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Caitlin Conner

@caitlinconner.bsky.social

My Adversity Led To My Purpose CEO & Founder of Be More Adaptive Mom•Model•Athlete•Advocate•T-Rex Agent: Skin I'm In Model & Talent Agency

484 Posts248 Follower245 Folgt
The Unified Principles Movement@the-upm.bsky.social · 2w ago

In 2024 alone, 1,684 Congressional candidates spent months (or years) fundraising millions of dollars, only to be eliminated in primary or general elections. 🚫 Fundraising Millions of dollars that will get wasted on marketing and consulting. ✅️ Listening to Millions of people to build better policy.

This visual highlights the central takeaway for UPM: while candidate interest grew modestly, the money required to compete expanded exponentially. Key Takeaways Illustrated Massive Financial Escalation (+313%): Federal election spending quadrupled in ten years—jumping from $3.85 Billion in 2014 to nearly $16 Billion in 2024. Moderate Candidate Growth (+28.2%): Congressional candidate filings rose from 1,678 in 2014 to a peak of 2,656 in 2022, settling at 2,152 in 2024. The Core Problem: The willingness of people to step up and run isn't the bottleneck—it is the financial capital required to enter and stay in the race.To understand how many candidates run versus how many actually make it into office, we look at the mathematical reality of fixed federal seats in the U.S. Congress: Fixed Seats Available: In any standard federal election, there are 435 House seats and roughly 33 or 34 Senate seats up for election—making a maximum total of ~468 available seats. The Attrition Rate: Because only one candidate can win per seat, every additional candidate beyond that baseline ratio is lost in primary battles or general election defeats.
The Unified Principles Movement@the-upm.bsky.social · 3w ago

People over PAC's. Removing the money in campaigning = removing the candidates who are just there for their donors. 🚫 Calls and door knocks asking for money ✅️ Town Hall listening sessions 🚫 Taking money from corporations and businesses with self-serving agendas ✅️ Getting to know your voters' needs

A wood panel wall is set behind an old-fashioned tv which sits upon a stool. At the top of the photo the words "Now Showing" are above the TV which shows the words "People Over PAC's". At the bottom is the trademark for "The Unified Principles Movement"
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 3w ago

At our municipal grocery stores, New Yorkers will get a 30% discount on eggs, milk, chicken, produce and other everyday essentials. In the wealthiest city in the richest country in the world, no one should have to wonder how they’ll afford the food they need to feed themselves or their families.

Mayor Mamdani holds up bananas with a 30% off sticker on them. Shelves of produce and canned goods, all with 30% off stickers on them. New Yorkers clap at the press conference announcing the 30% discount for municipal grocery stores.
Caitlin Conner@caitlinconner.bsky.social · last mo.

Today, I submitted my formal comment to the Secretary of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in opposition to Docket No. OP-1878. Phew, that's a mouthful. I’ve been digging into the trajectory of our financial system, and what I’m seeing is deeply concerning. 👇

July 16, 2026 Benjamin W. McDonough, Secretary Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 20th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20551 Re: Public Comment on Proposed Revisions to the Federal Reserve Policy on Payment System Risk and the Guidelines for Account and Services Requests, Docket No. OP-1878 Dear Secretary McDonough, I am writing to express my strong and unequivocal opposition to the proposed revisions under Docket No. OP-1878 (Federal Reserve System, 2026). The Board of Governors must not establish a framework for "Payment Accounts" designed to grant direct core ledger clearing and settlement access—specifically through Fedwire, FedNow, and the National Settlement Service—to non-depository, non-federally insured Tier 3 financial institutions, fintech platforms, and digital asset or stablecoin issuers (Federal Reserve System, 2026). Rather than adjusting payment system risk policies to accommodate these structurally volatile entities, the Board must maintain an absolute and unbreakable firewall. Bypassing heavily supervised commercial bank intermediaries exposes the nation's core financial rails to severe systemic run contagion, cyber exploitation, and catastrophic compliance gaps. This opposition is not aimed at shielding legacy commercial banks from market competition or technological progress. Innovation in financial services must occur within the established, legally authorized charter frameworks that protect the public. If fintech platforms and digital asset issuers wish to innovate and settle payments directly at the central bank, they are entirely free to apply for a commercial bank or credit union charter, accept comprehensive federal supervision, and compete on a level playing field.The catastrophic collapse of the fintech middleware provider Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc. serves as a stark warning. When Synapse collapsed, its poorly managed and unreconciled internal payment ledgers left more than 100,000 retail consumers locked out of approximately $265 million in funds. Bankruptcy trustee Jelena McWilliams and partnering banks subsequently identified a staggering shortfall of between $60 million and $90 million between what partner banks held and what Synapse's internal ledger expected. This structural disaster, which prompted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to file a Stipulated Final Judgment and Complaint (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2025) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to initiate formal enforcement actions against former executives for total failure of cash management supervision (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, 2025), proves that non-depository fintech firms systematically lack the basic ledger integrity, capital reserves, and crisis-management structures necessary to guarantee the safety of user deposits. Granting similarly structured, non-federally insured entities direct access to the Federal Reserve's real-time settlement rails is a recipe for automated consumer ruin.Parent organizations remain contractually and reputationally exposed to their nonbank affiliates, maintaining implicit liabilities to rescue them in times of distress (Cetorelli & Kundu, 2026). Under severe stress simulations calibrated to 2008-scale shocks, four to six percent of bank holding companies would completely exhaust their entire capital buffers attempting to recapitalize their failing nonbank subsidiaries (Cetorelli & Kundu, 2026). Allowing these fragile nonbank platforms direct access to the central bank ledger would enable rapid, automated liquidity runs that bypass depository firewalls and dump systemic liabilities directly onto the Federal Reserve's balance sheet (Cetorelli & Kundu, 2026). The Board may argue that its proposed guardrails within OP-1878, such as denying intraday and overnight overdraft capacity, offering zero interest, and banning participation in Excess Balance Accounts, are sufficient to mitigate these dangers (Federal Reserve System, 2026). Consequently, payment flows will be compressed entirely into ultra-high-velocity rails like FedNow and Fedwire, accelerating run speeds. While these parameters limit credit and liquidity risk for the Reserve Banks themselves, they leave the broader financial system completely exposed to catastrophic operational and fraud risks (Association for Financial Professionals, 2026). A state-sponsored hacker or automated fraud syndicate does not care about a one billion dollar balance cap; they can still use a single compromised fintech endpoint to execute hundreds of rapid-velocity payments that drain downstream participants instantly before operators can manually intervene.A ninety-calendar-day timeline is structurally and operationally insufficient to perform comprehensive Anti-Money Laundering, Bank Secrecy Act, and operational resilience diligence on complex, opaque Tier 3 entities. The Board's belief that its due diligence framework can filter out bad actors within such a rushed timeframe ignores the stark operational realities of the nonbank sector. As the Financial Stability Board detailed in its latest monitoring reports, the Non-Bank Financial Intermediation sector expanded by nine and four-tenths percent in 2024, growing at double the pace of traditional banking, and now represents fifty-one percent of global financial assets (Financial Stability Board, 2025). Despite its massive scale, the nonbank financial sector is plagued by critical data gaps (Financial Stability Board, 2025). Regulators currently lack the high-quality, standardized data necessary to monitor nonbank leverage, asset positions, and systemic exposures (Financial Stability Board, 2025). The vulnerabilities are so acute that the Financial Stability Board has had to establish a specialized Nonbank Data Task Force to conduct pilot studies just to begin to understand leveraged trading strategies in these markets (Financial Stability Board, 2025). It is operationally impossible for the Federal Reserve to perform rigorous, proactive due diligence within ninety days onentities whose underlying portfolios and transaction flows are fundamentally unmonitored, opaque, and prone to extreme data gaps (Financial Stability Board, 2025). Connecting these opaque platforms to 24/7 instant clearing networks also creates an intolerable national security threat. Hostile nation-state actors and cybercriminal syndicates systematically target nonbank edge networks because they lack robust, enterprise-grade perimeter defenses.
ProPublica@propublica.org · last mo.

A rule change pushed by White House officials would slash benefits or end support for as many as 400,000 Supplemental Security Income recipients with Down syndrome, dementia and other disabilities whose parents or relatives receive SNAP benefits. (Published April)

The Trump Administration Aims to Penalize Disabled Adults Who Live With Their Families

A rule change pushed by White House officials would slash benefits or end support for as many as 400,000 Supplemental Security Income recipients with Down syndrome, dementia and other disabilities who...

propublica.org

God@thegodshow.com · last mo.

The reason Trump screamed “RIGGED!” about the 2020 election was so that he could cheat and rig the 2024 election as much as he wanted. Because if anyone says the word ‘rigged’ now, even if it is, you sound like him. This is an old Nazi tactic.

dell cameron@dell.bsky.social · 2mo ago

NEW: DOD is probing the leak of information about an active intelligence officer involved with Peter Thiel's Dialog club. The officer is said to work for a special missions unit. The White House also claims details about another top intelligence official are restricted on national security grounds.

The Pentagon Is Looking Into the Dialog Data Exposure for Unmasking National Security Officials

Exposed records from the private group included the personal information of a senior White House intelligence official and an active-duty special operations officer.

wired.com

ProPublica@propublica.org · 2mo ago

NEW: Records obtained by ProPublica detail at least a dozen SpaceX investors with addresses in mainland China, Hong Kong or Russia who acquired stakes in SpaceX years ago through a middleman firm in the U.S. called Tomales Bay Capital.

Before SpaceX IPO, Investors in China Secretly Acquired Stakes

One previously unreported SpaceX investor has ties to Chinese military contractors. The information was revealed only after ProPublica went to court to obtain it.

propublica.org

dell cameron@dell.bsky.social · 2mo ago

NEW: "It's literally the gulag." A Meta engineer describes their job in the new 6,500-person "Applied AI" unit, where highly-paid Silicon Valley talent are now "draftees" forced to write puzzle problems to feed the beast. WIRED's inside the morale collapse:

‘Tell Him He’s a Piece of Shit’: Meta’s New AI Unit Is a Total Mess

Executives and employees alike are struggling with Meta's chaotic AI strategy, according to sources and internal discussions reviewed by WIRED.

wired.com

This Will Hold@thiswillhold.bsky.social · 2y ago

Musk’s Direct-to-Cell constellation and the U.S. election. Background: This began in 2022 as “digging,” when Musk launched his bid to purchase Twitter at $20B over value, just 49 days after Putin invaded Ukraine. A convo re NATO considering Article 5 over Cyber attacks prompted the original post.

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