Lisa Kocab

mom of 5 boys, 4th grade teacher at Hawkins, Brighton Area Schools, GiGis Playhouse Detroit President, believer in inclusive education

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

🚨 OH. MY. GOSH!!!!!!!

It has been revealed that the city of Asheville NC will only rebuild 8 HOUSES with the $225 MILLION grant they received from the Trump administration after Hurricane Helene.

Yes, you read that right... EIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!

...OUT OF 11,488 DAMAGED HOMES

The city allocated ONLY $3 MILLION for home repairs.

And $14.9 MILLION for "administration"

FIVE TIMES MORE for PAPERWORK than for the people whose homes got COMPLETELY DESTROYED!!!!!!

Over 100+ approved families are CURRENTLY ON A WAITLIST that will never be funded.

THIS IS CRIMINAL!!!!!!!!!!!

PEOPLE NEED TO GO TO JAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

If you’re keeping track, Democrats are

- running a candidate for Senate with a literal Nazi tattoo,

- funding the KKK through the SPLC,

- and fighting for racially segregated congressional districts.

But Republicans are the racists.

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

🚨OH. MY. GOSH!!!

The man seen FIRING AN AR-15 GUN INTO A CROWD OF CHILDREN here in Winston Salem, Emir Rodriguez, a VIOLENT REPEAT OFFENDER...

...HAS BEEN LET OUT OF JAIL AGAIN ON JUST A $5,000 BOND!!!!

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!!!!!!!!

WHAT IS GOING ON IN NORTH CAROLINA?!!!!!

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

Dear Senator Sanders,

Oh, this is RICH. This is so perfectly, exquisitely, weapons-grade rich that I had to put down my anatomy exams and just... appreciate it for a moment.

The man who got thrown out of a SOCIALIST HIPPIE COMMUNE in Vermont in 1971 — after THREE DAYS — for refusing to do any actual work while everyone else planted, harvested, and hauled water, is out here telling me the OLIGARCHS want to control everything.

Three. Days. The communists gave you a longer trial period than most employers give to someone who steals from the register.

Here is what Jim Quinn's Law Number Two says, and I want every single person reading this to tattoo it somewhere useful: "If you want to know what liberals are up to, pay attention to what they accuse conservatives of doing."

Senator, you OWN THREE HOMES. A Burlington residence. A D.C. townhouse. A $575,000 vacation lake house in North Hero, Vermont — purchased in 2016, the same year you were touring the country telling college students the system is rigged. Your net worth sits somewhere between $2.5 and $3 million. You have pocketed over $2.5 MILLION in book royalties since 2011. That elevator is clearly not stuck between floors for you, is it.

And then — THEN — during your "Fighting Oligarchy Tour" with AOC, you spent over $550,000 in CAMPAIGN FUNDS on PRIVATE JET TRAVEL. Half a million dollars on luxury jets to lecture working Americans about the dangers of wealth.

When Fox News caught you boarding a Bombardier Challenger 604 — a jet that runs up to $15,000 PER HOUR — you did not apologize. You did not even blink. You looked directly into the camera and said, and I am quoting this verbatim because it is the most accidentally honest thing you have ever said: "You think I'm gonna be sitting on a waiting line at United?"

Senator. THAT IS OLIGARCHIC THINKING. That is TEXTBOOK "the rules apply to you people, not to me." That is the elevator music of every single billionaire you have spent 35 years pretending to oppose. In a battle of wits with your own stated beliefs, you showed up completely unarmed.

Thirty-five years in Congress. You know what your personal legislative output looks like? Eight bills passed. EIGHT. In three and a half DECADES. That works out to 0.23 bills per year. I have produced more graded anatomy exams in a single semester. Your two greatest solo legislative achievements — the ones with your name on top, the thing YOU actually DID — are the naming of a post office in Danville, Vermont, and the naming of a post office in Fair Haven, Vermont.

You named. Two. Post offices.

You are as useful as a screen door on a submarine when it comes to actually passing legislation, but you want me to believe you are the vanguard of the working class. That sounds like a YOU problem.

Quinn's Law #25: "Liberals are great at giving away other people's money." You have been living PROOF of that law for 35 years. You give away everyone else's money — from a vacation home on a lake — while spending half a million on jets because you are far too important to wait in line with the taxpayers funding your lifestyle.

You want to talk about oligarchs controlling the media? You have been IN the media for four decades. You just finished a $75 million documentary. You have a book deal. You have a podcast. You HAVE the megaphone and you are using it to tell people that other people have the megaphone. The gene pool really needed a lifeguard for THAT particular reasoning.

I am a high school science teacher in Northeast Ohio. I support a family of six on a teacher's salary. I am not particularly impressed by a man with three houses, $550,000 in jet receipts, and 0.23 bills per year telling me he stands with the working class. More famous than wise, Senator. More famous than wise.

The hippie commune knew it in 72 hours. How long is it going to take everyone else?

IF you agree: LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to people who need to read it. SHARE this.

COMMENT below — do YOU think a man with three homes and a half-million dollar private jet habit speaks for working Americans? Tell me.

And if you want MORE of this — the data, the history, the science, the stories — JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube.

But what do I know — I am only a science teacher who can actually do math, a retired Army combat medic who knows what genuine sacrifice looks like, and apparently one of the few people left who finds it suspicious that the most vocal enemy of oligarchy just cannot bring himself to wait in line at the airport with the rest of us.

@JoJoFromJerz @GuntherEagleman @catturd2

#MAGA #Veterans #Trump

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

A pacific palisades fire victim named Sue Pascoe started her own investigation after the $100 million dollars in donation money from the FireAid concert ‘went missing’

She personally called all the NGOs to find out who they were giving the money to

Not a single NGO had given any money to actual fire victims of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires

Reminder, investigators were able to track roughly $75 million had been granted to 120–188 nonprofits. Not a dime went to victims directly

Gavin Newsom created a NGO and got some of the money

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late.

The right stack is always taller.

On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN.

I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS.

The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881.

He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts."

I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes.

The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200.

I waived it.

I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness.

Let me show you what I processed this year.

January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%.

February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed.

March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file.

I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again.

In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not.

I want to tell you about the soldier again.

He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in.

In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on:

Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee.
Defense appropriations they voted on.
Trade policy they negotiated.
Pandemic response measures they drafted.
Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public.

None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012.

Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases.

My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that.

The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop.

She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed.

I want to tell you about the fine.

$200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk.

Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself.

On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office.

The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year.

The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million.

The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write.

He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million.

The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised.

In my field, we call this self-regulation.

The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate.

Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return.

I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process.

As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.

[Hector Resendez - Trade School Secrets @TS_Secrets]

One of my neighbors kid went to trade school for HVAC at 18.

His parents were embarrassed because everyone around us, college is the only option promoted.

He spent $6k and started at $65k while his friends were still in school.

At 25 he got his contractor license. At 27 he opened his own shop.

Last year his company did $2.1 million in revenue with 3 trucks. His friends just started to pay off their student loans.

Now, my neighbors cant stop bragging about their son who also is our neighborhood HVAC tech.

Day 96 tagging @mikeroweworks to let everyone know that we need more kids like this.

[DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican]

Hello Senator Thune,

Let's expose what you're really doing with "reconciliation."

You announced it yesterday, eleven months after the House passed the SAVE America Act. You're not trying to pass this bill. You're trying to kill it in a way you can blame on process.

Here's how we know:

Reconciliation requires the Senate parliamentarian to rule that provisions are "budgetary." Citizenship verification is not budgetary. Photo ID mandates are not budgetary. The parliamentarian will gut the bill. Then you'll shrug and say "we tried." We see through you.

Meanwhile, you WON'T use the tools that actually work:

Rule XIX limits each senator to two speeches per legislative day. Keep the Senate in continuous session, file cloture daily, and the filibuster exhausts in ~12-20 days. You dismissed it as "complicated." Because if you tried and succeeded, you'd have to actually pass the bill.

Harry Reid nuked the filibuster in 2013 when he wanted results.

Mitch McConnell changed Senate rules THREE times and canceled the August recess.

Chuck Schumer used reconciliation within months on a 50-50 Senate.

You have 53 seats. You've changed nothing, canceled nothing, and waited eleven months.

Now let's talk donors:

• Goldman Sachs: $150K to you - top H-1B user
• Google: $75K - lobbies against E-Verify
• Meta: $72.5K - Zuckerberg's FWD[.]us pushes mass immigration
• Wells Fargo: $90K - banks undocumented immigrants

Same corporations sponsor Punchbowl News, where you sit for "Fly Out Days" which nobody watches except Congress staffers and K Street lobbyists who pays premium bucks for legislative intelligence. Their reporter then telegraphs to the audience the SAVE Act "will ultimately fail."

Corporate money flows to you AND to the outlet that frames your inaction as inevitable.

We see the loop.

You called grassroots anger a "paid influencer ecosystem." YOU are the paid influencer. You take the wrong side of a 80% issue because you are indistinguishable from a K Street mouthpiece, and an ineffective one to boot who won't bend the rules to get anything passed.

What we want:

1. Force a real talking filibuster.
2. Stop hiding behind process.
3. Pass the SAVE America Act.

YOU will become the reason that we will have our butts kicked in midterms. Not Candace Owens, not Nick Fuentes, not anyone else. You and you alone, and all because you want to make the 200 or so viewers of Punchbowl Fly Out Days happy. You're living in a K Street information bubble, addicted to the comforts and praises of lobbyists masquerading as journalists. You mistake the steak and martini dinners you get invited to as your own constituents.

You are not "moderate." The SAVE America Act has 98% support among Republicans. Name one other thing that has 98% support. You are an extreme minority who prides himself on being a calm leader, when in reality you are well in the running for the most ineffective Majority leader of all time.

Prove me wrong. Do the bare modicum of effort. Not symbolic. Actual effort. Cancel the recess. Get SAVE America Act passed.

[Bill Wells @MayorBillWells]

We sent a letter to the California DOJ with a simple question:

"If a child in our city is being sex-trafficked by an illegal alien, can we at least do a welfare check on that child?"

The answer? No. That would violate SB-54.

No workaround. No alternative. No explanation for how you're supposed to save that child.
That's what California's sanctuary law protects. Not the child. The trafficker.

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

Today, the Islamic Republic hanged multiple Iranian civilians, some of whom were just teenagers.

Amnesty International? Silent.

The UN? Silent.

Human Rights Council? Silent.

The Red Cross? Silent.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Iran has reportedly kidnapped the families of the Iranian women’s soccer team members who requested asylum & the women are now abandoning those claims and returning to the country to face torture or death. No prominent left wing American women’s soccer players have said a word.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Keep ChatGPT away from kids and the mentally unwell

[Martin Plaut @martinplaut]

Anyone sympathising with Iran's brutal regime should remember how they treat gay men

[US Holocaust Museum @HolocaustMuseum]

Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges.

[Juliet Moses @JulietMosesNZ]

An unspeakable evil. Literally. No words will suffice.
Congrats to Time however for its coverage, putting other media to shame.

[Josh Wolfe @wolfejosh]

More civilians now killed in Iran in 2 weeks––than all civilians in the Gaza war over 2 years (and many of those "civilians" were outright terrorists).

The protestor class? silence.

Revealing. Not shockng

[David Vance @DavidVance]

Why is the world silent?

[Laura Loomer @LauraLoomer]

There are new reports about the death count in Iran.

43,000 people have been murdered in Iran for protesting for their freedom over the last 3 weeks.

The killing has not stopped.

[0️⃣BlackBetty ⚓️ @BabyD1111229]

So, your doctor ordered a test or treatment and your insurance company denied it. That is a typical cost saving method.

OK, here is what you do:

1. Call the insurance company and tell them you want to speak with the "HIPAA Compliance/Privacy Officer"
(By federal law, they have to have one)

2. Then ask them for the NAMES as well as
CREDENTIALS of every person accessing your record to make that decision of denial.

By law you have a right to that information.

3. They will almost always reverse the decision very shortly rather than admit that the committee is made of low paid HS graduates, looking at "criteria words." making the medical decision to deny your care.
Even in the rare case it is made by medical personnel, it is unlikely that it is made by a board certified doctor in that specialty and they DO NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS!!

4. Any refusal should be reported to the US Office of Civil
Rights (https://t.co/QJjJAm5BxT) as a HIPAA violation.

Be safe out there 🫵🏻✨
Know your rights 👊🏼

#ThrowbackThursday

[Lisa Kocab @lisakocab]

@Milajoy 28 years