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Thinking of buying a car? Kimberly Walker, a mother of two in Columbia, S.C., can tell you exactly what that's like these days. She recently found herself having to shop for two vehicles on opposite ends of the market. For herself, she wanted a late-model electric Audi, and after looking around, she was able to find a used 2021 e-tron at a local dealership. The price? An eye-popping $68,000 with no room to negotiate. "We went back and forth. We were there for four hours," she says. "They did not budge on that price." For her teenage daughter, Walker was...

Black Lives Matter shut down all of its online fundraising streams late Wednesday afternoon, just days after California threatened to hold the charity's leaders personally liable over its lack of financial transparency.

At a weekly press conference, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) defended stock market investment by members of Congress after an investigation by Insider alleged that 49 members of Congress have violated laws against insider trading.U.S. law forbids people with insider information, including members of Congress, from buying stocks on the basis of that information, and those who break these laws can be subject to criminal prosecution.Laws against congressional insider trading were strengthened in 2012 amid a wave of insider trading in Congress; the STOCK Act, or Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, placed limitations and new...

There’s still many unsolved mysteries surrounding the 2013 election of Cdl. Bergoglio The narrative that Cardinal Bergoglio was a passive, or even an unwitting, beneficiary of the St. Gallen mafia’s initiatives on his behalf is impossible to accept.Tue Oct 26, 2021 - 12:35 pm EDT (LifeSiteNews) — His biggest supporters push the narrative of a humble cardinal and Church “surprised” by the election of Pope Francis. However, this narrative runs counter to the reality described in Henry Sire’s book The Dictator Pope of a Cardinal Bergoglio who “plotted like mad” after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation. Even accounts friendly...

The Democrats Use Churches to Deliver Votes for McAuliffeKamala Harris’ video messages may be in violation of the Johnson Amendment.The Democrats like to keep faith out of politics even as they impose politics on faith. They are happy to harness the power of religion for their own political purposes. Their usually strict views on the “separation of church and state” don’t stop them from campaigning in churches. The most recent example of this Democratic hypocrisy comes from Virginia, where the normally secularist Terry McAullife is using a “souls to the polls” strategy to drum up votes for his gubernatorial run.The...

Hours before he was scheduled to retire in 2018, Andrew G. McCabe, then the F.B.I.’s deputy director, was fired by the Justice Department, depriving him of his pension and prompting cheers from President Donald J. Trump, who had been hounding him over his role in the Russia investigation. On Thursday, the department reversed Mr. McCabe’s firing, settling a lawsuit he filed asserting that he was dismissed for political reasons. Under the settlement, Mr. McCabe, 53, will be able to officially retire, receive his pension and other benefits, and get about $200,000 in missed pension payments. In addition, the department agreed...

Vatican finance trial: Judges to rule whether to keep or scrap case in face of procedural misstepsVatican City, Oct 5, 2021 / 09:00 amThe Vatican finance trial involving Cardinal Angelo Becciu continued on Tuesday with two hours of legal debates that could potentially result in an abrupt end to the court case.Judges adjourned the hearing until Wednesday morning, when they will give their ruling on whether to move forward with the trial after the defendants’ lawyers took issue with what they consider to be significant procedural missteps by the prosecution.Tribunal judge Giuseppe Pignatone may order the prosecutor’s office to hand...

The Becciu Boomerang Will Hit Wheeler-Dealer FrancisForbes.com (October 4) presented the position of René Brülhart at the Becciu trial. Brülhart is the former head of the Vatican’s Supervisory and Financial Intelligence Authority (AIF). Highlights:• A Swiss anti–money laundering expert (“the James Bond of the financial world”), Brülhart removed Liechtenstein from blacklists and accepted the AIF job in 2012 under the condition that not even the pope was off-limits.• Francis received a briefing [from Brülhart] about Becciu in 2016 with “incontrovertible” proof about Becciu diverting more than $2 million. Francis ignored the file and made Becciu a cardinal.• When Francis finally...

What’s it pay to work for Biden? Here are the salaries of Jen Psaki, Susan Rice and others. There’s a new president in the White House. And a whole new staff working for him. The initial list of employees in Joe Biden’s White House has 560 names, some of whom you see every day in press conferences and other high profile events. That’s more than one-third higher than the 412 employees during President Donald Trump’s last full year in office. Of those appointed during the Biden’s presidency, almost 60% are women and 44% are members of communities that are racially...

The FBI agent credited with thwarting the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been fired from the agency after domestic violence allegations were levied against him. According to The Detroit News, Special Agent Richard Trask was fired last week while awaiting trial on charges of assault with intent to do bodily harm and allegations that he beat his wife’s head against a nightstand following an argument caused by a swingers party they attended. The firing of the law enforcement officer comes amid questions concerning potential misconduct by the FBI during the kidnapping investigation, and whether as many as...

[Catholic Caucus] The Corruption of the VaticanThe most corrupt nation state in Western Europe occupies only 120 acres of land and has fewer than 1,000 residents. But its capacity for initiating criminal behaviour, and the global consequences of the financial and sexual scandals in which it’s entangled, are hugely out of proportion to its size. That’s because, around the world, roughly a billion people traditionally regard the state’s geriatric absolute monarch as God’s representative on earth. They may have been aware that, for centuries, a few bad apples in the administration have betrayed the monarch’s trust by embezzling money. But...

Two crooks casually walked out of a TJ Maxx in Los Angeles with armfuls of merchandise on Monday — apparently walking by several store workers on the way to the exit. One man filmed the brazen act at the Granada Hills store, according to Fox 11. “That looks great,” the man can be heard saying in a video posted to Instagram. “What’s up, guys? I wanna see how far you guys get,” he adds, as he follows them outside.

Some very smug Democrats may not be smiling soon. Joseph R. Biden issued an executive order entitled "Executive Order on Promoting COVID-19 Safety in Domestic and International Travel" on January 21, 2021 that included the following text: Sec. 2. Immediate Action to Require Mask-Wearing on Certain Domestic Modes of Transportation. (a) Mask Requirement. The Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Secretary of Transportation (including through the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)), the Secretary of Homeland Security (including through the Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Commandant of the United...

Dominion Voting Systems has blamed "human error" on the bombshell discovery that its machines were failing to display Republican ballots in a Pennsylvania county. The executive vice president of operations at Dominion, Nicole Nollette, concluded the reasons in a special meeting held by the Luzerne County volunteer election board, the Times Leader reported.

Highlights: Any medical treatment must be evaluated along a cost-benefit analysis. No treatment is risk free. It is in this respect that transparent availability of risk-group-stratified data on potential effects of vaccination, as compared to corresponding unvaccinated groups, must be available. These should be analysed by specialists free of any suspicions of conflicts of interests. The publication and unbiased discussion of their results must be facilitated, not hindered. Below I describe several potential negative vaccine effects, including vaccination-associated, documented 3- and 20-fold increases in infection and death rates, respectively. [SNIP] For those above 60, during the first 14 days after...

Buoyed by a large budget surplus and swimming in federal pandemic recovery money, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday proposed $12 billion to get more people experiencing homelessness off the streets and into homes of their own. Newsom’s proposal includes $8.75 billion over two years to create an estimated 46,000 housing units, expanding on a program he launched last year to convert motels and other properties into housing. Nearly half the money would go toward housing in places where people with mental health and other behavioral issues can get services onsite. Newsom also proposed spending $3.5 billion on rental subsidies,...

DC parish leases raise questionsLocal pastors and lay advisors have raised questions about centralized leasing policies for parish property in the Archdiocese of Washington. Critics say policies restrict both the religious use and financial benefit of parish properties, even while some parishes struggle to make ends meet. >The archdiocese operates a centralized process of managing leased parish property, through which Catholic Charities of Washington leases parish properties for use as program locations, with rental rates far below market rate — charging in some cases only a nominal fee of dollars annually. The process reportedly restricts pastors from renegotiating lease rates,...

The Vatican’s Transparency Provisions: Yet Another Façade OperationVatican executives, including Cardinals who are heads of dicasteries and administrators, will be required to sign a declaration stating that they have no convictions or investigations against them for terrorism, money laundering, or tax evasion. Furthermore, they may not hold assets in tax havens or invest in companies that operate contrary to the doctrine of the Church. These stipulations are laid down in the Pope’s newly-issued Motu Proprio which contains provisions on transparency in the management of public finances. The declaration must be signed upon taking up any office or position and must...

US bishops’ conference denies any wrongdoing in ongoing Peter’s Pence lawsuit, blames parishionersWASHINGTON, April 28, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — In an ongoing case regarding the use of Peter’s Pence donations, lawyers for the U.S. bishops have asserted that parishioners were aware (or at least ought to have been) that their money could be used by the Holy See for any purpose, despite their own advertisement to the contrary.The Peter’s Pence lawsuit was originally filed in January 2020 against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) by the Stanley Law Group based in Dallas, Texas, representing a Class Action brought by...

[Catholic Caucus] The Forgotten ‘October Surprise’ of the 2013 ConclaveApril 15, 2021 (Steven O’Reilly) – As regular readers of Roma Locuta Est know, we have continued to investigate the events surrounding the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, as well as the conclave of 2013 which elected Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio SJ as pope. One can read our series of articles on these questions in The Conclave Chronicles.Our interest in such things has been primarily historical. I suspect most readers will have at least some familiarity with the “St. Gallen mafia” and the allegations of its attempt to dethrone Pope Benedict XVI...