"First, I AM A Victim.
Second, my excuse is that I already spent too much money investigating my GOP competitors
and had NO MORE $$$$$ to investigate those illegal aliens with their funny accents."
Posted on 12/05/2007 8:59:23 AM PST by lesser_satan
It's a good thing Romney has The Speech to dominate much of the campaign talk this week, because the rest of the news is pretty bad for him.
First there's word that the company that did his lawn continued to employ illegal immigrants, even after the brouhaha last year.
"After this same issue arose last year, I gave the company a second chance with very specific conditions," Romney said in the statement. "They were instructed to make sure people working for the company were of legal status. We personally met with the company in order to inform them about the importance of this matter. The owner of the company guaranteed us, in very certain terms, that the company would be in total compliance with the law going forward.
"The company's failure to comply with the law is disappointing and inexcusable, and I believe it is important I take this action," Romney said.
Team Romney has good reason to bang their heads against a wall and ask, "what are the odds?" Is the company, "Community Lawn Service With a Heart", hell-bent on ruining their client who's running for president? No interest in a contract to take care of the White House lawn?
Then we have another odd case of push-polling in Iowa. A group has claimed responsibility, a self-described "grassroots independent organization committed to educating voters to support Governor Mike Huckabee for the Republican Nomination for President of the United States" and notes that they aren't "authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee." Huckabee says he doesn't approve of their tactics.
The firm making the calls, ccAdvertising, has also done about $53,000 worth of work for the Romney campaign. Gabriel Joseph, the head of ccAdvertising, donated $1,000 to the Romney campaign on June 11.
I spoke to Mr. Joseph. He confirmed the donation to the Romney campaign; when asked about any work for this Huckabee group, or for the Romney campaign, he said that he could not disclose anything regarding his firm’s work.
When I said that the call number led back to his firm, he said, “Jim, our clients are confidential, and our work for our clients is confidential.” He said that if his firm’s clients choose to talk about them, that’s their decision, but that the confidentiality agreements do not permit him to confirm or deny anything regarding any work for anyone.
How do you feel if you're Mitt Romney, and a firm you hired - a firm headed by one of your donors! - is running push polls against you?
By the way, below the fold is the trail leading back to ccAdvertising:
Iowans received calls for “poll” from Caller ID of “PRDR 07” and phone number of “703-263-9011.” “Received a call said to be a Presidential preference survey for the Republican caucus in Iowa... this was a Push Poll Phone Call! Will report this to the local Republican office.” This is from the WhoCallsMe? website. (An NRO reader in Iowa reported the same phone number.)
The “PRDR” Caller-ID was linked to “Freeeats.Com, Inc., DBA ccAdvertising.” This comes from the OurCommunityPower.org website, 7/13/06. “PRDR 571-522-1511 are made by Freeeats.Com, Inc. DBA ccAdvertising C/O Gabriel Joseph 13800 Coppermine Road Herndon, Virginia 20171 703-234-2200 (Voice)”
This is from the Californians Against Telephone Solicitation website, 7/13/06.
Gabriel S. Joseph III is the president of FreeEats.com. (FreeEats.Com, Press Release, 9/13/07; Virginia State Corporation Commission Records, accessed via Nexis.) Visitors to FreeEats.Com are redirected automatically to CCAdvertising.biz. (www.freeeats.com)
Gabriel S. Joseph of Centerville, VA, who lists himself as a consultant, gave Mitt Romney $1,000 on June 11, 2007, according to the Center For Responsive Politics.
Romney For President disbursed $53,755 to CC Advertising Of Herndon, Va. on August 9, 2007, for “Survey Research.”
Another flaw book but why accuracy should matter when it fits you agenda!
LOL, no kidding. My dad has 4 acres and he mows it all himself.
I knew Craig was gay when he appeared on TV years ago to proclaim he wasn’t gay. . . .. . just appears Mitt has no similiar ability to judge character, which is a terrible thing to have in someone who picks judges.
Case in point, the killer-enablers Mitt has appointed.
And, no, I am not anti-Mormon. I AM, however, anti-fake and anti-liberal which is why I don’t like Romney.
The knee-jerk response by Mitt supporters to claim bias reminds me so much of Jesse Jackson and other professional victims.
The question is who commissioned the poll and the evidence does point towards the Romney campaign. I'm not saying the Romney campaign did it, but that's where the evidence lies currently.
Erik at Red State agrees with you.
I hold now to the position that a lot of the reporters I've talked to on this subject hold and on which, by stating here solely as my personal opinion I expect to be excoriated by a lot of people, even some who probably privately think I might be right — the "push poll" was pushing people on matters of religious bias, but it was not done by a camp hostile to Mitt Romney.
And the results of that polling gave the Romeny camp all the data points needed to finally show their MBA grad of a candidate that there is a real need for the speech he is about to give. I could be wrong and God knows the Romney camp has been telling me since I first suggested it that I'm wrong. But I think I'm right.
There have been several dozen articles posted here about the push poll, and I’ve read most of them.
It will not be PROVEN that the Romney campaign was behind the push poll unless the NH AG presses charges, which I doubt he will do. But the evidence, though circumstantial, is pretty strong.
Sure, there are anti-Mormon bigots out there, and anti-Catholic bigots, and anti-Jewish bigots, and so forth. But it’s Romney himself who keeps raising the issue, clearly because he thinks it useful to play the victim card.
No, it’s not all grass. The articles mentioned a pool to maintain and a tennis court. Heat expansion and contract on tennis courts cause cracks. They require maintenance.
The man has a net worth of 200 million dollars and until it was put in a blind trust he no doubt found his time more profitably used managing that portfolio than changing chlorine in his pool. He is not obligated to cut 2.5 acres of grass, maintain a pool and resurface tennis courts to be legitimate.
I agree with you completely; it's the only thing that makes any sense, and it is the only thing that makes sense consistently as the shifting explanations and excuses keep arising.
Given that the firm is run by Romney supporters, that seems a heckuva lot more likely than that the principals of the firm didn't know who their clients were or what they were doing for them.
Exactly.
Agreed. As I just said in the previous post, it can’t be legally proved unless the law chooses to investigate. But all the known evidence points that way.
One last item in the articles. He has dealt with the company owner for 10 years. They had mutual acquaintances through the local church.
If you have been doing business with someone for 10 years, it is not objectionable to give someone a second chance. The company owner has said he believed his employees were legal. At least one employee interviewed had a SS card and a matching drivers’ license, and the reporter apparently fact checked it and verified the SS card did match his name, as did the DL. But it is clear some employees of the company were illegals and it is also clear the company owner was not strict in checking every single employee. The law requires him to. It does not require Romney to perform that check.
Yawn.
The best comment on this was posted yesterday.
It read (paraphrasing): “If Mitt Romney cannot keep illegals of his own front lawn, how can we expect him to keep them outside of the borders”.
Great point. This is Mitt’s doom, and it has not a thing to do with his faith.
"First, I AM A Victim.
Second, my excuse is that I already spent too much money investigating my GOP competitors
and had NO MORE $$$$$ to investigate those illegal aliens with their funny accents."
He even gave this guy a SECOND CHANCE OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF HIS BLEEDING HEART! and WAS TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF....AGAIN!
Now, you Mitt supporters can't have it both ways! Either Mitt is a helluva nice guy that can be gulled by a simple gardener, OR HE IS SMART ENOUGH AND TOUGH ENOUGH TO LEAD OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR AGAINST TERROR and deal with the likes of Ahmadinejad, lil Kim and Assad, or he is not.
Evidence as of today, shows he is NOT.
The owner of the landscaping company is a liar, he tells a different story every time he’s interviewed.
“Speaking in Spanish, the worker identified himself as Justo Sanan, a 35-year-old father of three from Guatemala, and said he told Saenz as early as March that he did not have legal papers. Saenz then told him to “go get something,” Sanan said.”
Since you profess to be up to date on the “Romney push poll” articles, why don’t you post all the evidence that points to him?
And, while you’re convicting him on circumstantial evidence, without a presumption of innocence, why don’t you post all the evidence of Romney’s past acts of fraud?
I don’t fault Romney critics for questioning his conservative bona fides, but to accuse him of Clinton-esque political deceitfulness is unfounded.
Flaw? It was written by one of the most prominent historians of the 20th Century; one who credited with discovering the link between Thomas Jefferson and his slave concubine Sally Hemmings, and who, as blood niece to the president of the LDS Church (David McKay), had begun the novel quest to prove the authenticity of Joseph Smith's claim. Indeed, (so to repeat) why should accuracy matter when it fits your agenda?
“why accuracy should matter when it fits you[r] agenda”
Good point. A double edged sword if you ask me.
It is appearing that the landscaping service owner is lying in various interviews, given that his story is changing. OTOH he’s not under oath and has no obligation to tell news reporters the truth when he realizes those reporters are not trying to help his business.
Romney was probably not as zealous and strict as he might have been, but when I call a company to come deliver an appliance and of the team that arrives with the fridge I see there are Hispanics among them, I don’t immediately start an investigation into his documents. That is the company owner’s legal responsibility. Not mine.
If it was then brought to my attention that the Hispanics were illegal and I had dealt with that company for 10 years and personally knew the owner, sure, I can imagine giving him a second chance.
After that he gets fired. This all looks proper to me.
I do not expect to go out and buy a few rifles and shoot the Hispanics next time they show up to maintain my estate.
Well, as I said, there have been dozens of articles posted here since the push pull affair was broken.
You’d have to read them for yourself. Some take one side, some the other.
I did a search for “push poll,” but only a few of them turned up.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;s=push%20poll
Maybe if you want to look at the evidence, you could do a search yourself over the past couple of weeks for the key words Push or Romney or Mormon, and see what you can turn up. These threads also lead to various blogs that have discussed the matter.
A delivery service only comes once. A lawn and gardening service comes once or twice a week.
Still, you may be right that he just didn’t notice the problem, or I imagine he would have done something sooner.
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