Thread: I hope MinuteMen hand this POST HASTE!!

Rove will have a field day with this if they don't.


http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/pruden.htm
Wesley Pruden “Pruden on Politics” Washington Times

Keeping the trust is the first order
July 28, 2006

The first thing a Minuteman has to learn is to keep his powder dry. The bigger the powder magazine, the bigger the risk of getting it all wet.

This is the lesson that Chris Simcox, the president of the volunteers on the border, who have almost single-handedly aroused the nation's conscience about the tide of illegal immigration, seems to have missed in basic training.

The "powder" is the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Americans have contributed to the Minutemen, who have been exceedingly helpful to the U.S. Border Patrol. The careful, rigorous reporting of Jerry Seper in The Washington Times reveals that the Minutemen management has not made its records of fundraising and finances public in more than a year, raising the hackles and suspicions of several top Simcox aides. Some of them have resigned, protesting the loose management of the money.

If money is the mother's milk of politics, money is the meat and potatoes for the Minutemen, who have succeeded in doing something about the hell on the border. A measure of their success is how the Bush administration is now working hard to appear to be taking border chaos seriously. Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, marched up Capitol Hill yesterday to tell the House Appropriations Committee that the Border Patrol no longer releases apprehended illegals after stopping them at the border. This policy, called "catch-and-release," was as goofy as it sounds. "That means we no longer release them into the general population, but we hold them until we send them back."

Catching the illegal border crossers only to release them made sense to no one but a bureaucrat; it certainly makes no sense to the Border Patrol, which can only enforce policy made by the bureaucrats. So it's a measure of "progress" that the bureaucrats say they no longer insist on goofiness.

But tiny increments are meaningless, and smack of an attempt to hoodwink the House into thinking that it can safely turn to the amnesty provisions of immigration reform that the administration and the Senate doggedly refuse to call amnesty. Mr. Chertoff told the House committee yesterday that the government is finally serious about prosecuting employers who exploit easily abused illegal alien labor. "We are finally bringing a big stick to the issue of interior enforcement," he said.

The public is likely to be even more skeptical than Congress, which has been getting an earful from its constituency in the immigration hearings held in various cities across the country. This is the public skepticism that has made such heroes of the Minutemen that Americans have dug into their pockets for $1.6 million so far. Never have Americans paid such voluntary taxes so cheerfully, and taxes are clearly what the contributions are, not necessary if the government had been doing its job over the past decade.

All the more reason that Chris Simcox and his lieutenants must account for the money and explain what the Declaration Alliance, the grandly named political public-relations firm in Herndon, has done with the money it has collected and disbursed in the name of the Minutemen. The Declaration Alliance is the creation of Alan Keyes, the smooth-talking conservative activist and sometime pol, and is meant to provide mass mailings, public relations and "a fully accredited and independent audit." So far no one in the Minutemen management has said how much has been paid to the Declaration Alliance, and what the Minutemen got for the money.

There may ample explanation once the explanation is forthcoming, but Mr. Simcox and Mr. Keyes surely understand that perception is reality, and trust once abused is trust destroyed. The landscape is littered with the corpses of causes abused, sometimes by the well meaning (and sometimes by others).

Immigration is the hot-button issue of the fall congressional campaigns, as the members of Congress are learning. Americans are fed up with delay and dilly-dally, explanations and excuses that make no sense, and the Minutemen are the children of this widespread public frustration. All the more reason for the leadership of the Minutemen to get their finances in order. If they don't, they'll get a taste of their own powder.

Pruden on Politics runs Tuesdays and Fridays.

Xanadu,

Here's Chris Simcox's response a day later.

Minuteman Civil Defense Corps Responds to Washington Times

by Chris Simcox
Posted Jul 29, 2006

Recently, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, Inc. (MCDC), and our fiduciary accountability has been called into question in reports in the Washington Times newspaper. Its editors continue to misrepresent the facts and have purposely based their reports and editorials on information that is inaccurate.

They continue in their attempt to hold us to a different and improperly applied fiduciary standard than any other non-profit in the country. Jerry Seper and Wes Pruden seem not to understand the first, most basic matters of non-profit accounting and regulatory obligation. Further, Pruden absurdly describes Seper’s reporting as “careful, rigorous” when Seper has not spoken to at least two of his three “sources” on this matter in over a year, and he and his editors deliberately failed to disclose in their innuendos regarding “where our money is spent,” that tens of thousands of dollars was spent on full-page issues advocacy advertising in the Washington Times itself.

A year ago, people called us racists and vigilantes. We have overcome those falsehoods with an organizational performance of diligence, responsibility and excellent stewardship of the resources entrusted to us by our supporters and volunteers. Our careful spending and high standards in the field, combined with the generosity and faithfulness of our citizen patriot supporters, have allowed us to grow rapidly and effectively, consistent with our mission. This has been accomplished, in part, by aggressive advertising and outreach to people across the country, putting a spotlight on the state of lawlessness at our wide-open borders which our government continues to tolerate.

MCDC leadership from around the country has sent in statements of support and confidence, listing the financial subsidies, and scores of materials and equipment they have received for their border and state operations from MCDC national headquarters. Every authorized budget submitted from a state chapter has been covered in full, or exceeded. State leaders are very happy with the level of support our donors have afforded to us, and that we have afforded to them—although we could always do more with more funding. For all the support we are receiving, we are very grateful. We will continue in a responsible manner to fund and equip our border operations to help secure this nation’s borders in the face of the gross negligence and failure of our federal government to perform its primary duty.

The leadership of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and its officers continue to have full faith and confidence in American Caging, Inc., who acts as our comptroller, and in our other accountability and legal professionals and their adherence to federal regulation in their handling of our financial matters. ACI’s professional standards, and their statement of support for MCDC’s mission and organizational performance standard follow. We will continue to meet every federal and state regulatory and reporting deadline before us.

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Copyright © 2006 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

When you're dealing with other people's money, you need to be extremely careful to avoid even the perception of impropriety. Especially when you know that your opponents are just waiting for you to do something they can attack you about.

The careful, rigorous reporting of Jerry Seper in The Washington Times reveals that the Minutemen management has not made its records of fundraising and finances public in more than a year, raising the hackles and suspicions of several top Simcox aides. Some of them have resigned, protesting the loose management of the money.

There are at least four incorrect statements in just those two sentences.

1) "The careful, rigorous reporting of Jerry Seper" may have been careful. It may have been rigorous. Unfortunately, it was not accurate.

2) "...the Minutemen management has not made its records of fundraising and finances public in more than a year..." Chris Simcox denies this in a letter to MCDC personnel. The records could have been handled better in the past, and they are being handled better now than in the beginning.

3) "...raising the hackles and suspicions of several top Simcox aides. Some of them have resigned..." No, they were fired, and as a result, they took revenge by going to an anti-enforcement TV station to air a hit piece.

4) "...protesting the loose management of the money." Chris Simcox says their judgment is not correct. There are controls by third party licensed accountants who are not involved with the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

"Perceptions of impropriety" are hard to avoid when a hostile mainstream media TV station with a pro-illegal alien bias gives more credibility to sour grapes from fired ex-employees than to audited financial reports.