Report: Toyota Says ‘Later’ To California, ‘Howdy’ To Texas

(The Daily Caller) – The Japanese car maker Toyota Motor Corp. will shift most of its U.S. headquarters from California to Texas, according to several sources cited by Reuters and Bloomberg.

The move will occur over several years and affect several thousand of Toyota’s 5,300 sales and marketing employees in Torrance, Cal.

A location in Plano, Tex. is being eyed for the new facility, the Dallas Morning News reports.

Toyota sells 2.2 million vehicles a year in the U.S. and has manufacturing facilities in Texas, Kentucky, West Virginia, Alabama and Indiana. The company opened its first facility in California in 1957 and its Torrance headquarters in 1982.

The move, expected to be announced Monday, could be the fruit of a campaign led by Texas Gov. Rick Perry who has sought to poach businesses from the Golden State.

Perry, who is serving his last term as governor but has eyes on a 2016 presidential bid, has traveled to California numerous times to tout the Lone Star State’s business-friendly climate.

“Building a business is tough,” said Perry in a television ad released last year, “but I hear building a business in California is next to impossible.”

In both 2012 and 2013, Texas was ranked the best state for business in a survey conducted by Chief Executive. California was ranked 50th.

[H/T TheDailyCaller: Chuck Ross]

 

Insight: How Obama Alums Aim To Turn Texas Toward The Democrats

(Reuters) – In one of the country’s most conservative states, newly hopeful Democrats measure their progress by ringing a bell.

For those working to turn Texas from Republican red to Democratic blue, it’s the sound of one more volunteer agreeing to join their ranks. On a recent Saturday, phone-bank volunteers in a modest office here smacked the bell every five minutes or so, adding to the nearly 12,000 who have joined the effort.

In the past year, alumni from Democratic President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign quietly have built a grassroots army in Texas, where gun-rights advocates brandish semi-automatic rifles on city streets and pickup trucks bear “SECEDE” bumper stickers.

Battleground Texas, as the group is known, is backing Democratic state Senator Wendy Davis’ underdog bid for governor this November against Republican Greg Abbott, the state’s attorney general.

But those involved say their larger goal – likely to take years to realize, if ever – is to make Texas as competitive in national elections as politically divided states such as Virginia and Ohio. That means identifying potentially Democratic voters, namely those in the state’s booming Hispanic population, and persuading them to show up at the polls.

It is an unusually ambitious effort in U.S. politics. National parties typically measure progress in two- and four-year election cycles, with less focus on longer-term operations.

If Democrats succeed, they could upend the state’s low-tax, low-regulation approach to governance and give their party a decisive advantage in presidential elections for years to come.

Battleground Texas faces a steep climb, however.

Democrats have not won a statewide race in Texas for nearly 20 years, and the party now has trouble fielding candidates for many congressional, state and local races.

They also face procedural barriers that they say can make it tougher to register voters than in many other states, and often discourage minorities and low-income residents from participating. Those include a new law that requires residents to show state-issued photo IDs to vote.

But the group has two factors on its side: the state’s growing Hispanic population, which has favored the Democratic Party over Republicans by a 19-point margin in recent polls, and the meticulous door-to-door organizing techniques honed nationwide during Obama’s two presidential campaigns.

GETTING OUT THE VOTE

The campaigns’ on-the-ground organizing helped to give Democrats an edge over Republicans in voter data that the Texas group seeks to exploit by targeting many of the 10.5 million eligible Texans who did not vote in the 2010 governor’s race.

Turnout analysts say that Hispanics made up a disproportionate share of those who stayed home that year. Democrats also see opportunities to win over suburban white women who may feel alienated by the Republican Party’s rightward drift and support of cuts in education.

“There’s a huge amount of potential there,” said Jeremy Bird, who launched the Battleground Texas effort after working as Obama’s national field director in 2012.

Republicans acknowledge they need to do more to reach out to Hispanics and other minority groups. But so far, they see little evidence that Democrats are gaining ground in Texas, even as Davis’ campaign for governor is drawing interest, and millions of dollars in donations, from across the nation.

“All this work and all this money that they’ve spent up to now so far is not showing results,” Texas Republican Party Chairman Steve Munisteri said.

Democrats face long odds this year and probably won’t carry the state in the next presidential election in 2016, said James Henson, who heads the nonpartisan Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas.

But by 2020, the state’s Hispanic population is projected to eclipse its white population, and Democrats could make Texas competitive, he said.

“Certainly in 2014 everybody will be looking to see if there’s a leading edge of something bigger coming,” Henson said.

REPUBLICAN OUTREACH

Republicans say they recognize the challenge and have assigned seven staffers to reach out to Hispanics.

But there have been signs that Republican candidates may be undermining that effort as they court conservative voters ahead of the March 4 party primaries.

Abbott drew criticism from Hispanic groups and others this month when he said corruption in Texas’ mostly Hispanic Rio Grande valley resembled “Third World country practices.”

He also came under fire for campaigning with 1970s rocker Ted Nugent, who called Obama a “subhuman mongrel.” Nugent later apologized.

Another Republican, in a four-way primary race for lieutenant governor, has said undocumented Hispanics represent an “illegal invasion” of the United States.

Few prominent Texas Republicans back the immigration overhaul that passed the Democratic-led U.S. Senate last year, a top priority of Hispanic groups.

The Texas Republican Party’s official platform takes a hard line on immigration, saying that U.S. citizenship should be limited to those with at least one parent who is already a citizen. That could exclude from citizenship the party’s own director of Hispanic outreach, who was born to Mexican parents.

“It’s not a deal breaker for me,” said director David Zapata. When promoting Republicans’ ideas to fellow Hispanics, he emphasizes job creation and school choice rather than immigration.

CHICKEN-AND-EGG PROBLEM

Democrats, who dominated Texas politics for decades until the early 1980s, only recently began to rebuild in the state.

Republicans are unchallenged in seven of the state’s 34 congressional seats and 60 of the 150 state House of Representatives districts this year. In suburban Denton County, north of Dallas, Democrats have no candidates for district attorney, county judge and other important local posts.

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem, said Jenn Brown, Battleground Texas’ executive director.

“Volunteers don’t like working for bad candidates, but good candidates don’t want to run unless they feel there’s an infrastructure there to support them. So we decided to just go and start building,” she said.

A veteran of both Obama campaigns, Brown set up a neighborhood-based approach that encourages volunteers to organize phone calls and track voter responses.

Having Davis at the top of the ticket has helped, Democrats say. She was popular among Texas Democrats even before her unsuccessful 11-hour filibuster against proposed abortion restrictions rocketed her to national fame last June.

Davis’ campaign and Battleground Texas together have raised nearly $16 million since July 2013. The two groups have $11.3 million in the bank, about one-third of Abbott’s war chest.

But Davis is losing ground in polls. A Texas Tribune/University of Texas survey this week had her trailing Abbott by 11 percentage points. She trailed by 6 points in October.

GROUP’S TACTICS QUESTIONED

Battleground Texas’ tactics have come under attack by conservative provocateur James O’Keefe, whose undercover videos brought down the liberal group ACORN.

O’Keefe released a video last week showing Battleground volunteers copying phone numbers from voter-registration forms they had collected from residents, which Republicans say violated state law.

Brown said it was legal, but added that Battleground had discontinued the practice before the video came out.

“We decided to change it because the law was unclear and we knew attacks would be coming at some point,” she said.

The episode reflects some of the legal hurdles Battleground faces. Besides the new law requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls, Texas requires any individual who wishes to register new voters to get certification.

That doesn’t seem to deter the volunteers.

Between calls in Battleground’s office in Austin, University of Texas student Chris Cyrus said he and other volunteers recently registered 80 new voters in one day on campus. Cyrus, 21, said Democrats aren’t as rare in Texas as he once thought.

“It really seems like it’s something that’s kicking up this election cycle in a way I’ve not seen before,” he said.

http://www.reuters.com/resources_v2/flash/video_embed.swf?videoId=283830709&edition=BETAUS

[H/T Reuters]

Still Clueless: Politico Can’t Figure Out Why Ted Cruz Fights GOP Establishment

(Breitbart) — Politico just doesn’t get it about conservatives. Again.

The inside-the-beltway publication that keeps tabs on all of the “inside baseball” minutiae of Washington’s permanent political class does not understand why it is smart for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to oppose his party’s leadership, which he was elected by Texans to do.

In previewing its newest magazine article about Cruz, Politico tweeted, “Ted Cruz is a smart political operator—so why does he pick so many fights with his party?” Erica Grieder, the article’s author and senior editor at the left-of-center Texas Monthly, displays, like most of the mainstream press, that she has no clue why he does. She reveals a presupposed belief that the “way to win” is still through the D.C. political establishment.

The answer to Politico‘s question is a simple one. Cruz represents a movement in a party that Gallup has discovered has become more conservative over the last thirteen years, and his fights with the GOP establishment have catapaulted him to the front of presidential polls among Tea Party voters. In addition, the Republican establishment is distrusted and unpopular among conservatives, and Cruz got elected to take on that ossified permanent political class. In that sense, Cruz is doing what is politically smart. However, he is also showing that he is the rare politician that has gone to Washington and done exactly what he promised Texas voters he’d do if they elected him.

Cruz, Grieder writes, has offended his colleagues on both sides of the aisle by opposing gun control and amnesty, supporting the defunding of President Barack Obama’s disastrous Obamacare law, and forcing Republicans to go on record to allow a vote on raising the debt ceiling without any spending reductions.

What Grieder does not mention, though, is that Cruz’s opposition to gun control and amnesty was central in halting those efforts. Republicans did not fully support Cruz’s defunding strategy until the very last minute – after they were forced to by the pressure Cruz ginned up among the grassroots – and did not allow Cruz to put as much pressure on vulnerable red-state Democrats to join his effort. She also does not note that during the defunding fight, Republicans who were raking Cruz over the coals for his strategy insisted that keeping the sequester or getting more spending reductions in the budget negotiations was far more important. After Republicans joined Democrats to give up sequester spending levels as part of a budget deal, they then agreed to raise the debt ceiling without any spending concessions, which prompted Cruz to filibuster, forcing at least five Republicans to publicly declare their support for moving the bill forward in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he had to vote to advance the bill to save the country and then promptly voted against its final passage, as did every other Republican who had voted to break the filibuster.

Cruz does not play the “I voted against the bill that I voted to advance” game, and that is partly why the Washington establishment loathes him. What the mainstream press does not understand, though, is that the Washington establishment also hates Cruz because he has not ignored the voices of the conservative base that powered him to an unlikely win over Texas’s moneyed lieutenant governor in the Lone Star State’s 2012 GOP Senate primary.

Republicans from red states have often gone to Washington vowing to change it, only to have Washington change them. Even Grieder admits to being surprised that Cruz actually means what he says and is not “all hat no cattle” when he declares that he is “not at all” afraid of losing fights after standing on principle:

Every politician says things like that. Cruz, however, has a record of meaning it: He began his career in electoral politics in 2012 by launching a quixotic campaign for Texas’s Republican Senate nomination against an incumbent statewide officeholder, lieutenant governor David Dewhurst, who is ludicrously wealthy and was supported by most of the key members of the state’s political establishment. It was genuinely risky. It wasn’t the kind of bet most successful, pedigreed, politically minded lawyers would make.

Once he got to Washington, Cruz neither ran away from nor took for granted the conservative grassroots that elected him. In so doing, Cruz has amplified their voices in Washington much to the chagrin of the Republican establishment. Most recently, House Republicans were upset that Cruz had the influence to essentially put the brakes on their “immigration principles” after he called it “amnesty” in an interview with Breitbart News that was splashed across the Drudge Report. Cruz, after he had participated on a tele-town hall event the night before, told Breitbart News, “Anyone pushing an amnesty bill right now should go ahead and put a ‘Harry Reid for Majority Leader’ bumper sticker on their car, because that will be the likely effect if Republicans refuse to listen to the American people and foolishly change the subject from Obamacare to amnesty.”

Grieder is surprised that Cruz would say that Social Security reform did not get enacted under George W. Bush because “Congressional Republicans ran for the hills” because “the dominant instinct in Congress is risk aversion.” After writing that this was a “cutting thing to say” and “exactly the kind of comment that might irritate his colleagues,” Grieder shows she does not understand that the Tea Party was starting to form in response to the big-government programs of the George W. Bush administration.

“For a long time, the federal government, I believe, has spent too much, taxed too much, regulated too much and borrowed too much,” Cruz told her. “And that has been a bipartisan affliction – an awful lot of Republicans were complicit in exploding the size, power and spending of the federal government.”

Grieder wonders why Cruz would again take on his own party before whining that Cruz did not reveal interesting personal details to someone like her in the mainstream press that has already tried to use his college roommate to embarrass him. Yet after spending half the article insinuating that Cruz is a Tea Party pest lacking in substance, she concedes that Cruz “always perked up when my questions turned to fiscal matters and budget cutting – and the subject of whether his fellow Republicans really got it.” Grieder says that he gave an “impassioned take on his plans for fiscal discipline when he mentioned the need for entitlement reform, saying that he wanted to ensure the viability of Social Security and Medicare over the long term, rather than whittling away at them.”

She also noted that Cruz has listened to his colleagues – even those across the aisle. For instance, Cruz decided to support Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-NY) bill “to address sexual assault in the military by taking the decision-making authority for such prosecutions out of the chain of command” after listening to the evidence that was presented in committee.

Later in the article, she admits that she had “been following him around for more than three hours” and “pelting him with sometimes frivolous questions.” Yet Cruz remained placid even though she “wouldn’t have resented a flash of annoyance at what was obviously a trolling follow up” to one of her previous attempts at “small talk.”

That picture of Cruz is decidedly different from her portrayal of him at the beginning of her article as someone who bored her by not giving her interesting information or taking an interest in small talk, even though Cruz had warned her in advance that he could be “grumpy” because he was sick. Grieder says that Cruz, “when asked about politics, policy or the law… came to life: ferociously smart, talkative, engaged.” Apparently, like many in the mainstream press more concerned about gossip and the horserace than substance, she was neither interested in these discussions nor the movement that Cruz represents and that drives him.

[H/T Breitbart]

New Islamic jihadist Terror Compound Found in The Heart of Texas

(WND) — Declassified FBI documents confirm the existence of an Islamic jihadist enclave in Texas that is part of a network in the U.S. identified by the Department of Homeland Security as a terrorist organization.

The enclave belongs to the network of Muslims of the Americas, which is linked to the Pakistani-based militant group Jamaat al-Fuqra, according to an investigation by the Clarion Project and ACT! For America Houston.

Jamaat al-Fuqra was founded in New York in 1980 by Sheik Mubarak Ali Gilani, an Islamic cleric in Pakistan who at one time was in Pakistani custody in connection with the abduction of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Muslims in America says it has a network of 22 “villages” around the U.S., with headquarters at an encampment in the Catskill Mountains near Hancock, N.Y., called Holy Islamberg, as WND reported in 2006. An investigative report at the time found neighbors of Islamberg were deeply concerned about military-style training taking place there and frustrated by an apparent lack of attention from federal authorities.

WND also reported in 2006 that Jamaat al-Fuqra has collaborated with major terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah and al-Qaida.

The FBI describes the compound in Texas, called Mahmoudberg, as an “enclave” and “communal living site.” Located in Brazoria County along County Road 3 near Sweeny, Texas, it was discovered by the FBI through a tip from an informant in New York, according to the Clairon Project.

The Texas commune, in a heavily wooded area, is estimated by a local resident who spoke to ACT researchers to encompass about 25 acres. It dates back to the late 1980s, the resident said, which is confirmed by the FBI documents.

The FBI reported in 2007 that one commune resident formerly was a leader at the Muslims of America compound in Badger, Calif., called Baladullah.

In March 2001, a Baladullah member was arrested for transporting guns between New York and South Carolina. Another was charged with murdering a police deputy that caught him breaking and entering a home.

The declassified FBI documents show that the enclave is not the only affiliate of the organization that has operated in the state.

In 1991, after a MOA/Jamaat-ul-Fuqra bomb plot in Toronto was foiled, a federal search warrant for three suspects was issued and a nearly 45-acre “compound” about 70 miles south of Dallas was raided.

The location of the compound corresponds to a reference in an FBI document obtained by the Clarion Project that says about seven MOA members purchased property near Corsicana, Texas.

The suspects fled before the raid, and the children at the compound suddenly disappeared from school. Federal officials found four mobile homes; three military, general-purpose tents; and six vehicles. Also discovered were loose ammunition, books on counter-terrorism techniques and weaponry and various items with “Jamaat Fuqra Land” written on them.

Surveillance photos of a post office building and the Greenhead Station in Los Angeles were discovered as well.

The activities of Muslims in America continued after the October 1991 raid, however. Two 1992 FBI documents say MOA members in the state were using false aliases, Social Security numbers and birth certificates.

Murder, firebombing

Muslims of America is identified as a terrorist group in the FBI documents obtained by the Clarion Project.

A 2007 FBI record states members of the group have been involved in at least 10 murders, one disappearance, three firebombings, one attempted firebombing, two explosive bombings and one attempted bombing.

“The documented propensity for violence by this organization supports the belief the leadership of the MOA extols membership to pursue a policy of jihad or holy war against individuals or groups it considers enemies of Islam, which includes the U.S. Government,” the document states. “Members of the MOA are encouraged to travel to Pakistan to receive religious and military/terrorist training from Sheikh Gilani.”

The document also says Muslims of America is now “an autonomous organization which possesses an infrastructure capable of planning and mounting terrorist campaigns overseas and within the U.S.”

A 2003 FBI report states that investigation of the Muslims of the Americas “is based on specific and articulate facts giving justification to believe they are engaged in international terrorism.”

The Clarion Project said MOA members believe the holiest Islamic site in the country is at their Islamville commune in South Carolina. Along with Islamberg, other MOA entities include the International Quranic Open University, United Muslim Christian Forum, Islamic Post, Muslim Veterans of America and American Muslim Medical Relief Team.

An FBI report states the Sweeny, Texas, enclave is in an area “so rural it is quite common for residents to shoot firearms for target practice or hunting on private property without interference from law enforcement.”

ACT said that when its researchers were spotted in the area, they were immediately and repeatedly approached. At one point, a commune resident gave them a final warning to leave, despite the fact that they were not trespassing or harassing any members.

“It was definitely very threatening and menacing,” an ACT member said.

Multiple sources confirmed, according to the Clarion Project, that a resident of the commune is a police officer. Another, a neighbor has said, formerly drove trucks for the U.S. Army in Kuwait.

The commune is also linked to a nonprofit called the Muslim Model Community of Texas. Members, the Clarion Project said, travel to Houston to worship at the Muslims of America Dawah (Outreach) Center that is linked to another organization called First Muslims of Texas.

According to FBI documents and a police report, one of the MOA members was shot and killed by another member in 2002.

The report said the death of Salminma Dawood, also known as Terrance C. Davis III, was an accident. He reportedly was shot by another MOA member who “returned gunfire to unknown individuals who were harassing the MOA commune.”

Law enforcement reported they met about a dozen African-American males at the scene of the shooting. About five of the men lived at the commune, and there were an estimated seven women and children who also lived there.

Police said they were denied access to the trailer homes and were not allowed to directly interview the women, who covered their faces.

Local residents told researchers with ACT that they were aware of a few visits by government investigators to the commune. The locals said the MOA members refused to talk. One neighbor said two ambulances were denied entry into the compound until police intervened. The Clarion Project said Brazoria County criminal records show that two residents of Mahmoudberg were arrested in April 2013 and charged with “interference with public duties.” A trial is pending, the Clarion Project said.

Terror designation

In 2005, the Department of Homeland Security privately agreed to list Jamaat al-Fuqra and Muslims of America as a possible sponsor of a terrorist attack on the U.S.

The State Department, however, has not designated it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and it continues to organize in the U.S.

In 1998, the State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism report described Jamaat al-Fuqra as an “Islamic sect that seeks to purify Islam through violence.” It said that Fuqra members engaged in assassinations and bombings in the U.S. in the 1980s and still live in “isolated rural compounds” in the country.

A State Department spokesman was asked in January 2002 why Jamaat al-Fuqra stopped appearing in the department’s annual terrorism reports.

“Jamaat al-Fuqra has never been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” the spokesman said. “It was included in several recent annual terrorism reports under ‘other terrorist groups,’ i.e., groups that had carried out acts of terrorism but that were not formally designated by the Secretary of State. However, because of the group’s inactivity during 2000, it was not included in the most recent terrorism report covering that calendar year.”

The Clarion Project noted that Jamaat al-Fuqra has not appeared since then in the annual report, yet the declassified FBI documents from as late as 2007 discuss the terrorist threat posed by Muslims of America.

Last year, Muslims of the Americas filed a lawsuit against the nonprofit Christian Action Network for defamation and libel after CAN’s publication of the book “Twilight in America: The Untold Story of Islamist Terrorist Training Camps Inside America.”

The book accuses Muslims of America of  “acting as a front for the radical Islamist group Jamaat al-Fuqra.”

Much of the book is based on the investigation of a former NYPD undercover informant who spent eight years posing as a member of the group.

The authors of the book, Martin Mawyer and Patti Pierucci, told Fox News they welcome the lawsuit because it will expose the Islamic group’s activities.

Tied to Daniel Pearl abduction

The Jamaat al-Fuqra leader, Gilani, at one time was in Pakistani custody for the abduction of American journalist Daniel Pearl.

Intelligence sources determined Pearl was attempting to meet with Gilani in the days before he disappeared in Karachi in 2002 and later was beheaded. Intelligence sources also suggest a link between al-Fuqra and Richard Reid, the infamous “shoe bomber” who attempted to ignite explosives aboard a Paris-to-Miami passenger flight Dec. 22, 2001.

Beltway sniper John Muhammad also has been tied to the group, and there is circumstantial evidence that links it to Oklahoma University bomber Joel Hinrichs.

Joseph Bodansky, the former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, has affirmed Jamaat al-Fuqra operations in the U.S. have been known to the FBI and CIA for decades.

Gilani was a close associate of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who sent convicted conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to live with Jamaat al-Fuqra member Melvin Lattimore and attend flight school in Norman, Okla.

[H/T WND]

Obama: Tweets Support for Texas Democrat Filibuster of Late-Term Abortion Ban

Do you think Barack HUSSEIN Obama is not against the morals engrained in the United States?  Think again.

After calling out a ‘God Bless Planned Parenthood’ slur at a recent speech, he stoops a notch lower, into the bowels of disgust and tweets support for killing babies.

Breitbart reports: If calling out, “God Bless Planned Parenthood,” didn’t earn him the title of the “Abortion President,” perhaps Barack Obama tweeting out his support of Texas Democrats in a filibuster against a state late-term abortion ban will.

On Tuesday, Obama sent out a message from his Twitter account expressing support for Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) who filibustered the state House’s bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Something special is happening in Austin tonight: http://t.co/RpbnCbO6zw#StandWithWendy — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 25, 2013

The bill also would have required all abortion clinics to meet the same health and safety regulations as an ambulatory surgical center. It would require abortionists to secure admitting privileges at a local hospital and to personally administer abortion-inducing drugs to patients as well.

Davis argued that the bill would put abortion clinics that could not comply with the basic health and safety laws out of business, leading pro-life supporters to wonder how Davis and the Democrats were protecting women after all.

However, the bill failed when a violation of the filibuster rules prompted an objection, causing the end of the filibuster and throwing the session into chaos due to the presence of an angry mob of abortion supporters.

[loveclaw_buttons]