There's another excuse Martin gave that hasn't yet been covered. Martin claimed in one of his excuses (its hard to keep track of all of them), that he was just getting around to filling out his forms several months after the deadline because he only really made up his mind on September 30 of 2009 that he was going to run. However, the law seems pretty clear that you have to report your finances once you've raised $5,000: there are no exemptions for "not officially declaring" your candidacy. Furthermore, Russ Weiss had a great catch in the comments of this blog:
Martin claimed he announced his candidacy on Sept. 30. I checked whois.net for info on his campaign web site. Accordign to WhoIs.net, edmartinforcongress.com was registered on Oct. 29, 2008. It seems to me that Martin had tons of time to explore, commit and file forms.So Ed Martin gave several completely lame, easily debunked excuses for why he filed his financial disclosure form 300 days late, yet still somehow managed to fill out the form incorrectly. All this from a guy who's listed as the President of the Institute for Transparent Government.
Domain Name: EDMARTINFORCONGRESS.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS1999.HOSTGATOR.COM
Name Server: NS2000.HOSTGATOR.COM
Status: ok
Updated Date: 29-sep-2009
Creation Date: 29-oct-2008
Expiration Date: 29-oct-2010
Posts
These Tea Party people, (scratch that, I'm going back to calling them TeaBaggers now), really amaze me.
ReplyDeleteToday, at StLouisTeaParty.com "editor" wrote (and accused the FiredUp attack as originating with Robin Carnahan):
"The first is that Martin didn't disclose being an officer in the St Louis Tea Party, which filed papers in June 2009. How lazy are these people? The Tea Party is a volunteer organization, and the only reason we filed papers was because stupid government regulations required us to file something. We spend very little money, primarily on insurance and venue, and there is no need for a formal structure. Bill Hennessy takes care of that. He's the only person listed.
But because Bill is a former navy man, he speaks in military jargon. Thus, anyone volunteering is called an officer. But it's a figure of speech. We don't have any elected leaders or formal titles or even formal meetings. No minutes, and no funding. It's a bank account and an LLC because 501 c whatevers are too complicated to mess with."
Funny thing about that "officer" designation. At http://stlouisteaparty.com/2009/07/29/a-tea-party-leader-considers-washington/, they wrote:
"Since the first week of the St. Louis Tea Party movement back in February, Ed Martin Jr. has served as one of the organization’s officers. Ed is a passionate, intelligent, and inspiring speaker who delighted the crowds at Tea Parties in February, April, and July. Because of our non-partisan pledge, we must remove Ed’s name from our list of officers. We will welcome him back if he decides to leave to public life."
I'd sure like to see those 501(c) filings to see who's listed as "officers".
So StLouisTeaParty wrote in 2009 that Ed was one of the "organization's officers". Today, they write that because Hennessy speaks in "military jargon" that he was mistaken when referring to Martin as an "officer". But nothing in that post from 2009 remotely resembled anything "military" in style or words.
As a veteran (USN w/Vietnam experience). I think I would recognize such jargon.
In other words, do you believe FiredUp or your WTF lying eyes at StLouisTeaParty.com?
And this is also the Tea Party site that said: "We do not intend to endorse candidates..." (except Ed Martin, of course).
Uh huh.