Popular Information

They were donating more or the same amount to Republican PACs.

> Some of the “Blockchain Eight,” as the Prospect termed them in March, have benefited from crypto largesse. Five of the eight members received campaign donations from FTX employees, ranging from $2,900 to $11,600. Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC), one of the signatories, received half a million dollars in support from a Super PAC created by FTX co-CEO Ryan Salame.

> More consequentially, Emmer was the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm for House Republicans, this year. The NRCC’s associated super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, received $2.75 million from FTX in the 2022 cycle; $2 million from Salame in late September, and $750,000 from the company’s political action committee.

> That money helped House Republicans win the majority in 2022. Though FTX has been portrayed as a Democratic firm, thanks to the high profile of former co-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the company sprinkled around campaign donations fairly evenly, with a shade over 50 percent going directly to congressional Republicans and a shade under 50 percent to Democrats this cycle.

> In an email, the SEC declined to comment. Six of the eight congressmembers have yet to respond

https://prospect.org/power/congressmembers-tried-to-stop-secs-inquiry-into-ftx/

>No word on if those Democrats or PACs will give back the dirty money

Now you're just straight up lying on something that happened 10 days…

> Those people need to be incapacitated from causing further harm to society until such time as they pose no such threat.

Who are "those people", though? There is a wildly disproportionate amount of attention focused on a very small sliver of theft.

Consider that amount of stolen wages by employers recovered dwarfs retail theft by a factor of 3 to 1 [1]. The total amount taken is likely significantly higher. Walgreens — the very company for which people cite store closures as a consequence of shoplifting — just paid out a $4.5m settlement for stealing from thousands of employees in California from 2000 to 2017 [2].

Consider that over the past 20 years, police have stolen $68 billion from people without due process [3]. Since 2014, they've stolen more money than burglars [4]. As a society, we've actually chosen to make this legal via civil asset forfeiture.

And yet no one is calling for crackdowns on employers who steal from their employees. No one is calling for police to be "incapacitated from causing further harm to society". Indeed, the goal of the activists pushing to recall Chesa Boudin want to give the police more power — even though they steal more than shoplifters!

[1] https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-forms-theft-workers/

[2] https://popular.info/p/a-tale-of-two-thefts

[3] https://boingboing.net/2020/12/21/us-police-have-stolen-68-billion-in-the-past-20-years-from-american-citizens-without-due-process.html

[4]…

Thankfully we have another Walgreens executive quote for that:

> “Maybe we cried too much last year” about merchandise losses, Walgreens finance chief James Kehoe acknowledged Thursday on an earnings call.

There's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to retailers using shoplifting as an excuse to close underperforming stores without drawing scrutiny about poor management or strategy:

> For example, data released by the San Francisco Police Department does not support the explanation Walgreens gave that it was closing five stores because of organized retail theft, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2021.

> One of the shuttered stores that closed had only seven reported shoplifting incidents in 2021 and a total of 23 since 2018, according to the newspaper. Overall, the five stores that closed had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018.

But hey, you might say "how come a lot of different retailers all complained at the same time?"

There was a huge push by the National Retail Federation, a group that lobbies on behalf of these huge chain retailers: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-retail-lobby-confesses-it-lied-about-organized-shoplifting-rings

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shoplifting-retail/index.html

https://popular.info/p/lies-damn-lies-and-shoplifting-statistics

See also perhaps from November 2024 (post-election), "Drone company's stock soars after it appoints Donald Trump Jr. to advisory board":

* https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/drone-company-stock-soars-appointing-donald-trump-jr-advisory-board-rcna181987

* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/27/donald-trump-jr-drone-company

Also, from 2025:

> In October, Popular Information reported that the Pentagon awarded a contract to Unusual Machines, an obscure drone company that President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., joined as an advisor in November 2024, despite having no notable experience with drones or military contracting.

[…]

> Now, another small startup funded by 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm where Trump Jr. is a partner, will receive a $620 million loan from the Defense Department, the Financial Times reported. Vulcan Elements, which currently has around 30 employees, produces rare-earth magnets, which can be used in “drones, radar systems and other military applications.” The contract was awarded just three months after 1789 invested in Vulcan.

* https://popular.info/p/update-trump-jr-backed-startup-receives

Is this comment missing a /s? The Daily Wire is actual fake news, with a long track record of misinformation and poor quality content[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]... While not perfect, NYT has a long track record of quality journalism that goes back hundreds of years, winning 130 Pulitzer Prizes.

[1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-daily-wire/

[2] https://popular.info/p/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing

[3] https://www.thedailybeast.com/shadowy-right-wing-network-behind-ben-shapiros-facebook-success

[4] https://www.factcheck.org/2017/04/carson-didnt-find-hud-errors/

[5] https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/scientists-we-know-what-really-causes-climate-james-barrett-the-daily-wire/

[6] https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/global-quackery-earth-not-warmed-past-19-years-new-study-finds-joseph-curl-the-daily-wire/

[7] https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/daily-wire-article-misunderstands-study-carbon-budget-along-fox-news-telegraph-daily-mail-breitbart-james-barrett/

[8] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-mohammed-popular-name-netherlands/

(you're not being censored for your political views, it's because you're posting too many times in one thread. I get the same alert sometimes)

Again, my point isn't that there are no Democratic Facebook execs, it's that they play both sides. To whit:

> Indeed, the three top leaders of Facebook's DC office all have extensive backgrounds in Republican politics: Vice President for Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan; Vice President for U.S. Public Policy Kevin Martin; and Public Policy Director for Global Elections Katie Harbath.

https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives

That article also outlines a number of right-wing friendly moves that Facebook has made in recent years, just as a counterpoint to the example being discussed here.

I agree with you that the vast majority of staff at these tech companies are Democrats, but I'm talking about the top-level execs. And once you reach that level you see the top tech companies play both sides of the political aisle as best they can.