Conservative Extortion Scandal Breaks
I have been watching this story since it broke Friday mid-morning; corresponding with other National top bloggers from around the Country. My fellow Conservatives may think it was something that would be better off left unreported, while I feel that if the left was guilty of this, and they have been, I would be one of the first to be blogging on it, which I have done.
But this time, it comes from our side of the aisle, involving THE biggest names and organizations in the Conservative movement, but regardless of who is at fault, EXTORTION is WRONG and the guilty parties should be, and need to be, held accountable.
So imagine my shock when word spread that organizational leaders like David Keene, (ACU/CPAC) & Grover Norquist, (ATR), apparently tried to hit up FEDEX for THREE MILLION DOLLARS for support from these Conservative leaders:
The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s support in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group’s chairman flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.
For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”
The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.
The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of taking stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and supporters might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying big money.
The American Conservative Union, which calls itself “the nation’s oldest and largest grass-roots conservative lobbying organization,” took UPS’s side on Wednesday as part of a conservative consortium that accused FedEx of “misleading the public and legislators.” ACU’s logo is at the top of the letter, along with those of six other conservative groups.
Just two weeks earlier, ACU had offered its endorsement to FedEx, saying in a letter to the company: “We stand with FedEx in opposition to this legislation.” But there was a catch — an expensive one. ACU asked FedEx to pay as much as $3.4 million for e-mail and other services for “an aggressive grass-roots campaign to stop the legislation in the Senate.”
Have you ever? This is just unbelievable and has created a HUGE firestorm from Conservative bloggers in response to the mess. Erick Erickson from RedState.com, one of the most read Conservative blogs in the Country has a post up Paying to Play in the Conservative Movement, Michelle Malkin has chimed in with Republicans: Clean your own house, and James Joyner over at Outside the Beltway recommends that David Keene be fired; Fire David Keene – The ACU Pay-for-Play Scandal.
Not to be left out in the cold, my friend John Hawkins from RightWingNews.com shares Joyner’s opinion with his own post A Reluctant Open Letter To The American Conservative Union: Fire David Keene.
It’s just a horrible incident overall, with bad timing to boot. Certainly, Conservatives can not afford this kind of scandal/publicity, so close to the Sanford/Ensign “Booty Banging” episodes.
It is important to note that the ACU has tried to distance themselves from the scandal by claiming David Keene was acting independently with this “offer” to Fedex, even though the ACU logo is on the letter that was sent.
And you can bet that no one wants David Keene, the man’s support, they would want David Keene, the President of the ACU’s support, especially at a 3MILLION dollar price tag.
Let’s hope that the organizations involved deal with this swiftly and those that indeed intend to extort 3 MILLION dollars in exchange for support and favorable coverage, should be removed from whatever position they hold at this time.
The days of circling the wagons are over. At a time when the future of this republic is in mortal peril we can ill-afford to look the other way when scandal breaks out on the part of those who ostensibly are supposed to represent what is right and just but are no less corrupt and unprincipled than the liberal Statists.
It has long been a principle of Republicans in general and conservatives in particular to hold our people up to a very high standard of moral and ethical behavior. As a matter of historical record, when any of our own violated those standards we were the first to turn on them – unlike Democrats and other liberal Statists whose only standard is political victory at any cost.
If Keene and Norquist and any others are guilty of these accusations, hang the lot of them out to dry.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:15 pmI think the underlying cause must be addressed which would be government’s involvement in business. Corporations seek competitive advantage through the imposition of various regulations and the manipulation of the tax code.
Corporate tax must be eliminated. A Flat Tax system should replace our current massive and unwieldy tax code. Regulations should be minimized. Taking these actions would reduce extortion and bibery schemes from being contemplated.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:59 pmCompared to people like the Kennedys and the Clintons, Keene and Norquist are rank amateurs.
A flat tax cannot be implemented in parallel with the abolition of the CIT – unless the flat tax will be at a high rate. The reason is that you can’t finance even the basic functions of the government without taxing corporations _and_ individuals.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:01 am“Corporations seek competitive advantage through the imposition of various regulations and the manipulation of the tax code.”
Well, then the 2008 nominee of the GOP was the wrong nominee by that measure, because he would add even more regs to the tax code and would manipulate it to pay off the special interests that backed him.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:02 amYour “true American hero” knows absolutely nothing whatsoever about economics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XazpaYwFKd8
July 19th, 2009 at 6:17 amDi Marco:
You are absolutely correct. The way to eliminate corruption overnight is by getting the government out of business. For the same reasons why the Left says we need a strict separation of Church and State, we similarly need a strict separation of the Economy and State.
Zbigniew:
You wrote:
“A flat tax cannot be implemented in parallel with the abolition of the CIT – unless the flat tax will be at a high rate. The reason is that you can’t finance even the basic functions of the government without taxing corporations _and_ individuals.”
It depends on what you mean by “the basic functions of government.” The welfare state is not a basic function of government, nor is the regulatory state. Yet spending on those two categories surely constitutes well over 50% of the federal budget.
Even if you kept government spending at pre-Obama levels, government spending has constituted roughly 20% of GDP for a long time. Therefore, a 20% flat tax rate would almost certainly be revenue neutral – and given the fact that a flat tax would improve compliance and reduce the waste associated with paying tax professionals to avoid/minimize taxes, I would think that the rate could be slightly lower as long as the line were held on spending. The Hall-Rabushka flat tax which I posted here a while back argues that a 17% flat tax would be revenue neutral – and that plan eliminates corporate income taxes.
Even if the rate were slightly higher, it is my understanding that a flat tax of somewhere between 17% and about 23% would be sufficient to eliminate all payroll, corporate, investment and estate taxes. I would accept that in a heartbeat.
And the bottom line is that even if the rate would need to be higher in order to sustain current levels of spending, the virtue of the flat tax is that it would make the choice involved explicit and incapable of evasion. Government programs could not be proposed with the idea that they would be paid for by someone else. That would make for a much more honest debate about government spending.
Finally, I believe that former candidate Steve Lonegan’s flat tax proposal had an important improvement over all previous flat tax proposals I have seen. His plan to tax the first dollar of income so that EVERY income earner has to pay taxes and therefore has a stake in reducing taxes was an excellent idea that I had never seen advocated by anyone. Every other flat tax plan I have seen includes “generous deductions” so that the poor will still not pay any taxes. The cost of government should not be free for anyone, and Steve deserves enormous credit for taking that position – even though he did not win the primary election.
July 19th, 2009 at 8:28 am