Rent-A-Mob Alert for Cleveland

art credit: noethics.net

Rent-A-Mob Alert!  And the July GOP Convention in Cleveland is on the target list. From Kevin Mooney at The Daily Signal:

Calling community activists: If you’re a committed, left-leaning activist who’d like to take part in “grassroots campaigns to protect the health, economy, environment, and livelihood of Ohio communities,” then Ohio Citizen Action has got a job for you.

And it’s one that pays reasonably well, with benefits on top. This could be an especially nice deal for recent college graduates looking to help create a little drama in Cleveland when the Republican National Convention convenes in July.

Just google Craigslist and Ohio Citizen Action, and you get an advertisement that declares: “Change the World and GET PAID … $80/day (Downtown Cleveland).”

You’ll learn the nonprofit group seeks candidates who “possess strong communication skills and a genuine commitment to the environment, progressive politics, and the empowerment of our fellow OH residents.”

The ad, specifying Cleveland, says positions are full time and pay $80 a day, with bonuses available at 20 days.

Applicants should expect to work from 2 to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. And yes, they should be committed to community organizing with an eye toward “environmental justice” and “sustainable energy.”

“Getting paid to participate in a supposedly ‘grassroots’ campaign is a contradiction in terms,” quipped Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, in an email to The Daily Signal.

The Craigslist ad explains some of what makes the 37-year-old Ohio Citizen Action tick:

Community organizing is the backbone of OCA and each year it allows us the opportunity to continue building the strength in numbers that has won so many of our campaigns. We are looking to add highly motivated individuals with good communication skills to our already effective and professional campaign staff. Also, if you are truly looking for nonprofit grassroots organizing experience, we do it all year, and not just when it gets nice out in the spring and summer!

Perks and benefits apparently are available for those willing to stick with it.

“Health insurance, paid vacations and personal days to employees that show longevity and proficiency with the organization,” the group’s ad promises. “Travel opportunities within our nationwide network of nonprofits for environmental and social justice causes.”

What the ad says is revealing, but what it doesn’t say is perhaps more so.

Donors to the nonprofit get tax deductions, skeptics note. Is Ohio Citizen Action really the employer? Is it legitimate for a tax-exempt charity to use donations to protest and engage in political activism?

Ohio Citizens Action has received $30,000 since 2006 from Tides Foundation and $20,000 since 2013 from the William B. Wiener Jr. Foundation, according to data compiled by the Capital Research Center, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks charity and philanthropy.

In addition, the affiliated Ohio Citizens Action Education Fund has received almost $3.9 million from left-wing philanthropies since 2003. Major funders include the Joyce Foundation ($1.4 million since 2003), Rockefeller Family Fund ($595,000 since 2010), Energy Foundation ($422,000 since 2008), Winslow Foundation ($425,000 since 2007), and George Gund Foundation ($525,320 since 2003).

Read the rest, including reference to an earlier incarnation of the community activist outfit, ACORN, here.

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New York Primary math

art credit: ddrichswier.com

In case you missed it, here’s the bottom line from elections.ap  on the GOP race for the nomination:

Donald Trump is now the only Republican candidate with any chance of clinching the nomination before the convention.

Ted Cruz was mathematically eliminated Tuesday after Trump's big win in the New York primary.

Trump won at least 89 of the 95 delegates at stake. John Kasich won at least three and Cruz was in danger of being shut out.

There aren't enough delegates left in future contests for either Cruz or Kasich to reach the 1,237 delegates needed to win the GOP nomination. Their only hope is to block Trump and force a contested convention.

The AP delegate count:

Trump: 845.

Cruz: 559.

Kasich: 147.

Is Tea Party Patriots going to continue to endorse Ted Cruz, whose only shot at the nomination is to somehow influence the first vote at the convention, whether by dishonesty or outright theft? (I don’t think Cruz would stand a chance in a contested convention; he’d be thrown over in favor of other more “electable” candidates. Romney? Ryan? More of the same ole same ole…)

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"Voterless" elections

art credit: plymouthministorage.com

Okay, Ann Coulter is a bomb-thrower, but she also can hit the nail squarely on the head. Her column the other day was about the “voterless” primary elections, in which GOPe “leaders” are giving delegates to candidates whether the electorate likes it or not. Wisconsin. Colorado. Wyoming. Is West Virginia next? Here are extracts from her column

Another misconception sweeping the nation is that when state Republican parties disregard the voters and give all their delegates to Cruz, they are merely following THE RULES, and Trump is an idiot for not knowing THE RULES. 

That's what the Colorado GOP did, what the Tennessee and Louisiana parties are trying to do -- and what many other states may do, all under the careful tutelage of Tracy Flick Cruz.

I keep asking someone to send me a copy of THE RULES that direct state parties to ignore the voters and pick their own slate of delegates, but no one can cite such a rule. So I read through "The Rules of the Republican Party" myself -- and guess what? There's no rule instructing state parties to ignore the voters! 

To the contrary, the rules were recently rewritten so that delegate selection would "reflect the results of statewide presidential preference elections," according to a statement by Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus. (The nerds will tell us, that's "legislative history," not THE RULES.) 

Apparently, what people mean by THE RULES is that there is no RNC rule specifically prohibiting a state party from giving all the delegates to a single nominee, even if that is demonstrably at odds with the will of the voters. 

The state parties are given a lot of discretion, so Cruz harasses and cajoles the local party until it awards all the state's delegates to him. Trump keeps winning elections, and Cruz keeps winning sneaky procedural victories. 

Until Cruz won a primary in mean-as-a-snake Wisconsin, he hadn't won a single primary -- i.e., an "election" -- outside of his home state, a sister state and a state where Trump didn't campaign. In fact, until cantankerous Wisconsin, the only primary where Cruz managed to surpass 34 percent of the vote was his home state of Texas -- where he got 43.8 percent. 

(Contrary to lies you read in The New York Times, Trump has not complained about any of those races. And you know why? Because they were elections, not corrupt backroom maneuvering. Hey - does anyone know if the general election is won by influence-peddling with tiny groups of insiders or is it by winning elections?) 

It's as if Cruz and Trump are playing different sports: Trump keeps belting home runs, while Cruz is berating the umpire until he calls a balk, then prances to home base, telling everyone he hit a grand slam. 

True, there's no rule explicitly disallowing a state party from rigging the delegate selection. There's also no rule explicitly disallowing a state party from giving all its delegates to Kim Kardashian. 

Cruz is bragging about winning delegates in “voterless” elections, as the Drudge Report and other media dub them. Trump's “campaign strategy is to win with the voters. Ted Cruz’s campaign strategy is to win despite them.”

Does anyone really believe GOPe chairman Reince Priebus when he says “It's not a matter of party insiders. It's a matter of 2,400 grassroots activists, and whatever they want to do, they can do.”

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Rooms for rent?

photo credit: broadviewheights.blogspot.

Three patriot delegates from the Lakes Area Tea Party in Michigan will be attending the GOP Convention July 18-21 here in Cleveland, and they are looking for affordable rooms to rent or courtesy housing. If you are in a position to host these individuals, please email clevelandteaparty@gmail.com 

and we will forward your email to the leader of the group so you can work out details. 

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When Your Vote Doesn't Matter

The other day, this blog referred to Ted Cruz's dirty tricks in Colorado. The backstory is still unfolding, but it looks like Team Cruz worked with the GOP elites in Colorado, within the framework of their rules. The net result is that Colorado voters are disenfranchised by those rules. The GOPe takes full credit for getting delegates for Ted, an establishment insider. As the Drudge headline said, it was a "voterless victory."

American Thinker reproduced the resolution to exclude Donald Trump as a candidate for Colorado GOPe delegates. From another tweet from "Former CO GOP Chair: "The Message We're Sending Is Your Vote Doesn't Matter and Doesn't Count." 

The Colorado GOPe party controlled the selection. It followed the rules, and Colorado voters are going to protest those rules on Friday. 

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Ted Cruz Supporters Attempt Coup At Eagle Forum

conservativefifty.com

It just keeps coming. This report is via Gateway Pundit:

Cruz Supporters Stage Coup – 

Try to Dump Phyllis Schlafly After Trump Endorsement

Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly has been a national leader of the conservative movement since the publication of her best-selling 1964 book, A Choice Not An Echo. She has been a leader of the pro-family movement since 1972 when she led the fight to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment.

Phyllis Schlafly is 91 years-old.

On March 11, 2016 conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly endorsed Donald Trump for President at his St. Louis rally.

But not everyone in her organization, Eagle Forum – or her family – agreed with Phyllis Schlafly’s decision.

Last week Phyllis Schlafly released several board members for disloyalty to the organization.
The group was planning to hold rogue board meeting to take over the Eagle Forum.

Today the rogue Cruz supporters attempted a coup.

They held a non-sanctioned meeting and blocked Phyllis Schlafly from their conference call.

This email was sent out Monday afternoon.

St. Louis, Missouri:

“At 2pm today, 6 directors of Eagle Forum met in an improper, unprecedented telephone meeting. I objected to the meeting and at 2:11pm, I was muted from the call. The meeting was invalid under the Bylaws but the attendees purported to pass several motions to wrest control of the organization from me. They are attempting to seize access to our bank accounts, to terminate employees, and to install members of their own Gang of 6 to control the bank accounts and all of Eagle Forum.

“The members of their group are: Eunie Smith of Alabama, Anne Cori of Missouri, Cathie Adams of Texas, Rosina Kovar of Colorado, Shirley Curry of Tennessee, and Carolyn McLarty of Oklahoma.

“This kind of conduct will not stand and I will fight for Eagle Forum and I ask all men and women of good will to join me in this fight.”

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Diana West calls out Brent Bozell on his double standards

art credit: mediacriminaljustice.blogspot.com

I used to like Brent Bozell. I always looked forward to his guest spot on Thursdays with Sean Hannity. He’s spoken at Tea Party events. I thought he was a good guy.

Diana West just published an open letter to him on his support of networks banning Roger Stone (h/t Breitbart Big Journalism; see Ralph's earlier CTPP blog on Stone here).  And in light of the just-in reports of Cruz’s very dirty tricks in the Colorado GOP delegate selection process (see here and here), I thought I would share her article in full (WARNING: X-rated Bad language alert):  

The PCE, Pt. 16: Brent Bozell and the Stone Standard

Written by: Diana West 

Friday, April 08, 2016 6:11 AM  

To: Brent Bozell

I read the statement you made as president of the Media Research Center, applauding CNN and MSNBC for banning Trump supporter Roger Stone from their presidential election coverage.

CNN, Politico reports, banned Stone in February over his tweets about Jeb Bush supporter and CNN analyst Ana Navarro (Stone called her “Entitled Diva Bitch,” “Borderline retarded,” and “dumber than dog s---” [stet]). The MSNBC ban follows Stone's recent radio discussion of his planned Stop the Steal movement at the upcoming GOP convention in Cleveland, in which, as Breitbart reports, he said there would be protests, demonstrations and that

we will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal. If you’re from Pennsylvania, we’ll tell you who the culprits are.

We urge you to visit their hotel and find them. You have a right to discuss this, if you voted in the Pennsylvania primary, for example, and your votes are being disallowed.

You then wrote that such threats

and his [Stone's] long history of incendiary and offensive rhetoric add no value to the national discourse. ... Stone is a thug who relishes personal insults, character assassination, and offensive gestapo-like tactics that should be unequivocally dismissed by civil society, most especially those who might give him a platform from which to spew his hatred.

The news media have for far too long ignored Stone’s inflammatory words. I hope all media outlets that lament the debasement of political dialogue and the gutter politics for which Stone is infamous follow the lead of CNN and MSNBC. The media should shun him. He is the David Duke of politics. Those with whom he is affiliated should denounce him in no uncertain terms.

Having seized these non-partisan heights of rhetorical-cleansing -- which has nothing to do with your visceral opposition to Donald Trump (whom Stone supports) -- I will assume this is only your first step.

That is, Stone Standard in hand, you must be now turning your cleansing energies toward the rest of the Right, where public rhetoric of crudity and intimidation very often exceeds that of former CNN and MSNBC commentator Roger Stone, Hated One.

No? Not yet? You're not aware? Allow me to be of help. I have been creating what I call the Right's Anti-Trump Lexicon by logging the vile, the vicious, the violent, the demonizing, the patronizing, the vexed, the childish, the angry, the dehumanizing language used by GOP and conservative commentators and professionals to revile Trump and millions of Trump voters.

As an example, I can offer you two excellent candidates for your consideration, according to your own Stone Standard.  

The first is Rick Wilson, top GOP strategist, Rubio supporter and, reportedly, speech-writer of Mitt "Family Values" Romney's CPAC denunciation of Donald Trump.

Exhibit A.

With this one vicious, deviant tweet, well-known GOP professional Wilson has hit virtually every lowest marker of the Stone Standard -- "incendiary and offensive rhetoric," "personal insults," "character assassination," etc. -- instantly resulting in "the debasement of politicial dialogue." Indeed, the public square is forever rancid.

There's more.

Wilson uses irresponsibly violent language to discuss the Trump candidacy, actually invoking the assassination of Donald Trump and the summary execution of his supporters. 

For example: The donor class "are still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump. And that’s a fact,” Wilson said on MSNBC.

A "bullet"? I'm sure you find this not only "incendiary and offensive," but also dangerously "inflammatory."

Wilson, among others, has further corrupted our democratic discourse with bizarre revenge scenarios. Trump supporters, Wilson has tweeted, are no better than "collaborators" "Vichy Republicans," who may face "epuration sauvage" (summary executions) "up against a wall."   

Where Roger Stone denigrated the intelligence of his CNN colleagues, Rick Wilson does the exact same thing to Trump supporters, dismissing them all as "low-information voters." Further: "Most of them [Trump supporters]," Wilson stated on MSNBC, "are childless single men who masturbate to anime."

Is there not something wrong with political "analysis" that makes a viewer want to take a bath?

A second candidate for your consideration is National Review's Kevin Williamson, a regular commentator on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News. Like Wilson, Williamson is another one who has exceeded the Stone Standard, and with similar sicko touches. "The gross thing is, you can kind of imagine a Trump sex tape," he wrote in National Review.

Since you took exception to Roger Stone tweeting that his CNN colleague was a "bitch," I am sure you will be similarly outraged by Williamson tweeting that Donald Trump was a "bitch." And not just any kind of a "bitch."

 

Such talk -- and there is much more -- from the director of the "William F. Buckley fellowship in political journalism" debases more than political dialogue, no? 

In an essay originally titled "Father-Fuhrer" (Trump -- get it??), Williamson expresses more group-rancor, more group-hatred than I've seen from any other "thought leader" -- outside Black Lives Matter or the Cultural Revolution, that is -- asserting that white working class communities, where support for Trump is strong,  "deserve to die."

"Deserve to die"? Once again, we see the Stone Standard exceeded. Stone, after all, called for Trump voters to "discuss" the possible steal of their votes with delegates who may do the stealing -- fraught and ill-advised enough, to be sure. He has not, however, asserted that anyone -- including delegates breaking trust with primary voters -- "deserve to die."

If this is not beyond the pale, what is?

Williamson, too, castigates Trump supporters, calling these Americans he disagrees with, "bad citizens with defective judgement." Further, he has written in the pages of National Review that they are "engaged in the political version of masturbation: sterile, fruitless self-indulgence." 

What it is with these two men and masturbation is not, Glory Be, our concern; rather, it is their hellish level of discourse. I am wondering whether you will be issuing another righteous statement, as you did regarding Roger Stone, calling for "the media to shun" this noxious pair (and others, as you will see) and "denounce [them] in no uncertain terms"?

Somehow, I doubt it. 

It is similarly sickening to see the primary process corrupted, whether by intimidation, interference, or payoffs, and those we thought were conservative-value commentators have little, if anything to say about that corruption. 

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