites.
  • Require lobbyists to disclose when they lobby a specific congressional office; specific topics of visit; the official action being requested; and all documents provided to the office during the visit.

Do these seem like common-sense rules that should have already been in place? They are!

These anti-corruption rules have been blocked by your own elected officials because they work for themselves and not you!

You need to PUNISH any public official who does not put these changes into effect!

We are not asking for your money or your mailing list data. First: Simply put the logo at the top of his page (download it here) on all of your blogs, websites, social media, T-shirts and other visible locations. Next: only vote for candidates who promise to enact the platform goals, above, and stop any candidates who do not promise, in writing, to enact these goals.

That’s it. It is that easy!

If you want to support us, then promote this website link and copy-paste the text on it around the globe. You don’t need to give us your money. Spend it on media and marketing promotions of this site and the text on it. You can use www.newswire.com, Mohr Publicity, promoteyourwebsite.com, and many other services, to make the message global.

News And Reports:

Report: Over 131 Federal Judges Broke The Law by Hearing Cases Where They Had A Financial Interest

JOIN ONE OF THE MANY TEAMS “ENDING CORRUPTION IN AMERICA“:

http://www.majestic111.com

http://vcracket.weebly.com

https://www.transparency.org

https://wikileaks.org

https://www.judicialwatch.org/

https://causeofaction.org

https://fusion4freedom.com/about-gcf/

http://peterschweizer.com/

http://globalinitiative.nethttps://fusion4freedom.com/the-green-corruption-files-archive/

https://propublica.org

https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news

http://wearethenewmedia.com

http://ec.europa.eu/anti_fraud/index_en.html

http://gopacnetwork.org/

http://www.iaaca.org/News/


http://www.interpol.int/Crime-areas/Corruption/Corruption


http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/


http://www.traceinternational.org/


http://www.oge.gov/

https://ogc.commerce.gov/

https://anticorruptionact.org/
http://www.anticorruptionintl.org/

https://represent.us/
http://www.giaccentre.org/dealing_with_corruption.php

http://www.acfe.com/

https://www.oas.org/juridico/english/FightCur.html

https://www.opus.com/international-anti-corruption-day-businesses/

https://www.opengovpartnership.org/theme/anti-corruption

https://www.ethicalsystems.org/content/corruption

https://sunlightfoundation.com/

http://www.googletransparencyproject.org/

http://xyzcase.weebly.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelgate

https://www.opensecrets.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation

http://www.projectveritasaction.com

Over 12 Tesla Whistle-Blowers had mysterious deaths

Shoots A Car Into Space - Pays For It With Taxpayer Cash

Shoots A Car Into Space – Pays For It With Taxpayer Cash

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DOWNLOAD OR PLAY THIS VIDEO AT :    THE ELON MUSK STORY.m4v

How San Francisco Makes It Insanely Hard to Build Housing

Written by Sarah Wright

Capital Public Radio: LGBTQ seniors can struggle to find affordable housing. A Sacramento development is trying to help.

By Felicia Alvarez [9-20-22] // “I kind of don’t have a life right now,” Francesca Dixon said earlier this year. “My world is a 10-foot-by-11-foot room. It would be nice to have my own place.”

Bakersfield.com: City of Bakersfield on a mission to develop more affordable housing

By Steven Mayer [9-19-22] // By the end of a City Council Budget and Finance Committee meeting on Monday, it appeared that Bakersfield could add more than 500 housing units if a trust fund designed to spark new construction works as planned.

The San Francisco Standard: How San Francisco Makes It Insanely Hard to Build Housing

By Sarah Wright [9-13-22] // Bob Tillman owned a laundromat in San Francisco’s Mission District and wanted to replace it with apartments. In a city desperate for new housing, it seemed logical enough. But eight years later…

HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

NCSHA: Report: Filling Funding Gaps — How State Agencies Are Moving to Meet a Growing Threat to Affordable Housing

[9-20-22] // Key themes of this new report: “State agencies’ strategies for helping developers close unexpected funding gaps include reducing costs through administrative flexibility, allocating future-year LIHTCs, increasing financing from tax-exempt bonds, using Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (recovery funds), and working with developers to identify project cost savings.”

 

PODCASTS / MULTIMEDIA

National Housing Conference Webinar: The State of Native Housing: Programs, Policy, and Practices on Tribal Lands

Thursday, Sept. 29, 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PDT.

Fifth & Mission Podcast: Who owns all the housing in the Bay Area?

[9-20-22] // Property ownership and management in the Bay Area have become more corporatized, making it difficult for some tenants to figure out who exactly is their landlord. (30 min.)

LAND USE / PLANNING / REGULATION

Sacramento Business Journal: Placer County rescinds approvals for Martis Valley West project near Lake Tahoe

By Ben van der Meer [9-19-22] // The future of a plan to develop part of the Martis Valley north of Lake Tahoe is unclear, after a court ruling compelled Placer County supervisors to rescind approvals for the Martis Valley West project on Sept. 13.

Governing: Berkeley to Vote on $650M Housing, Infrastructure, Climate Bond

By Katie Lauer [9-19-22] // The most expensive item on the November ballot will be a general obligation bond measure that could end up being the largest revenue stream in the city’s history, increasing property taxes by $40.91 per every $100,000 in value.

HOUSING MARKETS / REAL ESTATE

S.F. Chronicle: One company operates thousands of San Francisco apartments. But who’s the landlord?

By L. Hepler, E. Stiefel, & S. Neilson [9-20-22] // In the years since Veritas super-sized its operation, tenants have repeatedly accused the company and its affiliates of maltreatment, sparking protests and in some instances lawsuits. The company denies all wrongdoing, and has argued for the lawsuits to be dismissed.

 

S.F. Chronicle: These are the secret power players shaping the Bay Area housing market

By S. Neilson, E. Stiefel, J.K. Dineen, & L. Hepler [9-20-22] // California doesn’t have hard-and-fast rules on how property owners identify themselves; large corporations, hedge funds and even wealthy families often purchase multiple homes through shell companies or trusts, shielding their names from ownership records. …We believe this is an unprecedented effort to uncover rental ownership and management networks across all nine counties in the San Francisco Bay region.

S.F. Chronicle: This map reveals who owns every property in the S.F. Bay Area

By Emma Stiefel and Susie Neilson [9-20-22] // This tool will help you investigate your landlord or anyone else’s.

 

L.A. Times: The Southern California median home price remained unchanged in August from the previous month as rising mortgage rates made houses even less affordable for many people.

By Andrew Khouri [9-20-22] // Sales of new and existing houses, condos and townhomes dropped 28.3% from a year earlier, while the median cost held steady for the fourth month in a row at $740,000. Mortgage rates have more than doubled in the last year.

Reuters: U.S. homebuilding buoyed by multi-family projects; falling permits signal weakness

By Lucia Mutukani [9-20-22] // The report from the Commerce Department on Tuesday showed permits for future homebuilding plunged to levels last seen during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020.

 

Business Journals: Housing inventory may not rebound for some time, despite slowing market

By Ashley Fahey [9-19-22] // “I think there are a significant number of homeowners who are locked into very, very low mortgage rates, and we’ve seen people who are staying put, living in their homes longer, renovating instead of moving,” said economist Lisa Sturtevant. See also housing starts in August’s U.S. New Residential Construction Report, released today.

HOMELESSNESS

S.F. Chronicle: S.F. had bold plan to cut chronic homelessness in half in 5 years. The numbers only got worse

By Mallory Moench & Kevin Fagan [9-20-22] // “Housing will fix homelessness, not more plans,” said Paul Boden, director of the antipoverty nonprofit Western Regional Advocacy Project.

 

Santa Cruz Sentinel: Second wave of Santa Cruz homeless camp closure enforced

By Jessica A. York [9-19-22] // Of the 54 individuals counted last week in “Zone 2,” the section being closed yesterday, only 15 accepted offers to move to the city’s Overlook tent encampment on leased land at the National Guard Armory in DeLaveaga Park.

Oakland Auditor: Performance Audit of the City of Oakland’s Homelessness Services: Better strategy and data are needed for more effective and accountable service delivery and positive outcomes for Oakland’s homeless residents

By Courtney Ruby [9-19-22] // The report reveals the City’s had mixed results in placing the homeless into permanent housing and better information is needed to determine whether they remain housed…

Mercury News: New audit finds critical flaws in Oakland’s management of homeless housing

By Marisa Kendall [9-20-22] // Oakland failed to track basic outcome data, according to report.

San Jose Spotlight: San Jose homeless sweep creates new dangers

By Tran Nguyen [9-20-22] // More than 60 RVs and cars have squeezed into the empty baseball field at the corner of Asbury and Irene streets after the city began clearing the sprawling encampment near the Mineta San Jose International Airport a few weeks ago.

L.A. Times: Column: At tiny-home villages in Eagle Rock and Highland Park, the report card is mixed

By Steve Lopez [9-17-22] // Providing housing isn’t enough for many people who have been surviving without permanent—or any—shelter. They need mental health treatment, drug abuse treatment, and other services.

ECONOMY / EMPLOYMENT

Washington Post: Worker shortages are fueling America’s biggest labor crises

By Abha Bhattarai [9-16-22] // Exhausted workers in education, healthcare and the railroad industry are pushing back after months of staffing shortfalls.

Next City: The Devaluation of Entire Black Neighborhoods, Not Just Homes

By Oscar Perry Abello [9-20-22] // Black retail spaces across the country are worth an aggregated $171 billion less than they should be worth, simply because they are located in majority-Black neighborhoods, says a new report. What does that actually mean?

Axios: Study: Medical debt threatens people’s health, housing

By Sabrina Moreno [9-10-22] // Soaring medical debt is setting U.S. adults up for higher risks of eviction, food insecurity and bad health outcomes regardless of insurance or income, a new study found.

TRANSPORTATION / TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

Washington Center for Equitable Growth: New research shows that 1 in 4 adults in the United States suffers from transportation insecurity

By Alix Gould-Werth [9-14-22] // Modeled after the Food Security Index, the Transportation Security Index identifies those experiencing transportation insecurity by looking at their symptoms, such as feeling stuck at home because of a lack of access to transportation or arriving early or late somewhere due to transportation scheduling issues.

CityLab: Traffic Deaths in the US Decline for the First Time Since 2020

By Keith Liang [9-19-22] // “Although it is heartening to see a projected decline in roadway deaths in recent months, the number of people dying on roads in this country remains a crisis,” Ann Carlson, NHTSA’s acting administrator, said in a statement.

REDEVELOPMENT / INFILL / PRESERVATION

S.F. Chronicle: S.F. just rejected another plan to turn an empty parking lot into apartments

By J.K. Dineen [9-16-22] // On Thursday, a short-handed Planning Commission rejected the project at 1010 Mission St. after an 11th-hour blitz from a half dozen South of Market nonprofit workers, who argued that the mostly market-rate housing — eight of the 57 condos would be below market rate — would be unaffordable and too small to accommodate local families.

Los Angeles Daily News: 50-unit affordable housing units will rise up on South LA church’s parking lot

By Chris Haire [9-20-22] // Officials broke ground on the project, called Serenity, on Monday morning, Sept. 19.

NATIONAL HOUSING NEWS

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The TransAmerica Pyramid peeks out behind wooden walls as workers continue construction on two affordable housing developments. | Jessica Christian/SF Chronicle via Getty Images

Bob Tillman owned a laundromat in San Francisco’s Mission District and wanted to replace it with apartments. In a city desperate for new housing, it seemed logical enough.

But eight years later and after countless community meetings, hearings, appeals, studies, a legal challenge and a court settlement—the site of the former laundromat at 2918 Mission St. still sits empty.

Tillman, who owned 10 laundromat businesses in the Bay Area, made out just fine: He bought the laundromat property in 2005 and 2006 for a total of $1.75 million, and after finally obtaining initial permits, he sold it in 2019 for $13.5 million to Lawrence Lui of Cresleigh Homes.

But his story, and the continued absence of housing at the site, reveals the massive hurdles developers face in the city and helps to explain why new housing permits this year cratered to about half of the 10-year average.

Bob Tillman stands outside the site of the former laundromat he owned at 2918 Mission St. in San Francisco on Monday, Sept. 12, 2022. | Paul Kuroda for The Standard

San Francisco is on pace to build an anemic 3,000 new units this year, and the lull in construction couldn’t come at a worse time. State law demands the city have a plan to build 82,000 new units over the next decade, and state officials led by Attorney General Rob Bonta are now investigating the city’s land-use practices and holding up the city as a poster child for housing dysfunction.

Indeed, the city represents an extreme version of a national housing crisis that is especially severe in big coastal cities. Costs are spinning out of control as builders face soaring pricing for materials and labor and a gauntlet of not-in-my-backyard activism, bureaucracy and cutthroat politics.

“It’s basically mafia government,” Tillman said. “People doing shakedowns of various sorts.”

“Nineteen times out of 20, they get away with it,” Tillman added. “And the 20th example, which is me, they cut a deal quietly, sweep it under the rug, and keep on doing what they’re doing.”

Higher Costs, Lower Rents 

From the beginning, Tillman realized he would have trouble financing a big housing project. When he first applied for permits in 2014, the estimated average cost of $700,000 for each of the 75 planned units seemed exorbitant. Today, the per-door cost of housing, a common metric for developers, is closer to $1 million in the city.

Even in the best of times, San Francisco is an extremely expensive place to build. Space is limited, the land itself is expensive, and the city’s high cost of living means higher cost labor, too.

That makes San Francisco’s average building cost—at about $440 per square foot—the highest in the world, according to data research group CBRE. A combination of rising materials costs, a labor shortage and supply chain disruptions are pushing costs even higher: In the Bay Area, construction bids have surged 17% over the past year, according to consulting group TBD Consultants.

Costs are rising in tandem with an unusual market pullback in the city, with rents still below pre-pandemic levels, home prices receding and low demand for office space.

“It’s really hard to make a project work in San Francisco right now,” said Brynn McKiernan, an associate at Emerald Fund, a local developer. “The type 1 construction, the towers, just aren’t financially feasible.”

But market conditions aren’t what’s driving many developers away. Instead, it’s the city’s political climate, which poses a host of challenges that don’t exist in friendlier pastures like Oakland and San Jose.

Developer Eric Tao shows a corner condo construction taking place on the sixth floor of 950 Market St., a hotel/condo development, seen on Friday, March 13, 2020, in San Francisco, Calif. | Liz Hafalia/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Three trends, in fact, worry local builders the most: The city’s multitude of fees that layer dollar after dollar onto every new project, its costly labor mandates—both tacit and explicit—and its tortuously slow permitting process. The capper is that even if the years-long permitting process goes well, there is the threat of arbitrary project denial at the Board of Supervisors.

Death by a Thousand Fees

The city’s “inclusionary housing” fee is where Tillman began his long odyssey to try and get permission to build. Unlike many other cities, where new development is allowed without a special process if a project fits zoning and other rules, San Francisco gives much greater power to commissions and politicians to decide on individual projects.

When he began the process in 2013, Tillman sought to build as many housing units on the site as he could, 14.5% of which were required to be below market-rate under the city’s so-called inclusionary housing rules. But after doing some legal research, Tillman discovered a loophole: If he used the state’s “density bonus” law, he could increase his planned 55 units to 75 without adding additional below market-rate units.

And if his project was fully up to code but still denied—which would likely be illegal under another state law that bars arbitrary housing denials—he could sue all the way to a state judge and set a precedent.

Adopted in 2002 and twice amended since then, the city’s inclusionary housing fee now requires developments larger than 10 units to include anywhere from 20% to 33% below market-rate units or pay a hefty fee equivalent to about $230 per square foot of the building’s residential area.

Affordable housing activists say the fee is a lynchpin of efforts to prevent displacement and assure that the city remains a place for everyone. Bad-mouthing by developers, they say, is just that, and affordability requirements remain a point of heated debate.

Jeremy Lui, a development manager at Cresleigh, described the fees as an example of good intentions with unintended consequences. The current inclusionary housing framework can kill projects, he said, because requiring a high percentage of low-rent units can outstrip any profitability.

“If I were a policymaker, it’s like saying ‘I only get 4 out of 5 votes sent in the mail,’” Lui said. “At some point, it just doesn’t make sense.”

The inclusionary housing fee is the 800-pound gorilla of San Francisco development fees, but is one of dozens of fees currently on the books. The city charges a boatload of neighborhood-specific impact fees, imposed in areas like Balboa Park and the Mission District, purportedly to help to offset the strain of new developments on existing neighborhoods.

Other fees are imposed citywide, like the $600 the city charges per bicycle parking space eliminated for new housing and the $2,302 per tree that cannot be planted. When piled onto a project, the city’s fees can amount to as much as a quarter of a project’s total “soft costs”—a term for the costs of architects, consulting, insurance, permit fees and other non-construction costs.

The Controller’s Office raises development impact fees every year alongside inflation. And 10 new fees have been added since 2014.

Other rules, like the city’s definition of a “high rise” and its building code requirements have evolved over the years to the point where Tillman says his project, if proposed today and therefore beholden to higher fees, would no longer be feasible.

“If someone … just gave me that lot [today], I don’t know that I could afford to build and design a project that would be economically viable,” Tillman said. “The city has done everything possible to increase the costs.”

Unfriendly Neighbors 

Tillman’s development plan met stiff resistance from the Mission District group Calle 24, which set in motion multiple appeals that wound up stalling the project for years.

Calle 24 wanted the site to be converted to 100% affordable housing and objected that the laundromat had been a site of activism in the 1970s, sending it to the Historic Preservation Commission for a study. Four months and $23,000 later, that commission did not find that the site had historic value.

Tensions boiled over at a January 2016 community meeting, when an irascible crowd hurled insults and homophobic remarks over concerns that the housing would displace existing residents. One attendee reportedly told Tillman that he wished his daughter, who lived in Boston, had been blown up in the recent marathon bombing.

At this point, Tillman says he saw the writing on the wall: There was little chance he’d get his project approved over neighborhood opposition. So he set out to get the project denied at the Board of Supervisors so he could settle out his building rights in court, allowing him to sell the site with entitlements, at a tidy profit, in a neighborhood where few new properties were getting the go-ahead to build new units.

Tillman’s housing plan—a 75-unit, eight-story housing project with 14.5% below market-rate units—eventually obtained a conditional use permit from the Planning Commission in 2017, three years after it was introduced.

That timeline is far from unusual in San Francisco, where it takes more than two years on average to permit housing projects—an unusually slow pace compared to peer cities, according to a draft study published last year.

The longer a project languishes in the city’s byzantine permitting process, the more expensive it gets for the eventual builder. Joe Ollá, vice president of business development and marketing at Nibbi Brothers General Contractors, estimated that for every six months of permitting purgatory, overall costs tick up by around 3 to 4%.

“If it gets delayed two years, that can destroy a job,” Ollá said. “It’s just this kind of neverending battle to try to catch up to the dollars.”

Knowing he was likely headed to court, Tillman refused to jump through the hoops normally required for getting a housing project off the ground in San Francisco. He didn’t cater his plans to the neighborhood and political groups and didn’t sign a voluntary agreement promising to use union labor.

That’s one of the unwritten rules for local builders, and it’s a double-edged sword: Those labor agreements tend to yield higher quality work, say builders, but also ratchet up costs.

Perhaps most importantly, not signing a labor agreement can make your project a political non-starter.

By the time he got that far, Tillman knew he was selling and didn’t want to tie a buyer up in a labor agreement. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway: The so-called “historic laundromat” had become a cause célèbre on both sides of the city’s housing debate, with Mission District activists saying it would further gentrify the neighborhood and pro-housing groups countering that building housing at an old laundromat couldn’t possibly displace anybody.

“I was going to get opposed by Mission activists whether I had the unions or not,” Tillman said.

Sure enough, Calle 24 appealed Tillman’s conditional use permit, sending the matter to the Board of Supervisors.

Chilling Effect

San Francisco’s system of housing review, which gives both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors discretion over housing approvals, is ripe for abuse.

In San Francisco, anyone—even non-residents—can ask the commission to take a second look at a development. It takes just a few hundred dollars and a claim of historical significance or environmental impact to stall a project

There are opportunities for public input and appeals at almost every stage of the process. Within two weeks of filing a pre-application for permits, applicants on bigger housing projects must notify everyone who owns property within 300 feet of the project of their initial plans and then hold a community meeting. Some buildings, like Tillman’s, require additional notifications before a hearing and can be subject to “postponement” to give the opposition time to organize.

Even once permits are approved, project opponents then have 30 days to appeal the permit to the Board of Supervisors. And that’s all just for the entitlement process—opponents have additional opportunities during the building permit phase to send projects to the city’s Board of Appeals.

An archival photo of the former laundromat at 2318 Mission St. in January 2016 (top) and a drone photo of the same lot (bottom) which remains empty on Monday, September 12, 2022. A housing development at the site has been delayed. | Michael Macor/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images ; Paul Kuroda for The Standard

The most common weapon of choice for anyone trying to stop a project is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a state law that requires most housing projects to undergo an environmental review. “Environmental impacts” can be interpreted broadly, and the Board of Supervisors has been accused of using CEQA as cover to tank projects for political reasons. That was the case in the much-publicized delay of 469 Stevenson, a proposed 500-unit development on a downtown parking lot, which led to a state investigation of SF’s housing policies.

“That just has a chilling effect,” said Jonathan Fearn, a builder with Greystar who sits on the Oakland Planning Commission, of the denial of projects like 469 Stevenson. “Why would I move forward?”

Likewise, the board cited CEQA in denying Tillman’s project in 2018, saying it could cast shadows over a nearby playground. Tillman sued, spurring the planning department to launch an independent “shadow study” and ultimately re-approve his project. That was five years after he first proposed it.

“If you’re on the political playing field, they can do anything to you,” Tillman said. “But once they turn you down…then you can go into the courts and that’s a different playing field. They don’t have control over it.”

Greystar, which manages more than two dozen apartment buildings in San Francisco, cleared planning hurdles on its last construction project in the city in 2014 and hasn’t done one since, said Fearn.

The pullback wasn’t calculated, but the South Bay, with its ample tech jobs to support rents—and more importantly, its simplified approach to approving housing compared to San Francisco—has proved a much more reliable market.

Cresleigh Homes, which purchased the 2918 Mission St. site from Tillman in 2019, demolished the old laundromat but still hasn’t secured final approval from the city’s building department to build beyond a foundation. Lui said it’s no surprise that builders decide that San Francisco is not worth the hassle.

“There’s a whole ecosystem of would-be builders that go elsewhere,” said Lui.

‘We Go to Oakland’

Pro-housing groups say the city’s “solutions” to the housing crisis are only making matters worse.

Local politicians are launching a yearlong process to redesign an existing state law to avoid relinquishing their role in project approvals. The Board of Supervisors approved a “streamlining” ballot measure with affordability and labor requirements so strict it’s unlikely to be utilized by developers at all.

Efforts at the state level to tear down barriers to housing may force San Francisco to change its ways, or set the stage for a legal showdown with local policymakers unwilling to cede local control of housing.

But for many of the city’s top builders, it’s too little, too late. They’re already spooked by projects like Tillman’s and 469 Stevenson that leave hundreds of units dead in the water for reasons they call arbitrary.

When asked what keeps builders in the city, McKiernan had a simple answer: “We go to Oakland.”