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Skilled with data and amateur research; interested in history, political economy, and world systems; grew up working class; Chicagoan🚩 @ampersoned.bsky.social
Jan 11 10 tweets 5 min read
Going to follow a loose thread here. This tweet refers to Alan Dershowitz. He was on a fellowship at Stanford to write a book as a member of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.


nytimes.com/1972/01/23/arc…
casbs.stanford.edu/people/alan-de…

Image That was the same Ford Foundation-founded center where Kenneth Boulding had previously done a fellowship. While there, he co-founded the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) with former Nazi Ludwig von Bertalanffy
isss.org/history/
Dec 27, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
@BoltzmannBooty Some interesting stuff on Wikipedia:


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@BoltzmannBooty web.archive.org/web/2004062605…
Dec 6, 2023 12 tweets 2 min read
When I watched "The Brink," the 2019 documentary about Steve Bannon, I was really puzzled by his connection to Peter Munk and John Thornton of Barrick Gold. Only now that I've finally wrapped my head around The Safari Club does it all makes sense. The Safari Club (together and overlapping with Operation Condor and Le Cercle) being a workaround a hamstrung CIA starting in the '70s, utilizing autonomous transnational assets from bourgeois and criminal networks to suppress communism globally, Iran-Contra being one result.
Nov 25, 2023 61 tweets 21 min read
I knew about the Esalen connection but I didn't realize Boris Yeltsin worked so closely with Paul Weyrich. Also didn't realize how Esalen's origins were closely tied to Weyrich's crowd.
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Nov 20, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
My grandfather grew up just outside Decatur in a poor, sometimes abusive household. The prominent (in those parts) Dazey family helped him and his brothers go to college, and he became a nutritionist for now Buffett-owned Kraft. Interesting synchronicity there. In the late Reagan years, Kraft was purchased by tobacco company Philip Morris, which funded a lot of far-right PR.
Nov 20, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Somehow missed that the far-right-wing guy, Patrick Byrne, was mentored by Warren Buffett. Amid his election denial campaign, Buffett said that he was "very intelligent and patriotic."Overstock.com Also, Buffett himself shared a mentor in Benjamin Graham with the far-right British donor and mutual fund pioneer, John Templeton.
Nov 4, 2023 9 tweets 2 min read
This far-right operative sure is friendly with a lot of liberals
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Halv… I guess that's what happens when you're at the intersection of tech, the Nordic countries, Venezuelan dissidents, Russian dissidents, Saudi dissidents, Chinese dissidents...the list goes on.
Oct 6, 2023 13 tweets 6 min read
Guess it's time to do PART 4, the conclusion of my thread on Paul Vallas and the Illinois Parents Union.
This part is focused on the group's 2021 relaunch (from Reopen Illinois Schools) and the creation of district-level groups like Awake IL and Moms for Liberty. Definitely check out parts 2 and 3 if you haven't already.
Oct 5, 2023 29 tweets 9 min read
@The_Wub_ Also, re: bipartisan RenTech, haven't connected the dots but interesting Volker's role at UMKC, which became central to MMT; Oppenheimer Capital's role in MPS, RenTech, and the post-Keynesian Levy Institute at Bard College; and Stony Brook University's ties to RenTech and MMT. @The_Wub_ Wonder if there's a Rockefeller connection in there
Apr 3, 2023 13 tweets 8 min read
Paul Vallas helped launch a far-right campaign against COVID precautions, Black history, and LGBTQ inclusion in IL Schools, in order to privatize schools

PART 2: The Receipts🧵

(credit: @cholent_lover for helping with research) PART 1 covered the background

I packed a lot in, but I wanted to set the table for how these far-right astroturf groups work and how close they are to Paul Vallas
Apr 2, 2023 19 tweets 16 min read
Paul Vallas was instrumental in launching a far-right campaign against COVID restrictions, Black history, and LGBTQ Inclusion in IL Schools, in support of school privatization. PART 1 (background)🧵
(credit: @cholent_lover for contributing research) Facebook post: Kati Byrne Spaniak announces a webinar with PFacebook post: Paul Vallas calls for a parents unionFacebook post: Illinois Parents Union thanks Paul Vallas forPaul Vallas speaks at a rally to reopen schools First, I want to recognize the people who have already reported parts of this story. Some of you have been covering it for quite some time, so apologies if I missed anyone, or any details.
@JinxPress @ILschoolwatch @il_fps @duboo @behindthissky @amyqin12 @PetrellaReports @rap30
Apr 1, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
Paul Vallas went on Dan Proft's radio show on 6/1/2022, calling for the next mayor to privatize CPS in the 2-year window before the elected school board is in place, backed by a counter-CTU coalition. Vallas described his coalition as parochial and private school parents, parents "upset with CPS," conservative unions like police and fire, and "the vast majority of taxpayers without kids in CPS."
Does that sound like someone who cares about all of Chicago?
Apr 1, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
Mar 31, 2023 9 tweets 3 min read
Paul Vallas is nothing but a throwback to the Vrdolyak 29's racist resistance to Black governance under the great Harold Washington. From 1988:
lib.niu.edu/1988/ii880412.… Image
Mar 31, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Paul Vallas playing nice with organizers of the Capitol insurrection while subbing for Dan Proft makes sense when you realize that he spent much of 2020-2021 organizing far-right school board campaigns and MAGA rallies to reopen schools through the same Dick Uihlein-backed orgs
Mar 30, 2023 16 tweets 6 min read
This is just the 35 year old agenda written by his business partner and fellow school administrator, Michael Bakalis, with Heartland Institute and United Republican Fund of IL, both bankrolled by Barre Seid, the Chicago billionaire behind the far-right Supreme Court takeover, no? Image "Steven Baer, a longtime friend and former adviser to Seid, said the businessman has long been “the major patron” for the Heartland Institute, a small Chicago-area think tank which for decades has attacked mainstream climate science." Steven Baer, a longtime fri...
Mar 27, 2023 15 tweets 5 min read
🚨Vallas has a new $200K gift from Hackberry Endowment Partners, which shares a Highland Park address with the Sacks Family Fdn. of Michael Sacks. This would be one of the first gifts from Rahm's more "liberal-labor coalition" type donors and joins big gifts from laborers unions. It's possible that the gift could belong to another current or former director of Sacks's Grosvenor Capital Management. Stephen J. Malkin is listed as a manager of Hackberry.
Mar 26, 2023 17 tweets 4 min read
As much as I hate to engage "Socialists for Pritzker," there's something to this. I could see it in the neighborhood watch and MAGA Facebook groups that Paul Vallas frequented. First they rehabilitated Daley. Then they rationalized Vallas. Socialists For Pritzker @PritzkerF. Replying to @lib crusher To clarify, I think there are a few things being conflated in SPF's post: name recognition with voters, whether someone is known and trusted by rich donors, whether someone is proven in elected office, and whether someone is a boss or a reformer.
Mar 26, 2023 18 tweets 7 min read
I feel like it needs to be said:
The old Chicago Democrat machine is backing Paul Vallas for mayor. Jesse White's endorsement wasn't merely opportunistic. Vallas has multiple connections to White.
His business partner Michael Bakalis's son-in-law is White's senior advisor.
And the old ward organizations, people like Iris Martinez, have moved in lockstep.
Mar 3, 2023 19 tweets 11 min read
Going to do a thread on Paul Vallas's top donors according to Illinois Sunshine, chipping away as I have time. Michael Keiser ($700,000) made his billions from Recycled Paper Greetings before developing golf courses. He's 1 of 6 Field Museum trustees who are AEI members and gave to INCS, the far right Heartland Institute, and many of the same Republicans as Dick Uihlein, including Trump.
Dec 13, 2022 9 tweets 3 min read
Peter Thiel sums up the conservatism here. He and Musk want to restore the supremacy of Reagan's anticommunist network of "the minister, the general, and the [libertarian]." He only omits the role of the mob boss. Thiel's venue was the Manhattan Institute, home of campaigns for charter schools, cops, race science, and "YIMBYism," and against CRT and trans people.