The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Pro America Report. This is Ryan Hite filling in here. This first segment of the show for Mr. Ed Martin. And I’m glad to be with you. Glad to have a lot of things to talk about today, but we are going to whittle it down into the biggies. The big things that you need to know, the big things that are going on and I promise you will not be bored throughout this entire next hour.
We got a lot of good stuff coming down the pike, but before we get there, let me remind you, go to proamericareport.com. That’s where you’re gonna find Ed’s substack and all the things he’s writing about. And also head to PhyllisSchlafly.com and at Phyllis schlafly.com is where you going to find the all important sign up for the WYNK e-mail. Every weekday morning and also the archives of this program, all the standalones, the guests, the links and resources, and of course, the podcast. There is where you can find it, share it and you will not be sorry that you’ve done so.
Like I said, we got a great show today. We’re gonna hear from Jason Jones. Amber Smith, our two guests. Jason Jones is a film producer. There is a new one coming up, a new book that he has The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset. Looking forward to hearing from him. And then, of course, Amber Smith a. Veteran helicopter pilot. She has another Great book that we’re going to talk about today. How the woke left is destroying the American military. But before we get there, let’s remind ourselves what it’s time for. It is time for the WYNK. What you need to know the first segment as we always have here on the Pro America Report, the what you need to know. And here’s what you need to know. We’re gonna have a great article that accompanies this. So you’re gonna see. We’ll post it on social media. And of course, it’s gonna be in the in the show notes if you head over to Phyllisschlafly.com. But if you go over there, you’re gonna find our. Great. What you need to know today and you’ll hear it here.
The Wikipedia fundraising scam.
That’s what you need to know. Wikipedia is a fundraising scam. Now we we actually talked about this. Mason and I talked about this on our last Unauthorized Caucus. There’s a shameless plug head to unauthorizedcaucus.com. We do a once a week live stream / podcast that you may take interest in a little longer form on a on a single topic. And we’ve talked about this but.
Wikipedia. Wikipedia is. It’s that it’s the devil that we all use, right? You know, we all know the common wisdom. You’re not supposed to link or reference Wikipedia because it’s not a reliable or citable source.
But we all use Wikipedia. You know why?
It’s a helpful tool. Wikipedia is awesome. And even though I don’t trust it, what’s there. I Use it as a launch point, something that gives me some of those basic things put together, or all in one place. I can go and look a couple of things up and then from there I can go find more information. Then I can go research what I found and verify it we’re in the same boat. You do it too. Trust me. Well, maybe you don’t if you don’t. Good for you. But I do. And I think most of us do. We use Wikipedia.
So trustworthiness of Wikipedia citing of Wikipedia or not, we all use it. So we’re all familiar with our lovely ads that pop up, right? They’re always asking us for money because we could be and. And I mean what you get from those is that this is some bare bones. Slim outfit of just a few folks who are doing the good work and trying to put together the Internet encyclopedia and they need our help and it runs on that kind of money.
I mean, it looks like that small nonprofit feel, right?
No. Nope, not at all. Not at all. In fact it is. Is a very scammy thing. When you start to dig in under the hood and realize what’s all connected to what. So let’s talk about this, where our donations are going, and we’re gonna give a shout out first and foremost. This is research pulled together by a great writer, Emil Kirkegaard. Kierkegaard. Pardon me if I’m mispronouncing some of the nuances there, but. He’s over doing his own thing at emilkierkegaard.com and we’ll put a link to this article, the Wikipedia fundraising scam. But it’s very interesting. He dives in and says, fine, how much money are you raising? Where is it all going? What are we doing? Let’s let’s check this out. Let us check this out.
So Wikipedia has a parent organization called WikiMedia – shocker. Right. Wikipedia. Wikimedia. Anyway I it’s. You don’t have to be creative when you’re literally naming things after. Well, things are named after you. Now the wikis of the Internet anyway. Wiki Media is the parent organization, so this has been making the rounds on Twitter. It seems to be because Chris Rufo, who is a conservative out there on the Twitter world X world he is attacking. The new CEO. Of. NPR, US, you know, quote unquote public radio. Katherine Maher.
Now Katherine Maher was previously the CEO of Wiki Media. So this has a lot of people looking into her past. And it has brought a lot of interesting Wikipedia fundraising information up into the spotlight. And this is where the word scam comes in.
There’s a great summary, and we’re just gonna run through a couple of things of it here. So it what seems like from our little pop up ads and the little please, you know donate monthly to keep our servers running well, guess what? It seems as though they’re begging for money because they have no sales people, they say, and they need to be online and growing. And I think that we all probably knew it wasn’t true, but it guess what, it’s really really, really not true.
All the way since 2003, 2003, they have pulled way more money than the Actual expenses, their revenue has been greater than the expenses. Every year and their bank account has grown since 2003.
Now, at the end of 2023, they had about $254 million sitting in the bank. $254,000,000. And yes, you go and look at all the IRS filings and you find out that is mostly money in the bank. That’s you know about $175,000,000 worth of various Stocks and bonds and securities with $250 million in the bank.
But then you say, well, what about all these expenditures? Let’s, let’s take a look at this. I mean, the expenditures expenses last year alone, 2022 to 2023, $169 million, how much does it take to run a website that’s communal? You might think? Well, it turns out only about $3,000,000 of their 169 Million total expenses last year was Internet Hosting. $3,000,000 of Internet hosting and yet they took in last year a total of $180 million and spent about $169 million. Only three million of it was hosting. Where did the rest of it go, you might ask.
Well, first of all, as you could likely imagine, there are some very bloated salaries. Involved, of course. Salaries are a huge money sink, but here to the tune of about $100 million last year. Again, thanks to IRS filings, you can see what’s going on. So you know this poor company with no sales people. Well, there Katherine Maher. As the executive director, at least in in 2021 made about. $800,000, her total income, total compensation about $800,000. Now that’s up significantly. The first executive director, at least that I saw back in the day, it was 2007, 75 thousand dollars was the increa, the the the compensation. 75,000 that started going up and up and up and up and up and up and up. And then someone new took over in 2014 and that was about $300,000, just over went up and up and up and up and up.
And then Katherine Maher, who has kicked off this whole conversation because of her entrance into NPR. Katherine Maher is the executive Director started her reign in 2016 at about $307,000 of total income. Well from 2016 to 21. That 307 dollars, $307,000 in compensation came up to about $789,000. That’s that’s just the salary side of it, but it gets dark when you dig into it. And this is where it’s probably not any big shock to you, but guess what?
Long story short, Wikipedia is a money laundering operation. My words not not Emil’s. My words. Basically a money laundering operation and so many other things are to shove their donations into Left wing progressive incubators nonprofits places where all of these groups pump money into different left wing causes. That’s exactly what’s happened.
So you start to run down this list and you realize what are they spending this other $166 million on outside of salaries and. Or not salaries. What are they spending this other $166 million?
Well, outside of that 3 million in hosting, 100 million for salaries comes off, which seems ridiculous, but we still got $66 million, guess what?
Lots of it is going to the Tides Foundation, that’s a left-leaning donor fund that is definitely affiliated with the Tides Advocacy, which is a huge progressive group that receives substantial funding from George Soros, who you may remember, we’ve talked about this week, is trying to buy the second largest Radio network in America right now. You know, but you start looking at what they back.
There’s equity, DEI, racial justice and equality, tons of stuff that has to do with essentially the woke agenda.
Basically, Wikipedia is a great analogy of government. Someone said that. Whenever someone says, you know, maybe, maybe it’s not wise for the government to spend this much money. Everyone brings up roads and infrastructure. It’s kind of like Wikipedia. You’re you’re using a small fraction of what they’re spending money on to justify all the rest of it. No, no, this is a this is a scam. It’s very scammy. You’re shoving money around different ways, and that is what Wikipedia is fundraising for. Not to keep the lights on. And that’s the scam. So that’s what you need to know. The Wikipedia fundraising scam. It’s a big deal, and it is something I think all of us see. So take a look. It’s just another leftist front organization.
We’re going to be right back. That’s all we’ve got time for this first segment. Proamericareport.com, PhyllisSchlafly.com. Come on back after the break, we’re going to talk to a couple of great guests. And we will see you back here on the Pro America Report.
