Thread: Ron Paul Excluded From Iowa Forum

Iowans for Tax Relief and Iowa Christian Alliance will host a presidential candidates forum on Saturday, June 30th in Des Moines. Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Sam Brownback, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Tommy Thompson, and Tom Tancredo will participate.

Ron Paul, however, will not participate. Why? Because he wasn’t invited. Campaign chairman Kent Snyder elaborates:

"We need you to get them to change their minds." Contact the sponsors:

Edward Failor
Iowans for Tax Relief
2610 Park Avenue
Muscatine, Iowa 52761
Phone: 563-288-3600 or 877-913-3600
Fax: 563-264-2413
E-mail: itr@taxrelief.org

Steve Sheffler, President
Iowa Christian Alliance
939 Office Park Road, Suite 115
West Des Moines, Iowa 50265
Phone: 515-225-1515
Fax: 515-225-1826
E-mail: slscheffler@iowachristian.com

http://www.dailypaul.com
-----------------------------------------------
The event is co-sponsored by the following:
Coldwell Banker Mid America Group, Realtors, FairTax.org,
Krishna Engineering Consultants, Inc, & Light Expressions by Shaw

Online Petition for Iowa Debate Participation
On June 19th, 2007 actsmart says:
Please sign the petition at the following URL
http://www.petitiononline.com/rpwi2008/petition.html

http://www.dailypaul.com/node/380#comments

I noticed Duncan Hunter's name is missing too. I wonder if he was invited?

I guess it's safe to assume Guilliani and McCain were invited since they're considered top tier candidates. I want to know why Duncan Hunter and Paul weren't invited!

I sent an email to: Steve Sheffler, President Iowa Christian Alliance

For the record, Hunter is rated 100% by the Christian Coalition with a pro-family voting record. (Dec 2003)

http://www.dailypaul.com/node/380#comment-1541

I think this may be the reason why:

On June 19th, 2007 rdenner says:

Figured it out finally
Makes sense now at least.
Here are two links
http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipi ... ientID=585
http://www.mediatransparency.org/person ... oleID=9618

First is to the man talked about in the Ron Paul alert. His name is Failor, Edward D.. He is the director(as is his son), of the Iowa Tax Relief..
Follow his steps back

""""Institution: American Legislative Exchange Council
Year: 2004
Person: Failor, Edward D (all roles)
Role: P E Secretary
Hrs/week: 1
City: Washington
State: DC
Postal code: 20036
Source: 990
Part V """"""
2004 he's part of american Legislative council
Here is info on that.

Established in 1973 by Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, among others, ALEC's purpose is to reach out to state office holders. In the words of ALEC's executive director, Sam Brunelli:

"ALEC's goal is to ensure that these state legislators are so well informed, so well armed, that they can set the terms of the public policy debate, that they can change the agenda, that they can lead. This is the infrastructure that will reclaim the states for our movement."

ALEC has the financial support of more than 200 corporations including Coors, Amway, IBM, Ford, philip Morris, Exxon, Texaco and Shell Oil. William Bennett, Jack Kemp, John Sununu, and George Bush have all addressed ALEC sessions in recent years.

When ALEC began, it comprised only a handful of right-wing legislators; by 1991, it had grown into a clearinghouse of information for 2, 400 conservative officeholders in 50 states, almost one-third of the 7, 500 state legislators in the country. According to a representative of the National Council of State Legislatures, although ALEC has not substantially modified its right-wing position on what it considers to be its core issues, it has been successful in attracting more moderate legislative support by toning down its more extreme rhetoric.

Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange.com
April 15, 2002
Smart Alecs

"Corporate America's Trojan Horse in the States"
Bill Berkowitz writes about a new report on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) released by Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Though ALEC claims to be nonpartisan, and is an IRS 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity, its core leadership is 85 percent Republican, and only one the 29 members of its board of directors is a Democrat. ALEC was founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, who is currently head of the Free Congress Foundation.

The report suggests ALEC's real reason for being is the provide a conduit for powerful corporations to shape legislation that is then enacted into law by either naive or complicit state legislators across the country. In 1999-2000, for example, the report states that ALEC members - who are state legislators - sponsored 3, 100 pieces of legislation, more than 400 of which were passed into law.

Companies and industry organizations supporting ALEC's mission include Enron, Amoco, Chevron, Texaco, R.J. Reynolds, AT&T, the American Nuclear Energy Council, the Chlorine Chemistry Council, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America.

The study charges ALEC with "act[ing] as a conduit for special-interest legislation from corporations to key state legislators on issues that range from rolling back environmental and consumer protections to privatizing government services such as prisons and schools."

"The payments [from corporations] might be membership dues, fees to sit on nine industry-specific committees that approve 'model' bills, expenditures for lavish parties and entertainment, or 'scholarships' to pay for targeted legislators to attend ALEC's junket-like meetings."
Robert NW Ohio

Okay Chloe24, that may explain why Paul wasn't invited, but what about Hunter. Have any ideas on why he wasn't invited?

Who knows, maybe I'm jumping the gun here and Hunter was invited.

I fired of a few e-mail to the two e-mail addresses you supplied.

Hope this helps chloe24.

Originally Posted by MW

Okay Chloe24, that may explain why Paul wasn't invited, but what about Hunter. Have any ideas on why he wasn't invited?

Who knows, maybe I'm jumping the gun here and Hunter was invited.

This follow up article offers more updated information as well as info about Hunter:

(Thanks for sending the emails Darlene. Hope more people will follow your lead.)


http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods72.html

The Iowa Christian Alliance and Iowans for Tax Relief are co-sponsoring a Republican candidates’ forum for June 30. The event will feature Mitt Romney, Tommy Thompson, Sam Brownback, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo.

Ron Paul, however, is to be excluded.

In fact, that’s what Paul’s campaign was expressly told when they inquired. Campaign manager Kent Snyder tells the story:


We heard about this forum from numerous supporters in Iowa who asked why Dr. Paul was not going to participate.Â* Those supporters assumed that Dr. Paul was invited.

The campaign office had not received an invitation so we called this morning; thinking we might have misplaced the invitation or simply overlooked it.Â* Lew Moore, our campaign manager, called Mr. Edward Failor, an officer of Iowans for Tax Relief, to ask about it.Â* To our shock, Mr. Failor told us Dr. Paul was not invited; he was not going to be invited; and he would not be allowed to participate.Â* And when asked why, Mr. Failor refused to explain.Â* The call ended.

Lew then called Mr. Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Christian Alliance, to talk with him.Â* Mr. Scheffler did not answer so Lew left a message.Â* He has yet to respond.


After reading this, I called Edward Failor myself. I said I was calling about the exclusion of Ron Paul from his candidates’ forum, particularly in light of Paul’s extraordinary record on taxes.

"Is there a question in there you want me to answer?" came the annoyed reply.

"Well, yes. Are you excluding Ron Paul, and if so, why?"

Failor explained that the event had been scheduled months ago, and that at that time they had made a decision about who the most "credible" candidates would be.

I didn’t quite understand his answer, though it was apparently more than he’d bothered to provide the Paul campaign. "You thought Tommy Thompson was a more credible candidate than Ron Paul?" I asked. (Can you imagine people gleefully sharing YouTube clips of Thompson with their friends, or holding up "Tommy Thompson Revolution" signs?)

Failor refused to answer that or any other question I posed to him, and closed with, "That is the only statement I am willing to make."

I assume I don’t need to point out that this explanation is not believable at all. We’ll leave aside his organization’s, um, mixed record when it comes to picking out the "credible" candidates. Had this really been a mere logistical question, why would Failor not simply have said so to the Paul campaign when they initially inquired? (Not that that would have been a good explanation, but it would have been something.) A non-hostile person with good manners might have said something like, "We’re very sorry about the way things turned out; we arranged this event a long time ago, and of course we’d have been delighted to have your campaign participate if we’d been able to feature more people on the stage."

The answer I got was pretty obviously one Failor had devised on the fly, not having expected anyone to call him on his decision to exclude Paul.

But the answer I got is also an obvious lie. Here is the schedule of the event as of a June 8 press release: http://www.iowapolitics.com/index.iml?Article=97674 Here, on the other hand, is the schedule just the other day: http://www.iowapolitics.com/index.iml?Article=98442
The second one replaces Jim Gilmore with Duncan Hunter.

I wonder why Hunter hadn’t been told that the arrangements had been made months in advance, that he’d been determined not to be credible – the whole story.

Failor, you’re busted.

After our call, I got to thinking about this Failor character: what kind of person running a "tax relief" organization would exclude the presidential candidate with – and this is no exaggeration – possibly the best record on taxation in all of American history, someone who favors the abolition of the income tax and the drastic reduction or elimination of nearly all other federal taxes? Should this be the Iowans For a Little Tax Relief, But Not Too Much?

I did a little poking around, and it turns out that our Edward Failor was initially a supporter of...George Pataki! George Pataki. And here I was thinking Failor had a hard time pinpointing credible candidates:

http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Failor_Ed_90931373.aspx

I remember seeing Pataki and Rudy Giuliani opening a Saturday Night Live episode years ago in which they both spoke about New York. Pataki was reading off his cue card so badly and awkwardly you just had to change the channel. Slightly less intelligent than George W. Bush: who will dispute this description of Mr. Failor’s credible candidate?

The New York Sun, writing about Pataki’s record, observed in 2006: "Mr. Pataki could be a hard sell to small-government conservatives, given that state spending in New York has grown to a projected $75 billion in the coming fiscal year from $43 billion in 1995." No problem for Edward Failor. According to the Sun, "Mr. Failor said the increases were the necessary result of growth brought on by aggressive tax cuts." Oh.

Maybe this is Iowans Who Are Only Marginally Unhappy With the Status Quo, or Iowans for Shell Games That Look Like Tax Cuts. Maybe it’s Iowans Who Want Guarantees that Absolutely Nothing Will Change.

Or perhaps it’s Iowans for McCain: check out Mr. Failor’s recent campaign donations:

http://www.campaignmoney.com/finance.as ... ria=failor

The Iowa GOP at large, on the other hand, is not hostile to Ron Paul, and in fact made sure Paul would be included in the Iowa straw poll. Iowa Republican leaders want it known that they, at least, have no bias against Paul.

Excluding Ron Paul from a "tax relief" candidates’ forum is like excluding Batman from an Anti-Riddler Convention. Even funnier is that these two organizations, in blacklisting Paul, reveal themselves to be even worse than the mainstream media they always criticize: the very day the Paul campaign discovered it had been barred from this Iowa event, they got a call from ABC News confirming Ron Paul’s participation in the August 5 debate in Des Moines, Iowa.

Now I don’t mean to leave the Iowa Christian Alliance out of the spotlight, but attempts to reach them resulted in busy signals or endless rings. They probably figured it’d be one day of angry calls, and that would be it. So I found a second contact number for them, which I reproduce below.

We shouldn’t be surprised at all this; such treatment is exactly what a truly anti-establishment candidate can expect in a world of phonies and hacks. But Ron Paul’s supporters are legion, and growing all the time. I rather suspect they will have something to say about their candidate’s exclusion.

What can you do? Well, an online petition in support of Paul’s inclusion in this event needs some signatures. Also, you might be interested in this information:

Edward Failor
Executive Vice President
Iowans for Tax Relief
563-288-3600 or 877-913-3600
Fax: 563-264-2413
itr@taxrelief.org

Katie Koberg
Public Relations Director
Iowans for Tax Relief
515-875-4936
kkoberg@taxrelief.org


Steve Scheffler, President
Iowa Christian Alliance
515-225-1515
(If no luck, try 515-971-7363)
515-225-1826 (fax)
slscheffler@iowachristian.com

Thanks to Michael Kenny for his input on this piece.

June 20, 2007

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. [view his website; send him mail] is senior fellow in American history at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. His books include How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (get a free chapter here), The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy (first-place winner in the 2006 Templeton Enterprise Awards), and the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.

Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com

Forgot to mention, if anyone feels so inclined to voice their opinions about this, here is a link to all the newspapers in Iowa:

http://www.oneiowa.org/actionnewspaper.htm

Well folks there the proof....when organizations, forums, the media comes after or excludes a candidate....that should ring an alarm...that the elistist don't want them. In that case, that is our guy