Don't tell AOC

https://capitalandmain.com/gavin-newsom-hands-out-fracking-permits-to-connected-driller-0619

On June 1, in the midst of the turmoil created by the coronavirus pandemic and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration quietly issued 12 fracking permits to Aera Energy, a joint venture owned by ExxonMobil and Shell.

The fracking permits are the latest example of California’s oil industry benefiting from regulatory or deregulatory action during the COVID-19 pandemic and came just months after the Newsom administration said it supported taking actions to “manage the decline of oil production and consumption in the state.” Aera, which also received 24 permits from the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) on April 3 during the early days of COVID-19, has well-connected lobbyists in its corner who work for the firm Axiom Advisors.

One of them, Jason Kinney, headed up Newsom’s 2018 transition team and formerly served as a senior advisor to Newsom while he was lieutenant governor. He is also a senior advisor to California’s Senate Democrats. The other, Kevin Schmidt, previously served as policy director for Newsom when the latter was lieutenant governor. Aera paid Axiom $110,000 for its lobbying work in 2019 and, so far in 2020, has paid $30,000, lobbying reports reveal.

Axiom’s lobbying disclosure records show both Kinney and Schmidt listed as lobbyists and Aera as one of the firm’s clients. Kinney’s wife, Mary Gonsalvez Kinney, was also the stylist for Newsom’s wife–Jennifer Siebel Newsom–dating back to their time spent living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kinney and Schmidt did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article.

Free speech event shut down by, Well free speech !

https://www.theblaze.com/news/cincinatti-protesters-burn-american-flag

A public input hearing on Cincinnati's budget turned chaotic Thursday after a crowd of protesters shouted down a speaker calling for more police funding before moving outside to graffiti walls and burn the American flag.

City Councilman David Mann had cut the public input meeting several hours short, telling WXIX-TV that he felt "trapped" and "more and more uncomfortable" by the time the pro-police speaker had been jeered and booed off stage.

"This went from an emotionally charged evening to close to a mob," Mann told the local news station on the phone after the meeting. "We had one speaker who spoke in favor of the police, and he was shouted down. I said, 'Hey listen folks, we are here to listen to each other,' and then I was shouted down."

https://hungarytoday.hu/fidesz-cjeu-soros-ngo-law-hungary/

He said the “Soros network” and the left wing had lobbied vigorously against the law, so the ruling had not come as a surprise. He added that this network wanted to make sure that no one knew how much foreign money NGOs received or from whom because this would reveal what interests they serve.

Hollik said foreign-funded organisations were pressuring national governments to fall in line with their agenda on migration and economic policies, and he accused them of interfering in national elections on a regular basis.

Earlier on Friday, commenting on CJEU’s ruling, PM Viktor Orbán said that western Europe and “the American left” were attempting to apply a form of “liberal imperialism” to “force their worldview onto countries that think differently”. He added that international courts, too, were “often also involved in this network”. Seeing the Hungarians who participate in these rulings, Orbán said, it was “easy to spot the ties” to the “international network” linked to US financier George Soros, which the prime minister called “the western European high command of liberal imperialism”.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/06/19/whoops-activists-fundraise-for-pro-police-foundation-unaffiliated-with-black-lives-matter-n553294

In the wake of the horrific police killing of George Floyd, activists, corporations, and celebrities leaped to donate to the Black Lives Matter cause. They gave millions to the Black Lives Matter Foundation, only later to realize that the foundation is not affiliated with the anti-police Black Lives Matter movement. While the Black Lives Matter Foundation appears to have reaped a fortune from the mix-up, the man who created the foundation insists that the Black Lives Matter movement co-opted his idea, not the other way around.

“I don’t have anything to do with the Black Lives Matter Global Network. I never met them; never spoke to them. I don’t know them; I have no relationship with them,” Robert Ray Barnes, the founder of the Black Lives Matter Foundation, told BuzzFeed News. “Our whole thing is having unity with the police department.”

The Black Lives Matter Foundation has benefited from the brand confusion as people conflated the two and funneled millions into his charity through GoFundMe PayPal, or employee donation matching platforms. The Black Lives Matter movement calls for the defunding of police, but the foundation wants to bring police and communities closer together.

According to estimates from BuzzFeed News, donors raised at least $4.35 million for the Black Lives Matter Foundation in the first weeks of June. Georgetown University’s a capella group, the Phantoms, raised nearly $1,100 for the foundation, without knowing it had no connection to the movement. Corporations including Apple, Google, and Microsoft raised $4 million for the foundation, and almost delivered the money.