A lot of union pension money (as well as the pension plans of unionized companies and state government plans such as CALPERS) is invested in hedge funds, so it is difficult to see how working for a hedge fund is really going to hurt Edwards. Of course, Republicans are adept at using more benign things than working at a hedge fund against Democratic candidates.

But the Post story is a different beast and a real problem for Edwards. Anyone who has sold a house knows that you know who you are selling to. And if you are selling to a corporation, something doesn't smell right.
 

If a hedge fund or the like offered you a lot of money for a piece of this blog, would you take it and would that compromise your ability to speak out on economic justice issues?

I realize the analogy isn't necessarily one to one, but on the other hand there isn't anything inherently corrupt in using your perceived status and (more questionable) expertise to help close business deals. That's very different than, say, quitting the FAA and going to work for an airline.
 

It's not uncommon at all to sell real estate to front corps. It's done all the time in order to prevent getting ripped off by a canny seller, or for other reasons. There is nothing illegal or even inherently suspect about shell corporations. Further, even if Edwards knew these two guys were under investigation by the SEC, so what? How is that corrupt or even questionable? There problems with the SEC do not deprive them of the right to buy a house nor Edwards the right to sell them one. This is all just too "PC"-like for me. Understood, the look of things matters when you're a politician, but jeez, aren't we taking this too far?
 

First poster: What union leaders do and what the rank-and-file feel are very different things. And I agree with the second part of your comment.

Second poster: Would I take money from a hedge fund and would it compromise my ability to speak out on economic issues? Yes, I would, and yes, it would. But for some reason, no one has yet made me an offer.

Third poster: Did you read the Post story? It is not good at all for Edwards.
 

To RB: If you would take money from a hedge fund and it would compromise your ability to speak on economic justice, that calls into question your ability to speak on economic justice at all. In short, you admit that you talk the talk, but don't walk the walk. (Or am I missing something?)
 

If you paid attention to the actual fact-oriented media, you'd noticed that Joshua Micah Marshall has basically destroyed this Post story in just the same way he destroyed a similarly nonsensical one by the same guy, John Solomon, that time about Harry Reid. (Apparently Reid had not paid for boxing-ticket freebies he was legally not ALLOWED to pay for, as a state official; then he had gone and voted AGAINST the interests of the promoters who gave him the tickets. Some scandal, huh, the man won't stay bribed?)

Apparently Edwards's house was sold below market value AND to people whose favor Edwards did not want to curry. He wanted to curry favor with their ENEMIES. What's the story? Calling something sleaze doesn't make it so.

There is no there there. For more see a page you should check every hour, as I do, talkingpointsmemo.com .

Standing Eagle
 

Anonymous 3:37. Indeed, you are lacking something: a sense of humor.
 

Standing Eagle, I read Josh Marshall's rebuttal, if that's what you want to call it. There's no argument there. I think Solomon is right. At the very least, Edwards has sold his house to two people under investigation for stock manipulation who appear to have constructed the deal as a way to shelter their assets. The fact that he sold it for less than the asking price is irrelevant; the question is not what it sold for, but were other people bidding for it, and if so, what were they willing to pay?
 

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
 

It's curious, Richard. Every time you write about hedge funds (attacking them, for the most part) you get a pretty vocal reaction. I deduce from this that you have a pretty large readership on Wall Street (and Greenwich) among, you guessed it, hedge funds.

This is good for your readership, but I have to ask -- shouldn't you all be calling in your shorts and making buckets of money for your clients?
 

How's this story shaping up, Richard? Any updates now that the ombudsperson is going after Solomon too?
 

Richard:

WELL?




Greg Sargent writes:

POST OMBUD DEBORAH HOWELL ON JOHN SOLOMON'S EDWARDS PIECE: "MISLEADING"; "GOTCHA WITHOUT THE GOTCHA."

As promised, Washington Post ombud Deborah Howell has addressed Post reporter John Solomon's hit piece on John Edwards' home sale in her column. She's pretty tough on him:

Accurate stories can be misleading. Two recent Page 1 stories -- one on the Fairfax County libraries and the other on the sale of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards's Georgetown house -- brought complaints that there was less there than met the reader's eye....

I kept waiting to read about the connection between the Klaassens and Edwards that would make this sale unseemly; it wasn't there. Edwards spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said Edwards "has never met or spoken with them; nor have they contributed to his campaign."

The story was interesting, but it was more of an item for the Reliable Source or In the Loop -- and not worth Page 1. It seemed like a "gotcha" without the gotcha.

This is a point I'd hoped Howell would make. Solomon and his editor have insisted again and again that the story didn't say Edwards had done anything wrong. But the real problem, which Solomon and his editor have refused to address, wasn't necessarily that the story said outright that Edwards had done anything wrong, but that it implied through innuendo and suggestion in various questionable ways that there was something untoward about his house deal, when there wasn't. There were other problems, too, but this was a key one.

Through its placement and tone, the story did imply that there was something "unseemly" about the deal. And as Howell suggests, this was "misleading," pure and simple. No amount of protestations that the story never said outright that Edwards did anything wrong will change that obvious fact. It was indeed "gotcha without the gotcha."

Howell says more about the piece, but for now I wanted to focus on this aspect of her analysis -- because it cuts right to the heart of the major flaw with Solomon that the Post is now saddled with. After all, this is hardly the first time Solomon has used innuendo, implication and suggestion to smear his frequently-Dem subjects. Nor was it the first time that even a cursory analysis of the story revealed that there was little to nothing there.
 

And again, WELL?

According to Media Matters, your 'at the very least' assertion is also false:

"Perhaps more significantly, the assertion made in the article and later by both Solomon and Hamilton that the buyers were "secret" and "not publicly disclosed" appears to be false. Publicly available records show that the buyer of the home was P Street LLC. LLCs are required to file articles of organization. Those documents should list the members of the LLC -- in this case, the Klaassens. Unless those documents omitted mention of the Klaassens -- and no one at the Post has indicated this to be the case -- it is simply false to say that the buyers were "not publicly disclosed," or that they were "secret." "



I think this merits a correction, and a post titled "John Solomon Screws Up" to counter your "Edwards Screws Up" post, shown to be almost certainly false except insofar as it's self-fulfilling.

Standing Eagle