Elon Musk, leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, said he was told that there is about a $100 billion annual payment of entitlements to individuals without a Social Security Number or even a temporary identity number.
Musk made this known in a statement through his X account on Saturday, clarifying what DOGE Team and US Treasury have jointly agreed on in the past few days.
Recall that DOGE, backed by US President Donald Trump, swung into action to cut costs across agencies, including the US Treasury Department and the US Agency for International Development, USAID.
Explaining DOGE’s efforts at the Treasury Department, Musk said, “Yesterday (Friday), I was told that there are currently over $100 billion per year of entitlement payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious.
“When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50 billion per year or $1 billion per week!”
“This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately,” he stated.
This comes as a DOGE is pushing for access to US Treasury Department payment records.
As of the earlier hours of Saturday, US District Judge Paul Engelmayer blocked DOGE from accessing the personal financial data of millions of Americans in Treasury Department records.
(Why is the judge blocking the access to follow through as to who is receiving all of this money without any identification?)
Recently, DOGE dismantled USAID, affecting all, but roughly 600 members of its 10,000-plus staff around the world who were placed on leave.
During his remarks from the Senate floor this week on the Department of Government Efficiency, Senator John Kennedy sounded the alarm over U.S.A.I.D. spending.
‘Age is all in the mind. When you get up, think you’re 21,’ Bernie Ecclestone says – Ruben Hollinger
Night has fallen in Gstaad, as the beau monde defy unusually mild, slushy snow conditions with some opulent après-ski. It has long been the place for people-watching, this achingly chic Swiss Alpine village where you find a 15th-century chapel nestled alongside a Valentino boutique. “The last paradise in a crazy world,” Julie Andrews called it, while a former manager of the Gstaad Palace swore that he saw Elizabeth Taylor here with five different husbands. Today, the residents hardly come more recognisable than Bernie Ecclestone, who, at 7pm sharp as arranged, arrives in the lobby of the Arc-en-Ciel restaurant with his wife Fabiana and their four-year-old son, Ace.
At 94, Ecclestone still projects an aura perfected during his 40 years as Formula One’s all-powerful impresario. Just as A-listers and heads of state would once genuflect to this diminutive figure on a race grid, the staff at his local pizzeria have memorised his preferences, right down to his favourite cushioned chair in the corner. Not that he is in formal mode tonight. He has just flown in from London, having accepted an award reflecting his six-decade contribution to the world’s most cut-throat sport. “These lifetime awards, they’re a bit stupid,” he mutters. “Why don’t you wait until somebody has died? Surely we’re going to do more things before we die.”
When I suggest that it simply allows recipients to see their life’s work recognised while they are alive, he shrugs. Ecclestone has never been one to wallow in nostalgia or to be comfortable with extravagant praise. He turned down a knighthood in the 1990s on the pretext that he was “too busy”. Except the fuller story was that he felt he had not accomplished enough to earn it. “Whatever I did, I did for myself,” he says. “If somebody benefited from that, good. But it was never my intention. I thought these awards should only be for people who had captured a country, gone back to the Queen and given her the keys. ‘There you go, we’ve captured India.’
There can be few men who have done as much to change the face of F1 as Ecclestone – AP/David Ramos
“I’m probably praised for a lot of things that I don’t deserve. I’m not looking for it, though. I’m not hoping that people stop me on the pavement. If they want to do it, good on them. What I don’t like is when they say something that isn’t genuine.”
‘I hope my son doesn’t look at me as the old man’
He orders his go-to dish, the Gorgonzola pizza, washed down with sparkling water. Given that he is battling a stubborn dose of winter flu, he avoids alcohol, explaining that two different doctors have prescribed a course of “rest, water and not getting aggravated”. While I stressed in advance that we could reschedule dinner if he was unwell, he would not hear of it, treating his ailment as a trifling speed bump. Two golden rules you learn in dealing with Ecclestone are that he always returns a telephone call and always, barring calamity, honours an appointment. Even when the eruption of an Icelandic volcano briefly grounded most global air travel in 2010, he arranged for his private jet to route around the giant ash plume in order to return to London from a trip to Shanghai.
Ecclestone expresses his philosophy on life thus: “Age is all in the mind. When you get up, think you’re 21.” It has been eight years since he relinquished his F1 supremacy, but he has stayed true to this core principle. In 2020, he became a father at 89, which by some accounts made him the sixth oldest in human history. The age range of his children is surely unsurpassed: while Ace is five in July, his eldest daughter Deborah turns 70 this year. Does it matter? To see him interact with Ace is to be reminded of any other paternal dynamic, as he fusses over the toddler’s temperature – he has been running a fever all day – and whether his colouring pencils are sufficiently sharp.
Ecclestone with his son Ace in Gstaad in 2023 – Ruben Hollinger
On the outside, Ecclestone is an unsentimental soul. He jokes that when the time comes for Fabiana to put him in a cardboard box, she should first ensure the box is DHL-branded so that she can make some advertising money (the Formula One sponsorship deal he struck with the delivery firm more than 20 years ago is still going strong). And yet when discussing Ace, or the precious time he has to watch him grow up, he betrays a faint hint of vulnerability. “I hope that he doesn’t look at me as the old man,” he says. “I try to be the way he would want me to be. He’s a bright little boy, so he needs to be treated as such.”
As the consummate deal-maker, hardwired to live in the moment, he almost never offers any concession to his own mortality. It falls to others to marvel at how he has sustained such a pace so long into his golden years. As far back as 2012, I recall one of his assistants saying incredulously of his work ethic: “82? For f—’s sake.” He is hardly slacking at 94. The only difference is that instead of crossing continents every fortnight, he has the kingpins of sport travel to him. One week he is dining with Juan Antonio Samaranch Jnr, a frontrunner to become Thomas Bach’s successor as president of the International Olympic Committee. The next he is entertaining Serbian business mogul Dragan Solak, the owner of Southampton.
‘I’m probably praised for a lot of things that I don’t deserve,’ says Ecclestone – Ruben Hollinger
But his 94th birthday brought a change in outlook. “You have to face up to reality,” he acknowledges. “When you’re 80, you tell yourself, “Maybe I can crack the whip for another five or six years.’ Then you’re 90 and you think, ‘Bloody hell.’ Now people say to me, ‘You’re going to live to 120.’ It’s all nonsense, obviously. What I don’t want, when they put me in the box or the oven, is to leave problems for people. Not for Fabiana, not for my children, not for anyone. I don’t want to leave any mysteries for them. I want them to be able to go on and live their lives as normal.”
To this end, Ecclestone has taken the extraordinary step of putting his entire collection of historic grand prix and Formula One cars up for sale. Together these 69 cars could be worth, at a conservative estimate, £500 million. Many, not least the title-winning Ferraris driven by Alberto Ascari, Niki Lauda and Michael Schumacher, are impossible to value, having never come on to the open market before. Tom Hartley Jnr, the British classic car dealer handling the sale, describes it as “quite simply the most important race car collection in the world”. At least two nation states are already reputed to be interested. One, Ecclestone indicates, is Saudi Arabia.
Ecclestone’s car collection is impressive, to say the least
A popular theory is that he is only contemplating this move after pleading guilty in 2023 to fraud, having failed to declare a trust that held assets worth more than £416 million. Prosecutors told Southwark Crown Court that he would pay a record £652 million to HM Revenue and Customs, while he was given a suspended jail sentence of 17 months. But Ecclestone has insisted this played no part in his willingness to sell off the family silver.
“It’s very easy,” he says. “With a bit of luck I might get two or three more years. And I don’t want to leave all this for Fabiana to sort. All these car dealers would be driving her mad. So the best thing to do is to get all the cars together and try to make sure they go to proper homes. Ace might not be interested in handling all this either. He might be more into football. Sooner or later, this had to happen. I’m still more or less in control, so I can do what I like. Maybe in another year I won’t be able to.”
Ecclestone met his third wife Fabiana in Brazil and they married in 2012 – Instagram
He met Fabiana, a 48-year-old Brazilian lawyer, while she was working at the grand prix in Sao Paulo in 2009, with the couple marrying here in Gstaad three years later. The relationship has not been short on incident. In 2019, Ecclestone called me to his Knightsbridge office, where they disclosed how they had been blackmailed over the kidnapping of his wife’s mother, with the man responsible even seeking to frame them falsely for the crime before she was released. Life has since produced a subtle role reversal: with Bernie technically retired, Fabiana works as vice-president for the FIA, F1’s global governing body, in charge of South America.
‘Hamilton won’t last two seasons at Ferrari’
Not that her husband is shy of holding forth on the sport that he made his fiefdom. Take Lewis Hamilton’s £50 million-a-year switch from Mercedes to Ferrari, the storyline consuming the F1 paddock’s focus this winter. The two have often been mutual antagonists, with the seven-time world champion calling in 2022 for Ecclestone to be de-platformed over his controversial comments. Except Ecclestone, having since criticised Hamilton for everything from his gesture politics to his rainbow helmet, is no longer in any mood to soft-pedal his views.
“I don’t think Lewis will get the same attention at Ferrari,” he says. “Firstly, the team are happy with Charles Leclerc, his team-mate. Leclerc speaks their language [he’s fluent in Italian], so they’ll be looking after him. Even if Lewis does well, there’ll still be a lot of enemies, because he has suddenly arrived.” Might age – Hamilton is 40, Leclerc 27 – prove a factor? “I have my theory about this. It’s not the age with drivers, it’s how long they have been doing the same thing. I have thought with Lewis, ‘He’s getting tired. He has lost motivation.’ If he had never won a world championship, it might be different, because then there would be an incentive to win one. But he has won seven.”
As ringmaster, he understood Hamilton’s peerless commercial value. Still, the attached circus, including the driver’s outré sartorial choices and preoccupation with social media, brought them frequently into conflict. “Lewis gets himself up front in a way where you can dislike him,” Ecclestone argues. “How a guy who has won a few world titles and has a few dollars in the bank can dress the way he dresses… I’m not a fan of that. He has a lot of talent as a driver. As much as people credit him with? No, but still enough to win races. I don’t know why he does all this other nonsense. He needs to get out of the music business and whatever else.”
Lewis Hamilton’s dress sense and activities outside of F1 do not sit well with Ecclestone – Getty Images/Dan Istitene
Even though Schumacher was never the same behind the wheel beyond the age of 40, Ferrari have enlisted Hamilton for a minimum two seasons. “He won’t last that long,” Ecclestone predicts. “Piero Ferrari, who has taken him there, still thinks they’ve done the right thing. I hope they have. I hope they haven’t just jumped in and end up wishing they hadn’t.”
As we eat, the snow falling softly against the restaurant windows, he remembers he has to call his daughter Petra to let her know he has landed. Among the Ecclestone clan, Petra, 36, and her older sister Tamara, 40, have rarely been out of the limelight, courting publicity through both their modelling and lavish property portfolios. But such wealth offered scant protection against last month’s devastating wildfires, with Petra and her four children evacuated from their £30 million Los Angeles mansion. “The house was very close to the Pacific Palisades fire,” her father says. “Her daughter’s school called her to say, ‘Come and get Lavinia now.’ She went and picked her up – and the next day the school had burnt down.”
‘Trump is a good dealer… Starmer doesn’t know what he’s doing’
In discussing events in the United States, it feels apt to explore his perspective on the re-election of Donald Trump. After all, Trump’s instinctively autocratic style, coupled with his disinclination to take no for an answer, has its similarities with Ecclestone’s own. “Trump is the best thing that could happen to the world,” he declares. “As I’ve said right from day one, he is a dealer. He puts it like this: ‘OK, you don’t want me to do this? Well, this is what I want you to do. So, let’s do a deal. I’ll back off a little, but you have to wake up.’ He’s a good dealer.”
They dealt with each other directly 15 years ago, when Ecclestone tried and failed to launch the Grand Prix of America, with the Manhattan skyline as a panoramic backdrop. One roadblock, he admits, was Trump’s insistence – as New York’s most flamboyant developer – on having his name plastered over everything. “I eventually said to him, ‘Do you know what? The only thing you haven’t asked to have your name on is toilet paper.’” Still, this shamelessness as a negotiator also earned his respect. “I would love to have had him as a partner in my used-car business.” From Ecclestone, the man who first forged his reputation as Warren Street’s finest second-hand car dealer, there could be no greater compliment.
Ecclestone attended the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in Kitzbuehel at the end of last month – Getty Images/Klaus Pressberger
As such, his expectations on Trump’s return to the White House are high. “Forget the word, ‘President’. He’s the chief executive of USA Limited. He’s running the country like a company. It’s for the shareholders and for everyone in that company. People who work there, he tries to look after.” There are parallels, certainly, between Trump’s pushback against diversity initiatives and Ecclestone’s repeated demands for his more activist drivers to stick to sport. “That’s what a good chief executive does. Trump wouldn’t be won over by, ‘My auntie or my great-grandfather did this.’ He picks people for what they are, not for what they’d like to be.”
Ecclestone, approving of Trump’s attempts to eliminate the “woke c–p” across US federal agencies, defines wokery as “people trying to make themselves look like what they’re not”. Portraying the re-election as a turning of the tide in this sense, he says: “He wants people to be honest and up front. He doesn’t want them to keep hiding behind something or saying things that aren’t honest. If he has got something to say, he says it. If it happens to upset somebody, that’s how it goes.” That sounds very much like a certain “Mr E”? “Yeah. You call it as it is.”
While he bases himself in Switzerland these days, Ecclestone has still kept his Kensington pied-à-terre. He just wishes, he says, that the country he calls home could be more expertly run. He famously donated £1 million to Labour in 1997, the year of Tony Blair’s election, leading to a scandal when the government later announced that F1 would be exempt from its ban on tobacco advertising. Today, Ecclestone exhibits far less enthusiasm for Sir Keir Starmer. “I don’t believe any of those people, including the Prime Minister, are bad people. The problem is that they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s like employing a dentist if you’re really looking for a heart specialist.” Does he worry that Labour could be easily outmanoeuvred by Trump? “Oh, it won’t be difficult for anybody to do that,” he replies. “They’re not bright enough to control what they’re supposed to be controlling.”
It is a sobering analysis to hear as the waiter brings us decadent Swiss chocolate mousse for dessert. Then again, he seldom sugar-coats his opinions on anyone he deems not up to the task. He can be intensely loyal to his fellow strong-men, but lethal to those he considers feeble. It is a key reason why so many of sport’s top executives still beat a path to his door. For the truth is that whatever you think of Ecclestone – and he could scarcely care less, six years shy of a telegram from the King – he still convinces as a font of wisdom, a force of nature whose like we shall not see again.
Mr. Gere speaks out to garner some attention prior to his award. One rich man jealous of another rich man who is helping the world. Mr. Gere talks the talk – does he walk the walk?
With the Biden/Obama/Harris/Pelosi/Schumer administration, we almost lost our country to socialism and seems he is sorry we didn’t elect the word salad lady.
No more PRETTY LADY!
Sorry, Mr Gere, just like you, nothing belongs to any of us, we are borrowing it from God. We had nothing since Obama except a taste of the goodness of America with four years of 2016 Trump; and, now, you are complaining because the people are not suffering under your progressives any longer?
The actor will receive the International Goya Award in Granada on Saturday, marking the 50th anniversary of his debut in the film industry.
Richard Gere, who will receive the International Goya Award in Granada on Saturday, marking the 50th anniversary of his debut in the film industry, has warned at the Alhambra about the current political situation in the United States since the return of Donald Trump to power, describing it as a “dark marriage” of power and money, as reported by Europa Press. “Billionaires are now in charge of America,” he denounced.
The renowned American actor and producer is the most internationally recognized guest visiting the Nasrid site these days, on the eve of the 39th Goya Awards ceremony at the Granada Conference Center. He held a press conference at the Palace of Charles V, within the Nasrid monumental complex, before a private visit.
The star of ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ pointed out that “we need to be vigilant” as they were not aware of “how quickly” the new Trump administration would progress. The actor lamented that there are “billionaires in charge of America today,” which he believes poses “a danger to all people on this planet.”
This “dark marriage” of power and money is “irresponsible and dangerously corrosive,” Gere stated, expressing, in the presence of his wife, Spanish Alejandra Silva, his “gratitude” for the “opportunities” his artistic career has provided him, as well as his concern for social causes such as homelessness.
The actor, known for roles that brought him worldwide fame such as Edward Lewis in ‘Pretty Woman,’ described the current political moment in the United States as “deeply disturbing” and expressed being “shocked” considering that “the people spoke and chose this president, and that is a fact.”
Nevertheless, “the people who voted for him didn’t even think he would do what he promised to do,” and it has been shown that it can be “even worse,” referring to the “dark depth” of everything he has been doing in recent weeks.
(It seems the corruption of the Democrat Progressives was okay with Mr. Gere as long as they are in charge.)
Gere specifically mentioned the decision to close international organizations and programs that were doing extraordinary work, such as those assisting people with HIV in Africa. He highlighted the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as “one of the best humanitarian programs in the world” and hopes that “people will stand up” against the “very dark times” ahead.
When asked by journalists if Hollywood could be at risk, he stated that “the world is at risk” with people doing “one dark thing after another” since Trump, whom he did not refer to by name at any point, took office in the White House.
(Strange he didn’t mention Biden/Obama/Harris/Schumer/Pelosi’s corruption – Just President Trump cleaning out the swamp that Biden/Obama/Harris/Pelosi/Schumer weaponized the government against the American people.)
Living in Spain allows him to see “how happy his wife is,” as well as enjoy the “great” food and people of this land. He praised his friend Antonio Banderas ahead of the ceremony on Saturday, where he is expected to receive the International Goya Award, declining to comment on the social media posts of actress Karla Sofía Gascón.
Although he remembered Granada and the Alhambra with fewer tourists when he visited four decades ago, he was impressed by “the incredible dance of history” in this Andalusian heritage site, where he also reflected on the evolution of American cinema throughout his career, during which he had the opportunity to shoot “wonderful” films.
El Mundo
He acknowledged that the business model of major studios has changed, stating that while “large investments are needed to make a film,” truly independent cinema is very challenging. Expressing his fascination with Spain and his desire to learn more about Spanish culture, particularly Andalusian culture, he mentioned that he would be delighted to make a film in his current country of residence.
When asked, almost obligatory while in Granada, about Federico García Lorca, he mentioned that the poet from Fuente Vaqueros is known “worldwide,” as evidenced in places like New York.
The Spanish Film Academy announced on January 30th that Gere was awarded the International Goya for his “extraordinary contribution to the film industry, starring in some of the most iconic films in cinema history, and his social commitment, demonstrated both personally and professionally, over decades.”
He will be the fourth recipient of the International Goya in history, following actresses Cate Blanchett, Juliette Binoche, and Sigourney Weaver. The Academy highlighted the actor’s “undeniable” physical appeal, as he has been acting for five decades and will receive the International Goya Award in the year marking the 50th anniversary of his debut in the film industry.
Terrence Malick, Francis Ford Coppola, John Schlesinger, Robert Altman, Paul Schrader, Richard Brooks, Lasse Hallström, Mike Figgis, Todd Haynes, Rob Marshall, Mira Nair, and Jerry Zucker are some of the directors who have worked with the star of ‘Days of Heaven,’ ‘An Officer and a Gentleman,’ ‘Breathless,’ ‘Looking for Mr. Goodbar,’ ‘Hachiko: A Dog’s Story,’ ‘Internal Affairs,’ ‘Mr. Jones,’ ‘First Knight,’ ‘The Jackal,’ ‘The Hoax,’ ‘I’m Not There,’ ‘The Flock,’ ‘Amelia,’ and ‘Brooklyn’s Finest.’
Gere, who was born in Philadelphia 75 years ago and grew up in a small town in Upstate New York, has collaborated with actresses such as Julia Roberts, Kim Basinger, Jodie Foster, Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton, Diane Lane, and Uma Thurman.
Among his accolades is the Donostia Award from the San Sebastián Film Festival, which he received in 2007. Gere has been residing in Spain since last autumn and was even spotted this past Christmas following the Three Kings Parade in Madrid at the InterContinental Hotel.
Furthermore, thirty years ago, he founded the Gere Foundation to channel his intense activism in support of Tibetan autonomy and the preservation of Tibetan culture advocated by the Dalai Lama – the actor has been practicing Buddhism since he was 20 years old – as well as his support for the rights of indigenous peoples, refugees, and the homeless.
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We are glad Mr Gere is happy in Spain; but, his success was given to him in the U.S. His political flavor doesn’t mix with his movies. He shouldn’t bad mouth the “hand” that fed him all of those years – the public.
Rep Green is the joker. Why does Green want to create a STATE for terrorists. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Doesn’t he realize – are they are posing as Palestinians? They can’t be both.
The U.N. should disband all of the terrorist organizations in the world instead of patronizing them.
Explainer: Was Hamas Elected by a Majority of Palestinians in Gaza?
Nur Ibrahim
Mon, November 6, 2023 at 3:57 PM CST
20 min read235
Ashraf Amra/Anadolu/Getty Images
In October 2023, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas intensified, a key claim about Hamas’ ties to the population of Gaza went viral without important historical context. A number of people online argued the majority of Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, a Sunni Islamist political party and military organization that’s considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and European Union (EU) — implying that most of today’s population in Gaza supports the militant group’s actions toward Israel.
For instance, a post by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stated that when Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, Palestinians supposedly had the opportunity to turn it into “an amazing and beautiful state.” Instead, he wrote, “A majority of Palestinians voted Hamas whose explicit goal is to destroy Israel,” and Hamas’ subsequent rocket firing, according to Bennett, forced the Israeli military to form a anti-Semitic statements on the Gaza Strip.
Another post on X (formerly Twitter) by Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at George Mason University, said, “Fact check: the majority of Palestinian people in Gaza elected Hamas, which ran on a kill-all-the-Jews platform; and it remains widely popular in Gaza.” (We reached out to Kontorovich for comment, and his response will be summarized below.)
“Ethnic cleansing in Gaza is not a joke,” the Democrat said on the House floor. “Especially when it emanates from the president of the United States.”
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Didn’t the Democrats send money to Hamas to fight Israel?
President Trump won the election by a large margin and Rep Green lost. Green doesn’t seem to like the swamp being cleaned and is now trying to do another impeachment on President Trump.
El Mundo
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