Senate Joint Resolution 19 'intended to limit free speech'

Sacra Pizza Man blog ^ | 9/4/2014 | Sacra Pizza Man

[CharlesOConnell]

Senate Joint Resolution 19 'intended to limit free speech'

 US Senate to Protect the Media Monopoly's Right to Corrupt Presidential Elections 

 

 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. 

 

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” (103^rd 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 fail to wonder how a 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.

[CharlesOConnell]

What's in your wallet?

[2ndDivisionVet]

I don’t think Mitt Romney made that money through inheritance, I believe he founded a venture capital firm. I don’t like the man, but that’s no reason to defame him. I’ll leave that to Harry Reid.

[Regulator]

the richest counties in the nation are not in New York, Texas or California, they’re suburbs of Washington DC

Man is that true.

I've worked in the Silicon Valley for the past 30 years and it ain't even close to the wealth you see in DC.

All I could think of walking around was "so this is where the money goes to".

The New Feudalists: US government agencies.

[null and void]

What's in your wallet?

Uncle Sam's hand.

Why do you ask?

[southernindymom]

Just emailed Coats and told him to vote against this! I must say, I really really really can’t stand these people. I don’t want to use the word “hate” but........

[combat_boots]

When I saw all the cranes and construction around DC after 0bama was elected, all I could think of was people living in the walled, capital cities of the middle ages, being there to beg boons of the king.

[Regulator]

being there to beg boons of the king

That's all it is. The IRS is his enforcer agency, out busting heads to bring the Vigorish back to the Big Man, who then doles out the goodies to the sycophants who promise to do the most for him.

Up from serfdom and right back down again.

[kevkrom]

I believe you’re correct - he certainly parleyed his family connections, but he did actually earn his own fortune.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Like the Hunger Games.

[Chickensoup]

the richest counties in the nation are not in New York, Texas or California, they’re suburbs of Washington DC

__________________

The Capitol.

[originalbuckeye]

I read at the time that he donated his entire inheritance to the Mormon Church. He DID make his own money. Something totally foreign to most wealthy Democrats.

[CharlesOConnell]

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

Mitt Romney "gave away his father's inheritance."

Reince Priebus on Sunday, August 26th, 2012 in a TV interview

Reince Priebus says Mitt Romney 'gave away his father's inheritance'

Mitt Romney, the self-made man.

That’s part of the "Mitt Romney story" that Republicans plan to tell at their convention in Tampa this week.

His father may have been well-to-do, but Republicans have been emphasizing for weeks that Romney made his millions on his own.

Romney’s father, George, was chief executive of Detroit automaker American Motors Corp. and a three-time governor of Michigan who ran for president in the 1960s. Mitt grew up in a wealthy Michigan suburb, attending prep school and ultimately Harvard.

He's been the target of silver-spoon attacks because he’s worth more than $100 million. (Perhaps far more.)

But Republicans argue he wasn’t handed his wealth — he earned it.

He even "gave away his father’s inheritance," national committee chair Reince Priebus repeatedly told TV interviewers on Aug. 26, 2012, as the party prepared to open its convention.

We’ve rated a related claim from Romney himself that he "didn’t inherit money" from his parents. That earned a Half True, because he previously told interviewers he did get an inheritance, but donated it to Brigham Young University.

This time we’re checking whether he "gave away his father’s inheritance."

We’re short on primary evidence for the claim — we haven’t seen his father’s will, nor a receipt from Brigham Young. But there’s a strong circumstantial case that Priebus is correct.

Rich get richer

George Romney died in 1995 at age 88. By that time, his son had led Bain Capital, the private equity firm he launched in 1984, for more than a decade.

As Romney told a C-SPAN interviewer in 2006:

"I did get a check from my dad when he passed away. I shouldn’t say a check, but I did inherit some funds from my dad. But I turned and gave that away to charity. In this case I gave it to a school which Brigham Young University established in his honor. ... And that’s where his inheritance ended up."

Why did he give the money away?

"I figured we had enough of our own," he said.

According to a short history of the George W. Romney Institute of Public Management at BYU, the family provided an endowment in 1998, within a few years of George Romney's death.

Our ruling

Reince Priebus says that Romney "gave away his father's inheritance."

Romney has repeatedly said so himself and that's backed up by the simple fact that Brigham Young University has an institute named for his father launched just a few years after his death. And there’s no reason to think Romney would have needed the money a decade after his lucrative move to Bain Capital.

We find the evidence supports the claim and we see nothing to contradict it. If any evidence emerges, we'll review it. But in the meantime, we rate Priebus’ claim True.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/27/reince-priebus/republican-national-committee-chair-reince-priebus/