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« City Paper: Election Coordinator Should Check Voter Rolls For Fake Social Security Numbers | Main | Missing the Forest For the Trees » October 6, 2006Rinks Update: Help Us Get The Truth Out to the People of the District 71
[For background on the Rinks story, click here and here.] The Courier isn't online, so I can't link to it, but Cook emailed me the text and, trust me, it's a pure pro-Rinks puff piece. Here's the only mention of the ethics questions: Touching briefly on an ethics issue which some critics have been gnawing, Rinks contends his campaign financial disclosure statements which have been questioned complied with the law in effect at the time they were filed. Later financial disclosure documents comply with a more detailed reporting requirement now in place, he says.Pure pro-Rinks spin, it completely glosses over the allegations and evidence of possible multiple violations of the law regarding what campaign funds can and can not be spent on - and fails to mention that the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance violated the law by failing to investigate the irregularities in Rinks' campaign finance reports.
It will take $140 to run a quarter page ad, $280 to run a half-page ad, or $548 to run a full-page ad. I further suggest we also run the same ad in the Independent Appeal, the other local paper serving the people of the 71st District. Ad prices there are similar - $141, $283 and $576 for a quarter, half or full page ad. If you wish to participate, please make your donation to me via the PayPal button above. All PayPal donations received from now forward will be considered donations for this project. If I receive enough donations to pay for a full-page ad in each paper, I'll post a notice on the blog to that effect. PayPal donations will be returned if I do not receive enough to cover the cost of running an ad. Even before posting this, I had received a commitment of $30 from one regular reader upset by the way Rinks regularly does House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh's anti-Second Amendment bidding on legislation regarding gun rights. Funding Update: Update: There may be a bombshell in the Rinks saga next week. As they say in teevee land, stay tuned... Update: I have tried to contact Rep. Rinks multiple times to get his side of the story, but Rinks has not responded. Oddly, I emailed him at randy@randyrinks.com, the email address I found by clicking "Contact Randy" link on his campaign website, and got this message in return: This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.Another oddity: Rinks' campaign website claims he is "against a state income tax," even though the last time he had a chance to vote on the income tax, Rinks voted for it. Perhaps he was for it before he was against it. Or maybe he's just lying to the people of the 71st District. Posted in Campaign Season
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Hardin County's Ted G. Cook reports that the Savannah Courier, one of the two main newspapers in Tennessee state House District 71, barely mentioned the swirl of ethics questions surrounding state Rep. Randy Rinks, D-Savannah, and his questionable uses of campaign funds in favor of running a puff-piece that reads pretty much like a campaign ad for the incumbent legislator.
So, here is what I propose: As the Courier won't properly inform the voters of the 71st District about Rinks' campaign finance reports, I am looking to raise sufficient donations to run an ad in the Courier before election day detailing the irregularities in Rinks' campaign expenditures, how he has used tens of thousands of dollars from donors to pay his American Express bills and his dues at the upscale 