Savage Republican

Or campaign finance 101.

There are a couple of bills wending their way through the House that should have the attention of anyone who is involved in politics. The first is a bill is (supposedly) an ethics/lobbying reform bill but it also has 527s in it’s sights. You remember the 527s of the 2004 campaign right? Groups like Move On.org and the Swift Boat Vets. This bill would no longer allow 527s to collect unlimited funds from individual donors. Instead it would limit individual contributions to the 527s to $30,000 per year. The other bill is aimed at exempting political blogs and bloggers (such as yours truly) from the constraints of the McCain Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Finance “Reform” Act. Senator McCain, in an attempt to “clarify” his restriction on free speech, has decided that political blogs and bloggers “contribute” to campaigns by their writings and as such should be assigned a dollar value and therefore restricted.

In the case of the first bill, Democrats spoke out against the proposal.

“House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “does not personally support additional restrictions on 527 contributions,” a Pelosi spokeswoman said.”

And no wonder….during the 2004 election, George Soros gave a whopping $24+million to Democratic oriented 527s. Insurance mogul Peter Lewis gave nearly $23 million to Democratic-oriented 527’s. Meanwhile Republican oriented 527s like the Swift Boat Vets only recieved $17.01 million and their largest donor gave $200,000. The rest were primarily funded by small individual donations of $500 or less. (2004 campaign data via Open Secrets )

Meanwhile, the exempt media is pushing hard to restrict the contributions of blogs and bloggers. The NYTimes wrote an op-ed piece this week that made it clear that they consider the internet to be a ” free-flowing big-money trough for uncontrolled political spending”. I wonder what they consider these unregulated Democratic 527s to be then. If you dig a little further into the world of 527 donors you would find that the four individuals that contributed the most money to 527s all donated to Democratic oriented 527s. Their donations were a staggering $73.3 million dollars. Meanwhile, the top Republican donor (the number 5 individual donor) gave a “paltry” $8 million. The next two Republican donors come in at number 8 (Dawn Arnall of Ameriquest with $5 million) and 9 (T Boone Pickins of BP Capital with $4.6 million). The remainder of the top 10 were also contributors to Democratic oriented 527s and they donated a combined $14+ million. That means that 7 individuals donated a combined $87.3 million dollars to elect Democratic candidates for office. Yep – I would say that is pretty free flowing!

Personally, I like what Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn) said. He said that the 527 issue needs to be addressed on its own merit. The 527 fountain of unlimited funds needs to be shut down. The loophole that allowed them to be set up was a horrible loophole in a horrible bill. We may be stuck with the McCain Feingold debacle, but the people of America deserve to have the 527 loophole closed. Otherwise look for the level of debate sink even lower than it is today…and heaven knows it’s low now.

Well, never let it be said that I’m surprised at the Minnesota radical left wing controlled Senate. These radical socialists (is there any other kind to liberty loving Americans?) who have unlimited access to money taken by force from others (BTW, called plunder or thievery: Webster- “to take away by force or unjust means” ) seem to think that now they know best (ha!) as how to make sure that people are covered by health insurace. They now have a proposal to force certain size companies to pay for things they may not wish to.Tough, according to the Senate Socialists. Yup, good ol’ Becky “I LOVE KARL MARX” says (from the article) “The measure’s sponsor, Sen. Becky Lourey, DFL-Kerrick, said large corporations that fail to provide adequate health care to their employees force taxpayers and other “responsible” companies to pick up the tab.”What I’m trying to do is stop the cost shifting to the public programs,” Lourey testified. “And why is there ANY concern about shifting “responsibilities” ? Well, because the Senate certainly knows best in ALL situations. Especially medical insurance. After all, aren’t all the left wing socialist Senators experts in insurance and certainly economics? Of course they are. What was I thinking? But, if they are SO wise, well, how did we get into this mess with medical insurance in the first place? I’m confused. Did the wisest and smartest people in all the world who warm chairs in the Minnesota Senate Chambers perhaps, maybe miss a certain something?
I also notice the compelling phrase “their fair share”.
And buried in the article is this little something “While 94 percent of companies with 500 or more workers provide health care coverage, only 43 percent of companies with 50 or fewer workers provide health care. The bill may actually encourage some businesses not to expand for fear of being included in the 10,000 worker category, they said.” Uh, it doesn’t even work that way. It works much, much lower. I lived across from a great neighbor who owned a very small manufacturing company. He was committed to never having more than 13 employees. Why? He said that when and if he got to 15 employees there was a number of state regulations that would fall on him to enforce and comply with. So, he made a decision not to expand. Another friend of mine started a small telecomm company perhaps 15 years ago. He had 22 employees and agonized over whether or not he was going to hire 4 more employees as there were a whole slew of new state and Federal regulations that were going to hit his company when he went to 25 employees. And from these two companies there are many, many more that chose not to be big or bigger. Forget 10,000 workers. Those are NOT the companies that make and drive the American economic engine.
Oh, and one more case: the wife of a friend wanted to start a small house cleaning company. A true American entrepreneur. Being dutiful, she asked the Feds and state what she would need. She received a box 2 inches high from the state filled with all the forms and regulations she’d need for a house cleaning company. She got another box 6 inches deep from the Feds. And a couple of weeks later she got a box a foot and a half deep from the EPA with all the warnings documents, postings, haz mat needed, banned chemicals, employees procedures that needed to met for all chemicals listed, and so on and so forth, etc,etc,etc…
She looked at her husband and said “I’m now a Republican”.
As if that would help.
Only 108 cuts left.

I wrote here, here and here about my dissatisfaction with the women’s movement today – especially with the National Organization for Women (NOW). In a story released last week, that which I speculated about in those posts, was revealed as fact….that the only womens right that NOW truly cares about is the right to abort unborn children.

“Some committee members had questions of Barrett and bill sponsor Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, but there was little opposition. Even Planned Parenthood, which usually opposes such bills, supports it.
“It is a step in the right direction,” Planned Parenthood’s Tim Stanley said.
One provision that makes the bill acceptable to a wider range of people is that if a pharmacist won’t fill a prescription, he must help the patient find a pharmacy where it can be filled.
Rep. Cy Thao, DFL-St. Paul, said he doesn’t see a need for the bill since patients will be able to get prescriptions they want, even if they go elsewhere.
“This is a compromise by the folks who actually dispense these drugs,” Emmer said.
Erin Matson, president of Minnesota’s National Organization of Women chapter, said it is not right to make people seeking birth control medicines to hunt for them.
“Women deserve more than a wild goose chase law,” she said.”

The bill in question was HF3032 which would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions under a variety of reasons including “moral objection”. The bill targets birth control pills and RU-486 (the so-called Morning After pill). Note the emphasized comments (above) from Planned Parenthood and NOW. I would think that if the provisions in this bill really were as odious as Ms. Matson implicates, that Planned Parenthood of MN/SD would also have problems with the bill and they don’t – they endorsed the bill!

It has become obvious to this woman, that NOW is only in business to support women who want to have abortions and the rest of us need not even apply. Maybe the time has come for a real womans rights organization…one that will take up the cause of women held captive by religion, by race and by economic status. A group that will pull the blinders off of the rest of the world to show them that if you want to truly empower women, then give us the opportunities that everyone else has – opportunities to grow and thrive and raise our children in a free society that appreciates us for what we are.

Which lie you ask? The oft repeated “Bush lied” about Saddam’s WMD’s meme that has been soooo prevelant over the last 3 years.

You may ask why I think we should finally put this lie to rest? Simply, this report in the Washington Times that states emphatically that:

1) Saddam was busily rebuilding his WMD program.
2) He was hiding the evidence from UN inspectors by burying it in the sands of Iraq
3) Joe Wilson LIED when he said that Iraq was not going after uranium in Africa!

“There is more to come. House intelligence committee Chairman Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican, told The Washington Times that about 500 hours of additional Saddam tapings are still being translated and analyzed by the U.S. In addition, in Qatar, U.S. Central Command’s forward headquarters in the Persian Gulf, sit 48,000 boxes of Iraqi documents, of which the military has delivered 68 pages to the committee. “I don’t want to overstate what is in the documents,” Mr. Hoekstra said. “I certainly want to get them out because I think people are going to find them very interesting.”

Yes please Rep. Hoekstra – get these documents out. Let’s show the world, once and for all, that the liars in this episode did not reside within the Bush Administration (as the Dems would have you believe)…

“The ISG, they were lied to in a very systematic way,” he (Bill Tierney) said. “Lying. They (the Hussein regime) were very good at it.”

It makes you wonder who else was lying to us and for how long…

I know…I really shouldn’t ask, not with the Democratic Party in the state it is in now…from today’s Washington Post:

“A liberal Democrat and potential White House contender is proposing that the Senate censure President Bush for authorizing domestic eavesdropping, saying the White House misled Americans about its legality.
“The president has broken the law, and, in some way, he must be held accountable,” Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said.”

Oh really Senator????? Gee, I must have missed the trial. Or is it just because the Junior Senator from Wisconsin says that the law was broken that we should just take your word for it?

Of course you just know that the Kos Kidz are all over this:

“”It goes without saying, though, that there better damn well be 44 co-sponsors on Feingold’s resolution,” a user called Georgia10 posted on the popular left-wing blog DailyKos.com within minutes of Mr. Feingold’s television appearance.”

However, not every Democratic operative is positive about the effectiveness of this course of action.

“Mr. (Joe) Trippi warned that any potential candidate who dismisses the censure idea risks being flamed online. “Anybody who says this is going too far is somebody who’s probably writing off that side of things,” he said. “Anybody who writes off the netroots or says you don’t have to pay attention is really playing with dynamite.”

“Another Democratic operative, Daniel Gerstein, said his party’s candidates need to proceed cautiously with rhetoric condemning the president. “If all people hear about your message is you’re against taking all reasonable measures to protect the country from terrorism and you don’t want the CIA listening to Al Qaeda, it puts us in an even deeper hole on this issue,” he said.”

Mr. Gerstein has a huge point here. This just plays into the Republican’s hand. Recent polls have shown support for the President when it comes to eavesdropping on al Qaeda. More telling is the fact that 59% of the people polled said that they felt that this kind of spying has prevented post 9/11 attacks!

Naturally, the Senate Republican leadership has publically stated that this not a bright move from their colleagues on the left and at least one conservative commentator has dared to call this kind of talk “treason“. Actually, I’m kind of surprised that my Senior Senator (Mark Dayton) didn’t attach his name to this Quixotic venture since he is not running for (or from) anything.

Personally, I think that this action is little more than the Senator pandering to the progressive internet activists over at the Democratic Underground or the

The DFL rolled out their version of immigration reform this week.

“The DFL legislative package includes expanding English-language opportunities for schoolchildren, giving tax credits to businesses that offer on-the-job English and citizenship classes, cracking down on people who exploit foreign workers and forming a Governor’s Commission on New Minnesotans to guide future legislation. “

What it doesn’t include is anything addressing illegal immigration! The DFL stubbornly clings to the mistaken idea that illegal immigration is not something that they need to be bothered with…that it is a federal problem! What they refuse to understand is that as long as illegal immigrants use local hospitals, send their kids to local schools, work in local businesses and drive on our local roads then illegal immigration is a local problem and our state and local governments HAVE to have the tools necessary to deal with it!

Having said all that, I am glad to see that the DFL is finally stepping up and proposing something that tangible. Three years of only opposing whatever the Republicans proposed is not leadership. Welcome to the dance guys. Hope you stay around long enough to actually get us to a solution to all of the problems that face Minnesota.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mi) reportedly met with 40-50 prominent liberal lawyers last week to discuss possible impeachment charges against President Bush. Rep. Conyers accusing the President of ethical malfeasance is quite comical considering this:

“Deanna Maher, a former deputy chief of staff in one of Conyers’s Michigan offices, reminded the committee of her allegations, originally filed two years ago, in a January letter and asserted the lawmaker’s actions had violated House rules. She said that she and other employees were required to work on local and state campaigns and baby-sit for Conyers’s children, among other chores. The Hill newspaper and the Detroit Free Press first reported the allegations.”

Now to be perfectly honest….there is a lot of ethical malfeasance in Washington DC. You don’t need to walk far down K Street before you trip over an allegation of wrongdoing. It doesn’t take much searching to find it. I will say, however, that if Rep Conyers is going to be casting any stones, he had best be without any sin of his own or his opponents wiull make much hay out of it.

The gents over at KvM have been asking this for some time now. Anytime that there is a vote in the Senate, or an agenda item proposed, the question is raised. It is time again to raise the question….if Ms. Klobuchar was serving in the Senate, how would she vote on this?

“In its latest move to draw attention to liberal ideas, the Congressional Progressive Caucus will introduce a plan today to divert $60 billion in defense spending to humanitarian assistance, social programs, energy conservation, homeland security and deficit reduction.”

Remember, these are the same Democrats that are trying oh-so-hard to convince voters that they are not soft on defense! They are pulling money away from research on the next generation of smart weapons!

So tell us, Ms. Klobuchar…if you were in the Senate, would you support this proposal from the Progressive wing of the House of Representatives? Your prospective constituents are dying to know….

For years, feminists have claimed to “speak” for the women of America. I have a couple of posts already, showing where these so-called “spokeswomen” have fallen flat in their defense of “womens rights”. Well in honor of the “International Day of the Woman”, Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review interviewed Phyllis Chesler, a feminist who authored a book called “The Death of Feminism”. Ms Chesler has some stunning things to say about the feminist leadership in America.

“Feminists, as well as women, have some terrifying external enemies. For example, Islamists oppose the ideals of dignity and equality for women by their practice of gender apartheid. This is a system which includes some, if not all, of the following human-rights violations: female genital mutilation, veiling and hijab, purdah, normalized daughter- and wife-beating, arranged (child) marriage, often to first cousins, polygamy, honor murder, the imprisonment, torture, beheading, stoning to death, and hanging of rape victims, suspected prostitutes, and feminist dissidents — especially in Iran today.
Such Islamist misogynists have many Western allies and apologists… Among them are many academic and establishment feminists who are also apologists for Islamic religious and gender apartheid and for the international trafficking in women and girls. In this, they are feminism’s worst enemies. For example, many academic feminists fear that any serious critique of veiling, purdah, or polygamy might be slandered as “racist.” They are right. These days, telling the truth about indigenous Islamic barbarism towards women and men is quickly branded as “politically incorrect” and dismissed as “racist” and “imperialist” arrogance. It requires real courage and clarity to stay this particular course of truth-telling. While some feminists did sound the alarm about the Taliban, they did not rescue Afghan women physically, personally, militarily, or economically. In addition, feminists have not focused on the right to motherhood, but primarily on the right to abortion; they have not focused on creating a strong feminist foreign policy, but primarily on the rights of gays and lesbians. Personal sexual freedom and identity politics have trumped universal human rights.”

Emphasis above is mine. I said here that it appeared that NOW was only concerned with the rights of left leaning, pro-abortion women. I am apparently not the only one who feels this way.

There are many eye-opening quotes in this interview that every woman in America (and anyone who loves women) should read. However, there are just a couple more that I would like to specifically point out.

Lopez: Did you actually get grief from feminist for writing about the “gender cleaning” of women in Sudan?

Chesler: Yes, I did. When I sent one such piece around, certain left feminists told me that they did not even want to read what I had written because they did not “approve” of my writing for conservative publications. Not even if my pro-woman pieces were solicited and welcomed in conservative quarters and totally censored in left-liberal mainstream quarters. I had a similar problem when I wrote about the refusal of Lukas Moodyson, the brilliant Swedish filmmaker, to allow his film against trafficking (Lilya-4-ever), to be shown at a feminist anti-trafficking conference in Israel. While he allowed the film to be shown in every country on earth where brothels, pimps, and traffickers flourished, he refused to allow anti-trafficking Israelis to show the film once because he disapproved of Israel’s military policies. I wrote a piece about censorship and prejudice and about the demonization of Israel which was immediately rejected by the New York and L.A. Times. I published it in Frontpage Magazine and within 48 hours Moodyson reversed his decision and allowed the Israeli feminists to show his film. The fact that my piece got some immediate positive results did not matter. All that mattered was that I had published it in a so-called “right-wing rag.”
In addition, as I write in The Death of Feminism, the level of anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda and intolerance towards all those who do not kow-tow to it is fairly monumental on many feminist list-serv groups. If one does not believe that America “deserved” 9/11; if one does not view America as the true “terrorist”; if one does not believe that Arabs and Muslims are being persecuted in America for “racist” reasons; and if one does not simultaneously believe that the Jews are “imagining” or “exaggerating” anti-Semitism — then one is not welcome on such list-serv groups. In fact, I was literally “purged,” Stalinist-style from one such group for my various pro-America and pro-Israel “Thought Crimes.” It was a most instructive experience. “

Again, emphasis is mine. These are the same people that lecture Christians about tolerance!

Lastly…

“Lopez: To what extent is there easy common ground on the Right and the Left as far as a new feminism goes?

Chesler: Perhaps such categories as “left” and “right” are no longer useful. I write about this at length in The Death of Feminism. On the other hand, the “Left” is aggressively secular and anti-religious; considers pornography to be “protected” hate speech; considers prostitution and trafficking to be forms of “sex work” which should be de-criminalized or legalized; views paternal sole-custody of children as the feminist solution to the problems that mothers have when they juggle child care and career responsibilities; believes that men and women are actually the “same”; has absolutely no foreign policy except that of opposing whatever President Bush and America do or ever have done — they really might as well be French; and has no universal feminist policy vis-à-vis jihadic Islam and its Muslim victims. The “right” has opposite views on these subjects. Although some “right-wingers” have diverse views on abortion, civil rights for gay people, the role of multi-national corporations in a time of war, the importance of intellectual and ideological diversity; the dangers of appeasing the Islam, etc. there are few “left wingers” who are at all diverse on their issues. If I am wrong — I hope they start saying so quickly, loudly, and proudly.”

Please take the time to read this interview. Ms. Chesler has been through much in her life….much that has helped shape these views. You need to understand what she has been through in order to understand these views. It is my fervent hope that women everywhere start rethinking the conventional wisdom about the feminist movement. The feminist movement no longer represents women! It is time that women woke up to this fact!

According to MDE, Mike Hatch’s gubernatorial campaign picked up an endorsement today. According to this post, ACORN has announced it’s support of the campaign. ACORN is probably not the best endorsement to pick up. According to this from the American Center for Voting Rights, an ACORN worker in Minnesota was found with 300 voter registration cards in his car. MDE has a St Paul Pioneer Press article on his post that has a telling quote from the presumed DFL candidate for the US Senate seat held by Mark Dayton.

“Reed faces sentencing Jan. 20 before Hennepin County District Judge Joanne Graham, according to County Attorney Amy Klobuchar. As part of a negotiated plea agreement, prosecutors promised they will recommend Graham sentence Reed to no more than 60 days in the county workhouse, plus 15 days of community service.
Klobuchar said Reed never intended to use the 18 forgeries to allow anyone to vote more than once. Instead, his motivation was to fraudulently increase his earnings from the fee he was paid to register new voters, she said.”

So Ms. Klobuchar, forging voter registrations is only worth 60 days in the workhouse and 15 days community service????? This is how you treat crime in Hennepin County?