One part of the article that was quite revealing.
You need to start with former CEO John Lansing. Lansing came to NPR in 2019 from the federally funded agency that oversees Voice of America.
So they put a propagandist from VOA in as CEO. No wonder they’ve got problems if they’ve got someone from a TLA calling the shots.
I don’t know if he was a propagandist. At the time, there was a major push from the Trump administration to kick out the old VOA admins, and install individuals like Sebastian Gorka. (A little weird because I doubt Trump knew anything about Voice of America, and yet he was prepared to take it to the limit.)
https://trashpanda-x.github.io/darklantern/#Voice%20of%20America
Now look here, some people take prevention seriously:
It was mentioned in some thread or other (T-inspired assholes?) a while ago, but it never made a big splash.
Ummm. I get they didn’t read the contract. That’s incredibly foolish but common. But how did they think this company made money?
Gulf Coast GunBusters provides free firearm destruction services for law enforcement.
Did they think this was some non-profit? Even a non-profit is going to charge a police department or city for a service. It’s only providing services to individuals that are typically free.
I’m sure that the contract was read by both the department, the procurement department and the law department.
That’s how the real world works. Even if they say no one read it. If you sign something without reading it for a municipality- you should be fired.
Anyone who doesn’t read a contract should be fired, yes. Maybe they did read it, and not just skim for the amount they had to pay, when it terminated, and liability issues.
But I’ve worked for state agencies and with municipalities and it would not be surprising if they didn’t really read the contract. People do that way more often than they should. I also doubt they ran it by the city attorney. No money being paid means the contract might not have triggered the legal oversight it should have received. Any contract should require legal review but I know from experience that isn’t reality. Particularly for these cities. They act like they are small towns still and haven’t bothered to establish the protocols needed
I hate to say it, but most of my political news (and most other stuff) I wait for Beau to digest first. No bothsidesing, just accurate info with a side of snark. I especially like the snark.
I worked on the contracting side- there’s no way it wouldn’t have been read. And they would have used their standard contract first. Any deviations would have been negotiated.
Not that grifting didn’t exist
A former Microsoft software engineer has been sentenced to seven years in prison after paying $16,000 in Bitcoin to arrange the murder of the parents of his adopted children.
[…]
Pence’s sister set up a GoFundMe page to support the family after the arrest, noting that he "has been accused of a terrible crime that did not involve any harm or misconduct to the children
Killing a child’s birth parents doesn’t involve harm to them? I’m much less interested in her claims than in what the FBI and child welfare authorities report.
“Pence’s family had legally adopted five of the intended victims’ children … there was an escalating dispute between the two families such that the intended victims desired to regain custody of their children and were involved in the reporting of Pence’s family to local child welfare authorities, both of which reportedly angered Pence,” stated FBI special agent Brian DeCarr.
69%? 
Nice…
(Yes, I am mentally still a teenager, why do you ask?
In Pulaski County, 39-year-old Jesse Kipf pleaded guilty to computer fraud and aggravated identity theft.
In 2023, Kipf used a computer to access Hawaii’s death registry system, where he created a fake death certificate for himself.
His plea document says he did this to avoid paying child support fees of more than $100,000.
The Guardian has a response of sorts (which I’ve not read yet);
Ruh-roh! Red flag warning:
In the piece on Free Press, a site run by Bari Weiss, a former opinion editor at the New York Times, Berliner noted…
From Berliner:
But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.
The neutered Mueller report?
When the essential facts of the Post’s reporting were confirmed and the emails verified independently about a year and a half later,
A favorite MAGA-Kermlin horseshit point. Some emails were verified, but that only verified the sender of the emails, not that they were received on a Hunter laptop.
Yeah no, this is some kind of BS play.
All those set off alarm bells for me, too.
Yeah the second I saw Bari Weiss’s name, I knew all I needed to know. Claims of media bias originating from her are … projecting doesn’t seem quite strong enough a word.
Maybe he should smile more.
