Closing the tabs ...
I hope the person who posted this got paid. https://t.co/vet2ba3Xrl
— Tim Potts (@therealtimpotts) February 5, 2025
Ed: Probably. But for how long?
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The only reason I can think of for taxpayers to fund that is, in fact, to filter money into the coffers of a news outfit that was very good at carrying water for the Biden administration.
Now, I can see one or two people benefitting from some high-level analysis and special news, but not to the tune of $34.3 million.
It’s hard to find actual profit figures for Politco, but it looks like gross revenue is around $400 million. That’s revenue, though, not profit. Most outfits have much slimmer profit margins. If you figure 10 to 15 percent, which seems reasonable from what I’ve seen, then we can see that a massive chunk of Politico’s profits came from the American taxpayer.
Ed: And what did Politico have to deliver for that profit? Marc Caputo revealed that his editors discouraged any reporting on Hunter Biden or corruption surrounding the Biden family.
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Politico Pro is a platform for lobbyists. It says so right on the promo materials.
— Gary Pageau (@garypageau) February 5, 2025
Why does an organization tasked with providing US aid to foreign countries need 37 $14,000 seats for a lobbying tool?
These are exactly the questions @DOGE should ask.https://t.co/TUcEQ2MtPJ
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Did you even know these programs existed? Did you know you’re paying for them? Does it matter to you that you haven’t known before Musk got there and now you do?
It is absolutely absurd to see how drooling mad left-wingers are over an audit of our spending, but yet have not a word to say about the actual spending. ...
While we’ve been struggling to pay for home insurance, groceries and basic American comforts, the government has been taking those tax dollars (the very ones we’re struggling to account for in our April filings) and giving them to people who don’t even live here to fulfill their dreams of becoming artists and changing their bodies, and those are the more “tame” expenditures.
Ed: They are angry because they and their allies are being held accountable. They are angry because they believe that American voters do not deserve transparency and an explanation for the massive outlays of American taxpayer money to the causes the Left likes. They do not want "democracy," but instead a quiet and progressive autocracy.
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Ed: Politico's front page as of 5:15 pm ET today. Notice how many negative headlines there are about Musk. There are four, and that's just above the jump.
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For years, the media demanded that the government subsidize them. Taxpayers said "No." We were so firm on the point that Democrats never even bothered trying to pass a law.
So Obama and Biden just began giving government money to the leftwing media without troubling to ask the public if they had their consent for this latest wealth-transfer scheme from Republican voters to Democrat voters.
Ed: I thought about that as well. That's what this looks like, and while Politico appears to have had the best of it, some of that money got tossed at the NYT, AP, and BBC too. If Republicans had succeeded in ending subsidies for NPR and PBS, would these same agencies have just bought enough "subscriptions" to make up the difference?
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If shutdown of USAID leads to collapse of left-wing press, we'll be out of job. Never rooted so much for self obsolence.
— Daily Gondor 📰 (@DailyGondor) February 5, 2025
Ed: This is a satirical account with a LOTR theme. Pretty funny, so let's hope that self-obsolescence won't be the immediate result.
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The federal government–that is the Democratic Party, only using taxpayer funds–has secretly been funneling millions of dollars to Democrat-friendly news organizations. That this is a waste of money is the least of it. No wonder the Democrats are hysterical about DOGE!
However corrupt you thought the federal government and the Democratic Party were, you gave them too much credit.
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Remember when Politico leaked the Dobbs decision and conservative Supreme Court justices were almost assassinated?
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) February 5, 2025
Turns out that was govt-funded pic.twitter.com/2AfOxy2ZOL
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Our thought bubble: The government spends trillions of taxpayer funds annually. The fact that the Trump administration is focused on slashing relatively small media budgets at the outset of Trump's second term speaks to how seriously targeting media companies is their priority.
- MAGA accounts are continuing to seize on this theory and proliferate it online.
- Conservative commentator Dana Loesch is calling for protests outside Politico’s offices.
Disclosure: Our Axios Pro product provides in-depth policy and industry news to paying subscribers, including government employees. Last year, $5,550 in payments were made to Axios as part of a Federal Communications Commission subscription, according to the government's database that tracks federal spending.
Ed: It's worth noting that Axios just provided more transparency than Politico ever did with that one disclosure paragraph. Also, while Axios tries to pooh-pooh the issue as "misinformation," they never do have an explanation for why bureaucrats needed $8.2 million in Politico Pro subscriptions while they only required less than $6,000 for the comparable Axios product.
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— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) February 5, 2025
Ed: Happy hunting! I was surprised to see that Media Matters didn't get any taxpayer dollars through the data compiled. Thus far.
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