Peter DeFazio is so friggin awesome.
Carla Axtman
As Jesse noted already, the shadowy and essentially anonymous Concerned Taxpayers of America have been taking potshots at Congressman Peter DeFazio, with all sorts of nebulous accusations. DeFazio has always been an ass kicker, and he's not taking this one lying down.
Over at Huffington Post, Amanda Terkel reports that DeFazio sought out his accusers--and attempted to confront them:
DeFazio decided to confront Concerned Taxpayers on Friday, intending to deliver a letter requesting that the group make its donors public. "Since you intend to try and buy Art Robinson a congressional seat, by raising and spending 'unlimited amounts of money,' the voters of Oregon are entitled to know who is picking up the tab," wrote DeFazio.
The Huffington Post, along with a couple of journalists from The Washington Post, accompanied DeFazio on the short walk from the Rayburn House Office Building over to Concerned Taxpayers' headquarters, listed as 10 E St, SE, which turned out to be a small grey townhouse. DeFazio had to ring the doorbell, knock, and yell through the mail slot before someone came to the door. The man identified himself as Mike Omegna and he told the congressman that he had never heard of Miller or Concerned Taxpayers, nor was his voice on the organization's voicemail...
Terkel's piece then goes on to post a transcript of the incident, which you can read here while you feast your eyes on the video below showing Mike Omegna lying to DeFazio's face about his role with Concerned Taxpayers. Not only is Omegna's name and voice on the organization's voicemail, Omegna works for Jamestown Associates. FEC reports show that Concerned Taxpayers of America's treasurer is Jason Miller, also with Jamestown Associates.
Yeah...sure...it's all coincidence. What a bunch of dirty buggers.
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3:42 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
I wish I could vote for him on the basis of that stunt alone. Way to go Pete.
4:28 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
Thanks for the video Carla. There is a reason Peter DeFazio is re-elected term after term in his district. We just viewed a great sample of the way DeFazio ticks.
4:41 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
But you see, if you force these creeps into disclosing who is paying for this crap, why then we all lose or our freedom of speech... or something.
5:31 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
If they are so ashamed of what you are saying that they must remain anonymous, then maybe they shouldn't be saying it.
6:08 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
Agreed.
11:33 a.m.
Sep 25, '10
Brush up on your American history. You just excluded a large number of brave patriots from free speech back in the late 1700s. Had this law been in place, The Republic as we know it, would never have existed.
3:32 p.m.
Sep 25, '10
This isn't the 1700's and I'll take my chances
4:31 p.m.
Sep 25, '10
That seems to be common place these days are people who think they know best and will take chances with others liberties and apply the law in unequal ways. What favors you today, will come back to bite you twice as hard tomorrow.
10:54 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
You continue to distort the issues. Separate the full disclosure issue from the blocking certain people's speech? Why do you continue to tie them together as if they are one and the same?
You can require full disclosure without blocking people's speech. Correct? Deal with full disclosure first; something that virtually everyone can agree to.
11:10 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
Not distorting anything.
s I noted above, the DISCLOSE Act would increase transparency of corporate and special-interest money in national political campaigns. It would require organizations involved in political campaigning to simply disclose the identity of the large donors, and to reveal their identities in any political ads they fund. It would also bar foreign corporations, government contractors and TARP recipients from making political expenditures.
Notably, the bill would exempt all long-standing, non-profit organizations with more than 500,000 members (such as the NRA) from the part about having to disclose their donor lists.
So please tell me how I have been distorting the issue?
11:11 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
That should be, "As I noted in another thread..."
10:35 p.m.
Sep 25, '10
"Yep. Every single GOP Senator voted against public knowing who will be buying their influence with them in the future, with the exception of Hutchison (R-TX), Murkowski, both of whom didn't vote at all." - implies the bill only deals with disclosing.
"But you see, if you force these creeps into disclosing who is paying for this crap, why then we all lose or our freedom of speech... or something." - as if the bill only deals with disclosure?
In later posts you mention both aspects of the bill - so good recovery.
11:30 a.m.
Sep 25, '10
#1 The bill does not apply equally. It is allowing larger and older pacs to slip by this regulation. You have mentioned this before I know, but if we pass a law it must apply to everyone the same. Foreigners could just as easily donate to one of these larger exempt pacs as they could a smaller PAC.
<h1>2 The 90 day gag on free speech by PACs is extended to 120 days (except of course if you are exempted). This is outside the scope of legitimate government. No one should be prohibited from criticizing the government left or right winged. (I do not support the banning of speech by government employees for the record, so please do not respond to me with that as an answer)Tit for tat is not justice. It is mob rule. #3 now that we have established this is not about stopping foreign influence (otherwise they would have included everyone) It is about attacking people instead of ideas. If you can't refute what someone is saying, you attack the speaker. The fact is this country was founded by anonymous writers who attacked the King with their pens. Without that right, our nation would still be British.</h1> <h1>4</h1>Requiring top donors to appear in ads they fund is absurd. Its an intimidation tactic. I am not too familiar with concerned tayers and what they said about Defazio. So I cannot say if it was correct or not. Instead of voting for more state power and coercion he should address the statements that were made towards him. Going to the little grey house is great, but he should respond with logic and reason to any attacks he is receiving. It does not matter who said it. Just like it did not matter who wrote to the papers back in colonial times to spark resistance. It did not matter who they were, it mattered what they said and any attempt to identify them would be agreed by all, a coercive tactic to silence them. This bill actually goes even further mandating silence 120 days before primaries and elections. I am not sure how legit an organization is that has a person who lies when confronted about who they are, but throwing free speech under the bus is not the way to deal with it. That will come back to haunt you.
5:40 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
I don't understand why the congressman is trying to violate the constitutional right to anonymous slander for billionaires...or something.
Is there to be no justice for the oppressed?
5:54 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
Great video. It shows exactly why the GOP doesn't want to pass the disclosure law, and why they got their houseboys on the Supreme Court to give special privileges to these "buggers" hiding in the corporate shadows. (It's great to cuss in British...., so much less vulgar.)
10:08 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
I'd like share some research on De Fazio's opponent that I did and posted on FB today.
RECOVERING FROM SHORT TERM MEMORY LOSS: Art Robinson was born in March of 1942. He did undergraduate work at Cal Tech at the time Linus Pauling was a faculty member. He resigned his post in 1972 and went into a partnership with Pauling at the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in Menlo Park, California in 1973. (He usually sets his full collaboration at 1961, though.) By 1978 there was a falling out with the two time Nobel Prize winner, Pauling, with Robinson now giving speeches at the Cato Institute deploring government funding for science. The sense is that Robinson thought Pauling was a poser but there is still a Linus Pauling Institute at OSU. See http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/ In 1980 he and his wife, and two children, moved to Oregon: he and she establishing the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and she home schooling the children. Two things arose from this: The OISM. Robinson lists Martin Kamen, and R. Bruce Merrifield as cofounders and listed as “faculty” on the web site. Kamen has been dead since 2002. More disturbing is Merrifield who not only is dead now but who won a Nobel Prize in 2004. I did not find anything if the research started with Merrifield that tied him to Robinson. You had this uneasy feeling about grandiosity and name dropping. Robinson Curriculum: When his wife died Robinson home schooled his then six children, later marketing to now 50-60K (probably fundamentalist Christian) children his curriculum which includes the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica and the 1611 edition of the King James Bible. "No one in our family ever questions the truth of the Lord's Word as provided to us in the Old and New Testaments of the King James Bible.” There was an incident where his daughter was told that she would have to take a humanities course called colloquium, which would be an an exercise "specifically designed to destroy her faith, her innocence, her self-respect, and her happiness in her way of life." He got this dropped by threatening an "an ever increasing telephone, fax, and letter campaign from his subscribers and his home schooler followers. He edits and publishes Access to Energy. http://www.accesstoenergy.com/view/ate/s41p1043.htmHe writes books, e.g. one with Dr. Gary North, who predicted that a Y2K roll over would precipitate severe disruption and perhaps even an economic collapse. North urged his readers to take "prudent" survivalist preparedness measures.
10:08 p.m.
Sep 24, '10
Part 2
He has held no political office or had any governmental employment. He thinks Congress operates largely outside the bounds of the Constitution. (He is not a lawyer, but we have Supreme Court Justices who are strict constructionists, so he is not entirely fringe.) He is running as a Republican but is endorsed by the Oregon Farm Bureau, Oregon Constitution Party, Oregon Libertarian Party, Oregon Right to Life, Independence Caucus, and Congressman Ron Paul. So there is the mix: Of course he wants: those crippling tax cuts ended; a repeal of Obamacare; there to be a rein in of tort litigation; a stop to illegal immigration; to prohibit the purchase of votes with tax-funded favors; to restore freedom to energy industries; to restore farm and forest industries and to fully staff the VA. I could not find a direct comment on social issues but he is endorsed by Oregon Right to Life and he is centered in the old and new testament, so I can’t imagine that he is anything but anti-choice and anti-gay. He is a signatory to a petition produced by the Discovery Institute, against Darwinism. One of the adjunct fellows there, Edwin Meese from the Heritage Foundation, came out against the opinion on the reversal of prop 8. His is a climate change skeptic which produced the Petition Project, a collection of supposedly 31,500 signatures of “scientists” who dispute the notion of man-made global warming. Because I lack good sense and having nothing better to do, I took 5 MDs from the list to verify their licenses (although I can’t see how an MD is qualified to speak about global warming) and some were there, some not and some were lapsed. This leaves out the whole Spice Girl and other bogus.signature controversy. You, too, can dig in. See the link below. I can only say, something is absolutely not right here. This person deserves an emphatic NO vote.
Global Warming Petition Project www.petitionproject.org
12:41 a.m.
Sep 25, '10
Way to go, Peter. Take names and kick butt. Another group hiding behind a fake name they probably got out of a focus group or marketing survey. If they truely had the courage of their convictions, they'd admit who they are.
1:38 a.m.
Sep 25, '10
Why is Representative DeFazio waging his campaign for an Oregon Congressional District in front of a small, grey townhouse in Washington DC? While he's busy with theater, Robinson and his supporters are knocking on doors and making phone calls ...
7:36 a.m.
Sep 25, '10
The more pertinent question: why anonymous people who have nothing to do with Oregon trying to wage a campaign against Peter DeFazio?
Perhaps Mr. Robinson might ask that question of those people in the small, grey townhouse--too. If he's in this to represent Oregon, I should think he'd be concerned about outsiders coming in to try and influence our elections.
Btw, the House is in session right now, which is why DeFazio is in DC. Y'know, doing that job we pay him to do.
4:20 p.m.
Sep 25, '10
Funny, I thought Congress met in Washington D.C.
7:13 a.m.
Sep 25, '10
Life's not fair in the 4th district they get Peter and here in the 2nd District we get Greg Walden. Ugh! Please donate to Joyce Seegers fro Congress Now!
7:15 a.m.
Sep 25, '10
Ack! Joyce Seegers for Congress
11:20 p.m.
Sep 25, '10
So proud that Peter DeFazio is my Representative in Congress.
11:26 p.m.
Sep 25, '10
Jason Miller used to work for Rudy Giuliani, Mark Sanford, George Allen and Oklahoma's Tom Coburn. Among others.
Secret Cash in Oregon http://wp.me/p5dEo-2uM