Marcha del orgullo en Paraná, Entre Ríos, Argentina. Noviembre de 2021 via Wikimedia commons
ANALYSIS – ‘Go woke – Go Broke’ – The saga of Budweiser and Target’s disastrous forays into transgender politics is great for conservatives, and all Americans.
It shows how national grassroots pressure can force giant woke companies to lose billions of dollars in a matter of weeks.
But more importantly, it shows us other ways to fight back. To truly force change we have to effectively leverage these boycotts and go way beyond them.
We need to go after the behemoth investment firms that push and incentivize these corporations to go even more woke.
Elon Musk just hinted at the next battleground – courtrooms.
Referring to Target’s decision to sell LGBT-themed items and clothing aimed at families and kids (including ‘onesies’ for toddlers and books instructing kids on using transgender pronouns), and the ensuing financial backlash, Musk said Friday that it’s just a matter of time before Target faces lawsuits for “destruction of shareholder value.”
“Won’t be long before there are class-action lawsuits by shareholders against the company and board of directors for the destruction of shareholder value,” he tweeted.
Won’t be long before there are class-action lawsuits by shareholders against the company and board of directors for destruction of shareholder value
Musk made the remarks in response to a tweet by conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who posted about JPMorgan downgrading Target’s stock after suffering its longest consecutive drop in decades.
Kirk replied by saying that shareholders should organize to get politics out of the “hyperpolitical” corporations of today.
And that is exactly what should be done.
Conservatives should also consider buying just one share of each offending company to give them legal rights as shareholders. And then take the companies to court.
These lawsuits won’t just put the offending companies on notice, but their huge investment firm backers too.
A big factor encouraging brands to promote transgender ideologies is an attempt to score points on lefty environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards that are being foisted on organizations all over the country.
And this is a product of leftist political pressures and aggressively activist investment firms.
During an appearance on Fox News, Anson Frericks, an ex-top Anheuser-Busch executive, said that quiet pressure from huge investment firms like New York-based BlackRock and Pennsylvania-based Vanguard is behind many of the controversial decisions by the woke companies they are heavily invested in.
However, it’s also not necessarily coming from the investment firms organically, since they too are being pressured by progressive lawmakers overseeing giant government pension funds that the investment firms profit from.
These hyper-politicized monster government pension funds are the ones really calling the shots.
One of the huge investment firms mentioned earlier, manages California’s massive pension fund — the country’s biggest — and California’s leftist politicians have a big say in the corporate governance and politics of the firms the fund invests in, Frericks noted.
“In California, for example, they recently have mandated those large pension funds [sic] that they divest from things like fossil fuels and oil and gas…”
“But they also tell BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard if they’re going to manage their money, they have to commit to things like ESG — diversity, equity, inclusion — and adopt firm-wide commitments that they therefore then force onto all the major companies in corporate America,” he added.
So, we need to find ways to limit the power and influence of these monstrous and highly politicized government pension funds that use taxpayer funds to push radical agendas.
We should also note that this isn’t just a conservative issue. Erin Elmore at Turning Point USA, reported The Epoch Times, argued that calls to boycott Target are “not necessarily conservative.”
Instead, she said, “it’s common sense. Most parents don’t support satanists or little boys wearing girls’ bathing suits,” she tweeted on May 28.
This isn’t a conservative-liberal thing. It’s an American thing.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
ANALYSIS – Two Proud Boys leaders have been sentenced to more than a decade each in jail after being convicted of the rarely used ‘seditious conspiracy’ charge for storming the Capitol.
They tried to overturn President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, which they considered fraudulent.
These sentences are much less than the three decades of jail time proposed by prosecutors but still very long prison terms for a few hours of rioting.
And yes, I understand that the rioting was at the U.S. Capitol and that the certification of the Electoral College vote was in process. I also understand these two guys and the two others convicted on this same charge were intimately involved in organizing what became violent chaos that day.
I was there, at the Capitol, as an observer with a TV camera crew. And I denounced the violence the next day. It was outrageous.
I believe any violent rioter who attacked police or media, or anyone else, on Jan. 6 should be put in jail – as should all the BLM rioters who earlier caused $2 billion in damages throughout the country and injured 2,000 cops months earlier.
But a decade or two behind bars for ‘conspiracy’?
Biggs and Rehl are the first Proud Boys convicted of the Civil War-era seditious conspiracy charge to be sentenced for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
The sentences kicked off a series of hearings scheduled for this week and next, where punishment will be meted out against the former chairman of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio (who was not in D.C. on Jan. 6 but was unbelievably arrested earlier for burning a BLM banner!), and two other members of the group.
All were convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes at a landmark conspiracy trial this spring. But was what they did really as bad as the Biden Justice Department tries to portray?
Seditious conspiracy is a broad statute that concerns attempts to overthrow the government, levy war against it or prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law. It also can be applied in cases where suspects seize any government property and carries up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Partly because seditious conspiracy allegations carry so much political weight, prosecutors have generally been hesitant to bring such charges in the past. “Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used in American jurisprudence,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist and expert on political crime at the University of Baltimore. Prosecutors can be wary of issuing such charges, even in cases that may fall under its broad statute, he added.
In the only similar case in the 20th century, federal prosecutors secured a seditious conspiracy conviction against Puerto Rican nationalists who stormed the Capitol building in 1954.
These four armed Puerto Rican independence militants entered the House floor and fired dozens of bullets around the chamber, wounding five legislators.
The four shooters and co-conspirators were convicted of seditious conspiracy and spent over two decades in jail until Jimmy Carter commuted their sentence in 1979.
In that case, however, the perpetrators had firearms and used them to try to kill Congressmen. That’s a pretty big difference.
The last successfully prosecuted seditious conspiracy was in the mid-1990s, when authorities charged Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine Islamist co-conspirators for plotting to bomb the United Nations, the FBI building, and several other landmarks around New York City.
Again, this was very serious and involved planning mass murder and terrorism.
There is little or no evidence that any Jan. 6 rioters planned any offensive violence.
To date, of those charged in relation to Jan. 6, former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes holds the record with an 18-year sentence, after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy earlier this year.
Even Rhodes, who is not believed to have actually stormed the building, is alleged to have plotted to bring weapons to the area and coordinate militia movements.
In the weeks before the insurrection, Rhodes allegedly purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of weapons and began communicating to other Oath Keepers in an encrypted group chat. “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” he messaged days after the presidential election. One Oath Keeper admitted as part of a plea deal last year that he brought an M4 rifle to a Comfort Inn hotel near the Capitol, while Rhodes and others allegedly discussed “quick reaction force” teams that could move into Washington DC with firearms. Once inside the Capitol, prosecutors state in their indictment that one group of Oath Keepers moved in a military “stack” formation and went in search of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
And at first glance, this does seem serious.
But Rhodes claims that despite earlier texts about possible ‘civil war,’ Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol went “totally off mission” and that he was only there to prevent his militia members from getting into trouble.
He has also stated that the armed ‘reaction force’ in Virginia was there to respond if armed leftist antifa thugs attacked pro-Trump protestors.
In the largest manhunt in FBI history, more than 1,100 people have been arrested on charges related to the Capitol assault. Of those, 597 defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences. About 366 of them have been given jail time.
The vast majority of these Jan. 6 defendants, though, accepted plea deals for minor, nonviolent offenses such as trespassing or obstructing an official function. Many of them still got jail sentences totally out of proportion to their alleged crimes.
And these four got the worst of it.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk. It was first published in American Liberty News.
The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
ANALYSIS – In one of my earlier PDBs I asked if the Pentagon’s ‘Wokeness’ was a deliberate effort to keep straight, white Christian males from joining the military. Of course, I knew the answer was ‘yes.’
I even said, “this may be the left’s goal – to deliberately alienate [straight] white Christian men from joining, so they can expand efforts to recruit non-religious, non-white, woke LGBT lefties instead.”
But now Joe Biden’s Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, a lefty civilian bureaucrat who never served a day in uniform, is saying the quiet part out loud. And she is going even farther. Much farther.
Wormuth doesn’t just want to alienate white Christian men, so they won’t join, she specifically wants to keep out recruits from what I call ‘patriot families’ – those who have a history of serving our country going back up to seven generations.
Most of these patriot family recruits would be white Christian men. Many of them are from the South.
Since the end of the draft in 1973 at the close of the Vietnam War, notes the Wall Street Journal, the Army has relied “heavily on veterans and military families to develop the next generation of recruits, especially in the region known in the military as the ‘Southern Smile,’ a curving region from the mid-Atlantic and down across the southern U.S.”
But we now also have multi-generational Hispanic service members and a few others. The children of all these military families make up most new recruits in the U.S. military.
The Journal added:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because “people who know the most about it stick around.”
But to the far-left Democrats, including Wormuth, all these patriots are dangerous and must be purged from our fighting forces. That’s what the Pentagon’s wokeness is really about.
Depending too much on military families could create a “warrior caste,” Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
There is a ‘warrior caste’ insofar as you have families who have fought for this country since the War of Independence. They showed up, they bled, and now they’re to be replaced by drag queens and identity politics quotas.
And Wormuth’s radical plan to replace our ‘warrior caste’ is being finalized.
According to the WSJ, “Wormuth said she expects within weeks to begin drafting a proposal for a recruiting overhaul so sweeping that Congress might need to pass legislation to enact all of it.”
While not going into details, Wormuth has stated that: “The Army is strategically deploying recruiters to communities across the country based on demographics, ethnicity, race, and gender.”
How does this translate into policy?
Greenfield writes in another Frontpage piece that: “Rather than getting the best people or even adequately qualified people, the goal is to match the force to the census data in a completely senseless exercise so that the people they do get are 20% black, 7.2% Asian, and 0.6% American Indian, or develop a plan to get those Asians.”
He adds:
That’s what deciding that the military should “look like America” really means in the ranks. You can’t have too many white men, but too many black men could also become a problem. If the goal is to match the census, then you can’t have too few minorities or too many. Come on in Jiang, we haven’t met our Chinese quota yet, sorry Jose, we have too many Hispanics already.
But as the Pentagon’s annual June ‘Pride’ festivities highlight, it’s not just about racial quotas, it’s also about sexual identity politics. Greenfield concludes:
Who needs a few good men when you can have a few good trans-men of color? And who cares if they speak English? No Habla Ingles? No problemo! Having HIV is not a problem. Being from an enemy nation is not a problem. Being a man who believes he’s a woman is not a problem.
Being white, especially a heterosexual male, is a very big problem. We need a military that looks like America and white heterosexual men look nothing like America.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is in possession of a document in which a Bureau source details a scheme to bribe then-Vice-President Joe Biden in exchange for policy decisions – but the agency is refusing to turn it over to congressional investigators.
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY), working with and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), has subpoenaed the FBI to produce the unclassified record alleging a criminal scheme involving Biden and a foreign national.
“The document, an FBI-generated FD-1023 form, allegedly details an arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions,” Comer’s office reports. An FD-1023 form records the details of an interview with a source.
Comer subpoenaed the record on May 3, 2023 with a return date of May 10, 2023.
The FBI has defied the subpoena, at a time when polls show a majority of Americans now view the FBI as steeped in partisan bias and working to defend Biden politically.
“It’s clear from the FBI’s response that the unclassified record the Oversight Committee subpoenaed exists, but they are refusing to provide it to the Committee,” said Comer in a statement.
“The FBI’s delay in producing a single, unclassified record is unacceptable,” said Comer. “The information provided by a whistleblower raises concerns that then-Vice President Biden allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national. The FBI must provide this record to Congress without further delay. The American people demand the truth and accountability for any wrongdoing. That starts with getting this record.”
“We’ve asked the FBI to not only provide this record, but to also inform us what it did to investigate these allegations. The FBI has failed to do both. The FBI’s position is ‘trust, but you aren’t allowed to verify.’ That is unacceptable,” Comer added.
“The FBI’s well-documented failures in politically sensitive investigations have eroded public confidence over the past few years. Just a few days ago, the Durham Report found that the FBI relied on unverified and inaccurate information as the foundation of its debunked Russia collusion probe. The FBI needs to take steps to restore public confidence. Flouting a legitimate congressional subpoena and dodging oversight is no way to rebuild the public trust. The FBI’s credibility is on the line, and their continued failure to cooperate will have long lasting consequences,” said Grassley.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Every now and then you see a story that just hits home, and you know you need to write about it and spread the word. This one, reported by CBS News, is absolutely one of them.
Morse had served two combat tours in Iraq with the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division Special Troops Battalion, followed by service in the National Guard, and then worked as a military contractor in Iraq for four years.
One day an Army buddy Morse served with in Iraq showed up at his gun store with his car and his dog. Then he brought a lot of guns inside the store, Morse said, adding: “And I’m like, brother, what are you doing?”
Morse knew well that often when people, especially combat veterans, start giving away their things, they may be considering suicide.
But before Morse could have a chat with his buddy, the vet simply left. And for six months his buddy didn’t answer his phone.
Meanwhile, Morse decided to hold his friend’s guns at Rustic Renegade in case he ever came back.
…his friend called and explained he had been in a bad spot and wondered where his guns were. Morse said he told him, “They’re your guns, man. They’re yours, you may want them back. And whenever you’re ready, they’re here for you.
“More than half of all gun-related deaths in the United States are suicides, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In 2022, the CDC reported that 26,993 people died by firearm suicide. Deaths by gun suicide are at an all-time high and have steadily increased, nearly uninterrupted, since 2006 according to researchers at John Hopkins School of Public Health.
In the veteran population the problem is acute; in its 2022 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Report, the Department of Veterans Affairs found that the suicide rate in 2020 was 57.3 % greater for veterans.
Guns are more commonly involved among veteran suicides, at 71%, than the rest of the population, at 50.3%, according to the CDC.
Soon after his first buddy chose to drop off his guns with Morse, another veteran came by to do the same, telling Morse that he was “in a bad spot.”
Morse, who had similarly been very depressed after returning from Iraq, accepted the vet’s gun and decided to set up a system to hold and track guns being left for storage by troubled vets in his store’s inventory, telling them to pick up their firearms when they felt better.
Within a year, other veterans dropped off guns “about a dozen times,” CBS reported. Since then, he has stored about 100 firearms.
According to CBS, she met with Morse in 2021 to work on a project she was coordinating with gun store owners who wanted to store firearm storage for those in crisis who, for a time, didn’t want their firearms in their homes.
The Armory Project was launched in Louisiana that same year with three different gun shop owners interested in providing storage for firearms.
Through a Veterans Administration (VA) grant, True and her team helped the gun dealers build local networks and partnerships.
And Anestis is absolutely correct. Voluntary outside storage, like preventing drunk driving by “taking away the car keys,” is a far better solution for preventing suicide by gunshot, than bans that violate our 2nd Amendment rights.
However, storing guns as part of a gun store’s inventory can cause liability issues.
So, as CBS reported, in July 2023 the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) got involved (in a good way this time). It issued an open letter to Federal Firearms Licensees (FFL) and gun shops advising how to legally and safely store firearms for these individuals.
Providing gun storage lockers at the gun store that individuals can open themselves and put their firearms inside, is one option.
As the ATF letter states: “In this situation, an FFL does not “receive “or “acquire ” the firearm into its inventory, nor does the FFL assume control of the individual’s firearm.” This can reduce liability for gun shop owners like Morse, who want to provide outside storage for others in need.
This is a great idea, and a great story. Look up The Armory Project and see if you can help with the effort in your state, city, or locality.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
A high profile conservative law firm is asking a Georgia court to enter a default judgment against anti-Trump prosecutor and liberal Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, after Willis failed to respond to a lawsuit demanding documents detailing her coordination with Washington liberals in Trump’s case.
The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced it “has asked the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, to declare a default judgment against District Attorney Fani Willis in Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeking records of communications Willis had with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee.”
The motion was filed after Willis simply refused to respond to Judicial Watch’s suit seeking what are supposed to be publicly-available records.
“I think this is the first time in Judicial Watch’s thirty years that a government official failed to answer an open records lawsuit in court,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “This further shows Ms. Willis has something to hide about her collusion with the Biden administration and Nancy Pelosi’s Congress on her unprecedented and compromised ‘get-Trump’ prosecution.”
“The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of Fulton County, GA, after Willis and the county denied having any records responsive to an August 2023 Georgia Open Records Act request for communications with the Special Counsel’s office and/or the January 6 Committee (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Fani Willis et al. (No. 24-CV-002805)). (Judicial Watch dismissed Fulton County from the lawsuit.),” Judicial Watch notes.
Judicial Watch notes Willis “was served with the lawsuit on March 11, 2024, but that she has not yet answered it,” writing in its motion:
Defendant has not filed an answer and no answer has been served upon [Judicial Watch].… Defendant’s answer was due 30 days after service, or on April 10, 2024. Pursuant to [Georgia law] the case automatically became in default when an answer was not filed by the due date. Further pursuant to that Code section, Defendant was permitted as a matter of right to open the default within 15 days of the day of default, or by April 25, 2024.
Judicial Watch asserts it “is now entitled to a verdict and judgment by default.”
By all accounts, Willis coordinated her case with some liberals in Washington, and has records that Judicial Watch and the public are legally entitled to see.
In its lawsuit Judicial Watch states that Willis’ “representation about not having records responsive to the request is likely false.”
Judicial Watch points to “a December 5, 2023, letter from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan to Willis that cites a December 2021, letter from Willis to then-House January 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson. In that letter Willis requested assistance from the committee and offered to travel to DC.”
Judicial Watch also cited “news reports and other records which ‘indicate that representatives of Willis’s office traveled to Washington, DC, and met with January 6 Select Committee staffers in April, May, and November 2022, as Willis proposed in her December 17, 2021 letter …’”
Judicial Watch is assisted in the case by John Monroe of John Monroe Law in Georgia.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.