As regular and detail-minded readers of MHProNews should know, we keep one eye on mainstream news to see how events may impact aspects of our affordable manufactured housing profession. For example, on the left coast of California wildfire stories are front page news across the country, as it should be. From right-leaning ZeroHedge is this pull quote: “AccuWeather has increased the preliminary estimate for the total damage and economic loss for the Southern California wildfires to a staggering $135 billion to $150 billion.” In Florida, there has been a fire too. But in Florida, the fire is a controlled burn of brush, the very sort of thing that hasn’t been occurring in CA that contributed to the disaster there. It is difficult to imagine how losses of that size won’t drive insurance rates up across the country. So yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus and sadly yes 49 other states are likely to end up paying more for insurance because of corrupt and/or incompetent practices in deep blue (i.e.: Democratic run) L.A. and California. There is an argument to be made that the kind of corruption and/or incompetence being suffered by American citizens in so many Democratic run cities and states merit a level of federal intervention, to help save those citizens from their own corrupt politicans and bureaucrats. This writer well recalls when the FBI broke up corruption that involved Republicans in the county commissioner scandal in Oklahoma years ago. While Democrats were also involved in OKSCAM, it is a reminder that corruption can be bipartisan and it needs to be rooted out whenever or where ever it is found. Because American citizens, we the taxpayers, are footing the bill. Speaking of scams, and it may be ‘legal’ in some sense, there is the story of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA-D), which will be explored about the headline related reports that follow in this news roundup with analysis. How this impacts MHVille will be explored in Part VI.
I don’t know how the government in California is so stupid. I lived in Florida for six years and Florida did controlled burns to prevent issues like this. You have to address the accelerant to make people safe. Florida does and California doesn’t https://t.co/ospJih81e3 pic.twitter.com/yscKEgbkSQ
— fordnGA777 ✝️✡️✝️ (@fordmb1) January 7, 2025
A Tale Between Two States; Florida v. California Wildfire Management |
Controlled burns in Florida have been instrumental in mitigating wildfires. These burns are strategically planned and executed to reduce the amount of understory fuel, which can help decrease the intensity… pic.twitter.com/VA8EPVfljO
— Andrea Shaffer, Employment/Labor Law (@Andreafreedom76) January 9, 2025
All hell is about to break loose. Biden just announced that 100% of the CA fires will be covered by the feds for 6 months, including temporary housing. North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia, and Florida get squat. Even before the fires are out, he’s promising federal funds that…
— Phil Kuhens (@PhilKuhens) January 10, 2025
Where the Hell was Biden when Helene hit? When Milton hit? It’s been confirmed that Joe Biden has stated that the Federal Government will cover the first 180 days of the costs from the wildfires in California
— Richard Roderick (@RichardRod38375) January 10, 2025
Much of what is happening in America is an apparent mix of corruption, incompetence, and special interests that can take advantage of ignorance because of a sympathetic echo chamber that fails to routinely point out what is actually occurring. Anyone who thinks that government ‘of, by, and for the people’ is working as it is supposed to isn’t paying close enough attention. The next several articles are examples of topics that regular, detail-minded, and longtime MHProNews may be familiar with, but newcomers may not.
In no particular order of importance are the following news items that will be considered for its relevance to MHVille in Part VII, below.
Part I From the Daily Signal to MHProNews is the following on the topic of censorship in America.
Commentary
The Age of Censorship Is Ending
Mark Zuckerberg attends the UFC 300 event at T-Mobile Arena on April 13, 2024, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
Specifically, Zuckerberg committed Facebook to revising a series of standards: reliance on left-wing fact-checkers will end, replaced by an X-like community notes system in which fact-checking will be crowdsourced; political content will no longer be artificially muted; censorship will be ended around controversial issues like transgender ideology and immigration; the content moderation team will be shifted from California to Texas to better account for the varying views of Americans; and Facebook will work with the Trump administration to push American-style free speech standards around the world.
This is all happening for one reason: the reelection of Donald Trump.
While Democrats claimed for years that Trump represented tyranny, the truth is that it was the Democratic Party and its media apparatchiks that routinely used the tools of power to silence their opposition in authoritarian ways. The cudgeling of Facebook represents a perfect example of such quiet authoritarianism.
Before the 2016 election, Facebook was considered a darling of the left: an open platform that could be used by heretofore underrepresented people to spread their political messages. Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign met with high praise for its creative use of Facebook, for example. The same held true for the Arab Spring.
And then Donald Trump won.
Democrats and the legacy media decided that social media had to be clubbed into place. Alternative media outlets like my own company, The Daily Wire, were far too successful: Democrats were upset that conservative content was reaching a wide audience, and legacy media were upset at the competition. And so by early 2017, the Democrat-Media Human Centipede set its narrative: that only the perversity of social media–and its hijacking by evil Russian masterminds–had allowed the election of Donald Trump.
By 2017, Sen. Dianne Feinstein was openly threatening Facebook with governmental action if the social media company refused to crack down on speech Democrats didn’t like.
In 2019, Zuckerberg himself responded in an excellent speech at Georgetown University, pledging his company to free speech: “We can continue to stand for free expression, understanding its messiness, but believing that the long journey towards greater progress requires confronting ideas that challenge us. Or we can decide the cost is simply too great. I’m here today because I believe we must continue to stand for free expression.”
But then, in 2020, Facebook began to cave under pressure from the federal government on issues ranging from COVID-19 coverage to the Hunter Biden laptop story. By 2021, the Biden White House was openly lobbying Facebook to change its standards to downgrade the traffic of The Daily Wire, among others. That same year, in April, our traffic began to plummet. Overall, our reach dropped by 90%.
Facebook got comfortable with censorship; Zuckerberg has admitted as much. The Biden administration, Zuckerberg claims, pushed for censorship. And Facebook conceded.
Not anymore. As Zuckerberg explained this week, “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.” That is absolutely correct. And it is also a damning indictment of a Democratic Party that always values power above principle. Free speech has become a Republican principle because Democrats abandoned it. And now free speech is returning. Let’s hope that remains a permanent feature of the social media landscape, not merely a temporary move to buy off the resurgent Trump administration.
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Ben Shapiro is host of “The Ben Shapiro Show” and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire. A graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, he is a New York Times bestselling author whose latest book is “The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent.”
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
—
Part II From the Daily Signal to MHProNews is the following on the developing ActBlue scandal.
News
Where Does the Money Come From? Elderly Democrats Say Donations Made in Their Names Aren’t Genuine
(AJ Watt/Getty Images)
Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue may have raked in millions through fraudulent donations, according to the testimonies of elderly Americans who said federal election records do not reflect their giving.
Eighteen registered Democrats in Connecticut, all over the age of 70, appear to have donated $1.9 million to Democratic causes, including ActBlue, through hundreds of thousands of small donations from 2016 to 2024, according to a review of Federal Election Commission filings by Dominic Rapini, cybersecurity company CEO and a former Connecticut Republican candidate for office.
Curious about the donation patterns, Rapini tracked down some of the Connecticut residents and asked them if they really did make thousands of small donations, sometimes multiple in a day, through ActBlue.
Several of the supposed donors told Rapini they did not make any of the reported donations, nor did they know anything about how their names were being used, Rapini told The Daily Signal.
An 88-year-old retired Yale University professor, for example, supposedly made 7,539 donations for a total of $213,163, according to FEC records. After Rapini informed him about the significant donations in his name, he signed an affidavit saying, “I believe this does not reflect my donation frequency or dollars I have donated.”
According to Rapini, who has analyzed numbers for three decades in the tech industry, this is a possible case of alleged identity theft and money laundering. A contribution made by one person in the name of another is illegal.
“When I examine the donation patterns tied to these alleged ‘smurfs,’ the irregularities jump off the page, revealing behavior that defies both human logic and common sense,” he told The Daily Signal. “To safeguard trust in our election process, we must confront these anomalies head-on.”
Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., chairman of the House Administration Committee, told The Daily Signal he’s aware of similar reports from across the country.
“In response, last fall, I shared the findings of our investigation with several state attorneys general,” Steil said in an emailed statement. “The committee and I remain fully available to collaborate with any state law enforcement officials who wish to access the information we have gathered on this critical issue.”
An elderly acupuncturist and registered Democrat appears to have made 17 donations in 2022 through ActBlue totaling $317. In an email to Rapini, she promised she hasn’t made political contributions since 2016.
“I can promise you I have NOT made donations myself to the [Democratic National Committee] or Democratic local party since 2016 … ,” she said. “Anything past that are fake and/or manipulated donations.”
A 91-year-old woman appears to have made 2,591 donations totaling $41,000, according to FEC filings. She signed an affidavit with Rapini denying making the reported donations.
Another 75-year-old woman looks to have made 4,270 small donations adding up to $32,323. She too signed an affidavit with Rapini denying making the donations in this frequency or quantity.
ActBlue is currently under congressional investigation for alleged laundering of foreign money laundering.
ActBlue came under fire on Oct. 29 because of its donor-verification policies. In a letter that day to ActBlue, Steil said foreign actors from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and China could use the platform to launder illicit money for use in U.S. political campaigns.
The Democratic fundraising platform admitted in 2023 to Steil that it didn’t require contributors to use a card verification value, or CVV, to donate on its website with a credit card. Those security codes are meant to ensure that the person making a purchase physically possesses the credit card.
ActBlue responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about the affidavits by referring The Daily Signal to a post on its blog, which says, “Because of how reporting works for intermediaries, contributions made on platforms like ours often show up more than once in public FEC records, because both ActBlue and the receiving campaign or committee must report the contributions.
“FEC rules require ActBlue to itemize every contribution made through its platform, regardless of amount,” the post says.
“Additionally, FEC reports often lump multiple donors with the same name together,” the post continues. “This can make it difficult to easily identify which contributions should be associated with each individual donor, especially donors with common names.”
Rapini said whether the suspicious donation patterns come from “sloppy data systems at the FEC” or “nefarious actors laundering money through unsuspecting elderly donors,” an investigation is needed.
“Transparency and accountability are nonnegotiable when it comes to protecting the integrity of our democracy,” he said.
Elizabeth (Troutman) Mitchell is a reporter for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Daily Signal Podcast.”
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MHProNews Note: There will be no specific comments in Part VI about ActBlue. But don’t be surprised if this becomes a developing issue during the Trump 2.0 term.
Honestly this ActBlue scandel is just insane. Investigators inserted fake names into ActBlue and what do you know they wound up on fundraising emails.
All the grass roots support is a total lie. It’s all about foreign interference with our elections laundered through… pic.twitter.com/FWHqFhgUO0
— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) July 27, 2024
ActBlue is the single biggest nationwide scam.
One Republican AG is investigating. Where are the other 26 Republican AGs.
Are you waiting until we become Venezuela? pic.twitter.com/gYkUMlBWHf
— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) July 30, 2024
BREAKING: Hillary Clinton encourages her supporters to donate to Joe Biden via a massive potential money fraud scheme similar to another one her campaign was involved in during her 2016 presidential run. Today Clinton tweeted a link to ActBlue, a Democrat nonprofit fundraiser,… pic.twitter.com/HjTBGS4w3A
— LIZ CROKIN (@LizCrokin) April 25, 2023
CLINTON FOUNDATION FOREIGN DONATIONS THEY ALL HOLD MAJOR INFLUENCE & ARE GIVEN BIG FAVORS FOR THESE LG SUMS OF $ Do u see the COMMON THREAD? pic.twitter.com/EcjIT7zD3Q
— Kristin Billitere (@SpecialKMB1969) November 4, 2016
Democratic linked ActBlue and the Clinton Foundation both appear to have involvement in foreign influence peddling. That’s been part of the apparent legacy of Biden (D) family scandals too.
Crucial Thread: Biden exposed
1/8: This FBI 1023 form info is great and all, but let me serve you up the evidence against Hunter and Joe Biden on a silver platter @RepJamesComer:
Hunter’s emails outline a coordinated “pay for play” between the Biden VP office, Hunter Biden,… pic.twitter.com/83OzIFklpf
— CannCon (@CannConActual) June 6, 2023
Never forget that Joe Biden bragged about how he leveraged aid to Ukraine to get them to fire the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma.
Conveniently, Hunter worked for Burisma…
The Biden crime family protects itself.pic.twitter.com/xKSCewDuX9
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) December 2, 2024
Part III From the Daily Signal to MHProNews is the Developing Battle Euro-Censorship Battle with Elon Musk.
Commentary
How Musk’s X Is Turning Europe’s Censorship Regimes ‘Upside Down’
In this photo illustration, Elon Musk, owner of the X platform, is shown against the backdrop of a German flag as Musk criticizes Germany’s leaders on X on Wednesday. (Dominika Zarzycka/Nur Photo via Getty Images)
Have censorship regimes met their match in Elon Musk?
As I and many others have written recently, discussion of mass Pakistani rape gangs operating with impunity in the United Kingdom has exploded in the past week, even though the story is now more than a decade old.
The details are horrifying and profound. It’s hard to imagine something like that happening on such a scale for so long. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is in hot water as his Labour Party is desperately trying to stop a new national inquiry into the matter.
Starmer has been reduced to the laziest, played-out message; namely, that asking questions about the widespread pedophile rape gangs that operated for years as authorities looked the other way makes you a part of the scary “far right.”
As some folks online say, however: “Far-right” is a stand-in for “right so far.”
Frankly, every person and institution involved in sweeping the issue under the rug should never be involved in public leadership ever again. They’ve brought infamy to their country and stained their souls. Shame on all of them.
Maybe now the victims of these most heinous crimes will get at least the small amount of justice they deserve, albeit belatedly.
What’s happening in the U.K., as this discussion about immigration and the failure of institutions heats up, is part of a much larger story.
What Musk has done is essentially force an American-style political debate onto the U.K. and even more profoundly, onto a European continent that not only doesn’t have a long-standing free speech culture, but has actively tried to do more to censor their own citizens in recent years.
Just listen to how shocked Jessica Phillips, the Labour Party member of parliament who initially shut down the inquiry into the rape gangs, was when she was accused of enabling the groomers.
UK Safeguarding Minister Jess Philips claims her life has been turned “upside down”, after she was called out by @elonmusk for declining to launch a public inquiry into child r*** gangs in Oldham.
“This is going to turn my world upside down…”
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) January 7, 2025
She said she felt like her world was being turned “upside down.” Ah yes, thousands of young girls, some no more than 11 years old, were repeatedly raped, but won’t somebody think of the poor politicians!
The U.K.’s political establishment isn’t used to dealing with these kinds of direct challenges and accusations. Their world really is being turned “upside down.”
Musk suddenly coming out and praising Germany’s AfD party, which backs immigration restrictions—and generally injecting the immigration question onto European Union countries that have spent decades attempting to shut down debate on the issue—is a seismic shock to the system.
From an American perspective, this may be hard to understand. Most Americans have been raised in a culture that embraces something close to absolutist free speech, even if that isn’t what we have in practice.
Certainly, for many Europeans, whose speech on the immigration issue has been squelched, this must be a refreshing change.
The social media platform X is colliding directly with Europe’s censorship regimes, and right now it’s breaking through. Don’t think those regimes won’t strike back.
For EU countries, such as Germany and France, that tightly control speech in the name of public “safety,” and have nothing like the First Amendment, foisting debates on their country that were once considered off the table is seen as an existential threat.
European politicians and many of their most powerful, established media outlets are now up in arms about Musk’s “meddling” in their political systems.
French President Emmanuel Macron took a potshot at Musk in a speech Monday.
“Ten years ago, who could have imagined it if we had been told that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would support a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections, including in Germany,” he said.
The EU is reportedly considering putting regulations on X to prevent Musk from boosting “populist” parties.
Those countries may go even further. There’s been speculation that Starmer and other European leaders may cut ties with the U.S. over the Musk issue because the entrepreneur is so closely aligned with President-elect Donald Trump.
BREAKING: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer considering cutting ties with US unless Donald Trump distances himself from Elon Musk. pic.twitter.com/VgEevNI52O
— Dominic Michael Tripi (@DMichaelTripi) January 7, 2025
Keep in mind, the EU doesn’t care that X can manipulate political debates in their countries. They are perfectly happy using Big Tech companies to shape public opinion and quash dissent. What they really loathe and fear is that they can’t control the man whose social media platform has become a kind of global newspaper.
Is it good that one man and one social media platform have this much power? On the whole, I’d say “no,” even though I’m happy with the results so far. We shouldn’t need the deus ex machina of one rogue billionaire to restore some semblance of free speech in the West.
But right now, that’s where things stand.
Starmer, Macron, and other world leaders are struggling to put a lid on a media environment that’s radically changed. And as the historical French observer of American life Alexis de Tocqueville noted long ago, countries that suppress free debate and expression and the truth are more likely to explode in revolution once the truth gets out.
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Part IV From the Daily Signal to MHProNews is the following on Nancy Pelosi’s Stock Portfolio Skyrocketing Value.
News
Nancy Pelosi’s Stock Portfolio Explodes in Value, Beats Market by Nearly 200%
Former Speaker of the House, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, is assisted by aides as she arrives for the first day of the 119th Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 3, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi beat the S&P 500 by nearly 200% in 2024, continuing her streak of outperforming the stock index.
Pelosi’s portfolio grew 70.9% between Dec. 29, 2023, and Dec. 30, 2024, compared to the S&P 500’s 24.9% return for the period, according to financial data platform Unusual Whales’ 2024 Congress Trading Report. The former speaker’s 2024 investment results exceeded her stellar 2023 performance, when she secured a return of 65.5%—outperforming that year’s S&P 500 return of 24.8% by approximately 164%.
Pelosi outdid many of the world’s oldest and largest hedge funds in 2024, including Citadel, which had $66 billion in assets under management as of December, and Discovery Capital, which has been around for over 25 years and had $15 billion in assets under management at its peak. She also outperformed legendary investor Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, more than doubling its 27.1% 2024 return.
Pelosi’s trades are executed on her behalf by her husband, Paul, an investment banker whose strategy largely consists of buying call options—financial contracts that provide buyers with the right to purchase an asset at a predetermined price—in large technology companies after they experience price drops, according to Unusual Whales. The strategy appeared successful in 2024, with Pelosi’s contracts to purchase chipmaker Nvidia finishing the year up 273% and her contracts to purchase cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks up 93% as of Jan. 7.
“Speaker Pelosi does not own any stocks, and she has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions,” a spokesman for Pelosi’s office told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Pelosi has made other shrewd trades in the past, unloading more than $1.5 million worth of stock in Google’s holding company Alphabet one month before the Department of Justice announced an antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant.
The longtime congresswoman has faced backlash for her investments in the past, with Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley introducing the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act in January 2023, which would have prohibited members of Congress from trading stocks.
“For too long, politicians in Washington have taken advantage of the economic system they write the rules for, turning profits for themselves at the expense of the American people,” Hawley said in a Jan. 2023 statement. “As members of Congress, both Senators and Representatives are tasked with providing oversight of the same companies they invest in, yet they continually buy and sell stocks, outperforming the market time and again.”
Pelosi has refuted insider trading accusations, and even supported the 2023-2024 Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act after dropping her opposition to a stock trading ban ahead of the 2022 midterm.
Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Owen Klinsky is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Part V From the Daily Signal to MHProNews is the supposed “Fall of the Censorship Wall” at Facebook.
Commentary
The Fall of the Censorship Wall at Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg, head of the Facebook group Meta, shows the prototype of computer glasses that can display digital objects in transparent lenses on Sept. 25, 2024, in Menlo Park, California. (Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Then Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced his Meta sites would be abandoning the censorship of “fact-checkers,” in place since 2015. NBC reporter Hallie Jackson stuck to fiction when she reported they would be abandoning the “independent nonpartisan fact checking they’ve had in place.”
Anyone claiming websites like PolitiFact are “independent” or “nonpartisan” should get the rating “Pants On Fire.” In the first nine months of 2024, PolitiFact was twice as likely to tag Republican officials as “Mostly False” or worse (82.2%) as they were for Democrat officials (41.3%). Put aside the percentages for the raw numbers, and there were 88 “false” tags for Republicans, 31 for Democrats–almost 3 to 1.
PolitiFact veterans like Angie Drobnic Holan tried to claim they were not engaged in censorship (but merely flagged articles for suppression!) and that they observed a Meta code of principles “requiring nonpartisanship and transparency.” This boilerplate is not credible.
Nevertheless, it is a little shocking to witness Zuckerberg proclaiming “the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.” That’s correct, but it’s not hard to imagine the lefties seeing Zuckerberg waving a white flag of surrender in the Trump Wars. Some unintentionally hilarious pundits said he went “full MAGA.”
Hallie Jackson raised questions about the political timing, with the tech CEOs trying to “make inroads” with Trump. That’s fair, but she and the other liberals didn’t find anything suspicious about social media giants censoring content to “make inroads” with Joe Biden (like ignoring Hunter Biden’s laptop, followed by Jackson and others parroting the Biden line that it was “Russian disinformation”).
They all ridiculously presume that they are so “fact-based” in their liberalism that cooperating with Democrats is eminently sensible and wholly noncontroversial.
Zuckerberg shifted left to “moderate” content under Democratic pressure after Trump was first elected in 2016, with Democrats accusing his sites of allowing Russian meddlers to install Trump. In 2020, Zuckerberg flooded heavily Democratic areas with millions of dollars to turn out minority voters–“Zuckerbucks”–and that was a yawner to Democrat media outlets. Only now is “making inroads” to an incoming president suddenly scandalous.
It was also shocking to hear Zuckerberg announce he would “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas.”
Censors often use the Orwellian buzzword “inclusion” to exclude conservative views that are critical of transgender advocates or illegal-immigration boosters. So now, Team Zuckerberg will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation.” You’re allowed to state that wanting to cut off your own genitals might be mentally ill.
The left incessantly insisted that Trump would impose autocracy if elected again. But to conservatives, this feels like the end of Big Tech autocracy. The Republican half of America will have more leeway to say things that the Democrat half cannot abide–like COVID probably came from a lab in Wuhan, and Tony Fauci loves himself too much. Opposing mass importation wasn’t racist, and illegal immigrants are lawbreakers.
Mark Zuckerberg tore down the wall of censorship. You can tell who favors censorship by noticing who is upset.
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We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
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Part VI – Additional Information with More MHProNews Analysis and Commentary
As a predicate for what follows, consider this. If government was working the way that it should, the manufactured housing industry wouldn’t be struggling as it has in the 21st century. More on that further below. In no particular order of importance are the following.
1) About former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the article itself provided key points. Quoting.
…Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley introducing the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act in January 2023, which would have prohibited members of Congress from trading stocks.
“For too long, politicians in Washington have taken advantage of the economic system they write the rules for, turning profits for themselves at the expense of the American people,” Hawley said in a Jan. 2023 statement. “As members of Congress, both Senators and Representatives are tasked with providing oversight of the same companies they invest in, yet they continually buy and sell stocks, outperforming the market time and again.”
Pelosi has refuted insider trading accusations, and even supported the 2023-2024 Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act after dropping her opposition to a stock trading ban ahead of the 2022 midterm.
There are books that could be written on these topics, but the aim today is to keep this more focused. It is the evidence-based view of MHProNews that problematic and/or corrupt behavior has spread like a cancer through much of America. It isn’t that the U.S. ever had a period of corruption free government. But the dawn of the age of President Woodrow Wilson (D) and the arguably misnamed “progressive” movement may someday be viewed by historians as the acceleration of an array of problems that may finally have come to a head in 2024.
2) The OKSCAM example from the preface was used deliberately. Members of both major parties were involved. The issue with Nancy Pelosi (D) and stock trading by members of Congress is doubtlessly a bipartisan issue. When Congress exempts itself from behavior that would be illegal for other Americans that ought to be at least a cautionary flag, if not a red flag. That mainstream media has only pointed a flashlight on that instead of an array of spotlights is part of the reason that what amounts to insider trading by members of Congress has persisted as long as it has. Will the MAGA movement stop or curtail that trading by members of Congress? Time will tell.
3) The scandal of death and devastation from the estimated $135 plus billion in losses in California wildfires is likely to impact insurance everywhere. If that could be mitigated by forcing Californians to pay for their own problematic political choices, that would be fairer than letting the entire country pay for it. It will not be a surprise if this problem ends up in President Trump and a Republican Congress’ lap, so, that will be one worth watching. Joe Biden’s (D) pledge to help deep blue CA for 6 months just days before his term of office ends is one Democrat giving cover to other Democrats at taxpayer expense (see more X-posts in the preface).
President Biden pledged Thursday that the federal government will cover 100% of disaster assistance costs to California for the next 180 days and emphatically tied the devastating wildfires to human-caused climate change.
DEAREST JOE,
EVER HEARD OF ASHEVILLE, NC?— Faith’s Dad (@faithsdad96) January 10, 2025
‘The federal government will cover 100% of the cost for 180 days’ announced US President Joe Biden while addressing the devastating wildfires in California that has consumed 28,000 acres of land so far and killed 5 #California #wildfire #LosAngeles #Biden #cnbctv18digital pic.twitter.com/tuGo9N1K6e
— CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18News) January 10, 2025
So biden just said federal govt, assume FEMA, will cover 100% of costs associated with CA fires and rebuild. What about Lahaina? What about East Palestine? What about Florida, North Carolina? This administration is fkd up. 11 days till current shit is gone
— Dean (@mrdeano58) January 9, 2025
But what must be kept in mind is that faux climate and environmental claims are behind the California Democratic disaster. It would be hoped that Trump and Republicans will begin to expose the great climate hoax in order to end it. That is one of an untold number of false or misleading claims that have been drilled into tens of millions of young people and adults over the course of years, and much of that ‘research’ was funded by special interests that had in mind to use it to their own advantage.
4) These matters impact manufactured housing directly and indirectly. Just using the words “climate hoax” is likely to cause some people shock if they are seeing or reading that for the first time, or if they think that the so-called climate crisis is real. Just because a belief is widespread that doesn’t make it true. MHProNews has periodically exposed these issues because the hypocrisy is almost self-evident. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have ocean front properties. If they really thought that the rising of the seas would wipe out their mansions, would they have bought them in the first place? Obviously, no. It is a scam, pure and simple, but it is a widespread scam. The oceans have risen and fallen, per geological history, for thousands of years, but it isn’t being meaningfully caused by human activity. See the report above for scientific evidence and more details.
In considering the two Democratic leaders above ponder the words of this Democratic President posted below.
A lack of historical knowledge has long been used to slyly erode our nation’s liberties. But only by grasping and then living the truth can we the people be set free.
This ‘climate crisis’ hoax is impacting manufactured housing through issues like the tragic DOE energy rule for manufactured housing, which hopefully MHARR’s efforts will help bring to an end when Trump 2.0 takes office.
5) This writer for MHProNews is not saying the following is acceptable, but it ought to be carefully considered from a pragmatic perspective. There is only so much change that human nature tends to tolerate. There is so much corruption, particularly among corporate and ultra-wealthy individuals that tend to lean left in the U.S., that it is difficult to imagine that it will all be rooted out in the single remaining term of Trump. In theory, numbers of billionaires and their corporate links ought to be charged with federal and state crimes that they have arguably violated. They ought to be prosecuted. But money is often readily movable. Wealthy individuals are able to flee to jurisdictions without extradition treaties. One reality check takeaway is that Trump 2.0 has a more daunting task than some may think. Even what some pundits think of as ‘normal’ the 21st century should still see that the 20th century had some big scandals too.
a) But what is perhaps emerging are areas where some authentic liberals and a growing number of MAGA/America First type conservatives have, are, and could find common ground. The fact that lifelong Democrat until he broke with his former party over what he said was a rigged primary process is the example of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who called what’s been happening a kleptocracy.
b) Kennedy said in 2023 that his candidacy would aim to end the corrupt merge of state and corporate power that is threatening a new feudalism in the U.S. While an avalanche of people from Big Pharma, Big Medicine, and many on the left are arrayed against RFK Jr. becoming Trump’s head of Health and Human Services (HHS), and without endorsing all that the man has said or done, he has nevertheless raised some very important topics.
6) To RFK Jr’s point, consider the following. Typos that follow are in the original.
From Sovereignty To:
Slavery
Fuedalism
Capitalism
Imperialism
The Stock Market (The Wall Street Bull, The Big Bull India, The Charging Bull New York, The Bund Bull Shanghai or in Amsterdam at the home of Euronext)When the market crash they Erect the Bull
Blood on the money pic.twitter.com/6YV5ZT1mgj— Jase (@ra_elkannur) April 3, 2021
New Fuedalism
In Canada the middle class is being destroyed
Many Canadians have become indentured servants to the pensions, banks and huge investment companies
Home ownership is a dream, rent is the future and Canadians are drowning in debt pic.twitter.com/RBArtIXCCC
— Bill Tufts (@BillTufts) November 29, 2023
Is it conceivable that our Tory overlords are deliberately attempting to usher in a new era of dystopian hyper-fuedalism? pic.twitter.com/fNrw5Xbsld
— Gareth Thomas 💙 (@thejunglisticg) January 31, 2024
The Green New Deal is all about putting in place the UN’s agenda 2030 plan which is the plan to cull the worlds populations and enforce a totalitarian Gaia environmental religion. It’s a new form of techno-fuedalism. Think Hunger games merged with Elysium.
— Mika Daniel Turrell (@TurrellMika) December 21, 2019
Regarding the reference to Nazis, one should keep in mind that the Nazis were socialists. Fascism i.e.: “corporatism” was a socialist construct in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
The WEF twins:
Biden and Kerry.
Working with the Global Predators of the WEF to make the world population into the new fuedalism, pretty much like the nazis.— BrooklynDame (@DameBrooklyn) November 2, 2022
kinda already enslaved in this new neo fuedalism, i think its hard to think about much else for most people, and sadly thats probably the goal
— Rando #42 – Mostly Harmless (@harmlessmostly4) January 12, 2023
America’s NEW ROYALTY, the billion/trillion dollar business owner. They get preferential laws written JUST FOR THEM, bc they are job creators. The workers pays their lord for the defense, roads, schools, health….. capitalism, the new fuedalism
— MzC (@2022123031C) October 11, 2018
a) It may be that soon to be POTUS Trump has clarity on this. Recall his 2020 speech? MHProNews reported on that 4.5 years ago.
b) The proper spelling is: “feudalism” and it is defined and illustrated as follows.
MHLivingNews and MHProNews have been exploring this concern for years. Philanthro-feudalism is just one aspect of the issue.
7) Let’s bring these seemingly distinct topics into a cohesive set of bullets and then apply the lens of MHVille to them. In no particular order of importance.
a) MHProNews has been reporting for years examples of manipulated news and censorship. Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement, while it should be viewed in a skeptical lens that demands skeptical monitoring, admitted that censorship has been a problem. What was called a conspiracy theory by some is suddenly admitted by Musk through his Twitter Files release and now by Mark Zuckerberg in his pledge to move away from biased fact checkers to a more X-like community comments system.
Holy crap, Mark Zuckerberg admits “fact checkers” on social media were too politically biased and didn’t work, ends the program on Facebook and Instagram. This is SEISMIC. It took way too long, but this is the right decision: pic.twitter.com/mqASIWK08B
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 7, 2025
b) Recall that MHProNews reported on the Twitter Files as follows.
c) Then recall that such censorship, per research, impacted the outcome of the 2020 election.
d) The U.S.A. isn’t a ‘true democracy’ (yes, America is a Republic but using for the sake of argument the vernacular of the left for a few moments) if what voters are told is meaningfully incomplete or largely untrue.
e) If government was as efficient and “progressive” as leftists claim then a wide array of social problems wouldn’t exist. But the reality is that decades after certain programs were put into place do exist. Those various federal (and/or state, local, etc.) agencies. To his credit, seemingly pro-left New York Times video opinion pundit and influencer Johnny Harris made such an argument when he said that in states (like California, which he specifically mentioned) where Democrats dominate all segments of government, the problem of affordable housing is often worse than in Republican states. Well over 11 million views of this video have occurred, per YouTube on this date. The text is from that YouTube page.
Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. | NYT Opinion
It’s easy to blame the other side. And for many Democrats, it’s obvious that Republicans are thwarting progress toward a more equal society. But what happens when Republicans aren’t standing in the way? In many states — including California, New York and Illinois — Democrats control all the levers of power. They run the government. They write the laws. And as we explore in the video above, they often aren’t living up to their values. In key respects, many blue states are actually doing worse than red states. It is in the blue states where affordable housing is often hardest to find, there are some of the most acute disparities in education funding and economic inequality is increasing most quickly. Instead of asking, “What’s the matter with Kansas?” Democrats need to spend more time pondering, “What’s the matter with California?”
f) There are times when left-leaning media aptly points out problems in government, but that begs the question. Why is it that their ‘faith’ in government as the savior of America hasn’t been shaken? That sort of belief in government is literally contrary to the notions held by the founding fathers who believed that government had to be kept small and under control by limits established by the Constitution.
g) Frederic Bastiat and some of the founders specifically spoke out against monopoly power. It was a reminder of the feudal power of old, as monopolists often cozy up to the rulers (or big government) in order to get and/or maintain and expand their monopoly. But one point to be made is that financial elites often wanted to be closely working with the military or police powers/legal elites. This resistance to monopolization is spreading, per polling. MHProNews began highlighting this issue before the topic became as hot and of greater popular interest than it is today. Several of our would-be rivals have largely avoided it or even written denials of its effects in manufactured housing.
h) That monopoly power, as Danny Glover brilliantly pointed out, often boiled down to capital access and information access. By controlling access to accurate information and capital, the few can manipulate, divide and ‘rule’ the many.
i) If big government worked as claimed and designed, an array of problems would either not exist or would be relatively modest and manageable. But as left-leaning Johnny Harris admits with significance evidence, there is often greater social issues and problems like ‘income inequality’ in Democratic dominated cities and states. But because much of the media and big tech is demonstrably biased, those truths are often obscured, which has helped keep so many Democrats and their millionaire-corporate-billionaire backers in power. Who says? A growing number of leftists and Democrats.
9) Now, let’s bring this more specifically into focus for manufactured housing. It is precisely because government agencies and officials may or may not do their jobs properly that associations exist. In a sense, associations are protected under the First Amendment under the rights of the people to assemble and petition government for a ‘redress of grievances.’
10) MHARR, as well as independent MHProNews and MHLivingNews, have spent years calling attention to the lack of proper enforcement of
a) the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 (a.k.a.: MHIA, 2000 Reform Act, 2000 Reform Law – particularly, but not exclusively) its “enhanced preemption” provision.
b) The Duty to Serve Manufactured Housing provision of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA).
c) The overreach of the federal government under Biden-Harris (D) and under Obama-Biden (D) of the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007.
Those points raise the question. What part of those or other aspects of the federal system are working as designed? In a tragically comic report for the soon-to-be exited Biden-Harris (D) era of HUD, HUD admitted that they have record homelessness in 2024, per their own research. MHProNews and our MHLivingNews sister site have connected the dots for years between a lack of affordable housing and the rise of homelessness.
How has homelessness and its connection to a lack of affordable manufactured housing been handled on the MHI website? Per the search shown below, not well. As in, not at all. Since then, MHI has mentioned it, but arguably not in a clear connect-the-dots fashion that could turn the issue of homelessness into one more argument for more manufactured housing. Perhaps more on MHI and their handling of the homelessness topic another time.
11) Big government is a proven failure. The claims of the “progressives” during the Woodrow Wilson era are demonstrably debunked in reports like this and the one linked below. Curiously, or perhaps hypocritically, no less a person in the MHI orbit than 21st Mortgage’s Tim Williams also whacked away at the failures of progressives, which his boss Warren Buffett and his later partner Charlie Munger have both been proudly progressive.
“The federal government has failed us, so we, the elected officials of small-town America, are getting tough with illegal immigration.”
12) The middle class was shrinking under Obama-Biden (D) and Biden-Harris (D). Under Bush-Cheney (R as in RINO or Establishment Republicans), the U.S. was duped by a blizzard of false claims into Middle Eastern conflicts that ended about the same as the Vietnam War did with the fall of Saigon. Trump 2.0 is coming into office with a prayer and promise of a new Golden Age for America. If you ask MHARR, they would be pretty happy if Trump 2.0 (R-as in MAGA Republicans) would enforce existing laws on DTS and “enhanced preemption” and kill the overreach on the DOE energy rule that MHARR had killed once before, but which was revived under Biden-Harris (D).
On 1.10.2025 at about 9:45 AM ET, the top result for the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) under “news” is by MHProNews’ of the MHARR press release shared via the mainstream Patch.
Via the mainstream Patch news site, MHProNews has spotlighted the apparent evidence of corruption at connected to CEO Lesli Gooch. More info on Gooch is at hand and awaiting deployment. Traffic on MHProNews is up. Traffic on that Patch is apparently up too. See that screen capture below.
13) Trump is promising a new “Golden Age,” as was noted above and was previously reported by MHProNews. After decades of broken promises and now epic failures on the left-coast and in the federal level during the Biden-Harris years, it is possible that the conditions for sweeping reforms are ripe. Time will tell if Trump 2.0 promised reforms will boost manufactured housing so that the industry can properly address the root causes of unaffordable housing. MHProNews plans to monitor and report as deemed warranted.
PS. It took the better part of a decade before the efforts of Harry Markopolos finally took root and Bernie Madoff’s corrupt and illegal scheme was brought down. That speaks volumes, but it also is a reminder that persistence with evidence and sound arguments can and does pay off.
Again, our thanks to free email subscribers and all readers like you, as well as our tipsters/sources, sponsors and God for making and keeping us the runaway number one source for authentic “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Affordable housing, manufactured homes, reports, fact-checks, analysis, and commentary. Third-party images or content are provided under fair use guidelines for media.) See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them.)
By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.
Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.
For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.
This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.
Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach
Related References:
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