"A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men
from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
(Thomas Jefferson)


Thursday, January 27, 2011

Filibuster 'reform' Dead but AmeriPAC Still Wants Money to Defeat Reid's Plan to Destroy the Filibuster

UPDATE:  After further research when we received the same email from World Net Daily, we decided to do some more investigation and discovered two PACs.  The first PAC is American Political Action Committee (AIRPAC) #C99002396 we found after going to the AmeriPAC website and found the number listed on the bottom of the page and they had this PAC since 1980 and are conservative.  The AmeriPAC we found using that acronym at the FEC is AmeriPAC:  The Fund for a Greater America #C002711338 and very Democrat.  When you search for American Political Action Committee, a whole host of sites comes up and buried in there is AmeriPAC with the correct number. 

Should have checked it out completely but using an acronym of the PAC for search is done frequently.  Are Democrats now picking acronyms and adding a few words to confuse people because it certainly confused us and we have been following PAC contributions for years.  My recommendation is to not only check out FEC contributions but now check out their websites before you give one penny. 

What you read below is when we thought AmeriPAC was a Democrat PAC following the search on the FEC database.  We decided to leave up the initial post to show how easy it is to be fooled by these PACs using the same acronyms.  The one thing that stands is the fact this filibuster change rule died last night but AmeriPAC wants donations and for everyone to buy a book so my premise that these PACs are out for money even after something has happened stands.  We apologize to the ACU for thinking they were sending out paid email from a Democrat PAC.

Recommend the FEC have a link to all PACs alphabetical by name with their number. Maybe they do but I couldn't find it -- you have to search by name of the PAC off the main link. 

Anyone for cleaning up the FEC to make it user friendly?

******

Started out this post complaining about PACs like AmeriPAC who asks for money after it is too late to have any impact which has always made no sense.  The Filibuster Reform bill died last night with the adjournment of the Senate but that didn't stop AmeriPac from asking for money to stop it this morning:

Reid To Destroy GOP By Filibuster!
Reid Pushing For A Vote This Week!

ALERT: Dictator Harry Reid is pushing a new rule to give liberals carte blanche power to pass any bill they want - whether the American people like it or not!
This was not the first time AmeriPAC has sent out emails like this.  I usually just delete their emails but this time I decided to follow my own link below to the FEC and check out how AmeriPAC was connected and to my shock discovered they gave to Democrats who were running for Congress along with Democrat Congressional Committees.  Talk about non-truth in advertising.

There is a a searchable campaign data base at the FEC so if you put in the name of the PAC in search, you should be able to find out how many donations they received and how they spent those donations. I decided to follow this link for AmeriPAC and it turned up their donations were given to Democrat Congressional candidates and committees:  Blue Dog Democrat PAC, DNCC, and familiar Democrats like Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) and Jason Altmire (D-PA), Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), and Alan Grayson (D-FL) for starters. Don't know if this link will take you to the list or if it will time out but it is worth a try: http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/com_supopp/2009_C00271338-- at that link you see contributions to Democrats running for the House in 2010.

AmeriPAC is sending out their emails to Conservatives like us looking for donations -- will bet money some people will be fooled with their rhetoric because it was sent out by info@conservative.org from the ACU when actually AmeriPAC is a Democrat PAC.  Why would the ACU send out an email for a Democrat PAC?  Most likely they never bothered to check out the PAC as we would bet it was more important to get paid to send out the email which gives the group credibility then to spend time checking them out.  We didn't didn't send them money but we also didn't check them out until this morning.  Lesson Learned -- check out every PAC that asks for donations in email.

We have lost track of how many times PACs like AmeriPAC have asked for money to stop something when it is already defeated/passed or to ask for money for campaign ads the night before the election so they can go on the air. People need to be very careful when donating to a PAC and check out how a PAC spends its money before donating. All these scare tactics to get money should be a tip off.  Now we will follow our own advice and check out every PAC that sends an email.  Who knows how many other PACs we are getting emails from give to Democrats.

In contrast to asking for money to lead the effort against Reid's attempt to change the rules for filibuster, we have the real story from Byron York of the Washington Examiner below that details the quiet death for the filibuster 'reform' ended last night.

In Senate, a quiet death for filibuster 'reform'
By: Byron York 01/26/11 10:10 PM
Chief Political Correspondent

Lost in the hubbub over President Obama's State of the Union speech was the quiet death of liberal Democratic hopes to "reform" the Senate filibuster. Those hopes officially expired at 10:20 p.m. Tuesday, as lawmakers prepared the leave the Capitol after the president's speech, when the Senate adjourned for the first time this year.

For months, some Democrats had been working on a plan to use a parliamentary maneuver called the "nuclear option" to put an end to minority Republicans' ability to block Democratic initiatives. Under that scenario, on the first day of its session -- and only on the first day -- the Senate would be able to change its rules regarding filibusters with a simple majority vote. Normally, it takes 67 votes to change the Senate's rules, but on the first day, Democrats believed, they could kill the filibuster with just a 51-vote majority.

Of course, the first day the Senate was in session was January 3. Most people would assume that such first-day changes, even if they were possible, would have to be made on that day. But in the Senate, "first day" can be a flexible term. So when the Senate finished business on January 3, Majority Leader Harry Reid did not adjourn the body, which would have meant the end of the day. Instead, Reid declared the Senate in recess, which meant that it remained, in technical Senate terms, in its "first day" until whenever Reid chose to call an adjournment.

Through January 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 -- through all those days the Senate was in recess and therefore still officially in its "first day." That meant liberal Democrats could continue to maneuver and negotiate ways to end the filibuster and, if they could find 51 senators willing to go along with their scheme, take a vote on the Senate's "first day."

Furious negotiations went on behind the scenes. The Democrats' anti-filibuster wing, led by Sen. Tom Udall, tried to muster support for the effort to kill, or at least substantially weaken, the filibuster. Udall wasn't, of course, trying to persuade Republicans to go along; all GOP senators opposed the idea. Rather, Udall and his allies were trying -- and, it turns out, failing -- to convince 51 Democrats to put an end to the filibuster. By Tuesday, it was clear they had failed. After the State of the Union, Reid adjourned the Senate, and the 22-day "first day" was over.

The filibuster was untouched; nothing has been done to it. "Literally nothing," says a Republican Hill source.

Excerpt: Read more at the Washington Examiner

NOTE: Updated to show that the email of the group who sent out the AmeriPAC email is the American Conservative Union.

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