This week we read the last chapter first of ‘Nobody’s Girl’. I explain why before the reading starts at 30: 46.
WHY READ THIS ACCOUNT?
For every Patrick Bateman abandoned to his unlimited desire for human harm by a circle of psychopaths who instrumentalize financial talent as standard.
If you or someone you know is being trafficked, these resources are open 24 hours/ 7 days a week/ 365 days a year, to whomever needs the help.
National Trafficking HotlineCALL: 1-88-373-7888TEXT: BEFREE (233733)
National Domestic Violence HotlineCALL: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)TEXT: “START” to 88788
988 Suicide & Crisis LifelineCALL or TEXT: 988
VOCABULARY
I learned a new phrase: rent seeking.
Used in a sentence.“Zohran Mamdani, the DSA mayoral candidate of NYC, sports a policy agenda that supplants and protects career rent seekers. So why put him in charge of NYC rent control?”
rent seeking, competition for politically protected transfers of wealth.
The typical rent-seeking scenario includes an economic rent, or “prize,” and a set of actors that create, capture, and finance the prize. The government creates the prize by setting, for example, a public subsidy, an import license, or a monopoly protected by legal entry barriers. Interest groups struggle to influence the government and thereby capture the prize, a contest that may include lobbying, public-relations campaigns, and bribery of government officials. Unorganized segments of the public complete the rent-seeking picture, for they are the actors from whom resources are extracted to finance the prize, via taxes or higher monopolistic prices.
Economic research on rent seeking has focused on both its causes and its consequences.
Causes of rent seeking
Analyses of the causes of rent seeking have traditionally classified political decisions based on their relative costs and benefits for winners (actors that capture or benefit from the prize) and losers (actors that finance the prize). Governments are more likely to create political prizes and induce rent seeking when such prizes involve (1) large benefits for a small well-organized interest group and (2) small costs for a large number of consumers or taxpayers in the unorganized public. In such a case, for each consumer or taxpayer, the costs of organizing an interest group to eliminate the prize would outweigh the benefits of eliminating the prize. Conversely, the creation of prizes is less likely when potential losers are well organized and must bear a high individual cost, while potential winners lack organization and must broadly share the benefits of the prize.
NEWS & SOURCES OF NOTE
Jack Smith Subpoenaed Records for Over 400 Republican Targets As Part of Arctic Frost
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Grassley Probes Gates Foundation and Others for 501(c)(3) Compliance
WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is probing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation to determine how the organizations are complying with applicable tax laws given their reported funding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its allies.
According to recent reports, the Gates Foundation, through grants and direct payments, have funded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its allies.1 I am writing today to ask you whether these reports are true or not and, if true, how your organization’s conduct comports with 501(c)(3) requirements.
According to reports, in 2023, the Gates Foundation “directed roughly $11.7 million into various arms of China’s communist-controlled government, as well as $2 million to a corporation the Department of Defense (DOD) determined works with the Chinese military and an additional $6.7 million to state-run universities that help prop up Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime.”2 According to reporting, the Gates Foundation labels most of its grants to the Chinese government as “public health initiatives concerning research, global health awareness and sanitation, among other areas.”3 According to the Gates Foundation’s FY 2022 tax filings, the nonprofit provided approximately $23 million in funding to over 20 different Chinese entities, some of which were labeled as “foreign governments.”4
Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) provides tax-exempt status for entities that are organized and operated exclusively for a charitable purpose.5 A 501(c)(3) organization may lose its tax-exempt status for failing to pursue the exempt purpose it described in its application to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).6 With regard to activity in foreign countries, IRS guidance states that “direct grants to foreign governments do not serve IRC 501(c)(3) purposes.”
Resources For The Shutdown
Find Your Local FoodBank from Feeding America
Keep talking through the tough conflicts. The right conversation, at the right moment, can change everything.
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