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FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

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91–100 of 143 posts

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#91
post #60

Non-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,…

Citation needed.

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#92
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Of course as is typical this comment comes with no evidence. Meanwhile we're supposed to believe that Trump supporters care about corruption when he did this? https://www.npr.org/2025/02/10/g-s1-47817/trump-pardon-rod-b...

Now do Hunter Biden.

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#93
post #3

“Can you proffer any evidence that [the grant] was illegal, or evidence of abuse or fraud or bribery — that any of that was improperly or unlawfully done, other than the fact that Mr. Zeldin doesn’t like it?” Judge Tanya Chutkan said. Judge Chutkan also ordered the Justice Department to provide the court with details about the alleged fraud, “because I don’t have the credible evidence that’s required.” This whole cal…

The minimum to cause change is judges expending more effort on imprisoning law enforcement agents for perjury.

On the scale of Wild Things happening in US politics, this one is pretty minor. Provoking that sort of constitutional crisis over it seems poorly advised - it'd be better if the judicial system sticks to their traditional role of telling people to do things differently when it has been established that the government is acting illegally.

In my lifetime politicians have associated with flagrant lies that led to 100,000s of deaths and they aren't even expected to apologise. The Iraq war alone is a study - eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Body_Count_project.

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#94

“Can you proffer any evidence that [the grant] was illegal, or evidence of abuse or fraud or bribery — that any of that was improperly or unlawfully done, other than the fact that Mr. Zeldin doesn’t like it?” Judge Tanya Chutkan said. Judge Chutkan also ordered the Justice Department to provide the court with details about the alleged fraud, “because I don’t have the credible evidence that’s required.” This whole cal…

The one good thing is this is going to end the Courts giving 'good faith' waivers to the government prosecutors for everything (oh the cops didn't keep chain of custody on this evidence but that's OK we are going to waive chain of custody requirements because we know you all are acting in good faith is such a BS policy).

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#95
post #60

Non-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 yes American nonprofits, with their mandatory annual public financial disclosures including key individuals salaries, famously a great and easy way to misappropriate monies.

Have you read any of the disclosure forms? They're a joke. I read the 990 for one organization (NLIHC [0]), a mostly-government-funded organization with >10M in "revenue". They're required to list their three most cost-intensive activities in field 4a of the 990, and brother, those people don't do a damn thing. They listed 1) they helped local governments spend tax money 2) made 8 pamphlets (the one I saw was ~10 pages long), and 3) they helped some other organization prepare some webinars. They list more fluff and nonsense (including attending conventions), but no meaningful deliverables. They couldn't even be bothered to proofread their one required deliverable, as evidenced by the bullet points which they copy/pasted into field 4a!

They employ 40 people and their CEO makes 400K, BTW.

These orgs do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.

[0]https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521...

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#96
post #60

Non-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,…

Wait until you hear about a politician that started his own meme coin right before entering office. I'm sure those attacking audited non-profits would go after such a blatantly fraud and abuse prone politician first.

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#97
post #93
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum to cause change is judges expending more effort on imprisoning law enforcement agents for perjury.

On the scale of Wild Things happening in US politics, this one is pretty minor. Provoking that sort of constitutional crisis over it seems poorly advised - it'd be better if the judicial system sticks to their traditional role of telling people to do things differently when it has been established that the government is acting illegally. In my lifetime politicians have associated with flagrant lies that led to 100,00…

Initiating criminal investigations into the administration's political opponents without evidence is NOT "pretty minor".

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#98
post #88
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A president can revert an executive order from the previous administration. But the Inflation Reduction Act is a law, not an executive order. If Trump doesn't like it, he can get Congress to repeal it. But he isn't the king. The constitution requires that the president "take care that the laws be faithfully executed". It isn't fraud when funds that were allocated by the act were distributed according to the act. If s…

>>The constitution requires that the president "take care that the laws be faithfully executed". You mean like Biden enforcing our border laws?

Most of us learn in kindergarten that "but he got to do it" is not a valid excuse for bad behavior.

(This should not be taken as accepting your premise)

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#99
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the scale of Wild Things happening in US politics, this one is pretty minor. Provoking that sort of constitutional crisis over it seems poorly advised - it'd be better if the judicial system sticks to their traditional role of telling people to do things differently when it has been established that the government is acting illegally. In my lifetime politicians have associated with flagrant lies that led to 100,00…

Initiating criminal investigations into the administration's political opponents without evidence is NOT "pretty minor".

Are you talking about when Obama admin did it, Biden admin did it or Trump admin did it? I mean, I agree but I have this sinking feeling that a lot of the people complaining aren't worried about the idea in principle and they just hate Trump.

There is this weird thing where the big government people have suddenly had a revelation that the day-to-day operation of government is threatening. And I welcome that because it is true, I just don't know what they think has changed apart from that they lost an election.

Re: FBI, EPA, and Treasury told Citibank to freeze funds to claw back climate money

#100
post #3

“Can you proffer any evidence that [the grant] was illegal, or evidence of abuse or fraud or bribery — that any of that was improperly or unlawfully done, other than the fact that Mr. Zeldin doesn’t like it?” Judge Tanya Chutkan said. Judge Chutkan also ordered the Justice Department to provide the court with details about the alleged fraud, “because I don’t have the credible evidence that’s required.” This whole cal…

The minimum to cause change is judges expending more effort on imprisoning law enforcement agents for perjury.

It’s far more likely that we judges imprisoned for ruling the wrong way.
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