Month: January 2020

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The gun-control group responsible for a 2018 march on Washington, D.C. raised the vast majority of its funds from undisclosed donations over six figures, a recently-released tax document shows.

The March For Our Lives Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) "social welfare" organization launched in the aftermath of the deadly 2018 shootings at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, is bankrolled almost entirely by large donations in excess of $100,000. The group reported $17,879,150 in contributions and grants over the course of 2018, its first year of operations. 95 percent of those contributions came from 36 donations between $100,000 and $3,504,717—a grand total of $16,922,331.

The group’s reliance on a small number of large donations raises questions about its ability to turn rally-goers and supporters into donors. It also provides ammunition to gun-rights activists who have long cast the gun-control movement as driven not by grassroots supporters, but by billionaire benefactors like Michael Bloomberg.

The group’s 990 tax form shows another 38 donations totaling between $5,000 and $100,000, which together accounted for an additional $876,114 of revenue. The remainder, just 0.5 percent of total receipts, came from those giving less than $5,000.

While March For Our Lives is not required to disclose its donors under federal law, some businessmen and Hollywood celebrities vowed to provide generous contributions for the group’s 2018 march on Washington, D.C. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and billionaire businessman Eli Broad both gave $1,000,000, two of six donors to do so. George Clooney and wife Amal Clooney gave $500,000, as did fashion company Gucci.

The group’s spending went primarily toward its March 24, 2018 march on Washington, D.C., which garnered several hundred thousand attendees and featured speakers pushing for new gun bans and magazine limits. The event cemented March For Our Lives as one of the most prominent and radical gun-control groups in the country. The group has since called for confiscating up to 117 million firearms from Americans as part of its highly-publicized "A Peace Plan for a Safer America."

The final cost for the group’s 2018 march was $7.8 million. $4.7 million appears to have gone to Harbinger LLC, a D.C.-based marketing agency, for production services. The group later embarked on a 24-state, 60-day, $4 million summer tour to educate and register young voters.

An additional $3.8 million was put toward gun-control advocacy efforts which were "instrumental in ensuring the passage of over 50 pieces of gun violence legislation, at the state and federal level," the forms claim.

Travel grants were also cut by the nonprofit to roughly 20 organizations, including the Center for American Progress, National Urban League, InspireNOLA Charter Schools, and the PICO National Network. The PICO National Network, which has since changed its name to Faith in Action, has worked in conjunction with liberal groups like the Center for Popular Democracy to quietly target Republican politicians up for election.

Millions more were spent on independent contractors. Soze Productions Inc., a New York-based group, was paid $1.6 million for tours and production services. Michael Skolnik—liberal activist and founding partner of the Soze Agency, which works with numerous left-wing political organizations—is listed as the CEO of Soze Productions by New York state business records.

Other groups receiving money included Hand in Hand Inc., a Los Angeles-based company with practically no online presence, which was paid $1.25 million for production services. California business records show the group was launched in June 2018 and is led by Hollywood producer Evan Prager. Law firm Loeb & Loeb LLP was paid $932,000 for legal services; the group finished 2018 with $2.4 million in assets. K2 Intelligence LLC, a New York-based investigative and cyber defense company, was paid $2.1 million for security services.

March For Our Lives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.

The post March For Our Lives Raised Nearly All Funding from Secret Six-Figure Donations appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

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My favorite America Philosopher, Yogi Berra once said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

With that truism in mind, let me begin doing the heavy lifting and tough stuff of being the Historian of the Future.

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Monday on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin returned from his holiday break to weigh in on the reaction to President Trump’s decision to kill Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.

“I think it is unequivocal now. There’s simply no debate that the Democrat Party hates America. That the Democrat Party press hate America. They hate this country to its core,” Levin said.

“The commander in chief, the president of the United States, exercises his solemn duty under the Constitution to protect this nation, to protect our armed forces, to protect our embassy, to prevent a regime of almost half a century at war with the United States from conducting itself in a way that harms further American citizens.”

“And the commander in chief is under full-scale 24/7 attack by the Democrat Party media.”

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Leftist Memory Loss

It’s clear that the majority of left-wing politicians have forgotten about the tragedy of 9/11

Nobody else says it quite like the Great One: https://t.co/ICZsTSuMg1 pic.twitter.com/XmeUiglNAY

— LevinTV (@LevinTV) January 7, 2020

The post Levin: No more debate: ‘The Democrat Party hates America’ appeared first on Conservative Review.

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The federal government has brought nearly 1,400 refugees to the United States over the last year from foreign countries listed on President Donald Trump’s constitutional travel ban.

In 2o19, the State Department imported exactly 1,378 refugees from Chad, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen — six of the eight countries on Trump’s travel ban list, which also includes North Korea and Libya. This indicates a more than 783 percent increase between 2018 and 2019 of refugees from travel ban countries arriving in the U.S.

Almost half of those refugees, roughly 631, arrived in the U.S. from Syria — 115 of which were resettled in California, while 51 were resettled in Illinois, 49 were resettled in Michigan, and 41 were resettled in Texas.

Another 512 refugees arrived last year from Iraq, a country that remains on the travel ban list. A bulk of these Iraqi refugees resettled in California, Texas, Michigan, and Illinois. About 216 refugees arrived last year from Iran, the majority of which were resettled in California, 63, and Texas, 38.

The remainder of refugees from travel ban countries came from Chad from where eight were resettled, Venezuela had nine resettled, and Yemen had two who were resettled for all of 2019. No refugees arrived from Libya or North Korea.

This level of refugee resettlement from travel ban countries is soaringly high compared to the only 156 refugees from these same countries that were resettled a year before in 2018. They do, however, remain vastly lower than the nearly 8,000 refugees from travel ban countries that arrived in 2017 before the travel ban was fully implemented.

There are nine refugee contractors that resettle all refugees for the State Department every year. These refugee contractors have a vested interest in ensuring as many refugees are resettled across the U.S. because their annual federally funded budgets are contingent on the number of refugees they resettle. Those refugee contractors include:

Church World Service (CWS), Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC), Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), International Rescue Committee (IRC), U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS), U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and World Relief Corporation (WR).

The federally mandated refugee resettlement program has brought more than 718,000 refugees to the U.S. between 2008 t0 2018 — a group larger than the entire state population of Wyoming, which has 577,000 residents. In that period, about 73,000 refugees have been resettled in California, 71,500 resettled in Texas, nearly 43,000 resettled in New York, and more than 36,000 resettled in Michigan.

Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to the latest research. Over the course of five years, an estimated 16 percent of all refugees admitted will need housing assistance paid for by taxpayers.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 

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The government of Germany will consider a proposal by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to pay citizens money who are forced to live next to wind turbines.

In response to rising protests against the installation of wind farms, under the German government’s ‘Energiewende’ green energy initiative, the SDP has proposed a plan to offer “direct financial incentives for people who live in those regions”.

“Those people who accept windmills in their neighbourhood, and so make the expansion of renewable energy possible, should be rewarded,” said SPD environment spokesman Matthias Miersch according to DW.

The payoff money would be given to local authorities; however, it would have to be spent on direct handouts to citizens. The move was criticised by Uwe Brandl, the president of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, who described the scheme as hush money.

“What we’re noticing now is more in the direction of paying people to keep quiet,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the right direction. If we start paying for people to keep quiet, then it’ll start with windmills and will go on with roads and other infrastructure measures.”

“I think the government would be well-advised to sensitize people to the fact that they’re part of this game, part of this society, and change is only possible if everyone is ready to participate in it,” he added.

Delingpole: Climate Hysteria Is Destroying Germany’s Car Industry https://t.co/RBsXVUoOdy

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 10, 2019

There has been a rising number of ‘not in my backyard’ protests across Germany against the installation of wind farms.

Rudi Frischmuth, a resident of the rural town of Langerwehe in Western Germany, said that the wind farm close to his house “drives you insane at night”.

“The big cities are the ones telling us to deal with the wind turbines, but they don’t want any themselves. It can’t be that one part of the population keeps getting disadvantaged,” Frischmuth told DW.

In December, President Donald Trump took aim at Germany over the country’s energy policy, saying that the pollution created in the production of wind turbines in Germany outweigh any benefits.

“Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything right?” said President Trump.

“If you own a house within vision of some of these monsters, your house is worth 50 per cent of the price. They’re noisy,” he added.

Green Nightmare: Germany’s Clean Energy Flops While Global Fossil Fuels Boom… https://t.co/52IWX5tHT1

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 14, 2018

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Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has slammed Remainers for holding back the country for three-and-a-half years by stalling Brexit, saying it had done “untold damage” to the United Kingdom.

Speaking to talkRADIO host Julia Hartley-Brewer, Mr Farage praised the near-realisation of the June 2016 referendum result, calling it a “victory for ordinary people”.

“The entire establishment, just a few years ago, did not even want to discuss Brexit,” Mr Farage said, adding: “This victory has really come because thousands of ordinary folk up and down this country have campaigned for years. It is a remarkable thing. It just shows you that if you live in a democracy, anything is possible.”

He went on to criticise powerful Remainers, including former prime ministers, who by failing to accept the result — “losers’ consent” — had jeopardised the country’s standing internationally and hurt its economy.

The Brexit Party leader said: “I think they’ve done untold damage to this country in three-and-a-half years, firstly in terms of the economy and the way in which we could have been moving on, and secondly in terms of our global standing.”

Mr Farage’s assessment on the economic implications appears accurate, with the financial information firm IHS Markit finding that the British economy is being helped by the certainty over Brexit brought by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s election victory.

“The modest rebound in new work provides another signal that business conditions should begin to improve in the coming months, helped by a boost to business sentiment from greater Brexit clarity and a more predictable political landscape,” Tim Moore, Economics Associate Director at IHS Markit, said in comments reported by the Associated Press on Monday.

Despite Mr Farage’s criticisms on Remainers’ past endeavours, he observed that many in the Europhile camp — including fanatic Remainer Alastair Campbell — have now accepted that Brexit is happening, and a second referendum is “finished”. However, he intimated that the next battleground Remainers may pick could be over “the terms in which we’re leaving” — i.e., close alignment with the EU in a trade deal.

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday, Remainer and Labour leadership hopeful Keir Starmer admitted that “the argument has to move on” from Leave or a second referendum, but believes for him and his colleagues: “The argument, now, is can we insist on that close relationship with the EU?” Fellow contender Jess Phillips, however, has said that she would “fight” to rejoin the EU.

On those remarks, Mr Farage said: “I think if the next Labour leader hints that at some point we might rejoin the European Union, they will find a shrinking minority of this population that support that view and the vast majority of us saying, ‘for goodness’ sake, the war is over, let’s just get on with the rest of our lives!’”

BoJo May Scrap Unelected House of Lords, Give Chamber to Working-Class Regions https://t.co/6eWKx83tZ9

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 6, 2020

The Leave campaigner said that post-Brexit, his party would be rebranded as the Reform Party, devoted to taking on reforming undemocratic aspects of the UK’s political system. While Mr Farage has discussed the Reform Party since November, a report from this week revealed that Prime Minister Johnson is tasking as part of a commission on the constitution to look into the future of the House of Lords and whether it should be replaced by a senate of regions and nations, giving a louder voice to areas outside of London and to the working classes.

Mr Farage told Hartley-Brewer: “We have a parliament that is not necessarily representative of the opinion in this country. We have an electoral system that is out of date with postal voting massively open to fraud and intimidation.

“We have a system of patronage and peerages whereby friends get rewarded, enemies get bought off and chucked in the House of Lords. That has no place in twenty-first-century Britain. I do think that the time and mood for genuine political change and reform is there.”

Asked whether he would rule out accepting a knighthood or a peerage, Mr Farage said: “I’m not for sale. That isn’t what I want to do.” However, he joked on whether that was a categorical “never”: “Anyone that ever says never is very, very stupid.”

He clarified: “I have no interest in doing that. I think the House of Lords needs to go. In the twenty-first century, let’s have an elected upper chamber. That would be a lot more democratic.”

Farage Plans £100,000 Brexit Celebration Party in London for Jan 31st https://t.co/yfxm8XlmdZ

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 4, 2020

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There has to be a way to honor someone’s religious beliefs and respect members of the LGBT community at the same time. Judge Dianne Hensley thought she struck that balance. Instead, she received an official reprimand from the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct (“Commission”).

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, public officials who are authorized (but not required) to officiate wedding ceremonies have faced the same dilemma Dianne faced. Many, rather than risk compromising their religious convictions, simply stopped officiating all weddings. But some demand that justices of the peace like Dianne either officiate all marriages or find themselves disqualified from office altogether.

Dianne knew there had to be another way. What if she were able to reconcile her religious beliefs with serving the needs of her community?

She knows that her convictions prevent her from officiating gay weddings, but she also respectfully understands that many of her gay friends do not share that same conviction. If she, like most of the justices of the peace in McLennan County, Texas, stopped officiating weddings altogether, it is those without ready access to low-cost alternatives who suffer most.

Instead, she found a way to honor her religious convictions and make sure any gay couple who wanted to get married could get married without delay or additional cost. Her referral system worked brilliantly.

If, because of schedule or moral reasons, Dianne could not officiate a requested wedding, she referred them to those who could — including a nearby walk-in wedding chapel. As soon as the couple holding a marriage license could make the three-block walk to the walk-in wedding chapel, they could be married.

It would cost the same, too. In fact, Judge Hensley offered to pay from her own pocket the difference between her rate and that of the walk-in wedding chapel. But the walk-in wedding chapel simply agreed to reduce its rate, instead, for those referred by Judge Hensley’s office.

It worked well. Dianne’s religious convictions remained undisturbed and her referral efforts accounted for more low-cost gay weddings than perhaps any other public official in all of McLennan County. But then, without having received a complaint, the Commission launched an investigation. Rather than praise her proactive problem solving, they determined she had to be reprimanded.

Dianne received a “Public Warning” for trying to honor her religious beliefs while respecting members of the gay community. It’s understandable why many have strong feelings about gay marriage, but surely we should be able to agree that justices of the peace like Dianne Hensley should not have their careers ruined for following both the rules of their faith and the law alike.

Surely in 2019, we can find a way to protect those with religious beliefs that prevent them from officiating weddings with which they morally disagree, while also accommodating the marriage of anyone lawfully allowed to wed. At the very least, no state agency should be punishing Dianne for her reasonable effort to reconcile her religious beliefs while meeting the needs of her community.

In fact, in a lawsuit we at First Liberty Institute filed in defense of Dianne, we argue that the Commission’s disciplinary actions violate the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act. There’s no compelling justification for the commissioners to punish a justice of the peace who, rather than cease officiating weddings entirely, accommodated more low-cost same-sex marriages than perhaps anyone in her entire local area.

Judge Hensley also hopes to continue using her referral system, even though she’s not required to officiate weddings at all. More than that, justices of the peace and other elected officials with the ability to officiate weddings are watching, hoping for a way to honor the distinctiveness of their faith while also respecting those in the gay community who wish to be married.

Is the only option really more reprimands? More penalties? More fines? Why must it either be officiate no weddings, officiate all weddings, or be disqualified from office because of your religious convictions, when there is a reasonable way to respect everyone involved?

Rather than punish her, the Commission ought to have recognized Dianne’s effort to balance her faith with the needs of her community — a type of basic, human, and much needed fairness missing in much of America today.

Jeremy Dys (@JeremyDys) is Special Counsel for Litigation and Communications for First Liberty Institute, a non-profit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom for all Americans. Read more at FirstLiberty.org.

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Monday night on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin discussed the ongoing debate over the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian general and terrorist mastermind Qassem Soleimani and how it fits into President Donald Trump’s foreign policy doctrine.

The Trump Doctrine, Levin explained, rejects the foreign policy tenets of both the Obama and Bush administrations, which, he said, were guided largely by overarching principles of appeasement and interventionism, respectively.

“So what’s the Trump Doctrine? I say it’s much like the Reagan Doctrine, but it has its own features to it,” Levin explained. “He believes in having the number-one military on the face of the earth, so he’s had to rebuild the military that, under the Obama Doctrine, they degraded. But he doesn’t believe in these interventions; he doesn’t believe in state-building. So he rejects the Obama Doctrine when it comes to the United States military and weakening it. He rejects the Bush Doctrine when it comes to interventionism and state-building; he saw what happened in Iraq. But he believes in American national security.”

Leven later added that Trump “exercises prudence” on questions of foreign policy: “He doesn’t say, ‘Look, in every case, I’m sending in the United States military,’ and he doesn’t say, ‘In every case, I’m going to appease through diplomacy.’”

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Leftist Memory Loss

It’s clear that the majority of left-wing politicians have forgotten about the tragedy of 9/11

Nobody else says it quite like the Great One: https://t.co/ICZsTSuMg1 pic.twitter.com/XmeUiglNAY

— LevinTV (@LevinTV) January 7, 2020

The post Levin: The Trump Doctrine appeared first on Conservative Review.

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