Redstate

Blowing smoke and pretending there's fire

By Chad Dotson Posted in 2006 — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

You may have been following the story about Virginia Senator George Allen and absurd allegations about some stock options. As the AP summarizes:

For the past five years, Sen. George Allen, has failed to tell Congress about stock options he got for his work as a director of a high-tech company. The Virginia Republican also asked the Army to help another business that gave him similar options.

Ummmm...except that's not even close to what happened. As The A-Team puts it, the AP writers pushing this story are either sloppy or lazy. Or both.

Jon Henke has done a very effective job of rebutting these charges here and here. I won't go into the detail that Jon has, but I do encourage you to go read his posts.

The short version, however, is this:

Read on...

Senator Allen, without question, disclosed the stock options during his first year serving in the United States Senate. Here's part of Allen's 2000 financial disclosure report:

Now, after that, Allen did not re-disclose the stock options...based on the advice of the Senate Ethics Committee. Finally, the only compensation that Allen did actually receive, contrary to the AP story, was specifically approved by the Ethics Committee.

Okay, it's a little more involved than that, and I encourage you to check out this story for all the details. Jon has also dealt with the misrepresentations flowing from Democratic opponent Jim Webb's campaign, but then, those guys haven't done or said anything right in months.

Of course, that's not the end of it. As you know, once the MSM gets their teeth into a meme, facts no longer matter. On Tuesday, we had this Bloomberg article that makes little sense, but continues to attack Sen. Allen for doing nothing wrong:

Stock options that Senator George Allen described as worthless were worth as much as $1.1 million at one point, according to a review of Senate disclosure forms and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Ummm, not quite:

The truth?

* The ‘one point‘ at which those stock options were worth $1.1m was “March 2000“…before George Allen became a US Senator.

* By December 31st of 2000, all of the stock options in question put together were worth about $1,250.

* Nevertheless, in 2000 and 2001 — his first year in the Senate — George Allen did disclose those stock options.

Blatant misrepresentations by Jim Webb's allies in the media (and around the blogosphere). I guess they've accomplished their goal of shifting the focus away from Webb's Marxist ideals.