Facebook and Conservatives

Photo credit: Breitbart.com

Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy – the RINO leadership in 2014

with Mark Zuckerberg 

About that meeting between Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and concerned conservatives, via Breitbart Big Journalism:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with a range of establishment conservatives in Silicon Valley on Wednesday to discuss the reported suppression of conservative content.

There were reportedly 16 attendees at the meeting, which included:

Glenn Beck, founder of the The Blaze

Barry Bennett, an adviser to Donald Trump

Jim DeMint, former GOP Senator from South Carolina [now at Heritage Foundation]

Robert Bluey, editor in chief of the The Daily Signal

Dana Perino, host at Fox News

Alex Skatell, founder of the Independent Journal Review

Mary Katharine Ham, Hot Air Editor at Large

S.E. Cupp, CNN political commentator

Jenny Beth Martin, CEO of the Tea Party Patriots

Brent Bozell, President of Media Research Center

Zac Moffatt, part of Mitt Romney’s campaign

Arthur Brooks, American Entreprise Institute

Representatives from Breitbart were asked to attend but declined the invitation, as did American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp.

While Breitbart is not entirely free of bias itself (see here and here), its report today expressed a viewpoint that, if indeed embraced by Breitbart, that most conservatives would share.

We do not want, nor do we need, Facebook’s corporate “validation.” We understand algorithms. Our social media team works relentlessly each day using state of the art analytics to monitor and leverage Facebook traffic. We strive for excellence, and we do not need Facebook’s condescension.

Here’s what we and our tens of millions of readers are interested in:

An interview between Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos and Mark Zuckerberg on the topic of free speech and Facebook’s suppression of conservative media. Milo will interview Zuckerberg anytime, anywhere—and we’ll agree to have it broadcast on your live video platform.

Facebook to immediately cease its active suppression of conservative media, as extensively reported by Gizmodo, The Guardian, and myriad other news outlets. Indeed, Facebook’s Trending News chief, Tom Stocky, is a maximum political donor to Hillary Clinton. So there’s no need to “discuss” anything. Facebook did it, Facebook got caught, and it must end.

Bottom line: be interviewed by Milo and stop screwing conservatives.

Free speech is not for sale, and neither are we.

But look at some of the names on the list of “Vichy” conservatives who DID meet with Zuckerberg. I now expect names like Bozell, Beck, and Perino on the list. But it is more than a bit alarming to this Tea Party patriot (small case “p” for patriot is deliberate) that Jenny Beth Martin is on the list. She is not keeping good company these days. And why is she now listed as the “CEO” of Tea Party Patriots, originally organized as a grassroots bottom-up loose organization of disparate Tea Party groups across the country. Cleveland Tea Party does not answer to a CEO. From a philosophical standpoint, we are closer to the Breitbart position quoted above.

This meeting was all about damage control. Once again Sundance exposes the charade.

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Speaker J. Wellington Wimpy

Art credit: www.daveposh.org

It’s Not Just Tactics, Mr. Speaker

By Jenny Beth Martin

7:27 PM 01/25/2015

The Daily Caller

“The issue with the Tea Party isn’t one of strategy. It’s not one of different vision … It’s a disagreement over tactics, from time to time,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner, on 60 Minutes Sunday night.

More than a year ago, Speaker Boehner took serious offense when conservative groups criticized a budget deal he favored. They had “lost all credibility . . . I don’t care what they do.” So irrelevant is the Tea Party movement that the Speaker took to 60 Minutes to complain about its criticism of him Sunday night.

The Speaker trivializes the differences that led to the biggest intraparty rebellion against a sitting Speaker since the Civil War. His first problem isn’t with outside groups, it’s his own GOP colleagues in the House. When one out of every ten takes the extraordinary step of standing before his colleagues and calling out the name of someone else for his job, he should realize he’s got a problem.

As for us, our opposition to his leadership centers on our belief that we do NOT, in fact, share visions and strategies.

For example, we oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants because we believe it would not be fair to the millions waiting in line to get into America legally, nor to the millions who already arrived legally after waiting in line. Amnesty rewards lawbreaking, and only serves to incentivize further lawbreaking.

The Speaker, on the other hand, dances to the tune of the Chamber of Commerce, whose members and supporters want cheaper labor, and are, consequently, major proponents of the kind of comprehensive amnesty legislation that passed the Senate in 2013 and which the Speaker clearly wanted to put on the floor of the House last year before Dave Brat’s stunning upset of the former Majority Leader put the kibosh on those plans.

Moreover, we seek a federal government that is actually smaller than the one we have now, not merely one that is smaller than the one Barack Obama would prefer. We note with disdain the Speaker’s willingness to sign off on budget and debt ceiling increase “deals” that appear to have been negotiated by Popeye’s J. Wellington Wimpy — he will gladly give the president a spending/debt ceiling increase now, in exchange for the promise of spending cuts to come Tuesday. And when Tuesday arrives, somehow the spending cuts never materialize.

Similarly, we seek the repeal of Obamacare because we believe it tramples the fundamental liberties guaranteed us by our Constitution, destroys patient choice, degrades the quality of health care delivered, increases costs, and will ultimately break the bank. The Speaker, on the other hand, seems perfectly content to tinker at the margins (1099 repeal? Medical device tax repeal?) secure in the knowledge that many of his major funders — the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies who support Obamacare because of its mandates, which lead to a massively growing client base, and, hence, increased profits — don’t actually want him to fight to repeal the legislation.

Here’s a test of the Speaker’s assertion that our differences are merely differences in degree, not kind: Why has he refused to lead his GOP Conference to vote in favor of the bill introduced by his colleague Ron DeSantis of Florida, which seeks to overturn the August 2013 OPM [Office of Personnel Management] ruling granting generous employer subsidies to Members of Congress and their staffs for the purchase of health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges, in clear violation of the law? That legislation is a fundamental part of a strategy designed to raise the temperature inside the offices of the Democrat Members of Congress whose votes are needed to build the necessary majorities for repeal in both House and Senate; yet, given multiple opportunities to put the bill on the floor, he has refused to do so.

Finally, I would note one other difference with the Speaker’s view, specifically regarding his assertion that the Tea Party’s opposition is manufactured for fundraising purposes: Every dollar we raise is contributed voluntarily, by donors whose only interest is seeking to influence their government to tax less, spend less, and stop running up a massive debt. They seek little from the government other than to be left alone, and we have nothing to offer them other than our promise that we will use the resources they contribute to do the best job we can to achieve our shared vision of greater personal freedom, economic freedom, and a debt-free future.

JENNY BETH MARTIN is co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization.

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Left’s latest assault on free speech

Art credit: rslblog.com

From The Hill via Tea Party Patriots:

December 02, 2014, 02:00 pm

Left’s latest assault on First Amendment nothing new

By Jenny Beth Martin

During the last week of October, when media attention was focused on the impending midterm elections – and President Obama’s forthcoming executive action on amnesty – an issue of critical importance slipped almost unnoticed into the news cycle. Democrats on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) are getting serious about stifling free speech on the Internet. 

At issue is an obscure anti-Obama ad from Ohio that wound up on YouTube. Because the spot was placed for free, it fell within the “Internet exception” the FEC has recognized – across party lines – since 2006. Internet ads of a political nature would seem the very embodiment of “free speech” contemplated by the Founders in the Bill of Rights. Democrat members of the FEC – and the American Left in general – see criticism of their Dear Leader as a serious matter, however, and in need of government regulation. They’re going to need to see your papers. 

The Obama Machine, whether in campaign or governing mode (is there really any difference?) has long viewed the First Amendment as an impediment to its agenda of “fundamentally transforming” the country. During the 2008 campaign, Democrat prosecutors in Missouriannounced the deployment of truth squads to “immediately respond” (in an ominous, yet unspecified way) to any derogatory information about then-Senator Obama. They backed down after being called out for their “police state” tactics by the then-governor. 

Once elected, the post-partisan president let it be known he’d brook no second guessing, let alone dissent. In 2009, vocal critics of the healthcare takeover could’ve found themselves on the flag@whitehouse enemies list, had they spread information deemed “fishy” by the administration.  After Robert Gibbs’ feeble insistence that of course the White House wasn’t keeping names and email addresses, the site was dismantled. 

Obama uses the bully pulpit to let his subjects know what a danger the First Amendment poses to his post-partisan agenda, and the 2010 State of the Union address was an ideal setting. Displeased with the recent Citizens United ruling, he took the unprecedented step of rebuking Supreme Court justices as they sat on the front row. Separation of powers and even basic rules of courtesy and decorum take a back seat, when the Cult of Personality needs to see its enemies’ donor lists. 

Following his 2010 mid-term “shellacking,” (and while his IRS was systematically targeting his perceived enemies), President Obama stepped up his assault on dissenters. In an absurd, "middle school hall monitor meets police state" story, Attack Watch was born. Concerned supporters of the president everywhere were asked to monitor and report any and all derogatory information. Knowledge is power, especially when informing on your neighbors.  And again, they certainly kept no list of names…not the folks who ask folks to document the content of group prayers. 

While it’s comforting that Attack Watch died relatively quickly (and mostly from ridicule), the sentiment behind the buffoonery is both serious and scary. The Left views criticism of their president as dangerous; the Bill of Rights is secondary. 

Democrat FEC Vice Chairman Ann Ravel is unambiguous about both the perceived threat to her president and the way to combat it. When her attempt to overturn the 2006 “Internet exception” ruling failed on a 3-3 party line vote,  Ravel took serious offense. Because the FEC wouldn’t force free Internet advertising into the same classification as paid ads on radio or television, she needs to shake things up. “A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the Internet and other emerging technologies is long overdue,” she said, as if regulating political speech is the logical next step. 

This is not Ravel’s first attempt to wipe her feet on the Bill of Rights.  Two years ago in California, she attempted to bring bloggers and "online commentators" under state regulation. Unbowed by her failure at the state level, she now wants to take her speech-stifling act national. If Ravel and her Democrat FEC colleagues have their way, bloggers and websites like The Drudge Report will answer to the federal government. Attack Watch was silly; these proposed new regulations are deadly serious. 

Ultimately for the Left generally and for Obama in particular, this is about control. Their nationalization of the health care system was a means to get the government more involved in people’s individual lives. Things that get in the way of that control – like the Constitution – are mere impediments to be dealt with. The President shredded Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution so he could control immigration. 

Does anyone think he sees the First Amendment as an obstacle to his controlling the Internet? 

People are criticizing him, after all. 

Martin is co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.

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