Patterico's Pontifications

10/13/2010

Robert Gibbs: Hijacker or Hypocrite?

Filed under: General — Karl @ 3:58 pm



[Posted by Karl]

I leave the obvious punchline for you, so I can get to this report from the Daily Caller’s Chris Moody:

The White House plans to continue attacking groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other conservative organizations for not disclosing the names of donors behind political ads. But during the 2004 Democratic primary campaign, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was involved with a political advocacy group that refused to reveal its own donors until the law required it.

***

Under campaign finance law, the Chamber is not required to release the names of its donors. When pressed by reporters as to why groups not mandated by law should disclose their donors, Gibbs said they should do it in “the spirit of political disclosure.”

During the 2003-2004 presidential primary season, however, Gibbs worked as the spokesman for a liberal advocacy group that ran attack ads against then-Democratic candidate Howard Dean. The “secretive” group, called Americans for Jobs, Health Care & Progressive Values, spent months organizing scathing ads without disclosing who was paying for them.

Gibbsy’s pals are best remembered as the sweethearts who savaged Dean as someone who could not stand up to Osama bin Laden. (more…)

Falcon Lake Murder Update: Cartel Sends Investigator’s Severed Head to Mexican Government

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:06 am



This puts to rest the crazy theory that the wife did it:

The severed head of a Mexican police commander investigating the fatal shooting of U.S. citizen David Michael Hartley on Falcon Lake was delivered Tuesday to Mexican military in a suitcase, authorities said.

The commander, identified as Rolando Flores Villegas, was one of the investigators that family members met during a meeting last week at an international bridge near Roma, said Cynthia Young, the mother of Hartley’s widow, Tiffany.

So we have cartels executing an investigator into the murder of an American. Is Obama ready to get involved yet?

P.S. If you think legalizing marijuana in California is the cure-all solution, think again. RAND says it will cut into the cartels’ profits, to be sure — but by no more than 3 percent.

Good News for O’Donnell: Zoominfo Profiles Can Be Verified by Anyone

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:59 am



When I first mentioned Christine O’Donnell’s Zoominfo profile I said:

A ZoomInfo spokesman claims that the “user verified” tag means O’Donnell verified the information on the ZoomInfo profile herself. Color me skeptical: how in the world would he know? ZoomInfo and LinkedIn should be more transparent — for example, they could release the e-mail address used by the person who set up the account.

Reader Aaron Worthing convinced Zoominfo that he is famed rock musician Tom Petty

Aaron joins me in calling on Zoominfo to release the e-mail address of the person who set up the O’Donnell profile:

So Zoominfo, it’s time to step up. Disclose the email address used to verify this account. If not to us, at least to an appropriately skeptical reporter.

They can’t really claim privacy. O’Donnell can’t claim it because she says she didn’t set it up. Nobody else can because they would be imposters. Release the information.

Nice job by Aaron.

Looking at the Velvet Revolution and Justice Through Music Books

Filed under: Brad Friedman,Brett Kimberlin,General,Velvet Revolution — Patterico @ 6:48 am



Chuck S. by e-mail (together with Dianna and Dustin in comments) found Velvet Revolution’s tax returns from 2006, 2007, and 2008. We also have tax returns from Justice Through Music from 2003, 2005 (with Schedule A), 2006, 2007, and 2008. All are .pdfs.

Feel free to look through them yourself and see what you find interesting. Notable aspects of the returns include large payments to unnamed independent contractors (Velvet Revolution) and unexplained large increases in rent (Justice Through Music).

Keep in mind that as a drug dealer, Kimberlin was used to fashioning his tax returns to forestall suspicion from the federal government. As Mark Singer reported in an October 1992 article in the New Yorker (subscription required):

To avoid the scrutiny of the tax authorities Kimberlin figured out how much he had spent in a given year, extrapolated the income that would be required to support such a life, added ten per cent, and filed a short-form tax return, taking the standard deduction. The tax code did not specifically require him to list his occupation, so he left that space blank. The only money he ever put in the bank was the money he used to pay taxes. He wrote only two checks a year — one to the Internal Revenue Service and the other to the Indiana Department of Revenue.

Consider this an open source project. Take a look and tell me what you see.

P.S. While looking at Velvet Revolution’s original articles of incorporation, reader Chuck S. found that one of the original Velvet Revolution directors, Ben Gelt, was arrested for drug trafficking in 2002. (The charge was later pled down to possession of marijuana.) Full details at this page. It appears that another director was Jeff Cohen, the founder of FAIR who used to appear on Fox News Watch. [UPDATE: Wrong. That Jeff Cohen e-mails to say it’s not him. I am sorry for the mistake.]


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