Since ‘Everybody’ Is Wondering (and Before Y’all Die of Boredom Looking)

….. I’m sorry to disappoint Pho, who wrote this side-splitter (”Hmmm. Keeping Blumer’s jack out of Ohio GOP coffers may make all this worthwhile.”)

This is it — One candidate endorsement; one piddling contribution wayyyyy too small to make this list; no other contributions to any candidates or issues.

After making my piddling contribution, I disclosed its existence and my endorsement of Bill Pierce in every Pierce- and DeWine-related post until Primary Election Day 2006.

I had the general mindset that it would not be a good idea to make political contributions when I started BizzyBlog. Then, a couple of months after startup, I consciously decided not to do that as a policy when it became clear during the 2005 OH-02 Special Congressional Primary that doing so would affect the perceived quality of my work. The 2006 Pierce for Senate primary campaign was and will remain the sole exception. If you knew Bill Pierce, you’d know why.

In the CPA profession, there are two important concepts: “independence in appearance” and “independence in fact.” You can mentally have independence in fact if you or anyone in your firm owns a very few shares of a company you’re auditing, but a sizable portion of the public won’t see it that way, no matter how much you protest to the contrary. Accordingly, rather than debase the perceived quality of audited financial statements and other reports, the profession has decided that independence in appearance is a critical ethical standard that must be adhered to. This means, with the very rarest of exceptions, that you and other firm members NEVER own any stock of, or make any kind of investments in, the companies your firm audits.

Likewise, I believe that you can be a fair and yet opinionated blogger while giving nominal amounts to political candidates and political causes. But as with auditing, a sizable portion of the public won’t see it that way, no matter how much you protest to the contrary. Accordingly, though I believe that nominal contributions would not affect my outlook, and I recognize that others might not make the same decisions with their blogging, I have decided that the perceived quality and credibility of what I bring up and have to say require that I have the same independence in appearance with political candidates and political causes that the CPA profession expects of its members and member firms.

That, and I’m cheeeeeep. :–>

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UPDATE, Nov. 1 — An IMO legitimate question has been raised, and will be addressed here. It has to do with election-law complaints I filed against Ohio 2nd District Congressional candidate Bob McEwen in December 2005 and March 2006. One resulted in a reprimand, the other went nowhere.

Though others will disagree, I happen to think that a blogger with his/her own site can engage in activism such as this without compromising fairness or credibility. I consider it analogous to seeing what you honestly believe is a crime being committed and reporting it to authorities. Why wouldn’t you do that? I would even suggest that establishment news organizations shouldn’t shy away from filing election-law complaints if they believe the situation is an obvious violation and no one else will step up.

Although I have been a NewsBusters contributor since late 2005, the site gave me Contributing Editor privileges in July 2006. This is no trifle. NB only has about a dozen Contributing Editors, and given the other relative luminaries on the list, it still seems ridiculous that I’m among them (but I’m not about to withdraw :–>).

Although I didn’t feel compelled to mention it at the time, at that point I made a conscious decision to get out of activist actions like filing election law complaints, working on campaigns, and the like. I felt, and still feel, that as a recognized representative of NewsBusters and its Media Research Center parent, I owe it to them to take that stance and stick with it, because there is nothing resembling a consensus on the aggressive position I outlined two paragraphs ago.

I don’t necessarily like the self-imposed restraint, but I think it’s appropriate. I’m not suggesting the other Contributing Editors see things the way I do, or that they should. This is just how I choose to operate.