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Biden bought the election with questionable campaign money

Posted: January 26, 2021 by chrisharper in elections
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By Christopher Harper

Even if Joe Biden didn’t steal the election, he certainly bought it through a record-breaking amount from anonymous donors whom Democrats have decried for years until 2020.

A Bloomberg investigation, which not so ironically came after the election rather than before it, noted that “the public will never have a full accounting of who helped him win the White House.”

Biden’s winning campaign received $145 million in so-called “dark money donations,” or roughly 10 percent of his record-breaking campaign chest of $1.5 billion. 

Biden’s haul of dark money dwarfed the $28.4 million spent on behalf of Donald Trump tops the previous record of $113 million in anonymous donations backing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.

In the past, many Democrats wanted to ban dark money since it allowed supporters to quietly back a candidate without scrutiny and obtain undue influence over victorious candidates. But in their effort to defeat Trump in 2020, they embraced dark money.

For example, Bloomberg reported that Priorities USA Action Fund, the super political action committee that Biden designated as his preferred vehicle for outside spending, used $26 million in funds originally donated to its nonprofit arm, called Priorities USA, to back Biden. The donors of that money do not have to be disclosed.

Guy Cecil, the chairman of Priorities USA, was unapologetic in comments to Bloomberg. “We weren’t going to unilaterally disarm against Trump and the right-wing forces that enabled him,” he said.

Campaign finance laws are supposed to limit the influence big money has over politicians. But the system has gaping loopholes, which groups backing Biden exploited.

In fact, the Biden campaign called for banning some types of nonprofits from spending money to influence elections and requiring that any organization spending more than $10,000 to influence elections to register with the Federal Election Commission and disclose any donors.

Overall, Democrats received $326 million in dark money, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That was more than twice the $148 million that supported Republican groups. 

Bloomberg found that Future Forward PAC, a super-PAC that spent $104 million backing Biden, got $46.9 million Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, $3 million from Twilio Chief Executive Officer Jeff Lawson, and $2.6 million from Eric Schmidt of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. But the most significant source of funds was from a sister nonprofit, Future Forward USA Action, which contributed $61 million. The names of those who put up the $61 million don’t have to be disclosed.

I guess you aren’t exactly stealing an election if you buy it with questionable donations, but it’s awfully close.

A sad day

Posted: January 19, 2021 by chrisharper in Always look at the bright side of Trump
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By Christopher Harper

It’s a sad day.

It’s a sad day because more than 74 million people who voted for Donald Trump will no longer have a voice in the U.S. government.

Most of us voted for Trump because the Republican and Democrat parties had disregarded our views and ignored us for far too long.

Like many who voted for Trump, I don’t trust politicians, and I hold the Washington autocracy and bureaucracy in contempt.

Like many, Trump wasn’t my first choice. But I came around to like his blunt, sometimes disrespectful view of the Washington crowd.

More important, I look back at what Trump, despite overwhelming opposition from Democrats and the press, was able to accomplish in four years.

I just checked my retirement investments over the past four years, and they grew at the fastest rate of any time in my nearly 50 years of working. During the Covid-19 years, my investments soared at a clip of 13 percent.
Until this past year, I was not alone in this economic prosperity as nearly everyone saw huge economic increases throughout the country at almost all income levels.

For the first time in my life, including many years reporting about the Middle East, Trump came as close as any president to bringing peace to the region.

He virtually destroyed ISIS and helped achieve remarkable peace agreements that lead to diplomatic relations between four Muslim nations and Israel.
T
rump abandoned the flawed nuclear agreement in Iran and the flawed Paris climate change strategy. Unfortunately, President Biden will reestablish both.

Trump stood up to China, resetting the terms of the relationship between our countries. He understood that China had become a growing threat to America. Biden and his son’s suspect relationship with China is likely to embolden Beijing.

Trump’s appointments to federal courts, especially the U.S. Supreme Court, will have an impact for more years, particularly if the five conservatives on the bench don’t wilt in the Washington political heat.

Ironically, Trump did a lot better than Obama when it came to politics.
Democrats lost 13 seats in the Senate under Obama, while Republicans lost just one under Trump since 2017.

Under Obama, Democrats lost 69 seats in the House. Under Trump, the GOP lost 29 House seats.

Furthermore, the GOP still has control of most governorships and statehouses.

Despite the handwringing within the GOP, the Republican Party in 2021 is in a much better position than it was in 2009.

Unfortunately, the GOP will rid itself of Trump. As a result, my fellow Trump supporters and I won’t be voting for Republicans or Democrats. We’ll find somewhere else to go or sit on our hands while we remember how much Donald Trump got right.

The blame game

Posted: January 12, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
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By Christopher Harper

After hundreds—perhaps thousands—of demonstrations over the years in Washington, D.C., how could law enforcement officials have been so poorly prepared for the attack on the U.S. Capitol?

For the most part, that question has gone unanswered as the media and Democrats blame President Trump.

The chaos showed that government agencies had no coordinated plan to defend against an attack on the Capitol.

The U.S. Capitol Police chief, Steven Sund, said he asked his supervisors for the National Guard to be put on alert long before the rioters exploded into the House and Senate. That request was denied.

“If we would have had the National Guard, we could have held them at bay longer, until more officers from our partner agencies could arrive,” said Sund, who, along with other law enforcement officials involved in the mess, has resigned.

Sund said that House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving rebuffed the idea, arguing he was uncomfortable with the “optics” that such a move would bring. Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger told Sund that he should informally reach out to his contacts at the Guard and ask them to be on alert, Sund added.

Both Irving and Stenger have since resigned from their posts in the fallout of the riots.

Despite numerous postings on social media calling for violent action, various federal agencies apparently failed to take the rhetoric seriously.

Dozens of posts listed assault rifles and other weapons that people claimed they were bringing to Washington. People discussed what types of ammunition would be best to carry and whether medical personnel would be available to treat the injured.

“It was such an embarrassingly bad failure and immediately became an infamous moment in American history,” said R.P. Eddy, a former American counterterrorism official.

Despite all of the red flags, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser sent a letter to top federal and local law enforcement officials that warned against massive police deployments. Bowser had complained loudly about the large presence of riot police during last June’s protests by Black Lives Matter.

All of the requests for support came far too late, resulting in National Guard troops arriving hours after the assault started.

“We rely on Capitol Police and federal law enforcement to provide an assessment of the situation,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said. “And based on that assessment that they had, they believed they had sufficient personnel and did not make a request.”

Ultimately, the rioters are responsible for the mess they created.

Now the politicians are shoveling the blame toward Donald Trump when the House and Senate leaders didn’t like the optics of a sufficient number of cops to handle the rioters.

As a result, the optics got a lot worse.

Readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic

Posted: January 5, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
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During the 25 years I have taught writing, I have complained frequently about how K-12 educators pay little attention to the building blocks of grammar, punctuation, and style.

In the past, students have accepted the need to learn these elements of writing. Now that’s changed.

I am teaching a month-long course in journalism history, which requires a great deal of writing.

For the first time ever, students feel emboldened enough to complain publicly that I deduct points, generally a full grade, when they make three errors or more.

“You keep dropping me entire letter grades for tiny, insignificant grammatical errors. I’ve never had a teacher complain about my grammar,” one student wrote. “Considering most of your students are juggling school, work, and the ramifications of a global pandemic, I don’t think this is the time for harsh grading.”

Another told me he checked with a website editor who said the grammar was fine. I noted 18 errors in a submission of 500 words.

Here’s what I wrote to all of the students:

After more than 25 years as a journalist at The Associated Press, Newsweek, and ABC News, I decided to teach writing. Since I joined academia, I have written and edited seven books. I’ve also written for newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and online publications. 

As such, I take writing quite seriously.

If a writer fails to understand the basic tenets of grammar, punctuation, and style, myriad problems occur.

First, readers and viewers get hung up on the errors, known as creating “noise” in communications theory. For example, I once did a major investigation of prisons, which began with a visual of geese over a Wisconsin jail. I referred to the geese as Canadian geese. Such birds are called Canada geese. At least 100 of the 20 million viewers of the documentary scolded me for the error. That means that at least 100 people stopped watching something important because I made a style error.

Second, readers and viewers may question the accuracy of the information provided if basic rules are not followed.

Third, I had the luxury of having excellent editors who would challenge almost anything I wrote. Today, there are virtually no editors who look over reporters’ shoulders for errors of grammar, punctuation, style, and most importantly, accuracy.

Lastly, if you seek employment in journalism, advertising, or public relations, you will likely have to take a writing test, which is intended to determine your abilities in accuracy, grammar, punctuation, and style.

Since this course is a writing class in the Department of Journalism, I think it’s essential that someone care about such matters.

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