Nearly $1 million worth of whiskey has vanished in what appears to be a rare large-scale liquor theft in Washington state.
Westland Distillery confirmed that 12,000 bottles, including its prized Garryana 10th anniversary release, were stolen from its Burlington warehouse in late July.
The theft had been kept quiet. But a recent report from a freight carrier to a local sheriff’s department caught the attention of the Seattle Times. The theft was confirmed earlier this week.
Westland disclosed that on July 31, a freight truck driver presented authentic-looking paperwork authorizing a pickup bound for New Jersey. The shipment was loaded but never arrived.
Company officials believe fraudulent documents were used to obtain clearance through a contracted broker. Among the stolen stock were Westland’s flagship single malt, a new release called Watchpost, and 3,000 bottles of Garryana — a limited-edition whiskey retailing for $150 but often commanding higher resale prices.
A Louisiana woman is being accused of fraud by investigators who say she was running a multi-million-dollar empire involving several companies and bought a $100,000 Lamborghini but still claimed – and took – Medicaid benefits.
A report from Fox News explains Candace Taylor, 35, from Slidell, is facing felony counts, accused by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill’s office of fraudulently taking Medicaid benefits.
Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, one of the first young technologists brought on to Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has returned to government shortly after resigning.
“Edward Coristine joined the Social Security Administration this week as a special government employee,” Stephen McGraw, an SSA spokesperson, tells WIRED. “His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people.”
Multiple sources at the SSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared in person to work onsite at the agency’s Woodlawn, Maryland, headquarters. One SSA employee says they saw Coristine with DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi, a current X and former Neuralink employee deployed at the agency. The pair was spotted at the SSA cafeteria as recently as Monday, although it’s unclear what day this week Coristine’s employment officially began. “Coristine looked nervous, almost embarrassed,” the SSA source says. “Aram was on the phone with someone … then said, ‘Yes, I’m with him right now,’ gesturing to Big Balls.”
Illinois authorities were reportedly investigating how three bags carrying $300,000 worth of cash fell out of a Brinks Home Security armored truck on April 22 in the village of Oak Park.
An employee alerted authorities shortly after 5 p.m. that the truck’s back door opened and the bags of cash fell out, CBS News reported, citing the Oak Park Police Department (OPPD). The driver alleged that 50 to 100 men and women then streamed in to pocket the cash and flee.
Nicole Phillips-Edward, a local who lives near the area where the incident happened, said she did not know about it until police showed up and asked for surveillance footage.
“He said they ran right past my house,” Phillips-Edward said. “That they had ran down the street and they were trying to see if it had recorded. So I pulled out my camera and I’m showing them and I’m like, ‘how far do I need to go back?’ and he’s like ’10 minutes.’ I’m like ‘ten minutes?!’ I was in the house 10 minutes.”
When I worked with Chris Wong, obviously Chinese, at IBM, he told me the key to understanding how to work with China is simple. They ignore the 10 commandments. That’s right, lie, steal, coven and all the rest of them.
Here’s the result:
China claims that President Trump started the trade war against China by imposing reciprocal tariffs.
What China conveniently omits is that they have been waging a full-scale trade war against America for decades. Not only does China systematically violate just about every term of every trade agreement, they have been stealing trillions worth of American industrial technology and intellectual property.
China Steals at Least $225 Billion Every Year
According to a 2024 report from the House Committee on Homeland Security, China steals between $300 and $600 billion worth of American technology and intellectual property every year. This is in line with findings from a 2017 report from the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property.
If we assume a middle-of-the-road figure, and extrapolate these findings back to 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, then we can assume that China has stolen some $9.9 trillion worth of American technology and intellectual property. As we will see below, this does not even encapsulate all the ways that China steals technology.
Perhaps surprisingly, only 29% of espionage targets were military in nature. The vast majority of China’s efforts have been focused on procuring industrial technology, including manufacturing processes, formulas, and designs. This theft costs American businesses at least $180 billion annually.
American businesses also lost out on big profits from counterfeit goods. A report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) notes that 60% of all counterfeit goods sold globally originated in China. The proportion is even higher for America’s consumer market, with 87% of the counterfeit goods sold in America originating in China. This deprives American companies of some $291 billion in lost revenue.
\Another report compiled by the United States Trade Representative discusses theft perpetrated on Chinese e-commerce markets. In particular, this “cause[s] great losses for U.S. Right holders involved in the distribution of a wide array of trademarked products, as well as legitimate film and television programming, music, software, video games, books and journals.”
Although this loss cannot be specifically quantified, it is likely significant. Consider that in 2024 Chinese e-commerce transactions were valued at an estimated $2.16 trillion USD. According to the above reports, approximately 40% of all products sold on these markets were pirated or counterfeit. Thus, we can estimate that these transactions deprived foreign — mostly American — businesses of $864 billion in profits.
How China Steals American Technology
Reports on China’s malfeasance typically focus on espionage and outright corporate theft. However, the main vectors of technological theft are not conventional theft. Instead, China focuses on acquiring ownership stakes in strategic American corporate assets, and strongarms American companies doing business in China.
America runs a large trade deficit with China, worth at least $300 billion per year over the last decade. How does America pay for this deficit? By selling assets and debts — this is called the balance of payments.
Assets include shares – ownership — of American corporations. Chinese investors coordinate to buy shares in American industrial and technology companies. They then use these shares to facilitate the transfer of proprietary technology.
Perhaps this is not technically theft, but it is a coordinated effort by the Chinese state and pseudo-state actors to acquire American technology. Further, these “owners” clearly breach their fiduciary duties to the American companies — once the technology is pillaged, they are free to liquidate their holdings.
The second main vector for technology transfers occur when American companies offshore their production to China. American companies are required to “partner” with a Chinese company, who handles all staffing and operational management of the factory. As a part of this deal, the Americans share their propriety technology with the Chinese company, and train the Chinese workers.
American businesses are happy to trade technology for short-term profits. Of course, this comes back to bite them. Once the Chinese have acquired the technology and knowhow, they often make copycat products and begin competing with their former employer.
A good example of this is the Pearl River Piano Group. They were contracted to build Steinway’s Essex line, lower-end manufactured pianos. After acquiring the technology, industrial capital, and experience in manufacturing pianos, Pearl River rolled out its own copycat lines: Pearl River and Ritmüller. In effect, Steinway created its own competitor.
This is just one example. The reality is that almost all Chinese companies have been built on stolen technology. Huawei, for example, is one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Huawei invented precisely nothing — all the foundational technologies were either “gratuitously” transferred through the above mechanisms, or stolen through outright corporate espionage.
The total amount of technology “stolen” in this way is unquantifiable. Consider that in 1983 most of China was pre-industrial — with economic development lower than that of colonial America. Since then, China’s industrial economy grown to be three times larger than America’s, and in some ways, more advanced.
America needs high and stable tariffs in order to reshore America’s factories, and stem the most egregious vectors of technological theft. If not, then America will continue to feed China until the dragon has grown past the point of taming or slaying.
Read the post just below on the release of the Crossfire Hurricane documents and this will make even more sense.
The “Russian Reset”
After Russia’s two invasions of Ukraine, first in 2014 and again in 2022, senior Democratic leaders roundly called out Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin’s aggressive behavior, primarily targeted at the country’s smaller neighbor, Ukraine.
President Barack Obama, after taking office in early 2009, set in motion the merging of U.S. business interests with the Russian economy through the famous “reset” in relations between the two powers. Obama’s reset began in 2009 as an effort to cool tensions that had ballooned after Russia’s invasion of its small neighbor Georgia in 2008.
The reset set the stage for several prominent Democrats and their benefactors to profit from the burgeoning business opportunities in Russia being facilitated by the Obama administration.
Hillary Clinton, Skolkovo, and a half-million dollar speaking fee
In one case, the policy of Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to support and develop Russia’s “Silicon Valley,” known as Skolkovo, may have undermined U.S. national security while the family’s Clinton Foundation pocketed donations from Russian donors. After Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, she would later make an about-face, instigating a narrative wherein Russia allegedly interfered and deprived her of victory in the 2016 election in which she was a candidate. She called her opponent, Donald Trump, a “Trojan Horse for Putin.”
After Clinton was appointed to represent the United States at the newly formed U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, she helped direct investments from U.S. partners to the venture, which had already received $5 million in funding from Moscow, investigative reporter Peter Schweizer found in his 2015 book “Clinton Cash.”
The Skolkovo project received backing and support from Clinton Foundation donors, like Google, Intel and Cisco. Additionally, donations from Russian businessmen tied to the Skolkovo project flowed to the Clinton Foundation. Andrey Vavilov, Chairman of SuperOx, which is part of Skolkovo’s nuclear research group, donated between $10,000 and $25,000 to the foundation, Schweizer reported. The Skolkovo Foundation head and billionaire Viktor Vekselberg also donated to the charity through his company, Renova Group.
Clinton’s spouse, former president Bill Clinton, also reaped rewards from the Russian reset, collecting a $500,000 speaking fee from a Russian investment bank, Renaissance Capital. The speech came at the same time that Secretary Clinton was opposing sanctions measures on Russian officials that later became the Magnitsky Act, Fox News reported.
Foreign assistance done right can advance our national interests, protect our borders, and strengthen our partnerships with key allies. Unfortunately, USAID strayed from its original mission long ago. As a result, the gains were too few and the costs were too high.
Thanks to President Trump, this misguided and fiscally irresponsible era is now over. We are reorienting our foreign assistance programs to align directly with what is best for the United States and our citizens. We are continuing essential lifesaving programs and making strategic investments that strengthen our partners and our own country. This is yet another promise made and delivered to the American people.
The move came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit decided that President Donald Trump would likely “prove that the DOGE’s effort to dismantle USAID did not violate the Constitution.”
Congress did not establish the USAID. President John F. Kennedy formed the agency by executive order in 1961.
That is the difference between the USAID and other departments. For example, President Donald Trump cannot dissolve the Department of Education because its formation went through Congress.
According to an internal memo obtained by Fox News, the State Department will take over the USAID’s remaining operations and programs:
Now, the State Department is poised to officially take on USAID programs as part of a merger that aims to streamline operations to deliver foreign assistance, the memo said. It also will result in cuts for thousands of USAID employees.
“By bringing USAID’s core life-saving and strategic aid programs under the umbrella of the State Department, this Administration will significantly enhance the efficiency, accountability, uniformity, and strategic impact of foreign assistance programs — and ensure that our nation and President to speaks with one voice in foreign affairs,” Jeremy Lewin, who is performing the duties of USAID Deputy Administrator for Policy and Programming & Chief Operating Officer, said in a Friday statement to Fox News Digital.
The administration will cut a total of 4,650 personnel from USAID.
Between now and July, the State Department “will assess staffing requirements to proceed with an independent hiring process.”
The department will allow eligible USAID employees to “apply for those positions as remaining USAID personnel move to shut down or transfer USAID operations to the State Department.”
DOGE targeted USAID in late January. Elon Musk and others discovered massive fraud and waste within the agency that had a budget of over $50 billion.
So essentially the entire town of Washington, D.C. has been stealing. The anomalies are those who are not stealing. $4.7 trillion, almost impossible to trace, represents two-thirds of the annual U.S. budget. And if it’s happening in the U.S., it is happening everywhere: France, Canada, the U.K., Germany, where budgetary processes are probably even more opaque than those of the U.S.
I used to think of people who worked for the government with a kind of veiled contempt or, in a more benign mood, compassion. I thought of them as pity jobs for those without initiative, as jobs paying off lefty campaigners, as a warehouse for the barely competent. In my own dealings with them, I found them punitive and extractive, papering me with demands to spend more and more money to hire more and more of their pet contractors, to get approval. In my working life, looking at the results of their involvement in America’s rural areas, I hated them for the hell they visited on people unable to fight back. They forced bad science on good people, and refused to see reason. They ruined forests, water courses, fisheries, and township after township turned to dustbowl status. The misery in rural sitting rooms in every state in the U.S. was palpable, long lasting; the green Blob ruined families for generations.
We’ve been robbed. Our tax money has been looted, stolen, and wasted. Beyond the imagination of most Americans.
But not beyond my imagination.
Mohammed Ali once said, “It ain’t bragging if you can back it up.” Well, I can back it up.
I’ve spent the past decade on my TV and radio shows reporting, warning and screaming from the highest mountaintops that…
*Politicians and government employees are robbing and raping taxpayers.
*Politicians and government employees are crooked and corrupt.
*Politicians and government employees live by the credo, “We make $170,000 a year, PLUS all we can steal.”
*Politicians and government employees are lazy and incompetent, don’t know how to do an honest day’s work, and live by stealing from taxpayers.
*There are way too many government employees. We could operate government just fine by firing half of the government employees.
*Politicians and government employees have stolen and looted TRILLIONS of dollars from taxpayers. That’s why people making $170,000 a year are retiring as multi-millionaires. That’s not possible.
After paying taxes, and paying for kids, and college educations, and mortgages, and property taxes, and often alimony too- no one can become a multi-millionaire on $170,000 a year. Something is wrong.
*Politicians and government employees are getting filthy rich by directly stealing taxpayer money…and also by awarding government spending and contracts to their friends and relatives…and by taking kickbacks from whoever is awarded government money…and from taking bribes into offshore bank accounts from our foreign enemies like China, the Mexican Drug Cartels and Iran…and from high-paying no show jobs, stock options and insider trading scoops given to their relatives from big corporations and lobbyists.
Far-left Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is apoplectic over President Donald Trump freezing all foreign funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Speaking at a press conference outside USAID’s headquarters in Washington, she said that the U.S. international aid agency’s “essential” programming kept her family fed and safe when they lived in a Dabaab refugee camp for four years at the outbreak of the Somali civil war. (From there, the U.S. granted Omar refugee status and ultimately naturalized citizenship, a process which involved Omar taking an oath renouncing all allegiances.)
Omar, the first Somali American congresswoman, has a record of advancing a Somalia First agenda while in office, seeming to view her job in Congress as representing the interests of her home country. “While I am in Congress, no one will take Somalia’s sea,” Omar once declared in Somali, according to an English translation. “The lady you sent to Congress is on this, and she is as cognizant of this interest as you are.” Omar, who was addressing her Somali American constituents in response to a dispute over Somalia’s waters, reportedly said, “The U.S. government will do what we ask it to do. We should have this confidence in ourselves as Somalis.”
So it’s no wonder why she went ballistic about USAID’s funding freezing. Through USAID, the United States is the single largest donor of humanitarian aid in Somalia. Since fiscal year 2022, USAID has sent Somalia massive sums of taxpayer money, nearly $2.3 billion to date, including direct cash transfers to Somali families in need, who receive monthly payments and vouchers for a period of time.
The apple doesn’t fall too far from the grifting tree. The daughter of 2 of the biggest political criminals in our history is part of the heist of money that was meant for people who really needed it.
The thing that gets me is she’s dumb as mud and her parents are smart. Maybe Bill isn’t her real dad or something.
“USAID gave Chelsea Clinton tens of millions of dollars and partnered with their sex trafficking organization The Clinton Foundation,” wrote author and journalist Liz Crokin on X.
“In 2010, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped oversee $4.4 billion that Congress had earmarked for ‘recovery’ efforts in Haiti by the USAID in 2010.”
“So USAID was funding organizations sex trafficking kids and lining the pockets of their family members all while the USAID also funded media organizations to cover up that they were sex trafficking kids AKA Pizzagate and all with YOUR hard earned taxpayer money!”
Crokin continued: “The level of corruption and criminality – including crimes that are deemed capital offenses with death penalty as a potential punishment – are astounding and unprecedented.
Do you think any of the 3 of them care about kids being trafficked or poverty in Haiti? Nah, me either.
Besides the fact that it was a scam from the beginning based on a lie, it’s not surprising to hear this.
The original leaders bought homes and cars and got out with millions. The rest went……where?
The only black lives that got improved were those at the top of BLM, who were wearing their paycheck.
Black Lives Matter, the official network foundation, is running out of money as donors have stopped handing over piles of cash to the shady operation. The Gateway Pundit reported back in May of 2023 that they were still paying some people very high salaries even as the cash was starting to dry up.
To make matters worse, despite raising tens of millions of dollars at its height, no one seems to know where all the money went. The most high profile figures associated with the group seemed to cash in and move on, leaving the organization in shambles.
It’s a far cry from where the organization was just a few short years ago.
Black Lives Matter Global circling the drain as it runs out of cash: report
Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is running out of cash and nearing its end “unless something changes dramatically,” according to a new report.
The Free Press, an independent news organization founded by former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss, on Tuesday published a scathing deep dive into the “scrappy start-up that struck gold in 2020” headlined “BLM Collected Over $90 Million in Donations. Where Did It Go?”
“Capitalizing on the lucrative opportunities afforded to them as high-profile progressives, the three celebrity founders moved on, leaving the operation to wither in the hands of deputies who, sadly, turned on each other. A remarkable spate of legal trouble, brushes with law enforcement, and tangles with the Internal Revenue Service have all but spelled the death of the enterprise that you probably know best as Black Lives Matter,” Free Press reporter Sean Patrick Cooper wrote.
“The spectacular rise and fall of BLM has surprisingly little in common with earlier civil rights campaigns, other than, perhaps, good intentions,” he continued. “How BLM’s leaders exploited George Floyd’s murder to raise millions that they then put into their own pockets more closely resembles the stories of famous grifters like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos or Sam Bankman-Fried’s foray into ‘effective altruism.’”
One of the main criticisms of BLM from all sides is that they failed to improve the lives of black people, with the exception of a handful of people at the top of the organization.
The PTA president at an elementary school in Queens, New York has allegedly stolen at least $40,000 intended for kid’s programs and used it for vet bills, Amazon purchases and Uber Eats.
According to the New York Post, on September 27th, Athena Gonzales resigned following accusations by other PTA members that she was stealing, the interim president announced at a meeting on October 7th.
The PTA members were first told during an emergency meeting after the group’s secretary discovered the missing money amid fraudulent bank activity.
A copy of a $10,000 check made out to cash was placed on the table, but no one admitted to writing it, according to sources.
The PTA announced at its October meeting that another check had been allegedly written out to Gonzalez.
Sources stated that members worked together to follow the paper trail and allegedly discovered Gonzalez spent the majority of the money over the summer, charging it to the PTA credit card.
PTA members traced the charges back to Gonzalez’ vet, and said she also has been posting on social media about recent vacations and a new car.
I’m not discounting their insider trading, but a lot of money was tossed around when they were confusing people on Covid as they told them how to act and behave.
Years after the passage of federal COVID-era relief and the subsequent loss of likely hundreds of billions of those taxpayer dollars, lawmakers are still unsure where that money went, how to get it back, and seemingly have done little to prevent it from happening again.
Federal watchdog and other reports estimate anywhere from $200 billion to half a trillion was lost to waste, fraud and abuse across various federal and state COVID-era programs.
“Insiders, including those who worked for state workforce agencies, conspired with organized crime factions and other individuals to defraud state UI programs and the states did little to stop them,” a Republican-led House Oversight Committee report released this week said. “Some states even hired individuals convicted of identity theft to process UI claims.”
It’s mostly for idiots like Thomas Woosley from the UK who generalizes all people from the US as “Yanks”, even though this works everywhere in the world.
So for people like Thomas, America is a continent, not a country.
A few years ago in a small town, robbers entered a bank and one of them shouted: “Don’t move! The money belongs to the bank. Your lives belong to you. Immediately all the people in the bank laid on the floor quietly and without panic.
This is an example of how the correct wording of a sentence can make everyone change their world view.
One woman lay on the floor in a provocative manner. The robber approached her saying, ” Ma’am, this is a robbery not a rape. Please behave accordingly.”
This is an example of how to behave professionally, and focus on the goal.
While running from the bank the young robber (who had a college degree) said to the older robber (who barely finished elementary school): “Hey, maybe we should count how much we stole.” The older man replied: “Don’t be stupid. It’s a lot of money so let’s wait for the news to be told how much money was taken from the bank.”
This is an example of how life experience is more important than a degree.
After the robbery, the manager of the bank said to his accountant: “Let’s call the cops.” The accountant said: “Wait, before we do that let’s add the $800,000 to the robbery of that we took to ourselves a few months ago and just say that it was stolen.”
This is an example of taking advantage of an opportunity.
The following day it was reported in the news that the bank was robbed of $ 3 million. The robbers counted the money, but they found only $1 million so they started to grumble. “We risked our lives for $1 million, while the bank’s management robbed two million dollars without blinking? Maybe its better to learn how to work the system, instead of being a simple robber.”
This is an example of how knowledge can be more useful than power.
Moral :Give a person a gun, and he can rob a bank . Give a person a bank, and he can rob everyone.
3
Delusions of Adequacy 