‘Just a Charade’: House Conservatives Decry IRS Chief’s Capitol Hill Visit

/0 Comments/in , /by

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen made the rounds Wednesday on Capitol Hill to discuss his potential impeachment, meeting with two of the largest GOP House caucuses.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus were furious about Koskinen’s visits with lawmakers who belong to the moderate Tuesday Group or the conservative-leaning Republican Study Committee.

These conservatives have been calling for the top taxman’s impeachment since October.

One of the members who quarterbacked the impeachment effort, Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., described the Koskinen tour as tantamount to allowing a defendant to chat up a jury “while the prosecuting attorney is away.”

“You’re going to give the most hated official in the Obama administration a free platform, without testifying under oath, to defend himself and his targeting of conservative groups?” Huelskamp told The Daily Signal. “This is just a charade.”

Conservatives have bickered for months over impeachment with GOP leadership, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. And pessimism was rank among members of the Freedom Caucus after word got out of the top IRS agent’s congressional visit.

“Life on Capitol Hill can’t get any more cynical,” Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., told The Daily Signal. He blamed centrist Republicans for “asking for testimony, not under oath, that allows someone with a proven track record of obfuscation and destruction of evidence to get a free pass in the media.”

The Freedom Caucus says the IRS commissioner has to go because he obstructed a congressional investigation into the agency’s unfair treatment of conservative groups. Conservatives have slammed leadership for being “too timid to go after corruption” in the past.

The Obama administration has been unwavering in its defense of the beleaguered tax chief. And for his part, Koskinen has described allegations of wrongdoing as “unwarranted” and the articles of impeachment lodged against him as “without merit.”

To force the impeachment issue, the Freedom Caucus employed a parliamentary mechanism known as a privileged resolution from the House floor in April. The tactic triggers a floor vote on impeachment and bypasses a laborious committee process.

Wednesday morning, Ryan said the House will hold a vote next week on whether to impeach Koskinen. But by afternoon, the tax chief was touring Capitol Hill in an effort to sway lawmakers to vote against his impeachment.

A leadership aide told The Daily Signal that Ryan didn’t play a hand in bringing Koskinen to the House, adding that the Republican conference will huddle Sept. 15 to discuss the party’s official position on impeachment.

The meeting will be an open-mic opportunity for conservatives to air their case against Koskinen and to bring other members, some of whom haven’t followed the controversy closely, up to speed.

Though the RSC meeting with Koskinen was cordial, Chairman Bill Flores, R-Texas, told reporters, it was hardly a meet-and-greet. Nearly 40 members met with the tax bureaucrat, grilling him with “pointed questions,” Flores said.

Some members of the RSC, including Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, want to fire Koskinen.

Chaffetz told The Daily Signal on Tuesday that he would “certainly be supportive of” a privileged resolution to force a vote.

But the Utah representative, who first introduced articles of impeachment in October, said that first “we have to get the entirety of our team, aka the Republicans, moving in the right direction.”

Chaffetz’s office didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s inquiries about who was on the sidelines of the impeachment push or if the Koskinen tour hindered that effort.

The impeachment debate comes as conservatives and GOP leadership are in a standoff over spending levels.

One member of the Freedom Caucus suggested conservatives might be persuaded to soften their stance on Koskinen if the establishment would agree to keep any spending bills from taking flight during the lame-duck session.

”It might very well be that we back off of Koskinen until the first of [next] year,” the lawmaker told The Daily Signal on condition of anonymity, “if you [GOP leaders] do a continuing resolution through March.”

Other members of the Freedom Caucus remain intent on getting their political pound of flesh. The IRS targeting scandal has been a focal point for Republicans since the public first learned in 2013 that the agency put conservative groups under extra scrutiny.

The IRS started flagging and holding up applications for nonprofit status from conservative groups in 2010. Agents specifically targeted applications that included terms such as “tea party,” “patriot,” and “government spending.”

While multiple investigations were underway, President Barrack Obama told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Super Bowl Sunday in 2014 that there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS.

Conservatives argue that no one at the IRS has been held accountable for the unfair targeting.

Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., said he wishes Koskinen would agree to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

“It’d be interesting to see if the song and dance would be different under oath,” he told The Daily Signal. (For more from the author of “‘Just a Charade’: House Conservatives Decry IRS Chief’s Capitol Hill Visit” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump’s New Military Plan Will Gut One of the Tea Party’s Biggest Achievements

/0 Comments/in , /by

Donald Trump isn’t done killing the Tea Party yet. Today, he’s scheduled to propose repealing one of its signature achievements.

Trump’s advisors says he will propose ending the “sequester” for the military — one of the rare budget reforms signed into law by President Obama, born out of the debate over the 2011 debt ceiling increase.

Meaning, Trump’s — the self-described “King of Debt” — big plan for the military is more debt for America.

A quick trip down memory lane reminds that sequestration was brought to fruition largely by Tea Party-fueled members of Congress elected in the 2010 midterm wave. Sent to Washington by voters who were angry over the skyrocketing debt, those new members demanded more responsible spending. And President Obama’s 2011 request to increase the debt ceiling — the legal spending limit for the government — gave them the perfect opportunity.

The Democrats, as always, were resistant to any reforms. They said anyone who opposed the debt increase, for any reason at all, was threatening the “full faith and credit” of the United States government. They said the president deserved a no-questions asked, no-strings attached debt increase. Then, they said they would only be willing to talk if large tax increases were included in the deal.

Ultimately, a package of spending cuts was agreed upon in exchange for the debt ceiling increase that did not include any tax increases. The deal stipulated that Washington accept a series of spending cuts over the next 10 years in exchange for giving President Obama a $400 billion debt increase in 2011.

It wasn’t perfect because it a typical DC deal: spending, save later. But it was something.

The Heritage Foundation’s Steve Moore — now an enthusiastic Trump supporter — said the sequester “shrunk the size of government more effectively than any budget took in a generation” and that it “put an electric fence around the Left’s grand spending ambitions.”

Since it was enacted, efforts have been underway to undo the defense cuts by hawkish Republicans such as Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. (F, 30%) and John McCain, R-Ariz. (F, 34%). And, Trump is offering to turn off the electric fence for them.

“I will ask Congress to eliminate the sequester and immediately re-invest in our military,” he told an audience in Greenville, North Carolina yesterday. Aides say he will offer more details today in an upcoming military-focused speech at the Union League in Philadelphia.

That’s a change for Trump, who once praised the sequester in 2013 and called for even deeper cuts. A change that makes him sound a lot more like Hillary Clinton than a conservative.

“We cannot impose arbitrary limits on something as important as our military,” Clinton said at the American Legion in Cincinnati last week. “That makes no sense at all. The sequester makes our country less secure.”

So consider a debate over defense spending off the table for presidential debates. Both of them are in favor of nixing that particular Tea Party victory. (For more from the author of “Trump’s New Military Plan Will Gut One of the Tea Party’s Biggest Achievements” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

After Being Accused of Racist Policing, the NYPD Is Blasting This ‘Deeply Flawed’ IG Report

/0 Comments/in , /by

The New York City Police Department launched a Twitterstorm Wednesday morning defending its “Broken Windows” community policing strategy. The social media rant came in conjunction with the release of the NYPD’s 46-page rebuttal to a June 22 report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) titled “An Analysis of Quality-of-Life Summonses, Quality-of-Life Misdemeanor Arrests, and Felony Crime in New York City, 2010 to 2015.”

“Broken Windows” policing, which focuses on targeting smaller offenses (a.k.a. “quality-of-life” policing) to mitigate bigger offenses down the line, was heavily criticized by the OIG, which claimed the policy was essentially racist as it unfairly targeted minorities. The NYPD’s epic rebuttal, titled “Broken Windows is Not Broken,” tears into “the unsupported assertions put forth in the OIG report.”

The NYPD describes the OIG report as “the culmination of a months-long analysis of the NYPD’s quality-of-life (QOL) summons and misdemeanor arrests from 2010-2015, and the impact of that enforcement on the reduction of felony crime.” It reportedly concludes that the NYPD’s QOL measures had “little-to-no temporal relationship with the decline in felony crime rates across New York City.”

It also claims to have found that QOL enforcement is “not evenly distributed across the city.” Cue the accusations of racial discrimination.

But the NYPD contests that the OIG selectively quoted its 2015 report titled “Broken Windows and Quality-of-Life Policing in New York City,” which aimed to dispel myths surrounding quality-of-life and Broken Windows policing. According to the NYPD, “the OIG report largely ignores most of its most pertinent information,” like the fact that “both city and state prison populations have fallen from previous highs, by 49 percent and 27 percent, respectively” in the 21 years since QOL policing was first introduced. Further, city leaders announced this week that 2016 was one of New York City’s safest summers ever.

From the press release:

Beyond the NYPD’s own comprehensive review and subsequent rejection of the OIG report, two independent eminent criminologists, Richard Rosenfeld and David Weisburd, have also roundly criticized the report, citing: problems with its research and statistical methodology; the lack of consideration for officer discretion; and the omission of the 16 years prior to 2010 — when misdemeanor arrests strongly correlated to the largest crime decline in New York City history. These criminologists have also determined the analysis contained in the report is not strong enough to support its conclusions.

In the past year especially, local law enforcement have been the target of public and private criticism. Wednesday, the NYPD sent a clear message: If you’re going to attack us, at least get your facts straight.

“Going back as far as 1978, in the streets of the Fenway, I have seen community complaints about quality of life conditions dominate conversations between the community and the police,” Police Commissioner William J. Bratton — set to retire this month — said in a statement:

“The NYPD’s Neighborhood Coordination Officer Program re-affirms what I learned all those years ago, that neighborhood residents expect action on the part of the police regarding lesser crimes and signs of disorder. Enforcement targeting these conditions has become known as ‘quality-of-life’ policing, and it has been frequently disparaged as a vehicle of oppression that creates racially disparate outcomes. That could not be further from the truth. This type of policing is an essential tool of community engagement and trust building, most often in direct response to community concerns. Quality of life policing will remain a key strategy for the NYPD.” (For more from the author of “After Being Accused of Racist Policing, the NYPD Is Blasting This ‘Deeply Flawed’ IG Report” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Her Child Was Killed by an Illegal Alien. Now They Call Her a Racist Nazi

/0 Comments/in , /by

Sabine Durden is many things. She’s a German immigrant, an avid Trump supporter, and an outspoken advocate for legal immigration. But above all of these things, she is a proud mother.

Durden’s son, Dominic, was killed four years ago in a fatal motorcycle crash. On July 12, 2012, Dominic, 30, was on his way to work when an illegal immigrant driving an unlicensed pickup truck took a wrong turn. Dominic was killed instantly.

The driver, Juan Zacarias Lopez Tzun, was an illegal immigrant from Guatemala with a record of drunk driving convictions. His initial sentence included nine months’ jail time, five years of probation, and a restitution fee of $18,800.

Thanks to the tireless work of Ms. Durden, Tzun was deported in March of 2014. Since then, Durden has continued in her efforts to fight illegal immigration and keep her son’s beautiful legacy alive.

Durden spoke with Conservative Review about her continued cause.

“The first thing I’d like to achieve is to share with everybody the incredible young man he was. The community loved him,” she said.

Durden shared that, to this day, she still receives regular feedback from individuals who knew her son dating back to grade school. Dominic’s old friends are now teaching their children about “Uncle Dominic,” a beaming teddy bear of a man who lived a life of service to his friends, family, and community.

Dominic, or Dom, as he was affectionately called by friends and family, worked as a 911 dispatcher at the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. He was a licensed pilot and a volunteer firefighter who had earned multiple awards for his service to his community. Dom was on track to realizing his goal of becoming a motorcycle patrolman, and eventually a helicopter pilot.

Early this summer, the city of Moreno Valley erected the Dominic Durden Trailhead, a memorial plaque honoring Dominic’s work as a local volunteer and public safety servant.

For Ms. Durden, the hardest part about Dominic’s untimely death was knowing that his killer was permitted to remain in a “sanctuary city” of Riverside County, California, after having demonstrated irreverence for its laws on multiple occasions.

“I want my country to be protected, and I want others to never know the kind of pain and grief this causes — not just when your child gets killed, but when it’s avoidable,” she told CR.

“I’ve been called racist, Nazi, Hitler,” she said, adding that she commonly has to report threatening Facebook messages she receives from strangers. But even more upsetting, she shared, are the biting comments from people who she “thought were friends,” telling her that she should “leave things alone and not separate families.”

“And then I remind them, ‘What about my family?’ I don’t have one left. My only child is dead,” she said.

“When they call me a racist, I show them a picture of Dominic and tell them, ‘That was my son,’” she laughed, referring to Dominic’s mixed race.

But when that doesn’t work, she offers this analogy to help other parents understand her “America first” approach to public safety as it relates to immigration.

“The other thing I always tell them is this: You live in a house that has walls and doors. And you have your kids, and you love them, and you want them protected,” she said. “Why is it so wrong for your country and for the next president to want to protect its citizens?”

“It has nothing to do with race,” she continued. “It has nothing to do with not liking a certain color … I’m talking about any illegal from any country — any color. When you want to come here — and you’re more than welcome, and America sure has been welcoming to me as a legal immigrant — you have to do it the right way.”

Speaking from experience, Ms. Durden shared that she was always proud of her journey as a legal immigrant.

“I was always telling people how proud I was for choosing to become an American,” she said.

She was sworn in at the Los Angeles Convention Center in 1994, accompanied by her own mother — who flew over from Germany to witness the special moment — and, of course, Dominic.

“He was proud of me,” she said of her son, who fondly used to refer to himself as “German chocolate,” a nod to his black American father and white German mother.

Sabine Durden was one of the earliest and most prominent members of the Remembrance Project, an organization founded in 2009 to honor the families of victims of illegal immigrant crime. The group coined the term “Angel Moms,” which has been attributed to the parents of these victims.

Without going into detail, Durden told CR that she has recently cut ties with the group.

“I had to take care of myself first. And I had to look out for my son, not being used — his image and his name,” she said.

These days, she simply goes by “Dom’s mom.”

And, as for politics, she prefers to focus on the bipartisan issues of national security and family policy. But when asked, she’ll happily tell you which presidential candidate has her vote.

“Donald Trump is my ultimate hero,” Durden, a former lifetime Democrat, said of the Republican nominee.

“He brought [illegal immigration] to the forefront,” she added. Durden said that before Trump announced his bid for the presidency in June 2015, no other national leader had taken such a firm stance against illegal immigration.

“Nobody wanted to listen to Dominic’s story. They wanted to leave the ‘illegal’ part out of it,” she said. “And I started losing ground and the depression became harder.”

On July 10, 2015, Ms. Durden received a call asking her if she would like to meet Trump. Later that month, Durden and other parents met with Trump at a hotel in L.A., with no media present. After hearing their stories, Trump escorted the group to another room, where members of the press were waiting to hear their stories.

“He listened to us,” Durden said.

Fast-forward a year, when Durden was offered a prime-time slot to speak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, a moment she called “a highlight of my life.”

“That man not only saved my life; [Donald Trump] gave my son a voice,” she said.

Durden clarified again that she is a strong proponent of legal immigration, and she believes in helping struggling families looking to provide a better life for their children. But to this, she adds one important qualification.

“I always say Americans first,” Durden said. “Let’s take care of home first, and then help.” (For more from the author of “Her Child Was Killed by an Illegal Alien. Now They Call Her a Racist Nazi” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

THANKS, MR. OBAMA: Japan Prepares Warplanes and Naval Forces to Repel China’s Rising Ambitions

/0 Comments/in , /by

Japan is providing regional partners with the tools required for future showdowns with China in the South China Sea.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met Tuesday with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and agreed to gift the Philippines two large patrol ships and five surveillance aircraft, according to Reuters.

The promised vessels and aircraft will be in addition to the 10 coast guard ships Japan promised to the Philippines as part of a $158 million soft loan agreement in 2015. The first of the 10 ships arrived in August.

Abe will reportedly also give Malaysia two used coast guard vessels, reports the Nikkei Asian Review. Along with the ships, Japan will provide technical support and repair services.

Japan agreed to furnish Vietnam with $1.7 million in used patrol vessels and equipment in September last year. The two sides decided to accelerate and enhance the patrol boat program during a high-level meeting in May.

The Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam are all engaged in territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.
China claims the vast majority of the South China Sea, through which roughly $5 trillion in global trade passes each year. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled against China’s claims in mid-July; however, China has completely rejected the ruling and the authority of the arbitration tribunal.

Between 2010 and 2016, there were 45 incidents in the South China Sea, and China’s coast guard vessels were involved in 68 percent of these incidents, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) revealed in a recent report.

Over the past five years, China has spent roughly $1.74 billion annually on its coast guard. The annual coast guard budgets for the Philippines and Vietnam have only been around $100 to $200 million.

China’s total coast guard tonnage increased from 110,000 to 190,000 between 2010 and 2016. The total coast guard tonnage for the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam are only 20,000, 6,500, and 15,000 respectively.

China is able to engage in provocative behavior in the South China Sea because other claimant states lack the coast guard capabilities to stand up to China.

“We’re seeing bullying, harassment and ramming of vessels from countries whose coast guard and fishing vessels are much smaller, often to assert sovereignty throughout the South China Sea,” Bonnie Glaser, a CSIS regional security expert, explained in an interview with Reuters. “The evidence is clear that there is a pattern of behavior from China that is contrary to what law enforcement usually involves.”

Japan’s coast guard budget by comparison is around $1.5 billion, which suggests that Japan has the ability to boost the capabilities of some of China’s neighbors.

Chinese ships, including several coast guard vessels, have reportedly returned to the Scarborough Shoal, stirring concerns in the Asia Pacific and beyond.

China’s stance on Japan’s involvement in the South China Sea has been fairly consistent. “Japan is not a concerned party in the South China Sea issue, and it has no right to intervene in relevant disputes,” explained Chinese Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Colonel Wu Qian at a press conference last month.

China has told Japan that if it expands its operations and attempts to participate in a freedom-of-navigation drill in the South China Sea, it will cross a “red line.” (For more from the author of “THANKS, MR. OBAMA: Japan Prepares Warplanes and Naval Forces to Repel China’s Rising Ambitions” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Alaska Right to Life Endorses Pro-Life Joe Miller Against Pro-Abortion Incumbent Lisa Murkowski in Race for US Senate

/0 Comments/in , /by

Anchorage Alaska, September 7th, 2016 – Alaska’s only Statewide group focused solely on the pro-life issue released an endorsement this morning of US Senate candidate Joe Miller. The endorsement comes on the heels of the announcement from Miller that he will again be challenging US Senator Lisa Murkowski, one of the nation’s most notoriously pro-abortion Republicans.

“Miller has consistently held a pro-life position and has viewed the tragedy of abortion as the genocide that it is” said Christopher Kurka, Alaska Right to Life’s Executive Director. “Once elected he will continue to be a true champion for the pre-born in the US Senate. Joe Miller is exactly the caliber of man we need fighting for the weakest of Alaskans in the Senate,” Kurka continued.

With the general election only a little over 7 weeks away, Kurka said he is “calling on every life-loving Alaskan to throw their support behind the only pro-life candidate for US Senate. It’s time for Murkowski to be replaced with someone who will take their oath of office seriously and do whatever they can to end the genocide of abortion that is taking the lives of millions of the most vulnerable of Americas populace – the pre-born.”

Murkowski is well known as being a pro-choice Republican, earning a 80% approval rating in 2014 from NARAL Pro-Choice America. Murkowski defends her support of Planned Parenthood, the organization that just last year was exposed in undercover videos showing their illegal sale of baby parts, by saying ” I believe Planned Parenthood provides vital services to those in need and disagree with their funding cuts…”

“Senator Murkowski should remember that there are other organizations out there whose sole mission is to assist women in need, especially those in unplanned pregnancies. These organizations don’t receive federal funding and they offer their services at no cost to their clients. Planned Parenthood is an abortion marketing machine and certainly doesn’t have the best interest of women at heart.” Kurka said later.

“We are excited to have a pro-life option on the ballot for US Senate this November and appreciate Joe Miller’s willingness to take on the fight once again. Alaska Right to Life’s Political Action Committee is proud to endorse him.” Kurka finished, reminding voters that election day is Tuesday, November 8th and adding, especially for loyal Republican party voters, that “principles should win out over political parties every time”.

Conservative Joe Miller Challenges Most Liberal GOP Senator up for Re-Election

/0 Comments/in , , /by

The rematch for the U.S. Senate seat in Alaska six years in the making is on.

Joe Miller, the 2010 Republican nominee for the position, announced on Tuesday that he will oppose incumbent Lisa Murkowski running as a Libertarian, though pledging to caucus with the Republicans if he prevails in November.

“Alaskans deserve a real choice,” Miller said in a release. “The choice between a Democrat, a Democrat-backed independent, and a Republican-In-Name-Only – who has been one of Barack Obama’s chief enablers – is no choice at all.”

The statement noted that while Murkowski billed herself as “the Conservative Voice for Alaska” during the Republican primary season (a slogan that has since been taken down from her website), the political branding does not match the record.

“Murkowski is the most liberal ‘Republican’ up for re-election having voted with Pres. Obama 72 percent of the time during the last session of Congress, second only to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine,” Miller related.

The candidate also cites an “F” grade on the Conservative Review’s scorecard of votes and a 34 percent lifetime voting record with Heritage Action. The average for Republican senators is currently 58 percent, with conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, earning 97 and 100 percent, respectively.

Miller shocked the political world in 2010 when he pulled off perhaps the greatest upset victory of the entire federal election primary season, defeating Murkowski.

Fairbanks Assemblyman Lance Roberts looks back at what Miller was able to accomplish with a sense of wonder. “It is amazing to me that he did it in a short time, and he had not had a political office before,” he said. “He did a yeoman’s job.”

The former federal magistrate judge and West Point graduate announced just four months before Election Day, with no statewide name recognition and just $100,000 in his campaign coffers, which he put up himself. Murkowski had over $3 million on hand.

Miller garnered the support during the primary of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and many other prominent conservatives.

After her loss in late August, Murkowski went back on her campaign pledge to support the Republican primary winner and announced a write-in bid to hold on to a seat her family has held since the early 1980s.

A raucous campaign followed, which included some missteps by the green Miller and his campaign staff.

Though the tea party favorite and his team appeared to regain their footing by late October, based on polling showing a tight race going into Election Day, Murkowski edged out Miller, 39 to 35 percent, with the Democrat candidate, Scott McAdams, taking 23 percent.

As reported by Western Journalism, there is a strong conservative base within the Last Frontier’s GOP, as evidenced in the presidential primary results earlier this spring. Cruz won the state in a upset, taking 36 percent of the vote, followed by Donald Trump with 33.5 percent, Rubio with 15 percent and Dr. Ben Carson with 11 percent. In other words, non-establishment Republicans accounted for at least 80 percent of the primary vote total in the state.

“People have been really grumbling about Murkowski,” since the 2010 race, said Bill Keller, who was co-chairman of Cruz’s campaign in Alaska.

In 2016, similar dynamics appear to be in play, with now four candidates vying for the seat including Miller, Murkowski, Democrat Ray Metcalfe and left-of-center independent Margaret Stock.

It is very likely the race will come down to Miller and Murkowski, once again. (For more from the author of “Conservative Joe Miller Challenges Most Liberal GOP Senator up for Re-Election” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Do Primary Elections in Alaska Work?

/0 Comments/in , /by

According to the Alaska Division of Elections, Alaska taxpayers will pay roughly $2,000,000 to help state political parties choose their nominees this year (note: this does not count the presidential race, which does not use the state primary process). For the price of $2 million in state funding, we should expect an election process that works, and that benefits all Alaskans, right? It seems a fair assumption, but it is also a naïve one. If the past three election cycles are any example, Alaska’s current primary election process has trouble meeting either expectation, which is one of the reasons fewer and fewer candidates are entrusting their bid for office to Alaska’s primary election process.

Of course, in one sense, it is easy to say that the process has worked for the politicians and candidates who emerged victorious from last month’s primary. Winning candidates can often be counted on to defend the process that led to their own election, even when that process utterly fails to deliver for most Alaskans. However, it should be noted that neither Alaska’s governor, lieutenant governor, nor senior US senator won their election through the primary election process. In fact, all three participated in that process and then abandoned it in order to get elected. If bypassing the primary election process worked for three of Alaska’s senior elected officials, why should other candidates not do likewise? And in fact that is what we are seeing today, as candidates openly consider write-in campaigns after primary losses, or bypass the primary entirely by running independent of a party label.

Even as a candidate who was successful in last month’s primary, I would argue that it is fairly easy to see that the current primary election process is not working, and that it needs to be one of the places we look to make cuts in next year’s legislative session. Let us set aside entirely the matter of whether Alaska’s elections are being executed properly. They aren’t, and that will likely be the final nail in the coffin of Alaska’s primary system, but even if they were being executed flawlessly today, I would still have to conclude that Alaska’s current primary election system has failed to deliver.

Voter Participation

According to numbers from the Division of Elections, 12% of Alaskans participated in the 2016 primary election (17% of registered voters). Our senior US senator received support from 5.4% of Alaskans (7.7% of registered voters), which pundits have already hailed as a landslide win. Obviously, her opponents received even less support. But these numbers alone do not tell the whole story.

Primary election participation in Alaska during presidential years has been in free fall since 2008. That year, voter turnout was 40.62%. By 2012, that number had dropped to 25.34%. Now in 2016, that number has dipped to 17.28%, less than one tenth of one percent away from the lowest voter turnout ever recorded and published by the Division of Elections in a federal election cycle.

Public Confidence

While primary election voter turnout is impacted by many factors, of greatest concern to me personally is the impact felt by changes in public trust and confidence in the primary process itself. Simply put, compared to 2008, voters today have less reason to believe that the results of primary elections will be maintained by the candidates and political parties involved. While the results of primary elections used to be a reliable indicator both of which party would be supporting a general election candidate, and of who would be appearing on the general election ballot for that party, today that is no longer the case. Let us review some notable examples, examples that many Alaskan voters will not soon forget:

* In 2010, after pledging to support whichever candidate won the Republican Primary, Senator Murkowski lost her race for the Republican Primary. Instead of supporting the outcome of the primary election, she began negotiations with the Alaska Libertarian Party to appear on the ballot as a Libertarian. When those negotiations failed, she pursued a successful campaign as a write-in candidate, a campaign co-chaired by Democrat Byron Mallott with public support from a number of Republican Party leaders.

* In 2014, after a previous bid for Governor in the Republican Primary was unsuccessful, Gov. Bill Walker returned to the campaign trail as an independent candidate, with running mate Craig Fleener. In the primary election, Byron Mallott won the Democrat Nomination for governor and Hollis French won the Democrat Nomination for Lt. Governor. After the primary election, Mallott replaced Fleener and began campaigning as an independent, and neither Democrat nominee advanced to the general election as a Democrat.

In fact, over the past three primary elections, Alaskan voters have witnessed a number of cases where candidates campaigned under a different party in the general election than they did in the primary, where voters changed party registration to influence the primary election of another party on behalf of their own party, where party leaders supported candidates other than their party’s own nominees, and where the actual results of primary elections seemed to matter very little, as losing candidates either threatened or pursued write-in campaigns, and winning candidates were not assured of support even from their own party. In this type of environment, how do state-financed primary elections continue to make sense?

Party Discipline

This Saturday, the Republican Party will attempt to remove one of its own elected party leaders, Dave Bronson, from office. Ironically, the charge against him is that he has been encouraging voters to support, for US Senate, the candidate who best reflects the Platform of the Republican Party (note: the fracas arose because that candidate is not the candidate who won the Republican primary). Yet, while discipline may exist for party leaders who break ranks in defense of their party’s platform, there does not yet seem to be any corresponding move to pursue discipline for Republican politicians whose official acts undermine the Republican Platform, or who campaign against their party’s own nominees after losing in the primary.

Those trying to make sense of all this should realize that party leadership usually changes biennially, and those currently serving as party officers are likely to be different from those who held those positions two, four or six years ago. However, it does bear mention in the 2010 case, that Sen. Murkowski has had a vote in all official state party business since 2002, and at no point since 2002 has she lost that vote or had her representative removed from party office. In fact, when it comes to official voting leaders of the state party, she has been the one constant.

Conclusion

Perhaps it was once the case that state-funded primary elections served the public by bringing clarity to voters about what candidates of a particular party believed and the positions they would likely hold in office. However, today’s primary election process seems to do more to confuse than to clarify.

When candidates no longer reflect the platform and values of their party, when those who win primary elections do not end up being supported by their party in the general election, when parties ask some of their nominees to drop-out (and others to join competing tickets), when candidates and voters no longer have confidence that the results of the primary election will be honored and maintained by political parties and fellow candidates, then you have all the ingredients for a confusing, dysfunctional system that most voters could simply do without.

Tell me, why should I vote in the primary, if the results of the primary election may not even matter? 83% of registered Alaskan voters chose not to participate this year. They had more important things to do with their time. At some point we need to step back and conclude that the state should not be subsidizing such a dysfunctional process, certainly not to the tune of $2,000,000 every election.

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Radio Host Levin Reverses Course: ‘I’m Gonna Vote for Donald Trump’

/0 Comments/in , /by

After once declaring he could never support Donald Trump as the Republican nominee, Mark Levin changed his mind with a big announcement on his radio program Tuesday.

“I’m gonna vote for Donald Trump. I’m gonna wind up voting for Donald Trump on Election Day,” the talk radio host said after reiterating his perspective that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was a far better choice for conservatives.

“I take no responsibility for the dumb things he says or the dumb things his surrogates say,” he added of the GOP nominee and his campaign.

Levin’s endorsement comes five months after unequivocally stating, “I am not voting for Donald Trump. Period.”

The 58-year-old syndicated radio host also noted that Trump has an uphill climb to win the White House, despite some recent national polls showing him tied or in the lead. (Read more from “Radio Host Levin Reverses Course: ‘I’m Gonna Vote for Donald Trump'” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Hillary Cuts off Reporter After Being Asked About Clinton Foundation Conflicts

/0 Comments/in , /by

Hillary Clinton seemed visibly agitated on Tuesday after a reporter asked if her daughter’s continuing involvement on the Clinton Foundation board would present a conflict of interest if Clinton is elected president.

The reporter asked the Democratic nominee, “If Chelsea Clinton does stay on the foundation’s board — which the foundation has said very definitively that she will, or that that’s the plan currently — do you believe that could raise legitimate conflict questions, and does that mean –“

“No, I do not,” Clinton snapped. “I’ve said over and over again, doesn’t matter how many times you ask me, and how you ask me. These issues will be decided after the election, and we will decide the appropriate way forward.”

Clinton defended her family charity by insisting that every donor was disclosed, but she acknowledged that a lot of the work will have to be “spun off” because of support from foreign governments.

“We’re going to do what is right and proper to make sure that there is not even a question,” she said. “Let’s not pretend there will be conflicts, because there were not.”

During an ABC News interview with David Muir, the former secretary of state said that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, should not have to step down from his position before the election is over.

“I don’t think there are conflicts of interest,” she said. “I know that that’s what has been alleged and never proven. But nevertheless, I take it seriously.”

While Bill Clinton announced his plans to depart the Clinton Foundation board and stop raising money for the foundation if his wife becomes president as a means of addressing the “legitimate concerns about potential conflicts of interest,” Chelsea Clinton said she would not follow suit.

“As recently as this summer, the foundation was discussing with some allies plans for Chelsea Clinton to leave the board, along with former President Bill Clinton, if Mrs. Clinton should win,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “But on Wednesday [Aug. 24], foundation spokesman Craig Minassian said Chelsea Clinton plans to stay on the board.”

An Associated Press report late last month revealed that during Clinton’s term as secretary of state, more that half of those she met with outside the government had given money to the Clinton Foundation.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has called the Clinton Foundation “the most corrupt enterprise in political history.”

His running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has said the foundation should be “immediately shut down.” (For more from the author of “Hillary Cuts off Reporter After Being Asked About Clinton Foundation Conflicts” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.