It isn't that Nancy and I don't want a wall, we just don't want your name attached to it.
Left-wing organizations will rush to the nearest federal judge. What “standing” do they have to object? If I withhold from you $1,000 I owe you, you have been aggrieved. If I give you $1,000 you did not expect or have any right to, how have you been harmed? So if the federal courts follow their own oft-repeated rules on why citizens cannot require the government to follow the law, they will have to find that no one has standing to object to a windfall.
Second, however, it has long been the law that private citizens can donate to the government. In 2012, a billionaire donated $7.5 million to help rebuild the Washington monument after the August 2012 Virginia Earthquake. Most of the legal authority focuses on when a taxpayer can deduct a donation to the U.S. Treasury from his or her income taxes. Most legal discussion involves general donations to reduce the national debt. Believe it or not, the Bureau of the Public Debt gets a lot of private donations every year.
Laws and regulations specific to different departments and agencies provide different rules. For example, the regulations for the U.S. Department of Defense provide procedures unique to helping soldiers and sailors. Some legal authority pertains to donating to medical research, museums, libraries, or schools.
“...the government is not allowed to accept donations for a specific purpose”
WTH?
Yeah. Only confiscated money, and we have no say in it.
bttt
If there is a hurricane I approve of my tax dollars going to relieve Americans who were in the way. In addition I donate my own money to help. When there are wildfires I don’t object to tax dollars help rebuild and I add my own money to help. When 9-11 hit the entire country donated to help NYC including replacing fire trucks with pennies collected by school kids. Why would this be any different?
I want to ask those people who don’t want the wall built because it doesn’t affect them if they would expect help if a disaster hit their city or state.
The potential abuses to such a precedent would be without number. As amusing as this is, one moment of thinking what this looks like in the hands of Tom Steyer with the next Obama should be enough to convince anyone of the foolishness of the principle. It would completely alter the form of government.
Simpler. The wall does have money budgeted for it, just not as much as Trump wants. Companies are going to be constructing sections of it.
Just go to a company, and make a deal with them. They get Kolfage’s money invested in them. In exchange, they offer to build X-yards more of the wall than their bid was originally planning to cover, with the extra being designated “The People’s Section” of the wall.
It isn't that Nancy and I don't want a wall, we just don't want your name attached to it.
My one concern is that GoFundMe has to issue a 1099 to the recipient of the money. If it passes through the hands of Brian Kolfage he may be liable for a big tax bill.
I have contributed so, I’m all for this effort!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
Every bit helps. Just do it. The President announced that there are contracts to build over a hundred miles of wall on the TX-MX border and a shorter one on the CA-MX border. Great things have been done with persistence over time.
The problem wouldn't be an agency accepting the money, it would be the agency having the authorization to spend the money without an underlying bill from congress.
The Border Fence GoFundMe is private money, but once it is accepted by the government, it becomes public funds, and can only be spent as approved by congress.
At least, that would be my unfortunate take, so I hope I am wrong.
Perhaps you could donate an amount equal to the proceeds you get from excerpting your clickbait here on Free Republic.
CAN be.
But WON’T be.
Watch the Democrats suddenly start calling for extra environmental studies or even claiming it will harm some rare eight-legged sand clam (or other made-up creature) that supposedly lives in the path the fence will take!
I hate that gifunfme gets a percentage of this. They are liberal louts. But easy for me to complain I’m not doing anything.
To state the obvious, it takes 1000 million to make a billion, so this is great but still a couple of drops in the bucket. I wish I knew why such things were so expensive. Far more than I would think. I know it comes down to time, materials, shipping, and prep/follow up work but still...
I envision 4 chain link fences, each 25 feet apart. Each fence has razor wire on top. The 2 inner fences are electrified.
Cameras cover every foot of the fence, and 1 mile on the Mexican side. Infrared and motion sensors.
Quick reaction squads stationed every 10 miles, for a total of 70 stations.
A budget is a plan of action expressed in dollars. When government’s pass a budget implicit is that the actions funded are approved policy.
If we donated to gofundme money to build an 11 mile high tower, that doesn’t mean it will be built. The policy will have to be approved. Congress will say, you can’t build just because someone else writes a check. We have to approve the action.
The democrats will go to court and Trump will participate.
I contain e to believe a wall is two years away because of delays and court actions and if Trump is not re-elected it’s not going to happen, except for a few sections here and there.
Secondly the environmental groups have yet to hit this hard. That’s coming. They won’t start till Trump takes a bigger step to build.
It’s simply remarkable what this young man has done.
There is a term that can be used to describe the words, doctrine, and agenda direction of the Democrats: False.
6 U.S. Code § 453 (b) Except as authorized by section 2601 of title 10, by section 93 of title 14, or by section 321n or 464 of this title, gifts or donations of services or property of or for the Department may not be accepted, used, or disposed of unless specifically permitted in advance in an appropriations Act and only under the conditions and for the purposes specified in such appropriations Act.The exceptions do not apply here, I checked.
The term "permitted in advance in an appropriations Act" means there has to be an appropriation to spend the funds.
If the donation goes directly to the Treasury, it is the same thing. Let's say Mexico deposited $25 billion in the Treasury. Those funds would have to be appropriated for a wall. (US Constitution, Article I, Section 9, 7). The only way around this would be a Treaty, I think, but that requires the Senate.