From Houston City Council Member Melissa Noriega:
|
||||
|
Okay, you have your opportunity for input. Don’t complain later if you don’t make your voice heard. Remember, the deadline is Friday, May 24th.
politics in Harris County and Texas
From Houston City Council Member Melissa Noriega:
|
||||
|
Okay, you have your opportunity for input. Don’t complain later if you don’t make your voice heard. Remember, the deadline is Friday, May 24th.
by Ed Hubbard
In recent posts I have addressed two distinct issues: the attempt by the Democratic Party to use new technology to nationalize the urban-machine approach to party building mastered in Chicago during the 20th Century; and the coerced conformity at the root of the modern progressive view of society. Now I want to show how these issues collided to help create the IRS scandal now plaguing the Obama Administration.
I want to start with a not-so-obvious proposition: the real scandal is not the mistreatment of conservative groups by the IRS—that was just a necessary by-product of the abuse of power, and the abuse of the tax laws, by this administration.
Instead, the real scandal is how the same abuse of power and law has been used to facilitate and perpetuate the database from both of Obama’s presidential campaigns for future use by the Democratic Party to identify and mobilize voters for their candidates. What I am referring to is Organizing for Action, which is now a 501(c)4, tax-exempt “social welfare” organization.
Let’s recap what Organizing for Action really is—it is a website that gathers and sorts into a master database information from the contacts it obtains from its followers, which is then used to contact, identify and mobilize voters for Democratic candidates and the causes they support, and to solicit funds to support those candidates and causes. As I recently quoted from an article in Salon, the database started during Obama’s 2008 campaign as “MyBarackObama, an interface for campaign supporters to create online identities, connect with other supporters and publicize their campaign activity.” The website address was “my.barackobama.com,” and the email addresses for contacting the site or a campaign operative was “[email protected].” As the Salon article went on to state, “[s]hortly after Obama took office, Democratic planners moved the MyBarackObama listserv and online community into the apparatus of the Democratic National Committee, converting it into Organizing for America.” After being maintained by the DNC until the 2012 presidential election cycle, the same “listserv and online community” using the same email address became part of the Obama re-election campaign, known as Obama for America. Then, after Election Day, November 6, 2012, this “listserv and online community” using the same email addresses used since the 2008 campaign, morphed yet again.
By January 18, 2013, what started out as MyBarackObama, then became Organizing for America, then became Obama for America, and had now become Organizing for Action, a 501(c)4, tax-exempt “social welfare” organization. That’s right … within just 73 days after the election, the application to convert Obama’s campaign database into a tax-exempt “social welfare” organization to shelter its future donors from disclosure had been prepared for, submitted to, and approved by the IRS—that same group that could not figure out how to “provide good customer service” and evaluate the Tea Party applications since 2009. The political importance to the Democratic Party of maintaining Obama’s database in this fashion cannot be underemphasized. In a revealing interview from February of this year, Congresswoman Maxine Waters described the future political importance of this database as follows:
… I think some people are missing something here. The president has put in place an organization that contains the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life. That’s going to be very, very powerful, and … that database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before. And whoever runs for president on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They’re going to have to go down with that database and the concerns of those people, because they can’t get around it. And he’s been very smart. I mean it’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place, and I think that’s what any Democratic candidate is going to have to deal with.
(See http://freebeacon.com/maxine-waters-describes-the-impact-of-the-ofa-database/).
So, the Obama IRS facilitated the use of “social welfare” status by Obama’s Chicago-based campaign apparatus to maintain its database for use by the Democratic Party in perpetuity without ever having to disclose its donors in the future. If Obama’s campaign apparatus is a “social welfare” organization, then we have a more serious problem with the IRS, and this administration, than just a biased enforcement against conservative groups—it is the biased use of government power to benefit one set of political views and one political movement, while using that same power to suppress the opposing political view or movement.
Welcome to the way of Chicago politics, now playing nationally.
The flip-side of the coin of expanding the block-to-block organizational approach of the Chicago machine to national Democratic Party efforts through groups like Organizing for Action (and Battleground Texas), is the raw use of governmental power by such a political machine to protect itself and suppress its opposition—you don’t get one without the other. This adaptation of raw machine political power to the administration of our national government is the real scandal that is surfacing.
How did this happen?
I believe the Obama administration’s abuse of the IRS tax emption process was caused by the collision of at least four variables that had to exist to create this scandal. First, Obama’s political campaign and administration attracted people who believe in the liberal orthodoxy of the benign and beneficial role of an expanded national government in domestic affairs—what I earlier called the “Magical Kingdom” model of government. Second, the expansion of the national government these people started to implement exposed the natural limits of the liberal orthodoxy—the limits of individual and institutional competence, and the effect of the aggregation of power on human nature. Third, the exposed incompetence and avarice left the government vulnerable to those who would abuse power for their own gain. Finally, the Chicago political mindset does not tolerate, or even recognize the legitimacy of political opposition, and it uses political power to suppress its opposition and to win at all costs. When these forces collided within the Obama administration, the IRS tax exemption process was too irresistible a tool not to use—and abuse—to further their goals.
Now we are seeing an old tactic of machine politicians caught “with their hands in the cookie jar”: feign ignorance, blame incompetence, and designate a “fall guy,” in order to stop any further investigation of the real scandal—in this case, to stop any further investigation that might focus on the abuse of the IRS to shelter the maintenance and expansion of the database of the Obama campaign for use by the Democratic Party without public scrutiny in the future.
As the committee investigations and the media interviews unfold, remember the questions that probably won’t be asked and the real scandal that will be hovering like a cloud over Washington: Organizing for Action, and the Chicago-style misuse of governmental power. To preserve whatever is left of the integrity of our government, we must demand the right questions be asked, and that we get real answers to those questions.
On the surface, I suppose, it would be easy to agree with the proponents of giving driving permits to people in the state of Texas that either entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas and are here illegally. After all, we want drivers on our roads to be qualified and insured, right?
But when you get below the surface, it gets a bit murkier and not quite as clear as some of the proponents want to make it. I mean, seriously, if someone is here illegally and making barely enough to survive by mowing lawns or whatever, what are the chances that this person is going to spend a large chunk of his or her paycheck to purchase insurance? Pretty much zero is my guess.
Then you get the argument that people have been here for “decades” and suddenly can’t renew their licenses and it is a security issue, not an immigration issue.
That 2011 measure has left undocumented immigrants who drove legally in Texas for decades unable to renew their licenses or buy insurance, a problem that has caused major headaches for law enforcement officials across the state.
“It’s good for law enforcement. It’s good for security,” said Rep. Roberto Alonzo, who authored the measure, House Bill 3206. “We have already gone past the immigration debate and now we’re into the law enforcement debate.”
What a load of bovine processed hay. If someone has been here illegally for “decades”, that would be two – remember that 1986 amnesty law? Which means these people were part of the flood that started after that “final” amnesty and basically prove the point that the current version of amnesty will only bring more people here illegally. You cannot possibly say that giving driving permits to people here illegally is not an immigration issue with any credibility.
One of the downsides of an emotional issue is the overreaction by either side. In this case, the proponents of the effort to legalize illegal drivers in Texas are way over the top. One of them, Bob Price, who blogs over at TexasGOPVote.com, went so far as to call Rep. Van Taylor’s refusal to allow the effort to legalize illegal drivers to be attached to a bill he is supporting “cowardly“. Yeah, the same Rep. Van Taylor that won a medal for valor:
Born in Dallas, Representative Taylor earned his Eagle Scout at age 13. He graduated from Harvard College in 1995 and joined the Marine Corps. After graduating from intelligence, infantry, sniper, and airborne schools, Taylor led a Marine reconnaissance platoon. Following four years of active duty, he joined the Marine Corps Reserves to continue serving his country while earning a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.
As a Marine Officer and paratrooper, Captain Taylor volunteered for duty as a platoon commander with the Marine Corps’ C Company, 4th Reconnaissance Battalion. He deployed to Iraq where he fought with 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company. Taylor led the first platoon into Iraq for his brigade and led a mission that rescued 31 wounded Marines during the pitched Battle of An Nasiriyah. For his service in Iraq, the Marine Corps awarded Captain Taylor the Combat Action Ribbon, Presidential Unit Citation, and the Navy Commendation Medal with “V” for valor.
Wow. If Bob wants to call Rep. Van Taylor “cowardly” that’s his right. But the fact is that the bill that Rep. Van Taylor was pushing was a pilot program allowing the Texas Department of Public Safety to reduce crowding at their offices by partnering with certain county commissioners. Nothing whatsoever to do with legalizing illegal drivers, immigration, or anything else related to the issue. Thus, Rep. Van Taylor was correct in his decision to call a Point of Order and that is why the chair sustained it. There isn’t anything “cowardly” about using correct parliamentary procedures to get a bill passed.
Are people that are in the USA and driving without insurance a problem? Certainly. You want to fix it? How about requiring proof of citizenship before you are able to purchase a vehicle? Get to the root of the problem. Legalizing illegal driving is not the way to go. Of course, the same people supporting legalizing illegal driving would most certainly oppose requiring proof of citizenship to purchase a vehicle because deep down, they really don’t want the “problem” solved.
Let me ask the supporters of legalizing illegal driving a question: Would your approach have stopped Andres Munos-Munos from killing Sgt. Dwayne Polk last night? Or would giving people here illegally some sort of quasi-legal status encourage even more people to come here illegally? I’m betting that it would be the latter.
I think that Rep. John Smithee has it right:
Some Republicans remain staunchly opposed to the bill. Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, said that, although supporters have made some convincing arguments, he still sees the proposal as “primarily an immigration situation.”
“The whole premise that the state of Texas is going to provide to people who are not even here lawfully a state-issued permit for what is really a privilege is contrary to … how we’ve traditionally done things here in Texas,” he said.
For another view, see mi amiga Karen Townsend’s Texans Deserve Protection Afforded by Cook Amendment.
From KXAN in San Antonio, let’s put forth some questions. Do Texas news outlets know that in Texas, on BOTH sides of the political aisle, activists are very savvy on navigating the websites of news outlets that report on bills moving through the Texas Legislature? Do nervous Texas Legislators know citizen journalists & community activists are equally savvy on following legislation moving through The Lege? Is education not one of the key HOT topics being discussed in Austin? Among community activists I’ve spoken with, the premise that a news organization would fail to publish a Senate Bill number in a story or as an update to a story puts the reputation of these news outlets in a very precarious situation.
The KXAN headline read “Lawmakers advance new option for failing schools” announcing a “turnaround specialist would run troubled school” by creating a special district operated by turnaround specialists. The story gives credit to Michael Brick of the Associated Press and requires block-quoting the entire article below. See if you can spot the Senate Bill number in Mr. Bricks’ reporting:
AUSTIN (AP) — The Texas Senate approved a new option for troubled schools on Wednesday, advancing a bill that would create a special district operated by turnaround specialists.
“I think this is the right thing to do for the children that are trapped in low-performing schools,” said Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, author of the bill.
Drawing key support across the political aisle from Senate Education Committee Chairman Dan Patrick, R-Houston, the bill passed 26-5. It still must clear the House.
Under current law, the state education commissioner can prescribe sanctions for schools with low test scores. They range from staff changes to closure, growing stronger with each consecutive year of low scores.
The bill would allow the commissioner to transfer a school into the new statewide “achievement district” for rigorous overhaul after two consecutive years of low scores.
Asked during a debate how many schools might join the program, Sen. West said about 15 would be eligible based on the most recent ratings. But he stressed that the bill would merely create another option.
The decision would fall to Education Commissioner Michael Williams, who has pledged to hold schools more accountable for the performance of minority students and students from poor families. He is working on changes to the system for rating schools.
Some Republicans cast the bill as a troublesomely bold move at a time of upheaval in the state accountability system. Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, argued that it would artificially raise the ratings of school districts relieved of low-performing schools.
But Sen. Patrick called it “an important bill to address those schools that have been perennial failures.”
The proposal, modeled on a system implemented in states including Tennessee, was amended to specify that local property tax funds would remain with the local district.
Asked during the debate how his plan would improve on the current system, Sen. West said, “If you close a school in a W community, you pretty much leave a devastated community.”
Nowhere in this story did Michael Brick publish the Senate Bill number – SB 1718. KXAN has not added the bill number to the story on the website.
The Houston Chronicle published the same story (screen shot):
..but if you click on the link the item is not found (screen shot):
Only if you go to the cached page will you find the same story published, with an update at the very bottom of the page (screen shot)::
So the Houston Chronicle, to its credit, updated the story to publish the Senate Bill number, title and link to the Bill Lookup. Then the entire story was scrubbed, only to be found on the cached page.
How did other Texas news sites report Mr. Brick’s story?
The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal? Nope, no mention of the Senate Bill number as an update to the story.
The Dallas Star-Telegram? Nope, broken link.
The Longview News-Journal? Nope, no mention of the Senate Bill number as an update to the story.
But Yvonne! Maybe news outlets don’t typically report House or Senate Bill numbers in their stories!
That is exactly my point and the premise to my lead paragraph. Texas news organizations should identify the bill numbers related to the stories they publish because their obligation is to inform the public. Armed with bill number, the public can educate themselves. Otherwise it gives the perception the news media interests lie more in protecting Texas Legislators than in reporting the news to the public.
As Mandy Nagy noted in her post on the Legal Insurrection blog, on May 15th the House Judiciary Committee (on which the CONGRESSWWOOMMAAANN sits) conducted an interview of Department of Social Justice Attorney General Eric Holder. One of the tense moments circulating on the web (and links via email into my inbox) that the Houston Chronicle failed to publicize in this article centered on a case Labor Secretary Nominee Thomas Perez had allegedly agreed to prevent the Supreme Court from hearing:
From the Legal Insurrection post:
In the recording, Perez is heard discussing a 2011 Justice Department case against the city of St. Paul, MN and making mention of a request not to disclose the details of that case. Issa insinuated that the arrangement was in exchange for what he characterized as a quid pro quo agreement for the city to drop a civil rights case that was to be heard by the Supreme Court.
“Is it OK to trade a case you don’t want going to the Supreme Court for a dollar damage case? That’s the real question here,” Issa pressed of Holder.
The recording seemed to catch many in the room by surprise, most notably Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who then interrupted Issa’s line of questioning to demand a parliamentary inquiry into whether or not it was necessary to provide the recording to the Attorney General or other members of the committee prior to today’s proceedings. (see it at about the 4:40 mark)
So, why did Sheila Jackson Lee interrupt Darrell Issa?
The case is Magner v Gallagher, which the Wall Street Journal summarized as concerning the legality of disparate-impact theory in housing.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Congressmen Darrell Issa, Lamar Smith and Patrick McHenry, along with Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, are investigating the St. Paul quid pro quo, and with good reason. To recap: A senior Justice Department official, Mr. Perez, intervened to undermine two civil complaints against the City of St. Paul in order to get St. Paul to drop a Supreme Court case that might have blown apart the legal rationale for his dubious discrimination crusade against law-abiding businesses.
It’s not a surprise to anyone following Houston politics and Sheila Jackson-Lee that the Houston Chronicle would fail to report the reason why the Congresswoman interrupted Darrell Issa. As a member of House Judiciary Committee, she would know the extent of the investigation into the St. Paul quid pro quo.
Sheila Jackson-Lee does not want Houstonians to know that she and her fellow race-hustlers were afraid for the Supreme Court, and hence the American people, to hear the Magner case.
Why?
Again from the Wall Street Journal:
“the text of the Fair Housing Act doesn’t explicitly allow for disparate impact”.
and:
“The City of Saint Paul, national civil rights organizations, and legal scholars believe that, if Saint Paul prevails in the U.S. Supreme Court, such a result could completely eliminate ‘disparate impact’ civil rights enforcement, including under the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. This would undercut important and necessary civil rights cases throughout the nation. The risk of such an unfortunate outcome is the primary reason the city has asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the petition.”
The potential exists, though, for the Supreme Court to hear another case examining the legality of the disparate impact theory under the Fair Housing Act. That case, as noted in the WSJ, is Mount Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action.
Let’s hope SCOTUS takes up the case the race hustlers fear.
by Paul Simpson
Abuses like those other Tea Party groups suffered at the hands of the Internal Revenue Service stymied the Katy (Texas) Tea Party’s efforts at a critical time leading to the 2012 elections, said the group’s former president, Darcy Kahrhoff.
Darcy this week disclosed the written demands different IRS offices issued from 2010 to 2012, detailing intrusive delay tactics that led to the Katy Tea Party abandoning its application for tax-exempt status. But the IRS, having ensnared the volunteer group in a Catch-22 web, then assessed the group fines and penalties for delays resulting from the IRS’s own foot‑dragging and ultimate failure to decide the group’s tax status until the effort was abandoned.
In 2009, the Katy Tea Party applied to the IRS for tax-exempt status. By early 2010, the group supplied basic information requested about its activities that qualified it for tax-exempt status. But the IRS repeatedly demanded more information and records without ever deciding anything.
The Cincinnati, Ohio office of the IRS wrote the Katy Tea Party in September 2010, demanding, under penalty of perjury, voluminous items such as all Facebook, Twitter, and Meetup materials; resumes of all the volunteer Board members; descriptions of any rallies; materials promoting candidate forums; meeting agendas; and copies of any distributed materials presented.
Over a year passed. Darcy said that, in response to the group’s repeated telephone inquiries, the IRS simply said it was “under review.”
The IRS finally replied in January 2012. This time, the El Monte, California office of the IRS sent an expanded three-page list demanding detailed descriptions – still under penalty of perjury – of the Katy Tea Party’s activities since the October 2010 letter; the details of any events the group had conducted – or would conduct – in 2012 or 2013, including names of participants and volunteers, expenses, and any video or audio recordings; copies of all communications, advertisements, and distributed materials; and volunteers “shared” with other groups; how the group obtained information on current legislation; and details about how the Katy Tea Party website operated, including who selects information for the site, online advertisements, and even “the turn‑around time to post” on the website.
After this last request, the IRS told the Katy Tea Party in February 2012 that its application had been assigned to yet another agent, who had “about two pages of additional questions.” The IRS agent then admitted that the IRS had not approved any tea party applications in the prior two years, and they were all on hold while the IRS “figured out what to do” with them.
The Katy Tea Party then abandoned its application and re-filed its tax returns, only to have the IRS assess fines for late-filing its new returns.
The Katy Tea Party stated the actions of the IRS over a nearly three‑year span seriously impeded the group’s effectiveness. With its tax status in limbo, donors hesitated. The IRS’s demands consumed limited resources and much of the group’s attention. However, Darcy Kahrhoff says, “If the IRS wanted to impede the resurgence of liberty in this country, it temporarily succeeded. But we will fight on. We will win. Our country needs us.”
Conservatives knew that putting a community organizer from the south side of Chicago into the White House would lead to thuggery like these IRS abuses. And in their crusade to “fundamentally transform” our country, Leftists will use any tool to eliminate their opponents – us.
For their long march through the institutions to dictate every facet of our lives, the Left needs to win Texas. To do that it needs win Harris County. Like the Left, conservatives need to think globally, but act locally. The battleground is here, and now. The price of liberty truly is eternal vigilance. But as Maggie Thatcher said, there are no permanent victories in politics, so there are no permanent losses.
So bring it on.
Paul Simpson is a lifelong conservative Republican grassroots activist, campaign organizer, and former Harris County Republican Party precinct chair, district chair, legal counsel, and treasurer; a lawyer, engineer, husband, and dad; and co-founder of Harris County ConservativesInAction. He has also been legal counsel for the Katy Tea Party. You can contact him at [email protected].