Dec 302013
 

Originally Posted Oct 06 ,2011:

The Capitol Resource Institute now finds itself embroiled in a politically-motivated FPPC investigation. The CRI is trying to qualify the SB48 referendum…

Leave it to the Organization Equality California to light up Karen England and the Capitol Resource Institute. CalWatchdog covered the story here and I have pulled out some excerpts:

The FPPC complaint charges that Capitol Resource Institute has been financially supporting the ballot initiative campaign. Karen England, executive eirector of CRI, said that is not the case. “Stop SB 48 leases office space from us,” she said. “They paid CRI up front for office rent and postage. And our employee was taken off the payroll and went on the the Stop SB 48 payroll right at the beginning of the campaign.” England said that she is even an unpaid volunteer for both CRI and the Stop SB 48 campaign.

When the Capitol Resource Institute ripped off the Prop 8 Campaign for $120k and I had a look at the campaign finance reports – the same pattern enumerated above repeated then. They used a “popular” issue on the right to raise money with and effectively paid the CRI’s bills with the money raised. (Click here to see my investigative report on the Capitol Resource Institute’s fake Prop 8 website)

But England said the campaign has not done anything to violate the campaign laws. “We have gotten thousands of small donations from people all over the state,” England said. “We haven’t hit the $1,000 or $5,000 thresholds for reportable contributions.”

This means that the CRI’s latest fundraiser is not going so well as they have not collected any substantial donations or those donating are giving checks below the threshold so they aren’t written about…

The CRI / Stop SB48 Campaign is claiming they have enough signatures gathered to qualify the initiative. I have seen little or no campaign activity from them at all, which gives me pause.

The moral to this complaint against the CRI is that their executive director has pointed the self-righteous finger at her political adversaries alleging many of the same complaints that the Capitol Resource Institute is now beset with. What’s worse for the CRI is that Equality California probably has far more evidence for their FPPC complaint than the anonymous blog comment that was the spiritual foundation for the rampage jihad against the Placer County Republican Central Committee.

What comes around goes around – and this is sad, because the SB48 referendum is a righteous cause.

 

Why the AB1266 Referendum Looks Dubious Part III – Look What They Did to Prop 8!

 Capitol Resource Institute  Comments Off on Why the AB1266 Referendum Looks Dubious Part III – Look What They Did to Prop 8!
Dec 282013
 

Enter www.lavendarliberal.com – this is a homosexual activist website designed to attack anyone who supported Prop 8. If you click on the block8 link – it takes you to a searchable database where you can look up anyone who has donated money to most pro-family campaigns across America. The site is replete with vicious comments about the donors as well.

In 2008, the Placer GOP ran a paid Prop 8 walking program. It was designed to protect the identities of those donating and participating. The people involved were all California Republican Assembly officers (remember the group Karen tried to take over?) and officers of the Placer GOP at the same time.

Karen England and it appears her friends in the CRI attacked this program as evidence of money laundering, culminating in an 7/7/2011 front page ABOVE THE FOLD story in the Bee where one of the CRI’s major donors – State Senator Doug LaMalfa (Now a Congressman) attacked the Placer GOP. Her psychotic rampage was listened to by local Tea Party Members and Liberal Anti-8 people like Auburn Council-member Mike Holmes and Lincoln City Council-member Spencer Short who all to this day believe that the people involved broke the law. (Click here for an expose’ on the attacks against the Placer GOP + links to the donations from LaMalfa)

Remember – these same people sued the Conservative Group California Republican Assembly Twice in their attempt to take it over! Holmes, Short and the other liberals on the Placer GOP Central Committee are still trying to this day to “get” the people that Karen targeted in her rampage. The victims / Accused? CRA Officers including George Park, Tom Hudson and Jeff Atteberry. (visit www.californiarepublicanassembly.com they are all listed)

Apparently, the ultimate goal of the Capitol Resource Institute is to eliminate competition in the Prop 8 arena. The pattern of financial motivations by Karen England is well established – and attacking the Placer GOP’s Prop 8 program in an attempt to expose the names of all who participated anonymously would certainly prevent such an effort from happening again.

Karen England registered a domain in 2008 – www.yesonproposition8.com. This was a website that was put together by the Capitol Resource Institute to raise money amongst other things. I was also told that the Capitol Resource Institute refused to participate with the real prop 8 campaign – www.protectmarriage.com and that they sent out numerous fundraising emails actually competing with the real prop 8 campaign!

Lavendar Liberal was kind enough to leave a blog post active with screenshots of the fake prop 8 website. It also proves a direct linkage to the Capitol Resource Institute in the creation and maintenance of the website.

Your intrepid blogger cross-referenced campaign finance reports that show what happened with the money raised by the fake prop 8 website run by Karen England and the Capitol Resource Institute.

Please also note that most all of the money raised by the CRI was from small dollar donors – suggesting that hundreds of people were fooled by this website.

The link to the campaign finance report is here for your reference.

A close look reveals this:

They held back $20,000 which was sent to the Capitol Resource Institute itself after the election was over. This is odd as most campaigns finish in debt – this suggests to me some pre-meditation with regards to the plans for the money all along.

Of the remaining $104,732.36 raised – it was spent as follows:

Around $31,000 in expenses of Capitol Resource Family Impact – a related entity to the Capitol Resource Institute. From looking at the report – it appears that over 40% of the money raised benefited the Capitol Resource Institute directly or indirectly.

In addition – there are several payments to LaTanya Wright, who works for the Capitol Resource Institute. (Side note – Wright was intended to be a alternate from the Seal Beach Republican Assembly in the attempted CRA coup in 2011. Wright lives in Roseville)

Meredith Turney also shows up on the report – at that time, she was employed by the Capitol Resource Institute as well.

The Capitol Resource Institute’s Yes on Prop 8 campaign sent out several emails as well. A 36-page document is linked here with several of the emails that were sent out in competition with the real prop 8 campaign. The comments at the beginning of several of the emails are revealing:

“This is the Capitol Resource Institute trying to skim money off of Prop 8″

“This is very fishy – I almost donated money to this site…”

“It appears Karen England is at it again, read on”

I spoke with a few people off the record and they were adamant that the Capitol Resource Institute refused to be cohesive with any of the other interests behind Prop 8 – and openly competed with the real Prop 8 campaign.

Similar to their behavior with the Prop 8 debacle – they have refused help from sources I have spoken to, preferring instead to control every aspect of the AB1266 referendum themselves. The Pattern Remains.

Given that the link between the CRI and the AB1266 campaign is undeniable, why would anyone reading the above + the two previous posts about their history believe that their AB1266 Campaign was legit?

Dec 232013
 

Contrary to what some think, I still have friends and lots of them.

I have talked to people over the years that have volunteered on the “efforts” that the Capitol Resource Institute has conducted. People on the CRI e-mail list for example, seem to magically get the emails for the various referenda (aka fundraisers) that they are running. Quoting an earlier post:

1. CRI employees were apparently taken off the CRI payroll and paid through the campaign.

2. The address of the Stop SB48 campaign and the CRI were the same for all intents and purposes.

3. There was no public accounting of what was done with the money raised – only scrutiny and research in to the fake prop 8 website exposed what was done.

4. According to volunteers that were present in the Stop SB48 headquarters – the effort was disorganized and there was no serious, coordinated or sustained effort to validate signatures that were being gathered. In addition – it appeared to the same source that the “staff” didn’t really seem to care about what was coming in the mail – and the error rate on the petitions was well over 50%.

This would lead one to believe that the Stop SB48 effort was a fundraiser for the Capitol Resource Institute and not a serious effort to do anything.

That was the SB48 effort.

In the stop AB1266 effort – there were similarities, but the petition gathering effort was much more effective. This is likely because when they brought in Frank Schubert after-the-fact and after the clock was ticking wasting valuable time, it appears that they realized that their credibility was on the line.

About the same time Schubert was brought in – mysteriously, Karen England disappeared publicly.

There were numerous mistakes that appear to have been borne out of a desire by CRI to keep total control of the effort. It appears that there were drafting errors and delays in the title and summar.

Inexplicibly, it took a couple weeks to get a petition together after approval. There was no real, coordinated effort to line up assets to have people hitting the ground running once the petitions were ready.

My sources that helped with the AB1266 effort indicated that the Mormons were not involved in this effort and others via hearsay indicated that the petitioner, Gina Gleason, a long-time friend and ally of Karen’s was bad-mouthing Mormons. Anyone that remembers the Prop 8 effort remembers that the LDS Church was huge in that effort.

Where were the mormons? Why did I hear stories that they were shunned (or worse)?

I have an email exchange where I tried to connect the CRA with the effort. I sent the contact info of the CRA President to the campaign – no follow up. Worse, the person we apparently were supposed to call participated in the aforementioned lawsuits against CRA and founded an organization a couple years ago to compete with CRA!

Were they ever serious about engaging the CRA – the largest and most effective Conservative group in the state?

It is not just my opinion – another volunteer on the effort had this to say:

The volunteer effort came up short?

Volunteers collected 400,000 signatures, a huge number for a volunteer effort in the short time afforded for a referendum drive. As one of those volunteers, we did our part.

It was the paid signature gathering that came up woefully short. Those leading this effort are again responsible for wasting thousands and thousands of volunteer hours for nothing.

BTW… Two points.

Most of the local volunteers believed CRI and Karen England were leading Privacy for All Students. CRI and Karen were the only names stated in connection with the referendum. When I mentioned the other persons or groups involved, the universal reaction was, “Who are they?” “Who is Frank Schubert?”

Volunteers in (my area) were told in mid October that the volunteer effort was on track to meet its goal. So what happened in late October/ early November?

In my opinion, Privacy for All Students has been running a face saving campaign to deflect attention away from THEIR epic failure in leadership, organization, and fundraising on the referendum.

Meantime – the CRI er. AB1266 Referendum keeps sending out those emails for more cash.

Next up – the retrospective on where the money went in past efforts.

Dec 212013
 

Those of you watching the AB1266 Referendum know that on 12/20 – they had Pacific Justice Institute file a lawsuit for them today. I suggest that they (the 1266 people) had PJI do it as I have known for years that Brad Dacus is very close to Tim Lefever and Karen England. (I briefly lived in Brad Dacus’ house until he got married years ago)

Emails and conversations with activists show that there was little, if any separation in people’s minds between AB1266 and Capitol Resource Institute. The steering committee included three people with long-time ties to CRI (Tim Lefever being one of them). Since CRI had exactly similar patterns with similar fundraising er. referendum efforts in the past – (we will recount those soon) all the similarities were present. These include subletting space so the addresses of the referendum and the CRI were almost the same, and paying “expenses” of CRI employees (perhaps their salaries based on what we’ve seen in records) out of said effort and apparently using common email lists to solicit donations for said effort.

Another detail – the law firm retained to do this lawsuit for PJI on behalf of CRI/AB1266? Sweeney and Greene.

This is the same law-firm that was retained by Karen England to threaten this blog and was also used to sue the CRA twice. Yes – these paragons of conservative values sued the California Republican Assembly twice – in an attempt to take it over.

It has gotten back to this blogger that the people behind the AB1266 referndum who may or may not include Karen England and Frank Schubert have been calling donors both in an attempt to sabotage fundraising to qualify a back-up initiative when this mismanaged disaster fails to qualify and claiming that people are lying about Karen England.

It is amazing that a woman with such a pattern of psychotic behavior is still obsessed with what people think about her. (So much so that she spent several hundred dollars paying a lawyer to threaten us)

The AB1266 people did try to separate Karen England from the campaign (somewhat).

However, the past history with failing to qualify a referendum against SB777 and SB48 caused many to be skeptical of this effort.

Worse, the Capitol Resource Institute appears to have filched $120,000 off of the Prop 8 effort in 2008, refused to cooperate with other Prop 8 aligned groups and an investigation revealed that over half the money appears to have gone straight back in to the CRI.

In politics, I have learned that people have to learn the hard way. They always have to experience it themselves.

So – if anyone reading this blog is questioning, in future posts, I will be laying out the myriad of evidence that both Karen England and the CRI itself appear to be frauds.

Please note that I am writing these blogs knowing full well that the thin-skinned Karen England has a sue-happy reputation despite the fact that it is always others suing to advance her interest.

The latest lawsuit where the PJI is suing Tulare and Mono County to count their petitions is in my opinion a politically-timed effort to save face by the proponents of this train wreck.

If they really cared about overturning AB1266 – they would be throwing their support behind an initiative. However, the history – which will be recounted here – appears to be the reason why they are pulling out all stops to save their credibility.

 

In Response to the Psychotic Rampage of El Do DA and the Bonus Scandal – Call goes out for Honest Candidates

 Vern Pierson  Comments Off on In Response to the Psychotic Rampage of El Do DA and the Bonus Scandal – Call goes out for Honest Candidates
Dec 192013
 

How often do you see it in local office? Local electeds slide by without a challenge.

In El Dorado County – their DA, Vern Pierson appears to be a meglomaniac using his office to prosecute political adversaries. It also appears to be a jam job related to the grand jury. Like a lot of counties, the El Do Grand Jury appears to have been polluted by someone looking for revenge. More on that soon.

A group called COVAC put out a call for Honest operators to run for office:

Dear Fellow Citizens:

Do you believe something should be done about the adversarial political climate in El Dorado County? So do we!

Please join with us to find and encourage honest and fair candidates to bravely run for elected office. We formed our organization, the Committee of Vigilance Against Corruption, to remove what we believe are corrupt incumbents abusing our elected County Offices to financially enrich themselves with bonuses and “pay differentials” beyond the publicly advertised salaries of Office; who are creating a climate of fear and intimidation with County employees and local businesses; or are using the crushing power of their Government Office to purse agendas and vendettas against personal and political enemies.

Our priority targets for removal from office during the upcoming June 2014 Primary Election are four-term incumbent Auditor – Controller Joe Harn and two-term incumbent District Attorney Vern Pierson who have committed all three offenses. We also believe other elected officials caught-up in the County’s infamous Bonus Scandal, such as seven-term incumbent Treasurer-Tax Collector C.L. Raffety; deserve removal for also taking tens of thousands of dollars in non-performance related “pay differentials” each year. However, replacing the worst two offenders, Harn and Pierson, are our priority.

Whether you call their conduct in office bad judgment, un-acceptable behavior, outright corruption, or white-collar crime, we know that once our community learns the awful truth about Harn and Pierson, our educated voters will sweep them from office. Unless however, honest and fair challengers come forward, we will continue to see the same despicable Chicago-style politics that now dominate our County for the next five years.

It is up to US! –You and me – to clean-up our County Government. In 2010 our County’s voters rejected Harn and Pierson’s crony candidate for Sheriff and chose an honest and fair reformer instead. Six months from now, in June 2014, we have an excellent opportunity to elect two more badly needed reformers. Right now, we need at least, one CPA and one Lawyer to stand tall for clean government and run for County Office and become our next Auditor- Controller and District Attorney. If you, or any other good people you know, are brave enough to come forward and be one of our next reformers, please contact us at info@covac.info.
Yours for Clean County Government,
Greg Post
Chairman
(530) 676-3441
www.COVAC.info

Someone please file.