Saturday, October 25, 2008

Bice Reveals Egelhoff’s…. Well… Nothing

Dan Bice is sometimes the only reason to even read the MJS anymore, but he missed the mark on this one. 

Consider the case of Jo Egelhoff, the Republican candidate for an open Assembly seat in Appleton.

Before entering the race, she was a regular blogger on FoxPolitics.net, a political Web site that she runs.

Egelhoff has removed everything from her blog. But nothing on the Web ever truly disappears, and a review of her old posts makes one thing clear:

The candidate is not always in line with the blogger.

As a candidate, Egelhoff talks about making the state’s schools the best in the nation. As a blogger, she spoke out in favor of eliminating kindergarten for 4-year-olds, shutting down all two-year colleges and restricting pay raises for teachers.

Um, that’s not a contradiction.  I think Wisconsin should be the best in the nation too, but I oppose 4-year-old kindergarten and think that we should either eliminate the 2-year colleges or the technical colleges.  Although they have different focuses, they are redundant.  Bice makes the assumption that 4-year-old kindergarten and such are the means to the end of great schools.  That is not necessarily the case.  If Egelhoff had said in an old blog post that she supports making Wisconsin’s schools crappier, then THAT would be a contradiction. 

As a candidate, Egelhoff promises to work to lower prices at the gas pump. As a blogger, she ripped “gas price whiners,” defended ExxonMobil’s profits and suggested cutting state spending on roads by 10%.

Here again, that’s not a contradiction.  I would like lower prices at the pump too, but certainly defend the energy producers’ right to earn a profit.  It would be like me carping about the cost of buying a copy of the MJS, but supporting the newspaper’s right to earn a profit. 

As a candidate, she makes a strong pitch for making health care affordable for everyone. As a blogger, she attacked the state’s Medicaid program’s benefits, called Medicare and Social Security “giveaway” programs and was unenthusiastic about universal health care.

What does Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security have to do with making healthcare affordable for everyone.  Since I don’t use any of those programs, they could be expanded, retracted, or thrown away altogether and it wouldn’t do anything for the affordability of MY healthcare. 

As a candidate, Egelhoff has the blessing of the National Rifle Association. But as a blogger, she voiced strong concerns about legislation that would let people carry concealed weapons in Wisconsin.

“This is an issue on which I part ways with my informed, sincere, liberty-loving constructionist - and gun-toting - conservative bro’s,” she wrote in March 2007.

She continued, “It’s my hope the legislature finds too many other things to do this session than to bring up concealed carry once again. . . . no matter how you slice it, more guns in homes, in pockets, in cars and on the street simply cannot be good for America. Nope, I just don’t buy it.”

Egelhoff is wrong on this issue, of course, but it is still not a contradiction.  Last I checked, support for concealed carry was not a requirement for a NRA endorsement.  (Bice… see: Kagen).  The NRA merely endorses the most pro-gun rights person in the race. 

Bice is usually much better than this.  I think he was getting heat for hammering on Democrats the past few weeks so he felt like he needed to bash a Republican.  That, or it could be an old media guy wanting to beat up on a new media gal.  In any case, while the premise of his column that a political blogger might have his or her words come back to bite them if they run for office, his “controversy” about Eglehoff is complete bunk. 

On another note, this from the end of the story should scare the daylights out of you.

Jonathan Becker, a staff lawyer for the accountability board, said he didn’t talk to the candidate about the issue and isn’t sure who did. But Becker said he can understand why she did what she did.

“The application of the law to that situation,” he said, “is unclear.”

“Unclear?”  She wrote stuff on a blog in a private capacity.  She can change or delete them all she wants.  They are HER WORDS.  What the hell is “unclear” about that?  Is the GAB lawyer hinting that the GAB might start trying to regulate blogging?  Scary stuff.

(6) Comments
Posted by Owen at 1350 hrs
Politics + Politics - Wisconsin

  1. Bice is usually much better than this.

    And that’s where you’re wrong.

    Posted by folkbum on October 25, 2008 at 1411 hrs


  2. I think any particular issue here may center not on what a blogger says, but on who owns the website.  If in fact the website is owned by a company, to use that as a resource to advocate one’s campaign will require that company to report the value of that space as a campaign donation.

    If it was in fact a purely personal website, there wouldn’t be any issue.

    Posted by Recess Supervisor on October 25, 2008 at 1607 hrs


  3. I think any particular issue here may center not on what a blogger says, but on who owns the website.  If in fact the website is owned by a company, to use that as a resource to advocate one’s campaign will require that company to report the value of that space as a campaign donation.

    If it was in fact a purely personal website, there wouldn’t be any issue.

    Who gets to make that determination though R.S.?

    It seems to me that if the G.A.B. gets that power, that the determining factor very well might reside with whether the person has the right political affiliation.

    Also then would a company like Google be required to report political ‘in kind” contributions since they own Blogger?

    Posted by Michael J. Cheaney on October 25, 2008 at 1728 hrs


  4. If Google granted one candidate the right to use Blogger but expressly refused access to another candidate, then yes, I would think that should be considered a donation and should be appropriately disclosed.  There may even be something in the Blogger TOS that covers this.

    Similarly, if the New York Times gave Barack Obama free space to write a 500-word column every Sunday, and refused to grant his opponent equal space, I think everyone would presume that it’s a contribution.

    The issue could well be here that Egelhoff (I believe) also served as an editor for this website and as such had the ability to regulate its content.  It’s not as though she were simply penning a column and making it available to third parties to print/publish as they saw fit.  And if the FoxPolitics website is in fact owned by some corporate entity, it may simply have been easier for her to take the course of action she chose.

    I don’t think that deleting old posts was necessary (to be honest, I think she did that to cover her own butt politically and not because of the GAB).  But she was probably wise to restrict her own future use of that particular forum, at least until after the election, lest it raise any issues.  She has a campaign website and certainly could have linked to/hosted a blog there if she wished.

    Posted by Recess Supervisor on October 25, 2008 at 1759 hrs


  5. Bice didn’t even mention some of the best stuff.  Read for yourself:

    Egelhogg blog unearthed.

    Posted by xoff on October 27, 2008 at 1337 hrs


  6. By the way, she owns the website herself.

    Posted by xoff on October 27, 2008 at 1338 hrs


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