Left-Funded Rally Aims to Pressure Lawmakers to Welcome More Refugees

Are you concerned about the plight of international refugees? Would you like to see the U.S. government take decisive, constructive action on behalf of displaced persons across the globe who have been forced to flee their homes?

If so, you’re invited to “stand up against the voices of intolerance” this Sunday in Washington, D.C., where you can join forces with other concerned Americans.

But if you do participate, policy analysts who have examined the refugee crisis want you to know they have good reason to believe the rally is a highly politicized event organized for the purpose of lobbying the Obama administration and Congress to allow more refugees into the U.S.—including those from war-torn Syria and Iraq who may have ties to terrorism.

A major contributor to causes on the left, the Tides Foundation, is collecting contributions for the rally.

President Barack Obama said he would boost the number of Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. to 10,000 for the fiscal year beginning last October and ending this Sept. 30. As of June, about 2,800 Syrians had resettled in America, according to Pew Research Center.

But after a slow start, the administration is poised to meet or surpass its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrians, Anne Richard, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, told reporters in a conference call earlier this month.

Skeptics, worried about the effects on the economy and the difficulty of screening for terrorists, point to studies showing resettlement of refugees in the U.S. rather than the Middle East is both costly and counterproductive.

High Costs of Resettling Refugees

A report by the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies found that it costs 12 times as much to resettle a refugee in America than it does to provide for services and relief to the same refugee in the Middle East.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan research outfit included State Department expenditures, welfare use rates, and other figures and benefits from the departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and other U.S. agencies. Its report says:

Based on that information, this analysis finds that the costs of resettling refugees in the United States are quite high, even without considering all of the costs refugees create. We conservatively estimate that the costs total $64,370 in the first five years for each Middle Eastern refugee. This is 61 times what it costs to care for one Syrian refugee in a neighboring country for a single year or about 12 times the cost of providing for a refugee for five years.

“The organizers, funders, and the supporting groups are putting this rally together to exert pressure to ensure that the Obama administration increases the admission of Syrians into the U.S.,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal.

For their part, the rally’s organizers insist they have put together a genuine grassroots movement of concerned citizens who want the U.S. government to assume a leadership role in ongoing efforts to alleviate the refugee crisis. This point is made on the rally’s website:

As borders have closed to those fleeing war and violence and as the voices of fear and intolerance have grown louder, we will not let politics or fear stand in the way of our compassion. We urge the United States government to uphold its founding principles and its traditional leadership role in refugee protection by further assisting the countries that are carrying the heaviest burden of the ongoing crisis. We believe that every act of rejection is an affront to humanity and every act of compassion a reminder of what is best in each and every one of us.

The website created for the rally lists the San Francisco-based, nonprofit Tides Foundation as a fundraising vehicle. The foundation and its sister organization, Tides Center, are major benefactors of “left wing” causes for more than 30 years, according to the Capital Research Center, which investigates the “aims and activities of left-liberal special interest groups.”

‘Same League as George Soros’

Foundation financial records put the Tides network on a par with the grant-making efforts of George Soros, the Hungarian-American businessman and progressive political activist. Soros is chairman of Open Society Foundations, an international grant-making network previously known as Open Society Institute.

“Tides’ grantmaking is in the same league as George Soros’s Open Society Institute,” a Capital Research Center report states. “From 1999 through 2008, Tides distributed $630.6 million in grants, a sum within hailing distance of the Open Society Institute’s $901.4 million, according to FoundationSearch.com records.”

Soros is a major funder of National Immigration Forum, a group advocating amnesty for illegal immigrants that is listed as an organization supporting the rally.

The website encourages participants to purchase an orange or white T-shirt with the logo of the DC Rally 4 Refugees, set to take place from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., rain or shine, at the Sylvan Theater near the Washington Monument.

The website also asks supporters to donate to the rally through the Tides Foundation, listing its address and a fund number.

In response to an inquiry from The Daily Signal about the role of Tides, rally spokeswoman Lauren Cozzi said in an email:

DCRally4Refugees is 100 percent dependent on individual contributions. The Tides Foundation is the organizational instrument that provides DCRally4Refugees with tax-exempt status on the donations. The Tides Foundation is not hosting the event, nor is it fundraising on behalf of DCRally4Refugees.

Cozzi also said the DC Rally 4 Refugees organization “was founded by a grassroots group of advocates inspired to help after volunteering directly with refugees fleeing war and violence in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other regions.”

‘We Can Each Make a Difference’

The United Nations Refugee Agency’s figures show more than 65 million people throughout the globe have been forced to leave their homes in response to armed conflict, political persecution, and other extreme circumstances. About 21 million of them are refugees, according to the U.N.

The rally website describes the international refugee crisis as the worst since World War II:

Nearly 5 million human beings have fled Syria alone since the start of its civil war in 2011 and are now living in limbo in neighboring countries. In addition, millions of Iraqis and Afghans have fled their homes under the threat of violence. Millions of refugees from Somalia, South Sudan, and elsewhere also need protection and assistance.

Rally organizers’ volunteer efforts in trouble spots around the world provided them with the impetus for Sunday’s event.

“After seeing the scale of human suffering with my own eyes while volunteering in Lesvos, Greece, I realized I had to help refugees in any way I could,” Kathy Hertz, founder and executive director of DC Rally 4 Refugees, said in a press release. “Despite having no idea how I would finance a rally, I trusted in my desire to educate people about the global refugee crisis and show how we can each make a difference.”

Hertz added:

Many people have shared with me their desire to help refugees, but did not know how to do so. I founded DCRally4Refugees to give them a way to help, provide tools, and create a large coming together of people for increased safe refugee resettlement and support. On the one-year anniversary of the drowning death of Aylan Kurdi, the young boy whose photo shocked the world, we unfortunately cannot say that things have changed. Refugees are still risking their lives daily and too many of them are dying in the process. I know we can do better.

Almost 10,000 displaced persons have drowned while attempting to cross from Turkey to Greece and Libya to Italy, according to the rally website.

‘Timed to Influence the Number of Refugees’

Asked by The Daily Signal to comment on the organizers’ policy objectives, Cozzi, the rally spokeswoman, said: “DCRally4Refugees will raise awareness about the global refugee crisis and urge U.S. action—at home and overseas—to alleviate suffering through relief efforts and refugee resettlement.”

Noting the rally will take place near Capitol Hill, the website said participants “will call on the U.S. to provide more refugee resettlement and increased support to countries and organizations already involved, support proven relief efforts overseas, and offer resources for those who wish to help, raising a collective voice against intolerance.”

Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said he sees more than mere happenstance at work in the timing of the rally: Obama is set to play host to a refugee summit at the U.N. on Sept. 20. The president also is expected to release his fiscal year 2017 plan for refugees by the end of September.

The rally is not only “to exert pressure to ensure that the Obama administration increases the admission of Syrians,” Krikorian said, but “timed to influence the number of refugees the State Department is trying to settle.”

Krikorian told The Daily Signal that he makes a critical distinction between refugees and additional Syrians who may be brought to the U.S. from countries, often in Europe, other than Syria:

Once they leave those countries they are basically just looking for a better job. … It seems to me the administration has not made a persuasive case for why any of these people should be brought here, especially since our research shows it costs 12 times as much to take care of a refugee here than it does to take care of them in the Middle East.

(For more from the author of “Left-Funded Rally Aims to Pressure Lawmakers to Welcome More Refugees” please click HERE)

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Alinsky’s Daughter: Here’s the Truth About Hillary the Media Won’t Tell You

In 1993, the president of Wellesley College approved a new rule upon being contacted by Bill Clinton’s White House. The rule stated that all senior theses written by a president or first lady of the United States would be kept under lock and key. The rule was meant to keep the public ignorant about the radical ties of the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to the radical Marxist organizer, Saul Alinsky. The 92-page thesis was titled, “There is only the fight…: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.”

The thesis became unlocked after the Clintons left the White House and is now posted online. After being ruled by Barack Obama, another Alinskyite, for 8 years, perhaps one might think the fact that the modern Democratic Party is completely taken over by Alinskyites is old news, but the connection between Alinsky and Hillary is special.

Hillary describes Alinsky as a “neo-Hobbesian who objects to the consensual mystique surrounding political processes; for him, conflict is the route to power.” Alinsky’s central focus, she notes, is that the community organizer must understand that conflict will arise and to redirect it and, as she quoted him in her thesis, be “…dedicated to changing the character of life of a particular community [and] has an initial function of serving as an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions… to provide a channel into which they can pour their frustration of the past; to create a mechanism which can drain off underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. When those who represent the status quo label you [i.e. the community organizer] as an ‘agitator’ they are completely correct, for that is, in one word, your function–to agitate to the point of conflict.”

The thesis in and of itself is limited to whether or not “social justice” can be attained through the tactics described by Alinsky in “Reveille For Radicals,” and the numerous speeches he gave on hundreds of college campuses in the 1950s and 1960s. What had become clear was that Alinsky’s previous organizing had fallen apart and almost all attempts to recapture the original intent had gone by the wayside.

Hillary noted that, “Alinsky’s lessons in organizing and mobilizing community action independent of extra-community strings appear to have been lost in the face of the lure of OEO money.” Pointing out that the power of the government took away the work of the “local organizer.” It is here that we see her light bulb illuminate. With this reasoning, the better approach would be to be the government who had the power to force social change.

But just because Hillary criticized Alinsky’s model in 1969 doesn’t mean she disagrees with his politics. In fact, it could very well be that Hillary’s model, which was to gain political power and wield it to gain social change, is simply her thesis finally realized. She criticized Alinsky, not so much for his tactics, but for his focus on organization. What is possibly the best way to put Hillary’s philosophy is what she told the Black Lives Matter movement, saying, “I don’t believe you change hearts, you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.”

Hillary questions whether organizing as Alinsky did in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago and eventually across the country was effective enough because of the unanticipated results. She pointed to other lefty thinkers that criticized Alinsky as a “showman rather than an activist.”

It should also be noted that while Alinsky’s “Reville for Radicals” was directed at labor organizing, “Rules For Radicals” was directed at middle class youth, instructing them how to carry out his model in a new age. Ever the social observer, Alinsky recognized that the blue-collar workers of the 1930s were no longer, “where it’s at,” but that middle class youth of the 60s was ripe for organization. But also, the emphasis in the prologue of working within the system is eerily similar to Clinton’s argumentation. In her 2003 book, “Living History,” Clinton wrote, “He believed you could change the system only from the outside. I didn’t. Alinsky said I would be wasting my time, but my decision was an expression of my belief that the system could be changed from within.”

At the end of Clinton’s thesis, she includes correspondence she received from Alinsky, and notes the personal interviews she conducted with him: twice in Boston in October 1968 and once at Wellesley in January 1969. She followed his organization, Industrial Areas Foundation, which was a training institute for communist radicals. She credited Saul Alinsky for both “providing a topic” and “offering me a job.” She never questioned the organization’s ultimate goal to achieve a Marxist utopia. What drove Hillary was how to get there.

Hillary’s whole life has been dedicated to socialist/communist ends. The fact that the arguments and the anger fomented by Alinsky in the 40s, 50s and 60s are the same arguments and anger of today’s Obama/Clinton model is telling. For 75 years, inner city blacks have been poor, labor unions have worked to put their members out of a job, and everyday there is some new group claiming it doesn’t have equality. All of these groups have been targeted by these so-called organizational geniuses. No matter what happens, either by the power/conflict ideals of Alinsky and Obama or by power grabs/money laundering of the Clintons, the lives of the people get worse. It is not whether Saul or Hillary are right about how to “achieve democratic equality,” or whose tactics are more effective, but of the failure of the philosophy behind it.

Hillary kept in contact with Alinsky throughout college and while in law school, she wrote him a letter claiming that she missed corresponding with him. The letter began, “Dear Saul, When is that new book [Rules for Radicals] coming out — or has it come and I somehow missed the fulfillment of Revelation? I have just had my one-thousandth conversation about Reveille [for Radicals] and need some new material to throw at people,” — she added, a reference to Alinsky’s 1946 book on his theories of community organizing.

David Brock, in his 1996 biography, “The Seduction of Hillary Rodham,” called Hillary “Alinsky’s daughter.” That is an apt label. Where Alinsky tactics are used now on both sides to confuse and agitate, Hillary is poised to become the supreme leader with all the power and tools of our monstrous government at her fingertips.

Saul’s daughter has it all figured out. (For more from the author of “Alinsky’s Daughter: Here’s the Truth About Hillary the Media Won’t Tell You” please click HERE)

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FUNNIEST CHART THIS YEAR: Illinois Obamacare Premiums to Skyrocket up To… 90%

The hits just keep on coming in the deep blue state of Illinois.

There are the public sector union pension plans, which are simply bankrupting the state.

There are the ever-increasing property, income and sales taxes.

Oh. And then there’s the ultimate irony: the health care system in the state that gave us Barack Obama is going to be — yes, you guessed it — financially eviscerated:

Although [Obama] frequently promised ObamaCare would reduce health insurance premiums by $2,500 for the average family, health insurance costs continue to rise for everyday Illinoisans.

According to new data released Aug. 24 by the Illinois Department of Insurance, premiums for the cheapest silver-level plan on the ObamaCare exchange are set to rise by an average of 45 percent next year. The cheapest bronze-level plans will rise by an average of 44 percent, and the cheapest gold-level plans will rise by 55 percent… In some regions of the state, premium increases will soar far higher…

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…If skyrocketing premiums weren’t bad enough, tens of thousands of Illinoisans will also see their plans canceled at the end of the year. UnitedHealthcare and Aetna, two of the three largest insurers in the country, previously announced they were pulling out of Illinois’ ObamaCare exchange altogether. And even the insurers who are staying are canceling many of their existing offerings. Notices for these cancellations will go out in fall 2016.

Come to think of it, this little economic “turbulence” couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of statists. (For more from the author of “FUNNIEST CHART THIS YEAR: Illinois Obamacare Premiums to Skyrocket up To… 90%” please click HERE)

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Republican Calls Grow for Second Look at Clinton Case

More than seven weeks after FBI Director James Comey’s July 5 announcement closing the case on Hillary Clinton’s personal email use, Republican calls are growing for prosecutors to take a closer look – at everything from perjury questions to the tangled dealings with Clinton Foundation donors during the candidate’s tenure leading the State Department.

And on Thursday, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy pointed out another potential problem with the bureau’s original email investigation.

After viewing the FBI’s tightly held file on the case, the South Carolina congressman told Fox News it doesn’t appear investigators asked Clinton about the issue that was the basis for not pursuing charges – known as “intent.”

During Comey’s congressional testimony last month, he said while Clinton was “negligent” and “careless” in her use of personal email for official business, “What we can’t establish is that she acted with the necessary criminal intent” . . .

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has steadily racked up endorsements from fellow Republicans for his call earlier this week to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the ties between the family foundation and her State Department. (Read more from “Republican Calls Grow for Second Look at Clinton Case” HERE)

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Coulter Comes Clean on ‘Split’ With Trump

Ann Coulter is not happy, but she is making it crystal clear in an exclusive interview with WND that she is not splitting with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump over his recent amnesty remarks, as several media outlets erroneously reported.

Coulter unleashed a series of tweets early Thursday morning that were critical of comments made the day before by Trump indicating he might flip-flop on his opposition to amnesty for illegal immigrants.

In an email to WND titled, “Exclusive on-the-record follow-up,” the influential columnist and best-selling author explained:

“Unlike crazed, cult-like Hillary supporters (and Cruz supporters, fyi), I’ve provided helpful criticism to Trump in the past, e.g., over the Heidi Cruz retweet, over the H-1B sellout, and other things.”

“THAT DOESN’T MEAN I’M ABANDONING HIM,” she wrote in all capital letters, to remove any doubt. (Read more from “Coulter Comes Clean on ‘Split’ With Trump” HERE)

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HILLARY AND SOROS: Their Campaign of Global Chaos

Major media outlets in the US have ignored the leak of thousands of emails from billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation by the activist hacker group DCLeaks. The OSF is the vehicle through which Soros has funneled billions of dollars over the past two decades to non-profit organizations in the US and throughout the world.

According to the documents, Soros has given more than $30 million to groups working for Hillary Clinton’s election in November, making him her largest single donor. So it is likely the case that the media’s support for Clinton has played some role in the mainstream media’s bid to bury the story.

It is also likely however, that at least some news editors failed to understand why the leaked documents were worth covering. Most of the information was already public knowledge. Soros’s massive funding of far-left groups in the US and throughout the world has been documented for more than a decade.

But failing to see the significance of the wider story because many of the details were already known is a case of missing the forest for the trees. The DCLeaks document dump is a major story because it exposes the forest of Soros’s funding networks.

The first thing that we see is the megalomaniacal nature of Soros’s philanthropic project. No corner of the globe is unaffected by his efforts. No policy area is left untouched.

On the surface, the vast number of groups and people he supports seem unrelated. After all, what does climate change have to do with illegal African immigration to Israel? What does Occupy Wall Street have to do with Greek immigration policies? But the fact is that Soros-backed projects share basic common attributes.

They all work to weaken the ability of national and local authorities in Western democracies to uphold the laws and values of their nations and communities.

They all work to hinder free markets, whether those markets are financial, ideological, political or scientific. They do so in the name of democracy, human rights, economic, racial and sexual justice and other lofty terms.

In other words, their goal is to subvert Western democracies and make it impossible for governments to maintain order or for societies to retain their unique identities and values.

Black Lives Matter, which has received $650,000 from Soros-controlled groups over the past year, is a classic example of these efforts. Until recently, the police were universally admired in the US as the domestic equivalent of the military. BLM emerged as a social force bent on politicizing support for police.

Its central contention is that in the US, police are not a force for good, enabling society to function by maintaining law and order. Rather, police are a tool of white repression of blacks.

Law enforcement in predominantly African American communities is under assault as inherently racist.

BLM agitation, which has been accused of inspiring the murders of police in several US cities, has brought about two responses from rank and file police. First, they have been demoralized, as they find themselves criminalized for trying to keep their cities safe from criminals.

Second, their willingness to use force in situations that demand the use of force has diminished. Fear of criminal charges on the one hand, and public condemnation as “racists” on the other causes police to prefer inaction even when situations require that they act.

The demoralization and intimidation of police is very likely to cause a steep increase in violent crimes.

Then there are Soros’s actions on behalf of illegal immigration. From the US to Europe to Israel, Soros has implemented a worldwide push to use immigration to undermine the national identity and demographic composition of Western democracies. The leaked emails show that his groups have interfered in European elections to get politicians elected who support open border policies for immigrants from the Arab world and to financially and otherwise support journalists who report sympathetically on immigrants.

Soros’s groups are on the ground enabling illegal immigrants to enter the US and Europe. They have sought to influence US Supreme Court rulings on illegal immigration from Mexico. They have worked with Muslim and other groups to demonize Americans and Europeans who oppose open borders.

In Israel as well, Soros opposes government efforts to end the flow of illegal immigration from Africa through the border with Egypt.

The notion at the heart of the push for the legalization of unfettered immigration is that states should not be able to protect their national identities.

If it is racist for Greeks to protect their national identity by seeking to block the entrance of millions of Syrians to their territory, then it is racist for Greece – or France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden the US or Poland – to exist.

Parallel to these efforts are others geared toward rejecting the right of Western democracies to uphold long-held social norms. Soros-supported groups, for instance, stand behind the push not only for gay marriage but for unisex public bathrooms.

They support not only the right of women to serve in combat units, but efforts to force soldiers to live in unisex barracks. In other words, they support efforts aimed at denying citizens of Western democracies the right to maintain any distance between themselves and Soros’s rejection of their most intimate values – their sexual privacy and identity.

As far as Israel is concerned, Soros-backed groups work to delegitimize every aspect of Israeli society as racist and illegitimate. The Palestinians are focal point of his attacks. He uses them to claim that Israel is a racist state. Soros funds moderate leftist groups, radical leftist groups, Israeli Arab groups and Palestinian groups. In various, complementary ways, these groups tell their target audiences that Israel has no right to defend itself or enforce its laws toward its non-Jewish citizens.

In the US, Soros backed groups from BLM to J Street work to make it socially and politically acceptable to oppose Israel.

The thrust of Soros’s efforts from Ferguson to Berlin to Jerusalem is to induce mayhem and chaos as local authorities, paralyzed by his supported groups, are unable to secure their societies or even argue coherently that they deserve security.

In many ways, Donald Trump’s campaign is a direct response not to Clinton, but to Soros himself.

By calling for the erection of a border wall, supporting Britain’s exit from the EU, supporting Israel, supporting a temporary ban on Muslim immigration and supporting the police against BLM, Trump acts as a direct foil to Soros’s multi-billion dollar efforts.

The DCLeaks exposed the immensity of the Soros-funded Left’s campaign against the foundations of liberal democracies. The “direct democracy” movements that Soros support are nothing less than calls for mob rule.

The peoples of the West need to recognize the common foundations of all Soros’s actions. They need to realize as well that the only response to these premeditated campaigns of subversion is for the people of the West to stand up for their national rights and their individual right to security. They must stand with the national institutions that guarantee that security, in accordance with the rule of the law, and uphold and defend their national values and traditions. (For more from the author of “HILLARY AND SOROS: Their Campaign of Global Chaos” please click HERE)

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New Florida Poll Shows Trump Leading Clinton

Florida is a swing state during the general election, with both Republican and Democrats fighting hard to earn votes. Barack Obama won the state both in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.

A new survey by the Florida Atlantic University Business and Economics Polling Initiative shows Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton by two points in the state of Florida.

Trump received 43 percent support over Clinton’s 41 percent. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson garnered 8 percent and the remaining 5 percent were undecided.

Both candidates have struggled with their favorability ratings in Florida. Trump currently sits at 56 percent unfavorable rating, while Clinton holds 58 percent. However, Trump has a higher loyalty score with voters, earning a strong 94 percent.

Clinton leads Trump among female voters with 4 points, while Trump leads among men 46 percent to 36 percent.

Associate professor of political science at FAU and a research fellow of the Initiative Kevin Wagner believes Florida will remain a close race and only the most pressing issues will determine the winner.

“The fact that both Mr. Trump and Secretary Clinton are significantly upside down in their favorability ratings could make it difficult for either to move substantially ahead,” he said. “Clinton likely got a boost from the fact that Floridians chose experience as the top quality they are looking for in their presidential candidate. But, Floridians also chose dissatisfaction with government as their top issue, which likely favors Mr. Trump.”

When it comes to Florida’s minority voters, Trump is lagging behind. He trails Clinton with African-Americans 68 to 20 percent, and Hispanics 50 to 40 percent, but leads significantly with white voters 49 to 33 percent.

“The race between Clinton and Trump among Hispanics in Florida is closer than it is nationally,” said Monica Escaleras, Ph.D., director of the BEPI. “Some of that is probably the Cuban vote. Trump’s support among Latinos in Florida is helping him stay competitive.”

The GOP nominee and real estate mogul recently launched an Hispanic outreach program which would focus his campaign on winning the Latino vote. This advisory council met with him Saturday in order to determine the most effective ways to present his proposals to the Hispanic community.

Trump has also made an appeal to black voters in order to close the wide gap between himself and Clinton, arguing that blacks who have suffered under Democratic leadership have “nothing to lose,” by taking a chance and voting Republican. (For more from the author of “New Florida Poll Shows Trump Leading Clinton” please click HERE)

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Leaked: DNC Finance Director Freaks Over Hillary Staffer Noting Tribal Donations in Email

As the media scoured through the close to 20,000 emails from the Democrat National Committee that Wikileaks hacked and then released, forcing DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign, they overlooked one of particular significance: the response from DNC finance director Jordan Kaplan to a Hillary Clinton campaign staffer, who had emailed him about contributions from Native American tribes.

Clinton staffer Justin Klein told Kaplan that he was sending the DNC a few checks from the tribes, which wanted most of the money directed to the Democrat National Convention. Kaplan responded, “Don’t send me an email like this again. You know Alex. Don’t be a d***” (asterisks not in the original).

Kaplan’s Reasons

Why did Kaplan respond that way? Was he concerned that they were breaking the law and didn’t want a paper trail?

The tribes make millions of dollars from operating casinos. Although they are exempt from many campaign finance laws, Clinton and the DNC are not. Even though the tribes can contribute exorbitant amounts of cash to political campaigns and committees, the recipients are limited as to how much money they can accept.

Tribes are not required to form political organizations, so they can contribute under multiple different names to get around contribution limits to politicians and PACs. According to The Washington Post, “One tribe has used more than 75 names” to get around these requirements.

Based on an analysis of campaign finance law, it appears the Clinton campaign was likely trying to circumvent contribution limits. According to Politico, Clinton benefited from joint fundraising with Democratic state parties — but after the money was distributed into the states’ coffers, 88 percent of it was then immediately funneled to the DNC, where the bulk of it was spent to help Clinton defeat the unexpectedly popular Bernie Sanders in the primaries.

By using this joint method of fundraising, it appears that once donors maxed out their giving to her campaign, she essentially directed the money to state parties or the DNC. According to Politico, some state Democratic party leaders griped that they were being used as pass-through organizations. This was not considered fair play since the state parties were apparently never told they wouldn’t get to keep a fair share as part of joint fundraising committees with the Clinton campaign, nor was it fair for the DNC to funnel money Clinton could not legally accept to the DNC, which used it on her instead of Sanders.

The Democratic line was that Clinton was raising money for everyone else, not funneling it all back to herself. Actor George Clooney went on television and asserted, “The overwhelming amount of money that we’re raising, and it is a lot, but the overwhelming amount of the money that we’re raising is not going to Hillary to run for president. It’s going to the down-ticket.”

The Clinton Story Downgraded

This hybrid “Hillary Victory Fund” that raised most of the money in question was a joint effort of her campaign, the DNC and state Democratic parties. The website Politifact, which verifies the accuracy of news in politics, downgraded its positive rating of honesty from mostly true to half true regarding the fundraising after discovering more information. The site noted one of the more egregious operations:

The Hillary Victory Fund sent $214,100 to Minnesota, for example, and that state party didn’t keep a dime. It was routed to the DNC, which otherwise wouldn’t have been able to accept the money “since it came from donors who mostly had already maxed out to the national party committee,” Politico reported.

In the context of current campaign laws, this funneling of money through groups that can’t legally use it comes close to money laundering. (In fact, Jack Abramoff served several years in prison for coordinating contributions from Indian tribes.) Politicians have gone to prison for money laundering. No wonder Kaplan was so upset with his young colleague for blabbing about the donations in an email.

Unsurprisingly, the leaked email has not yet affected Clinton’s political fortunes. Almost no one in the left-leaning mainstream media dares to tangle with her.

Lingering Questions

But the question remains: If Clinton and the DNC did nothing wrong in the way they allocated Indian tribe donations, why was Kaplan so upset about a staffer mentioning the arrangement in an email?

Campaign funding experts are divided over whether laws were broken. Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, who served for 13 years as general counsel at the Federal Election Commission, told Politico, “It clearly goes against what was intended for the joint fundraising committees.”

While the tribes may not have broken the law — since the regulations they are subject to are much less stringent — Clinton and the DNC are at risk of jointly coordinating to subvert campaign finance laws, which would be considered a “criminal scheme” under federal law. (For more from the author of “Leaked: DNC Finance Director Freaks Over Hillary Staffer Noting Tribal Donations in Email” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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Trump Just Officially Took the Jeb Bush/Gang of 8 Position on Amnesty

In part two of Republican candidate for president Donald Trump’s town hall with Sean Hannity, scheduled to air tonight on Fox News, it seems Mr. Trump will finally clarify his position on amnesty. For the worse.

Speaking on what to do with non-violent illegal aliens, Trump said that under his plan they will “pay back-taxes” and that it would be a “very hard thing” to “throw them and their family out.”

Having illegal immigrants pay a fine and back taxes to stay in the country was the policy proposed in the Gang of Eight amnesty bill!

Further, that is the position on amnesty once held by former candidate for the Republican nomination for president Jeb Bush.

“I think for the eleven or twelve million people here illegally, they should come out from the shadows, they should pay a fine, they should pay taxes, they should work,” Bush said in an interview back in October of 2015.

He famously, or infamously, drew fire from conservative critics for referring to illegal immigrants crossing the southern border illegally as an “act of love.”

“A great country ought to know where those folks are and politely ask them to leave,” he said, adding later that properly targeting people who overstay visas “would restore people’s confidence” in the nation’s immigration system.

“There are means by which we can control our border better than we have. And there should be penalties for breaking the law,” he added. “But the way I look at this — and I’m going to say this, and it’ll be on tape and so be it. The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn’t come legally, they come to our country because their families — the dad who loved their children — was worried that their children didn’t have food on the table. And they wanted to make sure their family was intact, and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family. I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime that there should be a price paid, but it shouldn’t rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families.”

One of those Bush’s fiercest critics was … Mr. Trump himself.

Remember this Instagram ad?

This is no "act of love" as Jeb Bush said…

A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on

Now that Trump himself has proposed non-violent illegal aliens be allowed to remain in the United States after paying fines in the form of “back taxes,” is Mr. Trump’s plan substantially different from Mr. Bush’s? Or the Gang of Eight bill’s?

(For more from the author of “Trump Just Officially Took the Jeb Bush/Gang of 8 Position on Amnesty” please click HERE)

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Pentagon Plays Hide and Seek With Trillions of Your Tax Dollars

After years of protesting that they were “too big to audit,” the Pentagon is finally under a congressionally-mandated review. Under a law passed in 2009, the Pentagon must provide their financials to Congressional overseers by September 30, 2017.

However, a new report published by the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General (IG) highlights how problematic the Pentagon’s books truly are. The IG now believes there is “considerable risk” that the Pentagon will not be audit-ready by the date mandated by law.

And, really, it’s more than just a simple problem. To borrow a Trumpism, it’s a YUGE problem. In fact, according to the Pentagon, the U.S. Army has trillions of dollars in accounting errors in their books. Yes, trillions. These errors are based on missing receipts and invoices, or statements that literally just don’t add up.

Reuter’s Scot Paltrow found that the Pentagon didn’t simply misplace a few receipts, nor was it as simple as offering an Accounting 101-style refresher. Instead, Paltrow concludes, that the military was forced to “make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that it’s books are balanced.”

As the report highlights, we’re talking about insane bookkeeping flubs. In fact, the Pentagon fabricated nearly $2.8 trillion ledger entries in just the third quarter of 2015; overall, $6.5 trillion in fabricated entries for the year. The evidence is damning; such poor mishandling will put additional scrutiny on defense spending, the largest expenditure in the discretionary budget. As can be expected, it will be difficult for the military to justify needed resources when, in fact, the Pentagon admits:

[F]inancial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. In addition, DoD and Army could not rely on their accounting system data when making management and resource decisions.

How could this happen?

Part of the problem begins with the culture of military support in Washington. For years, military spending has been a sacrosanct topic. Politicians are often reluctant to question or challenge the ever greater need for military resources; it is a subject that can immediately make a politician look weak on national security.

Today, the military spends roughly as much as it did during the Cold War era, or at least, during the Reagan defense buildup. All told, including war funding, the military will cost the U.S. taxpayer roughly $586 billion this year.

To truly put the size of our defense budget into perspective, it is often helpful to compare it to, well, the resources of other nations – particularly those who may be foes. As you can see in the chart, we crush everyone in military might; or at least when it comes to buying military hardware.

The inability of the Department of Defense to manage their own budget is an affront to the American taxpayer, as well as to the troops the DoD oversees. Every few months a new story develops where the military has literally lost billions of dollars. For example, in April of 2015, the military was accused of losing $45 billion in Afghanistan.

That’s nearly as much as the federal government provides to build our nation’s roads, each year. Taking taxpayer funds for granted; squandering them, or losing them is a disservice to the American people. Yet, that is not even the most unfortunate aspect.

Most concerning is what this means for the fate of U.S. Military might in the future. The federal government is cash strapped, with $19.5 trillion in debt, and a social safety net that is consuming the federal budget. As a result, each dollar sent to the DoD will be under greater and greater scrutiny.

Even the Pentagon realizes that asking for additional funds to build up the military is unrealistic when they fail to account for the resources they currently have. In their Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) proposal, a five-year defense budget, the Pentagon has effectively asked for flat funding, or, on average, $534 billion per year through 2020.

In fact, instead of expanding the military, the Pentagon is already looking for new savings. Plans are in place to reduce the number of active duty troops, from 1.31 million to 1.27 million. The Pentagon also would like to reform military pay and initiate a new round of base realignments and closures.

The U.S. military is the best in the world. Men and women throughout our history have sacrificed their lives to protect the freedom we cherish, even as they seek to liberate other lands from tyranny and terror. However, the means to achieve these heights should not be abused. The sacred honor with which our troops commit themselves should not be disregarded and shamed by an organization that squanders the pledges of U.S. taxpayers. Each dollar committed to our national defense should be treated with respect, and with purpose. Anything less tarnishes the honor of our troops, and the costs which they have so bravely borne. (For more from the author of “Pentagon Plays Hide and Seek With Trillions of Your Tax Dollars” please click HERE)

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