- Amend First District Platform to include opposition to Zuckerberg type election heists — look for a sign “oppose billionaires buying official election efforts” or related signature sheet. Individual delegates must sign on to the amendment before 11:00 AM.
- Readers can follow this link to our posting of the Republican First District draft platform to be voted on this Saturday.
If readers can find something that even hints at something like ~~ no private money directed to official offices to influence official election duties~~ in the draft Republican First District platform please enlighten me. I will apologize and correct the record if I missed it in my perusal of it. See link.
Now this criticism is not to say that the draft does not cover a lot of bases important to conservatives. It does. For example, for me the right to life issues will always be the sine qua non of the party platform — and it is well covered in the draft. But it is not my only issue and I am glad that a number of timely issues are covered — if occasionally in my opinion clumsily drafted or inadequately prefaced. And so it goes. But how in the heck was the CTCL/Zuckerberg/equivalent of election bribery (as per a Wisconsin judge) left out!?.
Given the extensive reporting of the matter in conservative circles and what should be the instincts of any informed delegate or other Republican office holder in response to the “progressive” pedigree of those pushing such largess and not understand it as anything other than to give them the ability to run a Democrat GOTV effort under official color and co-subsidized by any jurisdiction accepting such targeted grant — well it is just incredible.
One wonders if (charitably) the absence is an embarrassing oversight or the result of people afraid of embarrassing SOS Paul Pate who encouraged county auditors in 2020 to submit to the ruse. It cannot be that there was no example plank to work from by the District Platform Committee (typically composed of delegates from each county) because one such plank was part of the Scott County 2022 Platform. Section 10 , 12th item:
- We Support banning private funding of our elections.
We note that the proposed First District platform has been added to extensively (but not enough) from the ridiculously scant 2020 effort. The fetish of platitudinal platforms does not do justice to issues or citizen involvement unique to caucus systems like we have in Iowa.
The failure to include such a plank opposing private funding of elections cannot be seriously justified as something the legislature is soon to take care of. All manner of planks might be dropped using that excuse and others are still included in the proposal even though they have been dealt with legislatively. At this time an Iowa proscription on private money funneled through election officials has not been passed. Referring to HF2526 which includes a number of election related matters to the Iowa Code Sec 43.20 the “no private money provision” reads: (Bold our emphasis)
Sec. 5. NEW SECTION. 49.17 Conduct of elections — funding.
271. The state commissioner or a county commissioner or
28political subdivision of the state shall only accept funding
29from the following sources for the purposes of conducting an
30election:
31a. Lawful appropriations of public funds from the government
32of the United States.
33b. Lawful appropriations of public funds from the state of
34Iowa.
35c. Lawful appropriations of public funds from a political
-2-1subdivision of the state for the conduct of an election in the
2political subdivision.
The state commissioner, a county commissioner, or a
4 political subdivision of the state shall not accept or expend
5 a grant, gift, or other source of funding from a source other
6 than those listed in subsection 1, including from a private
7 person, corporation, partnership, political party, nonparty
8 political organization, committee as defined in section
9 68A.102, or other organization for the purpose of conducting
10 an election.
11 3. This section does not prohibit the state commissioner or
12 a county commissioner or political subdivision from issuing and
13 collecting fees as otherwise provided by law.
14 4. This section does not apply to the contribution of a
15 building for use as a polling place pursuant to section 49.21.
I plan to attend the District Convention (I am not a delegate) but hope to be able to circulate or induce a delegate to circulate an amendment to the platform addressing the “Zuckerberg money” issue. If you are attending please support the effort. If others have taken this up then I would support that effort instead.
There are other matters the platform misses that I hope are addressed as amendments. In the draft, nothing is said about a number of current items that ought to be addressed including, in this time of food insecurity and great inflation, the use of corn acreage for ethanol instead of food, the boondoggle of wind farms.
While there is a resolution calling for public neutrality by RPI Central Committee members regarding primary candidates and presidential caucuses, implicating such activity as untoward, there is nothing to chastise Republican office holders for their failures to support and even opposition to platform planks.
Paul Pate ought to be held in contempt for his promoting of CTCL money knowing the pedigree of the proponents.
And I do not think it is just me in considering that Chuck Grassley’ and the entire Iowa congressional delegation were as weak as they could be regarding the election fraud of 2020 and their pathetic statements regarding the events of January 6, 2021 parroting distortions and beltway thumb-sucking about an overwhelmingly peaceful demonstration.
By January 6, observation of the general election results of 2020 exhibited strong compelling video and other evidence including sworn testimony regarding fraudulent activity using mechanisms or a frequency that could produce large numbers of illegal votes, extreme violations of transparency inimical to confidence in the vote, executive enactments in violation of state constitutions, incredible anomalies and patterns in key states sufficient to alter electoral college outcomes. That the Iowa delegation in Congress saw their only role in the matter of election integrity as the ministerial rubber-stamping of something so suspect, so engendering of division, it was unbecoming of this great republic and the history and laws of this land.
Such a failure to take any action to merely delay the counting of electoral ballots pending an audit and for state legislatures to come into session and examine how valid the vote was in their states as submitted by Senators Cruz, Cotton and other senators well versed in the Constitution, federal regulations and American history — gave all appearances of ushering in the most damaging subversive governing regime possible.
And pardon my further venting from these pages:
Miller-Meeks votes to go along with Pelosi January 6th commission
Marco Rubio’s scathing commentary about Jan. 6 inquisition bill Miller-Meeks supported
Will Senators Grassley and Ernst apologize for parroting lies and spin about Jan 6th.
Comparative justice: Officer involved shooting Jan. 6 in D.C. and April 11 in Minnesota
Miller Meeks has not responded to a single email sent to her; there have been many sent regarding votes pending. Her email contact site asks if you would like a response, not even an anodyne reply by a staffer. She is worse with constituent relations than Leach or Loebsack and has the voting record to match.