Federal Racket-Follow the Money-Tammany Hall 2.0 and Big U.S. Media

According to Oxford Languages: "racketeering" is defined as "dishonest and fraudulent business dealings." According to Britannica: "Tammany Hall, the executive committee of the Democratic Party in New York City historically exercising political control through the typical “boss-ist” blend of charity and patronage. Its name was derived from that of an association that predated the American Revolution..." "For more than three decades after its organization, Tammany represented middle-class opposition to the Federalist Party. However, its “democracy” did not incorporate the aspirations of the lower economic groups. During this period it lost its national and nonpolitical character and became intimately identified with [corrupt] politics in New York City."

Tammany Hall became synonymous with political corruption and Democratic politics in New York City for decades. Per Fiveable's library: "Known for its influence over immigrant communities and its involvement in corrupt practices, Tammany Hall was a key player in shaping urban politics and exemplified the challenges of political reform during a time of rapid change in America."

With that backdrop, from the WND News Center to this writer for MHProNews and this Patch is the following in Part I which will be bolstered by additional insights plus other topics covered in Part II.

Part I

Check out the corporate media outlets raking in taxpayer cash

Cited are 'Politico, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones & Co Inc., The Associated Press'
By Wallace White, Daily Caller News Foundation| February 6, 2025

A host of corporate media outlets and their parent companies took in taxpayer cash from government customers over the last decade, federal records reveal.

Outlets such as Politico, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones & Co Inc., The Associated Press and others raked in taxpayer dollars from a myriad of federal agencies, according to public U.S. spending records. Trust in the corporate media has plummeted to its lowest levels since at least 1972, as numerous reporting blunders from major outlets continue to drive trust down.

Politico has taken a grand total of $35,018,269 in obligated taxpayer dollars in the form of contracts from 2015 to present day, with some longer-term contracts extending all the way to 2029, according to the spending data. Politico Pro subscriptions accounted for $8.2 million of spending, which includes a networking framework in addition to granting access to paid content, according to Politico's website.

A subscription to Politico Pro can cost approximately $10,000, and is commonly used among Hill staff of both parties. Politico's customers included the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Agriculture, and The Executive Office of the President (EOP) among many other agencies, according to spending data.

Politico CEO Goli Sheikholeslami said in a Wednesday memo to staff that the outlet has "never been the beneficiary of government programs or subsidies," and that the "overwhelming majority" of its customers are in the private sector.

Dow Jones & Co Inc. raked in more than $4 million in government contracts, which included purchases of WSJ content from the DOD, the EOP and the Department of Treasury among many other government customers, according to spending data. Other purchases reflected in the total included Dow Jones Risk Compliance services, Factiva, a business intelligence database, and access to Barron's, another outlet owned by the parent firm.

The AP, and its associated "child recipient" Press Association, Inc., have received one of the larger investments from the government, topping over $50 million in total awards for various services, according to spending data.

The AP received a $19,502,333 contract from the U.S. Agency for Global Media (AGM), stretching from 2017 to 2022, according to spending records. Additionally, the AGM is slated to dish out at least $5 million by 2027 to have "enterprise-wide access to the wire services including text, video, photo and images."

The AP told CNN in a statement Wednesday that the government has "long been an AP customer — through both Democratic and Republican administrations."

"It licenses AP's nonpartisan journalism, just like thousands of news outlets and customers around the world," the AP told CNN. "It's quite common for governments to have contracts with news organizations for their content."

The State Department also handed out over $400,000 to the AP from 2019 to 2024 to aid the outlet's overseas expansion in the Pacific, with countries like Laos, Timor-Leste and other "Pacific island nations or territories" considered, according to spending records.

The NYT received a total of $3,107,520 worth of obligated contract awards from 2003 to 2025, with a significant part of the contracts being subscriptions to the newspaper in print and online, according to spending data. NYT customers included the DoD, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Department of Transportation and others.

Other purchases included advertisements from various agencies, including the U.S. Air Force and VA, according to the data.

Trust for national news networks is 30% lower in 2024 than it was in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. Moreover, the data shows Republicans and young people are just as likely to trust social media for news as the traditional national news networks.

Incidents of false or misleading reporting only further drove distrust of the corporate media among the public.

Politico parroted the sentiment that the Hunter Biden laptop story was "Russian disinformation" in 2020, with two former reporters claiming they were advised against covering the story by senior staff. Hunter Biden was convicted on three felony counts related to buying the gun in June 2024, with the Department of Justice acknowledging the laptop as genuine and using it as evidence in their case against Hunter.

However, Hunter received a pardon from his father, President Joe Biden, on Dec. 1.

The NYT ran a story in 2021 claiming the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents pushed back Haitian migrants with whips at the southern border in Del Rio, Texas. However, a CBP investigation a year later found no evidence of whipping taking place, but the NYT did not take down their story.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a Wednesday press conference that the taxpayer funded Politico Pro subscriptions would be cancelled.

The New York Times and the AP did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation's request for comment.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Part II - Additional Information with More Analysis, Commentary, and Other Topics

The intersection between big government, big media, and big money interests has long been a close one in the U.S. and in other nations too. Ideally, the job of honest media is to hold institutions and the powerful in check. There are examples of good media and honest pundits or journalists. The emerging stories unearthed in the early days of Trump 2.0, from DOGE and other efforts, are spotlighting among other problematic and arguably corrupt practices are large payments made over the course of years to mainstream media outlets by parts of the federal government.

I would have phrased the following from YouTube a bit differently, but the producers of this Forgotten History video aptly remind us that so-called "fake news," once called yellow journalism, is hardly new. In this writer's view, and that of numbers of media experts, perhaps the most accurate way of looking at much (not all) of journalism is that it often leaves out important details. So the news is often paltering or half-truths, a topic that this writer introduced some months ago to readers of this ongoing series on this Patch.

Per their YouTube page for the video above is the following description.

"In recent years the television, radio and print media has lost all credibility for the most part. The legacy newspaper media outlets, such as The New York Times, Washington Post and others have become a tragic satire of their former reputations. People may differ on when they think that the mainstream media took a left turn into what they believe to be anti-Americanism, Marxist liberalism, or at the very least pushing false narratives, often fabricating news to push their political agenda at the expense of truthful journalism. This is not even in question. In fact, that has proven to be more true than ever by the conduct of the larger media outlets, who continued the legacy of “Yellow Journalism” and even when their fake news is proven to be false rarely generates a corrective response let alone an apology from those purveyors of fake news. Public faith in news has never been so low as it is today. Was William Hearst the father of Fake News? Let's find out. Written and hosted by Colin D. Heaton. Forgotten History is a 10th Legion Pictures Production."

Let's pivot back to Tammany Hall. When corruption and cronyism become systemic, when abuses in the system are often covered up, downplayed or ignored, for those familiar with American History, it should be a reminder of the Tammany Hall era. But in the view of some, Tammany Hall never really ended. It simply kept morphing and moving.

The problem with big, bloated government is that corruption becomes easier to hide given the huge sums of money involved.

It was never a secret that President Donald J. Trump intended to have a team lead by billionaire Elon Musk do audits of the federal government. When Musk took over Twitter (now X.com), about 80 percent of the staff was eventually eliminated and several corrupt practices were reported in the Twitter Files. For those paying attention, despite the loss of so much staff, X functions about as well now as before, and the community comments may prove to be much better than left-leaning censorship was.

https://patch.com/florida/lake...

An old trick used by con artists is to blame their opponent for doing what the finger pointing con man is complaining about.

In my part of the affordable housing profession, it has been increasingly apparent for years that the federal government is failing to do its job properly. As an example. Every American who now rents could own a manufactured home of their own, paid for, if the money lost through waste, fraud, and corruption in the federal government had not been lost and had been used to buy every citizen/household a new manufactured home of their own on a modest piece of property. That's not meant as a policy proposal. Rather, it is said to spotlight how corrupt the federal system is.

It is also said to illustrate that if more people in media were pulling back the curtain and spotlighting what has been going wrong in America for decades we would not be sitting on a multi-trillion dollar debt. The waste, fraud, and corruption are enormous.

There are many reasons why 'the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.' One reason is because of corruption in government. When big government, big media, and big money (corporate) interests are colluding, one outcome is that corruption is obscured, overlooked, or worse.

With the good Lord willing and Trump 2.0 keeps up its early efforts, don't be surprised if trillions of dollars in corruption is uncovered. Attorney General Pam Bondi and her team will likely have plenty of work to do.

More on these and other select topics follow.

As one more historical note. Since at least the presidency of Ronald Reagan (R), there has been talk about cleaning up waste, fraud, and corruption in the federal government. Count on the fact that federal corruption long predates the Reagan era.

Thanks for checking in, we'll keep aiming to keep you informed on what's happening on various issues and why.

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L. A. “Tony” Kovach is a publisher who has earned multiple awards in history. He and his family live in a manufactured home on private property in Winter Haven, FL. He is the co-founder of Manufactured Home Living News.com (MHLivingNews.com) and Manufactured Home Pro News.com (MHProNews.com), trade publications serving segments of the manufactured home industry. Having worked in several segments of the manufactured home industry for over 3 decades, Kovach is a widely acknowledged and often praised expert on manufactured housing. ###