Nothing to See Here, No Need to Look any Further, and We’ll Sue You If You Continue to Raise Such Questions
The Illinois Review gets an preview of how stories unfavorable to Rahm Emanuel will be squashed if they are not part of the official Cook County Democratic Party storyline.
Illinois Review has received an incredible amount vile hate email, comments, and phone calls because we had the nerve to ask questions about Rahm Emanuel’s property taxes. In fact, for the first time in our history we had to close the comment section of two posts because it was being overrun with malicious remarks.
Indeed, the thuggery of the Left and their political masters here in Illinois has been on full display. It is a Chicago-style that will soon be exported to Washington, D.C.
That said, Illinois Review is not going to stop asking questions. Nor will we mimic the Left, whose propaganda machines never allow facts to get in the way of their lies. When our questions are answered and those answers verified, we let our readers know.
Read the Full Story: http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/11/illinois-review.html
Gimme a break…
Dave Diersen has his comments closed on his GOPUSA news clippings. And those run on Ill Review every day.
This wasn’t a “story unfavorable to Rahm Emanuel”.
This was a complete fabrication based on a misunderstanding of basic property tax info.
Ms. Eaton’s original premise was that Emanuel paid no property taxes at all. She based this on the fact that she was unable to find his home address listed on the Cook County Assessor’s website.
When a staffer from the county assessor’s office tried contacting her she apparently didn’t respond. She also kept deleting that staffer’s comments pointing out that her assumption was wrong.
Today she deleted that original article, after having deleted all the comments to it and turning off the comment function yesterday.
The fact is that Emanuel paid $13,000+ in taxes last year, as Ms. Eaton later acknowledged in her second post (her “update”).
Using her own figures, Ms. Eaton found that Emanuel’s neighbors paid between $3500 and $7000 in taxes. Again, these are the figures Ms. Eaton originally chose to highlight because she thought Rahm Emanuel wasn’t paying any taxes.
Clearly though, Emanuel’s $13,000 tax bill is quite a bit higher than his neighbors’ $3500 to $7000.
Today she also deleted that update post.
The most bizarre part of this whole non-story is Ms. Eaton’s conclusion here: “When our questions are answered and those answers verified, we let our readers know.”
…Actually, the questions were answered and verified yesterday by multiple sources. The answers kept getting deleted and then Ms. Eaton posted two follow-up posts yesterday (both now deleted) complaining about the fact people were answering her questions.
Sad, really.
Illinois Review deleted the posts because they were threatened with legal action, not all that uncommon for the Machine.
Getting a surprise call from the Assessors Office about someone elses taxes has to be a first. Wonder why that happened Rob?
Amendment 1
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
the right of petition includes asking questions does it not?
CDOBs,
Illinois Review was knowingly and willingly publishing false information and knowingly and willingly deleting information correcting their fallacies.
Legal action might very well be an appropriate response in that case.
As for the Assessor’s Office, the staffer originally offered to help correct the story. Instead, Ms. Eaton continuously deleted the corrections.
Doing research and questioning things is fine. People and groups of all political stripes do it every day.
Misinterpreting the data one finds or accidentally not finding all the pertinent info available after doing such research is understandable and forgivable… if one were to simply admit the error and correct/clarify the original content.
The harm here, however, was in the deliberate continuation of such incorrect information — leaving it posted without direct clarification — and the deliberate removal of any and all corrective information subsequently posted by those more knowledgeable on the subject than Ms. Eaton apparently was.
USA,
The question Fran Eaton was: “Why doesn’t Rahm Emanuel pay property taxes?”
It’s a fallacy. He does pay property taxes. He pays about double (or more) the taxes of his neighbors (and that’s based on Ms. Eaton’s own published research, though she’s now deleted it).
Again, publicly lying about someone is liable to cause that person harm… and is clearly grounds for a lawsuit.
I have no doubt that Ms. Eaton or her publisher, Jon Zahm, would not hesitate to sue should someone come along and blatantly lie about them.
And while the question “Why doesn’t Rahm Emanuel pay property taxes?” was originally based on Ms. Eaton’s simple mistake, the truth was pointed out to her repeatedly and from several reliable, well-documented sources (including a copy of Rahm Emanuel’s own tax bill). The fact that she left the post up with that erroneous question unchanged, meant she was then knowingly lying about Rahm Emanuel.
Rob,
Rahm is a public figure. It is perfectly legal to speculate on whether he pays his taxes, much like people might speculate on Luis Guitierrez paying his taxes.
I don’t think small publications such as Illinois Review (or ours for that matter) can afford to be targeted for a lawsuit, so rather than publishing reasonably honest questions, it is cheaper just to pull them down.
JBP
John,
Perhaps you’ve missed the point despite the fact I’ve repeatedly stated in earlier comments for others who also missed it…
Yes, it is perfectly reasonable to question authority, whether Dem or GOP or other.
No, it is not perfectly reasonable (and in some cases may be illegal) to knowingly lie while doing so.
You state that she asked reasonably honest questions.
Her question that started this was premised on a fallacy: “Why doesn’t Rahm Emanuel pay property taxes?”
That was her question.
It was founded on incorrect, incomplete info.
Ms. Eaton didn’t “speculate on whether he pays his taxes.”
She premised her entire question on her (incorrect) assertion that she believed he did not pay any taxes at all.
When given correct info indicating he did pay taxes, she deleted the info and then turned the comments function off in an effort to try and avoid the correct info.
She can play the part of martyr all she wants, but she’s the one who chose to do incomplete research and then to initially, and quite belligerently, ignore corrective information when it was presented to her.
It doesn’t matter if the publication is as small as Illinois Review, Chicago Daily Observer, or Capitol Fax Blog or as large as CNN, Tribune Media, or Clear Channel.
Knowingly peddling a falsehood about another person after being given true info is at the least unethical and at worst potentially illegal… and grounds for a lawsuit.
President-elect Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel: His property, political contributions. Interesting Note: His sister-in-law’s name is Hillary Whipple Rule of Chagrin Falls
webofdeception.com/rahmemanuel.html
Rob,
I think you have run a blog before, so you certainly know that facts are not all that important to litigation. Once you get threatened with litigation, you either back down or face someone with quite a bit more resources than you have, in this case the Chicago Machine vs. a near volunteer organization.
The fact is that the Tribune (Sun-Times etc) did not uncover anything about Emanuel’s taxes. In my experience they miss this sort of thing because they are lazy, and not necessarily because he has a clean slate, much like the Tribune never noticed that Sen. Obama went to the church with the nutty Rev. Wright, until the Illinois Review pointed it out. The Tribune is lazy as hell first, and unethical only when it doesn’t require much work.
The media should question about 100 things in Rahm Emanuel’s remarkable background. The machine shut this one down. Maybe there will be more. I get quite a few e-mails about bizarre things that Emanuel has done, maybe the Tribune does too.
JBP
Wow,
bizarre emails being sent out. That’s proof for ya.
I heard Obama is actually a citizen of Tajikistan and his “berth certificate” is missing from the Tajik ministry.
Now what kind of intimidation did Ms Eaton receive? Does she believe that merely pointing out her mistake is intimidation?
Is an assessor employee posting a correction intimidation?
Is merely disagreeing with whatever she says intimidation?
She screwed up. She posted bad information. She should have simply said that.
I have no problem with her investigating Emmanuel or any other politician regarding property taxes, but before she posts wrong information she she learn the basics of the system.
If she can’t do that she shouldn’t call herself a columnist or a conservative. She should call herself a “nutjob”. Nutjobs come in all political varieties.
Now if you will excuse me I just received an email stating that Obama wears red underwear and hates America.
John,
The Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times hasn’t run anything because there’s nothing to run.
Fran’s original assertion was that Emanuel didn’t pay taxes.
She was flat-out wrong. He does pay annual property taxes, just like you and I.
And as a direct counterpoint to your assertion that the media is “lazy” … this mess came to light because Rich Miller, Illinois political journalist, saw Fran’s post and thought she might be on to something so he looked into it more.
That’s when he found out that she was completely wrong and wrote a blogpost describing the story.
…Wrong is wrong, whether you or Fran or anyone wish the wrong story to be true or not.
…And continuing to leave a “wholly inaccurate” blogpost up with direct clarification is a reasonable basis for a suit (for all we know it could’ve been as simple as a lawsuit to get the false post removed; which has already been done anyway).
–
Jerry,
Stop intimidating Fran. She’ll have to turn off comments again, just like her friend Dave Diersen does every single day on his own Illinois Review posts.
(That’s a light-hearted joke, John…)
Rob,
One can’t really know exactly what goes on with Chicago Politician’s taxes when the the Assessor threatens to sue you for discussing it.
I am sure there is more to the story, just as there is more to a lot of stories buried over this campaign.
Why was it again that the Tribune never noticed that the U of I was withholding information about Bill Ayers and the Annenberg Challenge? Ah I remember, “there was nothing to run”.
JBP
JBP,
Where’s the proof that Frannie was intimidated? If she had any courage or intellectual honesty she would run it. My guess is that her definition of intimidation is merely suggesting she is somehow wrong.
I could be wrong and she could settle the matter by “freeing” the emails. I’m sure Rush Limbaugh could bankroll any legal fight she might encounter.
As Maximillian Kolbe might say “No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth.
Where is the truth. Stand up Fran. Man the ramparts. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. I have not yet begun to fight.
Stand up for wide stance conservatism where truth matters less than point of view.
John,
You have evidence that she and Illinois Review were threatened with lawsuits simply because they were doing research into public files?
Your spin’s getting weaker and weaker.
As I’ve already explained more than a handful of times, Ms. Eaton made a mistake.
Rather than owning up to the mistake after being informed of her errors, she literally shot the messenger by continuously deleting the factual information.
She claimed Rahm Emanuel didn’t pay taxes. She was wrong.
Even after it was pointed out she was wrong, she kept the false post up.
…As for the Trib and the Annenberg papers, I remember reading newspaper articles about it. Did you ignore those articles so you’d have a talking point? By the by, the papers were made public after, who was it? Oh yes. After members of the press made several inquiries about making them public.
It’s neither your fault nor mine that the Annenberg papers were boring and contained no “smoking gun” gotcha moment.
If anything, they showed that wealthy Republican donors were just as involved in that conservative-funded education project as Barack Obama and others were. (One of those Republicans on that board even gave John McCain $1000 in 2008).
When you figure out what “more” there is to the story about a guy who pays his taxes despite the fact Fran Eaton lied about it… you let us know.
I won’t be holding my breath though.
Rob,
Read the post at Illinois Review, they were threatened with litigation. Not all that uncommon, I may add. There is a pattern of behavior from the Obama campaign to shut off unfriendly news sources.
Re Annenberg, funny how Ayers and Obama’s project didn’t make it into the Tribune or Sun-Times till days after the National Review noted that the two bumblers ran that project. Then, only after Jerry Agar’s wailed for hours on end about the U of I shutting out researchers from the U of I library, did the library open up.
Only after Jerry’s plea for some mildly responsible behavior from the press did the Trib cover the story (I don’t recall if the Sun-Times ever covered it in detail).
Campaign Obama wanted the story stomped out so badly that they flooded Milt Rosenberg’s show to shut off discussion with Stanley Kurz of the National Review.
Perhaps there was nothing much interesting in the Annenberg files at U of I. But then why would the Machine want to keep it private?
JBP
Unless I missed something the Illinois Review said nothing explicit about a threat of litigation. Fran said she received emails citing legal cases which COULD SUGGEST a threat of litigation OR that the Assessor’s office was trying to explain why they use PIN numbers to identify property and cited legal cases.
From her reaction and deceit I’d put my money on the Assessor’s office over her. Houlihan does a good job in a very flawed system and seems to be one of the good or better than average officials in local government.
Then again I could be wrong, but Fran and the rest of the peanut gallery at the Illinois Review don’t have the testicular virility to stand up for the truth.
Yes Jerry,
That is how they phrase it usually before hitting you with papers.
Houlihan’s office must have blinked when assessing (our next Senator?) Luis Guitierrez home, which seemed a bit off.
Why would the Assesors office even bother returning calls on this? Seems odd, unless someone instructed them to go beyond everyday do-nothing procedures.
JBP
It’s all a conspiracy. Your right JBP. I blame it on the CHICOMS.
Rich Miller started calling around regarding this. That is probably how it came to the Assessor’s office attention. Miller is a legitimate journalist as opposed to Fran Eaton and the partisan hacks at the Illinois Review.
As for responding isn’t that the job of the public affairs office at a governmental agency?
If they hadn’t responded you would have criticized that too. As for Luis Luis he likely knowingly took advantage of a mistake. Perhaps not, but sometimes the simplest answer is the best.
Now please keep the tinfoil on your head because the world you live in demands you protect yourself from the radio waves from the planet Lunaticar.
Jerry,
I’ll call Fran Eaton tomorrow and ask how the litigation was presented.
JBP
Thanks JBP.
I awaited the answer with bad and bated breath.
John,
Completely off-topic (unless the topic is the inherent anti-Obama anger which seems to underly both Fran Eaton’s initial, erroneous posts about Obama’s Chief of Staff pick and your strangely myopic defense of same)….
The reason the Annenberg papers were kept from public view is that the donor who gave them to the University of Illinois at Chicago asked that they be kept from public view.
Did you miss that part on purpose or because you just didn’t know?
After the media began asking to see them UIC went back to the donor to request permission to them up.
That permission was granted.
Nobody found anything.
Let me repeat: Nobody. Found. Anything.
There were no secret meetings plotting pinko bombings.
There were no hush-hush plans to take over in a coup.
There were no diabolical ruminations on destroying capitalism as we know it.
Nada.
Perhaps that’s why the Obama camp requested that action … to stop the infopimping of a non-story.
Wait. That’s sounds very familiar.
As if maybe conservative partisans who hate Obama are still doing something remarkably like that…
As if maybe someone’s been posting fallacies about some Obama staff member’s property taxes…
Go figure.
Rob,
“Nothing to See Here, No Need to Look any Further, and We’ll Sue You If You Continue to Raise Such Questions”
That must be why the Obama camp tried to shut off Milt Rosenberg from discussing the issue.
Censorship and shouting down opponents is bad for democracy. Shining some light on the issues is the responsibility of the press, a responsibility that the SunTimes and Tribune shirked during the campaign.
The Democratic Left would have much more credibility if they did not have such a track record of squashing stories that did not read like PR.
JBP
Deliberately publicizing and promoting false information so as to harm another person’s career or reputation is grounds for a lawsuit.
I’m not sure how much more simply I can put it for you since you’ve ignored it every other time I wrote it in this comment thread.
Rob,
Investigating public figures is a part of Freedom of the Press.
If you are against it, why not start a campaign to overturn the 1st amendment?
JBP
Lying about public figures — no matter how much you hate them — is not the same as investigating as them.
If you’re against the truth, why not go around defending people who lie?
Oh, wait.
As for actually investigating public figures, it may just be that the only way any of this really came to light is that Rich Miller — a “mainstream” journalist with whom I presume you are familiar — took Fran’s initial post to heart and followed up on it to see what the story was behind Rahm Emanuel’s property taxes.
That’s when he, and perhaps the Assessor’s office also, realized Fran Eaton was lying about Rahm Emanuel due to her own mistakes and misunderstandings.
As for the First Amendment — it is truly both a right and a responsibility. You and Ms. Eaton have the right to smear people you hate and make up nonsense.
Folks like me who appreciate honesty have the responsibility to call you and Ms. Eaton out for your ridiculousness and point out your lies and bizarre defense of same.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” – Thomas Jefferson
JBP,
did you speak to Frannie or did she tell you to stop asking questions too?
Remember, the truth will set you free. Or not.
Jerry,
Are you blue from waiting with baited breath? Or have you gone into a trance from the rhythm?
Been 3 days since the soap opera left us hanging… are we supposed to wait til next TV season for Fran’s answer to her friend John?
No additional response from Fran; you are welcome to contact her to determine if she meant lawyers had contacted her when she wrote lawyers contacted her.
JBP
When did the story change John?
FYI, as Ms. Eaton and others such as journalist Rich Miller have recounted, it was one Eric Herman, director of communications for the Cook County Assessor’s Office, that had been contacting her, answering her questions (answers she promptly deleted) and pointing out that much, if not all, of her assertions were, quote, “wholly inaccurate”.
If Mr. Herman is an attorney, that information has not been noted on any blog or other reference to this story about Ms. Eaton’s inaccuracies and subsequent whining and blame-passing.
Moreover, in her last post on the topic at Illinois Review, she initially wrote simply that court cases had been cited. Ms. Eaton never said anything about lawyers contacting her. Instead, all she ambiguously wrote was: “We were emailed this morning by the Cook County Assessor’s Office, and cited court cases among other things. We needn’t say more.”
In fact, you yourself were going to ask Ms. Eaton how those cases were presented to her. May I remind you that your reply to Jerry from the 9th is still above, when you wrote: “I’ll call Fran Eaton tomorrow and ask how the litigation was presented.”
Again, nothing about lawyers being involved.
What was that Ms. Eaton wrote about thuggery and propaganda machines getting in the way of lies?
I did contact Fran, but no response.
Call her yourself if you want.
JBP
If she doesn’t reply back to her friends who are attempting to defend her antics … that’s answer enough, don’t you think?
Leave your response!
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