Tag: democrats

Ilhan Omar’s grifty and sordid reelection campaign

Ilhan Omar has spent $2.97 million on her reelection this year. If you set aside refunds and transfers, her operating expenditures are $2.59 million. Only five members of Congress have spent more on operating expenditures so far this cycle.

Where is all that money going?

Much of it is going to her husband.

In March, the congresswoman (who perpetually scolded anyone who inquired about her multiple marriages) married her top campaign consultant, Tim Mynett. Mynett’s ex-wife alleged in divorce filings that her husband and Omar were carrying on an affair while both were married. Why does the congresswoman’s extramarital affair matter?

For starters, marital fidelity and sexual ethics reflect on character, which matters for elected officials.

But also, when Omar is funneling the lion’s share of her fundraising to her paramour-turned-husband, it’s a matter of public corruption.

As of June 30, according to her campaign’s latest filing, Mynett’s firm, the E Street Group, has pocketed $1.04 million of her $2.59 million in operating expenditures. That means that 40% of every dollar donated to reelect Omar lands in the bank account of her husband’s firm.

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Tennessee lawmaker used federal funds to pay for wedding, lavish lifestyle, feds say

A Tennessee state senator was charged with swindling $600,000 in federal funds to pay for her wedding and finance a lavish lifestyle, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.

From 2015 to 2019, state Sen. Katrina Robinson is accused of stealing the money that was granted to The Healthcare Institute — a company she directed, according to prosecutors.

In addition to covering her wedding costs, Robinson, a Democrat from a Memphis district elected in 2018, is charged with using the funds to pay for her honeymoon and pay legal fees for her divorce, the feds charge.

With the stolen money the lawmaker also paid for her daughter’s 2016 Jeep Renegade, home improvements, a $500 Louis Vuitton handbag and invested in a snow cone business run by her children, prosecutors and the FBI said.

Robinson was charged with theft, embezzlement and wire fraud.

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Democrats Wimp Out on Federal Marijuana Legalization. Thanks, Joe Biden!

It’s 2020 and the leadership of the Democratic Party still cannot get it together on marijuana legalization, which two-thirds of Americans support.

Pew

According to Pew polling data, support for full legalization crossed the 50 percent threshold back in 2010 and has been growing ever since. Much like support for gay marriage recognition, this seems to be a permanent cultural shift in attitudes.

But unlike the Democratic Party’s embrace of gay marriage, its leadership cannot seem to line up behind marijuana legalization, even as the Black Lives Matter and criminal justice reform movements highlight precisely how the drug war has led to the overpolicing and harassment of black communities.

Marijuana Moment reports that on Monday the Democratic National Committee rejected an amendment to put a plank supporting marijuana legalization into the party’s platform. The final vote against, 50-106, is almost a perfect inversion of the two-thirds of the public who want legalization.

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