Consider the Source: Scarantino Busted on Exaggerated Claims on Denish Spending

I've held back on discussing this week's wingnuttery attacks by James Scarantino -- who writes for a blog paid for by the right-wing Rio Grande Foundation -- on Lt. Governor Diane Denish. Scarantino asserted in a post this week that Denish had misused $225,000 in funds allocated to her by Governor Bill Richardson. The money was part of funding provided to the state via a bill signed in 2003 by President George Bush that cut taxes and provided some "stimulus" cash. Scarantino failed to provide any info on the rules that governed how the funding was to be used, but he made a number of dubious claims anyway suggesting the money had been misspent by Denish.

The fact of the matter is that the money came with no well-defined rules about how it was to be spent by the states, with the GAO stating the funds were “generally ... unrestricted in nature.” Basically, it was money provided to the states to use as they wished. Period.

Governor Richardson passed along $225,000 of the total to Lt. Gov. Denish and it appears to have been used primarily to promote her work to improve conditions for New Mexico's children -- including a poll to study attitudes about children and the formation of a Children's Cabinet. The "PR" that Scarantino claims was for the benefit of Denish was used to pump up the LG's work on behalf of children -- many of whom suffer severely from the negative effects of poverty -- as well as a small amount of organizational work related to a public Christmas event that included homeless children. 

Scarantino apparently considers this a waste of taxpayer money -- pretty much how he and his cohorts at the Rio Grande Foundation consider ANY use of taxes for the common good. There's a good reason they're known as the "I've got mine" brigade.

Viral Spread
Scarantino's claims were picked up by a number of local political blogs, as well as the Santa Fe New Mexican, Albuquerque Journal and two TV news outlets, and presented with little or no fact checking on whether the claims had any basis in reality. Republicans -- including gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez, GOP Chairman and oil man Harvey Yates, Jr. and former Rep. Heather Wilson -- seized on Scarantino's assertions and issued exclamation point press releases ravaging Denish for her supposed misdeeds. Gubernatorial candidate Allen Weh went so far as to call a press conference -- dutifully attended and reported on by many in the media -- alleging that Denish may have acted illegally and calling for investigations by the State Auditor, the State Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney General. Heavy-duty stuff. A regular pile on.

Reality Impaired 
The only problem? Scarantino's "research" on the matter was more than a little compromised by his yearning to attack Denish and the Democrats for heinous acts, and draw attention to himself and the New Mexico Watchdog website. He definitely got the attention. Big splash by the guy known for claiming that Rep. Martin Heinrich hangs out with "eco-terrorists," yelling "Heil!" in response to cheers at an Obama rally and explaining how progressives -- and progressive legislation like domestic partnership bills -- are really, truly, I'm not kidding you, FASCIST in nature. (Scarantino likes to paraphrase the paranoid, fact-challenged scribblings of Jonah Goldberg -- right-wing dissembler supreme.)

When Scarantino or others of his ilk publish scurrilous tracts that seek to promote right-wing echo chamber talking points, it's always tempting to jump in quickly and smack them down. It's usually very easy. The quandary is that, in order to criticize the claims, one has to call attention to them and thus provide them with greater exposure -- just what the culprits wanted in the first place.

In this case, I knew that Scarantino's charges were very likely trumped up and full of distortions and exaggerations. Like anyone knowledgeable about the way in which the right-wing echo chamber operates, I'm careful to CONSIDER THE SOURCE before taking accusations and allegations seriously. And if the source is Fox News or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove or James Scarantino -- in all probability "there is no there there," as Gertrude Stein once said. (Aside: Ms. Stein also wrote that "a rose is a rose." This, too, applies as "a Scarantino accusation is a Scarantino accusation," and most people with a working truth-meter in their brains immediately smell a rat.)

So, anyway, I decided to sit back and watch the media furor develop. I'm no journalist (neither is Scarantino) and I certainly possess neither the training nor the time to obtain and study all the documents that would be useful in determining the efficacy of Scarantino's assertions. But I had a hunch someone else would.

Just the Facts
Voila! Local reporter-blogger Heath Haussamen took a couple days to study the documents related to the claims by Scarantino and published an article with the title, "Denish stimulus spending: What’s the big deal?" In other words, Scarantino's post is much ado about nothing.

Bottom line: Definitely read Haussamen's entire piece, but I think this is one of his money graphs:

Though I’m not certain at all, I think it’s still possible there was a little mixing here, with a very small amount of public money. But my question, then, is this: If Republicans want to complain about the possibility that a Denish staffer might have been paid with public money for a few hours of work related to a Christmas card, do they also have a problem with the calendar hanging above my desk and paid for by taxpayers that former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., mailed me (also with taxpayer money) last year just before he retired?

Scarantino also suggested that the Lt. Governor's work on behalf of children and others was unconstitutional:

Under the New Mexico State Constitution, the only powers and duties given to the Lt. Governor are to serve as president of the State Senate, cast a vote in cases of a tie and to succeed to the office of Governor in the case of death, incapacity or removal. Unlike other executive officers, the state constitution does not even require the Lt. Governor to keep public records, books, papers or seals of public office.

As is his habit, Scarantino omitted any references that might rebut his views. In fact, state law significantly expands the role of the LG beyond the definition in the Constitution. As Thomas Cole wrote in his UpFront column in the Albuquerque Journal today,

... state laws impose additional duties and give the lieutenant governor ... wide discretion in shaping the job.

The lieutenant governor is a mandated member of the state Board of Finance, the Children's Cabinet, the Military Base Planning Commission, the Spaceport Authority, the Border Authority, the Community Development Council and the Mortgage Finance Authority.

State law also requires the lieutenant governor to "facilitate and promote the cooperation and understanding between the people of this state and the agencies of state government" and to "perform any other duties that may from time to time be assigned him by the governor."

More to Come
As I said earlier, there is "no there there" in Scarantino's recent attack on Denish. But that's apparently not going to stop him from continuing to selectively serve up documents to instigate clearly partisan smears that match the political strategies of the right-wing attack dogs. The 2010 election cycle version of the notorious Swiftboat brigades will be brutal indeed. Haussamen's post included a Scarantino statement defining how he sees his mission at New Mexico Watchdog:

“Please understand my role as New Mexico Watchdog,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Most of what I will do is dig through voluminous records and report on what’s there, something that too few people have the time or wherewithal to do. I then report on what is in the records.”

“I hope my work serves as a resource to enable professional and citizen journalists to dig deeper, which seems to be the case in this matter,” he wrote.

Right. He's just performing public-service research and leaving the conclusions to others. His work just happens to serve the political needs of Weh et al. Anyone have a guess on how much Scarantino will delve into the use of funds from federal contracting -- a lot of it related to Iraq -- of Allen Weh's CSI Aviation Services? Or into how Susana Martinez spent her prosecutor funds? Or into the kind of clients served by PR maven Doug Turner's company? Or into what actually happened between Republican land commissioner Pat Lyons and Las Cruces developer Philip Philippou on those land leases? I'm sure we'll got lots of "fair and balanced" -- at least the Fox News version of "fair and balanced."

GOP Tea Party on Steroids
Obviously, Scarantino will concentrate on providing new fodder for the right-wing spin machine as the politics of the 2010 election cycle heat up. He'll have plenty of company and support. The national focus of the Republican Party and conservative "movement" has degenerated into a Tea Party cum Fox News cum Glenn Beck cum Rush Limbaugh cum Michelle Bachmann hate fest. They're all of a piece in pushing a "patriot" revolution made necessary by the election of a secretly Muslim, foreign-born president planted here to bring down the good ole' boy US of A and install a fascist-Communist-socialist dictatorship. It's all they have.

When your only current policy position is NO -- and the governing philosophies of your bunch were almost entirely responsible for creating the worst economic cataclysm since the Great Depression, getting us into two quagmires and pretty much demolishing the middle class -- the only thing you've got left is trying to undermine the opposition without any regard to the truth. And there's a lot of right-wing money that will be used to support that effort. There always is.

For instance, New Mexico Watchdog is already accompanied by blogs using the Watchdog name, artwork and focus in other states including Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia, with more to come across the nation. It's not clear who's funding the effort, but we know that the Rio Grande Foundation has in the past received funds from the Cato Institute. No doubt they'll be pulling "donations" from the well-established and growing Swiftboat-Richard Scaife-Cato Institute-Heritage Foundation network that works to discredit anything left of Atila the Hun.

Clearly, Scarantino and the Rio Grande Foundation crew intend to bury us with biased research and revelations culled from digging deep into any and all paperwork that might be mined for smears and innuendo against Democrats. Let's hope that next time the media will delve a little deeper into the facts before helping to create a viral dissemination of what amounts to typical right-wing spin attacks. As for me, I intend to give Scarantino's future chicken scratching as wide a berth as possible. I don't have to read his stuff to know which way the wind blows in right-wing land, or to judge whether he's being fair or not. I already know. He pretends to be nonpartisan, but he's on a mission to discredit Dems and he obviously intends to do so regardless of the facts. What more do we need to know?