Vice President Kamala Harris’ former campaign finance chair is reportedly launching a strategic advisory firm to advise companies and corporate executives on social justice and other political issues, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Jon Henes, a corporate attorney at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, plans to launch the New York-based group in early September, CNBC first reported. Henes was the national campaign finance chair for Harris’ campaign during the 2020 election and later moved his fundraising efforts to support then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden, according to CNBC.

One source familiar with the matter noted the new advisory firm is initially planning to hire at least 15 people and could later expand operations to Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco, CNBC reported. The firm will also include teams that focus on environmental, social and corporate governance, along with workplace diversity, equity and inclusion, sources added. . . .

Whitey Bulger had threatened to reveal how the FBI helped him in his criminal activity. After his threats to reveal all, he was “inexplicably” transferred to a notorious prison known for violence and murders and placed in the general population.

Whitey Bulger and the FBI – The 60 Minutes report. Whitey Bulger left loose to rob, extort and murder with the FBI’s assistance. Bulger associate says he committed up to 80 murders on the FBI watch and assistance.

What is the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) doing spying on American citizens?

The FBI has been seriously abusing its warrantless electronic surveillance authority on American Citizens. This should alarm you.

Congressmen Jim Jordan and Andy Biggs are demanding answers from FBI Director Christopher Wray after a newly declassified opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court revealed “widespread” Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) violations.

This is outrageous. The @FBI has a growing credibility problem and this type of sinister snitching is clearly unhelpful.

Why hasn’t the @fbi made more progress finding the BLM rioters from last summer? Why hasn’t the @fbi leadership apologized for the Russian hoax they pushed? https://t.co/twmZp7M1wI

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) July 11, 2021

This is the kind of brutal murder that happens regularly in Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago.

“I’m a patriot and I love this nation. And I believe in the people standing up against the government in the correct way. So, if that makes me radical and an extremist, so be it. Put me on a list. I’m okay with it. . . . At the same time all of this is going on in Cuba, the very people who would stand up against the tyranny in this nation, the oppression in this nation, the very people who are being oppressed whether it’s through social media or the government itself, those are the people they (FBI) are wanting on a list. Not gang members, not people who are in organized crime. They are not asking for any of Hunter Biden’s drug friends. They want good loving, America loving patriots on that list.” ~ Former Navy Seal Jonathan Gilliam

The United States and 20 other countries have issued a joint statement expressing concern about the current and future outlook of press freedom in Hong Kong.

The group of 21 governments—part of the “Media Freedom Coalition” that was established in 2019 to advocate for press freedom and the safety of journalists—pointed to the recent forced closure of Apple Daily, a major pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong, and the arrest of the paper’s staff.

“The use of the National Security Law to suppress journalism is a serious and negative step which undermines Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and the rights and freedoms of people in Hong Kong, as provided for in the Hong Kong Basic Law and the Sino-British Joint Declaration,” the July 10 statement reads.

Freedoms in the financial hub have been disappearing at an alarming rate after the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) imposition of its draconian national security law last summer. Since then, dozens of the city’s pro-democracy opposition leaders are now either facing prosecution or sitting in jail, if they haven’t already fled overseas as political refugees.

Recently, Amnesty International stated that the law “has put Hong Kong on a rapid path to becoming a police state and created a human rights emergency for the people living there.” Reporters Without Borders called on democracies around the world “to put more pressure on the Chinese regime to end its authoritarian policies and ensure the restoration of press freedom” in Hong Kong. . . .

Violent offences committed by men who self-identify as female are being recorded as having been perpetrated by women – leading to claims that the practice is distorting official crime figures.

It was highlighted by the case of former police support officer Zoe Watts, who was jailed last week for a string of offences including building an improvised bomb and having a cache of illegal weapons including knives and a stun gun.

The 35-year-old worked for Lincolnshire Police for eight years. . . .

Israel, and Jews, can’t get a break these days — even from kid-lit authors.

Addressing the US surge in anti-Semitism, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators finally condemned Jew-hatred in a statement last month — but only to water it down with a later post.

Anti-Semitism has fueled “a 75% increase in hate speech and random violence against Jewish people,” read the group’s initial statement. “As writers, illustrators, and translators of children’s literature, we are responsible for promoting equity” for “all children and all families.”

The group warned that “silence” on such an issue “is often mistaken for acceptance” and urged readers to speak out “against all forms of hate, including antisemitism.”

Yet after some pushback — particularly from one Palestinian-American activist and writer — the group posted an apology to “everyone in the Palestinian community who felt unrepresented, silenced or marginalized” and to the activist, in particular, for deleting her posts on its Facebook page (which it apparently first considered hateful) and blocking her on Twitter.

SCBWI’s diversity chief, a black Jewish woman, actually resigned, saying she regrettably “neglected to address the rise in Islamophobia” — and later reported getting death threats. . . .

While the tech giant Amazon has publicly endorsed proposals to raise the corporate tax rate in the United States, the company has been secretly lobbying to keep its own tax rates low, Politico reports.

Last year, during the 2020 presidential election, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos openly supported then-candidate Joe Biden’s proposals to raise taxes on American corporations. Those proposals have re-emerged in recent weeks as a possible means of funding a possible infrastructure bill, and Biden has been advocating for other countries around the world to adopt higher corporate tax rates as well.

But recently, Amazon has been stepping up its lobbying efforts to try to convince Congress and the White House to allow the company to keep using certain tax breaks in order to keep its own rates low. The retail giant hired a tax lobbyist named Joshua Odintz, who formerly worked as a Democratic aide on Capitol Hill and then as an official in the Obama Administration. In addition to Amazon’s own efforts, similar lobbying has been undertaken by a group known as the “R&D Coalition,” which consists of several companies and organizations including Amazon, Intel, and the National Association of Manufacturers.

Odintz and the R&D Coalition have been lobbying in favor of preserving the “research and development tax deduction.” First implemented in 1981, the R&D deduction includes a tax credit that incentivizes companies to invest more in R&D in exchange for tax breaks on all expenditures related to these areas of spending.

Although the R&D deduction is not the only method through which Amazon and other companies can lower their own taxes, Amazon confirmed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the bulk of its tax reductions “were primarily related to the U.S. federal research and development credit.”

While the exact amount of money saved by this credit alone remains uncertain, Matthew Gardner, senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said that it is “very likely they’re getting hundreds of millions of dollars a year in R&D tax credits.”

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed by Congress in 2017 and signed into law by President Donald Trump, actually took steps to reduce the impact of the R&D tax credit. The law required companies to deduct their total amounts of R&D funding every year over the course of five years, which reduced the overall value of the tax break.

When asked about the possible R&D loophole, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, speaking on behalf of the Biden Administration, said that “promoting innovation is a critical priority…continuing to allow firms to expense R&D rather than shifting to amortizing could be one very effective way to bring that about.”

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Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.