A little over a year ago, we discussed the legal tribulations of James O’Keefe, the scuzzy grifter who founded Project Veritas, related to the theft of the president’s daughter’s diary and other material. Earlier this year, Anne Laurie covered O’Keefe’s departure from PV amid accusations of financial malfeasance.
WaPo obtained a report from an audit conducted by a law firm hired by PV after O’Keefe skedaddled, and, as WaPo puts it, “the report raises questions about whether O’Keefe complied with laws that prohibit nonprofit leaders from using the organization’s funds for their personal benefit.” Hoo-boy, does it ever!
In August 2022, James O’Keefe needed to get to Maine for a sailing trip. Rather than take a commercial flight for roughly $200, the conservative undercover-video activist directed his employees to book a $12,000 helicopter flight direct from New York to the seaside town of Southwest Harbor, using funds donated to Project Veritas, the nonprofit he founded, according to a draft of a private internal audit conducted by an independent law firm.
When bad weather forced the helicopter to make an unscheduled landing in Portland, O’Keefe booked a $1,400 black car for the three-hour drive from the helipad to the sailboat. O’Keefe justified the expenses by saying that he had a meeting near the dock, the audit stated. Two Project Veritas staffers described the person he met with to The Washington Post as a low-level donor…
There was $208,980 worth of luxury black-car travel over a two-year period. There was a $600 haul of bottled water during one hotel stay in San Antonio. There was even a $2,500 set of DJ equipment; O’Keefe dreamed of playing a set at Coachella, according to two former employees, and was irritated when his staff couldn’t get him booked at the legendary California music festival.
Sounds like he went all Kim Jong-un on them. But I think this is my favorite part:
In September 2021, according to the report, Hurricane Ida floodwaters threatened to destroy the Project Veritas office in Mamaroneck. The staff scrambled to save equipment and their own lives — one elderly employee was briefly pulled underwater and had to be rescued by colleagues. But O’Keefe had already left the scene, asking employees to prioritize his own evacuation so he could make it to Virginia for a performance of the musical “Oklahoma!” in which he had the lead role, according to staffers cited by the audit.
“Don’t worry, everything will be okay,” O’Keefe told his employees, according to recollection of a staffer cited in the audit, “but help me get out of here.” In 2022, Project Veritas admitted in a tax filing to improperly spending $20,500 moving some staff operations to Virginia during O’Keefe’s time with the musical production for his convenience.
Is it possible they’re just all like this? Grifty, selfish and profligate, I mean? O’Keefe was eagerly embraced by fellow Repub greed-head Donald Trump but wasn’t elevated by Emperor Tang. So no one can blame Trump for O’Keefe. Also, it’s been true for years that if you lightly scratch even the most buttoned-down and sober-seeming “conservative,” corruption and cupidity gush out. (See Bush, Neil, etc.)
Sometimes language evolves in such a way that in modern usage, a word means the opposite of what it meant originally. Something like that seems to be happening to the word “conservative.” Or maybe it’s been a contronym all along.
Anyhoo, O’Keefe is just a boy who cain’t say no, now he’s in a turrrrrible fix! Or at least I hope so.
Open thread.
ETA: WaPo gift link to the article.
Baud
You misspelled probable.
Villago Delenda Est
I am just distressed that this happened to such an upstanding Young Republican, who has his entire life in front of him.
Old School
He can always go back to pimping.
Wag
@Old School: Did he ever stop?
Elizabelle
White collar crime, fraud, but I do hope it lands this jackhole in prison for a spell. It’s what all the cool grifters are doing.
Cacti
For any Generation X type people, just read that the lead singer of Smashmouth has died.
Liver failure.
Betty Cracker
I hope someone looks into who funded the “musical productions.”
misterpuff
The Republican Party, where assholes go to be bigger assholes and frigging obscenely rich assholes throw money at them “to pwn the Libs.”
I guess Dean Wormer was wrong “Fat , Drunk and Stupid” is the way to go through life if you are a GOOPer.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
I believe we can cut that sarcasm. We might need a semi to haul it to the knife.
Well done!
LAO
@Cacti: yeah, the guy that was fired from smash mouth for giving a nazi salute on stage died.
Dangerman
Oklahoma, where the assholes go sweeping down the plains …
Huh. Needs work.
MisterDancer
To me: most of the bigwigs on The Right attended the Boss Hogg (from THE DUKES OF HAZZARD) School of “Entrepreneurship”.
Almost as if they all just want little fiefdoms to dominate, more than anything. For a lot of them, their beliefs in Conservatism is as shallow as their moral center.
Tony Jay
When the entire ethos underpinning your movement is the freedom to be the biggest dickhead you can be, it’s inevitably going to attract and reward an astonishingly large number of dickheads.
And this is their way.
Chris
I mean, Lord, yes.
It’s kind of baked into the cake right off the bat. Firstly, “greed is good” capitalism, which pretty much does away with any kind of morality right there. Secondly, “faith not works” evangelicalism, which insists that what you do in life doesn’t matter because you’re all evil anyway and the only way to make your life have any meaning is to join the correct tribe. Thirdly and probably most importantly, simple racism, which reduces all of life’s questions to “are the right people in charge,” with “the right people” defined in completely identitarian terms, so the only thing that matters isn’t how the public funds are being used, just who’s using them – as long as you’re in the right tribe, by definition it’s okay to do what you want with it. And of course once you reach the full-on fascist stage, there’s just the social darwinism that’s the only remaining ideology – “the strong do what they want, the weak suffer what they must.”
LAO
@Betty Cracker: Does anyone else find it funny that a guy who made his career as a dishonest grifter turns out to be a dishonest grifter. Are the assholes at Veritas really surprised? How ridiculously naive.
J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)
Christ, what an asshole!
misterpuff
I read the headline and thought Moscow Mitch must have wondered into the beyond, but no, Mitch McConnell is still alive.
I will check back daily.
Tony Jay
@LAO:
Was that him? I’d forgotten about that.
It’s just been raining wankers for the last decade or two, hasn’t it?
Chris
@MisterDancer:
Boss Hogg is a piker next to all of these guys. Half the corrupt schemes he tried to get involved with, he’d back out of immediately when it turned out they had a chance of hurting someone. Even within the show’s universe he was way too much of a sap, and the only reason someone bigger and meaner hadn’t muscled him out a long time ago is that there simply wasn’t anything in Hazzard County worth the effort.
(Well, that and a little help from the Dukes).
Roger Moore
Yes. SATSQ.
lollipopguild
@misterpuff: You left off “corrupt”.
Ruckus
@misterpuff:
“Fat , Drunk and Stupid”
It helps to go with one’s strengths.
It’s not as good when all of one’s strengths are in the negative column.
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
At least all the dickheads are easily recognizable.
All they have to do is speak for more than 15 seconds….
Madeleine
Thank you thank you! I’ve been yelling at the radio for several days now about calling Greene and her friends “conservatives.” Sheesh! Do these so-called reporters, pundits, et al. understand even basic political terms? I.e. their jobs? Of course not. Empty-headed mimics. Sheesh. Grrr.
West of the Rockies
So many of them know better. They choose to lie and cheat and steal and villainize people for cash and fame. Then they squeal when someone points out their lack of honor and integrity.
lamh36
Just came out of lurking to say HELLO!
How’s everybody doing BJ peeps?
Baud
@lamh36:
Hey! You are missed!
Hope you are well.
Dangerman
@Chris: It’s a coalition of single issue voters. Taxes. Debt (meaning, money spent by liberals; money spent by them is OK). Guns. Abortion (although that will barely be mentioned at their Convention because people like Nikki Haley aren’t following the dogma and it will cause a schism in their coalition). Pick your dickhead single issue; join the Cult.
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
It’s been raining wankers since well before I was born. And I’m in the middle of my eighth decade now.
This world has always had wankers. It wouldn’t be humanity if there hadn’t been.
Ruckus
@lamh36:
HELLO!
What is this world coming to, I agree with Baud — you are missed.
MisterDancer
[Edited for clarity] Well, I was trying to summarize how their real North Star is the same group of assholes who put my ancestors in bondage, along the way enabling the entire US to be a racist state (yes, including Lincoln and many Union soldiers.) Then they invented The Lost Cause to justify their shitty decisions, in parallel developing a one-party set of states as part of developing Jim Crow, overall shredding the economies of The South not once, but twice. Just to make, and keep, a few White Men rich.
But I figured I’d try to make it slightly lighter (and shorter) than I usually do. :)
Annie
I don’t know if they are all grifters, but I think a lot of RWNJs are incompetent. Look at some (or all) of the arguments Trump’s attorneys have presented. I work with competent lawyers and they laugh out loud at these arguments. Look at a lot of anti-vaxxers. Read their stuff or talk to them (I know a couple) and it’s soon clear that they are ignoring the science of vaccines. I have started to wonder if that’s why RWNJs are so authoritarian — they don’t want questions because their ideas won’t stand up under questioning.
Chris
@MisterDancer:
Reasonable :D
I do like the archetype, in that that kind of petty local potentate is exactly the kind of elite that’s the backbone of the GOP, even more so than any Wall Street bankers or Silicon Valley techbros.
Cacti
@LAO: Yeah, I haven’t paid much attention to them since the 1990s. Sounds like he drank himself to an early grave.
Miss Bianca
@lamh36: Hello! Miss you! Where ya been?
Ken
@LAO: When you put it that way, it sounds a lot like the trouble they’re having over at the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.
Alison Rose
@Tony Jay: His PR person tried to blame it on his health issues. The dude was a drunk. I’ve known many people with varying degrees of alcohol dependency, but none of them went Nazi because of it.
Alison Rose
@lamh36: Ahoy!
catclub
I think ‘revanchists’ come closest. Self important feudal masters who want the old ways back, with them in charge.
Kay
He looks… fleshier and worse for wear but still weirdly teenager-like.
Right wing men don’t grow up. Joe Rogan dresses like I would dress a 4 year old boy, except GIANT “play clothes”. Ewww.
Wouldn’t it be wild if they all just ended up in prison? All our Right wing celebrities of the last 20 years- in the hoose gow!
trollhattan
More bad news for Donnie.
I look forward to leaning which rich supporter pays Donnie’s penalty.
JWR
A bit of good news out of SoCal’s Inland Empire:
Chris
@Annie:
I mean, I think they’re all people who have been taught by experience that competence doesn’t matter.
Virtually all the conservative sectors of society are people who have very good reason to believe that when they break the rules they’ll be forgiven and when they fuck up someone’ll bail them out. Right-wing churches engage in everything from tax fraud to child abuse and nobody ever attacks them as institutions because that’s against “freedom of religion.” Businessmen mostly aren’t punished when they commit fraud and get bailed out when they make bad business decisions. Policemen are almost never held accountable when they break the rules, and any restitution to taxpayers only ever comes out of those taxpayers’ own pockets. Right-wing militia types are more often than not simply let off the hook by the justice system. The last Republican president to suffer any consequences for the crimes he committed in office was Nixon, though with Trump there’s at least some hope. And then there’s just the ordinary rank-and-file types, wife-beaters and racists who get away with it because the system is only interested in pursuing certain forms of crime.
They’re all part of an ecosystem that teaches them every day of their life that how well they do in life is completely unconnected to how well they do their jobs or abide by society’s rules. So naturally, most of them aren’t competent. And they keep pushing the boundaries of what they’re able to get away with, because most of the time it works out for them.
Alison Rose
@Kay: It’s weird, isn’t it? Most of them either look like overgrown preteen boys or the Crypt Keeper’s slightly younger brother.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
This was not a natural evolution of language. “Conservative” is merely one of several words they appropriated, redefined, and set to their own nefarious purposes.
Time to reclaim the English language.
Alison Rose
@JWR: GOOD. The very notion of this is absolute horrifying.
wjca
Seems like you left out the “prosperity gospel”, which inverts Christianity to claim that what proves your virtue is how much money you acquire. By whatever means. Definitely part of the mix.
HeleninEire
@LAO: Hi! I have a lawyer question. The judge in the J6 Rico trial just severed Cheseboro and Powell. They will go to trial in October. I know that Trump cannot be forced to testify in his own trial but can he be called to testify in this one?
Tony Jay
@Ruckus:
That’s true, but it definitely feels to me like a War of Global Arsehole Domination kicked off with the turn of the millennium and it’s become so all-encompassing that everyone, however low down the celebrity totem pole they may dwell, has had to chose a side, and a LOT of them have come out as proponents of or sympathisers with the wrong side.
There’s a ton of people over here whose political opinions I previously had absolutely no interest in who have insisted on jumping right into repellent vermin territory by using their fame to spread far-Right bullshit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: /bows
cain
@Tony Jay: Isn’t that the “freedom” they’ve been talking about ? They hate this DEI stuff because they can’t make the jokes they want, or other stuff like they used to.
Chris
@wjca:
That too. I think the “faith not works” mentality is somewhat more broadly accepted, though I couldn’t say for sure.
catclub
CNN:
Isn’t this all the more reason to start the trial as soon as the prosecutor says she is able to start?
Villago Delenda Est
@wjca: Raw Calvinism.
LAO
@HeleninEire: No. I mean technically he could be called as a witness by the defense, however he maintains his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination.
cain
@lamh36: lamh36!!!! Welcome!! :) Nice to see you – I hope all is well with you :)
geg6
@LAO:
This.
geg6
@lamh36:
Missed you much! So glad to see you here!
C Stars
@Betty Cracker: I know another guy who’s MAGA/libertarian and really into acting in local musical theater productions as well. Is that its own genus of creepazoid? The drama maga?
I mean, it makes sense. It’s all show biz to them.
HeleninEire
@LAO: Thanks.
JWR
@Annie:
I think you can stop wondering, because that’s what I’ve run up against nearly every time. Whenever they dispute this or that “fact”, I just fire up the computer and presto, the subject is changed.
cain
@trollhattan:
He’s bankrupting his supporters – hate to see it.
rikyrah
😂😂😂😂😂
Democracy Docket (@DemocracyDocket) posted at 1:53 PM on Wed, Sep 06, 2023:
BREAKING: Georgia judge rejects motions from Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell to have their Fulton County trials be separated from one another.
https://t.co/0Zue6FD6oI
(https://twitter.com/DemocracyDocket/status/1699496079618678887?t=aR09lW55o12g8M2g9JdTJA&s=03)
smith
@catclub: I’m pretty sure that would open up the possibility of appeals based on not having enough time to prepare a defense. The judge has to give them a reasonable preparation period.
Marmot
@Annie:
Is this a kind of chicken-‘n-egg thing? They’re authoritarian because their ideas won’t withstand questioning, but they’re dumb in the first place, which allows to embrace authoritarianism.
Edited for a sliver of clarity.
Sure Lurkalot
The whole nonprofit sector needs to be scrubbed and disinfected.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: When I heard that the production of Oklahoma was in Roseland, Virginia, I had to scratch my head. Roseland is a tiny community in rural Nelson County, about 35 miles southwest of Charlottesville, and is more suited to Bluegrass than Broadway musicals.
Then I learned that there is a large brewpub nearby, the original base of Devil’s Backbone Brewing company which was bought by InBev in 2016. I think they cater to people from the Wintergreen Resort area 10 miles away.
I concluded that this was likely a low budget, amateur production of Oklahoma. A payment of $200 probably would have guaranteed a leading role. But Nelson County has a certain history, and when I scratched my head some more I thought there may have been a cocaine deal involved.
frosty
@lamh36: Hi! Glad to see you’re still lurking. We’re hunkering down in the A/C here on the Mason-Dixon Line. Temps in the high 90s. Why, it’s almost as hot and humid as NOLA on a cool day!
Old School
@HeleninEire:
The judge ruled Cheesebro and Powell will go to trial in October. He has not ruled whether they will be severed from the other defendants.
smith
Given her history, it would be hilarious if Powell decided to testify in her own defense. I don’t envy anyone who has to be tried alongside her.
Alison Rose
@smith: Will they let her have cans of diet Dr Pepper on the stand?
HumboldtBlue
Fuck O’Keefe.
In much better news, my enameled Dutch oven has arrived!
Beef Bourguignon for everyone!
Gravenstone
@HeleninEire: Reporting I’m seeing is the opposite, that their motions to sever were denied.
eversor
@Chris:
Our society runs on fraud and abuse. It’s not just the right. I’ve worked at top firms that sent staff to Democratic administrations and handled liberal social causes. The raw amount of fraud and abuse of company assets is staggering. Private jets at airports around the globe, free meals to everyone that would make the tech sector blush, hotel rooms you can always get for free even if it’s just to take a mistress over to, unlimited Amex cards. That’s just the basics! Box office seats at all sorts of stadiums and constant free tickets to sporting events or higher end stuff the public cannot get. Then there are stunts like trips to Ted Talks or flying out people like Michelle Obama for a pep talk which is really meet the Obamas.
The right is more overt and shameless in the grift so they make the news but it’s not unique to them. Years back I worked for an NGO that was dealing with mosquito issues in Africa. This amounted to a lot of jet setting to Africa and burning through millions of dollars. Multiple lavish parties with chefs cooking for you, sushi made for you, all top shelf booze, chocolate fountains, celeberties and more. The solution they burned all this for… mosquito nets! Which, no shit we already knew that. All these people were die hard liberals and the firm was majority women but when you looked under the box the point was all the perks and then patting yourself on the back. Said firm was eventually banned from USAID funding for losing hundreds of millions of dollars but then scooped up by another firm, turned into a super firm, and got all funding back and still does the same stuff.
It’s also not just the rich or cranks doing it. It’s the educated and the upper middle class as well.
Fraud, abuse, and grift sucks. But it’s just endemic among the six figures and higher crowd and they will not give it up. We don’t have a top .001% problem or even a top 10% problem. We have a top 20% problem and we aren’t going to address that so at the end of the day who fucking cares!
HeleninEire
@Gravenstone: I meant severed from the others, not from each other. But apparently not. I think Old School at 69 has it right.
Alison Rose
@HumboldtBlue: But it is Julia Child’s beef bourguignon??? (I may have seen Julie and Julia once or twice or a dozen times.)
Citizen Alan
@MisterDancer: Boss Hogg was a pillar of morality and decency compared to today’s Republicans. There were lines of decency he would not cross. For James O’Keefe and his kind, there are none.
Tony Jay
@Alison Rose:
People who get into being publicly drunk for personal reasons tend to do reckless and provocative things that they almost immediately regret, and throwing out the odd stiff-arm salute (how edgy!) certainly fits that profile.
Of course, if there’s a deeper history of Hitler worship out there that I’m not aware of, I can cram that psychoanalysis back up in the place I pulled it from. No charge.
Suzanne
None of these pieces of shit dudes are cool! No one is interested! No one wants to hang out with you!
smith
@HeleninEire: I think at this point the only things that have been ruled on are whether Chesebro and Powell would be tried separately from each other (no), and if they will be tried on the speedy trial schedule (yes). I don’t think any ruling has yet been made on the other 17.
Marmot
@JWR:
Definitely. Many times I’ve encountered an empty “conservative” counter-argument — a false “fact” or a whattaboutDems — and had to conclude it’s simply a blocking tactic.
They’ll say anything at all simply to keep us from progressing. And they know you’ll seriously consider their ostensible point, but they won’t consider yours, except to develop another countering tactic.
Tony Jay
@cain:
Yup. “Freedom’s just another word for I don’t have to listen to yooz.”
jonas
@LAO: He evidently suffered from a number of health problems in recent years, including mental issues. The (apparent) Nazi salute was just one of a bunch bizarre things he did at that last concert in NY and he quit the band shortly afterward. Looks like it was sort of an alcohol-fueled downward spiral after that, ending in liver failure.
Betty Cracker
@lamh36: Hello, world traveler!
Elizabelle
@Kay:
I endorse this solution. Points for using the word hoosegow.
@lamh36: Hello stranger.
Betty Cracker
@HumboldtBlue: You can’t go wrong with Ina. I like the idea of putting the stew on garlicky toast. Yum!
The Dark Avenger
@C Stars: The a-hole who tried to tie out fair city to homophobia because he was the Mayor was a big theater nerd. There’s some cross-over between performing a role in public and those who do so on the stage. Even more if you think you’re a good singer.
jonas
Who the hell casts James Fucking O’Keefe in a production of Oklahoma!? I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.
Reminds me of one of the greatest lines from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Titus tells Lily and Kimmy about the time he was cast in “an all-Black production of Oklahoma!…called Alabama!“
eversor
@Marmot:
The issue with an ideology or a religion is that’s just something you believe in. Facts don’t matter or we wouldn’t have ideologies or religions. Conservatism is nothing more than ideology in bed with religion. Both are vile enough on their own, together they are lethal. But since we aren’t going to touch religion it’s just a matter when not if they win out.
HumboldtBlue
@Alison Rose:
(I may have seen Julie and Julia once or twice or a dozen times.)
Same here. Streep was fantastic, and Tucci as well. Julie annoys me, however.
@Betty Cracker:
Ina’s lemon chicken recipe I used to welcome the lady’s mom to town. I made a woman from Rayne, Louisiana, and an extraordinary cook in her own right and with skills that did not pass to her daughter, stretch her eyes
Also, this woman is my hero.
Navarro deserves every fucking thing he gets.
Hoodie
@jonas: Wasn’t Smashmouth the assholes that played at that superspreader event at Sturgis at the height of the pandemic, lead singer was a big Covid denier? Hard to give a shit about that guy.
eversor
@jonas:
He cast himself.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@jonas: I wasn’t a huge fan, but apparently he started boozing after the loss of a baby to pediatric cancer
Alison Rose
@Suzanne: I’m sure O’Keefe’s DJ skills are just as amazing as Ramaswamy’s rapping.
Alison Rose
@HumboldtBlue: Streep and Tucci together were perfection!!
trollhattan
@jonas: Guessing the same yahoos that put Rick Perry on a teevee dancing show.
Some people….
narya
@Sure Lurkalot: I worked for non-profits nearly my whole working life, and I never saw the kind of grift and unwonted largesse on display in a lot of this discussion (e.g., as eversor describes in this thread). I am NOT suggesting it doesn’t exist, and, in fact, I think scrubbing and disinfecting would be a good thing! Personally, I hate that shit, not least because it tars the organizations who aren’t doing it with the same brush.
Alison Rose
I just clicked on a Twitter* link from somewhere else, and noticed one of the trending topics is “Hittler” – yes, with two Ts. Do I…do I wanna click on that or nah? I’m thinking nah.
*I will never call it X
jonas
@JWR: This seems to be a thing now in CA — conservative rural school districts making it mandatory for teachers and staff to inform parents if a child asks to use pronouns (or clothes or bathrooms) different from their gender assigned at birth. Maybe I missed the reporting on this, but there *has* to be some national, right-wing, astroturf org behind this shit, all of which they’re pushing under the guise of “parental rights.” It’s never anything else.
trollhattan
@Alison Rose: Streep and Martin Short are a hoot on this season of “Only Murders.”
Talk about a combination I would not have paired in a hundred years.
jonas
@Alison Rose: Probably an epithet Trump used to describe Jack Smith or something.
Paul in KY
@lamh36: Doing fine. Hope all well with you!
Betty Cracker
@Alison Rose: Perfect casting. I think it was extraordinarily brave of Sarah Lancashire and David Hyde Pierce to take on those roles for the HBO series. They did a great job, IMO, but Streep and Tucci set the standard.
Alison Rose
@jonas: I would laugh so hard if that dipshit couldn’t even spell that correctly. But he’s one of your heroes, Donald!!
UncleEbeneezer
trollhattan
@jonas: You’re quite right. In this case not rural but tony suburb.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: Oh, I never saw the HBO series! I’m not too familiar with Sarah Lancashire, but I have loved David Hyde Pierce since Frasier and I could totally see him in that role. Though yeah, Tucci is pretty much untouchable. And Streep is, of course, Streep. I’ve often said when trying to explain how awful I am at adopting any other accent that I am the “anti-Streep”.
HumboldtBlue
@trollhattan:
Martin Short is a brilliant guy.
Here he is with Conan, whom he referred to as a freeze-dried Prince Harry.
Cameron
@trollhattan: Something like this?
https://youtu.be/0fnKqnqfuaI?si=e-1r2a0hJ2g7OSsv
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: I bet Coachella wouldn’t give him a 1230 PM slot at the El Crapo Stage if he paid them!
eversor
@narya:
I’ve also worked at non profits where that sort of shit did not happen. Those weren’t staffed with people with graduate degrees though. I can also say the same that not all law firms I worked at pulled those stunts, nor all consulting companies, and not all defense contractors are up to bullshit either.
What I am saying is that grift is a feature of our entire system once you hit a certain level of education or income and it’s not unique to the right. The right just likes to flagrantly break laws rather than put in the effort to get away with it legally. They’re bad at being crooks!
Also that I agree the entire system needs a good scrubbing I just don’t expect that to happen. Cause everyone is going to protect the frauds that their educational status or income level get away with while pointing at the people above them.
Alison Rose
@HumboldtBlue: OMG that was hilarious. “I’d love to do this show way more often, but, you know…pride.”
eversor
@jonas:
Parental rights is a Christian movement that is pushing again and has had the same actors for decades. Again, the issue is in Christianity though nobody here is going to admit that because then we have to have the nasty conversation about how Christianity is special but Republicanism, conservatism, Trumpism, or Whiteness are not. And once you uncork the truth of that Christianity goes down hard.
JWR
@jonas:
Probably “Moms for Liberty”. They’ve been all up in everything from book banning to Trans rights.
Patricia Kayden
Had no idea that O’Keefe was an actor and starred in a play. You learn something new everyday. He can play being a prisoner in jail one of these days.
The Lodger
@lamh36: Great to see you again! So, like, don’t be a stranger…
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: These people do not love Christ. They love Jeebus, son of Mammon and Moloch.
Betty Cracker
@Alison Rose: I am also incapable of imitating accents — I think it’s either a talent you have or not. Streep has it. We don’t.
Check that series out if you ever get a chance. Lancashire is brilliant in everything (she’s absolutely amazing in “Happy Valley”) and does a creditable Julia.
@HumboldtBlue: Now she’s my hero too. Laughed out loud at the end when she was dancing. 😂
narya
@eversor:
I’d argue that point over a beverage . . . in a friendly way, I mean. I have a graduate degree, as do many of the folks w/ whom I worked, so I’m not sure that education is a deciding or major factor. I think it might have more to do with the sources of the funds and the regulations that surround their use? Maybe? The types of federal funding with which I worked were extremely picky, with lots of routine oversight and monitoring, and lots of regulations about how the funds could/must/could not be used. It would just be harder to grift. OTOH, an organization with a lot of private donations would have much more leeway, as would an organization where the funds are less tightly regulated.
ETA: I’m also thinking of things like the Brett Favre scandal, where the government official could direct the funds in a way that just isn’t possible with the types of funds my organizations had available.
jonas
@trollhattan: Yeah, I saw this story recently, too. Same crap going on down in Temecula as well (I should have written “inland” rather than “rural”). Sure enough, there’s the PAC. The story doesn’t say who’s funding it (probably well-concealed), but there’s undoubtedly some national-level operation behind it.
These wingers usually don’t last too long, though. They manage to slip under the radar in low-key, low-turnout elections, where they don’t really advertise their agenda, but then let their talibangical freak flags really fly, and *then* everyone suddenly notices their schoolboard is full of a bunch of bigoted kooks making the community look bad and they’re out on their asses the next election. We’ll see.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I stopped calling them conservatives a year ago. I should have stopped years before. There aren’t. They are right-wingers. There is nothing conservative about them.
Ruckus
@Annie:
they don’t want questions because their ideas won’t stand up under questioning.
While true, I’d doubt that this is their reasoning, such as it is.
They don’t want questions, they want obedience.
They want obedience because they are always right, in all ways possible, because they want to conserve the life prior to when people that looked like them ruled and everyone else sucked hind…….. , just ask them.
UncleEbeneezer
@jonas: Correct. Mother Jones had a good deep-dive expose earlier this year:
Betty Cracker
Speaking of bad people / grifters, DeSantis appointed one of the Repub operatives who cofounded Moms for Liberty to the Florida Commission on Ethics, which is like putting me in charge of the nation’s red wine and cheese reserves.
There was a vacancy because the crook DeSantis originally appointed as chairman had to resign when it was revealed the state was already paying him $400K a year (more than Joe Biden makes!) to run the sham Disney oversight board DeSantis conjured to punish Big Mouse for saying gay.
At this point, it’s just a joke. They should abolish the Florida Commission on Ethics since it’s a self-refuting collection of special interest grifters.
wjca
Deep State!!! Impinging on the God-given (and, supposedly, Constitutionally protected) right of grifters to fleece the marks.
Ken
Why is it so easy to imagine Chesebro demanding an early trial date under the Georgia statute, then lodging an appeal on the grounds it didn’t give him time to prepare his defense?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Consider it done.
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
Baud, I have a nomination for your shadow cabinet!
The Lodger
@Patricia Kayden: O’Keefe can be Leo Bloom to Steve Bannon’s Max Bialystock.
Sister Golden Bear
@jonas: Chino involved an uber fundie grifter mega church that’s been bragging how they’re taken over school boards in the area. (Same as it ever was, they did the same thing nearby when I was in high school.)
No overt involvement from national groups that I’ve heard, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there’s some behind the scenes because that’s often the MO.
Roger Moore
@Annie:
Conservatism doesn’t care about competence as liberals define it. At its core, conservatism is about protecting privilege, and conservatives care about that above everything else. They judge arguments by whether they advance conservative goals, not whether they are legally and factually correct.
RAVEN
@Ken: Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded!
Barbara
@Alison Rose: Julia Child has a tendency to favor the complicated versions of French recipes, but beef bourgignon can be made more simply and still be wonderful. I like Anthony Bourdain’s recipe.
Sister Golden Bear
@Ken: I believe the GA law being used to expedite the trial specifies that invoking it means you lose the ability to appeal on the claim you didn’t have enough time to prepare.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Yes! I can definitely see Bannon wearing a cardboard belt.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@cain:
That is only part of it. I lot of them don’t think they are racist or sexist. They think they are right. They think non-white people really are inferior and women really are only meant for the bedroom and caretaking roles. It makes them so angry that they get criticized for having opinions they think are justified.
eversor
@narya:
I figured you’d fit there!
To take a high level view I’ve found that when I’ve been at lower level firms without the hyper-elite qualifications on staff and thus vastly less money flowing through it grift did not happen. They were all sort of scrappy and issue focused and there was little, if any, waste on anything.
On the other hand I found that when I’ve been at places where the education level was high, the schools were great, and there was a lot of money it was just slaughtering any contract you could get your hands on and grift was insane.
In both situations the funds were both public and private. In the case of the grift there was always an attitude of “I went to Yale, I have a masters, I deserve this, I’m saving the world, and I’m a good liberal” stuck to all of it. It was a right, and if they didn’t get it there would be hell to pay. Where there was no grift it was people who were willing to take horrible pay but really cared about the issue and most of those issues were local.
I worked at a small scrappy startup consulting firm two of my friends from the intel sector started. They both went to UMD (and that’s how they go married) and there was no grift. Though there were a few silly holiday parties and popping bottles of the fancy bubbly when we landed a contract. Though they kept only a few and really focused on them. I’ve also worked for a big four firm where the grift was insane and everyone went to a top college and the partners bragged it’s harder to get a job there than to get into Harvard and they fire 33% of their staff a year to keep them competitive.
Grift is endemic. It’s just the places with money and elite educations know how to do it legally. Idiots like O’Keef do not and they get busted.
wjca
For all the (oft deserved) criticisms of headline writers, sometimes they get it right. This from the (love it or hate it) WaPo:
Wisconsin’s gerrymandering rides to the rescue of its gerrymandering
Pretty obviously the current Wisconsin legislators are terrified lest they be required to actually reflect the state’s voters.
Librarian
@LAO: Steve Harwell. I don’t think he was fired, Wiki says he retired in 2021.
Old School
Betty Cracker
@Baud: & @Frankensteinbeck: (six months later) “Oh my God, it’s GONE! It’s all…GONE!!
Hoodie
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s easy to say, but there’s a little bit of No True Scotsman in that assertion. Eversor gets a lot of shit – most of it deserved – for harping on Christianity, but there is a point somewhere in there. It’s not unreasonable to wonder why Christianity has been so often coopted by fascism. Personally, I think the coopting of Christianity may have something to do with the evangelism, i.e., Christianity is in many ways an openly political religion that pretends that it isn’t. There’s a lot of talk about the Kingdom of Heaven but also a lot of winning of converts in this world. Christianity isn’t alone in that (e.g., Islam seems similarly political), and maybe it has something to do with religion in general, but there do seem to be some religions that have been more immune to the fascist impulse.
eversor
@Betty Cracker:
Big Mouse has the legal muscle to wait this out and wreck them. Disney is a silly corporation to pick a fight with. They’re also sort of a loved brand. Picking a fight with Mouse, Mermaid, and Snow White is a hell of an idea.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Speaking of, I finally listened to Raven and watched Happy Valley. I should’ve listened sooner (to him and others in my meatspace acquaintance who also recommended it). It’s bleak, but brilliant. She’s a very compelling actress.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: Just because Rick Scott showed the way doesn’t mean you have to follow his example, y’know….
Alison Rose
@Barbara: It was just a joke based on the movie :)
cain
@Hoodie: Islam is not nearly as political as Christianity is IMHO. I don’t see it as a business like I think Christianity is.
Gin & Tonic
@Barbara: A can of Dinty Moore with a half a bottle of Ernest & Julio’s finest is a lot quicker.
wjca
Is it really that Christianity so often gets coopted? Or that the local religion, whatever it is, gets coopted?** And Christianity just happens to be our local religion, so it feels like it is particularly prone.
** See Modi and Hinduism in India, Islam in Iran and in Saudi Arabia, etc., etc.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@misterpuff: Well he may very well have wandered into the beyond. But his body is still more or less animate.
Annie
@Ken:
that is called “invited error”. It is really tough to establish on appeal. Also, most trial court judgments are presumed to be correct so the burden is still on the appellant to establish that the trial court committed (1) errors of legal procedure that (2) had an effect on the outcome of the trial.
WaterGirl
@HeleninEire: I thought he did NOT allow Cheese-bro and Kracken to be severed from one another.
I don’t believe he addressed the issue of whether those two would be severed from the rest. I believe he is skeptical that all 19 can be tried together but he is taking written whatever one week from yesterday before he makes a decision.
Or maybe I got it wrong? I am not a lawyer.
jonas
@Hoodie: Both fascism and fundamentalist Christianity are both big into the notion of hierarchy and authority as central to “order.” Conservative Christians often glom on to fascism/authoritarianism (and vice-versa) because it affirms what they see as a divinely sanctioned order of creation: God–Man–Woman–Children.
Marmot
@Roger Moore:
Yes. And more succinct than I usually manage.
I have to put this anecdote here, because only y’all can truly understand. Today I spoke to a contractor and said something like, “Sure, the Permitting office gives the whole city bureaucracy a bad reputation.”
He’s like, “It’s not just Permitting! Did you hear the other day that if you’re getting robbed, the Austin city council wants you to dial 311 and not 911.”
I’m all, “I’m certain if it’s a robbery in progress, you can dial 911.” Then I looked it up later, and Lo! Behold! The right-wing propagandists have been touting the Austin 311 thing, and yes, it’s a lie. Still dial 911 for crimes in progress.
He never cared whether it was true. It just fit with his idea of who should actually be in charge. Fuck that guy.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hoodie: I read an article on Patheos the other day that argues that Christianity as we know it has jack shit to do with Jesus of Nazareth, and cited 10 historical reasons why it has jack shit to do with it. The main problem is that Jesus wasn’t founding a religion. The religion was tacked on after he was dead, to include all the supernatural horseshit.
Suzanne
IME, contractors hate the permitting office because they have to wait their turn and they don’t like it.
jonas
@Old School: OMG, if a gun charge like this was being made against anyone but Hunter Biden, to say *nothing* if it were a conservative, Republicans would be absolutely losing their shit.
narya
@eversor:
Okay, THAT makes sense. There was less room for that at the places I worked, in large part because of the services the agencies provided. Entitled assholes are gonna be entitled assholes–but you’re right, the Right is just incompetent at it.
Subsole
@Cacti: Damn. I used to listen to them a lot in high school.
Feels weird, man.
jonas
@Villago Delenda Est: The historical Jesus of Nazareth likely believed that he was the prophet of an imminent apocalyptic intervention by God in the history of the Jews, not founding a religion per se. The religion was already there — Judaism. A new religion called Christianity evolved once it became clear that the End Times were not coming for a while and people needed some stuff to keep themselves occupied (and obedient) until then.
HumboldtBlue
@cain:
Hah! That’s only because Muslims don’t have the numbers yet in the US to influence policy at the national level, but in places where they do they are just as fucking hateful and intolerant as any fucking Christian.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
I suspect it’s one of those things that’s a mix of talent and hard work. An actor like Streep has to have some skill, but they also devote a huge amount of time to perfecting the accent they’re going to use in a particular role. There are dialect coaches whose whole job is to teach actors how to do the accent they’re going to use.
I remember an interview with Gary Oldman, another actor who does a lot of different accents, describing how he needed coaching before playing Smiley in “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”. The funny thing is the role was supposed to use his native accent! He had done so many other roles that required him to adopt other accents that he had lost his natural one and needed help performing it again.
Juju
@Villago Delenda Est: is that anything like raw Calvinball?
Geminid
This afternoon the Senate confirmed Gwynne Wilcox to a 5 year term on the National Labor Relations Board. Lisa Murkowski voted for, and Joe Manchin voted against.
Roger Moore
@jonas:
I thought it was supposed to be Person-Woman-Man-Camera-TV.
Subsole
I can’t speak to broader Conservatism, especially as practiced up north.
Southern Conservatism is very, very much a continuation of Dixiecrat Planter culture. It is, in a very pure sense, neofeudalism. There is a landed gentry reinforced by an overbearing omnipresent church, and a vast sea of downtrodden, impoverished and benighted serfs atop a broad and deep base of slaves.
These people absolutely aspire to be Boss Hogg. They are every swaggering, jackbooted village tyrant our ancestors fled.
It’s who they’ve always been. The only thing that changes is what five-inch-thick coat of outdated nostalgia they slather over it like so much paint to make it look marginally less anachronistic and ramshackle than it actually is.
@MisterDancer:
Marmot
@Suzanne:
They certainly do complain about it. Every single one does.
But it reminds me a lot of how conservatives used to complain about how awful the Post Office was. And how it just wasn’t. (Do they still do that?)
I suppose I’ll find out about Permitting soon enough.
Edited for what the heck was I doing?
Shana
@Cacti: I have no idea what contributed to his liver disease but it’s not always alcohol-related. My 36 YO niece was just diagnosed with Lupus and Budd-Chiari syndrome which is causing liver disease. She is home now after spending about 3 weeks in the hospital while they tried to figure out what was wrong with her. It will be a fairly long road to recovery with the help of about 15 (!) different medications.
Nazi saluting however is always deserving of condemnation so fu*k him.
Paul Begala's Pink Tie
@Suzanne: is this like Hang Mike Pence saying he was a House conservative before it was cool?
Subsole
@Suzanne:
And that, my friends, is why we are all going through this shit.
They aren’t cool, and nobody wants to be around them, and their sad little asses genuinely do not know how to process that fact.
trollhattan
@jonas: The Biden gun charge might be that he did not have sufficient guns.
Subsole
@trollhattan:
Oh God, I had entirely forgotten that.
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Golden Bear: I don’t even think there needs to be any overt involvement from national groups. They provided the policies and the organizing playbook so now any small group of bigot parents can easily follow it and apply it to their community/schools. I’m sure the national orgs will highlight Chino and make it into their bogeyman, scare-mongering tale of “Evil Trans Ideology” run amok…sadly
Subsole
@Sister Golden Bear:
I get that everyone finds Eversor abrasive, but at some point we really are going to have to do something about the fact that sizable chunks of American Christianity (No, it ain’t all slick megachurches, and it ain’t all Evangelicals) essentially functioning as a massive shadow PAC/political machine for the GOP.
I simply don’t see how the situation can continue as it is.
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
I think they had interest, it’s just been over the last 25 yrs or so that everyone can have a public say, like what we are doing right now, across oceans and thousands of miles of land and borders be damned. For most of human history one’s world was rather small, even with the advent of radio and TV. And a lot of that didn’t really get going until the early 60s at best. So our reality started changing rather dramatically about 60 yrs ago and has, as it always used to do it takes time to change, especially that a lot of humans hate change, likely because they hate as much as any other emotion. But as communication has gotten so much better — cell phones, the internet, blogs, etc.
eversor
@wjca:
Christianity, per Christ himself, is patriarchal, hiearchal, authoritarian, and demanding with strict gender roles. It is fascist and created fascism. They are the same. The younger generations get this.
Maybe down the line we can do what we do with neonzais and de Christianize Christians but till that’s in place it’s the big issue and no other issue matters.
You don’t get to pretend it’s just the hippy nice bullshit.
UncleEbeneezer
@lamh36: Welcome back!!
persistentillusion
@Alison Rose: See if you can find Happy Valley. Lancaster stars in a dark whodunnit in Yorkshire. Her personal life and professional life undergird it. Excellent watch!
wjca
@eversor: You appear determined to ignore the very real evidence that your issue might be more with religion generally, rather than just with Christianity. Why?
eversor
@wjca:
Christianity is the religious threat we face. Also not all religions follow that method. Plenty were matriarachal but Christians genocided them because Jesus himself demanded patriarchy. If you are not pro patriarchy than you are not following Christ. Full stop. There is no way out of this.
I concentrate on the religion at my door threatening me and that means Christianity. I’m against patriarchy, authoritarianism, and hiearchy so that means I am agains Christianity.
If you are pro Christianity, well, join the rape is good and men should run everything as that’s what your savior demands. If you aren’t going to do it, you aren’t a follower of Christ.
Bill Arnold
@wjca:
Or Abrahamic religions, at least. They all share those characteristics, to varying degrees. (As do many older religions.)
On a semi-related note, finally watched all of this anti-fascism propaganda piece:
“Don’t Be a Sucker” – 1947 (YouTube, 14:57)
Back when there was broad consensus that Fascism was bad.
Jay
@Marmot:
in many places, you have to deal with “many” permitting offices.
When I worked the the Interior, all within a small area, there was The City of Kamloops, the TNRD, the SSRD, the NSRD and a couple of others. You go up into the Sahali Heights, and this property is Kamloops, the property across the street is TNRD.
The City was great to work with. They knew their buildings and tried to make it as easy as possible. Their inspectors knew their buildings, their codes, their history and showed up.
The TNRD was horrible. I was putting in a slab staircase. The drawings showed steel reinforced, (rebar and mesh), fibre reinforced, Class 6 concrete, below the frost line with a heave slab. 6 tons of the strongest concrete possible, 4 steps up with a railing. It took them 3 weeks with the drawings to decide I needed an engineering assessment, before I could start. That added tripled the cost of the project. If I had just ripped out the old rotten wooden entry stairs and replaced them with wood, I wouldn’t have even needed a permit, but the Company needed a long term solution.
It took the engineer 5 minutes of looking at the drawings and specs to stamp it. So I resubmitted, (and paid again), 3 weeks later, got the okay. The actual job took 5 days. Then a 5 week wait for the Inspector to show up and approve, and in the meantime, customers and employees had to use the loading dock, not the front door for access.
The NSRD didn’t really exist, unless you went there. A nightmare getting permits, so the “tradition” in the NSRD, is you just built, often multi-million dollar lakeshore homes and entire factories, with out a permit. There was no enforcement once you had a fait d’accomplis, but if you made the mistake of actually trying to follow the “rules”, well some legal projects waited 5 years before breaking ground.
And sadly, some of the projects that require a permit, are simple. Eg. GFI’s. In the TNRD I needed a permit to upgrade bathroom, kitchen and other circuits with GFI sockets. That’s a one day job. So wait weeks for a permit, pay for a permit, bring in a Red Seal Electrician to do the actual “work”, stamp and label the breaker box, and yet, a homeowner or landlord could do the work by themselves, no permit.
lamh36
Hey guys…sorry for just getting back to responding to some comments.
I had a break in work and was able to post a comment before heading back and am just now home and able to respond.
JIC this is a dead thread, I’ve posted a longer comment on the next open thread.
J
@Betty Cracker: Indeed, it’s hard to imagine anyone just happening to cast O’Keefe, no matter how amateurish the production, in a singing/dramitic part. His absurd (but malevolent) escapades give us a sense of his abilities as an actor. To get the picture of O’Keefe singing out of your head, here’s Blossom Dearie singing The Surrey with the fringe on the top https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ccIbog–aE&list=RD8ccIbog–aE&start_radio=1
artem1s
When I learned Biden added funding to the IRS budget I have been hoping they would spend at least part of the funding on investigating these non profit shell corporations that the very rich have used to hide income and to fund their very lavish lifestyles. The GOPers obsession with the Clinton Foundation proves that with conservatives it’s always about projection. They ‘know’ Bill and Hillary are profiting off their foundation and using it to cheat on their taxes because that’s what they are doing themselves. They can’t imagine having all that money sitting there and not taking a taste. Assholes have no understanding of philanthropy.
artem1s
@narya:
I’ve spent most of my working life with non-profit organizations. The ones that I see misusing funds on extravagant expenditures are usually pass-through organizations. They exist solely to raise money that they then pass thru to the non-profits who actually do the work. Think United Way or Komen for the Cure. Community Chests and pass through NPs don’t have any programming – all they do is raise money and maybe do a little education, PR and Marketing. Honestly, the worst NP job I ever had was when I was part of the development team which requires a ton of individual cultivation and event management. I’ve always preferred either the program or financial management side. I still work for the same NP. But I get to interact daily with the researchers who are doing incredibly cool stuff. I’d probably be making a lot more money if I’d stuck with individual cultivation. And I might even get to play richy rich and hang out with some jet setters. But I hate having to work special events and honestly standing around at cocktail parties and hanging out with country club types is my idea of hell on earth.
So, long story short – IMO the abuse and corruption happens when the fundraisers lose sight of what the real mission is. I always tell my friends that if they want to give money to a cause – give it directly to the organization doing the work. Don’t donate to fun runs, or events, or auctions, or to a NP because some celebrity supports them. Don’t give to organizations that only raise money and have nothing but fundraising and marketing staffs. People put too much emphasis on giving to NP’s that have low or no overhead. It’s easy to fill out tax returns so it looks like your NP is using a high percent of it’s revenue on programming if all you do is put on events. So often the best thing you can do help a NP sustain it’s programming is to give them unrestricted money that they can use to pay the fucking light bill.
BruceFromOhio
Spot on! Also soulless, two-bit, ratfuck, criminal, narcissistic, without honor or self-awareness or empathy, unworthy of Christ’s teachings, your car keys, or caring for your pets.
And, dear Gaia, keep them away from the children.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: Jesus was trying to get Jews to stop acting like Pharisees, IMO.
Paul in KY
@eversor: Judaism is pretty patriarchal. Just sayin…