OFFICIAL ENDORSEMENT: Our First Campaign Contribution of Election 2014

Earlier tonight, Cahnman's Musings attended a fundraiser for Katrina Pierson's U.S. House campaign.  We gave the candidate a (very) modest donation.  It was an easy call for a fantastic candidate.

Katrina spoke in more depth about her background than we'd previously heard. Born to a teenage mother who chose life, Katrina was also a teenage mother who chose life.  This makes sense, considering the last time we saw Katrina was at the Capitol during the abortion debate.

Having grown up in a family on welfare, Katrina was determined not to fall back into that trap when she had her own son at 19.  Katrina did things the hard way, but the right way.  It took her a decade to graduate college (working two jobs most of that time), but she made it without blood money from Washington D.C. or Austin.

Having survived the welfare system, Katrina is determined to promote economic opportunity.  Katrina understands that a strong education is the key to economic success, and that local control is the key to a strong education.  Thus, Katrina's #1 policy objective is to remove the Federal government from education.

Cahnman's Musings wishes we'd recorded Katrina's remarks; unfortunately, our phone was in our bag in the other room.

Katrina Pierson is one of those people (like Toby Marie Walker) we're not sure when we met.  We've been friends on Facebook for years, and we met face-to-face along the way.  We're honored to endorse her campaign and support it financially.

Katrina Pierson is currently running for the United States House in the 32nd district of Texas against the linguini spined Pete Sessions; you can support her campaign here.

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Katrina's 2009 "No President Is Going to Change Your Life Circumstances" Speech



Update: Katrina mentioned that Rafael Cruz spoke after her that day.

Will Progress Texas Apologize for (at best) mischaracterizing the IRS Scandal?!?

The other day, we called out Progress Texas for claiming they received similar treatment from the IRS as Tea Party groups.  We linked to their IRS application and the application of the Waco Tea party along with highlights from other Tea Party-type applications.  In response, Progress Texas retreated into semantics.

We were going to drop the matter, but that was before Friday's bombshell U.S. House hearing.

Details that emerged in that hearing (and other news reports we've seen the past 24 hours) belie Progress Texas' claim that they received similar scrutiny:

• Was Progress Texas ever asked to detail the contents of their prayers?!? No.

• Did any members of Progress Texas have their personal businesses audited?!?  No.

• Was Progress Texas ever asked to provide the names of every person they trained?!?  No.

At best, Progress Texas mischaracterized the scrutiny they received relative to Tea Party groups.

The honorable thing would be for Progress Texas to apologize and admit they were (at best) premature in claiming similar treatment; we'll see what happens.

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Facebook: Progress Texas
Twitter: @ProgressTX 

Update: Seriously, Progress Texas, similar treatment?!?


Update II:
In response to reading this post on my Facebook page, Toby Marie Walker wrote: "The answer is "no" however you can pass along to them that I gave all their info to Oversight since they too were asked illegal questions."

Did Progress Texas fib about the IRS scandal?!?

Yesterday, Progress Texas claimed that they received identical treatment to Tea Party groups when they applied for tax-exempts status; Progress Texas made the following three claims:

• While the IRS was screening Tea Party groups, the agency was headed by Doug Shulman - a George W. Bush appointee
• Many Tea Party groups operate like political PACs or political parties - which is not allowed under law
• It took us at Progress Texas 479 days to have our tax-exempt status approved, and we support the due diligence

Today, Robbie Cooper of Urban Grounds points out that Progress Texas received a standard set of IRS follow-up questions (*), not the detailed inquisitions sent to Tea Party Groups.

You can read the request sent to Progress Texas here.

You can read the request sent to Waco Tea Party here.

Bottom Line: Progress Texas was asked standard follow-up questions by the IRS (*) and had their application approved in a little over a year; Tea Party groups were given a proctology exam and many are still awaiting approval 3+ years later.

* which, in the opinion of Cahnman's Musings, are already waaay too intrusive.

Update: Fox 7 Austin has a great piece on the Waco Tea Party Case here:


Update II: Progress Texas has updated their original post to use the word 'similar' instead of 'the same;' without getting into semantics, a little over a year compared to 3+ years AND the two questionnaires speak for themselves.

Update III: An earlier version of this post contained a link to this account from the American Center for Law and Justice; with Progress Texas playing word games, we recommend you compare those questions with the Progress Texas request linked above and judge for yourself.

IRS Messes with Friends of Cahnman's Musings

Last week, the IRS apologized for specifically targeting Tea Party and 9/12 groups; today, Glenn Beck had two friends of Cahnman's Musings on to discuss their experience.

Maria Acosta, head of Central Texas 9/12 project, is a close personal friend.

We've also known Toby Marie Walker, head of the Waco Tea Party, for years; we've been a guest on her radio show in the past. While we are not as close with Toby as we are with Maria, Toby is also rad!  For the record, there is no-one, outside of the candidate himself (and his father) who did more to get Ted Cruz elected last year than Toby Marie Walker.



Highlights:

• This is far more intrusive than Watergate.

• At 2:42, you can see Sunshine State Sarah (of Texas) to the viewer's immediate left of Maria.

• Waco Tea Party has had to keep track of thousands of pieces of paper.

• CenTex 9/12 was asked to give the IRS a login.

• These IRS agent's are trained specialists.

Although, perhaps this will end well; this evening, Toby posted the following message to her facebook page:

Today the Governor called me....Gov. Perry asked me about the IRS story, I explained what they were doing to us. I told him they were picking on us, and he told me "Well, that ticks me off and I'm going to go pick back." LOL Thank you Governor!

 This is an amazing story, and if it leads to the administration's comeuppance, that will be amazing!!!