Business
Trudeau government spends millions producing podcasts
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Ryan Thorpe
Take the Eh Sayers Podcast from Statistics Canada, which has 21 episodes since January 2021. Episode topics have ranged from gender identity to climate change and misinformation to systemic racism.
The podcast has racked up 229 “estimated” subscribers, according to records.
To date, the podcast has cost $971,417.
Dozens of federal departments and agencies have launched podcasts in recent years, with the cost to taxpayers rising to millions of dollars once salary expenses are factored in.
That’s according to government documents, as well as access-to-information records, obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
“Canadians need the government delivering passports, not podcasts,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Can anyone explain why taxpayers are paying for government bureaucrats to spend a bunch of money on podcasts nobody listens to?
“This isn’t providing taxpayers value for money, these podcasts are make-work projects for government bureaucrats we don’t need.”
Take the Eh Sayers Podcast from Statistics Canada, which has 21 episodes since January 2021. Episode topics have ranged from gender identity to climate change and misinformation to systemic racism.
The podcast has racked up 229 “estimated” subscribers, according to records.
To date, the podcast has cost $971,417, meaning taxpayers are on the hook for $4,241 for every subscriber. The podcast averages 1,414 downloads per episode and has 39 reviews on Apple.
There have been anywhere from three to five full-time Statistics Canada employees assigned to the podcast, according to the records.
An August 2023 episode on gender identity begins with a “drag story time” reading from “drag king” Cyril Cinder.
During a December 2023 episode on misinformation, the host and guest talk about the problem with giving “both sides of an issue equal time or consideration.”
An earlier episode, from December 2021, focuses on “the arts and crafts movement across Canada, its renaissance and its necessity.”
“If Statistics Canada bureaucrats want to produce podcasts on gender ideology, climate change or misinformation they can fill their boots on their own time with their own dime,” Terrazzano said. “If you want proof there are too many bureaucrats in Ottawa with too much time and tax dollars on their hands, look no further than these podcasts.”
Or take CCI and CHIN: In Our Words, from Canadian Heritage, that seeks to “preserve” the history of the department “through interviews with current and former staff members.”
Between September 2019 and September 2021, when it was discontinued, the podcast released seven episodes. It has 17 reviews on Apple.
That podcast cost taxpayers $155,736, which works out to a cost of more than $22,000 per episode.
The costs included $9,000 for “podcast training and consulting,” $2,000 for equipment and $115,000 in salary expenses for the full-time staff assigned to it.
The First Sixteen podcast, from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, explores the “freshest ideas in agriculture and food.” It racked up $30,000 in expenses, on top of the salary costs for the full-time employee who works on it.
Healthy Canadians podcast, from the Public Health Agency of Canada, has four full-time employees assigned to it.
The average compensation for each full-time federal employee is $125,300 when pay, pension, paid time off, shift premiums and other benefits are considered, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Healthy Canadians also racked up $67,000 in expenses (over and above salary costs), including $34,000 spent on “podcast strategy, editorial planning and employee training.”
Business Unusual, a pandemic-era podcast produced by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, had 13 employees working on it, including two deputy ministers and two executives.
Government records released in November 2023 in response to an order paper question from Conservative MP Rob Moore reveal at least $1.7 million in podcast costs.
But that figure undercounts the true cost to taxpayers, because in most cases the departments did not include salary expenses for staff working on the podcasts.
In every case where salary expenses were included, it was the largest portion of costs.
“No wonder the government is more than $1 trillion in debt when it’s scheming up useless make-work projects for bureaucrats that accomplish nothing more than burning through tax dollars,” Terrazzano said. “With massive deficits and soaring debt, these taxpayer-funded podcasts should be the first thing on the chopping block.”
Business
CIA Offers To Payout Entire Agency: REPORT
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportedly offered payouts to its entire workforce Tuesday, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The CIA has apparently become the first intelligence agency to offer its employees a way out, as they were reportedly offered a bid to quit their jobs in exchange for roughly eight months of pay and benefits, the outlet reported. Trump administration officials told the outlet that the move is a signal to help those who oppose President Donald Trump’s agenda find other work.
In addition to the offer, the WSJ reported that an aide to CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the agency is freezing its hiring for job seekers with conditional offers, with some expected to be rescinded if the agents don’t have the background necessary for the agency’s new direction.
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“Director Ratcliffe is moving swiftly to ensure the CIA workforce is responsive to the Administration’s national security priorities. These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the Agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position the CIA to deliver on its mission,” a CIA spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Ratcliffe was confirmed as the CIA’s new leader on Jan. 23, after the Senate approved him in a 74-25 vote. In his opening remarks during his confirmation process, Ratcliffe said he would adhere to the CIA’s core mission and focus on threats from the Chinese Communist Party.
“We will collect intelligence — especially human intelligence — in every corner of the globe, no matter how dark or difficult,” Ratcliffe said in his testimony. “We will produce insightful, objective, all-source analysis, never allowing political or personal biases to cloud our judgement or infect our products. We will conduct covert action at the direction of the president, going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.”
The move from the CIA comes a week after the U.S. Office of Personnel Management released an email on Jan. 28, showing that millions of federal employees were offered deferred compensation through Sept. 30, provided they submit their resignation notices by Feb. 6.
“If you choose to remain in your current position, we thank you for your renewed focus on serving the American people to the best of your abilities and look forward to working together as part of an improved federal workforce,” the email said. “At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions.”
Business
Liberals, globalists flip out after Trump orders USAID freeze
From LifeSiteNews
By Stephen Kokx
The foreign aid agency USAID has morphed into a slush fund for the Deep State to spread wokeism and to spark revolutions in countries that resist its tyrannical decrees. President Trump has had enough of this, and his administration is moving to dismantle the program.
How many Americans even knew what USAID was until this week? I’m guessing less than one percent.
For the uninformed: USAID was started by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Officially named the United States Agency for International Development, it spends over $40 billion in taxpayer dollars every year on various initiatives overseas; most of which are a complete waste of money, as Elon Musk and others have pointed out in recent days. See here:
Whatever good intentions Kennedy may have had for the program, it has morphed into a slush fund for the Deep State to spread wokeism and to spark revolutions in countries that resist its tyrannical decrees. All of this is done in the name of “defending democracy” mind you.
Under Joe Biden, USAID was run by World Economic Forum functionary Samantha Powers, who weaponized the agency to funnel boatloads of cash to Ukraine, among other futile projects.
That fact was pointed out by Balázs Orbán, the son of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, on X this week.
A CIA front group that promotes LGBT ideology overseas
President Trump has had enough of this. In his continued effort to drain the swamp, he signed an executive order empowering the newly created Department of Governmental Efficiency to dismantle USAID.
“I love the concept, but they turned out to be radical left lunatics,” he said about the agency in the Oval Office on Monday.
USAID’s website has already been shut down, and many of its liberal employees have been fired or barred from entering its headquarters in D.C., causing Democrats to hold a rally outside of it; because nothing shows the American people that you care about them more than defending a program designed to spend their money in foreign lands. Talk about being out of touch.
Oddly enough, left-wing Jesuit priest James Martin also defended the agency by claiming that Jesus would support it as well. He was rightly called out by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on X.
Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been named USAID’s interim director. He told the media this week that its rogue behavior has come to an end.
“USAID has a history of ignoring [the national interest of the United States] and deciding that they’re a global charity. These are not donor dollars, these are taxpayer dollars,” he said.
Other lawmakers and mainstream pundits have jumped on the bandwagon as well.
“To my friends who are upset, call somebody who cares. You better get used to this. It’s USAID today, it’s gonna be Department of Education tomorrow,” GOP Senator John Kennedy said.
“It’s not foreign aid — it’s a foreign slush fund,” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham has argued, as has Glenn Beck.
Trump’s “Rapid Response” X account joined in on the fun by highlighting some of the many ways the agency has wasted your and my money on LGBT and DEI causes abroad.
Democrats melt down as Trump takes aim
Liberals have been unable to control themselves. News that fewer tax dollars will be spent promoting their woke religion has left them apoplectic.
This is a “coup,” thundered an emotional Joy Reid on MSNBC.
Fellow MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki ludicrously claimed that the agency helps with “humanitarian” causes and “works to combat corruption.”
Van Jones said on CNN the rolling back of funding is Trump telling the world to “go die.”
Total nonsense.
Like Freemasonry, USAID may feed the poor and help some impoverished people, but that is just cover to hide its true aim, which is to sow discord in countries that reject the NATO and U.S. empire.
USAID has done this for decades, primarily by funding non-governmental organizations (and even extremists) that cause headaches for leaders who refuse to be slaves to the West. This has been the case in the nation of Georgia over the past several years. See here:
CNN’s Scott Jennings, a Republican, made a comment about how USAID has been appropriated by liberals that really hits the nail on the head with what has gone wrong with it.
“There is a difference between soft power and soft stupidity. So whether you’re funding DEI musicals in some country or transgender surgery somewhere or whatever, that is not what most Americans would say is an effective part of U.S. foreign policy.”
USAID funded the Wuhan lab in China
Perhaps the most attention-grabbing headline that has emerged with the USAID story is the revelation that the agency funneled $40 million to a lab in Wuhan, China, to study bat coronaviruses.
“Records prove that Ben Hu — COVID’s likely ‘Patient Zero’ — is a Wuhan white coat funded directly by Fauci, NIT & USAID to conduct dangerous coronavirus gain of function experiments on animals!” watchdog group White Coat Waste Project posted on X today.
Fauci has long denied being involved in such measures, but GOP Senator Ran Paul has never backed down from disputing his claims. He likewise challenged Samantha Powers about USAID money going to Wuhan as well.
Last week, Paul announced his intention to continue digging into the matter, given Biden’s preemptive pardoning of Fauci.
Today, Paul re-shared an X post from political activist Matt Kibbe that suggested he is on the cusp of blowing the whole thing wide open.
“NIAID and USAID were money-laundering puppets for agencies prohibited from doing dangerous gain-of-function bioterrorism research. Now, Rand Paul and Elon Musk are poised to expose the whole scheme,” Kibbe said.
USAID has misspent taxpayer money in countless other ways as well. Many of the downright bizarre programs are being shared on X. Here are a few of them:
It should be noted that Rand Paul’s father, former Congressman Ron Paul, has been a critic of the Deep State for decades. In a recent video message, he called on the government to audit USAID and then shut it down. Elon Musk re-shared the video, calling it an “interesting” proposal.
That’s good advice. I hope Elon and Trump will take it and follow through on it. Ending USAID is long overdue.
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