It is adamant that you can see a golf course from the Representative’s San Diego office! Adamant! The Time has a third-party ad and everything! So there! But what about the allegations that Rep. Issa used his influence and position to make significant profits on both a mutual fund purchase and a real estate sale? Which is to say, two of three allegations* that the New York Times used as the framework for its hit piece on Representative Issa?
Yeah. About that.
Correction: August 26, 2011
An article on Aug. 15 about Representative Darrell Issa’s business dealings, using erroneous information that Mr. Issa’s family foundation filed with the Internal Revenue Service, referred incorrectly to his sale of an AIM mutual fund in 2008. A spokesman for the California Republican now says that the I.R.S. filing is “an incorrect document.” The spokesman, Frederick R. Hill, said that based on Mr. Issa’s private brokerage account records, which he made public with redactions, the purchase of the mutual fund resulted in a $125,000 loss, not a $357,000 gain.
And the article, using incorrect information from the San Diego county assessor’s office, misstated the purchase price for a medical office plaza Mr. Issa’s company bought in Vista, Calif., in 2008. It cost $16.3 million, the assessor’s office now says — not $10.3 million — because the assessor mistakenly omitted in public records a $6 million loan Mr. Issa’s company assumed in the acquisition. Therefore the value of the property remained essentially unchanged, and did not rise 60 percent after Mr. Issa secured federal funding to widen a road alongside the plaza.
But, darn it, there’s a golf course there. Or at least a driving range. Well, there was once a driving range there. That counts, right?
Background here. Executive summary: Eric Litchblau of the NYT allegedly trusted ThinkProgress as a research source [although if Litchblau did so trust them, he did not actually credit them] on Rep. Darrell Issa, and as a result wrote a remarkably inaccurate article about the Oversight Chair’s financial dealings. Issa’s office has responded by leisurely carving off strips of the NYT’s hide: this is merely the latest salvo. It remains unclear how long the NYT will keep this up before they finally surrender and simply run a black line through the entire article; judging from events thus far, they may go to the veritable wall itself to keep their first paragraph…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
(H/T: @ByronYork.)
*The third allegation – that Issa used his influence to aid Toyota because one of his companies was a ‘major supplier of alarms to Toyota’ – is still being stubbornly defended by the NYT despite the fact that it’s not actually true. And by ‘defended’ I mean ‘the NYT is simultaneously pounding the table, shouting, and screaming LALALAICAN’THEARYOULALALA while covering its ears. It’s such an impressive display that it’s almost Homeric.
It. Is. Time. For. Them. To. Go!