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The current regime.
FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money
61–70 of 143 posts
Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money
#62Some information from the linked document about the non-profits that are being targeted. > 2. Conflicts of Interest and Political Favoritism > A $2 billion grant was awarded to Power Forward Communities, a new nonprofit with ties to Stacey Abrams, despite reporting only $100 in total revenue in 2023 > Young, Gifted & Green was awarded $20 million, even though its CEO applied for funding while serving on the White Hou…
Power Forward Communities: A coalition of five nonprofit organizations — Enterprise Community Partners, Habitat for Humanity International, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Rewiring America and United Way Worldwide. Abrams' connection to Power Forward Communities, is through Rewiring America, one of the five organizations that leads the program. That seems pretty weak. No idea what the other group is but…
And it takes some kind of chutzpah to claim that Habitat for Humanity has no track record or competency building affordable housing, just because this collaboration is new…
Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money
#63[flagged]
If I had the authority to restructure the administrative state, I’d make a rule that every agency needs an anti-agency to hold it accountable. Let them swap roles every 7 years, with a consistently adversarial relationship to hold each other accountable. Basically a blue team vs. red team setup, or a blue/green deployment.
Checks and balances actually work pretty well, but we only use them at the topmost level between the three constitutionally defined branches. We need to apply the same mechanism throughout the federal bureaucracy.
Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money
#64Non-profits and ngos have such enormous potential for fraud and abuse. You get your political friends to setup an ngo, give it a nice name like "Climate Progress Coalition" or "Equity Action Network" etc. Hand it a billion dollars of hard-earned taxpayer money and it can then do (without oversight) what would be illegal for the govt to do with oversight. The potential for abuse is limitless...million-dollar salaries,…
Yes, I sleep so much better now when the dogebags and Musky protect us all from evil. Musk will never never abuse. Forever and ever, Amen.
Especially nobody won't abuse Medicare because there won't be any. If they want food they can beg in the streets or work at a plantation.
Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money
#65[flagged]
This is a private bank hoarding government (tax payer) dollars for seemingly no reason. The money sure as heck wasn't being used for "climate action". As an environmentalist and just someone who thinks the gov shouldn't be offshoring billions of dollars I fully support gov orgs looking into this...
It's easy to let politics color the perception of this but I for one although I dislike the current president support this effort.
Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money
#66[flagged]
If I had the authority to restructure the administrative state, I’d make a rule that every agency needs an anti-agency to hold it accountable. Let them swap roles every 7 years, with a consistently adversarial relationship to hold each other accountable. Basically a blue team vs. red team setup, or a blue/green deployment. Checks and balances actually work pretty well, but we only use them at the topmost level betwee…
That probably won't work. Blue would have an incentive to prove red failed, so if red initiated a big long term project (say, building a new high speed rail network, or a new dam, or incentives to build auto factories or whatever that cannot be done in the every X years switches happen), blue will do their best to sabotage it. This happens in politics already (e.g. public transit projects started by previous governments get sabotaged), let alone if there's an adversarial relationship by the people supposed to be directly directing and overseeing this stuff.
Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In theory, congress can remove a president In practice, the president is threatening to remove any Republican member of congress who crosses him by supporting a primary challenger.
>> the president is threatening to remove any Republican member of congress who crosses him by supporting a primary challenger Democracy is scary stuff to some people.
Money is people too, or something?
Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money
#68Some information from the linked document about the non-profits that are being targeted. > 2. Conflicts of Interest and Political Favoritism > A $2 billion grant was awarded to Power Forward Communities, a new nonprofit with ties to Stacey Abrams, despite reporting only $100 in total revenue in 2023 > Young, Gifted & Green was awarded $20 million, even though its CEO applied for funding while serving on the White Hou…
Power Forward Communities: A coalition of five nonprofit organizations — Enterprise Community Partners, Habitat for Humanity International, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Rewiring America and United Way Worldwide. Abrams' connection to Power Forward Communities, is through Rewiring America, one of the five organizations that leads the program. That seems pretty weak. No idea what the other group is but…
The gall to describe a group counting habitat for humanity and united way as members as “a new nonprofit”…
It’d be funny if it wasn’t so serious
Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money
#69Non-profits and ngos have such enormous potential for fraud and abuse. You get your political friends to setup an ngo, give it a nice name like "Climate Progress Coalition" or "Equity Action Network" etc. Hand it a billion dollars of hard-earned taxpayer money and it can then do (without oversight) what would be illegal for the govt to do with oversight. The potential for abuse is limitless...million-dollar salaries,…
Isn't that billion given only for a specific project? Doesn't it come with mandatory audits? And isn't that fully public information?
Contrast with something like the Pentagon which has billions entirely unaccounted for, even after paying tens of thousands of dollars for common items such as a bathroom soap dispenser.
Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money
#70[flagged]
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