Blog Betty (Thomas Friedman is a Great Man was an online novel): Con artist Patrice Cullers

Thursday, May 19, 2022

Con artist Patrice Cullers

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Joe Biden Likes Some White Supremacists" went up Monday.

No science this post.

We have to address a con artist. A number of us called out certain 'leaders' in the Black Lives Matter effort. Because they're not leaders, they are con artists.

From WSWS:

The Associated Press reported on May 17 that tax filings for fiscal 2020 by the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) list millions of dollars paid to entities controlled by relatives and close associates of then-Executive Director and co-founder Patrisse Cullors.

The filings with the Internal Revenue Service are the first and to date only public disclosures of the Black Lives Matter foundation’s finances. They show that the “non-profit” took in $76,872,002 in fiscal 2020, mainly in donations from corporate backers and individuals, and paid out $25,997,945 in grants to other non-profits and contractors.

Cullors, the only BLMGNF board member listed on the 63-page filing, resigned as executive director in June of 2021. She did so just weeks after two mothers of victims of police violence—Lisa Simpson, the mother of 18-year-old Richard Risher, killed by Los Angeles police in 2016, and Samara Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, killed by Cleveland police in 2014—released a statement demanding that BLMGNF stop exploiting the deaths of their children to make money.

They wrote: “We don’t want or need y’all parading in the streets accumulating donations, platforms, movie deals, etc. off the death of our loved ones, while the families and communities are left clueless and broken. Don’t say our loved ones’ names, period!”

The same month as the mothers’ statement was published, the New York Post revealed that Cullors and her wife had purchased four properties worth approximately $3 million between 2016 and 2021.

Last month, New York Magazine reported that in October 2020 the organization spent $6 million of donated money to purchase a mansion in Southern California. The 6,500 square foot property, with seven bedrooms and bathrooms, a sound stage, music studio and pool, was supposedly bought to serve as a “safe house” and headquarters for BLM leaders to create social media content.

Last June, Cullors and two other BLM leaders, Alicia Garza and Melina Abdullah, recorded a video outside the mansion to mark the first anniversary of the police murder of George Floyd.

According to the fiscal 2020 tax filings, BLMGNF’s biggest payout—$2,167,894—went to the Bowers Consulting Firm, which is owned by current BLMGNF board member Shalomyah Bowers. Defending his lucrative take, Bowers called Black Lives Matter “the largest black abolitionist nonprofit organization that has ever existed in the nation’s history.”

Los Angeles-based Trap Heals LLC, owned by Damon Turner, received $969,459 for “live production, design and media.” Turner, a rapper and artist, is the father of Cullors’ son.

The BLM foundation also paid $840,993 to Cullors Protection LLC, a company owned by Patrisse Cullors’ brother Paul and established in July 2020.

She defrauded the Black community and she needs to be held accountable. She should go to prison for the the grift she ran. Black people around the country could have used even a tenth of that money to make a better world for our children.

Shame on her.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, May 19, 2022. People are losing their grip on both integrity and sanity.

I am so tired of the Trump obsession some people have. Yesterday, a 72-year-old woman I've known for some time made the mistak eof unloading. I'd never heard so much stupidit in my life. Trump is evil, Trump is this, Trump is destroying the country, Trump is destroying her marriage, on and on it went and I just stood there blankly waiting for the moment when she'd stop to draw a breath, you don't know much of anything except what you should know if you're that opposed to Donald, which is that he's not in the White House.

These idiots destroyed four years of activism with their obsession of Trump.

There were real issue s to focus on. And the left has successfuly fought against sitting presidents. We did it with Ronald Reagan, for example.

It's llike everyone's becoming a stupid and powerless moron.

If Doanld Trump upsets you that much and you are convinced that he's going to win in 2024, how about you stop a moment, take a breath and enjoy the present.

I'm not saying it's perfect -- it's not an dJoe Biden isn't. But I do not know why what might happen two years from now is a justification for you to be crying and so angry that you're shaking.

More to the point, that you can't appreciate the good marriage that you have.

She wanted to talk to me because she wants a divorce and wants to know how to break it to him.

After listening to her reasons -- so-called reasons -- I otld her, "Tell him you've gone nuts. I'm sure he'll understand."

Her husband, an actor I've known for years and years, much longer than I've known her, has gone Trump!!!

The horror.

How so, I asked?

He says Joe Biden isn't doing a good job.

Well Joe's not doing a good job.

He's saying if Joe tries to run again and Donald runs again that Donald will win.

That could be a possibility.

She insists that when she told him he had to vote for Joe in 2024, he told her if Joe ran, he wouldn't vote for president.

"And that is as good as supporting Trump!"

The crazy is way too much and it's way out of control.

The woman married up. Yes, in terms of looks but also in terms of humanity. Long before she married him, her husband an dI had a brief fling (which is not a secret to anyone). At a different point in life, I might have tried for more than a fling. When he met her -- long after our fling -- I was happy for him and happy for her. He doesn't cheat on her, he doesn't abuse her, he doesn't ignore her, he doesn't treat her as an after thought.

But because he won't promise to vote, in two years, for a man he sees as ineffective at best, she's going to divorce him. (She's supposed to have spoken with him last night. If she didn't, yes, he does read this site, and yes, he will know.)

People need to get a damn grip, this is beyond stupid and beyond crazy. At one point, I pointed out that as bad as she thinks Donald is, we have had worse in our history and we did have worse recently with Bully Boy b/ush.

No, she insisted, he's a saint because he called out Trump.

Oh, I'm sure that makes all the dead Iraqis rise from their graves with a smile on their face. Sure he's responsible for their deaths and he lied the world into war but, hey, he insulted Donald Trump, slate clean, we're all good now.

What a load of b.s. The crazy one is not her husband. The woman is deranged and she really does need help before she destroys her life and her marriage.

It reminds me of when Bully Boy Bush was in office and Matthew Rothschild and THE PROGRESSIVE were featuring one loony article after another about how Bully Boy Bush was using FEMA and we were all about to be locked up and . . .

BB was committing War Crimes out in the open and you felt the need to go off on ssome theory/hypothesis that you had? Reality was right in your face but you had to invent garbage instead?

And yet now these same toxic warriors ar etreating him as wonderful and a friend because he said mean things about Donald Trump.

As Aretha sang (and wrote), of integrity, "Put the word in your vocabulary."

AFP reports, "Donald Trump is not in the White House. You do not know if he will run again (he seems to want to but Donald loves to f*k with people's heads), you do not know if he could get the GOP nomination if he tried to run, you do not know who the Democrats will run in 2024, "

Freud said the criminal had a compulsion to confess. I'd like to think the incident was more than a mere slip of the tongue. I'd love to believe the millions of Iraqis he killed haunt Bully Boy /bush's sleep, that they wreck every waking moment.

That's what should happen. Hes responsible for an illegal war, he's responsible for suffering, he's responsib le for a genocide.

Shame on those who are too weak and too stupid to hold him accountable. I'm referring to the ones who in 2015 would have called him out but now, because they share his hatred for Donald Trump, they're BB's best buddy.

They''re shameful.

They're adult-children with the emphasis on children. They are not anyone to trust. They have no center and they have no ethics and they will turn on you as quickly as they have decided to embrace Bully Boy Bush.

They need help, professional help and they should not be given platforms to adavne their crazy to others. They should be told, "You really need to seek some professional help."

A woman is destroyin gher marriage because Trump might run in 2024 and, if he does and Joe Biden runs, her husband says he's not voting in the presidential election.

How f**ked up is that woman?

And she's crazy if she thinks that if this turns out to be a mistake she can just go back. Her husband is more than a catch, he's a prize and she'll see just how quickly other women rush in. And if I were her husband, I'd never take her back. I'd say, you were willing to throw away decades of happiness just because I wouldn't vote for a man in 2024 who may or may not run.

Talk about devaluing everything you've had with someone.

On the lack of integrity, Margaret Kimberley (BlACK AGENDA REPORT) writes:

Twice in the month of April Barack Obama spoke about “disinformation.” First at the University of Chicago and then at Stanford University he claimed that democracy is at risk because of social media. Democracy is certainly at risk but not because of anyone’s tweets. His words were really meant to frighten Americans into accepting censorship should anyone dare to present a narrative that differs from the state’s. Of course, that isn’t what Obama said. He spoke of Trump’s claims of election fraud and racist posts and all sorts of things that liberals would support. But neither Trump nor anyone else on the right was his target. The left are his targets and the need to silence the public about Ukraine was the reason for his renewed efforts to address an issue concocted by the democratic establishment.

Less than one week after the Stanford speech the Department of Homeland Security announced the establishment of a Disinformation Governance Board. (They needed Obama to lay the groundwork with his disinformation tour.) Of course only conservatives and those who are truly on the left saw the danger in what some called a Ministry of Truth, as described in George Orwell’s 1984.

While republicans deemed lesser lights and the butt of liberal jokes such as Representative Lauren Boebert spoke out against the very problematic entity, liberals said nothing at all.

Bernie Sanders, House members known as “the Squad” and others thought of as progressives or leftists were silent. While democrats go along with and defend every Biden administration policy, republican members of congress held a press conference to share their concerns. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other republicans are seeking to defund the Board. “The President’s Ministry of Truth is just an un-American abuse of power, which is a scheme conjured up by Washington Democrats to grant themselves the authority to control free speech.” Of course abuses of power are very American but McCarthy’s assessment of what Biden and the democrats want to do is correct.

Fortunately there was enough pushback that the Biden administration felt the need to create a Fact Sheet in order to quell doubts about the dubious endeavor. “The working group does not have any operational authority or capability.” In other words, it is unneeded. Or rather it is needed to discredit anyone who dares to oppose state narratives, especially now when the Ukraine crisis needs a constant supply of public buy-in.

Yet the question must be asked about liberals’ silence. There was a time when they would be the first to oppose governmental overreach, including any efforts to control public discourse or to even give an appearance of limiting what was deemed acceptable to speak and to write.

But liberals are joined at the hip with the democratic party and that means they are the worst purveyors of misinformation and the group most interested in censorship. The Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post represents the democratic wing of the duopoly, and presented the Propaganda or Not hit list after the 2016 Donald Trump political earthquake. The fear that Trump might actually do what working people wanted was the cause of their fear and the need to label him and anyone who rejected the establishment agenda as a Russian bot, Putin puppet, or useful idiot.

Now Ukraine is the focus of their fervor. The Biden administration needs to misdirect attention from its instigation of the crisis. They want the public to accept every claim without question and believe that Vladimir Putin is evil, that the Ukrainian military can defeat the bigger, better equipped, and better staffed Russian army, and keep silent when $40 billion is spent on the effort. They don’t want the public to question why their needs are deemed to be too expensive while Ukraine is turned into a forever war and cash cow for the military industrial complex. Biden is forced to create a stupid expression such as, “Putin’s price hikes” to explain sanctions that can’t hurt Russia but also hurt Americans too.

There are very real issues at stake right now. Those without common sense and/or integrity can pretend otherwise but don't pretend you're dealing with reality because you are not.

ANd you're harming yourself and others.

Let's wind down with this from Ms.:

MORE THAN A MAGAZINE, A MOVEMENT

Dear Common Ills,

The leaked draft version of the Supreme Court’s majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has sent shock waves across the U.S. Although we await the final decision, we now know that the Court is poised to overrule the longstanding precedents of Roe v. Wade—representing the biggest blow to women's constitutional rights in history.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, abortion access will be endangered nationwide: anti-abortion groups have already announced their intention to pass a federal law to ban abortions across the country.

We have very little time to raise our voices in protest before a final decision is issued.

We know that women who have had abortions have spoken out many times during the last 49 years, and millions of women and men have marched in countless rallies and demonstrations for abortion rights. By a margin of 2 to 1, Americans support the tenets of Roe v. Wade.

In January, we launched a petition campaign with the encouragement and support of some of the original signers of Ms. magazine’s 1972 petition in which 53 well-known U.S. women declared that they had undergone abortions—despite laws in most states rendering the procedure illegal.

A recent article in The Washington Post credited the 1972 petition with the “start of a powerful strategy in the U.S. abortion rights movement: ending the secrecy that had kept many women out of the fight.”

Once again we invite all women, whether or not you’ve had an abortion, to sign in order to “help eliminate the stigma” of abortion and to demand the repeal of all laws restricting women’s reproductive freedoms.

We cannot, we must not, lose the right to safe and accessible abortion or access to birth control. Just as in 1972, we will send the signed petition to members of Congress, to the White House, and to the Supreme Court. And we will publish the names in an upcoming Special Issue of Ms. and on Msmagazine.com.

Nearly 7,000 women have already signed our new petition. You can help us by promoting the petition to your friends, family and others across the country to join our fight to save abortion rights.

For equality and a strong feminist future,