Feb 22, 2025 Financial Tips

Kunstler: Funny Money

Kunstler: Funny Money
Kunstler.com ^ | 21 Feb, 2025 | James Howard Kunstler

Posted on 02/21/2025 6:21:10 AM PST by MtnClimber

“The revelations that are coming for America possess the potential to reshape our entire notion of the relationship between citizen and state.” — El Gato Malo on Substack.

You’ve got to wonder how the Party of Chaos thought they would get away with the Stacey Abrams grift-of-grifts. In case you forgot, Stacey Abrams ran for governor of Georgia twice, lost, and claimed she was “real governor” for years after. In the meantime, she parlayed her celebrity persona to a $3.17-million net worth by 2022, doing nothing but running for office. She claimed it derived from giving speeches, publishing romance novels, and “wise investments.”

That was then, and this is now. Stacey popped up again this week in what looks like a textbook case of political scamming, uncovered by The DOGE team of forensic financial investigators. As “Joe Biden” racked up Democratic presidential primary wins in 2024, the shadowy claque behind him allocated $27-billion to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from the huge Inflation Reduction Act, ostensibly for “climate change action.” The money was stashed at Citibank, where it became a hidden slush-fund to keep payoffs flowing to party favorites no matter who won the 2024 election. An EPA “special advisor on climate action,” one Brent Efron, told a Project Veritas investigative reporter that “President Biden” was “throwing gold bars off the Titanic”.

The key to understanding how the Democratic Party works is how it uses federal grants to redistribute taxpayer money into jobs programs for its rank-and-file. As seen in the recent USAID scandal, the action revolves around the creation of countless NGOs (non-governmental orgs). They are easily created, poorly supervised, and assembled into large networks of self-serving, inter-dependent organisms whose main mission is paying staffers — and secondarily pretending to do good works, as suggested by a given group’s name is. These staffers make up the matrix of Democratic Party activists, well-paid foot-soldiers in do-nothing jobs who can be called upon to cheer-lead for the party, organize street protests and, most critically, harvest ballots when the time comes.

Stacey Abrams became a kind of field marshal for setting up NGOs around her campaigns for office and then later turned them into money laundromats for the trillions of dollars fire-hosed out of the US Treasury during the Covid-19-darkened “Biden” years. Here are some of Stacy’s NGOs:

· The New Georgia Project and its affiliated NGP Action Fund — set up for her 2018 run for governor. It was eventually fined $300,000 for failing to disclose millions in contributions, failing to register properly, and sixteen violations of campaign laws. Its main purpose was providing jobs for an army of activists. One question that might have been asked: how many of Stacey Abrams’ books were purchased by The New Georgia Project, juicing her royalties?

· The Southern Economic Advancement Project, founded in 2019 to “promote equity” in twelve southern states, paid Stacey a $700,000 annual salary.

· The Fair Fight Action group raised nearly $62 million in dark pool donations by 2022, with 96-percent from 252 large, unidentified donors.

· The Fair Count Project was created to lobby for counting illegal aliens in the 2020 US Census, in order to pad state congressional districts.

· The Third Sector Development group, created as an “incubator” for other groups (including the New Georgia Project).

· The Fair Fight 2020 group, created to “train voter protection teams” in twenty “battleground states.” That is, ballot harvesting.

Out of the $27-billion from “Joe Biden’s” Inflation Reduction Act sent to EPA in 2024, $2-billion from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) ended up in the Stacey-associated Rewiring America org and its offshoot the Power Forward Communities org. Stacey was listed as “senior counsel” to Rewiring America, which also happened to “partner” with her prior NGOs Fair Count and Southern Economic Advancement Project.

What you might surmise from all this is that “Joe Biden’s” green energy agenda was used as a green smokescreen for a giant patronage racketeering operation. The billions allocated would go ostensibly to innumerable corporations set up to carry-out “green” good deeds, most of which would never actually happen, but would, along the way, pad thousands upon thousands of bank accounts for favored contractors.

Stacey’s Power Forward Communities NGO was incorporated in the state of Delaware where loose corporate governance requires such orgs to pay out only five percent of the org’s funds to its stated mission recipients each year. The rest of the $2-billion not allocated to staff salaries can be socked away in safe investments garnering, say, $50-million-a-year in returns, which can be rolled back into the org and used for spinning out new NGOs with more paid staff positions. . .grift upon grift. . . .

That is what patronage is, and that, by the way, is how it became such an urgent national issue over a hundred years ago when it was openly known as the “spoils system” in electoral politics — to the victor go the spoils— which was resolved by the 1883 Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Alas, in our time patronage (that is, corruption) has reinvented itself as the blob, the runaway system that almost sank the country.

Do you see how all this works now? The ever-expanding matrix of NGOs creates an army of useful idiots working hand-in-hand with an ever-expanding rogue bureaucracy that has become effectively a fourth branch of government accountable to nobody. This is how your tax dollars disappear down a rat-hole and why the US government is insolvent.

The difference now is that the Democratic Party no longer has its hands on the levers of power. Different managers are in place at the critical agencies....SNIP

TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: grift

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1 posted on 02/21/2025 6:21:10 AM PST by MtnClimber

To: MtnClimber

I wonder what percentage of the budget goes to grift.

2 posted on 02/21/2025 6:21:24 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)

To: Carriage Hill; GOPJ; Mama Shawna; notdownwidems; The FIGHTIN Illini

James Howard Kunstler ping

3 posted on 02/21/2025 6:22:19 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)

To: MtnClimber

The lampposts of D.C. need to be festooned.....

4 posted on 02/21/2025 6:30:21 AM PST by TTFlyer (Lenin: that by the infliction of terror, a well-organized minority can conquer a nation.)

To: TTFlyer

“The lampposts of D.C. need to be festooned.....”

Gonna need a real sturdy lamppost for Ms. Abrams.

5 posted on 02/21/2025 6:36:06 AM PST by Buckeye Battle Cry (Progressivism is socialism. Venezuela is how it ends.)

To: All

Stacey Abrams is the field marshal for setting up campaign NGOs that turn into money laundromats for trillions of tax dollars fire-hosed out of the US Treasury during the “Biden” years. Here are some of Stacy’s NGOs:

<><>The New Georgia Project and its affiliated NGP Action Fund — set up for her losing 2018 governor effort and fined $300,000 for failing to disclose millions in contributions, failing to register properly, and sixteen violations of campaign laws. Its main purpose was providing jobs for an army of activists. One question that might have been asked: how many of Stacey Abrams’ books were purchased by The New Georgia Project, juicing her royalties?

<><>The Southern Economic Advancement Project, founded in 2019 to “promote equity”, paid Stacey $700,000 annually.

<><>The Fair Fight Action group raised nearly $62 million in dark pool donations by 2022, with 96-percent from 252 large, unidentified donors.

<><> The Fair Count Project was created to lobby for counting illegal aliens in the 2020 US Census, in order to pad state congressional districts.

<><>The Third Sector Development group, created as an “incubator” for other groups (including the New Georgia Project).

<><>The Fair Fight 2020 group, created to “train voter protection teams” “battleground states” on ballot harvesting.

Biden’s $27-billion ” Inflation Reduction Act” handed Abrams $2-billion from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) ended up in the Stacey-associated Rewiring America org and its offshoot the Power Forward Communities org.

Stacey was listed as “senior counsel” to Rewiring America, which also happened to “partner” with her prior NGOs Fair Count and Southern Economic Advancement Project.

6 posted on 02/21/2025 6:37:13 AM PST by Liz

To: MtnClimber

7 posted on 02/21/2025 6:38:23 AM PST by nopardons

To: MtnClimber

claque

Learned a new word today.

8 posted on 02/21/2025 6:39:04 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is opinion or satire. Or both.)

To: MtnClimber

The key to understanding how the Democratic Party works is how it uses federal grants to redistribute taxpayer money into jobs programs for its rank-and-file. As seen in the recent USAID scandal, the action revolves around the creation of countless NGOs (non-governmental orgs). They are easily created, poorly supervised, and assembled into large networks of self-serving, inter-dependent organisms whose main mission is paying staffers ...

Come up with a 'great sob story', apply for grants, and voila - instant high paying jobs for the children of 'white liberal elites' who majored in 'class warfare' at Harvard.... The NGO steals tax dollars from hard working Americans and uses the money to feed their own grandiosity and lifestyle.

9 posted on 02/21/2025 6:40:39 AM PST by GOPJ (Democrats are the party of angry black women, sexual weirdos and white liberal elites. It's a fail.)

To: MtnClimber

The 'cause' - the one on paper that justifies the scam - gets very little of the money.

10 posted on 02/21/2025 6:47:58 AM PST by GOPJ (Democrats are the party of angry black women, sexual weirdos and white liberal elites. It's a fail.)

To: MtnClimber

CRIMINALS NEED TO GO TO JAIL

To: MtnClimber

>> I wonder what percentage of the budget goes to grift.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and claim ONE HUNDRED PERCENT goes to grift, properly defined.

Great article. Thanks.

12 posted on 02/21/2025 6:56:32 AM PST by Nervous Tick (Hope, as a righteous product of properly aligned Faith, IS in fact a strategy.)

To: Nervous Tick

Someone made a good point about the shutdown of the USAID and all the NGOs it funded, supposedly for food and medical relief etc. in poor foreign countries. Why is it that we haven’t heard a word of complaint from the leaders of the recipient countries? The answer was that they never got the bulk of the money for these projects in the first place, that it was largely diverted to NGOs, their staff and “leadership” who were paid enormous salaries out of these funds for doing something close to nothing. The foreign leaders couldn’t complaint that they weren’t getting the money, otherwise they would be cut off from what little their countries received on claims of “corruption”.

13 posted on 02/21/2025 7:21:36 AM PST by laconic ( )

To: MtnClimber

So what happens now?

Stacey Abrams caught money laundering “global warming” money for corrupt NGOs she controls, and buying/manipulating elections

Certainly there was a crime in there somewhere?

Does fat body now go to jail?

14 posted on 02/21/2025 8:02:54 AM PST by PGR88

To: MtnClimber

I cannot wait to see how much money in total was stolen by this massive RICO.

15 posted on 02/21/2025 8:09:03 AM PST by TalBlack (Their god is government. Prepare for a religious war.)

To: MtnClimber

16 posted on 02/21/2025 8:39:38 AM PST by sauropod (Make sure Satan has to climb over a lot of Scripture to get to you. John MacArthur Ne supra crepidam)

To: MtnClimber

17 posted on 02/21/2025 9:59:42 AM PST by aquila48 (Do not let them make you "care" ! Guilting you i9s how they. control you. )

To: MtnClimber

18 posted on 02/21/2025 11:50:05 AM PST by aquila48 (Do not let them make you "care" ! Guilting you i9s how they. control you. )

To: MtnClimber

It’s clear NGOs need to be illegal. Or Congress codify no federal money allowed to go to them.

19 posted on 02/21/2025 11:59:30 AM PST by Fledermaus (GOP RINOs - Get on Board or Get Out!)

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