Tag Archives: Political campaign

What An Incredible Coincidence

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On Wednesday, The New York Post posted an article about the new minimum wage law in California.

The article reports:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that exempts Panera Bread from a new $20-an-hour minimum wage hike for fast food chains after the billionaire owner of several of the chain’s locations donated to his campaign, according to a report.

In September, Newsom, a Democrat, signed into law a measure that raises the minimum wage of food fast workers from $16 an hour to $20 an hour.

But the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act (FAST Act) includes an unusual carve-out that exempts “chains that bake bread and sell it as a standalone item,” according to Bloomberg News.

Newsom reportedly sought the exemption, which benefits among others Greg Flynn, the billionaire CEO of Flynn Restaurant Group, the company that owns some two dozen Panera Bread locations in the state.

Flynn, who attended the same high school as Newsom, has been involved in business dealings with the California governor, according to Bloomberg News.

He has also contributed to Newsom’s political campaigns.

…The governor’s office told Bloomberg News that the law was the “result of countless hours of negotiations with dozens of stakeholders over two years.”

Flynn was publicly critical of the legislation when it was first floated in 2022.

He said that raising the minimum wage of fast-food employees would have an adverse business effect on franchise owners.

Flynn quietly lobbied Newsom’s aides to reconsider whether Panera Bread can be considered fast food, according to Bloomberg News.

The exemption for bread sellers was inserted into the legislation after the union that was pushing for the hike in minimum wage accepted it as a concession aimed at getting the governor’s support, the report stated.

I would not be disappointed if In-N-Out Burger decided to get out of California and come east!

The Next Generation Of The “Cancel Culture”

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On Friday The Federalist reported the results of a recent Cato Institute survey of Americans asked whether or not it was okay to fire people who support President Trump.

The article notes:

The Cato Institute just released a new report showing that 62 percent of Americans are inclined to self-censor what they say politically “because others might find them offensive.” Even moderate leftists report they feel increased fear of offending the offendable, while only the most “staunch liberals,” as Cato described them, feel free to speak their minds. The “very conservative” have been pushed deepest in the closet: they are most likely to refrain from saying what they think politically, at nearly twice the rate of the “very liberal.”

Buried deeper in the report, however, is a stunning data point that might be one of the most troubling current cultural indicators. Forty-four percent of Americans younger than age 30 believe a company is correct in firing an executive because he or she personally donated to President Trump’s reelection campaign.

The companion finding was also disturbing. Twenty-seven percent of people under 30 said they were fine with an executive being fired because he or she donated to the Joe Biden campaign. The means that of Americans under 30 years old, 73 percent think it would be wrong to fire an executive from a company for donating to the Biden campaign, while only 56 percent believe it would be wrong to do so for a Trump donation.

The article concludes:

It was not all that long ago that the liberal clarion value was the misattributed Voltairean principle, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Today that seems to have been replaced with the brutally authoritarian, “I disagree with what you believe, and I will make sure you lose your livelihood because I went digging and found out you made a private campaign contribution to someone I think is evil.”

If, God forbid, the autopsy of the American experiment is ever written, this growing expectation that political submission be a condition of one’s employment will certainly be noted as a significant stage in its demise. It demonstrates that the world’s most hopeful self-government is moving in a very bad direction, and that should profoundly bother us all.

This is frightening. It is a further indication that many Americans do not understand the founding documents of America. Free speech was one of the foundations of those documents. Viewpoint discrimination is an intimidation tactic that should be totally unacceptable in a free country. Firing an executive because they donated to a political campaign should not even be a consideration. The fact that it is is one of many reasons that the names of people who make donations under $1000 to a political campaign should be kept private. The names of people who make large donations or the names of organizations that make large donations should be made public.

 

The Case For Investigating The Trump Campaign And Presidency Just Keeps Getting Weaker

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Yesterday John Solomon posted an article at Just The News with the following title, “The 13 revelations showing the FBI never really had a Russia collusion case to begin with.”

I am going to list the revelations without the comments, so please follow the link to read the entire article. It is chilling to think that a political party in power can use such flimsy information to spy on the political campaign (and presidency) of the opposing party.

Here is the list:

1.) The FBI possessed information dating to 2015 in Steele’s intelligence (Delta) file warning that he might be the victim of Russian disinformation through his contacts with Vladimir Putin-connected oligarchs.

2.) Senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr warned the FBI in August 2016 that Steele held an extreme bias against Trump (he was “desperate” to defeat Trump) and that his information was likely uncorroborated raw intelligence.

3.) Steele’s work on the dossier was funded by Trump’s rival in the election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and the Democratic Party, through their opposition research firm, Fusion GPS.

4.) Steele told a State Department official in October 2016, 10 days before the FISA warrants were first secured, that he had leaked to the news media and had an election day deadline for making public the information he had shared with the FBI as a confidential human source.

5.) Steele was fired Nov. 1, 2016 for violating his confidential human source agreement by leaking to the news media.

6.) Information Steele provided to the government was proven, before the FISA warrants were granted, to be false and inaccurate.

7.) Steele was caught in October 2016 peddling a false internet rumor also being spread by a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee and a liberal reporter.

8.) The FBI falsely declared to the FISA court it had corroborated the evidence in Steele’s dossier used in the search warrant application, including that Carter Page had met with two senior Russians in Moscow in summer 2016

9.) The FBI interviewed Steele’s primary sub-source in January 2017, who claimed much of the information attributed to him was not accurate, exaggerated or rumor.

10.) The FBI possessed statements of innocence from Page collected by an undercover informer in August and October 2016, including that Page denied meeting with the two Russians and did not play a role in changing a GOP platform position on Ukraine during the Trump nominating convention.

11.) The CIA alerted the FBI that Page was a friendly U.S. asset who had assisted the Agency on Russia matters and was not a stooge for the Russian government.

12.) The FBI possessed exculpatory statements made by Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos in which he told an undercover informer he and the Trump campaign were not involved in the Russian hacking of Clinton’s emails and considered such activity to be “illegal.”

13.) The FBI concluded in January 2017 that Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn was not being deceptive in his interviews with agents and likely suffered from a faulty memory and was not operating as an agent for Russia.

The only thing I can add to this is that this should NEVER happen again in America. The only way to prevent it from happening again is the put the people in jail who violated the civil rights of Americans by lying to the FISA Court.

Don’t Pass It Until People Are Held Accountable

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One America News posted an article today about Congressional attempts to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Frankly, I don’t think it should be extended until those who abused it in the past are held accountable for their actions. FISA was used (just as the Watergate break-in was attempted to be used) to spy on an opposing political campaign. If the act is extended and no one is held accountable, it is a pretty safe bet that political parties that are in power could do the same thing that the Obama administration did–use the law to spy on the political campaign of their opposition. That is not acceptable. That sort of action puts us on the road to having a two-tiered justice system with the government having almost unlimited authority to spy on Americans.

The article reports:

The Senate voted on a temporary extension of recently lapsed intelligence programs to provide time for discussion on major provisions in the renewal process. The extension was passed Monday, just minutes before a scheduled procedural vote on the matter.

The move came as a way to give lawmakers more time to consider the bill, which would reauthorize the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, the extension for the Senate was unanimously agreed to in order to give members more time to debate on the House’s revisions.

Specifically, there is bipartisan push-back to FISA, which senators on both sides of the aisle fear violates people’s privacy rights. Two of the most vocal opponents to the act are Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).

“The secret FISA court should be forbidden from allowing spying on political campaigns ever again, period,” said Sen. Paul. “…History has proven just how dangerous it can be when we sacrifice our rights to create a temporary and ultimately false sense of security.”

Until I see indictments of people who knowingly lied to the FISA court, I don’t want to see FISA renewed.

The Thin Line Of Censorship

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A friend of mine who is in radio advertising tells me that radio stations do not have the ability to refuse political ads. During an election season, a station must air all ads that a political campaign pays for. Evidently this is the result of the fact that radio stations are controlled by the Federal Communications Commission. Unfortunately the new media is very loosely controlled by anything. This is a very mixed blessing. I don’t want the government telling me that I have to accept political ads on my blog whether or not I agree with the ads. However, the censorship of conservative speech that is going on at YouTube, Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc., is not acceptable.

Breitbart is reporting today that according to a report by 60 minutes more than 300 of President Donald Trump’s political ads have taken down by Google and its video platform YouTube, mostly over the summer.

The article reports:

The CBS reporters were unable to find specific reasons for the mass takedowns of Trump ads, a common problem with social media companies, which are often reluctant to explain precisely why a ban or other act of censorship has happened. “We found very little transparency in the transparency report,” concluded 60 Minutes.

The article includes the following quote from CBS News:

60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Wojcicki, “Have you taken down any of President Trump’s ads at all?” YouTube’s CEO responded, “There are ads of President Trump that were not approved to run on Google or YouTube.” When pressed for an example, Wojcicki added, “Well, they’re available in our transparency report.”

In response to concerns raised after the 2016 election cycle, Google and YouTube, like Facebook, keep a searchable archive of political ads that have run on the site.

60 Minutes reviewed the archive to learn more about President Trump’s problematic political ads. We found that over 300 video ads were taken down by Google and YouTube, mostly over the summer, for violating company policy. But the archive doesn’t detail what policy was violated. Was it copyright violation? A lie or extreme inaccuracy? Faulty grammar? Bad punctuation? It’s unclear. The ads determined to be offending are not available to be screened. We found very little transparency in the transparency report. 

We are coming into a very important election season. American voters need to hear both sides of every campaign. We already know that the mainstream media is extremely biased. How are people supposed to get information when free speech is being suppressed?

Money Doesn’t Always Win Political Races

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A number of the Democrat victories in Virginia were heavily funded by George Soros. George Soros also poured $800,000 into a political campaign in New York to unseat Sandra Doorley, a Republican District Attorney in Monroe County, New York.

Yesterday Paul Mirengoff at Power Line Blog posted an article about Tuesday’s elections.

The article reports:

George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire, succeeded in toppling two fine Northern Virginia prosecutors this year in Democratic primaries. Pouring unheard of amounts of money into local prosecutor races in Arlington and Fairfax Counties, Soros was able to take down Commonwealth Attorneys Theo Stamos in Arlington and Raymond Morrogh in Fairfax. They will be replaced by prosecutors who are borderline qualified, if that, and who very likely will adhere to the radical, anti-law enforcement agenda of Soros, their money man.

The article concludes:

Add the amount Soros spent on the Monroe County race to what he spent in local prosecutor races in Virginia and elsewhere, and you see how badly the Hungarian billionaire wants to “decriminalize crime” (Lonsberry’s phrase) in the United States.

Fortunately, Monroe County voters don’t share Soros’s pro-criminal agenda. They reelected Doorley handily. She captured around 56 percent of the vote.

Afterwards, Doorley thanked Soros for his involvement. She declared:

The Republican Party in Monroe Country is not dead, and we are alive and well. And look at all the great people, here. We still have the energy and we will be back. And I am back for another four more years, so, thank you, George Soros!

Soros deserves to be taunted. However, I don’t buy the suggestion, other than in jest, that his large contributions to left-wing candidates in local races are counterproductive. Soros made a difference in Virginia, and I suspect that Doorley’s race was closer than it would have been without the Hungarian’s $800,000 contribution to her opponent.

Soros keeps probing for weaknesses in the opposition to his radical plans for America. He does so skillfully. Fortunately, Monroe County passed his “stress test” on Tuesday.

Money does not always win elections.

 

Unfortunately No One Wins In This Scenario

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Lisa Page’s testimony stated that the Department of Justice prevented the FBI from charging Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information. That may or may not have something to do with a meeting on an airport tarmac, but that is the situation.  Let’s take a trip back in time to reexamine the entire picture.

If the FBI had indicted Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information during the political campaign, Bernie Sanders would have been the candidate and Donald Trump would probably have won. The Democrats would have been up in arms that Donald Trump won unfairly. They are claiming that anyway, but not too many people believe them! Since the Democrats expected Hillary Clinton would win, they assumed the story of the private server would disappear as soon as she took office. Well she lost, and the story is back. But let’s take a look at the consequences of the server.

On October 27, 2016, Real Clear Politics posted the following quote by Charles Krauthammer:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: This brings us back full circle to the beginning. The question was originally: Why did she have the private server? She said convenience, obviously that was ridiculous…

It was obvious she was hiding something.

And think about it, she set it up in 2009, before becoming Secretary of State. So, she anticipated having exchanges that she would not want anyone to see. So, we’ve been asking ourselves on this set for a year almost, what exactly didn’t she want people to see?

Well, now we know.

And as we speculated, the most plausible explanation was the rank corruption of the Clinton Foundation, and its corrupt — I don’t know if it’s illegal, but corrupt relationship with the State Department.

And her only defense as we saw earlier– the Democrats are saying, well, there was nothing she did… that was corrupted by donations. You can believe that if you want, but there’s a reason that people give donations in large amounts, and that’s to influence the outcome of decisions. So, this — we are getting unfolding to us, exactly what she anticipated having to hide, and it is really dirty business.

I miss Charles Krauthammer.

But there is another aspect to this. On August 29, 2018, The Federalist Papers reported:

A new report shows that the Chinese hacked Hillary’s homebrew communication server and reports indicate the Chinese killed 12 CIA sources while the server was at her residence.

The article included quotes from the Daily Caller News Foundation:

…“The Chinese wrote code that was embedded in the server, which was kept in Clinton’s residence in upstate New York. The code generated an instant ‘courtesy copy’ for nearly all of her emails and forwarded them to the Chinese company, according to the sources.”

In other words, an American secretary of state who felt entitled to work on her own amateurish computer system had exposed all of her correspondence to one of the country’s most powerful and dangerous rivals in world affairs.

And it’s very possible that at least 12 operatives serving United States intelligence agencies paid for Clinton’s security breach with their lives.

According to a New York Times report from May 2017, a successful Chinese counterintelligence operation that started in 2010 “systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.”

“From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.’s sources,” The Times reported. “According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.”

Maybe it’s a coincidence, but 2010 was Clinton’s first full year as secretary of state.

So what do we do with Hillary Clinton? If she were anyone but Hillary Clinton, she would be sitting in jail somewhere. However, if she is charged under a Republican administration, the Democrats will cry that the charges are political. But if she is not charged with the mishandling of classified information, it will be political. How in the world do you solve the accountability problem and the political problem?

What Were These People Thinking?

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Unfortunately politics is a blood sport. That is nothing new. It has been that way since the days of Julius Caesar.  Fortunately, not everyone in our nation who votes sees things that way. Many of us voice our opinions, but have no interest in threatening or promising to embarass people who do not do exactly what we want them to do. But there will always be a few people who say things or act in ways that actually harm their cause rather than help it.

Hot Air posted an article today that makes me wonder about the mentality behind a particular political campaign.

The article reports:

Supporters of Democratic candidate Scott Wallace in Pennsylvania’s First District have been going house to house and leaving some door hangers reminding people to vote. Nothing wrong with that message, of course, but these particular pieces are being described as Orwellian because of the implied threat they contain. Rather than simply saying you should get out and vote, the hangers have a cheerful message reminding the resident that records of whether or not you voted are public.

This is the door hanger:

I strongly believe everyone should vote. However, I wonder if this door hanger is helpful to the cause.

Have We Reached The Point Where The Cost Is Already Too High?

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In 1987 The New York Times printed an article about Raymond J. Donovan, Secretary of Labor under President Reagan. The were a lot of  people in the media and in government who disliked President  Reagan almost as much as they dislike President Trump. In 1985, Donovan resigned from his Cabinet position because  charges of fraud and grand larceny were brought against him (those charges had nothing to do with his work in the Reagan administration). He was the first Cabinet member in history to be indicted. In 1987 he was cleared of all of those charges.

In 1987, The New York Times reported that Mr. Donovan had been acquitted. At the end of the trial, Mr. Donovan asked, “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?” That is not to mention the expense of defending himself during the two and a half years of the trial. The use off the government to bully people into submission is not a new problem, but we have definitely seen an increase of attacks on people tangentially associated with Donald Trump.

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about the impact the Mueller witch hunt has had on Carter Page.

The article reports:

FBI surveillance of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page cost him business, income and even his girlfriend.

Page tells The Post that during the media barrage he faced in late 2016, he visited his girlfriend at her London flat, where she was “freaking out with the fake news about me.”

“Talking with her later in the evening after dinner, she told me that she didn’t want me staying there anymore, and that our relationship was over.

“So late that night,” Page continued, “I booked a last-minute hotel reservation as part of this early chapter of the redefinition of my life.”

Page believes the FBI’s mole, professor Stefan Halper, was secretly spying on him as part of a “politically motivated” investigation of Team Trump, using fake sympathy to gain his trust — all while fishing for dirt on Page’s ties to Russia, where he’d worked as an energy consultant.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be a trap,” Page said.

People who work on a political campaign should not be subject to government spying simply because they worked on a political campaign.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today that included one of President Trump’s tweets:

This is wrong. The Mueller investigation has bankrupted General Flynn, awakened Paul Manafort‘s family at gunpoint in the middle of the night, and bankrupted  Michael Caputo (article here) after he worked on the Trump campaign for a short period of time.

None of Mueller’s efforts have uncovered one shred of evidence that the Russians were working for the Trump campaign or vice versa. Mueller has terrorized American citizens in the name of justice and not been held accountable for it. It is time to turn the tables and hold Mueller accountable for his actions.

 

 

I Suspect There Are Some People In The FBI And DOJ Who Wish Mueller Had Shut Down His Investigation Before This Information Came Out

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Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about some of the information discovered regarding the government spy inside the Trump presidential campaign. It is a long article, but worth reading. Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

To me, this is the highlight of the article:

The article details some of the contradictions in the story the media and the FBI and DOJ are currently trying to sell us.

For instance:

Remember, in May 2016 Mr. Page was the key witness working on behalf of the FBI in a case against Russians. [ Evgeny Buryakov Case] Now in September 2016, the same FBI is fixing to put Carter Page under a Title-1 surveillance warrant and label him an agent of a hostile foreign government….

… funny, that.

The two last exchanged emails in September 2017, about a month before a secret warrant to surveil Mr. Page expired after being repeatedly renewed by a federal judge.

This whole thing stinks. I can totally understand the opposition party infiltrating a political campaign–that has been going on for years. But when the government not only takes sides during an election, but puts a spy in one political campaign, we have entered into a new realm of dishonesty. This makes Watergate look like a job done by amateurs (which it actually was). The people involved in this need to go to jail–regardless of their status in our government–they used the government’s power against the people. They violated the Fourth Amendment. They violated the Oath of Office they took to defend the U.S. Constitution. They not only didn’t defend the Constitution–they walked all over it and would have killed it had they won the election. If Hillary Clinton had won, the corruption would have gone unchecked and probably gotten worse. It is long past time to hold the people involved in this scheme accountable.

We Need To Listen To The People On The Front Lines

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Lifezette is reporting today that the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Council has endorsed Donald Trump for President.

The article reports:

The National ICE Council, the union representing 5,000 federal immigration officers and law enforcement support staff, decided to endorse the GOP nominee after carefully considering the impact a Hillary Clinton presidency would have on their officers. Saying that Clinton has embraced the “unconstitutional executive orders” of President Barack Obama, Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council, said in a statement that these orders “have forced our officers to violate their oaths to uphold the law and placed every person living in America at risk — including increased risk of terrorism.”

According to the article, this is the first time the National ICE Council has endorsed a candidate in a national election. This is important. We need to listen to these people as they are on the front lines of our fight against domestic terrorism.

The article reports the following statement by Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council:

“Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has promised the most radical immigration agenda proposal in U.S. history,” Crane added. “Her radical plan would result in the loss of thousands of innocent American lives, mass victimization and death for many attempting to immigrate to the United States, the total gutting of interior enforcement, the handcuffing of ICE officers, and an uncontrollable flood of illegal immigrants across U.S. borders.”

…After noting that only 5 percent of the council’s membership supported Clinton’s presidential bid, Crane lambasted the Democratic presidential nominee for catering to the special interest groups and “open-borders radicals” all in the name of “cheap labor, greed and votes.”

To be fair, the establishment Republicans are no better than the Democrats on open borders. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a major contributor to Republican candidates. Those candidates do not want to close our borders because many of the Chamber of Commerce members want cheap labor. If the Republican Party truly opposed open borders, those borders would be closed by now, regardless of who was President. There are some Republicans who have fought for real borders, but they are not in the majority.

The article at Lifezette concludes:

“America has been lied to about every aspect of immigration in the United States,” Crane concluded. “We can fix our broken immigration system, and we can do it in a way that honors America’s legacy as a land of immigrants, but Donald Trump is the only candidate who is willing to put politics aside so that we can achieve that goal.”

Logic Turned Sideways

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Last night at a Donald Trump rally in San Jose, Trump supporters were attacked by an angry mob as they left the venue.

Hot Air posted an article today about the violence and about the Mayor of San Jose’s comments on the riot.

The article reports:

“Our police officers have done an extremely courageous and professional job so far,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told the Associated Press by phone. “We’re all still holding our breath to see the outcome of this dangerous and explosive situation.”

The mayor, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments have to deal with.

“At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,” Liccardo said.

I hate to be difficult, but the behavior of the Donald Trump campaign was not the problem.

The article further reports:

Here’s how CNN described Thursday’s scene outside the San Jose Convention Center:

Protesters jumped on cars, pelted Trump supporters with eggs and water balloons, snatched signs, and stole “Make America Great” hats off supporters’ heads before burning them and snapping selfies with the charred remains.

Several people were caught on camera punching Trump supporters.

This was also reported:

TrumpProtestNo, California is not Mexico. The fact that the Trump protesters are claiming that it is might be food for thought.

The Weekly Standard also posted an article about the protests today.

They reported:

The mayor of San Jose, Democrat Sam Liccardo, reacted angrily to the events. Not that he was particularly upset at the violent mob that attacked innocent Americans, of course. No, his ire was directed at Mr. Trump. “At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,” the mayor said. Apparently it was downright “irresponsible” of Trump to even set foot in California’s third largest city.

The Washington Post characterized the mayor’s remarks as if they were just standard partisan hackery: It noted that the mayor is a “Hillary Clinton supporter.” But Liccardo’s remarks were far different than, say, a cable TV flack claiming that Trump’s tax policy “favors the rich.” (And by the way, he employed the same logic as as a slack-jawed misogynist saying of a sexual assault victim, “hey, her skirt was so short, she was asking for it.”)

I would love to know how many people were arrested and charged with assault (as they should have been). I would also like to know when it became acceptable to physically attack people who support ideas that are different than your ideas.

The violence at San Jose is unacceptable. It needs to be condemned. It also needs to be understood that the people who are to blame for the violence are the people who are committing the violent acts. I don’t care who said what–there is no excuse for the behavior shown. I would also like to know how many of the protesters were paid and what the conditions of the employment were–were they encouraged to be violent?

I encountered paid protesters during a political campaign in Massachusetts a number of years ago. It was very clear that they were attempting to create an incident that would get major press coverage. They were unsuccessful because no one cooperated. In the case of San Jose, it didn’t seem to matter what the response was, the protesters were going to be violent.

Until responsibility for the violence is put on those committing the violence, we will see more of this. The solution to this is to charge anyone engaging in violent activity with assault and fine them heavily. Even though the people funding this may have deep pockets, at some point paying fines will get old.

The Internal Revenue Service As A Political Force

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We haven’t heard much lately about the Internal Revenue Service‘s (IRS) targeting of conservative groups, but Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial yesterday illustrating another aspect of IRS involvement in the 2012 election.

The article explains:

At the same time the IRS harassed Republican nonprofit groups during the 2012 political campaign, it selectively advised black churches and other Democrat nonprofits on how far they can go in campaigning for President Obama and other Democrats.

…U.S. tax code prohibits churches and other nonprofits from “participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office.”

The ban includes donations, endorsements, fundraising or any other activity “that may be beneficial or detrimental to any particular candidate.” In the past, black churches have been known to pass out voting guides to members in violation of IRS rules.

Washington constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley at the time blogged that the special campaign training session offered these Obama supporters — with the direct participation of the IRS chief and attorney general — was a “raw” display of political favoritism.

“If (former GOP Attorney General) Alberto Gonzalez went to Congress to brief evangelical religious leaders on campaigning in the presidential election, the hue and cry would be deafening,” Turley said.

Non-black clergy were not afforded the same legal training in campaigning tactics by the Obama administration.

First of all, I have very mixed emotions about the whole idea of churches not being allowed to be politically involved. Theoretically, the church is the moral backbone of America and should be allowed to speak out on political or moral issues that impact America. The law that bars political speech in the church was enacted by Lyndon Johnson in response to a political opponent who was getting support in local churches–it has nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution. In fact, if you study American history, you find that the church has often spoken out about political and moral issues in the past.

The uneven enforcement of the law is one of the major aspects of the Eric Holder Justice Department and the politicized IRS. It is time to remove these people from Washington and return America to a place where all men are equal under the law.

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Checking The Facts On The Campaign

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The charts below relating to Presidential campaign fund raising and campaign spending were posted in the Washington Examiner yesterday:

 

 

The charts were in response to a statement made by President Obama on the campaign trail. The President stated:

I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign, if things continue as they have so far.

I’m not just talking about the super PACs and anonymous outside groups — I’m talking about the Romney campaign itself. Those outside groups just add even more to the underlying problem.

The Romney campaign raises more than we do, and the math isn’t hard to understand: Through the primaries, we raised almost three-quarters of our money from donors giving less than $1,000, while Mitt Romney’s campaign raised more than three-quarters of its money from individuals giving $1,000 or more….

The above statement is simply false, as the charts show. This is the time in the election season where if you believe everything you are told, you are at risk of being misled! 

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