U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar in December 2021. Photo by Gage Skidmore | Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
Prescott Republican Congressman Paul Gosar spent more than $7,800 for travel, lodging and vehicle expenses while attending events with far-right groups and white nationalists, according to a review of the congressman’s finances by a nonpartisan watchdog group.
The Moonlight Foundation conducted a review of congressional travel that showed Gosar has spent more on travel than any other congressman in the past five years. An additional review of the data by CNN found he has spent nearly $1 million on travel since 2016 — including having taxpayers pay for his trip to speak at a white nationalist conference in Florida in 2021.
Gosar spent nearly $3,500 to travel to Florida with his chief of staff Tom Van Flein to attend both the Conservative Political Action Conference and AFPAC. While there, the pair billed an additional $1,000 in hotel rooms. Gosar also charged the government an additional $1,000 for what appears to be a single day vehicle rental during that week.
Gosar was speaking with DeWinter about an anti-Muslim activist who was jailed in the United Kingdom for breaking rules barring reporting on ongoing court cases. Initially, Gosar told a house ethics committee that a group named the Middle East Forum had paid for the trip. However, an analysis by CNN found he charged taxpayers $2,300 in commercial travel expenses.
A day after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Gosar charged $1,787 on commercial transportation, the Moonlight Foundation found.
A spokesman for Gosar’s office told CNN that the expenses were all within the realm of official activity and have been reviewed both “in-house” and by the House of Representatives. However, lawmaker spending is largely protected from public scrutiny, as expenses are filed under general categories such as “commercial transportation” or “travel.”
Gosar has far outspent other members of Arizona’s delegation. Republican Congressmen Andy Biggs spent only $69,000 in 2021 and David Schweikert spent just $47,000.
Taxpayers paid for Paul Gosar to travel to Florida to speak to a white nationalist conference in 2021
Gosar billed taxpayers for travel at same time as appearing at political events, such as CPAC. Also big expenses for lodging – like $11K over three days – but rules don’t require disclosure. “Travel budgets are treated like personal slush funds by lawmakers,” watchdog says
Gosar’s office says he racks up dollars as he travels district extensively. But in final quarter of 2021, for instance, three Gosar aides totaled less than $400 in mileage reimbursements, while Gosar did not disclose any for himself. Yet Gosar's office billed $80K in travel costs
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he personally killed a “ridiculous” plan from White House adviser Stephen Miller to deploy 250,000 troops to the southern border as a migrant caravan approached. Esper, who writes about the moment in his upcoming book, “A Sacred Oath,” says he initially thought Miller was joking when he asked for the troops while waiting in the Oval Office.
“We’re in a meeting, waiting for the president to come out,” Esper tells Norah O’Donnell for an interview airing this Sunday on “60 Minutes,” “We’re standing around the Resolute Desk. And he’s behind me. And this voice just starts talking about caravans are coming. And, ‘We need to get troops to the border.’ And, ‘We need a quarter-million troops.’ And I think he’s joking. And then I turn around and I look at him and these– and these deadpan eyes. Clearly, he is not joking.”
Mark Esper
Esper, who served as President Trump’s second secretary of defense, says he told Miller the Department of Homeland Security could handle any caravans, as they had done in the past.
“He repeats, ‘No, we need a quarter-million troops,'” Esper says. “And I just turn squarely around to him, face him, and say, ‘I don’t have a quarter million troops to send on some ridiculous mission to the border.'”
But Esper says the plan that Miller had been pushing was already in motion.
“I told this story to General Milley and my chief of staff,” Esper says. “I said, ‘Let’s be safe. Let’s just check and make sure that this isn’t being worked somewhere in the building.’ And Milley comes back days later and the door opens up and he’s waving a document that’s in hand.”
“And he says something like, ‘secretary, you’re not gonna believe this.’ And that’s when he explains to me that, yes, they were working. That we had developed a plan, initial concept of how this might happen,” Esper tells O’Donnell. “And I was just flabbergasted that, not only was the idea proposed, but that people– people in my department were working on it.”
Esper still laughs at the idea.
“It’s just so absurd,” Esper says. “I can’t even consider it. I mean, again, we don’t have 250,000 troops to send to the border. And to do what? It’s just ridiculous.”
Miller declined to comment when reached by CBS News.
“Whatever happened to that plan to deploy a quarter million troops to the border with Mexico?” O’Donnell asks Esper.
“Well, it died,” Esper says. “I gave General Milley specific instruction to tell NORTHCOM, Northern Command, to stop working on it, to cease and desist. And that if anybody had any questions, you tell them they should call me direct. I never got a phone call.”
“It was dead and it died, as it should,” Esper says.
O’Donnell’s interview with Esper will air Sunday night on “60 Minutes.”
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he personally killed a "ridiculous" plan from White House adviser Stephen Miller to deploy 250,000 troops to the southern border as a migrant caravan approached. https://t.co/aJOCstSjhx
"We had developed a plan, initial concept of how [sending 250,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border] might happen. And I was just flabbergasted," former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper tells @NorahODonnell.
I keep telling people they are not going to stop until the LGBTQ+ are gone. They don’t want us to exist. They don’t see us as human people. But what they really want is to codify their god into the laws of our country to force everyone to live by their church doctrines. The thing is right now they are coming for the LGBTQ but the next targets will be those religions they say are wrong and offend their god also. As more and more people leave the religion in the US the Christian religions want to force people to live according to the dictates of their religion.
A group of Republican senators want a new TV rating created so parents can block their children from watching shows with LGBTQ characters. The five senators from North Dakota, Kansas, Utah, Indiana and Montana sent a letter Wednesday to the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board asking for the new rating.
The two-page letter signed by Sens. Roger Marshall, Mike Lee, Mike Braun, Kevin Cramer and Steve Daines “strongly urged” the TV group’s chairman, Charles Rivkin, to update its guidelines to ensure parents are aware of the “disturbing” content.
The letter also cited Disney’s ongoing opposition to a recently enacted state law – dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” measure.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 enabled greater parental choice in television programming. In establishing this law, Congress found that “studies indicate that children are affected by the pervasiveness and casual treatment of sexual material on television, eroding the ability of parents to develop responsible attitudes and behavior in their children.”
The law requires TV manufacturers to establish a technology that would allow blocking of programs based on category ratings in its set receivers.
In order for the technology, known as the V-Chip,to fulfill its purpose, Congress also incentivized the creation of TV parental guidelines as well as the creation of the Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board.
The law was fully implemented allowing parents to easily block violent, sexual, or other programming that they believe may irrevocably interfere with their child’s emotional and psychological development.
I posted earlier on another topic where lately I’ve seen more and more biblical verses being shown during commercial breaks lately. I guess we’re slowly becoming the “Christian Iran” .
Oksana Balandina, a nurse, lost both her legs and four fingers on one hand in a mine explosion in March. She also lost her will to live, but her family has restored her spirits. At the hospital where she is being treated, they held a wedding ceremony for her and her partner, Viktor Vasylyev. Originally published at – https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-nurse…
This is what the Russian war is doing to the people of Ukraine. There are people alive buried under the rubble in that steel mill and Russia won’t stop the bombing so the Ukrainians can dig them out. It is past time the countries of the world showed that this inhumanity won’t be allowed to continue. Russia hopes the world will lose interest and they can be as cruel and destructive to human life as they please. We cannot let that happen. This could have been a group of kids that got near that landmine. Remember Russia dropped thousands of trip wire triggered bombs from the skies over Ukrainian cities and towns. The idea was to kill and main as many civilians as possible. The idea is to cause terror so the people will beg Russia for peace at any cost or terms. The world cannot let this continue. We have the ability; we just need the will.
Scottie's Playtime 