Hundreds of millions of dollars from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg were used to violate election laws, according to a new report.
The Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, a national constitutional litigation organization, released the 39-page report, alleging that Zuckerberg’s $500 million given to election officials was used to treat voters unequally and to improperly influence the election for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The bulk of the funds went to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a nonprofit started by former managers and staff at the New Organizing Institute, a progressive nonprofit.
According to the report, the nonprofit earlier this year “began sending agents into states to recruit certain Democrat strongholds to prepare grants requesting monies from” it.
For example, the center gave $100,000 to Cory Mason, the mayor of Racine, Wisconsin, to recruit four other cities to develop a plan and request a larger grant from it. Those five cities submitted such a plan in June and received $6.3 million to implement it.
That kind of privatization of elections “undermines the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which requires state election plans to be submitted to federal officials and approved and requires respect for equal protection by making all resources available equally to all voters,” the report states.
“The provision of Zuckerberg-CTCL funds allowed these Democrat strongholds to spend roughly $47 per voter, compared to $4 to $7 per voter in traditionally Republican areas of the state. Moreover, this recruiting of targeted jurisdictions for specific government action and funding runs contrary to legislative election plans and invites government to play favorites in the election process.”
Phill Kline, director of the Thomas More Foundation’s Amistad Project, in a file photograph. (Courtesy of Phill Kline)
Mason’s spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor did a Facebook spokesperson, nor CTCL’s media office.
“This effectively is a shadow government running our elections,” Phill Kline, director of the Amistad Project, said at a press conference in Virginia.
“Government has the core responsibility of managing elections. We don’t put out elections for bid. We don’t have elections brought to you by Coca Cola. It is government’s job to manage elections, and it must do so without a thumb on the scale.”
The project said the main foundations funding the efforts include The Democracy Fund, New Venture Fund, Skoll Foundation, and Knight Foundation.
Other nonprofits deemed key to distributing the money besides CTCL were named as the Center for Electronic Innovation Research, the Center for Civic Design, the National Vote at Home Institute, the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, and Rock the Vote.
None immediately responded to requests for comment.
Several years ago I penned this for the Review-Journal.
On this day in 1791 the Bill of Rights were ratified by three-fourths of the states. At the insistence of the Anti-Federalists led by Thomas Jefferson the first 10 amendments were added to the new Constitution.
They might more properly be called a Bill of Prohibitions, since they are not so much a delineation of rights as a list of things the federal government may not take away from individuals and the states and local governments. Bill of Rights
This is our day to celebrate the First Amendment prohibition against establishing a state religion, despite odd rulings about nativity scenes and posting the Ten Commandments, and the right of free speech and press, despite McCain-Feingold limits on campaign spending and advertising. (Since somewhat overturned by Citizens United.)
This is our day to celebrate the Second Amendment, despite requirements to register handguns and other laws.
We celebrate the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unlawful search and seizure, despite the Hiibel case in which Larry Hiibel was arrested for not giving his name to a Humbolt County deputy. (Not to mention civil asset forfeitures.)
There’s the Fifth’s protection against taking of property except for public purposes that was bounced by the Kelo decision that let government take property for private development.
As for the Sixth’s right to speedy and public trial? Forget it. No explanation needed.
The right to trial by jury according to the Seventh? Try that in traffic court, buddy.
No cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth’s prohibition. Lifetime sentences for possession of pot belie that one.
The Ninth’s and 10th’s guarantees that rights not delineated are prohibited to feds? Let’s see the states try to set the drinking age or voting age or speed limits.
There’s still the Third’s prohibition against housing troops in private homes. (Right?)
Happy birthday, Bill of Rights, long may you be respected.
A couple of years ago I ran across the Cato video below. As my ol’ Pappy used to say: Great minds travel in the same plane, while fools just think alike.
Actually, the Third is also suspect as I reported here. The courts have since ruled that cops are not soldiers. They sure look alike and are armed alike. http://dlvr.it/RnmWCf
GOA and other pro-2A groups are suing the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives.
Honest citizens should enjoy the right to assemble their own firearms for lawful purposes, and they should be able to do so without being terrorized by their government.” — GOA’s Erich Pratt, AmmoLand, December 11, 2020.
For years, Polymer80 has been producing “80% complete” lower receivers which the ATF determined to be incomplete and non-regulatable by the ATF as firearms. These receivers require holes to be drilled and surfaces filed before they become an actual, usable receiver, hence the term 80% receiver.
You might have heard an anti-gunner refer to a completed homemade firearm as a “ghost gun” before.
According to the ATF in numerous letters to Polymer80, their 80% receivers did not require a manufacturer’s license, the unconstitutional Pittman-Robertson tax, a serial number, or a NICS check before purchase.
Anti-gunners have been advocating for a ban on homemade firearms for years, even recently appealing to the Trump Administration.
Once again, the ATF appears to be reversing its longstanding interpretive guidance and is arbitrarily redefining a crucial term to enact a gun ban.
The ATF did raid or show up at other companies that sell other kits that include 80% part kits, barrels, and slides that are not Polymer80. AmmoLand News sources inside the ATF say that the agency is now considering 80% kits with all the parts needed to finish a pistol as a firearm. None of the companies had any warning on the change to ATF’s regulations before actual agents showed up making attempts to retrieve customer information.
Apparently, the ATF now considers an 80% lower receiver sold with a parts kit — such as the one offered by Polymer80 as a Buy Build Shoot Kit — to be a firearm requiring a background check. .
But the statute defining a firearm hasn’t changed.
ATF Leadership 2020 Acting Director Regina Lombardo & Associate Deputy Director Marvin Richardson
What did change?
ATF is arbitrarily redefining firearms using interpretive guidance. Acting Director of the ATF Regina Lombardo must feel emboldened by the apparent victory of presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Her reported priorities? Pistol braces and 80% receivers.
But this is more than cooperating with a transition team. Lombardo has begun advancing the Biden-Harris gun control agenda during the Trump Administration!
Aidan Johnston Director of Federal Affairs Gun Owners of America
About Gun Owners of America
GOA spokespeople are available for interviews. Gun Owners of America, and its sister organization Gun Owners Foundation, are nonprofits dedicated to protecting the right to keep and bear arms without compromise. For more information, visit GOA at www.gunowners.org.
An unprecedented “major leak” of official records has uncovered a register of 1.95 million members of the Chinese Communist Party, many of whom are now living and working all over the world, including Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The data lists names, party positions, date of birth, national identification number, ethnicity and — in some cases — their telephone number.
As reported by Australia’s Sky News on Sunday, the database “lifts the lid on how the party operates under President and Chairman Xi Jinping.” The leak “shows that party branches are embedded in some of the world’s biggest companies, and even inside government agencies,” the outlet reports.
“Communist party branches have been set up inside western companies, allowing the infiltration of those companies by CCP members — who, if called on, are answerable directly to the communist party, to the Chairman, the president himself,” said Sky News’ Sharri Markson.
“Along with the personal identifying details of 1.95 million communist party members, mostly from Shanghai, there are also the details of 79,000 communist party branches, many of them inside companies.”
Markson also inferred that this security breach would likely embarrass both Xi Jinping and “some global companies who appear to have no plan in place to protect their intellectual property from theft.”
According to the Daily Mail, communist party members swear an oath to “guard Party secrets, be loyal to the Party, work hard, fight for communism throughout my life…and never betray the Party,” are “understood to have jobs in British consulates,” and that “Beijing’s malign influence now stretches into almost every corner of British life, including defence firms, banks and pharmaceutical giants.”
“Detailed analysis” has revealed that Pfizer and AstraZeneca employed 123 “party loyalists,” and that “there were more than 600 party members across 19 branches working at the British banks HSBC and Standard Chartered in 2016.” In addition, “firms with defence industry interests” like Airbus, Boeing and Rolls-Royce “employed hundreds of party members.”
In The Mail on Sunday, former British Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith wrote that this discovery “proves that members of the Chinese Communist Party are now spread around the globe, with members working for some of the world’s most important multinational corporations, academic institutions and our own diplomatic services.”
Concluding, Sky News’ Markson said that it “is worth noting that there’s no suggestion that these members have committed espionage — but the concern is over whether Australia or these companies knew of the CCP members and if so have any steps been taken to protect their data and people.”
A spokesperson for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a group “which comprises more than 150 legislators around the world who are concerned by the influence and activities of the Chinese government” — released a statement saying that a representative of the organization had “received this list from a non-governmental source, but was not in a position to verify it,” and that journalists had “since investigated and their findings are disturbing indeed.”
You can find whispers of this on Twitter but I’m pretty sure it’s throttled down and, if I had to bet, I would say it will get censored in short order. Especially if the order goes into action.
But it’s not a theory. It is an Executive Order that was issued by President Trump on September 12, 2018. It’s almost as if President Trump saw this situation coming.
The order is titled:
“Executive Order on Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election”
I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, find that the ability of persons located, in whole or in substantial part, outside the United States to interfere in or undermine public confidence in United States elections, including through the unauthorized accessing of election and campaign infrastructure or the covert distribution of propaganda and disinformation, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. Although there has been no evidence of a foreign power altering the outcome or vote tabulation in any United States election, foreign powers have historically sought to exploit America’s free and open political system. In recent years, the proliferation of digital devices and internet-based communications has created significant vulnerabilities and magnified the scope and intensity of the threat of foreign interference, as illustrated in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with this threat.
So, what remedies are described in this Executive Order?
Section 1 says the Director of National Intelligence (John Ratcliffe) shall conduct an assessment and report on any foreign related interference in our elections.
Section 1. (a) Not later than 45 days after the conclusion of a United States election, the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the heads of any other appropriate executive departments and agencies (agencies), shall conduct an assessment of any information indicating that a foreign government, or any person acting as an agent of or on behalf of a foreign government, has acted with the intent or purpose of interfering in that election.
We could be approaching 45 days fairly soon depending on when they deem the conclusion of the election to be.
The report will be delivered to the heads of State, Defense, Treasury, Homeland Security, Attorney General, and the President.
The report will then include any recommended remedial actions that the United States take against such actors, other than sanctions described in the order.
Sec. 2. (a) All property and interests in property that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person of the following persons are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any foreign person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security:
The actions that could be taken are wide ranging.
Will this Executive Order come into play? The implications could be huge, if so.
Thanksgiving is rich in traditions. The turkey. The dressing. The pumpkin pie. The family assembled in prayerful reverence in remembrance of the plight of the early settlers of this country — much of which is complete fiction.
The Plymouth colonists set out to live in an idealistic communal fashion. Everyone would share equally in the products of the colony. But after nearly starving to death in 1621 and 1622, Gov. William Bradford abandoned the social experiment and gave each family its own plot of land, and whatever was produced on it was the rightful property of the owner to consume or trade.
The result was a prosperous harvest in 1623 followed by a feast of Thanksgiving.
Capitalism saved the colony.
The American Institute of Economic Research has posted online its own retelling of the Thanksgiving story, along with passages from Bradford’s recollections from “Of Plymouth Plantation,” translated into more modern spelling.
The AIER notes that the colony was attempting to live in the manner described in Plato’s Republic in which all would work and share goods in common, ridding themselves of selfishness and achieving higher social state. The problem was that hard work was not rewarded and laggardness and sloth went unpunished. William Bradford
Bradford wrote:
“For the young men that were able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children, without recompense. The strong, or men of parts, had no more division of food, clothes, etc. then he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labor, and food, clothes, etc. with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignant and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc. they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could man husbands brook it.”
Before the colony could die off from starvation, Bradford divvied up the land and introduced private property.
The governor wrote:
“And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number for that end. … This had a very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted then otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little-ones with them to set corn, which before would a ledge weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
And the result was, again in Bradford’s words:
“By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God. And the effect of their planting was well seen, for all had, one way or other, pretty well to bring the year about, and some of the abler sort and more industrious had to spare, and sell to others, so as any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.”
This is the real lesson of the first Thanksgiving: Capitalism always triumphs over communist utopian fantasies. Humans will work for their own self interest and, instead of it being greedy and rapacious, all benefit and prosper.
But Americans appear to have elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris anyway.
A metal monolith planted in a remote southeast Utah canyon was discovered last week by a Utah Department of Public Safety flight crew that had been counting bighorn sheep. (UDPS photo)
A metal monolith has somehow been installed in the ground in a remote area of red rock in southeast Utah.
“It is illegal to install structures or art without authorization on federally managed public lands, no matter what planet you’re from,” warns a Monday news release from the Utah Department of Public Safety.
It’s possible the use of “planet” is warranted because of a hard-to-believe discovery by a flight crew that was counting bighorn sheep in an undisclosed area of southeast Utah.
The crew spotted an unusual object and landed to investigate.
A metal monolith had somehow been installed in the ground in a remote area of red rock. The metal sticks out about 12 feet above ground at what appears to be the point of a small canyon.
The crew said there was no obvious indication of who might have planted the monolith.
The exact location was not disclosed because it is in a very remote area and “if individuals were to attempt to visit the area, there is a significant possibility they may become stranded and require rescue,” the UDPS stated in the release.
The federal Bureau of Land Management will determine if more investigation is needed, the UDPS stated.
Two crew members show the height of a monolith discovered Nov. 18, 2020, in a remote southeast Utah canyon. (UDPS photo)A crew member next to a metal monolith discovered Nov. 18, 2020, in a remote southeast Utah can …A crew member next to a metal monolith discovered Nov. 18, 2020, in a remote southeast Utah canyon. (UDPS photo)
The spring has unusually cool, so I planted the vegetable garden later than usual. Then it got extremely hot immediately. The tomato plants produced a few tomatoes but then largely went dormant.
With the cooling of autumn, out popped more tomatoes. But it is so cool they are not ripening.
I picked a half dozen and left them in the kitchen window to ripen, but to no avail.
So, for the first time in my life I fixed fried green tomatoes. Simple recipe I pulled off the net — dredge in flour and Cajun spice, then egg and milk and finally bread crumbs. About the same as you would for wienerschnitzel. Added a dash of Louisiana hot sauce and they were rather tasty.
I have a lot more tomatoes, so there is bound to be more on our table. Perhaps for Thanksgiving. http://dlvr.it/RmCFNq
On Monday a Clark County District Court judge threw out a DUI conviction because the prosecutor in the case also serves in the state Legislature, a violation of the Nevada Constitution Separation of Powers Clause.
Judge Richard Scotti wrote:
Appellant Jennifer Plumlee was deprived of her Constitutional rights of procedural due process because her prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Scheible, also served as a Legislator at the time of the trial, in violation of the Separation of Powers doctrine which doctrine exists as a fundamental feature of American government, and as a express clause in the Nevada Constitution. Nev. Const. Art. 3, Sec. 1. An individual may not serve simultaneously as the law-maker and the law-enforcer of the laws of the State of Nevada.
The plain and unambiguous language of the Nevada Constitution is that: The powers of the Government of the State of Nevada shall be divided into three separate departments, -the Legislative, -the Executive and the Judiciary; and no persons charged with the exercise of powers properly belonging to one of these departments shall exercise any functions, appertaining to either of the others, except in the cases expressly directed or permitted in this Constitution.
Nev. Const. Art 3, sec. 1. This is commonly known as the Separation of Powers clause.It is undisputed that Prosecutor Scheible was a person charged with the exercise of powers within the legislative branch of government at the time of the trial. Further, there is no reasonable dispute that, as prosecutor, she was charged with the exercise of powers within the executive branch. the enforcement of the laws of the State of Nevada are powers that fall within the executive branch of the government of the State of Nevada. See Nev. Const. Art. 5, sec. 7. Prosecutor Scheible was enforcing the laws of the State of Nevada, and representing the State of Nevada, and thus was exercising the powers delegated to her within the executive branch. It is not mere coincidence that District Attorneys are frequently referred to as the State or the government. Deputy District Attorney Scheible did not have the legal authority to prosecute Appellant, thus the trial was a nullity.
The Nevada Separation of Powers Clause has been flouted for decades, as an assortment of bureaucrats have successfully won seats in the Legislature.
The principle was embodied in the founding documents of this country.
James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 47, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote in “Notes on the State of Virginia” in 1784: “All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. … An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”
In a 1967 case, the Nevada Supreme Court flatly stated, “The division of powers is probably the most important single principle of government declaring and guaranteeing the liberties of the people.”
In 2004 then-Secretary of State Dean Heller asked the Supreme Court to remedy the ongoing skirting of the Constitution. Heller asked the court to find that service in the Legislature by unidentified executive branch employees violates the concept of separation of powers and to direct the Legislature to enforce the Separation of Powers Clause.
But the court ruled that doing so would violate — wait for it — the Separation of Powers Clause, because the Constitution also states that the Senate and Assembly are to determine the qualifications of their members, thus the judicial branch telling the legislative branch who its members may be violates the Separation of Powers Clause. Got it?
The court did allow that “declaratory relief could be sought by someone with a ‘legally protectible interest,’ such as a person seeking the executive branch position held by the legislator.”
Since then, the Nevada Policy Research institute has filed a lawsuits on behalf of people seeking the executive branch jobs of lawmakers, but to no avail.
NPRI’s Vice President Robert Fellner said of Scotti’s decision, “As the decision by Judge Scotti demonstrates, the judiciary has an obligation to defend the rights of Nevadans against government overreach and unconstitutional conduct. We are hopeful the Nevada Supreme Court will do just that when our own case inevitably reaches them.”
The Las Vegas newspaper quoted Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson as saying, “Based upon Judge Scotti’s ruling, we are considering our options, which includes going to the Nevada Supreme Court. We haven’t made a decision, but we will be making a decision in the semi-near future.”
Over the years it has been argued that employees of local governments do no violate the Separation of Powers Clause, but Nevada is a Dillon Rule state. The state limits the power of local governments to those expressly granted by the Legislature, local governments are basically subsidiaries of the state. Employees of local governments essentially are serving in the executive branch of state government, and also should be barred from serving as a lawmaker under the Constitution.
Let’s hope the state Supreme Court weighs in soon and settles this significant issue. http://dlvr.it/RlctcN
