O! Say Can You See?

Propaganda as a many-splendored thing

Right wingers of many persuasions have enabled criminal enterprises to keep untruths coming at the American people. Artificially induced (by laundered cash) media serve as a means for conjuring up falsehoods to keep people afraid of whatever “other” is needed at the moment.

All these lies are easily proven on a one-at-a-time basis, but painting the bigger picture invokes the tsk-tsking of the commentariat holding the truth teller as unfair or irrational. What I see is NOT a conspiracy; it’s a way of life for people with bad intentions.

Perhaps it’s because I just had cataract surgery. (Came through fine)  I've seen developments over the past couple of days worth examining in the context of the great power struggle going on beyond electoral politics. These are skirmishes, but details worth remembering in any overall political analysis. 

First up, there’s the Epoch scam, best looked at as a big picture propaganda effort with a religious core. A little history is in order. 

Back in the Nixon era, the Unification Church funded the Washington Times to make sure right wing ideology was kept in front of policymakers. That funding came via investments made with profits from the sale to Japanese consumers of iconic merchandise purported to have supernatural powers.

Via an 1984 Washington Post investigative report:

• These operations range from Gloucester, Mass., tuna fleets to the anticommunist political lobbying of Causa International in Latin America and the United States.

• Their accounts could explain how the Unification Church -- with fewer than 5,000 U.S. members by some estimates -- has been able to support a major Washington newspaper that has lost an estimated $150 million during its first 2 1/2 years of operations.

• The Times, showcase of the church's business network, is seen by Moon as an important source of political influence here, according to Soejima, the former chief of Unification Church public relations in Japan. Exhorted by pep talks to meet "the respected father's" needs, Japanese church members have worked in recent years under sales quotas requiring them to transfer to the United States roughly $2.5 million a month earmarked for The Times, Soejima said.

Conflict at the top of the Unification Church and scandals at the Times led to a reduction in funding after the turn of the century. The paper is now considered a digital training ground for up and coming right wing columnists.

The Epoch Times, international multi-language newspaper and media company funded by the Falun Gong new religious movement, moved into public consciousness outside the mainland China diaspora with the election of Donald J Trump.

The publication and its affiliates have been prime movers for conspiracy theories favored by the former president’s supporters, ranging from the Spygate conspiracy theory to falsehoods about Hunter Biden’s Ukraine experiences to claiming the antifa was behind the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capital.

You might be aware of The Epoch Times due to a national billboard advertising campaign that included San Diego, claiming to be “#1 Most Trusted.” Print copies of the Epoch Times have been left on driveway and front porches in at least the San Carlos neighborhood.

Aside from Trump’s enmity to the People’s Republic of China, the Falun Gong also views him as the historical vehicle for a judgment day in which communists are sent to hell and Falun Gong's allies are spared. 

(A similar scenario is foundational for some of the evangelical sects understanding of the biblical Book of Revelation, who have been among the ex-president’s most avid supporters.)

Earlier this week, the Justice Department announced the indictment of the chief financial officer of The Epoch Times, Weidong "Bill" Guan. He was charged with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering and two counts of bank fraud.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said that under Guan's leadership, The Epoch Times's Make Money Online team purchased crime proceeds using cryptocurrency and transferred them into bank accounts held by Epoch Times entities. According to the DOJ the funds inflated the organization’s revenue by 410%.

The indictment of just the CFO has led to speculation that prosecutors are hoping to turn other participants in the scheme into witnesses for the state.

Entities like the Epoch Times provide a nurturing environment for conspiracy theories and false accusations that work their way up through the right wing media world.

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Gaming the news media, crudely done by religious fringe groups and more subtly by the likes of Rudolph Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, also involves paying off potential witnesses to criminal wrongdoing.

Being a supporting witness for Donald Trump has proven to be a lucrative pathway, according to a bombshell report from ProPublica:

• Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company.

• The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee.

• These pay increases and other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.

Proving witness tampering –the obvious crime in progress here– is exceedingly difficult without one of the beneficiaries turning state’s evidence. But the suggestion of untoward actions can be worked into future trials to undermine defense witness credibility.

I want readers to understand that the bigger picture involves a group of very wealthy individuals who see the checks and balances nominally occurring in our democracy as a threat against further enrichments.

The man convicted of 34 felonies and facing trials in three other criminal cases is coming to California this week, where he’ll be welcomed by members of Silicon Valley billionaires set

Via Politico:

• It’s routine for presidential candidates to make cash swings through the wealthy pockets of the Golden State. But the attention on Trump’s visit is heightened by his recent convictions — and the fact that California Republicans have stayed relatively quiet following the verdict, as Melanie Mason and Nick Reisman report today.

• MEANWHILE, IN SILICON VALLEY — Some of the nation’s wealthiest citizens are pulling out their checkbooks for Trump, galvanized by the verdict.

• Sequoia Capital Partner Shaun Maguire donated $300,000 to Trump following the news, noting on X that the timing was “not a coincidence.” Another Sequoia partner, billionaire Doug Leone, announced Monday he would back Trump’s reelection bid, despite renouncing his support after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.   

It’s not like all this billionaire backing is any secret. Here’s Sam Pizzigati at Inequality.Org 

• The wealthiest of our wealthy, a just-released report from Americans for Tax Fairness points out, are doing their best to keep these good times — for America’s rich — rolling.

• “Just 50 billionaire families,” the new ATF report details, “have already injected more than $600 million collectively into the crucial 2024 elections, with that number sure to show accelerating growth in the final six months of the campaign.”

• Stats like these, adds the report, offer “further proof that the nation’s richest families consider democracy just another commodity they can buy.”

Come November 5 you will have choices going beyond the names on the ballot. Wars are never neat and proper. Your voting decisions will be about taking a side in a class war. There are no superheroes or supervillains on the ballot and expecting such, given our political economy, is a fool’s errand.

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Tuesday’s Other News to Think About

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‘It’s time we put a felon in the White House;’ Riverside County sheriff endorses Trump in snarky video via the Press-Enterprise

• Joking that he was “going to change teams,” a sarcastic Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign by deadpanning: “I think it’s time we put a felon in the White House” in reference to the former president’s legal troubles.

• In a video posted on his personal social media last week and shared more than 63,000 times on Instagram, Bianco, a Republican, rebuked Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and the legislature’s Democratic majority for, in his view, making it harder for law enforcement to protect the public while coddling criminals and releasing them from prison early.

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Housing Is The Economy - Nothing gets better until we build more housing. By Hamilton Nolan at How Things Work

• On the national level, because it’s hard to produce overnight results on this issue, politicians need to make a point of educating the public on how this all works, as they push the policies that will make it happen. Donald Trump is the ultimate NIMBY, the bloated idiot who screams about “Protecting Our Suburbs” while promising to give the very same wealthy homeowners who caused this problem more power to continue perpetuating it. If you despise Donald Trump, yet find yourself on the same side as him when it comes to the question of whether people should be allowed to build new apartment buildings in your neighborhood, you need to reconsider your understanding of this issue.

• There are lots of economic issues but housing costs are the biggest one for most people. The only real way to improve this is to build a whole lot of new housing. Understand that this is a necessary part of being a progressive. Every day more people are born and they will all need places to live and if we ignore the need to continually build all of those places then everything gets fucked up, as it is now.

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The facts about Biden's new immigration policy by Judd Legum at Popular Information

• Nationwide, there has also been no evidence of a migrant crime surge. In 2023, homicide and violent crime dramatically declined. And, this year, cities that have received the most migrants as a result of Texas’ controversial busing program have seen crime levels drop, an NBC analysis found. 

• If anything, research shows that immigration is linked to decreases, not increases, in violent crime. Neighborhoods with higher concentrations of immigrant populations also have lower crime rates, multiple studies found. Between 1990 and 2014, undocumented immigration, in particular, was “generally associated with decreasing violent crime,” according to one study. 

• Nevertheless, Trump insists that “the border invasion and migrant crime will not stop until Crooked Joe Biden is deported from the White House.”