‘The constitutional amendment before us,” Harry Reid said Tuesday, describing a proposal to give federal and state governments the authority to regulate political giving, “isn’t about limiting free speech.”

Harry Reid, may I present the American Civil Liberties Union. I am sure you two have met before.

Writing in June that the nonprofit “strongly opposes” the so-called Udall amendment, the ACLU’s Laura Murphy and Gabriel Rottman called the Democratic proposal “deceptively complex,” “unnecessary,” “redundant of existing law,” “dangerous for liberties,” “vague,” “overbroad,” “exceedingly dangerous to democratic processes,” and “the first time the amendatory process has been used to directly limit specifically enumerated rights and freedoms.” Reid’s baby, the ACLU said, would “‘break’ the Constitution” by “amending the First Amendment.”

Two levels of government would be permitted “to criminalize and censor all issue advocacy that mentions or refers to a candidate under the argument that it supports or opposes that candidate.” Recall that Citizens United, which the Udall amendment is supposed to address, was not about tea-party Astroturf. It was about the FEC’s attempt to censor a film critical of her royal highness.

The mandarins at the FEC and IRS, as well as their counterparts at the state level, would be responsible for distinguishing political communications that “support or oppose” a candidate from those that do not. They would penalize the individuals and groups they subjectively deem violators of administrative diktat. If this is not about “limiting free speech,” what is?

I am not speaking abstractly. Want an image of a post-Udall world? Think Lois Lerner on Spring Break — after a bottle of tequila.

“My Democratic colleagues and I,” Reid says, “are trying to address the special-interest money that threatens to create a government of elected officials who are beholden to a few wealthy individuals.” But we can dismiss this rationalization outright. It is an example of what the Freudians call projection: the denial of immoral urges by transferring them to another. Projection is a disorder.

Special-interest money and super-wealthy individuals are two of the most prominent features of today’s bourgeois liberalism. The unions, the foundations, the colleges, the liberal-leaning or rent-seeking corporations, the residents of Manhattan and Silicon Valley and Beverly Hills and Ward 3, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Tom Steyer, Marc Lasry, Steve Mostyn, Michael Bloomberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Chris Hughes — these groups, these men, they are not misshapen appendages of the Democratic party. They are its innards. Its guts.

Indeed, one of the reasons that Reid scheduled a vote on a measure that was sure to be defeated was, in the first place, to curry favor with, and solicit checks from, rich donors to progressive causes who have a sentimental and moralistic aversion to money in politics. It is part of Reid’s plan to smear Republican candidates as instruments of the wealthy brothers Charles and David Koch, and thereby prevent a GOP takeover of the Senate.

From a financial standpoint, Reid’s strategy is working. His Senate Majority PAC, which does not disclose its donors, has run more advertisements than the Koch-affiliated Americans for Prosperity, and has spent almost as much money. The fundraising of Democratic Senate candidates is competitive with that of their Republican counterparts. The top three individual contributors to federal elections this cycle are Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, and Fred Eychaner. They are not Republicans. The day that Reid opened debate over the Udall amendment, the DCCC issued a fundraising appeal tied to the vote. Ironic.

The scale of the progressive infrastructure is staggering. It is coordinated and funded by the Democracy Alliance, a secretive group of millionaires and billionaires that plots strategy and giving at meetings in fancy resorts. Documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon reveal that there are at least 172 groups inside the Democracy Alliance network. “113 of them have attacked us,” Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden said recently, noting that far fewer groups – 31 — make up Koch World. The Kochs may spend up to $290 million in the 2014 election. Sounds like a lot. But Holden says the progressives may spend “somewhere in the ballpark” of $2.2 billion.

These numbers make clear that the goal of Reid and Udall is not to expunge money from politics. Their goal is to expunge conservative money from politics — money that could be used against incumbents, money that could be used against them, money that could be used to organize and promote alternatives to the Hegelian god-state coming into being before our eyes. Their goal is no less than a silent coup, a renegotiation of the American social contract and the structure of the constitutional order, performed outside the public’s notice and without the public’s direct consent.

The Udall amendment subverts freedom in two ways. First, by exempting media from regulation, the government would determine who or what “the media” are. Certified institutions would become the few remaining outlets for free expression. Perhaps you have noticed that the press tends to favor a certain ideological standpoint. In a post-Udall world, the influence of press barons such as Buffett and Bloomberg and Mexican oligarch Carlos Slim would increase. Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine would silence conservatives further.

There is only one Rupert Murdoch. If someone of like mind as the Koch brothers tried to build a press operation of their own, we know what would happen. The liberal media would revolt.

Second, by endowing governments with the power to ban anonymous political giving, the Udall amendment would usher in an era of witch-hunts and public shaming, with the media using their new powers to condemn and malign and stigmatize and penalize the advocates of unfashionable causes.

We have already seen that a small, years-old donation to a judicially overturned plebiscite can cost a man his job. But the fight over disclosure is about more than the same-sex-marriage debate. “During the civil rights era,” the ACLU notes in its letter, “southern states often tried to use laws forcing groups exercising First Amendment rights to disclose their membership, in a bid to run them out of town.”

In a post-Udall world, legislative bodies would be arenas where members of one party criminalize the speech of the other. Religious-liberty groups would be exiled from, say, New York; gun-control groups from Texas. Says the ACLU: “Congress would, for instance, be free to pass laws targeting only ‘political’ speech by groups like ACORN.” Or like Americans for Prosperity.

Media power and disclosure work together to undermine the adversaries of the caste, the 21st-century oligarchy of tech entrepreneurs and media executives, lawyers and administrators, professors and foundation officers, journalists and actors, studio executives and museum officials, heirs and heiresses, and progressive and politically connected bankers and investors. This is the plutocracy that dominates the presidency and the Senate and the bureaucracy and the academy and philanthropy and print and electronic media, that determines the contours of elite opinion, that decides what is “reality-based” and “empirical,” what is “faith-based” and “ideological.” This is the educated class that writes our laws and newspapers and screenplays and late-night comedy routines, that fashions itself the guardian of equality and progress and diversity and all that is true and good even as it profits off the regulations it imposes, the industries it subsidizes, the cheap labor it imports, the racial and sexual controversies it sensationalizes.

What we saw in Harry Reid’s Senate this week, when the Udall amendment failed a cloture vote, when 54 Democrats voted to refashion the First Amendment to serve the interests of incumbency and power, was not a noble cause. It was not good government. It was not an example of altruistic intentions stifled by Wall Street.

What we saw in Harry Reid’s Senate this week was an attempt by the ascendant part of the elite, the part that makes its living from abstraction, to vanquish the declining part, the part that makes its living from extraction. And this sorry excuse for a legislative week did more than reveal, in real time, the structure and nature of class struggle in America today. It also occasioned a sentence I never thought I would write. If only Harry Reid listened to the ACLU.

Obama's obsessive non-stop fund raising among the smug/stupid Democrat elite is beginning to look sinister. The world smolders but the Dumobcrat ding-a-lings soldier on w/ big bucks fund-raising.

REALITY CHECK Could this be a WH/Democrat Ponzi scheme in progress?

While they bash Wall Street publicly, leaders of the Democrats' mega-funder "The Democracy Alliance" have quietly recruited venture capitalists, bankers and hedge fund moguls -- along with union bosses and red-diaper trust fund babies -- to fund their takeover goals. ....$230,000 public school union dues go to the Democrats' "Democracy Alliance."

"The Democracy Alliance" does not itself raise and spend a great deal of money. Rather, being a partner in the Alliance requires one to contribute large amounts to other left-wing groups. The Alliance evaluates left-wing organizations on various criteria, and makes recommendations to its members as to where they should put their money. Currently, the Alliance lists 21 groups in its “Aligned Network”:

<><> America Votes, American Constitution Society, Black Civic Engagement Fund, Brennan Center, Catalyst, Center for American Progress, Center for Community Change, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Common Purpose Project, Fund for the Republic, Latino Engagement Fund, Media Matters for America, New Media Ventures, New Organizing Institute, Organizing For Action, Progressive Majority, Progress Now, State Engagement Initiative, State Voices, Women’s Equality Center and Youth Engagement Fund.<><>

The most interesting of the D/A documents that have come to light is the one that contains D/A’s “investment recommendations” for 2014. Not only does it list the recommended organizations, but it rates each organization in several categories, sets out the group’s budget for 2014, and shows how much of that budget should be contributed by the 100 members of the "Democracy Alliance." One category in which DA rates the organizations is “Collaboration,” as DA believes that all left-wing groups should coordinate their activities for maximum political impact.

Opportunistic pols like Harry Reid have denounced Charles and David Koch, and others, who contribute to conservative causes as “shadowy,” “secretive” people who dare infest politics with “dark money.”

In that context, it is worth noting that most of the groups to which the Alliance and its elite liberal members contribute are 501(c)(4)s that do not disclose their donors.

===============================================

ANALYSIS Buncha sap-happy Dummy/dopes are feeding the Democrats' Democracy Alliance lotsa money---thinking its safe.....going to a "good thing."

That's exactly how Madoff operated. Money-laundering, tax evasion was part of the Madoff mix---helping investors, foundations, and tax-exempts break the law in a seemingly legal way.

Madoff helped himself to the untraceable money in the process.....and got himself in trouble. When he went to jail for 125 years, investigators found Ponzi King Madoff had stashed billions offshore---into a labyrinth of financial entities.

COLLUSION AND CONSPIRACIES GALORE Some $8.9 billion was funneled to Madoff through a dozen so-called feeder funds based in Europe, the Caribbean and Central America......a labyrinth of hedge funds, management companies and service providers that, to unsuspecting outsiders, seemed to compose a formidable system of checks and balances.

But the purpose of this complex financial architecture was just the opposite: the feeder funds provided different modes for directing money to Madoff in order to avoid scrutiny.

Dummycrats apparently took notes.

============================================

Harry Reid is forever denouncing the Koch brothers, and others who contribute to conservative causes, labeling them as “shadowy,” “secretive” people who infest politics with “dark money.” ........but Harry has no problem with the Democracy Alliance's arch-secrecy since they are his Dummycrat comrades.

Keep in mind ......most of the groups to which the lib-loving Democracy Alliance and its elite liberal members contribute are 501(c)(4)s that do not disclose their donors. In fact, this is addressed in a “FAQ” in one of the DA documents....which was not intended for they eyes of the conservative riff-raff.

Have the official documents filed by "The Democracy Alliance" and its “Aligned Network” been scrutinized? Every official document filed should be scrutinized for possible criminal activity. Perjury, forgery, tax fraud, and financial fraud need to be considered.

THE ALIGNED NETWORK INCLUDES: America Votes, American Constitution Society, Black Civic Engagement Fund, Brennan Center, Catalyst, Center for American Progress, Center for Community Change, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Common Purpose Project, Fund for the Republic, Latino Engagement Fund, Media Matters for America, New Media Ventures, New Organizing Institute, Organizing For Action, Progressive Majority, Progress Now, State Engagement Initiative, State Voices, Women’s Equality Center and Youth Engagement Fund.

Falsifying Official Public Documents involves altering, changing, or modifying a document for the purpose of deception.......can also involve forgery and/or passing copies of false documents. Falsifying documents is usually done in connection with broader criminal aims, such as extortion, government fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, financing terrorism........

A person (or persons) can be held criminally liable if they are deliberately acting with the intention of deceiving or defrauding another party.

Falsifying documents is a very serious offense and is generally classified as a felony. This means that a person charged with falsifying documents may be subject to the following legal penalties:
◾Having to pay a monetary fine
◾Incarceration in a prison facility

Depending on the gravity of the offense, as well as individual state laws, falsifying documents can result in a prison sentence of 5-10 years. Also, if government documents or authorities were involved, the legal penalties may be more severe. ..... legal penalties may increase with repeat offenses.

The penalty for falsifying government documents is outlined in the Crimes Act of 1958.

=================================================

To notify the FBI (you may remain anonymous):
FBI TIPS PAGE
https://tips.fbi.gov

===============================================

To report suspected irregularities WRT ID theft, contact:

Federal Trade Commission
(Solicits reports to assist ID theft investigations)
web site ftc.gov/idtheft
Tele 1-677-438-4338

SNAIL MAIL
FTC
ID Theft Clearinghouse
Washington, DC 20580 ===============================================================

The Bank Secrecy Act should be mobilized----to follow the paper trail and determine how monies changed hands; to determine the scope and dimension of collusion in sub rosa deals and who might be personally profiting.

<><> L/E needs to examine bank accounts.

<><> Joint bank accounts might be used to facilitate the transfer funds from one account to another, and/or wire-transferred offshore;

<><> To cover their tracks, fake invoices might be created to show that money deposited into accounts was being used for legitimate purposes.

<><> Financial schemes scheme might be advanced by issuing phony statements of payments from financial sources that actually covered the transfer of funds for insiders' personal use and/or for redistribution schemes.

===============================================

NOTE WELL Under the Bank Secrecy Act, banks are required to establish, implement and maintain programs designed to detect and report suspicious activity indicative of money laundering and other financial crimes. “The Bank Secrecy Act was enacted to protect the public from harm by identifying and detecting money laundering from criminal enterprises, terrorism, tax evasion or other unlawful activities,” the special agent in charge for Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, explained.

Shady banking transactions could be prosecuted under the (1) Bank Secrecy ACT, (2) RICO, and, (3) the Hobbs Act.

=============================================

<><> L/E should get ahold of: (1) copies of checks, (2) wire transfers, (3) account statements, (4) invoices, (5) bills, (6) delivery tickets, (7) correspondence including snail mail, e-mail, mobile devices, cell phones, (8) contracts, (9) loan agreements, (10) other account books or official records.

L/E should also explore (a) monies paid to brokers, sub- brokers, (b) family members, (c) mortgage brokers, (d) financial managers, and, (e) real estate agents, brokers, and developers.

<><> L/E should scrutinize bank accounts for suspicious activites: (A) large deposits, (B) funds transferred from one account into another, (C) frequent requests for withdrawals.

<><> Bank records might also show diversions to secret LLC accounts, to money launder and to operate personal ventures;

Tax fraud may also be a factor, facilitated by withdrawals, gift cards purchases, credit card purchases and intra-bank transfers from legal bank accounts into personal accounts, or redistribution schemes.

<><> A huge tipoff is whether bank withdrawals support and luxurious lifestyle including payments for real estate, investment and stock holdings, jewelry, luxury vehicles, resort travel....... and gifts from luxury outlets for wives and mistresses.

FBI TIPS PAGE--YOU MAY REMAIN ANONYMOUS ---https://tips.fbi.gov

SUBJECT: Collusion, conspiracy, bribery
IN RE: financial irregularities
REFERENCE: fraud, falsified documents, wire transfers, accounting fraud, etc.

NARRATIVE Taxpayers demand to know the scope and dimension of multiple conspiracies by to collude in sub rosa deals to personally profit and/or to facilitate redistribution schemes of US foreign aid.

OF INTEREST TO LAW ENFORCEMENT The FBI should interrogate individuals for evidence of multiple schemes to falsify official documents to further fraudulent schemes. The FBI should investigate any and all official documents submitted to govt oversight agencies.

Crimes might include---conspiracy, collusion, falsifying official documents (a felony), money laundering, tax evasion, extortion, theft, misuse of public facilities.

Examine tax returns with a fine-tooth comb.....especially entries for "interest income."

Senate Joint Resolution 19 ‘intended to limit free speech’

US Senate to Protect the Media Monopoly’s Exclusive License to Corrupt Presidential Elections

Amateurs Not Allowed to Speak

An apocryphal story from the good old 1960s tells of $3 million found under the bed of a deceased congressman, with the question automatically asked, at that time, “how does an honest, $50,000 per year congressman accumulate that kind of money?” These days, newspapers don’t blink at the President’s $10 net worth—chump change compared with the $100s millions accumulated by the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, remuneration for—speaker’s fees.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, slumming at only $3 million to $10 million, made hay clamoring for public release of the tax returns of 2012 Presidential candidate Mitt Romney—one of those baldfaced patricians like Presidents “Dubuya” Bush 43 and George Herbert Walker 41 who got their money “the old fashioned way”—they inherited it.

A political operator who raked his in by more direct means, is former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who plead guilty in 2006 to mail fraud, conspiracy to bribe public officials, and tax evasion. A devout Jew, Abramoff underwent a spiritual conversion while in prison. When he got out, he blew the whistle on the best little civic bordello, in Washington DC—the richest counties in the nation are not in New York, Texas or California, they’re suburbs of Washington DC.

SnidelyDollars

Now we hear the vestal virgins in the Senate Democrat Majority bemoaning the Supreme Court’s dereliction of duty in the Citizens United ruling, so egregious because it supposedly gives the green light to the evile Koch Brothers to corrupt the common weal—Senator Reid makes not a peep at rainbow-progressive billionaires Tim Gill and Jon Stryker spreading corruption in the body politic.

The Senate’s siren song against dirty money is titled “Senate Joint Resolution 19” (103rd Congress) with only sporadic opposition from Evangelical and anti-abortion foundations. Senator Reid recently said of the resolution, “We’re going to push a constitutional amendment so we can limit spending because what is going on today is awful.” The proposed amendment would “protect freedom of the press”—the freedom of the Media Monopoly (NYTimes, WaPo, Gannett and Big 3 TV) to continue corrupting presidential elections, meanwhile little John Q. Public better keep his mouth shut!

Legal scholar Professor Ronald Rotunda notes “Section 3 of S.J. Res. 19 makes clear that its intention is to limit free speech. It says, ‘Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress the power to abridge the freedom of the press.’ The First Amendment prohibits Congress from ‘abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.’ Tellingly, the Senators cosponsoring the ‘improved First Amendment’ left out the phrase ‘freedom of speech.’ ”

The teapot tempest that started all this was something called Hillary: the Movie, a 2008 political documentary coincidentally about frontrunning presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Produced by Citizens United, the film was scheduled to be offered as video-on-demand on cable TV right before the Democratic primaries in January 2008, but the federal government blocked it. Senators Reid and Udall conspicuously fail to wonder how a simple, country woman lawyer accumulates $100 millions, or just exactly what the people who gave it to her expect in return.

This good-natured gamesmanship is all thoroughly in the grand tradition of politics running back hundreds of years in the US and Britain. You can read all about it in a series of stories a century old by GK Chesterton, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and a non-fiction book by his brother Cecil with Hilaire Belloc, The Party System, both free on Kindle, the app itself free on most platforms.

So lacking is Hillary in the most basic of personal political prerequisites that even Morning Joe called her "canned" and cringeworthy. The panel was commenting on an excruciating clip of Hillary...... that there is something about Clinton's public persona as to be seriously off-putting. (Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...

===============================================

The Clintons are paranoid---Hillary's "dead broke" comment to ABC's Diane Sawyer is haunting her candidacy. The Clintons lay awake nights, trying to dream up angles to make voters forget her "dead broke" bomb.

She's really desperate---picking on the Redskins franchise last week. She bombed doing an outlandish comedy routine w/ Colbert. Where she'll strike next is anybody's guess.

Maybe she'll take it all off for Playboy---seeing that "she needs the money"?

Maybe Hillary, Bill and Chelsea will stand in a bread line, join hands, and sing Kumbaya?

==========================================

The Clintons were relying heavily on the old reliable Dummycrat "equality" bugaboo but that was before the world knew the Clintons were worth billions. The Clintons' have benefitted from, and are climbing back into office, using privileges far beyond those of the "community of color" to whom they planned to appeal.

"White privilege" denotes the array of advantages the Clintons have cultivated over years in public office. The gold-plated, endless perks of "white privilege" include:

<><> their personal massive wealth in the $2 billion range....

<><> ownership of multiple homes in posh enclaves....

<><> unknown secret offshore bank accounts...

<><> unrevealed investment profits...

<><> the chain of high public offices they've held....

<><> privileged friends in high places....

<><> global connections....

<><> constant affirmations of their own worth....

<><> greater social status...

<><> the expansive freedoms wealth and connections provide...

<><> unlimited access to the press to speak freely.....

<><> their memoirs made millions....

<><> Dec 2000 book deal $8 million; 2014 book deal $14 mill....

<><> three tax-exempt Clinton family foundations worth hundreds of millions....

<><> Clinton foundation "endowment" skyrockets to $200 million overnight....

<><> Hillary's $200,000 speeches.......

<><> Bill's tax-paid cushy pensions/benefits....

<><> tax-paid Clinton Library (Hollywood honey Sultan of Brunei a donor).....

<><> Chelsea's paid-for $10 million uber-condo.

2016 Hillary was relying on the "income equality" bugaboo to hoist herself into office......as good a definition of "white privilege" as any. The Clintons strategy is to label others as "different" while presenting themselves as "normal."

The Clinton "normal" is couple billion dollars laying around without having a real job. The Never-Enough Clintons had planned to run a populist campaign, critical of the Wall Street types”....that's after the world was informed that speaker Hillary was pocketing $200,000 a throw from Goldman Sachs.....and other corporate giants.

The Clintons went from "dead broke" to multi-billionaires in an astonishing short period of time----without holding jobs The greedy, mega-wealthy Clintons have money pouring in from everywhere without lifting a finger...said to be worth couple BILLION dollars.

Never-enough Bill/Hillary look to cash in w/ another go-round in the White House. The Clintons owe bigtime......money is pouring into their three tax-exempt foundations......and these donors expect payback.

=================================================

Clintons raised $2-3 billion in two decades
The Hill ^ | July 2, 2014 | Alexandra Jaffe / FR Posted by Cincinatus' Wife

Bill and Hillary Clinton raised $2-3 billion in the two decades they’ve been prominent on the national stage, according to the WSJ.

The Journal tallied the Clintons’ speaking fees, fundraising for their foundation and the sums raised for Bill Clinton’s two presidential campaigns for the DNC while he was in office and for Hillary Clinton’s Senate and presidential campaigns.

Between $1.3-2 billion came from U.S. companies and industry sources, making up at least 75 percent of the sum — more than the 60 percent industry sources contributed to the two Bushes’ political operations.

The Journal reports that if Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016, as expected, she could return such donors to the Democratic Party, a source of concern for Republican fundraisers as they gear up for what’s expected to be the most expensive presidential election in history.

Overall, the Clintons’ political operations raised $1.2 billion, their nonprofit drew between $750 million and $1.7 billion and they made about $100 million in speaking fees. --SNIP--

=================================================

The figures are what THE CLINTONS ALLOW us to know. DOES NOT include (1) amounts secreted in numbered offshore bank accounts,(2) investment holdings, (3) safe deposit boxes holding coins, gold, valuables, etc, (4) other holdings in real estate, businesses, (5) rental, interest accrued, investment income, etc .....

=================================================

The latest Clinton frown-line maker is that they are investors in "The Beast"----the freight train company bringing illegals across the border to leech off Americans. There have been thousands of accusations of human rights abuse, and even reports of murder on the freight trains transporting undocumented migrants to the US border. The migrants have also reported train operators standard practice of extorting money from the passengers.

The trains used and involved in these accusations are publicly-traded companies, traded on NASDAQ, with "very influential stockholders", such as Clinton and Carlos Slim. Other stockholders include,T Rowe Price, Bank of America, and General Electric. A real bummer is that these transportation companies are involved in the Narco trade, and in this report it makes it clear that the companies are aware of the abusive practices their train operators are engaging in. The border swarm is all about human trafficking, narco trafficking, and government and corporate collusion.

This is "The Beast"---ain't no Atcheson, Topeka and the Santa Fe.
No running water and flush toilets on those freight trains.

Coming to America....thanks to the Clintons.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.