There is no patriotic obligation to help advance the career of a politician who is otherwise pursuing interests that are fundamentally antithetical to your values. That's not the call of patriotism. - John Bolton
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JOHN
BOLTON
National Security Advisor |
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| ACTIVISTS |
March for Our Lives’ students make nationwide
voter push
— Hogg, 18, and other student activists are in the
middle of a nationwide tour devoted to voter registration and an end
to gun violence in America. Every day starts by waking up in a hotel room
around 7 a.m. and then boarding a bus for hours, stopping in new cities for
town halls and other community events, he said. The day usually ends around
midnight. Hogg spoke on Thursday as the bus headed to Aurora, Colo., where a mass
shooting at a movie theater in 2012 killed 12 people and injured dozens more.
— The students come from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School, where 17 people were killed on Valentine's Day, and from
cities affected by gun violence across the country. Alex King, who recently
graduated from Chicago's North Lawndale College Prep High School, said the
students on tour have become family. "We look at this as a family road
trip," he told Morning Education. King lost his nephew to gun violence
last year. "People who've been through so much suffering can become very
close with each other," Hogg said.
— Protesters and gun rights advocates are often present
during the stops. But King said they ask protesters to have a
conversation whenever possible. "Most of the time we invite them in so
that they can listen to us and we can listen to them," he said. "We
do this because we need to understand both sides. You need both sides of the
story to get the truth and get the change."
— There are many stops left on the tour, which ends on
Aug. 12 in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six adults were
killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Hogg, who
recently graduated, said he plans to take a gap year after the tour and
continue his voting push on college campuses, in addition to other projects he
said were "secret." King said he plans to attend Grand Valley State
University in Michigan this fall and keep up the activism "when I don't
have class." [POLITICO's Morning Education, July 13, 2018]
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TRUMP’S
LAWYERS
PETTIFOGGING MOUTHPIECES |
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| JAMES COMEY |
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| RACE |
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| GAMES & SPORTS |
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| READ |
YOUTH 'LOBBY DAY' LOOKS TO DISCIPLINE GUIDELINES: More
than 100 young activists are expected to gather in front of the Education
Department today and call on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to maintain
Obama-era guidelines aimed at addressing racial bias in school discipline
policies. DeVos is chairing a White House school safety commission that's
considering whether to rescind the guidelines over concerns that they burden
school districts and potentially keep violent students in the classroom.
— The activists are also expected to visit the
offices of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Kirsten
Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Chris Murphy
(D-Conn.), urging them to sign a pledge and "prohibit federal
funding for any school policing or criminalization of schools and invest in
restorative justice, and mental health supports and resources for schools,
students, and families," according to a release. The "youth-led lobby
day" is being organized by left-leaning groups including the Center for
Popular Democracy, Make the Road New York and the Urban Youth Collaborative. [POLITICO's Morning Education, July 12, 2018]
Protect Your Right To Speak Out
The oil industry in North
America is expanding — building new oil pipelines and terminals to export dirty
oil from Canada and the U.S. Today a
new report shows the lengths they’ll go through to build these projects.
Warning: it’s hard
reading.1
The report details some
jaw-dropping behavior. But together, we can do something about it. Together, we can pressure banks to not fund these pipelines
and really hit these companies where it hurts. Sign the petition today.
When Indigenous Peoples from
all over the world gathered at Standing Rock to stop the Dakota Access
Pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners was thrust into the spotlight for the
shocking images of private security attack dogs, arbitrary arrests, and
violation of the Standing Rock Sioux's treaty rights.
Now Energy Transfer Partners is suing
Greenpeace entities and our allies for $900 Million in
an attempt to silence opposition to its toxic projects and infringe on the
right to peacefully assemble.2 The
lawsuit makes outrageous claims about “drug trafficking” and being part of a
“criminal enterprise” in an attempt to divide the movement.
But together, we can defend our right to free speech.
These oil pipelines rely on investments from banks. Please sign the petition today and call on banks to not fund oil
pipelines.
We all give our money to banks
— they need us to
see them as safe bets. So a massive, global petition could help
the banks see just how risky these dirty oil pipeline projects are. Investing
in pipelines harms the reputations their business depends on.
And potentially their bottom
lines too.
Every step of the way,
thousands of Indigenous communities and supporters are coming together to
peacefully resist pipeline construction.
Why? The pipelines cut through
communities and put precious water and wildlife at risk of oil spills. A large
oil leak or spill can mean a huge clean up bill for the company and can destroy
a community.
Even for pipelines companies,
it's all too much. Last month, Kinder Morgan threw in the towel on building the
Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline, a project that Kinder Morgan itself has
indicated is ‘untenable’ and that faces more than a dozen lawsuits, crumbling
economics and a growing resistance movement that is spreading around the world.3
Pipelines are a problem for all
of us. Spills and leaks could poison the water on which all life depends. And
exporting more oil is going to hurt, not help, our fight on climate change. But
together, we can be a Wave of Resistance against them. Let’s stop banks funding
these dirty dinosaurs.
In Solidarity,
Elizabeth Jardim
Climate and Energy Campaigner, Greenpeace USA [July 13, 2018]
Climate and Energy Campaigner, Greenpeace USA [July 13, 2018]
Right now the Federal Reserve is slowing down the economy to
kill jobs. They want to make unemployment HIGHER and drive our wages even
LOWER.
I work over 40 hours a week in retail in San Francisco to help.
I get paid just above the minimum wage at stores where tech millionaires shop.
My parents migrated to San Jose, California from Vietnam, and
they have worked tirelessly their entire lives to make ends meet. Despite
decades of sacrifice and hard work, my family still can’t buy a house, and now
we’re being priced out of our home and our community.
We can’t let our economy get even worse than it is right now.
We need a San Francisco Fed President who is a break from the
status quo that is keeping us down, not another insider who doesn’t care about
the people.
The San Francisco Fed district covers the largest, most diverse
districts in the country, but in 105 years of history, they have never had a
single Black or Latinx president.
In a selection process without transparency or accountability,
just six people will choose the next San Francisco Fed president, and every
single one of them come from banking and business, and all but one isn’t white.
Do you think they’ll choose an outsider who will stand up to the rest of the
Fed and stand up for workers?
In solidarity,
Nick Gallant
Fed Up Campaign
Rise Up Retail
Fair Workweek Initiative [July 12, 2018]
Fed Up Campaign
Rise Up Retail
Fair Workweek Initiative [July 12, 2018]
How Ron Paul Operatives Made Bank Off the Alt-Right
The
“pipeline” from libertarianism
to the alt-right has received some attention amid Donald Trump political
ascent. And it just so happens that the most prominent alt right-linked
candidates of the 2018 election cycle can trace some of their most active
campaign supporters and consultants to a small crew of aides to Ron Paul’s 2012
presidential campaign, some of whom have set up a network of PACs and political
vendors that have boosted 2018’s most controversial Republicans—and earned
hundreds of thousands of dollars for their small cadre of proprietors.
By
2018, they’d had their hands in campaigns for Paul Nehlen, the virulent racist
and anti-Semite challenging Speaker Paul Ryan; Roy Moore, the disgraced former
Alabama supreme court judge whose Senate campaign was derailed by allegations
of pedophilia; and Corey Stewart, who is vying to replace Virginia Sen. Tim
Kaine on a platform that fully embraces neo-Confederate imagery.
The
saga began in Maine, where a group of Ron Paul campaign staffers endeavored to
set up a political apparatus operating independently of either the campaign or
the state GOP. Leading the effort was Eric Brakey, then the Maine state
director for Paul’s campaign. In June 2012, he set up a political group in the
state called Defense of Liberty PAC, (DOLPAC) which enlisted the services of Reilly
O’Neal, a regional director for the Paul campaign, and his consulting company,
Tidewater Strategies. The PAC would eventually spend a total of about
$80,000,
with just over $12,000 going to candidates in the state, and the rest spent on
consultants, staff salary, and overhead expenses.
Those
spending habits drew the ire of Patrick Eisenhart, a Maine delegate for Ron
Paul at the 2012 Republican convention. He filed
an ethics complaint with state authorities alleging the use of PAC funds for
the personal enrichment of its principals and consultants. The Maine Ethics
Commission declined to bring any action against DOLPAC. The language in their
decision foreshadowed difficulties in combating so-called “scam PACs” in the
years since: “Mr. Eisenhart does raise important issues regarding whether a PAC
has some fiduciary responsibilities to its contributors,” the commision wrote.
“However, under current campaign finance law, there is no such standard.”
After
the Paul presidential campaign fizzled out, O’Neal’s consulting business really
picked up steam. Over the next two election cycles, Tidewater and two of his
other firms, Mustard Seed Media and the Capital Square Funding Group, pulled
down about $940,000 from federal political clients.
Among
those clients was a super PAC called the Principled Leadership Project (PLP),
and it would once again tap the Paul campaign alumni network. In early 2017,
PLP jumped into a special election for a House seat in Georgia with an attack
ad so vicious that it was condemned by both the
Republican and Democratic candidates in the race. Defending the ad was the
group’s new spokesman, Noel Fritsch, a Ron
Paul 2012 supporter who consulted for Nehlen’s 2016 campaign. That was before
the racism and anti-Semitism were front and center, but Fritsch would go on to
work for Nehlen’s 2018 campaign as well.
PLP
has raised more than $270,000 this cycle, the vast majority of which has been
paid to the group’s consultants. They include Tidewater, Capital Square, and
another of O’Neal’s consulting firms, email vendor Rightside Lists. They also
include an obscure firm called DSGB Strategies, which was created in late 2016
by Brian Gentry, a little-known political consultant with views typical of a
subset of libertarians, such as his intense
antipathy towards
“tyrant” Abraham Lincoln, his role in fomenting the “War for Southern
Independence,” and “dishonest Abe’s enormous contribution” to “the modern
socialist, welfare/warfare state.” Gentry is also an alum of the 2012 Ron Paul
campaign, and in early 2018, DSGB signed a new client: the Maine Senate
campaign of Eric Brakey.
DSBG
is incorporated
in Georgia, but in FEC forms, it’s listed a different
address:
a Washington D.C. house owned
by Fritsch, who insists he has nothing to do with the firm. But work by
Fritsch, O’Neal, and Gentry has overlapped
considerably since last year, and some of the groups with which they’re
involved appear to do little but pay the three consultants’ companies. O’Neal
and Fritsch have drawn the ire of conservative
activistsin
North Carolina for their involvement with the group North Carolina Gun Rights,
which has raised about $46,000 this cycle and paid about $34,000 to O’Neal’s
and Gentry’s firms. The group’s only donation to another political entity this
cycle was a $750 contribution to the North State Leadership Council. That group
has raised just $11,600—including a $5,000 donation from PLP—and paid $8,600 of
it to two of O’Neal’s firms. Another tarheel state-centric group, Pro-Life North
Carolina PAC, has raised about $29,000 this cycle, and paid $22,000 to
Tidewater, Capital Square, and Mustard Seed.
The
sums that this cadre draws from its network of super PACs pales in comparison
to its biggest cash cow to date: the Moore Senate campaign. O’Neal, Fritsch,
Gentry, and their consulting firms pulled down a whopping $1.1 million from
Moore’s failed campaign.
From
the summer of 2017 through the end of the year, they also did significant work
for Nehlen’s campaign—Fritsch as a paid staffer, and O’Neal as a consultant.
That work would come to dog Fritsch in particular as he and O’Neal began
working for Stewart in December. Stewart, who was raised in Minnesota but has
nonetheless embraced
the Confederate Flagas a campaign symbol, has recently
been grilled on the explicitly racist and anti-Semitic campaign
messaging of his top consultants’ last client.
They’ve
also taken on a new venture in the news space: shortly after Moore’s defeat,
O’Neal’s Mustard Seed Media bought the site Big League Politics, a fringey
pro-Trump outlet whose editor has called conspiracy theorist Alex Jones “my
Walter Cronkite.”
Brakey,
meanwhile, prevailed in the Maine Republican Senate primary last month, earning
the right to challenge Sen. Angus King in November. He may get the chance to
pursue the goals he invoked in founding DOLPAC six years ago.
“My
plan remains to be (as always),” he wrote at the time, “Step 1 - Have the
Liberty Movement take over the Maine Republican Party. Step 2 - Have the
Liberty Movement take over the State of Maine. Step 3 - Have the LIberty
Movement take over Nation. Step 4 - Enjoy our Liberty.” [DAILY BEAST, Pay Dirt, July 12, 2018]
Get the data:
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| CARTER PAGE |
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| PAUL MANAFORT |
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