As a political fundraiser I’ve raised tens of millions for political causes. Along my journey I’ve met so many grassroots warriors who are hampered by lack of resources. Funding is the choke point in the war between us and the establishment.

Here’s how it will work. We will bring you information about the projects and the activists who are going to run them and then you will decide if it is worthy of your support. You are investing in projects that will benefit you with original content, reporting, and activism. Unlike other platforms we will only present you with projects that we believe will become profitable and long-term allies in our fight against establishment corruption.

I know how competitive it is for your fundraising dollars, I hope you’ll provide us feedback to improve and maybe set aside a few dollars when you can to help us create something awesome. It’s time to take it to the next level!

To watch this boatload of awesome unfold, join the FundEmpowerment Facebook page!

I live in California, a state where Republicans are currently struggling for relevance. We’ve conceded 2/3 of both houses of the legislature to the Democrats, and all of our constitutional offices are held by Democrats.

It’s going to be a long road back for Republicans here, but I haven’t given up. In fact, I spent the past two days volunteering for a Republican campaign in a special election for a State Senate seat in the Central Valley. The incumbent Democrat resigned to go get rich working for an oil company — because rich people are only evil if they’re Republicans, apparently.

The voting registration in the district heavily favors Democrats, but we somehow convinced a great candidate – and a solid conservative – to run for the seat: Andy Vidak. Andy is a charismatic cherry farmer from the area and I knew I had to lend my support however I could.

So on Monday I hopped on my motorcycle and rode the 3.5 hours down to Hanford, CA (about 30 minutes south of Fresno), and over two days I walked four precincts, speaking to voters and encouraging them to get to the polls and support Andy Vidak.

With California’s new blanket primary system, if Vidak gets 50% +1, there is no run-off. If he falls short, then he’ll face Democrat Leticia Perez in a run-off election (she’s the next highest vote-getter).

I woke up this morning to the news that Vidak currently leads with over 51% of the vote! Essentially, that’s 50% +1,000. There are still outstanding provisional ballots to be counted – and we’re waiting to hear exactly how many there are. But Democrats in California win provisional ballots by a large margin, and if there are 5,000-7,000 provisionals left to be counted, then the outcome is going to be close.

Regardless of the outcome, however, Andy Vidak is in a position to win this very blue seat because of the volunteers who turned out for him. The Sacramento County Young Republicans sent down a contingent this weekend, and I know plenty of Southern California activists made the trip as well. Activism matters, and if Republicans in California are able to claw our way back to relevance, it will be on the backs of the conservative activists who work hard to make sure we elect the right people in districts like this.

Perez has reportedly conceded the race, and the media is declaring Vidak the winner, but those of us who have been in these tight races before are skeptical. If a run-off is necessary though, you’d better believe that we’ll see another army of volunteers show up to support Andy Vidak.

UPDATE: The Secretary of State still has to certify the election, but it’s unofficially official – Andy Vidak won with over 50% of the vote!

Like most things that are humorous they are based on some kind of reality. So when the political world seems to be alight with more scandals than baseline it’s important to figure out why there are so many scandals at once. This isn’t to say that all of the scandals aren’t important but only to spend time contemplating which issues are mere “bumps in the road” and which scandals could be really damaging. I’ve ranked the scandals based on a scale from “oh shit” to “spin master manageable”.

Spin master manageable: Spying on the AP. From what I’ve read it seems clear that this falls under the damaging but probably not illegal category. It also seems custom made for diverting the attention of the self-absorbed American press from other things. Does anyone really think this is going to swing any votes in a close House or Senate race in 2014? I don’t, so I’m going to mostly ignore it.

Oh shit: The IRS intimidation story. What do you call using non-partisan agencies of the government to attack perceived political opposition during a Presidential election. Remember the 2012 election was supposed to come down to Ohio, the State where the attacks are said to have originated. When I was Chief Strategist at TheTeaParty.net we received one of the questionnaires and referred it to our attorney and I remember writing at the time about how this would impact the groups that weren’t large enough to retain a high-powered Washington law firm. I also remember many people including our own Dan Backer offering their services to groups under fire, free-of-charge.

Not enough information: Benghazi. The things I’ve heard about Benghazi are really disturbing and I’m convinced that this story has only scratched the service of what happened. The people who’ve been tirelessly pushing this story have instructed me to research “Extortion 17″ but I haven’t gotten to it yet, so for now I’ll let the experts be the experts. I think we’ve only just started asking the right questions.

Fast and Furious should be right at the top with these but it’s gone back to being mostly ignored.

They are all a bunch of manipulative crooks, we all know it. Every once in a while someone takes it over the line and are made an example of, let’s hope it’s this whole damn administration.

Today’s lesson: It’s the missed opportunities that kill you.

I consider myself to be a terrible tournament player. I’ve only won one small tournament, compared to countless early exits. In reality, I typically play well, read other players correctly, and just make a couple bad decisions that end up costing me the tournament. I played in a No Limit Hold’em tournament this week, and I was consciously tracking where my biggest mistakes came in. That’s the only way to improve your game, right?

A little about the tournament: it was a $30 buy-in for 2,000 chips, with an extra $1,000 chips available for $5. The tournament also has a buy back/add-on of $30 for 3,000 additional chips. This gives players an incentive to be aggressive early and try to double up, knowing that if it doesn’t work they can just buy back in. The blinds start at $25/$50 and go up every 15 minutes. After an hour, pretty much everyone at the table is short stacked.

If you miss an opportunity in a cash game, it’s not ideal but also not the end of the world – before long another opportunity will present itself. In a tournament, however, the blinds go up too quickly for you to get many more chances.

In this tournament, I played well early and won 4 or 5 small-to-medium pots. But even with doubling my chips, the blinds were about to increase to a level that meant I had to be more selective of the cards I played. After losing a couple small hands here and there, I found myself needing to make a move. I was out of position, and most of the table had tightened up – they were folding to most early raises. Man, if I got good cards, now would be a good time to make a move.

I looked down to see QJs – a hand that I would rarely push hard in a cash game. I recognized, however, that if I went all-in here (I had 3,000 chips and the blinds were 150/300), I had a good opportunity to steal the pot. And even if I got a caller, I was going to have plenty of opportunities to win the hand (straight/flush against an over pair, pairing one of my cards against two over cards or a middle pair).

I’m not a fan of QJs, though, so I decided to fold it. Four players limped in, creating a good-size pot. The flop came J-5-3, which means I would have had top pair with a pretty decent kicker – a great position to be in at that stage in the tournament. All the money goes in for the remaining players, who turned over AQ, 55, 33, and J10. The turn and river cards come out 2-2, and the player with a set of 5s wins the hand. Now that’s a set-up hand on the flop, and my hand certainly wasn’t good.

BUT – the only player who could have reasonably called an all-in bet from me was the AQ, who I would have beaten and doubled up through. Instead, I folded my cards and missed out on an opportunity that would have put me in a position to make a deep run in the tournament. As the blinds continued to increase, I got more and more desperate. I eventually made my move with a hand much weaker than QJ, at a time when even if I did double up, I would still have been a long shot to win the tournament. I missed my shot, and another opportunity didn’t come my way (see footnote at the bottom of the post).

This is one of the easiest lessons to apply to life, and it’s similar to last week’s: life’s too short to miss opportunities. I can look back at times in my life when I took shots that paid off (for example: moving 3,000 miles on 3 days notice for a job opportunity), but there are probably more shots that didn’t pay off (e.g., asking out the most beautiful woman in the room, or trying out for the college baseball team). The opportunities that haunt me, though, are the ones that I let sail by.

Put another way: fortune favors the bold. That doesn’t mean being reckless, and it doesn’t mean blindly throwing your chips around the table. It means seizing an opportunity when it appears and giving yourself the best chance at success. This was a good lesson for me to learn at the poker table, but also a good reminder for life. You only get so many shots – take one already!

–
For the record, AQ beats QJs nearly 70% of the time – I would have been unhappy to see him turnover the cards pre-flop. And there’s no guarantee that either – let alone both – of the players with low pairs fold. It was entirely possible that I would have lost my entire stack, and there are probably players better than me who would argue that I made the right move by folding there. But this doesn’t change the lesson – you only get so many opportunities in poker tournaments. If you let them slip by, you don’t stand a chance.

As I continue to improve, Dustin’s asked me to blog on the experience. Now there are an insane number of poker advice blogs, forums, and books out there (if you’re interested in advice on how to play the game, I’d recommend spending time at 2+2. It’s full of professional and semi-professional poker players who are more than happy to give advice on how to improve your game). And I’m nowhere near good enough at the game to give practical advice anyway.

So my point in these blog posts will be to 1) highlight some fun stories about winning money off drunk people in casinos and 2) draw some sort of overarching lesson about life from poker. Because, seriously, you could teach a college class on poker and philosophy.

So, for the first story/lesson:

Lesson: Sometimes you have to fake it to make it.

To simplify things, there are basically two ways to play poker – tight or loose. A tight player waits until he has a really good hand before he enters a pot – and then he pushes hard knowing that his hand is likely to be best. A loose player, on the other hand, will enter a pot with any cards that might turn into a big hand. They let most of them go pretty quickly, but they find themselves in situations where their hand is almost guaranteed to be better than a tight player’s hand (for example, a made straight beats a pair of Aces every time).

I’m typically a very tight player – I enter about 10-15% of the pots. I’m a grinder, I hate to lose money, and I consider it a win if I can play for 5 hours and walk away up or down by 10%. But that’s not the point of poker. The point of poker is to make as much money as possible in the long run.

So in Vegas last weekend I made the conscious decision to play loose and aggressive. I had won $150 at blackjack and decided to use that money to buy into a $1/$2 no-limit Texas Hold’em game and play until I lose it. But instead of trying to drag it out, I wanted to put pressure on everyone at the table, get them to fold, and take their money.

I entered 50-60% of the pots, raising about 50% of the time. There was one other guy at the table entering as many pots as I was, and he was gambling like crazy. He was calling down big raises with only 4 outs all the way to the river in hopes of making big hands – even calling attention to himself by actually hitting one of those hands and taking someone’s entire stack.

Because we were both playing aggressively, and because they had seen the “poor” poker decisions he had made, we both had the same table image – even though I was playing quite differently than him after the flop.

I continued to enter pot after pot, and finally caught a stretch of consecutive hands that hit either big hands or big draws. And because I was winning these hands against people who were playing tight, they got frustrated and started calling my bets with marginal hands. So I kept making larger and larger bets, and kept hitting cards, and pretty soon I looked down at over $1000 in chips!

Loose/aggressive play isn’t a style I’m comfortable adopting all the time. The swings are too volatile and I don’t have a bankroll sufficient to withstand a bad run if I play that way all the time. But playing tight isn’t nearly as profitable in the long-run as playing loose. If everyone knows that you only bet when you have a hand, then they will never call you down unless they have a good hand too.

I now have sufficient evidence that I can successfully adopt a loose/aggressive style. This has been the missing key for my profitability at the poker table, and I’ve been far too chicken to pull it off. Until I faked it!

And this is a lesson worth adopting across all areas of life. Do you need to negotiate for a raise but are uncomfortable talking to your boss? Fake the confidence you need. Do you want to get into shape but don’t know how to get started? Go to the gym and fake it until you figure it out. Do you want to ask out that cute girl/guy in accounting but are afraid of getting shot down? Fake it – even if it doesn’t work, you’ll begin to realize that rejection isn’t the worst thing in the world.

It won’t always work out, just like I’ll have losing poker sessions. But sometimes you really do have to fake it till you make it.

As if the simple fact that Karl Rove controlled nearly $400 Million in an election against OBAMA and got smoked. Why should we take anything Karl Rove suggests with a grain of salt when it comes to the internet and new data managed with cutting edge technology?

Let’s start with Crossroads Generation. They hired a bunch of young super-achievers, gave them a bunch of money, and told them to go get them irascible youth’s on the “Social Media”. The great thing about social media is that their are easily defined metrics. Let’s start with the Social Media king Facebook and see how they performed there.

Crossroads Generation as of writing has a barely respectable 56,564 “likes” on its Facebook page but the telling number is “talking about”. Right now 29 people are “talking about this”. That’s right 29 people.

Let’s compare that with some other properties that were not built without sugar daddy money.

I like self-promotion so let’s start with my page. Dustin Stockton has 19,679 likes but 30,396 talking about this. I’m adding a few hundred people a day and spending….. $25 a day on advertising. I could come up with an absurd performance percentage but I’m lazy and don’t want to do the math. Yesterday we put up this graphic that was shared more than 20,000 times between the large pages it was posted on.

The Tea Party page run by TheTeaParty.net has 1,697,286 likes and 1,557,431 talking about this. I helped build that page and we grew it without coming anywhere near Crossroads money.

So what’s the takeaway? The GOP plans to “tame the internet” and put all data in the hands of “Turd Blossom” (Rove’s Secret Service Code Name) even though they can’t even figure out Facebook. There are plenty of people effectively using technology on the right, Rove and the establishment are stuck in a direct mail, big TV buy, and robocall mentality while the people they need to win are already figuring out Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram.

If Rove and his associates are running the GOP data, keep my data out of it! The RNC mailers are easily the scummiest I get. They look like fake legal documents and other important things to make you open them. All they do is create rage. Now they want to share that “data” with everyone, great just what we all need more junk mail and pushy phone call solicitations.

Is all the talk of attracting youth mean anything at all to the GOP?  Those of us who have had a computer for nearly or all of our lives are making our way through life by using the internet.  How many people of all stripes are helping get through these tough economic times by supplementing their incomes by selling things online? Hint: A lot.

Many of these people are exactly the kind of people we overwhelmingly lost in 2012.  They need a champion.  All it would take to send a message to these people which party is looking out for them is for our politicians to speak out on the issue.

Congressman Jim Birdenstein gets it. You might remember him from being banished by John Boehner for not being squishy enough.

The #InternetSalesTax encourages states to form interstate compacts w/ uniform tax rates.The private sector calls this price-fixing. #tcot

— Jim Bridenstine (@RepJBridenstine) May 1, 2013

OK online retailers could be required to open themselves to tax audits from 49 other states in addition to the IRS. #InternetSalesTax #tcot

— Jim Bridenstine (@RepJBridenstine) May 1, 2013

The #InternetSalesTax encourages states to form interstate compacts w/ uniform tax rates.The private sector calls this price-fixing. #tcot

— Jim Bridenstine (@RepJBridenstine) May 1, 2013

Congressman Massie also joined in although I don’t like to use whatever nonsensical title they assign it, call it what it is which is an Internet Sales Tax!

The Marketplace Fairness Act is essentially an #InternetSalesTax. Real fairness comes from lower taxes and fewer regulations #tcot

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) May 1, 2013

Now I’ve been asking Congressman and so far I’ve been surprised by the lack of response. I figured Darrell Issa would have our back AND he sits on a critical committee regarding this bill. So far nothing but with some help, who knows?

Sorry to bother you, real quick, #InternetSalesTax HR 684, oppose or support?Thanks in advance! @darrellissa

— Dustin Stockton (@DustinStockton) May 1, 2013

Here asking more Republicans about it. We don’t really know these guys so I’m not too shocked they didn’t respond yet.

Sorry to bother you, real quick, #InternetSalesTax HR 684, oppose or support?Thanks in advance! @bachusal06 @farenthold @reptommarino

— Dustin Stockton (@DustinStockton) May 1, 2013

Here is another group. The only guy we know in this camp is Doug Collins and we heavily backed his primary opponent Martha Zoller so I’m REALLY not surprised he hasn’t answered.

Sorry to bother you, real quick, #InternetSalesTax HR 684, oppose or support?Thanks in advance! @repholding @repdougcollins @keithrothfus

— Dustin Stockton (@DustinStockton) May 1, 2013

I’m not nearly as polite to the Democrats, Obama supports it, so they support it. You might remember Hank Johnson. He’s the guy who was worried Guam was going to tip over!

#InternetSalesTax support or oppose?@repcohen @rephankjohnson @suzandelbene @joegarcia @repjeffries @repjohnconyers

— Dustin Stockton (@DustinStockton) May 1, 2013

Here is a link to our comprehensive list of every House Member!

With passage in the Senate all but assured thanks to the likes of Lindsey Graham’s ilk, our opportunity to destroy this job killing legislation rests in the House. The bill I’m referring to is HR 683 which would be accurately titled as the Internet Sales Tax

The problem with this legislation is that it sacrifices tangible and honorable relief to people in the name of “fairness” by forcing all potential businesses to suffer from the same government strong arming that is killing off older businesses.

Reasonable people have argued that it provides an “unfair” market advantage to internet companies over traditional brick and mortar retailers who are forced to operate under the undecipherable government rules and regulations.

Who does this legislation help? Will anyone who didn’t have a job before get a job? Will this protect any business from going out of business to a more efficient and exuberant market competitor?

No, this bill is being supported by companies like Amazon not in the interest of “fairness” but in the interest of destroying the environment that made their success possible thereby cementing their place at the top of the online retail world in codified law.

To the small business owners who think that by bringing the same burdens to online competitors, I’d ask that you consider the circumstance you find yourself in. The world has already changed, the internet is the future, and if you don’t want to see the steady decline we’ve seen it’s critical that you start to compete in the new environment in which is going to succeed regardless of your participation. If you allow this code to go through you are blocking yourself out of this future market by monopolizing participation in the hands of the people who are politically well connected, right now.

This week I am going to ask you to kill this bad piece of political bull crap and I’ve got a new tool that I want to try out.

If you’re like me you are sick of sending emails only to receive a ridiculous form letter, if you’re lucky enough to get a response at all. You’re sick of calling the capitol switchboard only to deal with a petulant intern who has no pull in voting decisions. You’re not sick of doing these things because they aren’t worthwhile endeavors, you’re sick of feeling like no one is listening.

Twitter is a new platform that nearly every member of Congress is participating in. We have compiled a list that includes every member of Congress, their twitter handle, their party affiliation, and a link to their wikipedia page. Frankly if a member of Congress isn’t capable of answering questions from the people affected by their laws on a platform as user-friendly as Twitter, they don’t deserve to be in office.

We are committed to using a variety of sticks and carrots to steadily increase the number of interactions between members and their constituents including on new communication tools like Twitter, Wikipedia and Reddit.

So here is what I will be asking people to do this week. I’ll be asking that they go through the list (they are organized alphabetically by state), read the wikipedia article on their member, and then tweet at them (hopefully opposing the Internet Sales Tax). It is critical that we include the hashtag #InternetSalesTax in the tweets so that we can accurately measure how well members respond to the people who pay their salaries.

Our tax code is broken. The only people who will disagree with that statement are those who personally profit from the broken system. While our government seems completely incapable of producing a positive vision to escape the multitude of current problems, their imagination knows no bounds when it comes to creative ways to create new taxes.

As far as taxes go, the sales tax seems to be one of the least intrusive and equitable. It’s far superior to the income tax, which demands government intrusion into every aspect of your life that involves the almighty dollar (read: everything).

The argument being made for the Internet Sales Tax is that it fixes an unfair market advantage for internet sales over brick and mortar retailers. It’s true that this is their best argument, and, if taken without context, it may even be a winning argument. But the reason it’s moving so quickly isn’t to fix an injustice, it’s to create a host of new ones that raise the barrier to entry to potential competitors of established players who have big bucks to spend protecting their market share.

To some it might appear counter intuitive that a company that would be saddled with burdensome new tax compliance issues would be supporting this legislation. Companies like Amazon understand that the burden is actually a competitive advantage because they are large enough to lobby for special exceptions and can afford compliance.

It’s the same way Dodd-Frank “punished” the major banks with cryptic regulations that do nothing more than greatly reduce the opportunity for competing banks and investment firms from starting up and growing.

During election time all we hear the politicians talk about are “jobs.” If we want jobs, we need startups, and the internet is booming with creative startups because the government has remained largely out of it. It gives people the opportunity to bypass previous hurdles and the establishment is feeling its grasp on control slipping.

Imagine the compliance burden of collecting, organizing, and reporting with every city, county, and state that collects a sales tax? A company like Amazon can hire a team of lawyers, but for the stay-at-home mom who sells crafts, it is a dream killer.

This is a terrible idea that will only make it more difficult for a nation struggling to get on its feet to unleash the creative innovations of the coming generations.

This bill is moving blazing fast through the Senate. Marco Rubio through his twitter account commented on the speed by saying: “This #internettax bill is a really big mistake. Really shocked at how fast it is moving in Senate. #tcot.”

#tcot is twitter shorthand for “Top Conservatives on Twitter.”

So it looks like the best opportunity to kill this thing is in the House. To do that we need to reach out to the committee set to vote on the bill. The bill number is H.R. 684, and it is assigned to the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law.

Here are the members of that committee:

AL-06 Spencer Bachus @BachusAL06 R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Bachus

TX-27 Farenthold @farenthold R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Farenthold

CA-49 Darrell Issa @DarrellIssa R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Issa

PA-10 Tom Marino @RepTomMarino R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Marino

NC-13 George Holding @RepHolding R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Holding

GA-09 Doug Collins @RepDougCollins R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Collins_%28politician%29

PA-12 Keith Rothfus @KeithRothfus R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Rothfus

TN-09 Steve Cohen @RepCohen D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Cohen

GA-04 Hank Johnson @RepHankJohnson D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Johnson

WA-01 Suzan DelBene @SuzanDelBene D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzan_DelBene

FL-26 Joe Garcia @JoeGarcia D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Garcia

NY-08 Hakeem Jeffries @RepJeffries D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakeem_Jeffries

MI-13 John Conyers @repjohnconyers D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Conyers,_Jr.

So right out of the gate we need to engage the Chairman Spencer Bachus and Darrell Issa who has been a valuable ally on issues like Fast and Furious and Benghazi. Please take just a minute and tweet at @BachusAL06 and @DarrellIssa and tell them how you feel about this bill.

Burning the UN Flag is only worth doing only if we can be sure that the media will pay attention to it, in a way that allows us to discuss “sustainability” programs that exist in nearly every American community. It’s compromising our ability to educate our kids in a way that challenges them to explore as much of reality as they possibly can. To me that is a tragedy and the enemies agenda is coming from the UN. That’s a fight we need to have.

The UN is not a completely terrible idea but it can’t be a law issuing body. I had it wrong when I cited UN proclamations as justification for the Iraq war and now that I’ve learned about C-Scope, CommonCore, and the sustainability initiatives the more I see the need to uproot these dangerous ideas and dispel the UN influence from our laws. It needs to happen at the local level. Your mayor, your city council, sheriffs, and other elected officials have a responsibility to respond to your questions or they cannot be trusted and must be defeated.

The establishment media isn’t going down without a fight. They are awfully powerful but they are misguided. While the talking class drones on about a Presidential Election the people are peacefully revolting against the practices of this government by taking over OUR government at every level.

They haven’t realized that it’s time to break up the monolithic presidential campaign apparatus and prepare for a midterm campaign. Don’t worry we’re on top of it.

We need to let people know that there are still heroes in our political system. We need LOTS of heroes and we need them to share what they are working on.

If you’re doing something cool I’m going to do my very best to connect you with people who could use guidance to do what you’re doing and then do my very best to fund it. If necessary I will take all the wealth I have accumulated and use it to connect as many people as possible to voices who might inspire them towards action. This means a lot of different voices with varying intensity.

I’m concerned about the imagery. If we burn it near a government building it will make us look like the Anarchist hippies like Occupy Wall Street and if we do it at a campground or something, the imagery looks like a Klan meeting. In neither instance is that a comparison we want to draw. I’m willing to do it because I think the media will talk about it, although I’d really just prefer someone talk to us. I can’t tell you what to do so if you want to go burn a UN flag all I can say is make sure you show proper respect for fire and courtesy and let’s make sure we get the timing right.

We need the media to be slow enough that we won’t get pushed out of the news cycle. I read an interesting comment somewhere that we could bury it, or tie it to a helium balloon and float it into space, or other fun ideas. I know burning the flag isn’t the best visual but we should keep using the imagery online and if it comes down to it, we’ll find a way to do it to maximum value.

There are a lot of great people who have been leading grassroots fights for years. It’s time they get an audience that bypasses the establishment media….. because America!