OTBL Blogger Outs Lies ontheborderline.net

On the other side of the borderline, the OTBL bloggers are trying to whip up their minions after their embarrassment in the Tuesday elections. Their Hudson school board endorsee, Jim Baker, missed by a significant margin. In New Richmond, the OTBL'ers are talking less about the victory of Bob Seivert and Rick Hinz, and more about the lack of ethics on their blog.

Read what OTBL anonymous blogger Keenan posted on April 7@ 4:12 PM.

"Blogger ethics do exist. No we don’t have editors. We do care about getting the facts right. After reading the actual piece written by a NR District administrator and published by the Parent Group, I’d like to make a correction to my original post above. JB used the word endorsement. Norton’s message was not as clear cut as an endorsement..."

Keenan's reference to "JB" refers to a New Richmond blogger who posts by the anonymous name Jack Bauer. Throughout the school board election campaign JB, obviously a member of New Richmond's Do Group, consistently glorified candidates Hinz and Seivert and trashed Andy Lieffort and Deanna Cook-Shannon. A number of those misinformation posts by JB were pointed out here.

Notice the date and time on Keenan's comment above. Notice that he points out he wants to retract his comments after actually reading a letter sent out by New Richmond's West Elementary principal Frank Norton. Timing is everything...

Keenan's comments were on a post by Jack Bauer boldly titled "Norton Endorses Cook-Shannon and Lieffort." No where in the post is a word from Norton's letter quoted. If fact, the actual letter linked below mentions no school board candidates. Bauer did the posting on Sunday, April 2 @ 6:30 PM.

Keenan was the first OTBL'er to jump on the post. At 11:13 PM that same night, he wrote:

"Wow! Jack- That’s out of line. First, focus on the issues and conveying your message to voters. Don’t lose focus by getting distracted by how the liberals break the rules. They do. They think the ends justify the means..."

The following morning at 10:40 AM, New Richmondite Bob Ziller commented on the post:

"I agree with Keenan on this one. I even have trouble with my representatives in Madison when emailing about political stuff. They are real skittish since Chuck whats-his-name and Scott Jensen got nailed for doing fund raising and campaigning on company time. They can’t even say a bad word about their opponent.

I am really surprised this happened. I wonder what the school board will do."
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I pause here to note that Mr. Ziller had not read Norton's letter as yet. He is making his comments based on the hearsay of JB. During the day, Ziller got a copy of the letter and actually read it. At 5:58 pm that afternoon, Ziller posted the following:

"I just got a copy of the Frank Norton letter. It does not endorse Lieffort and Deanna C-S. It only urges the increase in capacity of the elementary schools. I happen to agree to that.

Maybe there are two letters out there and Jack Bauer got a different one. Next time JB, put the letter on the blog and let us make up our own minds. I want to keep this blog on a high level of honesty and integrity."

That same afternoon, I received a copy of the Norton letter and included the letter in the following post: Ziller Accuses Jack Bauer of Dishonesty. Later that evening, anonymous blogger N. Onimous made a couple of comments siding with Keenan and ignoring Ziller's information correcting the bad information, i.e., lies posted by Bauer. Here I'll point out that a personal contact I have who is a regular poster and commenter on the OTBL site, told me that N. Onimous is a name used by a group of OTBL'ers. He is also pretty sure Jack Bauer is used by an number of people.

So now it's Friday, April 7 and keenan has finally reading the letter and getting the facts. Suddenly, confronted by the actual facts contained in the letter verses the lies posted by Jack Bauer, keenan gets religion and takes Jack Bauer to task for lying on the blog.

Jack Bauer is not just an infrequent poster at the OTBL blog. Between March 31 and April 4, of the 55 posts at OTBL, 12 or 22 percent of the posts were done by Jack Bauer. You can do your own investigative reporting on this, but most of those posts contain the same type of misinformation and lies contained in the Norton letter post.

As someone who has talked with local officials about the information posted on the www.ontheborderline.net blog, I can verify that many of the posts are filled misinterpretations of information and facts. In addition, the OTBL blog strictly posts only information that reflects positively on their agenda.

Keenan tells us that "blogger ethics do exist." I believe they do exist, but no ontheborderline.net. They are a blog site with an agenda. They have been accused of being on of the numerous right-wing blog sites getting paid by Wal-Mart to publish pro-Wal-Mart/anti-union propaganda. I like the saying about "where there's smoke there's fire." You can read many OTBL posts that read like a cut-n-paste job from a press release.

You're adults and, if you're not, you should know what adults are up to. At Ontheborderline.net they are trying their worst to put down and slander community-mind citizens who are working very hard to improve their community and keep their eyes on the future. It's not a giant communist plot, as the OTBL'ers see everything. This tendency to see everything as a plot comes from the serious influence the John Birch Society has had on some of the founding hypocrites at OTBL. You will notice that everyone who does not agree with them is labelled a "communist," "socialist," "collectivist," etc. This comes straight out of the John Birch worldview.

You can called me whatever you want. I've been paying taxes since I was 13 years old and I've always believed in being a contributing member of the community. It's about us not just me. The agenda on this blog site should be quite clear to anyone whose spent some time here. Our job is to expose the hypocrisy and lies being pumped out at the OTBL site. They can hide under the hoods of their anonymous names like Jack Bauer, but we are going to continue to shine the spotlight of truth on their sorry asses and have a damn good time doing it!

James P. Nelson

PS: If you have any guesses as to who Jack Bauer might be, please enter them in the comments below.