Tag Archives: Federal Election Commission

Imaginary People Making Real Donations

Posted on by

On Thursday, The Daily Signal posted an article about the funding for ActBlue. ActBlue was founded in 2009 to help Democrats in fundraising. The organization serves as a conduit for left-wing donors, with two more arms—ActBlue Charities and ActBlue Civics—funneling money to 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) clients, respectively.

The article reports:

Paging Dr. Adrienne Young, M.D. 

The good doctor is listed online as an “internist” in McKees Rocks, a borough in western Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, known locally as “the Rocks.”

Campaign finance filings report Young’s practice is located on Heckel Road in McKees and list a 412 area code phone number. But her office does not appear to exist at this address and the number is not in service. Moreover, none of the receptionists attached to doctors’ offices located in close proximity to Young’s office address in McKees have ever heard of her. That’s peculiar in and of itself. But a search of campaign finance records only adds to the intrigue. 

Someone identified as Adrienne Young has been making substantial contributions to a left-of-center political action committee known as ActBlue, according to Federal Election Commission records. 

…Restoration News is still attempting to contact the individual listed in campaign finance documents as Adrienne Young. Records list her residing on Leet Road in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. These records show that since 2017, Young has made 17,342 in contributions to ActBlue totaling $209,670.06—which averages seven contributions per day. 

Evidently the doctor is doing very well.

The article notes:

“Smurfing” involves repackaging large sums of money into smaller, individual transactions to appear less suspicious and avoid scrutiny from law enforcement officials. Is “Adrienne Young” a cover for such an operation, benefiting Democrats?

While it is indisputably the case that ActBlue is ringing the bell with hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions, it’s not evident the smaller contributions that translate over time into larger sums are coming from an individual donor.

One of the more recent contributions to ActBlue leading back to the donor identified as Young came on March 16, 2023, in the amount of $1196.50. That’s not an unusual amount for an individual, but what is unusual is folding that amount into more than 17,000 contributions made over the span of several years. The donor identified as Young was actively contributing to ActBlue at least through part of this year with a donation of $429.00 made on April 30, 2024. If a smurfing operation is underway, it may not be limited to what’s flowing into ActBlue. 

Please follow the link to read the entire article. This sort of cheating needs to have serious legal consequences.

On Friday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article with the response of the Former Chief Impact Officer at ActBlue.

This is the response:

In a recent interview with an OKeefeMedia Citizen Journalist, Geri Prado former Chief Impact Officer at ActBlue, downplayed concerns about the organization’s suspicious fundraising practices. Prado attempted to brush off allegations by describing ActBlue merely as “a payment processor for campaigns, but it’s not a campaign,” and likened it to PayPal, citing credit card fees as a standard issue.

When asked about potential money laundering, Prado dismissed the concern, “No… It’s a very hard thing to do,” downplaying the likelihood of any illegal activity. However, she admits, “There are other problems,” hinting at other issues within the organization.

This comes amidst reports that Federal Election Commission (FEC) records are inaccurately reflecting senior citizens as having made donations far beyond their actual contributions.

It will be interesting to see what the current Department of Justice does with these allegations.

Paperwork Matters

Posted on by

On Tuesday, Townhall reported that a complaint has been filed against the political campaign of President Biden and Kamala Harris.

The article reports:

A complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission last week by Citizens United and a number of state Republican Party chapters, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are accused of violating federal law in the hours after Biden dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House on July 21.

“This complaint is filed pursuant to 52 U.S.C. § 30109(a)(1) against Kamala Harris (FEC DI P80000722), Harris for President (f/k/a Biden for President) (FEC DI 00703975), and Keana Spencer, in her official capacity as Treasurer, for an unprecedented $96 million violation of 52 U.S.C. §30116(f),” the complaint, submitted July 24, 2024 states. “Importantly, Biden and Harris were not their party’s nominees for President and Vice President, respectively, for the 2024 general election at the time this all happened. Notably, there also is no record on the FEC’s website that Biden filed any paperwork with the Commission announcing that he was no longer a candidate for President, as other candidates do when they withdraw from a race.'” 

When Biden announced he would not seek re-election, weeks prior to being nominated at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, his campaign war chest of $96 million was transferred to Kamala Harris after a name change on FEC paperwork. 

The rules are there for a reason. The transfer of the $96 million from President Biden to Vice-President Harris is not automatic–there is serious paperwork involved. Evidently, neither of the people involved sought to honor the paperwork requirements.

The article notes:

“In fact, while Harris filed paperwork with the Commission announcing that she was no longer seeking reelection as Vice President, 6 Biden did not file any corresponding paperwork.

It will be interesting to see if the rules are going to be followed or ignored.

Adding To The Circus

Posted on by

Most Americans have figured out at this point that the New York City trial of President Trump is actually a campaign donation to the Biden campaign. No one seems to be quite sure exactly what the President is charged with, and a lot of the testimony doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the case. Well, now there is a new twist.

On May 13th, The Federalist reported the following:

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s paralegal testified on Friday that his office deleted from their evidence three pages of phone records between convicted liar Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson without notifying former President Donald Trump’s legal team, according to reports.

Trump attorney Emil Bove questioned paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider on Friday about three pages of 2018 phone records between Davidson and Cohen that Bragg’s office had deleted, according to CNN. Additional phone records between Daniels manager Gina Rodriguez and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard regarding Daniels’ claim about her alleged affair were also deleted, according to The Epoch Times.

The altered call records were submitted into evidence, but Bragg’s office did not tell Trump’s team that three pages were missing, The Epoch Times reported.

The article also notes:

Trump’s defense also made a motion for a mistrial, which Judge Juan Merchan denied. Merchan also kneecapped Trump’s team from defending the former president by limiting what former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith could say when testifying about campaign finance-related issues, noted Steve Roberts and Oliver Roberts in The Federalist Friday.

Is there an honest person somewhere in the New York State legal system that will end this travesty?

Finding The Common Ground

Posted on by

On Wednesday, Townhall posted an article about a common factor among some  of the people attempting to remove President Trump’s name from the presidential primary ballot.

The article reports:

Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows claims to be unbiased when she ruled that Trump is disqualified from running in the state’s 2024 presidential race. But Bellows, the Democrat whose Dec. 28 ruling booted Trump off the Republican primary ballot in the northeasternmost U.S. state, previously cashed in on Soros family money.

According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, during her doomed U.S. Senate bid against Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in 2014, Bellows received a $2,600 donation from Andrea Soros, the daughter of billionaire investor George Soros, who notoriously spends his wealth influencing local elections across America by bankrolling the campaigns of Democrat picks.

The article notes:

Maine was the second state to officially declare Trump ineligible. In Colorado, the state Supreme Court decided on Dec. 19 to enforce Trump’s disqualification. Leading the charge in the Colorado case to ensure Trump’s removal is the Orwellian-named Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Between FY 2017 and 2021, CREW was given more than $2.8 million in grants by the Foundation to Promote Open Society, which acts as one of Soros’s two chief grantmaking vehicles, for “general support” and “support[ing] political advocacy on ethics in government,” according to an Open Society Foundations database.

And another one…

Spurred by Colorado’s decision, California’s Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis followed suit, requesting in a Dec. 20 letter that the state’s Secretary of State Shirley Weber “explore every legal option” to remove Trump from the presidential primary ballot there.

Kounalakis, too, is a Soros recipient. According to campaign finance records, Soros and his wife Tamiko Bolton Soros, another Open Society Foundations board member, handed over a total of $45,400 to bolster Kounalakis’ successful 2018 campaign and 2022 re-election. Now, Kounalakis is gunning for the California governorship in 2026. Last year, Soros gave Kounalakis an additional $36,400, the maximum amount allowed, just a few months after she launched her bid to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom.

And in conclusion…

Free Speech for the People is the 501(c)(3)organization that filed a flurry of lawsuits across multiple states to bar Trump from the ballot by claiming that he violated the 14th Amendment’s little-used “insurrection” clause (Section 3). Dubbed the nationwide “14Point3 Campaign” in reference to the constitutional provision, the left-of-center nonprofit advanced 14th Amendment challenges in Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, and Illinois as well as organized the most recent Massachusetts complaint.

…In the past, Free Speech for the People was partly funded through grants awarded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which has received $1.5 million in funding from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, a primary Soros grantmaker. Between 2013 and 2017, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave Free Speech for the People $275,000 in grants, according to archived 990-PF forms.

See a pattern yet?

 

It’s Only Okay To Question Some Elections

Posted on by

On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported that election lawyer Dara Lindenbaum, who is President Biden’s pick to serve on the Federal Election Commission, is representing Stacey Abrams’s nonprofit and Raphael Warnock’s church in a lawsuit that challenged the validity of Georgia’s 2018 election due in part to the state’s use of “unreliable” electronic voting machines. So the electronic voting machines were unreliable in 2018, but reliable in 2020?

The article reports:

In November 2018, election lawyer Dara Lindenbaum signed on to a federal legal complaint on behalf of Abrams’s Fair Fight Action. The complaint challenged the constitutionality of Georgia’s 2018 election, which saw Abrams lose to Republican governor Brian Kemp in a race she never conceded. Warnock’s Ebenezer Baptist Church joined the suit in early 2019, just months before the Democrat entered Georgia’s 2020 Senate race.

There were some changes made to the complaint in December 2020:

According to the complaint, the state of Georgia “grossly mismanaged” the election by depriving “Georgia citizens, and particularly citizens of color, of their fundamental right to vote.” As a result, the complaint said, Georgia’s election “violated the First, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.” The complaint also lamented the use of “insecure and unreliable” electronic voting machines that “lack a paper trail” and thus “cannot be audited”—those machines even “switched” votes from Abrams to Kemp, according to the complaint.

While the lawsuit remains active, Fair Fight and other plaintiffs amended the complaint in December 2020 to remove many of its assertions detailing problematic voting machines. The move came after former president Donald Trump said voting machine irregularities led to his defeat against Biden.

The article concludes:

Prior to her role representing Fair Fight Action, Lindenbaum served as general counsel to Abrams’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign. Abrams lost that race to Kemp by roughly 2 points, but she never conceded her defeat, instead saying the election was “stolen” due to “voter suppression.” In the aftermath of her loss, Abrams launched Fair Fight Action, a nonprofit that says it is “leading the charge to protect voting rights.” Fair Fight’s website touts the group’s “historic civil rights lawsuit in federal court … challenging the gross mismanagement of the 2018 election that discouraged and disenfranchised voters.” Lindenbaum still serves as legal counsel to Fair Fight Action and the group’s political arm, Fair Fight PAC, her Office of Government Ethics disclosure shows.

Neither Fair Fight Action nor Ebenezer Baptist Church returned requests for comment.

This lady does not belong on the Federal Elections Commission.

Quietly Paying The Fine After You Have Broken The Law

Posted on by

When charged with a crime that has a penalty of a cash payment, the quickest way to get that charge and the crime off of the front pages of the media is to quietly pay the fine. If you’re a Republican, that might not work, but if you are Democrat, it will definitely kill the story.

On Saturday, The Epoch Times reported the following statement by Kash Patel, regarding the violations by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016:

“So the Hillary Clinton campaign is not contesting it, they’re paying the fine. It’s basically admitting that they did this and they’re out is: ‘we just don’t want a protracted legal deal, as if the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC ever shied away from taking something or someone to court,” Patel added.

(Hillary) Clinton’s campaign and the DNC agreed to pay a combined $113,000 to the FEC, according to documents made public on March 30, after the commission found probable cause that the entities violated federal law by describing payments that ultimately went to the Fusion GPS research group as going toward legal services and consulting.

“It shows them how wrong they were to violate the law and spend political campaign dollars on hit job, opposition research pieces for then-candidate Trump, all of which, [to] remind the audience, was then used intentionally by the FBI—even though they knew it was false—to go to a federal secret court and surveil a presidential candidate and later a president of the United States.”

The article concludes:

In October 2020, Durham (Special counsel John Durham) was appointed by the Dept. of Justice as special counsel to investigate the FBI’s handling of Russiagate. His recent filings revealed that internet traffic at Trump Tower and the White House was accessed to fabricate ties between Trump and Russia.

The filing, which was submitted late on Feb. 11 in connection with the indictment of Michael Sussmann, a former attorney to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, reveals that Rodney Joffe, a tech executive who was working with Sussmann, had exploited access to domain name system (DNS) internet traffic pertaining to the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP) as well as Trump Tower and Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building.

“This FEC fine is another step towards accountability. But [for] me as a former federal prosecutor, maybe I’m biased, but the ultimate step of accountability which the American public is waiting for,comes in the form of indictments, especially to those people who violated their oath of office,” Patel said.

Indictments would be nice, but unfortunately it is becoming very obvious to most Americans that only Republicans get indicted when they break the law.

 

Titles Can Be Very Misleading

Posted on by

H.R. 1 was introduced into the House of Representatives on January 4, 2021. The bill is titled, “For the People Act of 2021.” The bill is anything but for the people.

Heritage Action took the time to dissect the bill and see exactly what its impact would be. Here are some of the highlights:

At 600+ pages long, H.R. 1 contains many provisions that are unhelpful, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. Below are just a few of the terrible policies contained within H.R. 1:

Sabotages state voter ID laws—When arriving at the polls, voters will not be required to show ID and can simply sign a statement in which they claim to be who they say they are. This undermines many states’ voter ID laws, which were enacted to combat impersonation fraud, voter registration fraud, duplicate voting, and voting by ineligible individuals, such as illegal aliens.

Mandates same-day registration—States will be required to immediately register a person to vote upon request, even on the day of an election. With no buffer-period to verify personal information, this provision could easily lead to voter fraud.

Automatically registers ineligible voters—States will be required to automatically add to voter registration rolls every person, regardless of voter eligibility, who partakes in certain government programs, such as receiving welfare or obtaining a driver’s license. Other provisions of H.R. 1 then restrict the ability of states to verify eligible voters and the removal of ineligible voters from voter registration rolls. This provision will automatically enroll ineligible voters such as illegal aliens.

Unconstitutionally requires states to restore the ability of felons to vote—Upon release from prison, every felon would immediately be restored the ability to vote. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution allows states to restrict voting rights to those who have participated in “rebellion, or other crime.” States have the constitutional authority to decide when or if to restore that right, as long as they do so in a manner that is not racially discriminatory. H.R. 1 would attempt to unconstitutionally overrule the 14th Amendment with a statute.

Violates the First Amendment—H.R.1 deters political free speech by inserting a provision that makes it a criminal offense to provide “materially false” information that will “impede or prevent” someone from registering or voting. This provision is so vague that it would likely interfere with free speech and other legitimate activities.

Requires ballots be counted outside of the voter’s precinct—This removes the integrity of the local government to verify voter rolls and oversee elections and gives the power to count votes entirely to the federal government.

Creates unaccountable redistricting committees—Currently, congressional district lines are drawn by state governments that are accountable to their constituents. Allowing unelected officials to determine congressional districts is a nakedly political ploy to draw more Democratic districts.

Alters Federal Election Commission into a partisan organization—Currently, the FEC has six members (three from each party), preserving its bipartisan nature. H.R. 1 would reduce the number to five, giving one party a majority and the opportunity to weaponize the FEC for their party’s benefit.

We are at a point in our constitutional republic where one political party is attempting to gain full control in both the present and future. This is not healthy for the republic. This bill needs to be stopped. Please share the above information.

 

Is Public Opinion Shifting? What Is The Evidence Of Fraud?

Posted on by

The first part of this article is based on an article in Red State Observer that was posted today. The article reports that a Rasmussem poll released on Thursday showed that 47 percent of voters surveyed believe that the Democrats engaged in election fraud in several states to ensure a Joe Biden victory. Please follow the link above to the article to see other related statistics.

On Thursday Just the News posted an article about a sworn statement by Williams College Professor Steven Miller, a Yale and Princeton trained math expert, who analyzed the Pennsylvania ballot data.

The article reports:

Williams College Professor Steven Miller, a Yale and Princeton trained math expert, said he analyzed Pennsylvania ballot data collected by former Trump campaign data chief Matt Braynard as well as 2,684 voter interviews conducted by a phone bank and found two concerning patterns. One involved possible votes that were not counted, the other ballots that appeared to be requested by someone other than a registered voter.

“I estimate that the number of ballots that were either requested by someone other than the registered Republican or requested and returned but not counted range from 89,397 to 98,801,” Miller said in the sworn statement provided to Just the News.

According to Pennsylvania state data for early and absentee ballot requests, there are roughly 165,000 ballots requested in the names of registered GOP voters that had not been counted as of Nov. 16.

Federal Election Commission Chairman Trey Trainor told Just the News that Miller’s analysis provides fresh evidence of potential voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 

“This data, which is provided by an expert witness, who would be qualified in almost any court in the country, adds to the conclusions that some level of voter fraud took place in this year’s election,” Trainor said.

The article at Just the News also reports:

In addition to his two base estimates, Miller also offered two estimates with broader ranges and higher confidence intervals. “Almost surely, the number of ballots requested by someone other than the registered Republican is between 37,001 and 58,914,” Miller writes. “Almost surely the number of ballots requested by registered Republicans and returned but not counted is in the range from 38,910 to 56,483.” 

Slowly, the indications of election fraud are becoming visible.

.

 

 

Desperation Can Be Expensive

Posted on by

The Washington Examiner posted an article today with the following headline, “Democratic megadonor George Soros launches new super PAC.” Keep in mind that George Soros is not a friend of America. He is a supporter of one-world government and fully intends to be part of the ruling class in that government. There are some very questionable items in his past regarding collapsing currencies and his relationship with the Hitler regime as a teenager.

The article reports:

George Soros is launching a super PAC ahead of the 2020 election and has already written the single biggest check of any megadonor so far this election season.

Soros contributed $5.1 million to the new group, Democracy PAC, according to paperwork filed with the Federal Election Commission. He was one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors in the last presidential election, giving more than $20 million to the party’s candidates and causes, and has already doubled the amount he had donated at this point in the 2016 cycle.

A person familiar with the group told Politico that Soros’ family members may also donate to the PAC. His son, Alexander Soros, has become somewhat of a Democratic megadonor in recent years.

The article continues:

“He has, unlike Tom Steyer or [Michael] Bloomberg, funded things like Senate Majority PAC and Priorities USA and EMILY’s List and Planned Parenthood and expects to continue to do so,” a person familiar with the PAC said.

Soros has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

There are some things to consider here. It is very difficult to unseat an incumbent President during good economic times. I suspect some effort will be made in the coming year to make sure those good economic times do not continue. I have no idea what form that effort might take–it could be raising interest rates sometime next year, it could be more civil unrest from domestic terrorist organizations like Antifa, or it could be as simple as telling Americans not to spend money in order to slow down the consumer-driven economic growth. At any rate, in the past four years we have seen a number of efforts to buy election victories fail. If money were the only thing in winning elections, we would currently have either President Hillary Clinton or President Jeb Bush. In local politics if money were the only key to victory, Joan Perry would be running for Congress in the Third U.S. House District in North Carolina. I am hoping that the only thing George Soros’ political PAC is successful at doing is relieving Mr. Soros of some of his wealth.

What Does This Say About The Candidate?

Posted on by

Kamala Harris is currently considered the up-and-coming Democrat candidate for President in 2020. She achieved that status after an attack on Joe Biden that stretched the truth more than a little. Well, Ms. Harris is serious about her campaign. The Washington Examiner is reporting today that the Harris campaign hired Marc Elias, who heads Perkins Coie’s political law group.

The article reports:

…Elias, who held the same position in Clinton’s campaign, is named in two pending Federal Election Commission complaints and in a recent federal lawsuit alleging that the Clinton campaign broke campaign finance laws when it used Perkins Coie to hire Fusion GPS.

Fusion GPS went on to hire British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who compiled an unverified dossier allegedly based on sources close to the Kremlin which was disseminated to the media and used by the FBI to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants targeting former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is reviewing alleged FISA abuse related to the dossier and Attorney General William Barr launched his “investigation of the investigators” earlier this year.

Clinton’s former presidential campaign manager Robby Mook said in 2017 that he authorized Elias to hire an outside firm to dig up dirt on Trump’s connections with Russia. “I asked our lawyer and I gave him a budget allocation to investigate this, particularly the international aspect,” he said.

Mook said Elias was receiving information from Fusion GPS or directly from Steele himself about the research into Trump and Russia in 2016, and that Elias then periodically briefed the Clinton campaign about the findings.

The article concludes:

Elias is a fixture in Democratic politics. Aside from working for Harris, Clinton, and the DNC, Elias has said that he and his colleagues at Perkins Coie have represented the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, various Democratic PACs, the pro-abortion EMILY’s List, dozens of Democratic senators, and more than a hundred Democratic members of the House.

Neither the Harris campaign nor Elias responded to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.

I wonder if Mr. Elias’ name is going to come up during the release of the Inspector General’s Report or the questioning of Robert Mueller. Stay tuned.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) Fails To Rule

Posted on by

Yesterday The Independent Journal Review posted an article about vacancies on the Federal Election Commission and the consequences of those vacancies.

The article reports:

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is facing a lawsuit for its inaction on a complaint filed against Hillary Clinton‘s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

The right-leaning Coolidge Reagan Foundation filed a lawsuit — obtained exclusively by IJR — on Wednesday morning in the hopes of getting a ruling that would force the FEC to address the complaint it filed on August 1, 2018.

Its original complaint with the FEC requested an investigation into Hillary for America — the official name of Clinton’s campaign — and the DNC for their role in obtaining and financing the anti-Donald Trump dossier penned by former British spy Christopher Steele.

By law, if the FEC does not rule on a filed complaint within 120 days, the party that filed the complaint has the authority to sue the commission. Almost 300 days have passed since the Coolidge Reagan Foundation filed that original complaint, and nothing has happened.

The exact incident that caused the Foundation to sue is explained in the article:

The original FEC complaint alleged that Hillary for America and the DNC breached campaign finance law by issuing a false report with the intention of misleading the American people. The complaint notes that campaign expenditure forms show that the DNC and Hillary for American paid their mutual legal advisers at Perkins Coie, LLP for “legal services,” but the law firm turned around and paid Fusion GPS for the Steele dossier.

The Coolidge Reagan Foundation argues that Hillary for America and the DNC used Perkins Coie, LLP as a “strawman” organization to distance themselves from Fusion GPS and Steele and submitted a false FEC complaint in the process:

The FEC is composed of six members. Right now there are two vacant seats on the Commission. The seats on the Commission are supposed to be filled two at a time–one by the President and one by the highest ranking Senator from the opposite party. As of now, Senator Schumer has not submitted a name, so the President cannot proceed with a nominee. Since FEC rules require four votes in order to begin an investigation, unless there is a unanimous vote by the four current commissioners, nothing will happen.

The article further notes:

As IJR previously reported, the Coolidge Reagan Foundation also filed an FEC complaint against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, for their sketchy campaign funding operation and for failing to disclose payments to congresswoman’s boyfriend.

According to Backer, neither of those complaints have received a ruling from the FEC.

It’s a fairly safe bet that if an FEC complaint were filed against a Republican, Senator Schumer would very quickly come up with a name so that the investigation could move forward!

Foreign Interference In An Election

Posted on by

If you follow the mainstream media, you might conclude that foreign interference in an election only matters when Republicans do it.

Meanwhile, BizPacReview reported yesterday that Pras Michel, a rapper for the group ‘The Fugees,’ has been indicted by the U.S. government for funneling millions of dollars of foreign money to Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.

The article explains the charges:

In a DOJ statement, the feds announced Michel and a Malaysian financier were charged with four counts “for conspiring to make and conceal foreign and conduit campaign contributions.”

Michel, 46, and Low Taek Jho, 37, aka”Jho Low,” were charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and for making foreign and conduit campaign contributions. Michel also was charged with one count of a scheme to conceal material facts and two counts of making a false entry in a record in connection with the conspiracy.

The article includes a statement from the Department of Justice:

According to the indictment, between June 2012 and November 2012, Low directed the transfer of approximately $21,600,000 from foreign entities and accounts to Michel for the purpose of funneling significant sums of money into the United States presidential election as purportedly legitimate contributions, all while concealing the true source of the money.  To facilitate the excessive contributions and conceal their true source, Michel paid approximately $865,000 of the money received from Low to about 20 straw donors, or conduits, so that the straw donors could make donations in their names to a presidential joint fundraising committee.  In addition, Michel personally directed more than $1 million of the money received from Low to an independent expenditure committee also involved in the presidential election in 2012.

The indictment also alleges that by funneling campaign contributions through straw donors, Michel caused a presidential joint fundraising committee to submit false reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), including a false amended report in June 2013.  The committee’s reports were false because they identified the straw donors, rather than Low or Michel, as the true source of the contributions.  In addition, the indictment alleges that by contributing more than $1 million of the money he received from Low to an independent expenditure committee, Michel also caused that committee to submit false reports to the FEC, insofar as those reports identified Michel as the source of the contributions when, in fact, it was Low.  The indictment further alleges that in June 2015, Michel submitted a false declaration to the FEC in which he claimed that he had no reason to conceal the true source of his contributions to the independent expenditure committee in 2012, even though Michel knew that the true source of that money was Low and that Michel had funneled the foreign money into the election.

It is good news that the Department of Justice is holding Mr. Michel accountable.

Campaign Finance Violations On Steroids

Posted on by

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article about some campaign finance violations by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti. The violations listed are not minor violations, there are some major amounts of money involved here.

The article reports:

Two political action committees founded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s top aide funneled over $1 million in political donations into two of his own private companies, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday.

…The arrangement skirted reporting requirements and may have violated the $5,000 limit on contributions from federal PACs to candidates, according to the complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.

Campaign finance attorneys described the arrangement as “really weird” and an indication “there’s something amiss.” They said there was no way of telling where the political donations went — meaning they could have been pocketed or used by the company to pay for off-the-books campaign operations.

PACs are required to disclose how and when funds are spent, including for expenditures such as advertisements, fundraising emails, donations to candidates, and payments for events and to vendors.

The private companies to which Chakrabarti transferred the money from the PACs are not subject to these requirements.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article for the details.

This is interesting for a number of reasons. Was it a rookie mistake or was it planned corruption? Is this coming out now because AOC has become a problem for the Democrats–she is so far left that she may cost them votes in 2020?

The article concludes:

Bradley A. Smith, a former chairman of the FEC, said he has never seen such an arrangement. “It’s a really weird situation,” he said. “I see almost no way that you can do that without it being at least a reporting violation, quite likely a violation of the contribution limits. You might say from a campaign finance angle that the LLC was essentially operating as an unregistered committee.”

Chakrabarti declined to comment on the FEC complaint or provide details about his companies’ financial activities. Corbin Trent, a spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez, declined to comment.

Zeynab Day, communications director for the Brand New Congress PAC, said Chakrabarti was not currently affiliated with the group and that it recently went through a “transition period.” She referred questions about the LLC to Chakrabarti. “I’m unable to answer any questions about the LLC … I am not informed about them. We are not an affiliated group,” she said.

A spokesperson for Justice Democrats said he did not know why the PAC paid so much money to Chakrabarti’s LLCs. When asked what the Justice Democrats PAC does on a daily basis, he said, “It’s very clear what we do,” but declined to elaborate.

Chakrabarti founded Brand New Congress PAC, in April 2016. According to a statement released by Justice Democrats PAC last May, Chakrabarti “was the only controlling member” of the company Brand New Congress LLC and “took no salary.” The statement added: “Saikat is lucky to have a small side business that generates him enough income that he is able to do all of this work as a volunteer.”

If this story is accurately reported, it is bound to get more interesting!

H R 1

Posted on by

The Democrats in the House of Representatives are planning to start the new year off with a bang. Hopefully it will turn out to be more of a whimper. H.R. 1 is called the “For the People Act of 2019.” It is actually only for some people who want to make sure that the Democrats win all future elections. It was introduced into the House on January 3rd.

Breitbart posted an article about the bill today. In their article is a link to the Conservative Action Project which is opposing the bill.

The Conservative Action Project lists some problems with the bill:

H.R. 1 undermines the First Amendment. H.R. 1 undoes key Supreme Court cases that protect elections as fundamental to free speech. It would allow the Federal Election Commission to track and catalogue more of what Americans are saying, register even very small political donations, and make public those who donate to different charitable and nonprofit organizations. The legislation will subject private citizens to intimidation and harassment for their private and political beliefs, far broader than what was done in the IRS targeting scandal in 2013.

H.R. 1 yanks election authority away from the states. H.R. 1 reasserts the ability of the federal government to micromanage state elections through a process known as “preclearance.” Preclearance, which was previously overturned by the Supreme Court, requires states to get permission from the federal government for changes as small as modifying the hours of an election office, or moving a voting location from a school gym to the library. Critically, none of these practices would undo any fraud or corruption. Rather, these same practices result in incorrect registrations and inaccurate voter data, while failing to address actual corrupt practices like ballot harvesting. Moreover, they are all designed to eliminate the federalism that keeps elections transparent, local, and fair.

H.R. 1 attacks individual voter integrity. America was founded on the principle of “one person, one vote.” H.R. 1 turns this on its head by weaponizing every aspect of the political regulatory system. The Federal Election Commission, which is currently a neutral body, would be given a 3-2 makeup, guaranteeing a partisan outcome with little accountability toward the actual votes which are cast. H.R. 1 also includes a 600 percent government match for political donations, and authorizes even more public dollars to campaigns. The bill also wants to make Election Day a new paid holiday for government workers, with additional paid vacation given to bureaucrats to oversee the polls. All of these changes are designed to distance the outcome of the election from those casting their votes.

H.R. 1 would also implement the following changes:

• Forces states to implement mandatory voter registration, removing civic participation as a voluntary choice, and increasing chances for error.
• Mandates that states allow all felons to vote.
• Forces states to extend periods of early voting, which has shown to have no effect on turnout.
• Mandates same-day voter registration, which encourages voter fraud.
• Limits the ability of states to cooperate to see who is registered in multiple states at the same time.
• Prohibits election observers from cooperating with election officials to file formal challenges to suspicious voter registrations.
• Criminalizes protected political speech by making it a crime to “discourage” someone from voting
• Bars states from making their own laws about voting by mail.
• Prohibits chief election officials in each state from participating in federal election campaigns.
• Mandates free mailing of absentee ballots.
• Mandates that states adopt new redistricting commissions.

H.R. 1 would cause sweeping and irrevocable damage to the free speech, privacy, and integrity that are central components to free and fair elections in America. We oppose H.R.

Our new House of Representatives has obviously decided to throw out our Constitution wherever possible. This bill is representative of that. It opens the door to massive voter fraud and nationalizes state elections, which is unconstitutional. Nationalizing all elections also greatly increases the vulnerability to hacking. The bill needs to fail miserably or we will be in serious danger of losing our representative republic.

We Might Take Them Seriously If They Practiced What They Preach

Posted on by

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article yesterday about some recent actions by Senator Bernie Sanders. It seems that according to the Federal Election Commission, Senator Sanders spent nearly $300,000 for private jet travel in the final stretch of his campaign for re-election to the Senate.

The article reports:

Air travel is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, with some estimations saying that the aviation industry accounts for about 11 percent of transportation-related emissions in the country. The environmental impact is greatly magnified in cases of private flights, which carry far fewer people per trip than commercial jets.

Sanders claims on his website that “climate change is the single greatest threat facing our planet” and puts the blame chiefly on the growing rate of emissions being produced by the transportation sector.

“Global climate change is real, it is caused mainly by emissions released from burning fossil fuels and it poses a catastrophic threat to the long-term longevity of our planet,” he writes. “The transportation sector accounts for about 26 percent of carbon pollution emissions.”

The Sanders campaign told the Washington Free Beacon it purchased “carbon offsets” to balance out emissions produced on the trip.

“The campaign purchased carbon offsets from Native Energy to support renewable energy projects and invest in carbon reduction projects to balance out the emissions produced on this trip,” Jones said in an email.

The Washington Free Beacon was unable to identify payments made by the campaign to the environmental group. Jones says the purchase will appear in the campaign’s next filing.

So let me get this straight–it’s okay to have a ginormous carbon footprint as long as you are rich enough to buy carbon credits. Meanwhile, all of us little people are supposed to go broke paying ever increasing prices for energy caused by regulations to lower carbon emissions put on us by people who have no intention of curtailing their carbon emissions. Seems a little unfair to me.

Free Speech In Danger In America

Posted on by

On Friday, The Washington Examiner reported on efforts by Democrats on the Federal Election Commission to limit political speech on the internet. The latest effort by these Democrats was triggered by the fact that unnamed Russians spent $100,000 for politically themed ads on Facebook. Somehow no Democrats on any committees were concerned when Saudi Arabia was funding anti-fracking movies.

The article reports:

Weintraub (Commissioner Ellen Weintraub) also demanded that the FEC address the issue of “internet political communications” at its next meeting on Sept. 14.

Facebook’s involvement and proof of Russian spending on political ads could give Democratic FEC critics of the freewheeling Internet the case they’ve needed.

Republicans on the FEC have claimed for years that the Democrats have been focused on the Internet in part because they want to silence conservative outlets like the Drudge Report, conservative videos, and even movies.

But the Facebook revelation and huge amount of money involved should give the Democrats a new weapon in their fight to regulate spending on Internet sites beyond paid advocacy. Under current rules, paid online ads that say, for example, “Vote For” or “Vote Against,” are regulated. The so-called Internet freedom rule, however, exempts free Internet posts and advocacy by third parties.

This sort of government intervention into free speech never ends well. I have no problem with anyone posting anything on Facebook as long as the source of the post is obvious. Where were these people when conservative groups were being denied tax-exempt status? This is a political move partially caused by the fact that Democratic election and fund-raising efforts are not going well. This is an attempt to slant the playing field to the Democrats advantage. It needs to be stopped.

We Need To Protect Free Speech

Posted on by

On Thursday, The Washington Examiner reported on a proposal by Democrats on the Federal Election Commission to limit media coverage of the 2016 election. I am sure that fact that their proposal would only limit conservative news outlets is purely coincidental.

The article reports:

In a last-minute submission Wednesday, a top Democrat on the evenly split FEC proposed that the Thursday meeting of the commission begin the process to prohibit companies with foreign ownership as small as 5 percent “from funding expenditures, independent expenditures, or electioneering communications.”

Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said in her submission, “Given everything we have learned this year, it blinks reality to suggest that that there is no risk of foreign nationals taking advantage of current loopholes to intercede invisibly in American elections. This is a risk no member of the Federal Election Commission should be willing to tolerate.”

Under Weintraub’s proposal, entities that reach her foreign ownership target would conceivably be banned from advocating for a candidate’s election or defeat.

Several media giants have at least 5 percent foreign ownership, some with as much as 25 percent. Included is News Corp, which owns Fox, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times also has foreign ownership, as do many politically active firms like Ben & Jerry’s.

That prohibition could include Fox commentator Sean Hannity or Wall Street Journal editorial. And, according to one analysis, because foreign nationals also are prohibited from making electioneering communications, those media would not even be able to mention Donald Trump or Hillary Rodham Clinton, even if just covering them.

This needs to be stopped before it even begins. Americans are smart enough to evaluate news sources. The government does not have to censor or filter news in America.

Stealing From The Poor To Enrich The Rich

Posted on by

This is a screenshot taken from the Observer:

bankstatementThe article reports:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is stealing from her poorest supporters by purposefully and repeatedly overcharging them after they make what’s supposed to be a one-time small donation through her official campaign website, multiple sources tell the Observer.

The overcharges are occurring so often that the fraud department at one of the nation’s biggest banks receives up to 100 phone calls a day from Clinton’s small donors asking for refunds for unauthorized charges to their bankcards made by Clinton’s campaign. One elderly Clinton donor, who has been a victim of this fraud scheme, has filed a complaint with her state’s attorney general and a representative from the office told her that they had forwarded her case to the Federal Election Commission.

…“We don’t investigate fraudulent charges unless they are over $100,” the fraud specialist explained. “The Clinton campaign knows this, that’s why we don’t see any charges over the $100 amount, they’ll stop the charges just below $100. We’ll see her campaign overcharge donors by $20, $40 or $60 but never more than $100.” The source, who has worked for Wells Fargo for over 10 years, said that the total amount they refund customers on a daily basis who have been overcharged by Clinton’s campaign “varies” but the bank usually issues refunds that total between $700 and $1,200 per day.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. The repeated charges to Mrs. Mahre are not an isolated incident. It is totally amazing to me that with the amount of money the Clintons have amassed through questionable dealings involving the Clinton Foundation they would feel the need to obtain campaign funds dishonestly. There seems to be a pattern in the actions of the Clinton family.

Holding On To Free Speech By A Thread

Posted on by

The Washington Examiner posted an article today about a recent vote by the Federal Election Commission.

The article reports:

Finally making good on long-harbored anger at conservative media, Democrats on the Federal Election Commission voted in secret to punish Fox News’ sponsorship of a Republican presidential debate, using an obscure law to charge the network with helping those on stage.

It is the first time in history that members of the FEC voted to punish a media outlet’s debate sponsorship, and it follows several years of Democratic threats against conservative media and websites like the Drudge Report.

The punishment, however, was blocked by all three Republicans on the commission, resulting in a 3-3 tie vote and no action.

The article further explains:

One of the candidates left out filed a complaint to the FEC, charging that Fox was essentially making a contribution to the 17 candidates by letting them have a voice in the debate.

CNN did the same thing, but there is no indication that they faced a complaint.

The quote “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” is attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Regardless of who made the statement, the quote applies to today. There are Americans who want to take away our First and Second Amendment rights. We need to watch the votes in Congress and the Congressional appointments and remove those people from office at the first opportunity to vote.

 

People In Glass Houses…

Posted on by

Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Federal Election Commission has sent a letter to Bernie Sanders‘ campaign committee about illegal donations to the campaign.

The article reports:

The campaign’s January financial disclosure filing listed contributions from foreign nationals and unregistered political committees, the FEC said. Other contributions came from donors who exceeded the $2,700 per-election limit.

“Although the Commission may take further legal action concerning the acceptance of [excessive or prohibited] contributions, your prompt action to refund the prohibited amount will be taken into consideration,” the FEC told the campaign.

Sanders’ campaign has relied on small-dollar individual contributions to a far greater extent than any other presidential campaign, including the Super PAC- and dark money-fueled efforts of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

The Vermont Senator and self-described socialist is running on a platform of transparency and campaign finance reform, contrasting his grassroots support with Clinton’s high-dollar donors and use of loopholes in federal election laws that allow her campaign to coordinate with outside groups that can accept unlimited contributions.

However, Sanders’ donors have also run afoul of federal campaign finance laws, and his financial disclosure reports have been riddled with errors.

Many of the foreign donations come from people in countries that support socialism and want to help the Sanders’ campaign. However, the campaign needs to follow the law and practice the transparency that it preaches.

Our First Amendment Rights Are In Danger

Posted on by

Yesterday PJ Media reported that the Federal Election Commission is considering a rule which would require non-profit organizations to provide a list of donors. This would mean that pro-life groups, Tea Parties, etc. would have to disclose donors. If this seems innocent to you, I would like to remind you of an incident that happened in California last year.

In April of last year I reported:

The Foundry is reporting today that Mozilla Corp. co-founder Brendan Eich has resigned as CEO after a week of public criticism for his support of Proposition 8 in California. Proposition 8 was the ballot initiative that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Brendan Eich had been at Mozilla for 15 years.

I have a few problems with the forced resignation of Mr. Eich. How does anyone know he contributed to a campaign supporting Proposition 8? Is that public information? Since when did supporting traditional marriage cost you your job? Aren’t Americans allowed to contribute to things they believe in?

The article at PJ Media points out:

Harassment of financial donors to conservative causes has become one of the standard tactics of the militant left. Speech regulations issued by the Federal Election Commission are therefore a necessary component of snuffing out financial support for conservative causes through harassment campaigns.

A half-century ago, liberal groups understood and respected this. The landmark case of NAACP vs. Alabama saw the Supreme Court protect the NAACP from having to disclose supporter information because of the harassment campaigns that would follow.

Now, with perfect hypocrisy, the PAC that issued the petition which triggered the FEC to consider rulemaking which would force disclosure of information does not disclose the full name of its leader. On the page detailing who runs Make Your Laws PAC, Inc., the founder, treasurer, and director is listed merely as “Sai”:

sai

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (of which I am counsel) has already submitted comments to the FEC opposing new federal powers over political freedom. Those comments can be found here. If you also oppose more power for Washington bureaucrats to pry private information from groups who speak out, you can add your own comments at this link.

If you value your First Amendment rights, please leave a comment at the link in the previous paragraph. This is truly a threat to free speech.

Is American Free Speech In Danger?

Posted on by

The Daily Caller posted an article today about a letter written by FEC Vice Chair Ann Ravel about her plans to deal with the issue of internet political advertising. The concern is that her plans will severely limit political speech of any kind on the internet.

The internet has made a significant difference in the political climate in America. People who do not trust the mainstream media have a place they can go to investigate news stories on their own. Since many of the internet news sites lean conservative, there are those in the Democrat party who consider this a threat. The significance of the internet in the political dialogue in America is almost on the level of the significance that talk radio has been in recent years.

The article reports:

The Republican members of the commission cited a 2006 ruling which provided a so-called “Internet exemption” which allows for the publication of free political web videos.

But according to her letter, Ravel, an Obama appointee, hopes to change that.

“A re-examination of the Commission’s approach to the Internet and other emerging technologies is long overdue,” she wrote, adding that “the Commission has not adapted with” a changing world.

Warning against “turning a blind eye to the Internet’s growing force in the political arena,” Ravel said that “this effort to protect individual bloggers and online commentators” has been “stretched to cover slickly-produced ads solely on the Internet.”

The fact that FEC Vice Chair Ann Ravel has written this letter tells us that the Democrats are concerned about the growth of the new media. The new media is doing the job that the traditional media used to do. Hopefully, the FEC will not be successful in shutting down free speech.

Should We Take Up A Collection To Buy The Federal Government New Computers?

Posted on by

The Blaze posted a story today about another federal government agency whose hard drive crashed in the middle of an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This is getting comical.

The hard drive in question belongs to April Sands, a former employee at the Federal Election Commission who resigned in the spring after admitting to violations of the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act limits political activities of federal employees, specifically prohibiting them from engaging in political activity while on the job or from government offices.

The article reports:

Issa (Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)) noted that while Sands admitted to violating the law, the FEC just recently told Congress that it could not recover her hard drive, which made it impossible to seek criminal charges against her.

“Recent information obtained by the committee suggests that the FEC OIG could not pursue criminal prosecution for the misconduct because the attorney’s hard drive had been recycled by the FEC,” Issa’s letter said.

As a result, Issa asked the FEC to provide information to his committee by July 28. That includes all documents related to the hard drive loss, and documents detailing the FEC’s practices for retaining information on computers.

The FEC is an independent agency, but Sands’ emails clearly indicated she favored Obama’s re-election in 2012. Before the election, she tweeted things like:

“Our #POTUS’s birthday is August 4. He’ll be 51. I’m donating at least $51 to give him the best birthday present ever: a second term.” In another tweet, she said anyone supporting Republicans is her “enemy.”

“The bias exhibited in these messages is striking, especially for an attorney charged with the responsibility to enforce federal election laws fairly and dispassionately,” Issa wrote.

The article includes a letter written by Issa to Federal Election Commission Chairman Lee E. Goodman, which shows some of the tweets sent by April Sands during regular work hours. There is also a document showing how and when information requested by the Oversight Committee was to be submitted. Unfortunately, because of the computer crash that information seems to be lost.

The federal government would probably have fewer computer crashes if there were more honest people in the current administration.

Incumbency Over Ethics

Posted on by

National Review Online posted a story today about Mitzi Bickers, who played a major role in Thad Cochran’s primary victory in Mississippi. Ms. Bickers is a Democratic staffer and political strategist. Last year, she left her job as a senior adviser to Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed after news surfaced that she had filed a fraudulent financial-disclosure statement.

The article reports:

In a bizarre turn of events, it seems that Bickers was in the middle of a bitterly contested Republican Senate primary. Two Atlanta-based entities affiliated with Bickers, The Bickers Group and the Pirouette Company, were paid thousands of dollars to make robo-calls on Senator Cochran’s behalf by a super PAC that backed Cochran in his bid for reelection. Documents filed with the Federal Election Commission show that Mississippi Conservatives, the political-action committee run by former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour’s nephew Henry, paid the groups a total of $44,000 for get-out-the-vote “phone services.”

It is becoming very clear that some Republicans are as opposed to the Tea Party as the Democrats are. Why? Because some of the Republican establishment has morphed into a Democrat Light party and has lost its way. The Republican establishment no longer adheres to the principle of smaller government and individual freedom. They have joined the Democrats in supporting the status quo and consolidating power in Washington.

The Republican Party needs to get back to its roots and its platform if it intends to be a political force in the future.

The Timeline On The IRS Scandal

Posted on by

On Thursday Kimberley Strassel posted an article at the Wall Street Journal detailing the evolution of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp has sent a letter to the Justice Department requesting a criminal probe of Lois Lerner.

Ms. Strassel points out that Lois Lerner may have felt justified to target conservative groups based on the rhetoric of leader Democrats rather than direct orders from the White House.

The article lists what may be some of the root causes of the IRS attacks:

As the illuminating timeline accompanying the Camp letter shows, Ms. Lerner’s focus on shutting down Crossroads GPS came only after Obama adviser David Axelrod listed Crossroads among “front groups for foreign-controlled companies”; only after Senate Democrats Dick Durbin, Carl Levin, Chuck Schumer and others demanded the IRS investigate Crossroads; only after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a website to “expose donors” of Crossroads; and only after Obama’s campaign lawyer, Bob Bauer, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about Crossroads.

The article goes through a timeline and details various attacks on conservative groups. It also notes the difficulty various investigative committees had in getting the information they requested in the investigation.

The article concludes:

In 2012, both the IRS and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings were targeting the group True the Vote. We now have email showing contact between a Cummings staffer and the IRS over that organization. How much more contact was there? It’s one thing to write a public letter calling on a regulator to act. It’s another to haul the regulator in front of your committee, or have your staff correspond with or pressure said regulator, with regard to ongoing actions. That’s a no-no.

The final merit of Mr. Camp’s letter is that he’s called out Justice and Democrats. Mr. Camp was careful in laying out the ways Ms. Lerner may have broken the law, with powerful details. Democrats can’t refute the facts, so instead they are howling about all manner of trivia—the release of names, the “secret” vote to release taxpayer information. But it remains that they are putting themselves on record in support of IRS officials who target groups, circumvent rules, and potentially break the law. That ought to go down well with voters.

It may be time to abolish the IRS and institute a consumption tax.

Enhanced by Zemanta