These Are The Richest 'Politicians' In The US

Entering politics doesn’t require a specific income, yet many politicians are multimillionaires.

At some of the highest echelons of U.S. politics are federal and state-level politicians worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. Who is the wealthiest U.S. politician today?

In the following graphic, Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu visualizes the net worth of America’s 12 richest politicians, using consolidated data as of June 2023 from GoBankingRates.

Which Politician is Richer Than Donald Trump?

The list of richest politicians in the U.S. includes three billionaires, with the most famous being former U.S. President Donald Trump.

His wealth is closely tied to The Trump Organization, which has interests in real estate, hotels, casinos, and media. But Trump is not the wealthiest U.S. politician by most estimtates.

At the top is the Governor of Illinois Jay Robert Pritzker. A longtime financial supporter of the Democratic Party, he is a member of the wealthy Pritzker family, which owns Hyatt Hotels & Resorts.

Completing the billionaires list is North Dakota’s Governor Doug Burgum. In 2001, Burgum sold the accounting software company Great Plains Software to Microsoft for $1.1 billion and later founded several investment firms.

The wealthiest serving member of Congress is Republican Rep. Darrell Issa from California. Issa served as the CEO of Directed Electronics, which he co-founded in 1982. It is one of the largest makers of automobile aftermarket security and convenience products in the United States.

At the bottom of the list is Texas Rep. Michael McCaul. Before being elected to Congress in 2005, the Republican served as Chief of Counter-Terrorism and National Security in the U.S. Attorney’s office, and led the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/these-are-richest-politicians-us

Joe Biden Announces Additional $175 Million Security Assistance to Ukraine

On Wednesday, the Biden regime recently announced additional U.S. security assistance for Ukraine.

This latest package, valued at $175 million, is aimed at supporting Ukraine in its ongoing defense against Russian aggression. The assistance includes a variety of military equipment and support, such as air defense munitions, artillery ammunition, and anti-armor missiles.

With limited resources available, the Biden regime has signaled that without further action from Congress, this could be one of the last security assistance packages provided to Ukraine.

According to the press release:

The United States is today announcing a new package of weapons and equipment to support the people of Ukraine as they defend their country and their freedom against Russia’s aggression.

This package, which uses the limited resources that remain available to help Ukraine, provides up to $175 million of arms and equipment under previously directed drawdowns. Capabilities provided in today’s package include air defense munitions, additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rockets Systems, artillery ammunition, High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles, anti-armor missiles, small arms ammunition, demolitions munitions for obstacle clearing, equipment to protect critical national infrastructure, and spare parts, ancillary equipment, services, training, and transportation.

Until Russia ends this war by stopping its brutal attacks and withdrawing its forces from Ukraine, it is critical for the United States to continue to lead the coalition we have built of more than 50 countries standing strongly with Ukraine.

Unless Congress acts to pass the President’s national security supplemental funding request, this will be one of the last security assistance packages we can provide to Ukraine. Helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression and secure its future advances our national security interests and contributes to global stability around the world, and we need Congress to act immediately.

The U.S. has already directed over $75 billion in various forms of assistance to Ukraine, as reported by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. This support extends beyond military aid, encompassing humanitarian and financial help. Yet, a significant portion of this aid is military-related.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/america-last-joe-biden-announces-additional-175-million/

Finland declassifies JFK killer files

Lee Harvey Oswald spent several days in Helsinki in 1959 before his defection to the Soviet Union

The Finnish Security Intelligence Service (SUPO) has declassified a 60-year-old file detailing Lee Harvey Oswald’s mysterious visit to Helsinki in advance of his defection to the Soviet Union, just over four years before he assassinated US President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Oswald was adjudged by the Warren Commission in September 1964 to have been the sole gunman who fired the fatal shots from the Texas School Book Depository on Elm Street in downtown Dallas that killed Kennedy the previous November.

The day after Kennedy’s murder – November 23, 1963 – SUPO composed a memorandum into Oswald’s Helsinki trip that paints a unique, if somewhat incomplete, portrait of one of the most infamous characters of the 20th century.

The newly declassified files show that former US Marine Oswald, then 19, checked into Helsinki’s Hotel Torni on October 10, 1959 for a five-night stay, but stayed for just two nights, local outlet Yle News reported Saturday. Oswald’s US passport application showed his stated intention for the trip was related to seeking education either in Switzerland or at the University of Turku in Finland.

However, as Yle notes, Oswald’s application to the Finnish university proved to be false and ignited speculation as to his true motivations. Despite their efforts, Finnish authorities were unable to discover more information about his movements during this brief period.

https://www.rt.com/news/588835-finland-jfk-oswald-files/

Most students at Yale received A's last year, frustrated professors say it's 'dishonest to our students'

Anew report recently revealed that Yale University is apparently handing about grades in the A-range like they are candy. An estimated 78.97% of all the grades given to undergraduates at the prestigious university fell within the A-range.

The surprising development has left both students and faculty alarmed that high grades appear to have lost their value, according to the New York Times. Shelly Kagan, a philosophy professor, said: "When we act as though virtually everything that gets turned in is some kind of A — where A is supposedly meaning ‘excellent work’ — we are simply being dishonest to our students."

The grade report was put together by economics professor Ray Fair, who noted that the increase in grades started during the COVID-19 pandemic. And it has continued to rise since then, with students averaging a 3.70 GPA, up from 3.60 in 2013-2014. The details of the study were first shared with the Yale Daily News.

Fair told the Daily News: "Some thought [the COVID effect] would be temporary, but it has more or less persisted. [It’s] probably the faculty going easier on students because COVID was a pain."

"The report simply documents the history of grading at Yale … It gives the ‘current state of grading’ and I think the numbers are straightforward to interpret."

Fox News Digital reported that one Yale student, Gustavo Toledo, who is studying political science and intends to pursue law school, suggested the sudden inflation of grades across campus could over-saturate the job market, making it more difficult for high-performing students to stand out among their peers.

"If Yale and other Ivy League institutions start getting these reputations for grade inflation, students who were already feeling pressured to get these high G.P.A.s will then feel that their work is sort of devalued," Toledo said. "This obviously doesn’t help."

The report also noted that the A's given to students depended on the class. A total of 52.39% of students enrolled in economics courses received an A, whereas a staggering 92.37% of students received an A in History of Science and Medicine and Public Health courses.

The Times noted that Yale is not the only school giving easy A's to its students. A report provided in October from Harvard University's Undergraduate Office revealed that 79% of grades given during the 2020-2021 school year fell within the A-range. This comes after Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, appeared before Congress to give account for the sudden uptick in anti-Semitism on campus.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/most-students-at-yale-received-a-s-last-year-frustrated-professors-say-it-s-dishonest-to-our-students

Decentralised Data For a Decentralised Future

Analyzing the problem of centralized data storage and potential solutions to protect data privacy and prevent theft and censorship.

The Codex organisation is innovating around decentralised data storage. The org and the blockchain community are building solutions to decentralise data storage and guarantee robust data durability. This article examines the current problem with modern data storage techniques, including their weaknesses and challenges. The piece further explores solutions in the form of decentralised data storage and erasure coding, the hurdles of implementing it, and what the future holds in an era of a more decentralised, open, and fault-tolerant internet landscape.

The Problem: Honeypots and Powder Kegs

Data storage is the Achilles heel of the internet. Many of the images, text, music, and software applications we enjoy live in a centralised server. Our digital footprint amounts to increasingly stored data across these servers, including on mega-servers hosted by Google, Facebook, TikTok, Yahoo, Instagram, and other similar services. Most people take it for granted that we should store data in this inefficient and costly manner.

This storage centralisation into repositories represents an unnecessary and dangerous risk to our collective and personal data. When data — like money or other assets — gets stored in a singular location, that location becomes a powder keg and honey pot.

It is a powder keg because, at any moment, outages, hardware malfunctions, or disk crashes can destroy data or render it inaccessible. It is a honeypot because once data is accumulated and stored in a single location, it attracts hackers, scammers, and thieves, especially if PII (personally identifiable information) or other sensitive info, such as financial or medical records, gets stored en masse.

Ransomware is one example of how bad actors have exploited the situation. Ransomware is an attack where a hacker puts a bug into software, locking the owners out of that software and its data until they pay a ransom. Any time organisations store data in one location in large troves, those entities expose themselves to the possibility of ransomware attacks. Astra Security expressed the growing problem:

‘There are 1.7 million ransomware attacks every day which means every second 19 ransomware attacks. The first half of 2022 saw nearly 236.7 million ransomware attacks worldwide. Ransomware is expected to cost its victims around $265 billion (USD) annually by 2031.’

Decentralisation of data storage is not a foolproof mechanism for preventing ransomware attacks. It is a partial solution. In reality, a mix of decentralisation and strong encryption will help minimise attacks on data. Protecting valuable troves of data against the scourge of accidental outages, North Korean hacker attacks, government seizure of servers, and other unforeseen attacks must be a key priority for all organisations.

Storage Concerns and Vulnerabilities in Web3

Storage becomes more vital as the internet community moves from Web2 to Web3. In this ecosystem, people enjoy games or collect art that involves the maintenance and storage of NFTs. Web3 is the internet directly linked to blockchains that leverage tokenised assets. NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, are assets that live on these Web3 blockchains and belong to individuals.

https://thefreethoughtproject.com/solutions/decentralised-data-for-a-decentralised-future

Soros Son Meets Zelensky as Globalists Circle Wagons Around Ukraine

The scion of the globalist George Soros Open Society Foundations network of international influence schemes, travelled to Kyiv this weekend to reaffirm his support for the Zelensky government as the largest independent financier of Ukraine.

While there is growing weariness in the West of the war in Ukraine as it approaches two years since the Russian invasion was launched, with hundreds of thousands of casualties and hundreds of billions spent for what at best could be described as a stalemate, it appears that globalist agenda setters are intent on doubling down on their support for Ukraine.

Alexander Soros, 38, who took over as the head of operations for his father’s Open Society Foundations earlier this year, travelled to Kyiv on Saturday, meeting with First Lady Olena Zelenska and later joining President Zelensky to speak at a meeting concerning the thousands of Ukrainian children currently in Russian occupied territory.

During his trip, the Soros heir committed $1 million to First Lady Zelenska’s charity and announced a partnership with the Open Society Foundations.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/12/10/soros-son-flies-to-kyiv-as-globalists-circle-the-wagons-around-ukraine/