3 Ways Obama’s New Overtime Rule Will Hurt Employees

In an alleged attempt to increase the income of certain salaried employees, the Obama administration issued a new overtime rule, set to take effect Dec. 1., that will almost certainly do more harm than good for the employees it seeks to help.

Currently, employers only have to pay the overtime time-and-a-half rate to salaried employees who make less than $23,660 per year (as well as some who make more but don’t have sufficiently advanced job duties). The new rule more than doubles the pay level subject to overtime to $47,476.

This effectively means that many salaried employees can’t be paid to get a job done, but must instead be paid based on their hours.

Beginning in December, employees who make less than $47,767 a year must keep track of their hours and their employer must pay them time-and-a-half for any work over 40 hours per week.

Seems like it could benefit employees through higher pay, right? That’s what the Obama administration thinks. It claimed the rule will increase pay by an average of $1.2 billion per year across roughly 4.2 million workers (an extra $285 per worker).

But that assumption defies the economic literature. It effectively assumes employers have an extra $1.2 billion in spare change that they can dole out to employees without consequence.

Even left-leaning economists Jared Bernstein and Ross Eisenbrey acknowledge that’s not the case. They write that additional overtime costs “would ultimately be borne by workers as employers set base wages taking expected overtime pay into account.”

Another option for keeping total costs constant is to shift employees to hourly rates.

In the end, employees are likely to lose desired job flexibility and income dependability, and will likely have no additional income (maybe even less) to show for it:

1. Lost Flexibility. In today’s more service-oriented economy, the previous eight-hour work day has become less common as employees shift hours between days and weeks, and often perform work—such as responding to emails—outside the office and outside normal business hours. This flexibility gives employees greater autonomy and a better work-family balance. If employers must keep track of their employees’ hours and pay them time-and-a-half for any work over 40 hours in a given week, employers will limit employees’ flexibility. No more staying late a few nights one week in exchange for leaving early the following week, no more working from home where hours are more difficult to track, no more logging extra hours to cover for a co-worker (who would do the same in exchange), and potentially no more—or fewer—paid vacation days.

2. Less Stable Incomes. Salaries are beneficial for employees and employers alike. Salaries provide certainty of cost for employers and certainty of income for employees, allowing both to properly budget their resources. Salaries also allow employees to be paid to get a job done as opposed to having to log a certain number of hours. Many workers log fewer than 40 hours during less busy weeks or seasons and more than 40 hours in busy periods. Because most employers can’t afford—at least not without consequence—to pay employees with variable hours their existing base salaries as well as time-and-a-half when they work more than 40 hours, they will likely shift those employees to an hourly rate that results in roughly the same income for the year. But most employees prefer a regular paycheck over variable ones. After all, their mortgage or rent and most other expenses don’t vary from month-to-month.

3. Excessive Compliance Costs Likely to Reduce Wages. The Obama administration estimated employers will spend $295 million per year complying with the new regulation. The rule is unlikely to raise average wages as employers will reduce base pay or shift employees to hourly pay. But even if the rule raises wages by the administration’s unlikely estimate of $1.2 billion per year, $295 million in compliance costs amounts to an outrageously high 25 percent administrative fee. Those compliance costs will almost certainly be passed onto employees through lower wages.

Rather than intervene in mutually advantageous salary arrangements between employers and employees, the government should let employees agree to be paid to get a job done. The Obama administration’s paternalistic approach will ultimately hurt the employees it aims to help by limiting job flexibility, reducing income certainty, and potentially reducing incomes through excessive compliance costs. (For more from the author of “3 Ways Obama’s New Overtime Rule Will Hurt Employees” please click HERE)

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Did Obama Just Betray Syrian Christians to Please the Turks? Seems So.

American policy in Syria has been marked by a long list of flip-flops and failures. Remember Obama’s “red line” meant to stop the Assad regime from using chemical weapons? That was quickly erased when Congress made it clear there was little public support for using U.S. forces to topple another secular dictator in favor of rebel groups whose radical Islamist views made them no less dangerous to our interests. The “moderate” rebels to whom the U.S. was airdropping weapons proved to be virtually mythical creatures, and those weapons ended up in the hands of al Qaeda’s allies. Then we learned that a rebel group the Pentagon had backed was fighting another that the CIA had armed.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has executed on Russia’s behalf a clear and consistent policy, which has helped keep Assad in power — to the benefit of Russia’s Mediterranean influence, and to the benefit of the beleaguered Christian minority in Syria, who find him less of a threat than the Islamist alternatives.

There was one policy, just one, that the U.S. had engaged in which seemed to be working out well: Our government’s backing of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Kurdish-led militias that are allied with local Christians (the Syriac Military Council and the Nineveh Plain Force), that with growing success are taking territory away from ISIS. In those liberated regions, the SDF has established enclaves where Christians have religious freedom and their own armed militias, and women take part in government (unlike in most of the Middle East). As religious freedom activist Johannes de Jong reported here at The Stream:

The successes of the Syriac Military Council and the Nineveh Plain Forces changes the picture we may have of the Syriac-Assyrian Christians in Iraq and Syria. It also challenges us to rethink our strategy to support them. No more than you or I do these Christians aspire to live in refugee camps on care packages. They ask for our assistance in standing up and defending themselves in their own country, where their families have kept the Faith for almost 2,000 years.

But now the U.S. government has decided to abandon the Kurds and their Christian allies, as Michael Horowitz reported in the International Business Times:

Five days ago, US jets were scrambled to protect Kurdish forces in their self-declared Northern Syria Federation from Assad’s air force in the eastern city of Hasakah.

Today, in the aftermath of a limited Turkish intervention on Syrian soil, the US is demanding the Kurds leave the northern city of Manbij, which the Kurds fought and died to capture during the past two months – backed by US warplanes.

That these two events happened less than a week from another is astonishing, even in such an unpredictable and volatile environment as the Syrian civil war. That the US is letting down its only remaining ally in Syria, at a time when other powers, namely Russia and Iran, have acted aggressively to protect theirs, is damaging to the overall US position in the region. …

By demanding the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) leave Manbij, the US took the strategy it itself initiated, nurtured and supported, and dumped it into the trash.

Why?

What motivation does the Obama administration have for turning against its erstwhile allies, the best hope in a desolate region for establishing something like a free and pluralist government? According to Horowitz, we are currying favor with Turkey — the former secular democracy which is morphing before our eyes into an Islamist dictatorship, in the wake of a failed coup that has proved a pretext for a massive purge of secular-minded dissidents.

This is the same Turkey that has gone from provoking Russia (by shooting down a plane that was fighting ISIS) to cozying up to Putin. Turkey is also blackmailing the European Union for huge cash payments and visa-free travel throughout the continent, with the threat that if these demands are not granted, Turkey will dump hundreds of thousands more Syrian migrants across the EU border into Greece and Bulgaria.

So concerned are U.S. generals over Turkey’s untrustworthiness that they have pulled U.S. nuclear weapons out of their longtime Turkish base of Incirlik.

Turkey has for decades savagely repressed its large and growing Kurdish minority, and its autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, would rather see ISIS prevail in Syria than the creation of a free, democratic Kurdish region that might serve as a magnet for armed Kurdish rebels in Turkey.

To patch up relations with that regime, the Obama administration has apparently decided to throw its Kurdish and Christian allies to the wolves — and embark on a campaign of flattery aimed at Erdoğan. On August 24, Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ankara and told Erdoğan:

The attempted coup went to the heart of who your people are — principled, courageous and committed. And for a people who have struggled so long to establish a true democracy, this was, from my perspective and the president’s perspective, the ultimate affront. So my heart goes out to not just the government, but to the Turkish people.

Biden gushed that “the American people … stand in awe” of Erdoğan and his supporters for beating back the bungled coup. Biden did not mention the ugly crackdown that was taking place all around him as he spoke. As Bridget Johnson reported on PJ Media:

Erdoğan’s purge since the coup attempt has included basically any secular opponent to his Islamist government: more than 40,000 people have been rounded up, from soldiers to jurists to bankers and even teachers and a comedian. Human rights groups have charged that the rule of law has gone out the window as detainees have been kept in makeshift facilities without proper access to legal representation and suffering beatings, rapes and starvation. Erdoğan has also intensified his battle against the free press.

Meanwhile, religious freedom activists concerned for Christians in the region are profoundly worried about the implications of this U.S. flip-flop. Johannes de Jong, who works closely with Syrian Christian leaders, told The Stream:

It is clear that the Turkish push against the [Kurdish-led] SDF is very worrying for the Syriac Assyrian Christians of the area, and even more for the growing number of Kurdish Christians of Rojava. It shows how much influence Turkey can have and it’s obvious that Turkey is the oppressor of Christians and Kurds. Turkey still denies the [1915-21] genocide against Armenians and Assyrians. One major way for the U.S. to restore trust among the Christians is to properly arm the Syriac Military Council. And, obviously, the U.S. needs to make substantial steps to show that it indeed continues to support the SDF. The U.S. needs to stop the ongoing attacks on the SDF and to investigate the claim that Turkey used chemical weapons against the SDF and the civilian population the SDF protects. [emphasis added]

(For more from the author of “Did Obama Just Betray Syrian Christians to Please the Turks? Seems So.” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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50% of Americans Are Skipping Church, but Not Because They Don’t Believe in God

Most Americans know that 50 percent of the population doesn’t go to church on Sunday. Most probably think that people who don’t go to church are staying away because they don’t believe in God.

But, a large majority of Americans — 89 percent — still believe in God, and a new Pew Research Center study released this week found that a significant portion of people who don’t go to church are actually staying away for practical or social reasons, while others admit they are simply too lazy to make the effort.

Pew found that among Americans who hardly ever go to church, one-in-five claim they are too busy, and one-in-ten claim they are “too lazy” and have “gotten out of the habit.” Another 17 percent claim social concerns as the reason to stay away from church, including that they used to go to church with a friend or family member but don’t anymore.

There is good news though: Pew found that among people who go to church at least semi-frequently, 27 percent are actually going more regularly than they used to. One-in-five of those people told Pew that they have become more religious, while “Others found themselves desiring God or religion in their life or realized religion was important as they got older or grew more mature.”

The common liberal narrative on shifts in American church attendance attributes the decline in worship on unbelief — in the eyes of liberals, a good move toward a secular, post-religious America. But these new Pew numbers show the liberal narrative is wrong. And what’s even more reassuring is that the belief in God and desire for religion in some Americans is getting even stronger. (For more from the author of “50% of Americans Are Skipping Church, but Not Because They Don’t Believe in God” please click HERE)

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Clinton Foundation Witness Removal Vehicle

Biff Spackle offers this exclusive (to you, at least) photograph of the Clinton Foundation’s Witness Removal Vehicle:

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Backstory: here. (For more from the author of “Clinton Foundation Witness Removal Vehicle” please click HERE)

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WIKILEAKS CHIEF: We Have a Little October Surprise for Miss Hillary

Last night Fox News aired part 1 of a 2-part interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Assange noted that they are currently reviewing “thousands of pages of material” related to the Hillary campaign which he described as “significant.” When asked whether the new material will be leaked before the November 8th election, Assange responded “yes, absolutely.”

“We have a lot of material, thousands of pages of material. There’s a variety of different types of documents and different types of institutions that are associated with the election campaign, some quite unexpected angles that are, you know, quite interesting, some even entertaining.”

We now know that Assange planned the timing of the previous leaks to correspond with the Democratic National Convention which has since resulted in the dismissal of 5 DNC officials, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz. We assume this leak will also be timed to maximize it’s effectiveness with speculation swirling that it could be released before one of the scheduled debates in October.

When asked whether the next release could be a “game-changer” in the November Presidential election, Assange replied:

“I think it’s significant. You know, it depends on how it catches fire in the public and in the media.”

(Read more from “WIKILEAKS CHIEF: We Have a Little October Surprise for Miss Hillary” 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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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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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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RED ALERT: NYT Asks Google to Censor Search Results Related to Hillary’s Health Problems and They Do It

Some radical nutjob and New York Times reporter (but I repeat myself) recently called on Google to censor search results related to Hillary’s numerous health issues.

Farhad Manjoo is a reporter for the New York Times who writes about tech issues. His latest passion is a beef with free speech, though of course, as a leftist, he would never frame it that way.

More specifically, Manjoo is upset that a Google search about Hillary’s health turns up what he calls “conspiracy theories.” And because he’s decided that the negative information available on line about her health is unfounded, Google should “fix” the problem.

Based on my research, it would appear that Google is now obliging that request:

Curiously, Google’s super-smart auto-suggest feature appears incredibly ignorant when it comes to matter of Hillary Clinton’s well-documented health problems.

I did a few experiments, but judge for yourself:

Any results for Hillary health problems?

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Negatory, good buddy.

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How about Hillary health condition or concerns?

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No, apparently zillions of people are searching for “Hillary health centre” instead. That certainly seems plausible.

What does Google Trends have to say about the matter? This separate, and far less used service, allows users to determine search volumes for certain key phrases. I wonder what it has to say about search volume for Hillary health questions?

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Gee, that seems awfully curious. As tales of Hillary’s falls, concussions, confusion, reported seizures, sleepiness and a possible tongue biopsy slipped out of late, searches for Hillary health have skyrocketed.

Pity the guys at Google Type-Ahead Land never got the memo.

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In fact, the number of folks searching for Hillary seizures and Hillary health problems are also noteworthy.

Need definitive proof Google is censoring the results? Check out the type-ahead results here and note Hillary headband.

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Now compare the actual search volume for Hillary headbands versus Hillary health problems:

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So Julian Assange is completely wrong, folks. Google isn’t deeply entwined with Hillary’s campaign. No, that’s just a conspiracy theory.

So, shut up: there are no concerns whatsoever with Hillary’s health. Why, just ask our new Overlords at Google, all you rubes in flyover country. (For more from the author of “RED ALERT: NYT Asks Google to Censor Search Results Related to Hillary’s Health Problems and They Do It” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

7 Questions for Those Who Say That Islam Is Just Like Any Other Religion

In defense of Donald Trump’s suggestion that Muslim immigration be restricted until we better understand the nature of the Jihadist terror threat, the following is offered up by our long-suffering Summer Intern @BiffSpackle:

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Democrats, progressives, and other miscreants: please feel free to answer any or all of these questions in the comments section.

P.S., Keep up-to-date with anti-Jihad news by visiting some of the Fabulous 50 Award Winners for Anti-Jihad Blogging. (For more from the author of “7 Questions for Those Who Say That Islam Is Just Like Any Other Religion” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.