Corruption Personified!

 A socialist is someone who has read Lenin and Marx. An anti-socialist is someone who understands Lenin and Marx.   ~ Ronald Reagan

A couple years ago the Socialist Party of America felt secure enough to announce the names of 70 Democrats in Congress that belong to their caucus. Several of our Posters are in that number along with Corrine Brown (D-FL Dist 5). It is not likely that Rep. Brown has read or understands anything about Marx or Lenin –more likely she simply follows the party line as a look at her votes indicate. See the Heritage Action scorecard.  Read the bills and how she voted and draw your own conclusion. You’ll see clearly that she votes for FedGov control of virtually every aspect of our lives --and at great cost.

The nearly $20 trillion national debt has her name on it for her 

votes over 24 years in office.  Many of the votes of the Socialist Caucus members are in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution that these Reps have taken an oath to uphold.

Citizens Against Government Waste  calls her “Hostile to Taxpayers.”   The NationalTaxpayers Union gives her an “F” a failing grade that places her in the "Big Spender" category.

The Club for Growth ranks her at 435^th out of 435 members of the House, dead last in her votes for a pro-growth economy without which we cannot generate the taxes to pay for her spending.  Mind you, she’s not alone in the basement –along with her are many other anti-growth members: in Florida alone there’s Wasserman-Schultz, Hastings, Castor, Deutch and my Rep., Lois Frankel. Don't forget Sen. Nelson.  

But she’s not just wild left-wing spender and regulator. Her tenure abounds with legal and ethical problems. Just a few from Wikipedia:

• ·        Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported that Brown's daughter Shantrel Brown-Fields was a congressional lobbyist, a conflict of interest.. In 2006, Brown's campaign committee paid her daughter's husband, Tyree Fields, $5,500 for political consulting work. Rep. Brown has earmarked millions of dollars in federal funding for her daughter's client Edward Waters College and for other of her daughter’s clients.
• ·        The Federal Election Commission admonished Brown and her campaign treasurer quit after he discovered that his name had been forged on her campaign reports. The staffer alleged to have forged the treasurer's signature stayed with Brown and as of 1998 was her chief of staff.^[19]
• ·        She violated the House Gift Rule when her daughter received a luxury automobile when Rep. Brown used her influence to get her friend, Gambian millionaire named Foutanga Sissoko, released from prison where he was serving time for bribing a customs officer.
•  ·         Last month, Corinne Brown and her chief of staff, Elias "Ronnie" Simmons, pleaded not  guilty to a 24 count federal indictment in relation to One Door for Education Foundation Inc.,^[32] which federal prosecutors allege was supposed to give scholarships to underprivileged students, but instead acted as the personal slush fund for Brown and her associates totaling $800,000, much of which was deposited in cash to Brown's personal bank accounts.

There’s a lot more on Rep. Brown that argues for the term limits amendment to the U.S. Constitution but let me close with this recent email from U.S. Term Limits:

   True to form, another career politician in Congress is preparing to be indicted on federal charges. These elected officials just can't seem to keep their hands out of the cookie jar.
   This time it's 12-term Florida Congresswoman Corrine Brown. Brown frequently runs unopposed for re-election or wallops her only opponent by 30-40 points. Her district was one of the most gerrymandered in America before a judge ordered its "bizarre shape" be redrawn.
   Now Brown will face charges regarding "One Door for Education," a fraudulent charity which raised $800,000 for education, then only disbursed one student scholarship for $1,000. Meanwhile, the charity's money was spent on lavish parties in Washington, D.C. and luxury skyboxes at NFL games. Lifestyles of the rich and elected, apparently.
   According to the Florida Politics blog, Brown will continue to serve in Congress while under indictment. They cite a 2014 report by the congressional research service saying "there are no federal statutes or rules of the House of Representatives that directly affect the status of a Member of Congress who has been indicted for a crime that constitutes a felony."
   This raises a question for the American people: Why do members of Congress only leave office on occasion of indictment, retirement or even death? That is evidence of a broken system which protects the powerful and excludes everybody else. It must be fixed.
   If Corrine Brown had faced the six-year term limit prescribed by the U.S. Term Limits amendment, she would have left the House of Representatives in 1999. Instead, she was given 17 more years to build power within the system and connections with special interests outside of it.
   We need to clean up the corrupt mess in D.C. as soon as possible. It will require a grassroots army of volunteers pressuring state legislators to pass resolutions for the Term Limits Convention. 
   Are you ready to join this grassroots army to fight for term limits? Sign our Super Activist Sign-up Form by clicking HERE.

Thanks for your support,
                                     Phil Blumel, President
                                     U.S. Term Limits

For Balanced Budgets and Greater Debt Limits. Really.

In 1976, Orrin Hatch made term limits a central part of his Senatorial campaign against popular Democrat Frank Moss, a three-term incumbent. Ironically in retrospect, Hatch criticized Moss' 18-year tenure in the Senate, asking "What do you call a Senator who's served in office for 18 years? You call him home."  Hatch argued that many Senators, including Moss, being in office for so long lost touch with their constituents. His hypocritical stance on term limits is a familiar part of the state's political folklore. Hatch’s forty-year incumbency proves the point as his record clearly shows.

A quick look at the current Heritage Action Scorecard shows Hatch with a score of 33% while the five others in the Utah delegation average 80%.  The power of incumbency is in name recognition and money –the latter from special interest lobbies. So we agree with Sen. Hatch on this: after 18 years he should have been called home. (Altho we would suggest 12 years max for the Senate.)

Looking at the Heritage Action bills scored in the current report we see a microcosm of lobby influence and career politicians’ tendency to “go along to get along” with leadership.   Please look at the Hatch’s votes on these key issues several of which were sponsored by Sen. Lee (1^st term Sen. From Utah with 100% score on Heritage Action) –you’ll be surprised as would most Utahns.  Take a minute to look at the bills to see where you would have voted. Click on the bill summary for more detail.

Orrin Hatch didn’t start his political career with such a big government, huge deficit voting record but, as with virtually all of our Poster Children, he drifted left to please those who could help him get reelected. Getting reelected is Job One for career politicians.  Did you notice his recent vote to increase the debt limit again by over a $trillion? This from the sponsor of a Balanced Budget Amendment --17 times! Knowing it wouldn’t pass anytime soon such a position is good for bragging rights among conservatives in Utah but doesn’t upset the special interests.

FreedomWorks disputed Sen. Hatch’s claim to be “one of the greatest conservatives in the history of this country,” --as he votes for Wall Street bailouts and serial increases in the national debt; loads bills with expensive earmarks and supports an individual health care mandate.

He has even drifted on the social issues. As a Mormon one would expect he would oppose abortion as his church teaches. Did you see his current vote to continue to fund Planned Parenthood at least until December 11^th during which time they will commit about 70,000 abortions and at taxpayer expense?  Hatch once would rally conservative Christians and Mormons to the Republican Party, most notably on the right to life platform which he had supported for 35 years. Tenure corrupts.

Citizens Against Government Waste and the National Taxpayer Union have ranked Sen. Hatch rather highly over his tenure and The Club for Growth did as well until recent years. Early on he was known for limited government values but later has taken an active role in expanding fedgov -- he voted 16 different times to raise the debt ceiling by a grand total of $7.5 trillion. He also voted for the TARP bailout.

Tenure in the District of Corruption does indeed corrupt even those starting out with the best intentions.

Not only has Orrin Hatch refused to follow his own wisdom that Washington should be run by citizen-legislators, not career politicians, but he--as chair of the Judiciary Committee--has been a major opponent of federally legislated term limits, according to the Cato Institute.

He won't be running again –he’s 81—let him serve as an example of why we must always watch even the best newly elected politicians and hold them to their oath of office.  

Term limits are essential to returning our country to limited government.  U.S. Term Limits has a new plan to force a congressional term limit amendment vote by the states. It is known as the Article 5 Process and is contained in the US Constitution.

Check it out at this one-minute video by an infamous lobbyist: Jack Abramoff

What’s Wrong with Vermont?

Sen. Patrick Leahy is in his 7^th 6-year term in the U.S. Senate. We did a poster on him in 2011 documenting his life of “Leahy’s Loot” how he spent $billions on earmarks. We showed how he has cooperated with Harry Reid and others in over-complicating the tax code and over-regulating and bashing U.S. corporations forcing many to leave the country to be able to compete. Companies like Apple and Caterpillar were put through the ringer of Senate committees by Leahy and fellow statists not fond of free enterprise and free markets. 

The other Vermont Senator is self-proclaimed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders who is now, ludicrously, running for president –and bringing in $millions in contributions and huge vote counts –not only in Vermont!

Investor’s Business Daily says it better than me (excerpts from 1/26/2016 editorial):

“… (Bernie Sanders) was a ne’er-do-well into his late 30s. …His family managed to send him to the University of Chicago. Despite a prestigious degree, however, Sanders failed to earn a living, even as an adult. It took him 40 years to collect his first steady paycheck — and it was a government check. “I never had any money my entire life,” Sanders told Vermont public TV in 1985, after settling into his first real job as mayor of Burlington.

Sanders spent most of his life as an angry radical and agitator who never accomplished much of anything. And yet now he thinks he deserves the power to run your life and your finances — “We will raise taxes;” he confirmed Monday, “yes, we will.”

“One of his first jobs was registering people for food stamps, and it was all downhill from there. Sanders took his first bride to live in a maple sugar shack with a dirt floor, and she soon left him. Penniless, he went on unemployment. Then he had a child out of wedlock. Desperate, he tried carpentry but could barely sink a nail. Then he tried his hand freelancing for leftist rags, writing about “masturbation and rape” and other crudities for $50 a story. He drove around in a rusted-out, Bondo-covered VW bug with no working windshield wipers. Friends said he was “always poor” and his “electricity was turned off a lot.” They described him as a slob who kept a messy apartment — and this is what his friends had to say about him.

“The only thing he was good at was talking … non-stop … about socialism and how the rich were ripping everybody off. “The whole quality of life in America is based on greed,” the bitter layabout said. “I believe in the redistribution of wealth in this nation.”

Needless to say, his voting record was one of tax, regulate and spend –not unlike Sen. Leahy and the other Vermonter in Congress, Rep. Peter Welch. No wonder IBD referred to the state as “the Peoples Republic of Vermont.”

Peter Francis Welch succeeded Bernie Sanders in the at-large House seat in 2007 after spending nine years in the Vermont legislature to which he was appointed by then-Governor Harold Dean; he had a couple of other losing runs in-between. Another career pol. 

All three congressmen from VT are big spenders of other peoples’ money without any regard for the future generations that will be saddled with the debt –now up to $20 trillion! All three are at the bottom of all of the scorecards for their big government votes:

Citizens Against Government Waste  calls all three “Hostile” to taxpayers

National Taxpayers Union grades all three a failing “F” for their concern for taxpayers

Heritage Action Scorecard:  Leahy 4%; Sanders 15%; Welch 13% --out of 100%

The Club for Growth:  Leahy 3%; Sanders 7%; Welch 7% --these votes explain the poor economy; 60% is considered anti-business!               

No point in going further –these career pols are The Problem with our country today. To examine the actual votes simply click on the name of the group and the link will take you to their websites with detail on the actual bills.

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Socialism is based on envy “Envy is a terrible vice and it is the probable cause for the Socialists credo of 'redistributing wealth.' Taking from Peter to pay Paul, even though it is stealing, has always attracted the Paul’s of the world; but it does not produce wealth. It produces sloth — and it always fails. Like the dog biting its tail, there is not enough nourishment for it to survive; but there is a great deal of pain.” –Thomas Lifson