1. New piece from the TWITTER FILES.
How the pharmaceutical industry lobbied social media to shape content around vaccine policy.

The push included direct pressure from Pfizer partner BioNTech to censor activists demanding low-cost generic vaccines for low-income countries. 2. In 2020, it was clear that the pandemic would require rapid innovation. Early on, there was a push to make the solution equitable: an international partnership to share ideas, technology, new forms of medicine to rapidly solve this crisis. medicinespatentpool.org/news-publicati…

1. TWITTER FILES PART 8

*How Twitter Quietly Aided the Pentagon’s Covert Online PsyOp Campaign*

Despite promises to shut down covert state-run propaganda networks, Twitter docs show that the social media giant directly assisted the U.S. military’s influence operations. 2. Twitter has claimed for years that they make concerted efforts to detect & thwart gov-backed platform manipulation. Here is Twitter testifying to Congress about its pledge to rapidly identify and shut down all state-backed covert information operations & deceptive propaganda.

Docs show Facebook and Twitter closely collaborating w/ Dept of Homeland Security, FBI to police “disinfo.” Plans to expand censorship on topics like withdrawal from Afghanistan, origins of COVID, info that undermines trust in financial institutions. interc.pt/3Dq6TDB FBI agent Laura Dehmlow was in communications w Facebook that led to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 over the false allegation that it was “disinfo.” This year, she met w/ Twitter/DHS to stress “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.”

Private prison CoreCivic touts boardroom diversity and MLK prison murals as its “ESG” racial equity cred. New feature explores this trend generating big fees for BlackRock & fund managers, woke reputations for corporations — but is society benefitting? interc.pt/3ONxAG7 The NAACP branded social responsibility ETF has largely the same top holdings (Amazon, Tesla, JP Morgan) as ordinary index funds.. except the fees are as much as 16x higher. Asked how this fund helps racial justice, the firm pointed to Amazon allowing a union vote in Alabama (??)

Lawsuit reveals that lawyers for the 9/11 victims promised lobbyists a cut of the $$$ they win from foreign assets. New filings show lawyers are already scrambling to grab a slice of the $3.5 billion seized from the Afghan people - while millions starve. theintercept.com/2022/02/16/afg… Kreindler & Kreindler, one of the law firms that filed yesterday to demand a piece of the $3.5 billion, hired lobbyist firm NVG in December to work on 9/11 litigation issues. NVG's co-founder helped Biden with Asian American outreach during the campaign and is a big Dem donor.

This volunteer says he collected over 12,000 signatures for the successful recall of San Francisco’s school board members. The backlash against woke bullshit in schools is a landslide. The ultra woke school board, every speaker here emphasizes, was *not progressive.* They prioritized shutting down schools, renaming them, categorizing students by race, closing gifted programs — the backlash and the recall, they say, is a revival of progressive politics.

Just read this NYT piece on proposed California state education standards that demand that teachers change curriculums to bring racial identity politics into everyday math lessons. So I click the draft standards and the first section cited this CRT paper. nytimes.com/2021/11/04/us/… If you say anything about CRT, you get a gazillion scolds claiming there’s no CRT in schools, nothing inspired by this ideology. When you take literally 2 minutes to look into recent curriculum changes you find it everywhere.

Many people here don't know the history of the 1960s. They think violence helped produce meaningful reforms. But the 1961-1964 was a period of mass nonviolent activism, voter registration, organizing that helped produce the 1964 congressional sweep that gave us Medicare. Medicare was signed into law on July 30, 1965. The following month was the first mega riot of the 1960s, the Watts riot in August 1965, scores of riots followed, w/ many on the left embracing racial sectarianism and promoting "burn baby burn."

Lmao

https://twitter.com/lyta_gold/status/1428011761635143681?s=20

Nothing better than seeing rich over educated leftists like Nathan — constantly online, obsessed w/style & symbols & language policing, who sneers at at actual working class concerns like gun violence — throw a tantrum when asked to live up to any supposedly radical principles.

Bouie is a fabulist when it comes to policing and crime, lots of examples.

Here he invents a conspiracy that police murdered Joshua Brown as a cover up in the Guyger trial. Not remotely true, Brown was killed in a drug deal, his killers confessed.

https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1181666094882398209

Here's his tweet last year falsely claiming that Michael Reinoehl, the antifa guy who murdered a pro-Trump supporter in Portland, was some type of conservative "emulating Kyle Rittenhouse"

The current debate around coronavirus vaccine intellectual property is a great example of corporate solidarity. Business interests at large would benefit from sharing IP to end the pandemic as fast as possible. But virtually all corporations are silent or siding w the drug lobby. The National Association of Manufacturers -- the lobby group that reps ExxonMobil, Toyota, Alcoa, etc -- opposes any IP exemptions to share vaccine patents globally, claiming doing so would "undermine innovation"

Nancy Pelosi previously sponsored single payer "Medicare for All" style health reform. In 1994, she demanded a vote on it. "It is interesting to see how, under scrutiny, when people really take a look at these bills, how brilliantly the single payer plan stands out," Pelosi said. Given the recent "discourse" around this topic, surprised no one has pointed this out. Pelosi sponsored the single payer bill, even serving as the pitch person introducing it at committees, appearing on TV to argue for it. Makes basically all the same points as Bernie does today.

If you own a racehorse, the coronavirus stimulus legislation has a tax break for you The so-called 'three martini lunch' tax deduction, used by business to deduct food and beverage expenses, is in there.

CDC guidelines for vaccine priority recommend 87 million non-healthcare “essential workers” — an amorphous group that includes various interest groups, journalists, the financial industry — over the elderly in part b/c the elderly are overwhelmingly white. cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/… The CDC guidelines are nonbinding but are used by states to set the distribution of the vaccine. Those w/lobbyists and organized advocacy are pushing to be counted as “essential workers.” The elderly and less well resourced workers may be out of luck. theintercept.com/2020/12/10/lob…

Hollywood deployed lobbyists close to Gov. Gavin Newsom and key Dems to win exemptions to strict California coronavirus lockdown interc.pt/3a1dWph Newsom was caught indoor dining w multiple households last month at the French Laundry. He was celebrating the birthday of Netflix lobbyist Jason Kinney. Netflix has tripled its lobby spending and won the right to continue filming in LA as other businesses are shut down.

In California, gig companies paid off woke groups to lie and claim helping drivers unionize was racist and harmful to people of color, bail bond industry paid woke groups to claim ending cash bail was racist, oil refineries paid off woke groups to prevent higher taxes. It worked. Industry groups — from Uber to Chevron to the entire predatory bail bond industry — paid off woke activists to invoke racial justice rhetoric in order to convince voters to back far right positions for Prop 15, Prop 22 and Prop 25. Business groups prevailed in all of them.

Much of the media is constricted by an overwhelming conformism shaped by partisanship and Twitter slogans detached from the lives of the working class and journalistic inquiry. Glenn is bound by principle rather than what’s popular in his social cohort.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1321869227226222593?s=20

Expect a lot of sniping from the reporters behind discredited Russiagate hysteria, hype mindless identity politics, aggregate partisan horse race journalism & whose beliefs are uniformly identical to whatever is popular on Twitter. The conformist mob hates principled dissent.

Taking unpopular principled positions and not receiving any monetary or professional benefit is the Twitter definition of grifter

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1298668293558095880

The easy grift in the Trump era is jumping any number of liberal bandwagons -- Russiagate, MeToo, identity pol, scapegoating police for every problem in society, claiming America is Nazi Germany -- positions that get you foundation gigs, TV invites and millions of followers.

Kansas State Rep. Stan Frownfelter, the incumbent senior Democrat defeated by @Aaron4KS37 in the primary, voted to criminalize second trimester abortions, also voted for resolutions supporting the Keystone XL & calling on Congress to remove EPA's power to act on climate change. Frownfelter's pitch to voters was to reelect him because he is "one of the largest fundraisers for the Kansas Democratic Party." Its true, he raised nearly $50,000 -- almost entirely from corporate PACs representing real estate, utilities, construction, etc.

Republicans are using the coronavirus crisis to win long-desired bank deregulation, raising potential for bank failures. We obtained letters showing the deregulation push. interc.pt/2LbrvVx Regulators have already lifted risk taking rules on "community banks" ie banks w/less than $10b in assets in response to Covid-19. But small banks helped drive the last financial crisis. There's much attention on big banks but nearly 500 community banks failed in the last crisis.

Bipartisan group of lawmakers now joining the push to literally bailout corporate lobbyists using cover of 'it's only for local chambers of commerce.' fitzpatrick.house.gov/media-center/p… A defining aspect of our democracy is that the vast majority of corporate money shaping policymaking and elections comes from 501c(6) trade groups, which allow corporations to pool their collective money together (like a union but for businesses instead of workers) for influence.