The RNC has been reporting for months that it has taken in contributions, and is in a no-debt position…
Turns out the HNIC was lying.
And from their choice of attorneys to defend the RNC against Federal Election Commission fines – it appears the dirt on this one goes a lot deeper than just an accounting error.
Looks like the HNIC could be getting fitted for his very own Orange Jumpsuit!
The Republican National Committee failed to report more than $7 million in debt to the Federal Election Commission in recent months – a move that made its bottom line appear healthier than it is heading into the midterm elections and that also raises the prospect of a hefty fine.
In a memo to RNC budget committee members, RNC Treasurer Randy Pullen on Tuesday accused Chairman Michael S. Steele and his chief of staff, Michael Leavitt, of trying to conceal the information from him by ordering staff not to communicate with the treasurer – a charge RNC officials deny.
Mr. Pullen told the members that he had discovered $3.3 million in debt from April and $3.8 million from May, which he said had led him to file erroneous reports with the FEC. He amended the FEC filings Tuesday.
Campaign-finance analysts said that simply misreporting fundraising numbers to the FEC can lead to millions of dollars in fines and that criminal charges can be levied if the actions are suspected to be intentional. Read the rest of this entry »
On this 4th of July it is heartening to see at least nor every Republican hates America. I mean, a lot of conservatives do the wave the plastic flag thing, and talk the talk about “loving our troops”…
But when push to shove are absent on every single Veterans BIll, absent in COngress or the Senate in making the hard decisions for a country in crisis, and absent during the most critical decisions of the day because the man who sits in the Presidency doesn’t look like them…
Who spew hate over the nations airwaves for black and brown people, and then demonstrate their patriotism with pepper induced tears…
Who accuse less fortunate Americans who have lost their jobs and livelyhoods (and often homes) of being “lazy”…
Nice to see on this Independence Day -a return to American values.
Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, both senior Republicans on the Armed Services Committee, denounced Mr. Steele’s comments, joining a chorus of Republican criticism.
Mr. McCain of Arizona said that Mr. Steele’s remarks, made at an event last week, were “wildly inaccurate, and there’s no excuse for them,” adding that Mr. Steele had later told him in an e-mail message that his comments were misconstrued.
“The fact is that I think that Mr. Steele is going to have to assess as to whether he can still lead the Republican Party as chairman of the Republican National Committee and make an appropriate decision,” Mr. McCain said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” broadcast from Kabul, Afghanistan, where he and Mr. Graham were visiting troops with a delegation of Republican lawmakers.
Mr. Graham of South Carolina said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he was “dismayed, angry, upset” over Mr. Steele’s remarks, calling them “uninformed, unnecessary, unwise, untimely.”
“This is not President Obama’s war; this is America’s war,” he said, adding, “I want to separate myself from that statement. And the good news is Michael Steele is backtracking so fast he’s going to be in Kabul fighting here pretty soon.”
Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, also described Mr. Steele’s remarks as “inaccurate” and “unacceptable.”
“Chairman Steele needs to apologize to our military, all the men and women who’ve been fighting in Afghanistan,” Mr. DeMint said in an interview on“Fox News Sunday.” “This is America’s war. It’s not Obama’s war.”
Uncle Mikkie Steele just pissed off a whole bunch of patriotic Americans with his spiel about the Afghanistan War…
This may well be the straw that broke the Camel’s back – not only for Steele, but some of the over-the-top criticism offered by the right of President Obama. This smells of out and out treason.
Conservative strategist William Kristol, former South Carolina party chairman Katon Dawson and other Republicans are calling for the resignation of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele over Steele’s suggestion that the U.S. effort in Afghanistan is doomed.
At a fundraiser in Noank, Conn., Steele blamed the U.S. troubles in Afghanistan on the Obama administration and expressed doubts about coalition forces’ ability to succeed in the violence-torn country.
“Keep in mind again, for our federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing,” Steele said. “This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in.”
“It was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan,” Steele said, referring to Obama’s insistence during the presidential campaign that the U.S. should be focused on Afghanistan instead of Iraq.
“Well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan.”
Former president George W. Bush ordered U.S. troops to Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the Sept. 11 attacks by terrorists based there. Obama has said publicly for at least eight years that while he opposed the invasion of Iraq, he supported the war in Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »
Perhaps as a result of facing the heavy flak he has received as Chair of the RNC, Michael Steele comes clean about the state of the relationship between the Republican Party and black folks. Could be that Mikkie has figured out the handwriting on the wall, finally – and suddenly found a spine because of it…
“You really don’t have a reason to, to be honest — we haven’t done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True,” Republican National Chairman Michael Steele told 200 DePaul University students Tuesday night.
Steele — a former Maryland lieutenant governor and seminarian serving as the first African-American head of the Republican Party — offered a frank assessment of the American political system…
Steele seemed to hold the diverse student audience’s attention most when he talked about his own experience suffering racial discrimination — in his first law firm interview for example — and when he confessed his party’s failure to reach out to African-Americans:
“We have lost sight of the historic, integral link between the party and African-Americans,” Steele said. “This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass. The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don’t walk away from parties, Their parties walk away from them.
“For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, ‘Bubba’ went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.”
Now Mikkie didn’t suddenly have this epiphany for no reason. Also in the news today is what an internal Republican audit of the RNC’s finances turned up –
Barely 6 1/2 months before the midterm elections, an internal investigation by the Republican National Committee has revealed that the organization is beset with questionable financial management and oversight and is spending more money courting top-dollar donors than it raises.
The investigation found that the Republican Party’s national governing body is losing money on its major-donors’ fundraising program — spending $1.09 for each $1.00 raised, according to RNC members privy to the investigation’s findings. It typically costs about 40 cents for every dollar raised from donors who give more than $1,000.
The investigation also found that the RNC has allowed employees to forge Finance Director Rob Bickhart’s initials on expense-reimbursement request approvals, according to an RNC member who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The RNC’s top elected and appointed management have united in defense of the committee’s practices. RNC Chairman Michael S. Steele can withhold or increase RNC contributions to a state party.
Every single day, including Saturdays and Sundays, the phone rings at the Ben Stein household. On the line is a man or woman raising money for the Republicans:
Republicans running for the Senate. Republicans running for the House of Representatives. The California Republican Party. And, above all, the Republican National Committee.
Every single day.
We very often write checks, and we do it because we have a long history with the party.
But we also give because we have a lingering belief (and a hope) that the GOP is the party of small town, all-American virtues and verities.
I suspect millions of others get these fundraising calls from the GOP and write those checks for the same reason.
I’d like to keep sending in that money, but I really can’t with the current Chairman of the RNC in office.
Michael Steele – who I am sure is a fine fellow – was the first African-American Lieutenant Governor of my home state, Maryland. In a pitiful gesture of imitation, the RNC chose him to lead the party after the nation went for its first black President.
The gesture made no sense at the time. The best man or woman for the job should have been selected, regardless of race. There was nothing in Mr. Steele’s record to indicate he was that person.
Now, it is clear just how ill-advised a choice he was. Stories are pouring out of the RNC to the effect that Mr. Steele is demanding the Committee get him a private jet, which is a heck of a big bite. (I don’t have one!) In the meantime, he rents one fairly often.
Mr. Steele is running up fantastic tabs at super-expensive hotels and restaurants, including some near me in Beverly Hills. Just recently it was revealed that the RNC had been billed nearly two thousand bucks for “entertainment” at a West Hollywood strip club called Voyeur. (Hmmmm, that’s near me, too.)
The RNC has asked the staffer who signed the expense chit to pay back the money, but the damage has got to be stopped. This lavishness is happening on Mr. Steele’s watch, and he ain’t watching.
The GOP is not the party of small town virtues and verities if it has multi-thousand-dollar bills for meals and drinks at The Beverly Hills Hotel and the Voyeur Club.
I am sure Mr. Steele is a fine man, and obviously a party guy in many ways. But he is not the man to lead the charge to get a GOP Congress and a GOP president in the next elections.
It is time for Mr. Steele to go.
Good bye, Mr. Steele. You will find everything you want in Baltimore.
At this moment, the Republican Party needs more than ever to present a sober, serious and ethical face to the public. Voyeur was the last straw. It would be an unselfish gesture for Steele to step aside.
How to put this politely? Michael Steele is a man of considerable talent — it’s just that he conspicuously lacks those required for his present position. He’s energetic, personable and articulate. But those are not the qualities most required of a party chairman. The job demands an administrator, a behind-the-scenes schmoozer and a tactician. Showboating is a hindrance. It’s a job that requires the talents of a stage manager, whereas Steele likes to be the star.
At a time when the Republican Party is the indispensable vehicle for thwarting the disastrous policies of the Obamaites, Steele is a costly distraction in more ways than one…
Charen lays it on a bit thick – but it is consistent with the hyper-inflated hyperbole of the right, that the continued existence of a (badly acting) black man would threatens the entire world’s destruction!
North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Tom Fetzer on Thursday became the first state party leader to call publicly for the resignation of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele , saying the party has set “a poor example of the kind of leadership voters can expect if Republicans are elected.”
Mikkie has been on the defensive for quite a while, with criticisms of his leadership style, poor management, and outlandish spending on personal travel on the RNC’s dime. And while Mikkie got the RNC Chair job because of race…
He’s going to lose it because of incompetence. A level of incompetence, malfeasance, and paper-thin character anyone familiar with Mikkie’s track record in Maryland in office easily predicted. When Mikkie was running for, and later Lt. Governor of Maryland, he skimmed hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state, and the campaign chest.
In the meantime – “It’s dem evil white folks!”
WHICH “evil white folks”?
Republicans. The same Republicans the HNIC shills for.
If the chairman of the Democratic National Committee had suggested that Republicans were being unfairly critical of their national chairman because he is black, Republican Party officials would swiftly demand an apology. Some surely would call for his resignation. But when their own chairman suggests precisely that, he is met with silence.
Asked by George Stephanopoulos on Monday if he felt he was held to a higher standard because he is black, Steele infamously responded, “The honest answer is, ‘yes.’ Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. A lot of folks do. It’s a different role for me to play and others to play and that’s just the reality of it. But you take that as part of the nature of it.” Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Steele partly spoke the truth Monday, yet it probably further hurt his chances to continue leading the Republican National Committee.
Steele defended what he’s done to raise money for the organization, even while he has been on widely criticized spending sprees.
Then he played the race card: Being black, Steele said, is a problem for him with his GOP critics.
“Barack Obama has a slimmer margin,” Steele told ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.’ “We all — a lot of folks do. I mean, it’s a different role for me to play and others to play. And that’s just the reality of it.”
With those words, Steele probably irritated a lot of GOP members who just a year ago were all to happy to have a black face on top of the RNC organizational chart.
See, we don’t see color. We even let a black lead us.
But in recent months Steele has been a lightning rod for controversy, and it hasn’t had a lot to do with his race.
They include last week’s revelation that the national committee paid for a night out at a Hollywood night club to Steele’s use of private jets to his writing a book that surprised some in his own group.
So now top Republicans are publicly contemplating Steele’s future even as the GOP has to raise a lot of money to be successful in the 2010 elections.
Some conservatives have started their own fundraising for candidates. Other groups are telling their followers to stop contributing to the RNC and go elsewhere — including directly to the candidates they want to support.
In other words Steele — whether he’s black, white or polka-dotted — is on thin ice right now.
Oh, and you know Democrats love seeing the turmoil at the RNC.
As White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday, “Michael Steele’s problem isn’t the race card, it’s the credit card.”
Talk about a bad day for black conservatives! The HNIC gets black conservative victimology bragging rights on this one. And this after firing the “staffer” who apparently didn’t include him on a RNC funded strip club party, no less…
Renowned author, Amiri Baraka, had harsh words for the Republican party and words of praise for Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick and President Barack Obama at the Black Writer’s Conference at Medgar Evers College last Saturday.
Baraka revealed that he had recently been in the presence of Deval Patrick. Baraka said that he knew Deval’s father, Pat Patrick, who played saxophone with Sun Ra and his Arkestra as well as John Coltrane. Baraka could go on to say how Obama and Patrick were descendants of the Black creative movement that he was a part of.
He would talk about the need for African Americans to be supportive of Obama, bringing up Hannity and Beck as those who opposed him. He also had a harsh criticism for Michael Steele, who he called a “Real, Public Coon.”
Toni Morrison also spoke at the Writer’s Conference and she revealed some interesting stories about when she was an editor for Random House and published books by Angela Davis and Muhammed Ali. Former honorees, Sonia Sanchez and Cornel West also addressed the crowd in Brooklyn.
We certainly know the animals of the right, the US Reich, the Foxes and Klan in Civilian clothes, e.g., O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh & Co., and certainly a coon or two. Tavis & Andy. Some people even came up with the slogan “Strangle Rangel”. Happily, w/the departure of Bonnie & Clyde, more of these Negro retainers will replace their “ HillJig” buttons with the shit-eating grin of exposed Toms as they try to ease painlessly into at least the margin of the masses who support Obama …
Turns Out Uncle Mikkie Likes Something Other Than Puppies
Let me get this straight – the head of the RNC, the Party of the Moral Majority… Drops $2,000 of the Republican’s money in a lesbian titty bar? Not to mention $9,000 for a hotel room?
According to two knowledgeable sources, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele once raised the possibility of using party money to buy a private jet for his travel.
“I know that … regular ongoing use of planes was something that was looked at,” says one person with direct knowledge. “I can’t speak to how serious those inquiries were.” Both sources say Steele considered purchasing a plane outright, or buying fractional ownership in one, through a company such as NetJets.
Steele’s spokesman, Doug Heye, did not deny that such discussions took place, responding that the RNC never had a “plan” to buy a plane. “I don’t know what somebody might have discussed or might not have discussed.”
While Steele has not purchased a plane, he continues to charter them. According to federal disclosure records, the RNC spent $17,514 on private aircraft in the month of February alone (as well as $12,691 on limousines during the same period). There are no readily identifiable private plane expenses for Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine in the DNC’s last three months of filings.
The RNC explains that Steele charters jets only when commercial service is unavailable, or when his tight schedule requires it. “Anytime the chairman has taken any private travel has been a either to a route that doesn’t exist or because of connections and multiple travel to where he just wasn’t able to do so,” Heye said. Yet Steele’s office repeatedly refused to explain in specific terms the circumstances of the February charter flights.
Once on the ground, FEC filings suggest, Steele travels in style. A February RNC trip to California, for example, included a $9,099 stop at the Beverly Hills Hotel, $6,596 dropped at the nearby Four Seasons, and $1,620.71 spent [update: the amount is actually $1,946.25] at Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex.
RNC trips to other cities produced bills from a long list of chic and costly hotels such as the Venetian and the M Resort in Las Vegas, and the W (for a total of $19,443) in Washington. A midwinter trip to Hawaii cost the RNC $43,828, not including airfare.
Steele himself declined numerous interview requests, though his defenders point out that luxurious accommodations are sometimes necessary to attract big-time donors, especially since Republicans remain in the minority in Washington.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele apparently will do anything to stay on the payroll, even if it means sacrificing his identity as a black man and disgracing himself in the process.
Saturday, some participants at the Tea Party rally on Capitol Hill allegedly yelled racial epithets at black members of Congress, hurled a homosexual slur at a gay member of the House and spat on a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
As expected, Tea Party organizers and Republican leaders condemned the behavior — as if they could do anything else. Steele, who loves to tout himself as the first African American chairman of the GOP, entered the fray Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He also chose to separate himself and the Republican Party not from the Tea Party that he loves, but — referring to the slurs and epithet hurlers — from “idiots out there saying stupid things.”
Steele knows the words he should have used, but he couldn’t bring himself to say them lest he offend the people who put — and keep — him where he is today.
The people who shouted the slurs weren’t “idiots…saying stupid things.”
They were racists and homophobic bigots uttering hateful and inflammatory language. They should have been called out as such.
Steele didn’t go that far because he knows they are part of the conservative base on which his party relies. And so must he, if he wants to keep getting a Republican Party paycheck…or is it 30 pieces of silver?
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