Conservative Blogger
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to announce 2016 plans June 24
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will announce his decision on whether to join the crowded field of Republicans running for president later this month.
Jindal, 43, will make the announcement at an event in New Orleans June 24. The two-term governor had previously said that he would wait until the last week of June, after the conclusion of the state's legislative session, before announcing whether or not he would run.
Nine Republicans have already entered the 2016 race. The latest, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, announced his candidacy Monday in his home state. Former Texas governor Rick Perry is expected to become the tenth person to join the field with an official announcement Thursday at an airfield outside Dallas.
Jindal formed an exploratory committee on May 18. In his announcement, Jindal said "Economic collapse is much closer to the door than people realize, our culture is decaying at a rapid rate and our standing in a dangerous world is at an all-time low."
On Tuesday, Jindal was one of the speakers at a GOP economic gathering in Florida that also featured Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, both would-be presidential candidates.
ISIS' frightening arsenal: Remote-controlled sniper rifles, steel plated suicide trucks
KIRKUK, Iraq – Captured ISIS weapons show the black-clad militants are developing an arsenal of sophisticated arms, and Kurdish fighters told FoxNews.com they fear the terrorist force's expanding manufacturing capability is making it more formidable by the day.
In a dusty outpost near the Kurdish-held northern city of Kirkuk, a Peshmerga commander recently displayed two weapons that show his enemy's increasing adaptability on the battlefield. One was a scoped sniper rifle, customized and mounted on a welded steel platform and built to track targets by computer and fire by remote control. The other was a much different type of weapon - a truck reinforced with two-inch thick steel plates to ensure its load of explosives could crash through checkpoints and make it to its target before detonating.
"They are using high-tech (weaponry), and have the know-how from all over the world.""They have more weapons than us, they have mines, C4, sniper rifles, humvees and tanks," said Peshmerga Commander Kemal Kurkuki.
- Peshmerga Maj. Gen. Sirwan Barzani
In Anbar Province, where ISIS is fighting the U.S.-equipped Iraqi army, the terrorists are using weapons taken from their vanquished foes. But on the northern front where the Peshmerga clash daily with ISIS, the militant fighters have powerful equipment either modified or built within the so-called caliphate known as Islamic State.
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This customized sniper rifle seized from ISIS weeks ago operates by remote control. (Gavin John)
Kerkuki said it was not clear who built the weapon or where it came from. Controls and labels on the wires were written in English, but the deadly innovation of the device led some to suspect it was built by Chechen fighters, who have poured in to join ISIS.
"[ISIS] has all types of weapons, heavy machine guns, tanks," said Peshmerga Maj. Gen. Sirwan Barzani. "They are using high-tech (weaponry), and have the know-how from all over the world."
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Peshmerga Commander Kemal Kerkuki says ISIS is developing new weapons to adapt to US air strikes. (Hurbakis.net)
Kurdish military sources said the improvised weapons show ISIS is adapting from its use of conventional weapons easily spotted from air and vulnerable to coalition sorties. Peshmerga commanders say that, while coalition air superiority has changed the dynamic of the war, they need weapon for troops on the ground to combat ISIS. To a man, they complain that the central government in Baghdad, which has always eyed the semi-autonomous Kurds suspiciously, is slow to send supplies needed for the fight they share.
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Two-inch
thick steel plating on this truck was intended to ensure it delivered
its deadly payload past Kurdish checkpoints. (Gavin John)
But the Peshmerga, whose name translates to "Ones who confront death," will fight ISIS with whatever they have on hand.
"Their weapons are strong, but our goals are bigger than theirs," Kurkuki said. "ISIS has no future in Kurdistan."
HRC EMAILS: Federal officials voiced growing alarm over Clinton’s compliance with records laws, documents show
Over a five-year span, senior officials at the National Archives and Records Administrations (NARA) voiced growing alarm about Hillary Clinton’s record-keeping practices as secretary of state, according to internal documents shared with Fox News.
During Clinton’s final days in office, Paul Wester, the director of Modern Records Programs at NARA – essentially the agency’s chief records custodian – privately emailed five NARA colleagues to confide his fear that Clinton would take her official records with her when she left office, in violation of federal statutes.
Referring to a colleague whose full name is unknown, Wester wrote on December 11, 2012: “Tom heard (or thought he heard) from the Clinton Library Director that there are or may be plans afoot for taking her records from State to Little Rock." That was a reference to the possibility that Clinton might seek to house her records at the Clinton Presidential Center, which was largely funded by the Clinton Foundation.
"[W]e need to discuss what we know, and how we should delicately go about learning more about…the transition plans for Secretary Clinton’s departure from State," Wester added. He did not specify why the situation required “delicate” handling, but added that colleagues had “continued to invoke the specter of the Henry Kissinger experience vis-à-vis Hilary [sic] Clinton.”
That was a reference to how the secretary of state during the Nixon and Ford administrations, preparing to leave office in January 1977, stashed large segments of his classified papers on the upstate New York estate of his friend, Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller. It wasn’t until 2001 that Kissinger relented to demands from scholars and the U.S. government and made the documents available for research.
Under the Federal Records Act, NARA is entrusted with official oversight of Executive Branch agencies and their employees, aimed at ensuring that the records they generate in the discharge of their official duties are being properly preserved and stored.
The Wester email and 72 other internal documents released by NARA and the State Department earlier this month show NARA officers repeatedly expressed concerns that Clinton and her office were not observing the federal laws and regulations that govern recordkeeping – but that NARA never did much about it.
The 73 documents from NARA and State were turned over to Cause of Action, a non-partisan government accountability watchdog that had filed a Freedom of Information Act request in March, after the New York Times revealed that Clinton had exclusively used a private email server and domain name during her tenure as secretary of state. Cause of Action shared the documentswith Fox News on an exclusive basis, ahead of Senate testimony by the group’s executive director, Daniel Epstein.
“Given NARA’s stated concerns,” Epstein said in written testimony submitted this week to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, “it either was aware of the failure to preserve Mrs. Clinton’s emails or was extremely negligent in its efforts to monitor [the preservation of] senior officials’ emails.”
The alarm bells sounded fairly early in Clinton’s tenure at Foggy Bottom. In a November 2009 email, written when Clinton had not yet completed her first year on the job, NARA archivist David Langbart wrote to his colleague, Michael Kurtz, about a “huge issue on which there has been little progress” – namely, the proper preservation of “high-level memos” generated by employees at “S/ES.” That is the abbreviation for the office of the secretary of state within the State Department’s Executive Secretariat.
“[Members of a task force] are still working with the Executive Secretariat on the high-level memos issue,” Langbart wrote on November 2. “Earlier it sounded like S/ES was going to rely on SMART [an updated recordkeeping program for the State Department] but it now appears that they will be establishing their own recordkeeping system…”
Previously unpublished notes taken at a conference of NARA and State Department officials in July 2014, after Clinton had left the government, reflect continued concern that recordkeeping practices at Clinton’s agency had never met federal standards.
The handwritten notes, turned over to Cause of Action, refer to employees at State “using gmail with no r/k [recordkeeping] system,” and lamenting the “total disaster” that had apparently occurred when the Department of Interior had adopted a Google app for government use. The notes show the officials discussed “targeting senior leaders” at the State Department, in part by having assistant secretaries of state at each of the department’s bureaus establish “Bureau Records Coordinators.”
The notes show that the officials considered starting such procedures with a test run at the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), which was thought to be an “easy” venue for such trials, then moving to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) and then “into the Office of the Secretary w/ Principles [sic]” on the “7th Floor” – where the secretary’s office suite is housed.
The most recent private expressions of concern by NARA officials came after Michael Schmidt, the New York Times reporter who broke the Clinton private emails story on March 2, began making inquiries at NARA a few days before his story ran. “I’m working on a story about government employees who use their personal email addresses to conduct government business,” Schmidt wrote, without disclosing initially that his focus was on Clinton, in a February 27 email to NARA general counsel Gary Stern.
Within about two hours, Stern secured approval from NARA Chief Operating Officer William Bosanko (“No objections from me”) for Stern to speak with Schmidt. The two connected on Sunday, March 1, after which Stern privately emailed the National Archivist himself, David Ferriero, and Wester, the agency’s chief records custodian, who had two years earlier expressed fears about Clinton unlawfully taking her records with her when she left office.
“As Paul surmised,” Stern wrote, Schmidt “has learned that when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she apparently used a personal email account to conduct government business.” Stern, who has served as general counsel at NARA since 1998, added: “NARA does look into allegations of this type, with our interest being to ensure that the agency recovers any alienated [withheld] records and has policies in place to ensure prevent such events from occurring again. This case, if true, would present a concern.”
Particularly stung by the Times’ bombshell was James Springs, the acting inspector general at NARA, who responded to the story with an agitated March 3 email to Wester that asked: “Were we aware the gov[ernment] email system was not being used by Ms[.] Clinton. [sic] If we were not aware why not. [sic] What checks and balances do we have in place to ensure the gov email systems are being used. [sic]”
Wester forwarded Springs’ email to seven NARA colleagues, stating only: “I will talk to James, hopefully later this afternoon or tomorrow.”
Wester did not respond to a message left on his office voice mail by Fox News. Appearing at a National Press Club panel discussion in April, Jason Baron, the attorney who formerly served as the director of litigation at NARA, expressed amazement that NARA officials had not done more to discharge their supervisory duty over Clinton’s recordkeeping practices.
“I remain mystified by the fact that the use of a private e-mail account apparently went either unnoticed or unremarked upon during the four-year tenure in office of the former secretary,” said Baron, now in private practice at the firm of Drinker Biddle & Reath.”Simply put, where was everyone? Is there any record indicating that any lawyer, any FOIA officer, any records person, any high-level official ever respectfully confronted the former secretary with reasonable questions about the practice of sending e-mails from a private account? It is unfathomable to me that this would not have been noticed and reported up the chain.”
Clinton has disclosed that late last year she turned over 55,000 pages of emails to the State Department, printed out, and unilaterally deleted another 30,000 emails she deemed “personal.” Her spokesman, Nick Merrill, told reporters when the controversy first erupted that the secretary had obeyed the “letter and spirit of the rules.”
Police kill Massachusetts man, arrest another in anti-terror investigation
Authorities in Massachusetts arrested a man in connection with a counterterror investigation late Tuesday, hours after another man under surveillance by the Joint Terrorism Task Force was shot and killed after he refused to put down a military-style knife while approaching two officers.
Authorities identified the deceased man as 26-year-old Usaama Rahim, who was shot outside a CVS Pharmacy in Roslindale, Mass. at approximately 7 a.m. local time Tuesday. A law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told the Associated Press that Rahim had been making threats against law enforcement personnel.
Boston Police Commissioner William Evans told reporters that members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force approached Rahim to question him about "terrorist-related information" they had received when he moved toward officers with the knife.
Evans said officers repeatedly ordered Rahim to drop the knife but he continued to advance. He said task force members fired their guns, hitting Rahim once in the torso and once in the abdomen. Rahim was taken to Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
WFXT reported that three different Joint Terrorism Task Force teams had been carrying out 24-hour surveillance on at least three different people in the Boston area, though it was unclear how long that had been going on. One source told the station that they had been investigating an "active plot" centered around harming law enforcement officials, although it is unclear if it was operational. The plot may have been inspired by the terror group ISIS, who have repeatedly called on followers in the United States to attack law enforcement officials or military installations.
Vincent Lisi, special agent in charge of the Boston FBI office, said authorities "don't think there's any concern for public safety out there right now."
Evans did not comment on the report that Rahim had been radicalized by ISIS, but said "Obviously, there was enough information there where we thought it was appropriate to question him about his doings ... He was someone we were watching for quite a time."
Evans later said authorities knew Rahim "had some extremism as far as his views."
Evans said the officers didn't have their guns drawn when they approached Rahim. He said police have video showing Rahim "coming at officers" while they are backing away. That account differs from one given by Rahim's brother Ibrahim Rahim, who said in a Facebook posting that his youngest brother was killed while waiting at a bus stop to go to his job.
"He was confronted by three Boston Police officers and subsequently shot in the back three times," he wrote. "He was on his cellphone with my dear father during the confrontation needing a witness."
The officer and the agent involved in the shooting weren't physically injured but were evaluated at a hospital for what Evans described as "stress."
WFXT reported that Rahim worked in loss prevention at several CVS stores in the Boston area. However, it was not clear that the store where he was killed was among them. Boston voter registration records seen by the Associated Press list Rahim as a student. Other records indicate that as recently as two years ago he was licensed as a security officer in Miami, but don't specify in what capacity.
The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center said its security firm hired Rahim as a security guard for a month in mid-2013. Executive director Yusufi Vali said Rahim didn't regularly pray at the center and didn't volunteer there or serve in any leadership positions.
Later Tuesday, the FBI and local police arrested a man at a home in Everett, Mass., in an action authorities said was related to the Roslindale shooting. Christina Diorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, said David Wright was taken into custody from his home in suburban Everett. She said Wright will face federal charges and is expected to appear in U.S. District Court on Wednesday.
The Boston Globe reported, citing a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case, that the charges against Wright will related to an alleged plot to kill a member of law enforcement.
The FBI and Rhode Island State Police also searched a property in Warwick, R.I. in relation to the Roslindale shooting. Police sealed off a street, requiring anyone who lived there to show identification to pass the police cordon, but it was not clear if they had anyone in custody.
A 17-year-old told the Boston Globe that police had asked him about a neighbor in his mid-20s named Nick. The teen told the paper Nick often wears long robes and prays in his front yard.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Exclusive: Cash for Slackers
First of a Three-Part Series
Wouldn’t you like to have a job where you get paid to slack off, and no matter what, have a powerful authority to back you up, winning battles to preserve your salary, benefits, and your every demand if your boss tries to fire you?
It’s a fact of life for many government workers. A dive into government labor fights at the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) reveals a nasty secret—the great lengths federal unions go to protect government slackers, at your expense.
Cases at the FLRA, a quasi-judicial body that oversees disputes between federal agencies and government unions, show federal labor unions are winning battles that are putting taxpayers, and the government, at risk.
And now one big government insider is calling foul on government union abuses of taxpayers and federal agencies. Patrick Pizzella, one of the three referees at the FLRA adjudicating these fights, is blowing the whistle on federal union abuses in case after case. “One cannot make this stuff up,” Pizzella said.
For example, federal labor unions are winning fights against federal agencies who try to fire their union workers for letting mentally ill military veterans walk out the door of psychiatric units in Veterans Affairs hospitals, or for not catching things like a major rat infestation in a food factory. Instead, union lawyers are getting their members’ jobs, back-pay, and benefits reinstated, all at taxpayer expense.
Federal unions have also battled Defense Dept. agencies that, for example, try to suspend a daycare worker for letting a toddler wander off a military base down the sidewalk toward traffic.
At the same time, federal worker unions have been fighting to unionize federal inspector generals’ offices, the watchdogs who catch waste, fraud and abuse committed by federal workers at agencies like the IRS, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the Dept. of Transportation, or the Dept. of Veterans Affairs.
In the second part of our series, we’ll show you how federal unions are fighting to let their members work full-time from home on union business, and not on their work for the government, at places like the VA.
We’ll show you, too, how federal teleworking is on the rise, thanks to the Obama Administration, where a growing number of government workers are working from home, even from their couches. This, as workers at the U.S. Patent Office were found to be surfing on Facebook, shopping online, running errands or doing the laundry, while ostensibly working from home.
And in the final part of our series, we’ll show you how, despite the fact that cyber attacks on the government are on the rise, a federal union recently won a case that stopped Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from immediately blocking workers’ personal email accounts on government computers, like Hotmail or Gmail. Such accounts are often loaded with computer viruses or malware.
Instead, the union is forcing these security agencies to first enter into protracted collective bargaining over the use of personal webmail accounts, putting the government at risk of cyber-attacks at a time when security experts note cyber criminals, terrorists and nation states like China are increasingly trying to break in.
Just last week Russian cyber thieves were blamed for the hack into the IRS, where tax return data for 104,000 individuals was stolen in order to get fraudulent tax refunds, now estimated at $50 million. Hackers broke into the IRS’s Internet service that lets taxpayers access their past tax returns.
Big government is becoming harder to oversee as it increases in size. However, the head of the country’s biggest federal worker union recently threatened retaliation against anyone in Congress who tried to dial back the federal workforce in order to help rein in the ballooning $18.1 trillion federal deficit.
“We are a force to be reckoned with and we are a force that will open up the biggest can of whoop ass on anyone” who votes against the interests of federal unions, J. David Cox Sr., national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), recently said, adding, “every time the “fools” in Congress try to hurt the federal workforce we get bigger. We get stronger and we fight harder.” AFGE did not return repeated calls for comment on this story.
The percentage of workers represented by unions in the private sector is now at about 6.6%, a number that has been steadily declining since the seventies, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compare that to estimates that show anywhere from 35.7% to more than half of the federal government is represented by a union.
About 1.2 million federal workers are members of a federal union, says the Government Accountability Office. That’s an estimated 57% membership rate; there are about 80 federal unions. At the same time, it can take anywhere from a little over five months to more than a year to fire federal workers for poor performance, and fired workers can still appeal, consuming another 200 days.
Meantime, the FLRA continues to hear hundreds of cases where federal unions battle attempted firings for government backsliders. Cases dense with an impenetrable fogbank of legalism, where federal unions hire attorneys who earn a bonanza of fees protecting miscreant federal workers and magick away accountability, putting taxpayers, and the government, at risk.
Taxpayers Must Reward Back Pay to VA Worker Who Let Psych Patient Vanish
Somehow, no one at the VA medical facility in Kansas City, Missouri noticed that an unnamed patient in its secure psychiatry unit for acute inpatients had vanished in the spring of 2014. VA workers had left the security door unlocked.
The reason the vets in the unit are kept in a secured, locked environment is due to their treatment for “drugs, [their] hostile nature, and mental problems,” notes the FLRA’s Pizzella in the case file. Pizzella, who served as assistant secretary for administration and management at the Labor Department under President George W. Bush, added: “Alfred Hitchcock would probably have referred to this case as ‘The Case of the Vanishing Patients.’"
Even though a security camera had recorded the patient walking out of the VA psych unit through an unlocked security door, at least three employees still wrote in VA reports that they were seeing the veteran in the unit.
For example, VA worker and AFGE union member Afolabi Olubo not only had marked the patient present, he had reported that he had physically seen the veteran four times, even though the patient had already disappeared. Hours later, that evening, the veteran was discovered at his brother’s house.
Other “patients had escaped” from this VA unit before, and in one case, a VA patient “was gone for two days” before it was discovered he was not in this Kansas City VA facility, the FLRA case file notes.
VA patients are vanishing elsewhere, including, for example, from VA medical facilities in Cleveland, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A reporter for a CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh noted in 2013 after a vet vanished: “Let’s be honest. The patient could only ‘go missing’ if the people who were supposed to be watching him weren’t doing their job.”
FLRA official Pizzella notes in the case file that “one might presume, therefore, that solving the mystery of the unlocked door would be a priority shared by the managers and union officers at AFGE Local 2663 in order to ensure that no other [VA] patients are lost in the future.”
But ensuring that VA workers protect the safety of mentally ill vets wasn’t the union’s priority in this case. When VA managers tried to fire Olubo, the AFGE union fought to cut his penalty to a fourteen-day suspension, then to a one-day suspension.
Then, in September of last year the federal arbitrator on the case, Archie Robbins, ordered the VA to reinstate Olubo and award him back pay. AFGE argued that suspension was inappropriate because Olubo “had just returned from...vacation and mistakenly thought he saw another patient who looked like [the missing] patient.”
Olubo’s negligence was ruled just a “shortcoming,” and the arbitrator even lectured the VA in Kansas City “that it should have used the disciplinary process ‘to inspire [Olubo] to be a better worker in the future,’” Pizzella wrote. Arbitrator Robbins also ordered the VA in Kansas City to not place any evidence of a verbal reprimand “into [Olubo’s] work record or utilize it in any future disciplinary action.”
Pizzella notes that the AFGE union and the arbitrator “treated this case as if losing a patient is no more serious than losing one’s office key,” adding, the VA workers’ “misconduct is inexcusable and must have violated many written and unwritten policies pertaining to the public health and welfare,” (see FLRA case details).
Taxpayers Must Reward Back Pay to USDA Food Inspector Who Didn’t Catch Rat Infestation
A federal food-safety inspector at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service got suspended for “negligently” failing to discover that rats had infested a pasta factory in Bridgeview, Illinois.
However, the AFGE won, his punishment was overturned and his back pay was reinstated. The federal labor review board may reinstate the legal costs for his union attorney as well.
Back in February 2010, Irvin Boesen, a 25-year USDA food inspector, supposedly inspected Vince & Sons Pasta Co. in Bridgeview, Ill. But USDA officials did their own looksee, and found that “the rat infestation in the pasta-production facility was extensive and widespread,” the case file shows.
Somehow Boesen, the USDA inspector, “failed to discover” rat feces in a storage area holding bags of raw flour and rat excrement on the floor around “a bag of flour that was ripped open,” documents indicate. He also “didn’t pay sufficient attention” to reports from the pest control company hired by the plant, which noted four rats were trapped inside the factory that month
Because of the rat infestation, the government shut down the pasta facility “for more than a week,” due to the “serious health and safety issue” in the plant, putting employees temporarily out of work, documents show. The USDA also suspended the inspector for just five days without pay, “on the lenient side,” the USDA admitted, taking into account his long service, the case file shows.
But the AFGE union lawyer on the case fought back, arguing the USDA “failed to apply progressive discipline,” and that Boesen’s five-day suspension was “unreasonable, arbitrary, capricious, punitive and an abuse of discretion.”
The AFGE won. The federal arbitrator, Robert D. Steinberg, set aside the USDA’s decision as unwarranted. He ruled the worker was merely negligent rather than willful or reckless, emphasizing Boesen was a long-term employee with a satisfactory performance record. So, the inspector got his back pay (he made more than $67,500 yearly) and lost benefits were reinstated, with just a slap on the wrist.
The USDA inspector “suffered no significant consequence, even though his inexcusable negligence could have affected the health of hundreds, if not thousands, of consumers,” FLRA official Pizzella wrote, all contrary to the mission of the USDA, which “is to ensure that the nation’s commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe.”
Pizzella noted “the unavoidable conclusion”: That the USDA inspector “created the potential for a serious health crisis.”
Union Says Suspension Excessive for Federal Daycare Worker Who Let Toddler Wander Off
Video footage revealed a federal daycare worker at Elgin Air Force Base in Florida was so busy talking, she let a toddler walk off a gated playground in February 2014 toward traffic. But the AFGE argued her five-day suspension for negligence was “excessive,” despite the video proof.
Specifically, the toddler, under the care of the federal worker (both unnamed), walked out of the playground through an unclosed gate, and proceeded down the sidewalk toward traffic while the daycare worker, an AFGE union member, talked to a parent. “Video footage of the incident indicated that the incident would not have happened if the grievant or her coworker had monitored the playground,” the case file reads.
Even though it admitted the video footage was “credible,” AFGE argued the Air Force “failed to prove” the daycare worker’s misconduct since “the playground gate was broken,” blaming it on the “responsibility” of the day-care center director.
However, the Air Force’s table of penalties “permits firing even for a first offense of this nature,” notable in this case since this lapse could have created “serious injury” to the toddler.” This time, the union lost, and the worker was suspended.
Next: Taxpayers must pay for government workers to do full time work on union issues—from home.
Graham makes nine: Time, money running out as more Republicans enter 2016 race
The Republican presidential field swelled Monday to nine candidates as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham officially entered the 2016 race, making campaign fundraising even more challenging for those still on the sidelines.
The list of potential candidates who have not yet announced includes: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.
Each of the hopefuls has a unique set of challenges, to be sure. But for those at the bottom of the polls, the ability to raise money likely becomes more difficult as more candidates enter the race.
On Sunday, Kasich and Jindal each responded to questions about whether they had waited too long to enter, with Kasich alluding to the money factor.
“If I think I can't win, I wouldn't do it because I don't want to burden my family and my friends,” Kasich told NBC's "Meet the Press." “I raised money the old fashioned way. I go out and tell people what I think. … I'm optimistic where we are. I'm optimistic on the resources. I'm becoming more and more optimistic on the organization.”
Jindal, who is polling near the bottom in the list of roughly 14 GOP candidates and hopefuls and plans to announce his intentions at the end of the month, said the race will “ultimately be up to the voters.”
Graham enters the race also running well behind in early polls but is running on a tough national security message and could use his home state's status as holder of the first-in-the-South primary to his advantage.
But arguably bigger fish have yet to jump in the 2016 pool -- namely, heavyweights like Bush and Walker. Right now, they still enjoy solid numbers in the polls and have already lined up a fundraising network.
David Payne, a Republicans strategist and partner at the Washington, D.C.-based firm Vox Global, voiced confidence in their ability to keep raising money, even on the sidelines.
“There’s still time for serious contenders to ‘ante up,’” he said. “Our current campaign finance laws are making this one of the most interesting primary campaigns ever for Republicans, but also confusing. Two of our top-three contenders are running without officially declaring their candidacy as of yet: Bush and Walker.”
Political analysts have predicted Bush’s Rise to Rise super PAC will collect $100 million to $500 million by the July 15 federal filing deadline. It reportedly has done so well that Bush has asked donors to limit contributions to $1 million.
Walker certainly cannot match Bush’s extensive donor list, built with help from his father George H.W. Bush and brother George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns.
However, Walker has reportedly amassed a sizeable amount of cash through his political group, Our American Revival, pulling from small-dollar contributors and such mega-donors as casino magnate Sheldon Anderson and millionaire investor Foster Friess. The super PAC Unintimidated PAC is also raising money to help Walker.
The field of nine declared candidates is Graham, Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, ex-Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina, former New York Gov. George Pataki, retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
Still, fundraisers and analysts predict as much as $5 billion could be spent on the entire 2016 White House race, twice as much as in 2012, with Democratic frontrunner and fundraising juggernaut Hillary Clinton able to collect and spend as much as $1.5 billion.
“If … Christie or Kasich decide to get in the race, they would instantly command more attention and more money than most of the individuals who have already filed their official paperwork,” Payne said. “Late summer 2015 will clear up all this confusion about who’s actually running and who our top candidates are in the early primary states. ...
"If you’re a candidate who’s still playing it coy in August, it will be too late for you.”
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