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Protect Marriage Washington has filed their Summary, Full Report Receipts and Expenditures, or “C4 report”, for August, 2009. Protect Marriage Washington (PMW) is the political organization forcing a referendum vote on the domestic partnership law passed this spring by the Washington legislature and signed by the Governor. To preserve the law, voters must vote “APPROVED” on Referendum 71.
For the second month running, PMW’s C4 has failed to report expenditures related to their paid signature gatherers. Their use of paid signature gatherers has been well documented in newspapers here, here and here, and blogged about here and here.
PMW has also neglected to report their legal expenditures. Attorney Stephen Pidgeon has been providing legal services for PMW since at least May 27, 2009, when The Olympian identified Pidgeon as attorney for PMW and its campaign manager, Larry Stickney. May 27th was the date when Pidgeon and Stickney initiated an unexpected legal challenge to the Referendum 71 ballot language.
Since that time Pidgeon has taken a very public role as PMW’s attorney in their efforts to keep donor names secret, and in defense of PMW’s collection of signatures from non-voters and PMW volunteers’ fraudulent signing of petition circulator’s declarations on petitions that they did not circulate.
James Bopp, Jr. of the Indiana firm Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom has been the primary attorney in PMW’s efforts to keep their petition signers’ names secret, with Pidgeon acting as local counsel. Pidgeon and Bopp continue to be identified as PMW attorneys and sign off on their court documents. Yet not a penny of cash or in-kind payment has been reported to the Public Disclosure Commission for at least 3 months of professional legal services rendered to PMW by two attorneys and probably staff at Bopp’s firm.It seems that on top of being allowed to collect signatures from non-voters, hide the identity of their petition signers and fraudulently attest to circulating petition sheets, PMW is also allowed to spend freely on signature gatherers and lawyers without reporting it. One wonders what other laws they’ll be allowed to break without repercussions before the ballots are counted.
Incidentally, Larry Stickney apparently took a salary hit in August, receiving only $3,290 for the month. In June he took home $6,500 and $5,150 in July. But while the fortunes of PMW and Stickney seem to be waning, his accumulated salaries continue to account for about 45% of all (divulged) expenditures ($14,940 total salaries/$32,786 expenditures = 46%). This was also the case in July, and makes one wonder if he has a habit of reserving a certain minimum percentage of donations for his own salary.
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* Protect Marriage Washington’s finance report looks sketchy
9 Comments
I call shenanigansWhen will the MSM call these people out?
Oh, that’s right… likely never.
Have you read “Steal This Story” from The Stranger? The byline says it all: Local Media Needs to Explain Where R-71 Came From
It is very worrisome, what PMW is allowed to get away withThey have been exempted from every key part of the state’s public disclosure law, and the courts have ruled that essential guarantees of open government can be put aside on a whim. I am really getting worried. What will be next? WHO will be next?
How To Be A Dick In 3 Easy StepsYes, you can be a HET DICK, a.k.a. a Heterosexual Dictator. You have to be VERY clever and even a tad evil and sick. And you must want to deny the LGBT community their due rights for as long as possible.
Here’s how:
#1 ~ STATE-BY-STATE RIGHTS – Make sure this is the ONLY option. This gives you plenty of time to wiggle around and avoid the federal issue. Decades.
#2 ~ RIGHT-BY-RIGHT - (Here’s where the DICKS are brilliant). Have the Queers beg and plead for each right individually, so you end up pitting them against each other. Then they will NEVER be organized and unified!
#3 ~ CIVIL RIGHTS FUNDRAISERS – Trick people into thinking that they have to spend money to attain their due rights throughout their entire lifetime. Make sure they do NOT realize the POWER they could have when money is withheld, as is a nationwide Equality Tax Revolt. We definitely do not want that; it could bring this entire civil rights nonsense to a STAND STILL.
There you go. It’s easy to be a DICK.
How to be a Heterosexual Dictator…..OMFG! John, this is brilliant and as succinct an explanation as I’ve ever seen. Thank you so much for this!
How long before the PDC would jump all overWAFST for non-compliance if they reported as PMW has? Let’s face it R-71 is pretty much a lost cause, no matter how much support there is in Washington for domestic partnerships. PMW has already framed the campaign about marriage and not domestic partnerships.
PMW has won restraining orders to keep the names of the signers of the petition sealed. PMW flaunted constitutional and statutory requirements for collecting signatures and the Thurston County Court upheld their actions. Until we have federal protections, the protect marriage wing nuts will always be given preferential treatment to impose their theocracy on society.
We need to fight back on their level, lie and be deceitful. Frame the campaign discussion around freedom of religion. A no vote for R-71 will support the freedom of pedophile priests to exercise their religious rites to molest your children. Only fear will move the voters to approve or reject R-71, not reason and logic.
ah, no thanks.by all means let people know about how these people break the law in the name of jesus and bigotry. but if you believe r-71 is already a lost cause, then there’s no need to sink to their level, or do anything at all.
i don’t believe r-71 is a lost cause. i think washingtonians are on the whole fair-minded people and will see pmw’s rhetoric for what it is: deceit in the service of bigotry, cloaked in religiosity. the best thing to do is keep telling the truth – the truth about us, the truth about the domestic partnership law, and the truth about pmw.
Thanks,…but I owe the term Heterosexual Dictator to Trevor over at Joe.My.God. I love it; sums it up.
My usage of term here:
http://gaytaxprotest.blogspot….
I truly believe that most fair mindedcitizens everywhere support equality. But, when hate mongers are able to instill fear and create hysteria that children will be harmed, parental instincts to protect their children take precedence over civil fairness. That fear is nearly impossible to diffuse with reason and logic.
Having R-71 approved would be a huge step towards equality of state sanctioned benefits in Washington, but it’s still not marriage, only second class citizenship.