Except, in reality, they deputized the entire state of Texas, so now everyone there is an agent of the state. Based on that alone, the Supreme Court should have stayed the law.
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Interesting. Appears to be run by a husband & wife team. Together they are getting paid about $270K, half from thr org, half from the org, half from related orgs, and they report only working 25 hrs/wk. Also, there are only 4 people working there (unless they purposefully mis-stated their 990 — they are required to report their top 5 highest paid employees). (p.7)
In 2019 they overspent their revenue by about $310K and had to liquidate some assets to cover expenses. In this, they apparently lost $100K on fundraising (p.9). This is in 2019, so pre-COVID. (Losses on fundraising isn’t uncommon, but it’s a lot, and represents about 5% of their revenue in 2019.)
I’m sure there are other interesting tidbits in their 990, but it’s late and a PITA to read on my phone, so going to hang it up tonight.
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I’m not sure it’s limited to Texas, though, right? Anyone anywhere can report someone and claim the prize.
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Looks like it’s “fooling” a majority of the supreme court. As in it gives them an excuse to act as if they didn’t know the intent of the law, only its letter
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Appropriate use of scare quotes, there.
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Does this include thoughts and prayers?
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A loss of fundraising, or did Farris Wilks forget to cut them a check that year?
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Useful FAQ
Out of staters can be held liable, and the author draws this Interesting comparison.
In this sense, there is a parallel between SB 8 and the stringent Alabama defamation laws that the Supreme Court struck down in 1964’s landmark New York Times v. Sullivan . Alabama used these laws to chill the expression of out-of-state speakers who sought to report on the civil rights struggle or criticize Jim Crow. The threat of ruinous libel suits in Alabama courts limited this kind of media coverage throughout the U.S. Similarly, Texas is using the threat of ruinous lawsuits to stop pro-choice advocates throughout the country from supporting abortion within the state.
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Good question. Unfortunately there isn’t enough detail to tell. But, if they reported correctly, it means they spent about $200K on fundraising activities, let’s say mailers, and received only $100K in checks back with the mail-in cards included. Or they spent $200K organizing a charitable banquet/event, and only sold $100K in tickets.
A contribution from someone like Farris Wilks would usually be treated as a “gift and other donations”, even if they spent considerable time and money wining and dining him for the contribution. (It reports they spent some $42K on donor cultivation (p10)).
Basically, page 10 is highly suspicious. There are only four employees on this org, two are related. They spent $95K on travel. $45K on conferences. $42K wooing donors. That’s a lot of wiggle room for bleisure expenses or living a jet-set lifestyle on the company dime, and small NGOs aren’t known for their 5 star bookkeeping.
I can’t say they are doing anything illegal or unethical financially, but it sure looks suspicious. If I were the taxman, I’d be interested to find out more. (And wouldn’t be able to because Republicans neutered the IRS for this very reason.)
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It got booted from Digital Ocean too, and is now on Epik, the Nazi infested butthole of the internet:
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And they’re having issues on Epik:
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When people who host actual literal Nazis boot your ass in less than a day, on a Saturday, you know you’re in the wrong.
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I wanna see what happens when the TPTB in TX try to sue an airline or a rental car service or Amtrak because of this shit.
Prohibition didn’t fail until it became a law…
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From
Rebecca Traister: There are people dedicated, righteous activists and people who have worked their whole lives to do the very thing to support people who need to get Abortion, care, but have been prevented from doing so over decades, not just starting two days ago, but over decades. Right. This law takes aim at those systems of support, those activists, the ones who’ve been awake this whole time and have been working to stave off exactly this kind of this kind of restriction and this kind of punitive cruelty. It’s those the activists, the people who’ve known this was coming, that this law targets by saying that they themselves are now being made vulnerable, that they themselves are going to be the subject of vigilantism and bounty hunters for doing the righteous work of supporting the people who need the care that they’ve been barred from. And that’s something that I can’t stop thinking about, because, yes, this has been a decades long project for many, many people. And there is I see in the coverage of it this. Sense that this came up on us by surprise, it happened overnight in the dark of night and all that’s true in terms of how how the courts do it, did it and how and how the Supreme Court did it. But but the move toward making abortion inaccessible to vast swaths of this country has been has been happening ever since Roe was decided. And there have been people who are not surprised by this, who have been working against that trend. And those are the people who are being targeted by that by this law, which is the thing that I sort of can’t stop going over in my head all day to day.
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I wish I was that smart
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Definitely wouldn’t want to write a simple .bat file containing these instructions that you could run off a flash drive that you brought to a library or other public access data point.
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Is there a way to do that with smartphones too?
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Screen shots, even.
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