Trump has filed forms with the FEC for his prospective 2020 re-election bid, and the State of North Dakota is checking to see if the paid pipeline protestors are filing their tax forms.
The first thing will make it much more difficult for well-heeled, Progressive interest groups to set up non-profits to oppose Trump initiatives. I don’t know all the legal ins and outs of it, but it appears that if you’re a non-profit, there are restrictions on what you can do in partisan politics – Trump is set to run again in 2020, and thus a non-profit is curtailed in what it can do against him. This is turning Progressive “lawfare” against them with a vengeance.
The North Dakota action may well be motivated by the fact that North Dakota has had to shell out big bucks due to the pipeline protests, but it works out as a discouragement for the sort of paid protestors Progressive groups gin up to make it look like there is widespread, popular opposition to certain things. This is also a bit of “lawfare” turned against the left.
And this is how you fight them. You see, for many years, the left has used the American system – and, often, taxpayer subsidies of one sort or another – to work against the actual desires of the American people. Until Walker’s reforms in Wisconsin, no one had really taken the fight to the means by which the left advances their cause – and that successful fight in Wisconsin instructed everyone that (a) you can fight them on that level and (b) you can win.
I think we’ll see more and more of this – and the Democrats just making sure there is more of it. Democrats will rue the day they walked out on Hatch’s committee. Hatch – I’ve met the man: a nice gentleman in the largest sense of the word – simply does not like the idea that decorum should be shoved aside like that. It wasn’t even over a crucial issue the Democrats had a chance of winning on – Hatch might have understood something like that. But merely trying to delay the inevitable because some shrieking protestors are demanding it? Absurd. And insulting.
The left is anti-intellectual, anti-truth and committed to the asinine concept that few experts can manage things for the benefit of all. It is past time we ended this nonsense – and we end it by hitting the left where it hurts the most: in their taxpayer money, and their ability to be jerks without paying a price.
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What I find interesting is the left is instigating opposition to the point of violence. I believe this violence will escalate where it will trouble most civil Americans, if it hasn’t already. While creating an environment where the majority moves away from them, they are also setting themselves up for arrest and possible prosecution for felony crimes. With Trump making replacements to the DOJ, Attorney General and federal judgeships, you can bet most of those people will work tirelessly to go after anyone or group who incites such violence, especially politically motivated violence that puts all Americans at risk. How many celebrities does it take to be subject to a public trial and then be sentenced to a stiff jail term before it gives pause to those who would fuel the fire of hatred? How strange it is in today’s world of smart phones and readily available video cameras, these daft protestors think they remain anonymous being part of a group protest. I tend to believe, without knowing it they are setting themselves up for a big surprise when they receive official notification of being charged with a crime. I doubt many of them will have the means to fight such legal accusations. And when they finally realize the stupidity of their actions, it will be too late to turn back the clock on whatever destruction they were a part of, or the sentence they’ll have to serve.
JDGE1, I tend to agree with what you said with one caveat: I think we need to stop legitimizing these thugs with the word “protesters”. They are “demonstrators” as they are not really “protesting” anything but the fact that they didn’t get their own way.
The ringleaders are paid agitators, and need to be treated as such. Their goal is to undermine the government, and they need to be treated as subversives.
And yes, those who incite violence, who play the “Let’s You And Him Fight” game have to be held responsible.
In the meantime, we need to stop giving these morons the respect of calling what they are doing “protests”. They are temper tantrums writ large, and we should start calling them that. When the only “principle” is the assumption of entitlement to throw hissy fits, destroy property and try to bring the government to a halt when they don’t get their own way, we need to properly identify those actions and those motives.
This is turning Progressive “lawfare” against them with a vengeance.
Trump may well turn out to be unlike any adversary the Left has ever encountered. I have a feeling being nice to and getting along with Democrats isn’t even going to make the bottom of Trumps list of priorities.
Funny thing is, it would have – had they been reasonable. The guy is a deal maker…its what his whole life has been about. Democrats refused any deal…
In fact, more than anything else, it was his willingness to make a deal which worried me the most…I figured he’d give the left half a loaf. Better than the whole loaf, but it would still work out to leftwing causes advancing. Now, they’ve pretty much made sure that the only thing Trump will advance is Conservatism, with a bit of a populist flavor in economics.
I think Trump has been better than expected so far with the exception of maybe just going a little too fast on some issues and losing some clarity within the agencies but that is simply due to a lack of experience in governing, which he will adapt to quickly. I think Rex Tillerson will make a fantastic SecState, Gorsuch is a slam dunk for the SC, and I love putting Iran on “notice” and letting them know that we will no longer be passive observers to their provocations.
Re: the Democrats, they continue to shoot themselves in the foot, and the head from time to time. Their aging leadership of Pelosi, Schumer, Warren, and Sanders have become completely unrelatable to most Americans anymore and their continued support of far left causes and unhinged rioters will only widen that gap and push them further into the minority. But that wouldn’t hurt my feelings.
I don’t mind a little loss of clarity in the agencies, as that can easily be corrected, and I like the idea that these smug overconfident agency heads might be a little panicky. Sometimes it is a good strategy to just stir things up and see what falls out and what floats to the surface, and based on the focus and clarity of most of what Trump has done so far, including the “lawyerly” composition of his well-written Executive Orders I am thinking perhaps this might part of a Trump strategy.
While unhinged rioters burn, loot and destroy the Berkeley campus out of juvenile rage because someone they disagree with was scheduled to give a speech, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor stated this:
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday said future diversity on college campuses is a key to diversifying society at large, noting that the number of black students at the University of Michigan is a “real problem.”
This is who the left is. They do not embrace diversity of opinion and in fact become violent in light of it. The only diversity celebrated by the left is the diversity of skin pigmentation. They are quickly becoming an imploding party of lunatics.
I think, and this is my troublemaking gene coming out, that during the Gorsuch hearings he, or someone, ought to reference this Sotomayor comment as an example of Identity Politics run amok. This lame-brained comment is a great opportunity to talk about the foolishness of arbitrary quotas based on skin color, political affiliation, ethnicity, etc. It would also be a chance to expound on the necessity of diversity of THOUGHT, as you point out, instead of diversity of superficial characteristics.
If he is feeling very bold he might comment that there would probably be more black students at the University of Michigan if the Michigan schools did a better job of educating students and preparing them for college.
He will be questioned on abortion—–there is already whining that so far he has never ruled on an abortion case—-and I hope he will use this as a platform for a lecture on the danger to the nation of having our Constitution interpreted to comply with political agendas. It’s a chance to discuss ideas about the 10th Amendment, state sovereignty and the need to stick strictly to what the document says and not how it might be stretched, manipulated and expanded.
Very few on the Left understand that the objection to Roe v Wade is less about the implied approval of abortion than it is about bad law, about taking a state issue and jamming it into federal jurisdiction by inventing a Constitutional “right” that simply does not exist in the Constitution.