The discovery of gold in Gold Canyon by Abner Blackburn, a member of the Mormon Battalion in 1849, sparked a rush of miners seeking their fortunes in the Sierra Nevada region. However, the miners did not establish permanent settlements and instead moved back and forth across the mountains in search of “pay dirt.”

As early as 1850, miners migrated to the mouth of Gold Canyon, near the Carson River downslope from Mount Davidson, seeking relief from the crowded California goldfields during the summer months. Yet, they would return to California before winter’s snow arrived.

In August 1850, Chinese, Mexicans, and Indigenous people digging at Gold Canyon indicated the region’s attraction to multiple ethnic groups at the start. The following year, in 1851, Gold Canyon housed around 200 prospectors during the summer, but the transient nature of the settlement remained evident as there were no permanent buildings.

In September 1850, travelers observed miners on the “other side” of the Carson River in the Pine Nut Mountains. Troubles with Native Americans were documented in pioneer diaries, referring to stolen livestock.

The winter of 1850-1851 witnessed James “Old Virginny” Finney, the namesake for Virginia City, wintering over at Gold Canyon, possibly becoming the first white man to spend winter in Northern Nevada, then part of Utah Territory. A log trading post, built by Spafford Hall, was constructed around 1852 and later sold to James McMarlin, who subsequently sold it to Major William Ormsby.

By 1852, Gold Canyon began showing some permanency with the appearance of three log cabins, including a trading post, a boardinghouse, a tavern, water diversions, livestock, and a rail system that carried ore from the upper Gold Canyon to the Carson River. Despite this progress, Genoa, also known as “Mormon Station,” boasted even more development in the same year, with houses, blacksmith shops, ranches, farms, and trading posts.

It was in 1852 when William Dolman, one of the original claim holders in the Gold Canyon/Virginia City area, witnessed his first gold mining operations upon arriving at Gold Canyon in October of that year. He was en route to California’s goldfields but stayed, playing a significant role in Nevada’s mining history.

In the summer of 1853, Gold Canyon had four female residents, including one 12-year-old, highlighting the slow growth of women in the mining settlement. Meanwhile, “Johntown,” a small mining settlement, emerged as a trading post established by Walter Cosser in late 1853, about two-and-a-half to three miles north of Dayton in Gold Canyon.

Settlements also sprang up along the eastern front of the Sierra in 1851, including Franktown, French’s Fort, Jack’s Valley, and other “way stations” such as Ragtown and Jamison’s Station. Additionally, Mason Valley and the Walker River area had hopeful placer miners.

In 1858, the establishment of Curry’s Warm Springs, which later became a Nevada State Prison, occurred. The Washoe used the springs even before the arrival of settlers. Walley’s Hot Springs, situated two miles south of Genoa, was also utilized by the Washoe until the advent of pioneers in the area.

It had begun to snow pretty hard when I stepped inside the Virginia City Visitor Center to drop off newspapers and chat with Liza McIlwee. She is into reenacting and works behind the old bar from the Crystal Palace, now the center’s front desk.

“I was sitting on a bench in front of the Tahoe House next to a guy who said his name was James,” I said. “He was dressed in a suit from the late 1800s, and spoke with an Irish brogue.”

“I don’t know any reenactors that talk like that,” she replied.

“He reminded me of…,” I tried to remember, adding, “I know the guy was somehow attached to the Tahoe House, and I think he was Irish too.”

Liza opened the browser on her computer and typed in Tahoe House.

“Nothing here about an Irishman.”

“He was also a senator or maybe the governor.”

She added them to her search bar and pressed ‘enter.’

“James Fair?”

“Could be. Was he Irish?”

“And a U.S. Senator. Let me bring up a picture of him.”

“That looks like him.”

She smiled, “Maybe you were tlaking to a ghost.”

“No, I handed him a paper to read,” I said. “But when I came back from upstairs, he was gone, but the paper was there, so I picked it up.”

“I’ll bet you I know who it is. I have a friend, Marcus Aurelius Clark, who looks an awful lot like him, right down to the beard.”

She opened her Facebook app and typed something in. Then a group of tourists entered, and she put down her cell phone and helped them.

I sat on the bench near the door to wait.

A few minutes later, when it was she and I again, she looked at her phone and said, “He says no, it wasn’t him.”

We still haven’t a clue who this man was or if he was a reenactor or a spirit returned.

Women were created because sheep can’t cook and men because a vibrator can’t mow the lawn.

God created man and woman. Social justice warriors created all others.

Counting to ten only makes it premeditated.

Dogs float in water because they are good buoys.

It has been a long time since I have written a full political commentary. I stopped before the Obama Administration departed the White House because of the online anger received by both the right and left.

If I said anything about Obama, Trump, or Biden, I found myself blasted with hate because the lens of partisanship says, “How dare you!” And yes, I comment on political issues through various social media platforms, but I do not leave them up for longer than a day or two.

It began with a Tweet from Dinesh D’Souza, asking, “If Pence FOUND them, who TOOK them? Pence! Same with Biden. Both men TOOK the documents and then later FOUND them. And Trump too! So why do you say Trump STOLE the documents while the other two merely FOUND them?”

“Trump didn’t steal them, D’Souza. He, unlike Pence or Biden, had the authority to declassify what he had under lock and key,” I returned.

D’Souza never responded. However, Jeff Tiedrich, a communist media personality, did.

“Mike Pence found classified docs and alerted the FBI,” he tweeted. “Joe Biden found classified docs and alerted the DOJ. Donald Trump stole classified docs, hid them and refused to return them. If you’re still pretending there’s no difference, you’re just being an obstinate tribal asshole.”

And perhaps, I shouldn’t have, but being called an ‘obstinate tribal asshole,’ by a person I do not know, kicked up the levels of my PTSD, and I tweeted back, “I’d love for you to say that to my face. You are a coward with a keyboard.”

So while I knew I was right, drawing on the time in July 2004, when Clinton-confidante Sandy Berger stuffed a bunch of National Archive stored documents down his pants and made off with them, I still had to double-check myself, as doubt can be a curious thing in an ever-changing reality.

Going directly to the National Archive website, I found Executive Order 13526. It reads: “Classification Authority (a) The Authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by: Sec. 1.3: “The President and the Vice President.”

Further down in Section 1. 7 (c) 2: “The information may be reasonably recovered without bringing undue attention to the information.”

Then in Derivitive Classiffication, Sec. 2.1 reads: “Use of derivative classification (a) persons who reproduce, extract or summarize classified information, or who apply classification markings derived from the source material or as directed by a classification guide, need not possess original classification authority.”

Finally, Sec 5.5 Sanctions: 4 (c): “Sanctions may include reprimand, suspension without pay, removal, termination of classification authority, loss or denial of access to classified information, or other sanctions in accordance with applicable law and agency regulations.”

Clear as mud.

Then a report from New Orleans, LA., WWL-TV: “As a matter of academic constitutional law, there may be a question of whether a vice president is in that chain of command that can declassify things,” Executive Director of National Security Counselors Kel McClanahan told VERIFY. “However, as a matter of practice for at least the last ten years, if not much longer, its been a longstanding practice in the executive branch to say that the vice president has delegated authority from the president and should be treated as pretty much the same.”

“[The president] can just say, ‘I decide that this is declassified and its declassified,” added McClanahan

“According to McClanahan, Executive Order 13526 doe not apply to the president,” reported WWL.

Here the rabbit hole begins, turning into several burrows within a warren. And like all warrens, the twisting and turning maze is designed to confuse.

In early November, classified documents were ‘discovered’ in the Washington, D.C. office of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a President Biden think tank. Then the news broke that more had been ‘located’ at another location. The Biden Center has since found itself facing questions about Chinese donations to the University of Pennsylvania, which houses the think tank.

In 2018, Biden became the “Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor” at the University of Pennsylvania, and the “Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement” was launched the following year. However, discussions about his future involvement with UPenn long predated the end of the Obama presidency, according to emails from his son, Hunter Biden, and his infamous abandoned laptop.

On Mon., Apr. 25, 2016, marketing company Creative Artists Agency (CAA) agent Craig Gering emailed Hunter with “confidential notes from our meeting,” in which Gering listed plans discussed for the vice president upon leaving office. One of those plans included “wealth creation,” with no further explanation, and another, an apparent reference to the Penn Biden Center and a possible job opportunity for Hunter.

“The Biden Institute of Foreign Relations at the University of Pennsylvania,” Gering’s email read. “Focus on foreign policy. In addition to the institute at U of Penn, the school has an existing office in DC that will be expanded to house a DC office for VP Biden (and Mike, Hunter and Steve?). Operates like The Clinton Global Initiative without the money raise.”

Hunter confirmed the notes, emphasizing they needed to be “very confidential.”

“Yes, in theory that’s the way I would like to see it shake out — BUT please keep this very confidential between us because nothing has been set in stone and there’s still a lot of sensitivity around all of this both internally and externally,” Hunter replied. “He hasn’t made any decisions and this could all be changed overnight.”

Ten days earlier, Hunter was to attend a meeting with his father and then-university President Amy Gutmann, according to an email from Rosemont Seneca Vice President Joan Mayer. It is not clear if the meeting at the White House took place.

It was scheduled almost a year after Hunter and his then-wife Kathleen hosted Gutmann for a private dinner, according to an April 2015 email from a Penn official to Kathleen and Hunter.

Joe Biden left the vice presidency on Fri., Jan. 20, 2017, and was hired as an honorary professor at Penn less than four weeks after that, where he was paid a total of $776,527 in 2017 and 2018, nearly double what full-time Penn professors made during the same time and entailing only six visits.

The Penn Biden Center had its official opening in February 2018, where Joe signaled he had spoken with Gutmann when he was still vice president about becoming a ‘professor’ and being able to bring his team with him to UPenn.

“President Gutmann, when you came to me before the [Obama] administration was up and asked me whether I [would] consider to be a professor at Penn, the first thought I had was that it sounded like an intriguing idea, but it became even more intriguing after the outcome of the [2016] election when you said I could bring along with me some serious, serious people,” Biden said.

“Serious staff people and much more than staff, and they start with Tony Blinken and Steve Ricchetti and others, so thank you for allowing me to bring along some really, really bright people,” he added.

An article titled “Antony Blinken’s horrific stain on Albania and it’s all for George Soros” by the New York Post revealed that since May 2021, US Secretary Antony Blinken has been meddling with the Albanian elections on behalf of George Soros.

Blinken sanctioned former Albanian President and Prime Minister Sali Berisha, who voiced about Open Society Foundations. The Secretary of State called Berisha “corrupt” in both a tweet and a statement in April 2021 in addition to accusing him of “undermin[ing] democracy in Albania,” he banned him and his family from visiting the US.

Berisha says the allegation against him was in response to his attempt to declare Soros as “persona non grata.” The sanctions also uphold the current Albanian government led by PM Edi Rama, an ally of Soros.

After being named Biden’s secretary of state, Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet said this was “great news for George Soros.”

Blinken’s father, Donald Blinken, a former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, funded the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at a Budapest university. Donald Blinken is on the Board of Trustees for the university, for which Soros served as chairman.

Congressman Lee Zeldin demanded Blinken justify why he is doing what he is doing in Albania.

“This is now my third request for additional information since raising the issue of sanctioning Sali Berisha with Secretary Blinken during the June 7, 2021, House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing,” Zeldin wrote.

“Congress plays an important oversight role for the executive branch including the Department of State, yet my office has received alarmingly few details in response to my inquiries. It is unacceptable and suspicious that the Department of State has not sufficiently fulfilled this request for additional information in a timely manner and has instead chosen to slow-walk a Congressional request for transparency.”

As far as can be ascertained, Zelden has never received an answer. Meanwhile, Berisha is suing Blinken for defamation.

A report by Mexico’s El Universal newspaper outlined how Rama, through elements of the Albanian mafia, is tied to the Sinaloa cartel. The paper documents how Albanian mobsters are laundering money for El Mayo via resorts in Mexico and Albania, including at Marina Bay resort owned by Besnik Lulaj.

In October 2020, offering photographic evidence, Albanian news outlet Dosja reported on a meeting between Mark Hauptmann, Dorian Ducka, and Rama at the prime minister’s office. Hauptmann is a former Bundestag lawmaker for Germany’s center-right CDU party, who resigned in 2021 after being linked to an Azerbaijani lobbying scandal.

Ducka is a former Albanian energy minister-turned-fixer for Rama. The World Policy Conference lists him as Rama’s “external advisor on investments.”

In 2016, Chinese state media featured Ducka’s favorable attitudes toward trade with Beijing. Interestingly, El Universal reports that the Hysa brothers’ activities include exports to China.

Albania’s MCN news on Mon., Sep. 16, reported the October 2020 meeting at the prime minister’s office also included El Mayo money man Luftar Hysa and Besnik.

And as Pamfleti reported, not only was Hauptmann married at Marina Bay, Lulaj’s construction company has received nearly $3.5 million from Rama’s government. Pamfleti further references incorporation records that indicate Lulaj and Hysa are hiding their partnership in a corporate cutout held by their respective sons.

Wiretapped conversations from 2019 published in the German newspaper Bild showed the close links between Dako and narcotrafficker Astrit Avdylaj. Last April, Avdylaj was sentenced to 12 years in prison by an Albanian court, while the Trump administration designated Dako as a corrupt official in 2019. Also, last year, former Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri was sentenced to three years in prison for assisting drug traffickers.

Homeland Department of Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, another Biden appointee, continues to claim that the border between the U.S. and Mexico is secure, despite topping 2.76 million in 2022, breaking the previous annual record by more than 1 million, including more than 850 deaths of illegals.

On average, one person dies of a fentanyl overdose in the United States every seven minutes, making the lethal drug the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49, with DHS seizing over 1.6 million pounds of precursor chemicals used to manufacture the deadly drug.

“We continue to see precursor chemicals originate from China. We also see [the] equipment used in the manufacturing of fentanyl originate from China and therefore our interdicting capabilities are driven accordingly,” Mayorkas told the Washington Post. “So, we are seeking to interdict the flow of the precursor chemicals and the equipment from China. But we’re seeing [them] come to Mexico increasingly, and the Cartels are peddling this poison to our children and to our friends and neighbors here in the United States.”

The bottom line is that the Albanian prime minister appears to be involved in a narcotrafficking conspiracy involving the Sinaloa cartel, which is responsible for the largest share of narcotics smuggling into the United States, including fentanyl. And now Mayorkas is not allowing Border Patrol agents to testify before the House Oversight Committee.

Albania is now a primary arrivals destination for Latin American cocaine imports into Europe. As Vice reported in March, Albanian mafia clans now dominate the highly lucrative cocaine trade in London.

In 2019, Biden took an unpaid leave of absence from Penn after he announced his presidential campaign.

As president, Biden selected Gutmann to be the Ambassador to Germany. David Cohen, former chairman of Penn State board of trustees, was named the Ambassador to Canada.

Then The White House revealed the documents, dating back to Biden’s time as vice president, and discovered at the Penn Biden Center were recovered in November. Private attorneys for Biden then reportedly handed them over to the National Archives.

Aides to Biden then found more classified documents at his home.

During the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City, Biden said he was ‘surprised’ to learn of the found documents.

“They did what they should have done. They immediately called the [National Archives] … turned them over to the Archives, and I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office,” Biden said. “But I don’t know what’s in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were.”

At least ten senior Biden administration officials worked for the Penn Biden Center, including current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl, and White House counselor Steven Richetti. Blinken and Richetti served as managing directors, while Kahl was a strategic consultant.

Since the Penn Biden Center opened, UPenn has come under a microscope over its influx of foreign donations, particularly from China, taking roughly $77 million in gifts and contracts from China between 2014 and 2020. Further, foreign contributions to Penn tripled in the two years following the think tank opening.

UPenn continues to struggle to explain a 2019 $3 million donation from a Hong Kong shell company tied to Chinese national and businessman Xu Xeuqing. A university spokesperson previously said the donation came from Chinese national Xin Zhou, but there is no link between Xin and Nice Famous Corporation Limited, where the gift originated.

UPenn also received at least $12.8 million in gifts from China between March 2020 and June 202. Additionally, the school reported another $2.8 million in China contracts between July 2020 and January 2022.

“The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity,” UPenn vice president of communications, Stephen MacCarthy, said. “The University has never solicited any gifts for the Center.”

MacCarthy said that since its inception, two American donors provided three unsolicited gifts totaling $1,100 for the Biden Center and that “one hundred percent” of the think tank budget is from university funds.

“Penn is fully compliant with federal law regarding the reporting of foreign gifts and contracts, as foreign gifts are all properly reported to the U.S. Department of Education as required by Section 117 of the Higher Education Act,” MacCarthy said.

Shortly after the second disclosure, Republicans asked that a special counsel investigate Biden’s handling of classified information. Attorney General Merrick Garlan appointed U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to review the matter.

The revelation came months after a similar situation related to former President Donald Trump and his handling of classified documents. Following a months-long dispute between Trump and the Department of Justice, FBI agents executed a warrant on his home in Mar-a-Lago to recover some 300 classified documents. A former aide to Biden and reportedly questioned by federal investigators as part of the probe into his handling of classified documents exchanged emails with Hunter on numerous occasions.

Executive Assistant to Biden when he was vice president and the current deputy director of protocol at the Pentagon, Kathy Chung, is among those interviewed by law enforcement. She reportedly gave Hunter names, numbers, and associated details from files kept by his father.

While working for Biden during the Obama administration, Chung regularly communicated with Hunter, transmitting information about scheduling and passing on messages directly from the then-vice president, according to emails.

Her relationship with Hunter appears to date from before she worked for his father. The emails show that he recommended Chung for the role when executive assistant Michele Smith left the White House in 2012.

“Thanks for calling and thinking of me,” Chung wrote to Hunter on Mon., May 14, 2012. “After the initial shock of taking in what you said…how could I pass up an opportunity to work for the Vice President of the United State!!!! I do have a few questions. What is Michelle’s (sic) primary job? I think I know what the job would entail, minus the scheduling part, which is a huge part of what I do now. But what would be my top 3-5 responsibilities be in the office? Do you know the salary? Again, thanks for thinking of me.”

Chung worked with former Sen. Mark Udall as his scheduling director. She previously worked for Delaware Sen. Ted Kaufman, who was appointed to replace Biden in the Senate in 2009.

In response to her message, Hunter responded, saying that the job would make her the primary gatekeeper of Biden and that she would be “involved in everything that goes on outside of policy.”

“Call if/when you want me to tell Dad you are interested and I’m sure Michele would also want to talk to you at some point,” he added. “I don’t know who else they were considering but I thought you would be great.”

On Wed. Jun. 13, 2012, Chung emailed Hunter saying she got the job.

“I cannot thank you enough for thinking about me and walking me thru this,” she said. “What an incredible opportunity! Thanks, Hunter!!”

Dozens of additional emails between Chung and Hunter showed various levels of correspondence between the two.

In one instance, Hunter and Chung communicated to schedule a video conference with his father and Mexican business magnate Carlo Slim, with whom Hunter was seeking to do business at the time, on Fri., Oct. 30, 2015. In another from earlier that year, Chung sent Hunter and other members of the Biden family an invitation to attend a State Department luncheon hosted by his father honoring Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In February 2017, Hunter suggested Chung come to work for him and his business partners, Eric Schwerin and Joan Mayer.

“Actually work ‘for’ me and ‘with’ Eric…Actually do actual ‘work’ with Eric and Joan and so that I can make everyone money…actually just make all of you and Kathleen money and none for me,” he wrote to Chung, referring to his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle. “Sounds fun right!”

And on multiple occasions, the pair coordinated schedules for meetings with the former University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann. Shortly after taking office, the president selected Gutmann to be the U.S. ambassador to Germany.

“VP will be meeting with President Guttman on Friday, Jan. 8, 11:00 am, at the Lake house in DE,” Chung wrote in an email to Hunter Biden, other family members, and several White House officials in January 2016. “VP hopes that you will be able to join him for this meeting. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!!”

After Chung invited Hunter Biden to another meeting with Gutmann in April 2016, he suggested in a follow-up message to his business partner that he may need to reschedule a previously-scheduled conference with the prime minister of the Ivory Coast, adding, “the Guttman mtg is a must-attend for me per Dad.”

Gutmann, meanwhile, participated in the ceremony marking the grand opening of the Penn Biden Center in 2018.

“President Gutmann, when you came to me before the [Obama] administration was up and asked me whether I [would] consider to be a professor at Penn, the first thought I had was that it sounded like an intriguing idea, but it became even more intriguing after the outcome of the [2016] election when you said I could bring along with me some serious, serious people,” Biden said during the opening ceremony in February 2018.

Aides have been searching additional locations where Biden could have possibly brought more classified documents from his time as vice president in the Obama administration, having even discovered papers from when Biden was Senator.

In 2015, Biden, then Vice President, “personally raised the idea” of investigating Gen. Michael Flynn for violating the Logan Act phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The document also shows that former President Barack Obama told top administration officials that “the right people” should investigate Flynn.

But then-FBI Director James Comey acknowledged during the meeting that included Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and national security adviser Susan Rice that the conversations with Kislyak “appear legit,”

The revelations from handwritten notes prepared on Wed., Jan. 4, 2017, by ex-FBI Agent Peter Strzok

“According to Strzok’s notes, it appears that Vice President Biden personally raised the idea of the Logan Act,” defense lawyers Jesse Binnall and Sidney Powell wrote. “That became an admitted pretext to investigate General Flynn.”

Biden first claimed a lack of knowledge about the meeting, only later, when confronted with the facts, to say he knew they wanted to start an investigation but had no idea it had gone forward.

The 1799 Act bars unauthorized Americans from engaging in “any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government,” and has only led to two indictments, 1803 and 1852, but neither resulted in a conviction.

The Logan Act comes to play after learning that a high-level director at the Open Society Foundations (OSF,) a group bankrolled by billionaire George Soros and working with the Biden administration on policy, has close access to the White House.

Open Society-U.S. executive director and part of the Soros leadership team Tom Perriello, who sits on the board of Governing for Impact, another Soros-funded group maneuvering behind the scenes to shape and implement policy, has frequently visited the White House for meetings and events.

His name appears in White House visitor logs 13 times on eight different days between May 2021 and September 2022, the last publicly available month for the records. It remains unclear who all Perriello met with, but records show Jordan Finkelstein, the chief of staff to Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn; Richard Figueroa, a race and ethnicity policy adviser; Rachel Chiu, chief of staff in the office of political strategy and outreach; Yohannes Abraham, previously the deputy assistant to the president, chief of staff, and executive secretary of the National Security Council, also appear in the logs, among others.

Soros’ son Alex, OSF chair, has been at meetings in the White House six times since Biden took office, including twice visiting Ron Klain, outgoing chief of staff. The visits span from October 2021 to December 2022. Alex has also publicly posted several pictures with his father and Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, at what appear to be private gatherings.

Meanwhile, Perriello sits on the board of Governing for Impact (GFI), which worked with the Biden administration on the policy items.

GFI has since worked with the Biden administration, creating “transformative governance” and producing “more than 60 in-depth, shovel-ready regulatory recommendations” for dozens of federal agencies,” a now-deleted job advertisement on Harvard Law School’s website once read. The group has boasted through internal memos of implementing more than 20 of its regulatory agenda items as they work with the administration to reverse Trump-era deregulations by focusing on education, health care, housing, labor, and environmental issues.

GFI has also prepared legal policy memos for at least ten federal departments and agencies and ten administrative law primers as of 2021,

Soros cash has propelled GFI and its related Foundation to Promote the Open Society action fund from the outset. The Foundation to Promote Open Society has funneled nearly $10 million to GFI since 2019, while the Open Society Policy Center sent $7.45 million to GFI during the same period.

Open Society-U.S., which Perriello leads, was the referring program for the grants.

GFI’s total contributions are unknown as groups like it are not required to file tax forms to the Internal Revenue Service because they are fiscally sponsored projects of the New Venture Fund and Sixteen Thirty Fund, not standalone organizations.

“Perriello’s frequent lunch meetings at the White House are just more proof that Governing for Impact, and by extension, George Soros, is secretly calling the shots on regulations that will affect the daily lives of millions,” said Parker Thayer of Capital Research Center.

Last year, Soros partnered with billionaire Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, to financially back the Good Information Inc. project, fighting disinformation.

Heading into the 2022 midterms, in an open letter signed by 11 other groups, the Soros-funded Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights called on Big Tech CEOs to take “immediate” action against the spread of “voting disinformation” and to “help prevent the undermining” of democracy.

The signatories received a combined $30.3 million from Soros.

There remain eleven Facebook-approved fact-checking organizations for Central and Eastern Europe, with Soros funding eight. These groups are critical of the political right.

Organizations such as PolitiFact, Snopes, and others have long faced allegations of left-leaning political bias, allegations a series of studies over the years have confirmed. One of the more recent studies of PolitiFact found sources six times more likely to defend Biden in their ‘fact-checks’ than check his facts.

Funding for PolitiFact parent company, The Poynter Institute, includes the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Ford Foundation, Soros-backed Tides Foundation, and Tides Center, the Carnegie Corp. of New York, among others. One project of the Poynter Institute specifically, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), was launched in 2015, with its initial funding coming from the National Endowment for Democracy (backed by the U.S. State Department,) the Omidyar Network, Google, Facebook, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Open Society Foundations. IFCN acts as the “high body” for the dozens of fact-checking organizations under its umbrella, which unites under a shared code of principles, and a mission “to bring together the growing community of fact-checkers around the world and advocates of factual information in the global fight against misinformation.”

Affiliated with the IFCN are the Associated Press, FactCheck.org, The Dispatch, The Washington Post, and PolitiFact. Facebook and other social media platforms have since exposed themselves as having censored articles and people suggesting that the COVID-19 virus leaked from a Wuhan lab.

Articles questioning the effects of climate change are tagged with warning labels even if backed up by data. The abandoned laptop, once owned by Hunter Biden, was censored because intelligence officials claimed it appeared to be Russian disinformation.

In addition to spreading false narratives, Soros buys his name protection. A search for his name through PolitiFact reveals very little about the former Nazi.

An Internet search of Soros’ name leads to an ad, inviting the searcher to learn the “truth” about Soros and that “George Soros does not pay protesters. Clickin the ad redirects the searcher to a PolitiFact “fact check” of a claim from Candace Owens that Soros is “funding the chaos” in Minneapolis through his Open Society Foundations during the summer of 2020 riots.

Emily Venezky rated Owens’ claim “False” while citing a 2015 Snopes fact check that admits Soros donated $33 million to organizations “that have worked with Black Lives Matter or worked to raise awareness during the Ferguson-related protests” in the past. Similarly, PolitiFact fact-checker Yacob Reyes wrote an article to debunk claims that Soros was funding Black Lives Matter, only to admit and downplay Soros-funding of BLM-adjacent groups.

Of the dozens of fact-checks mentioning Soros by name on the PolitiFact website, all deny what organizations Soros is funding, then work to debunk ‘rumors’ about him. When it comes to objectively true allegations about Soros funding prosecutors nationwide, his connections to various media figures, and the Biden White House, the fact-checkers ignore them.

It is the same tactic Facebook uses.

The social media platform, working with the Chicago-based Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), spent nearly $420 million in election offices nationwide before the 2020 elections and is currently refashioning the program for the 2024 election cycle.

CTCL said its U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence plans to grant $80 million to local election offices in the form of two-year loans over the next five years “to create a network for the nation’s thousands of local election officials … to improve their technology and processes.”

In the wake of the 2020 elections, the Conservative-wing of the GOP raised the alarm over revelations that CTCL issued private money grants to nearly 2,500 county elections offices across 47 states and the District of Columbia for its Safe Elections Project, including $350 million donated directly by Mark Zuckerberg.

CTCL recruited officials in counties and cities that are traditionally Democratic to participate in its programs, giving “Zuckerbucks,” or “Zuck Bucks,” disproportionately to Democratic-voting jurisdictions.

The CTCL grants and other private contributions to election offices, masked as COVID-19 relief, were geared to “educating” elections offices about mail-in voting outreach and procedures, which drove the Democratic voter turnout.

Election integrity watchdogs, Honest Elections Project (HEP), the John Locke Foundation, and Foundation for Government Accountability are raising the alarm about CTCL, this time, a year before the election rather than months after, claiming its Alliance is a front for boosting Democratic turnout, especially in Democratic strongholds within swing states.

“No matter what it claims to be, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is nothing more than a dark money-fueled scheme to push liberal voting policies and influence election administration in key states,” HEP Executive Director Jason Snead said.

“The work of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is ‘Zuck Bucks 2.0,’” John Locke Foundation Civitas Center for Public Integrity Director Dr. Andy Jackson said, claiming in a statement that the Alliance is a vehicle “for the private funding of elections by left-wing donors.”

Snead and Jackson collaborated in producing a Thu., Jan. 19 Zuck Bucks 2.0 report showing how CTCL’s Alliance “is focused on systematically reshaping election offices and pushing progressive voting policies,” adding, “How state and local governments respond will have ramifications for free and fair elections in 2024 and beyond.”

Over the past two years, 24 GOP-led state legislatures have adopted laws banning or restricting the use of private, third-party grants and other allegedly nonpartisan contributions to “assist” local officials in administering elections.

With 45 state legislatures convening in 2023, proposals to ban private money in public elections administration have been filed in at least two states and filed in at least two more.

“The pace has slowed because most of the states where (a ban) is feasible, it’s already been done,” Snead said. “The key thing to keep in mind is the U.S. Alliance for Elections Integrity is similar to what happened in 2020, but now really is the new and improved version. It is designed to be more insidious and to exert more influence into how these offices function.”

CTCL maintains the Alliance is “a nonpartisan effort that brings together election officials, designers, technologists, and other experts” to assist elections officials in administering elections and help all voters, regardless of party, cast ballots.

“Unfortunately, years of underinvestment means many local election departments often have limited capacity and training,” CTCL Executive Director Tiana Epps-Johnson said when she announced the creation of the Alliance at an April 2022 TED talk.

The Alliance “is bringing together world-class partners so that local election officials no longer have to go it alone,” Epps-Johnson said, and will provide “customized resources, coaching, and implementation support,” the Alliance says on its website, explaining its offerings include grants, training, resources, and consulting services to establish “a set of common values and standards.”

Alliance grantees can only spend the funds on physical and technological components needed for an election office and for training “personnel with specialized training … whose absence could cause undesirable consequences or hamper the election security mission,” it states.

Recipient election offices, called “Centers for Election Excellence,” receive grants based on three criteria: “excitement and willingness” for participation; a commitment to improving practices and procedures; and a commitment to working with other members, sharing materials, and providing input. Grant amounts vary based on population, from $50,000 for elections offices with fewer than 5,000 registered voters to $3 million for those with more than 1 million voters.

In November, the Alliance announced its first wave of grants would go to ten county and municipal election offices in seven states in Contra Costa and Shasta counties, Cal.; Greenwich, Conn.; Kane and Macoupin counties, Ill.; Ottawa County, Mich.; Clark County, Nev.; Brunswick and Forsyth counties, NC; and Madison, Wis.

Snead noted CTCL is not seeking to establish its centers in the 24 states that have banned private money from being used by elections offices in response to its alleged influence on the 2020 election.

“Indeed,” he said, “CTCL and its partners exclusively selected the first cohort of ‘Centers for Election Excellence’ from states without private funding limits.”

The center did, however, issue grants to elections offices in three of the six states where Democratic governors vetoed bills adopted by Republican lawmakers banning private contributions to elections officials, including one in Michigan and Wisconsin and two in North Carolina. North Carolina lawmakers passed Senate Bill 725 in 2021, prohibiting the State Board of Elections, county boards of elections, and county commissioners from accepting private funding for election expenses after offices across the state received $7.2 million in CTCL grants during the 2020 election cycle.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed SB 275 in December 2021.

In 2020, Trump saw a historic increase in votes in Nevada, only to be beaten by Biden through mail-in voting.

The 158,000-vote increase Trump saw from 2016 to 2020 is consistent with aggressively courting voters through numerous massive rallies. However, Biden hardly visited Nevada, with his final rally in Las Vegas rally on Wed., Oct. 9, drawing less than 30 people.

CTCL spent $2.7 million in grants between the two most populated counties in Nevada, Clark, with $2,394,036, and Washoe, getting $277,479, the only two Biden won. That is $4.59 per Biden voter in Clark County and $2.17 per Biden voter in Washoe County.

Trump won the remaining 15 Nevada counties by an average of 73 percent, losing Washoe by only 11,000 votes. In Clark, Biden crushed Trump by almost 91,000 votes, nearly three times his 33,000 statewide lead over Trump.

How county elections officials spent their CTCL funds is unclear. However, in 2020, Nevada conducted an all-mail election, sending absentee ballots, which must be requested by voters, to every registered voter in the state.

All CTCL grants required participating counties and states to place “Secure Dropboxes” where voters could deposit their ballots without fearing interaction with potential virus-carrying individuals. Dropboxes sidestep basic voting integrity requirements, allowing anyone to drop any number into a private collection bin with no official oversight and no accountability after the fact.

There is no way of knowing how many ballots were left unattended in the boxes or if and where Washoe County placed “Secure Dropboxes” as required by the grant application.

As for Sandy Berger, he pleaded guilty to stealing classified documents and cutting them, adding that he intentionally took and deliberately destroyed three copies of the same document dealing with terror threats made.

Berger served no jail time, was fined $10,000, and lost his security clearance for three years. He died in 2015, the butt of many jokes like being referenced as “Sandy Burglar” on late-night television and radio talk shows.

It was one of the busier campgrounds I discovered a little too late, but I decided to set up my tent and stay the night anyway. That left me most of the day to hike the trails around Burney Falls.

In the late afternoon, I returned to #37, my campsite, to find I had neighbors on either side of me—an older couple on the one side and a family of four on the other. Within half an hour of my return, the seven of us were laughing and carrying on as if we had known one another a lifetime.

In the end, we co-mingled our dinner and then sat about our community firepit enjoying beers and conversations about life and travels. At about 8 p.m., the couple’s kids went to bed early, reminding me of how it was when I was young, laying awake, listening to the grownups talk until the Sandman found me.

Before I knew it, even the older folks were off to bed, including me. With the two couples returned to their trailer and camper, I set about cleaning up and banking the fire for use in the morning.

As I strolled back from the bear-proof garbage cans some 100 feet away, I heard what sounded like a person heavily fast-walking behind me. When I turned to look, they stopped in their tracks, hidden in the shadows.

“Maybe they didn’t know I was in front of them,” I told myself as I thought about the full moon in the sky ahead of me.

Thinking no more of the person, I entered my tent and climbed inside my sleeping bag. It wasn’t long before I was fast sound asleep.

How long I had been asleep, I don’t know, but suddenly I was fully awake, listening, certain somebody was walking around my tent. Then I saw a hand press in against the fabric of my tent.

My breathing halted in my chest, but my heart felt like a military drum playing a loud tattoo. I quietly reached under my boots and touched the only thing my dad had left me, his Desert Eagle.

The hand disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, and I let out my breath. As I did this, I watched as a face pressed itself into the side of my tent.

It continued inward and down until it nearly met my face. That is when I withdrew my pistol and throttled the slide back with a sharp, staccato snap.

The face disappeared, and I heard a set of feet race off through the wood, twigs snapping and pine needles crunching. I remained awake for much of the night from then on.

Come morning, when I crawled from my sleeping bag, I found large muddied handprints all around the outside of my tent. Some things lurk in the woods at night that are more dangerous than wild animals.

Having gotten a late start, I made it to Lahontan Reservoir as the sun was hanging above the west mountains by more than an inch. If I hurried, I would have enough time to set up my camp tent and gather loose wood for a fire.

Once my tent was ready, I returned to my truck and retrieved my sleeping bag and food. Returning to my campsite, I found my tent tipped on its side and the stakes holding it in place pulled from the ground.

“What the…” I said aloud as I looked up and down the nearly deserted shoreline.

My nearest neighbor was over a hundred yards away, and their camp was quiet as I had seen them take their boat out for a spin. There was no one in the other direction because of a large patch of willow brush at my back.

Having reset my tent, I gathered some wood to start my fire. I would use the heavier store-bought bundle later once I had a good base.

Returning, I found my tent upset again. This time tipped to the other side.

“Leave my stuff alone,” I barked at the willows, thinking I had a prankster hiding among the brush.

Vowing not to leave my site unattended the rest of the night, I built my fire and cooked rice and beans for dinner, washing it down with ice-cold beer. Then I spent a couple of hours star-gazing and sipping more beer.

Approaching time for bed down, I got a feeling of being watched. I stood up as casually as possible, pretending to stretch while focusing on the patch of willows behind my tent.

At first, all I saw were shadows amid the darkness of the saplings, but as my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I could make out a shape, a human figure. It was a child, perhaps the one pranking me earlier.

As I watched the child, I ran directly at them, and they disappeared into the willows.

“And stay away!” I shouted, feeling victorious.

Once inside my tent and my sleeping bag, I quickly fell asleep. It was not a restful night.

As I slept or believed I was, I felt paralyzed, unable to move or breathe. Laying there, I would hear a child running around my tent, see a face looking down at me from the open tent fly or gasping for air after an invisible hand held my mouth and nose shut.

Finally, the sun rose, and I got up, ragged from a poor night of sleep. I quickly made a cup of coffee using what embers still glowed from the evening before, then rapidly packed up my camp to leave.

As I did this, that sense of being watched overcame me again. This time I unhesitatingly looked towards the willows, where I once again saw the child standing.

Without warning, they raced towards me like I had done to them the night before. As they did, what had been a child grew into a gray billow-like cloud before sweeping over and knocking me down with a frightening chill.

Wasting no time, I buried my fire, grabbed my gear, raced to my truck, climbed in, and sped out of Lahonton Reservoir without looking back.

Here’s the thing for me…I don’t want to make money off a website. I already get paid for reporting the news in two newspapers. I jus’ wanna share what else I write.

Tried both Substack and Wix, and both are difficult for a non-computer/software/whateverthehellyouwannacallit sixty-something but came to a grinding halt when I became bogged down in all the bullshit instructions I had to follow jus’ to get one fucking post published. So I am staying with WP for the time being even though they are doing their best to omit me from the blogosphere by changing from the Classic setting, to their goddamned stupid block system.

How about jus’ letting people write? We ain’t all in the fucking business to make money — only — some of us simply wanna express ourselves.