Chip Hanlon has some questions to answer…
Last December, Red County publisher Chip Hanlon had a complete cow when he found out that one of his bloggers, who called himself “York,” was being paid by a consultant to post nice things about Poizner, and to rip Whitman. Click here to read what Hanlon wrote about that.
Now Hanlon himself is in the crosshairs of conflict of interest charges. Hanlon is a writer for something called “Green Faucet.” Click here to read his Green Faucet bio. According to his bio he is also their founder!
Why does that matter? Well, if you peruse Whitman’s campaign finance report, and search for expenditures, guess what? She paid Green Faucet the sum of $20,000 for “Information Technology and Email.” Click here to see that on the California Secretary of State’s website.
That is rather odd given that Green Faucet describes itself as “a revolutionary financial content and publishing site which aims to provide the most highly respected, highly credentialed contributors exclusively..” on their website. Why would a publishing site get involved in IT and email?
And it gets stranger still. Whitman paid a bunch of folks for IT and email. She paid a company called Slater Technical Consulting a total of just under $40,000 for the same services. And she paid the Smart Media Group about $20,000 for the same services too. And another outfit named Emaildirect.com also got paid thousands for the very same services.
So here is the question. Did Whitman pay Hanlon, via Green Faucet, to blog for her on Red County? How is this any different from what “York” did?
I have maintained for years that the whole point of Red County is to shill for their pals – for fun and profit of course.
Hanlon and Whitman have some questions to answer…
Thank you so much for this post – I am not part of the OC GOP crowd, in fact, I live 450 miles away in Rocklin, CA.
I was Sgt. York – now I post under my own name. The OC Register was the newspaper that exposed my real identity – so much for anonymity on the Red County Blog.
I promise you guys that I will get you the rest of the story regarding my ouster from Red County.
This revelation also explains why Hanlon chose to do what he did as bombastically as he did it. Hanlon is a fraud, Cunningham is a Fraud and the Orange Juice Blog found the smoking gun to prove what the rest of us knew all along.
Art, I don’t understand all this “they’re getting paid” stuff. So what? Only a fool would read something on a blog and not consider the motives of the author. Am I all upside down on this?
When you’re dealing with political types of course you can expect spin and obfuscation, etc. It may be annoying but, you know, caveat emptor!
Aaron,
Sorry you got played by Chip and Jerbal. They did the same thing to the blogger that used to be known as Lurk.
You are never truly anon at Red County.
I look forward to hearing more about this…
David,
Very true. The whole point of blogging is to move the ball in some desired direction. We do it here as true believers, but the Red County guys are, for the most part, paid shills.
That said, Chip opened this door when he outed York. Now he has egg on his face too!
You are ALL paid shills, not that I don’t love reading the blog! 🙂 You take ad revenue from politicians and tout many as your “choice.” There isn’t really any difference in that regard between OJB and RC. So, no need to be holier than thou . . .
Hey, I don’t get nothin’!
And I’m pretty sure some of these ads are free ones for people Art just likes. Like Joe Shaw for example.
#5,
Vern is right. We give away a lot of ads to politicians I like. They file their paperwork as in-kind contributions.
If they can pay me, all the better, but we are trying to affect social change. Red County is just trying to make money, hand over fist…
Case in point, Red County advertised a tax increase in Santa Ana (a school bond measure). How do you like that? I would NEVER have taken money from Measure G. No way!
Point well taken, and correction acknoweldged. Though I am not sure that “giving away” advertizement (which is as you note an in-kind contribution) is less “Shilling” (if that is a word, which I don’t think it is) than making money off a politician. Sure, it doesn’t line your pockets, but it does give you better access if they get elected.
#8,
Wishful thinking. The access goes to those that fund their campaigns.
We are just trying to winnow the herd of the most lame politicians.
Art – email me with a good address for you.
My new site is http://www.rightondaily.com – it clearly discloses that the ads on it are paid.
Interesting – as I never hid who I supported, ever… talk to you soon Art.
too bad I don’t get any money for being biased towards myself 🙁