(Originally posted at Illinois Reason.)
Somebody help! We keep getting attacked with too many facts and this thing called "the truth"! Ahhh! Noooo! Make it stop!!!
We should've known it wouldn't take but 36 hours for Illinois Review to begin lying about members of the forthcoming Obama Administration, in this case Chicago's own Rahm Emanuel, designated Chief of Staff. It wasn't but an hour or two before one of their own, Mark Rhoads, went off on a rant about every magic unicorn he could think of to explain how, in the Bizarro Ill Reviewer World, Obama couldn't possibly have won this landslide without some sort of criminal enterprise doing it for him.
Here's a quarter for the clue bus, y'all. Your guy lost because your side is losing its grip on reality, badly. This episode is yet one more example of that:
Mid-morning Thursday -
Illinois Review editor, Fran Eaton, posts an entry asking "Why doesn't Rahm Emanuel pay property taxes?".As you read the following tidbits, keep in mind that Ms. Eaton loathes President-elect and has done so since his days as an Illinois State Senator and through his run for US Senate, in which she worked on the campaign of his opponent Alan Keyes. During his run for President, she labeled Mr. Obama "dangerous" and routinely infopimped misinformation and her own misinterpretation of facts and events about our next President.
In her post about Rahm Emanuel and property taxes, Ms. Eaton lists several facts she found in doing some basic research through the Cook County Assessor's Office. They are accurate facts, but something's amiss because all her research leads her to believe that Rahm Emanuel is not paying taxes on his home. Her key quote here is:
"According to the Cook County Assessor's website, the Chicago home of four-term Democrat Congressman and likely new White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, doesn't exist. While the address of 4228 North Hermitage is listed as Emanuel's residence on the Illinois State Board of Elections' website, there seems to be no public record of Emanuel ever paying property taxes on this home."
Note that in this original post, Ms. Eaton also indicates that other homeowners in Cong. Emanuel's neighborhood are paying "between $3,500 and $7,000 annually." Note too that she keeps referring to property addresses rather than Property ID Numbers (PIN) which the County uses to identify properties.
A bit after Ms. Eaton's post goes up -
A staffer at the Cook County Assessor's Office attempts to respond to Ms. Eaton's post with the facts by using the comment function on the post. Ms. Eaton continuously deletes these error-correcting posts.
At about the same time Illinois political reporter Rich Miller, publisher of The Capitol Fax newsletter and blog, takes note of Ms. Eaton's post and (smelling a potentially bombshell story) calls the Assessor's Office to discuss details and do his own research.
Within minutes Mr. Miller learns that the Eaton post is completely bogus because she simply misunderstands the way property taxes are assessed in the county.
After several attempts to leave corrective comments on Ms. Eaton's Illinois Review post, Ms. Eaton deletes all comments and disables the comment function entirely.
Mid-day Thursday -
Apparently feeling some heat for not correcting her original post which -- by now -- is clearly erroneous when it asks "Why doesn't Rahm Emanuel pay property taxes?" and states that "according to the Cook County Assessor's website, the Chicago home of ... Rahm Emanuel doesn't exist", Ms. Eaton publishes a completely new post as an UPDATE in which she admits that she's been informed by Eric Hermann of the Assessor's office that her initial post was "wholly inaccurate". (Again, that response from the Assessor's office is housed here since it's been completely wiped off the Illinois Review site.)
Note that she uses the word "accused" ... she says Eric Hermann "accused" her of posting something "wholly inaccurate".
Pointing out that something is wholly inaccurate is not any more of an accusation than pointing out that the sky is blue or water is wet. If a blog post is inaccurate, it's inaccurate. She wrote the question "Why doesn't Rahm Emanuel pay property taxes?" and clearly claimed that "according to the Cook County Assessor's website, the Chicago home of ... Rahm Emanuel doesn't exist".
Mr. Hermann's actual, deleted comment was:
Your posting about Rahm Emanuel’s house being tax exempt is wholly inaccurate. Rep. Emanuel’s house is on the tax rolls, and he and Ms. Rule have paid the taxes on it.
The Emanuel house sits on two lots. For tax purposes, the property is listed as 4232 N. Hermitage Ave. The PIN is 14-18-408-035-0000. As you can see, 4232 N. Hermitage came up as one of the addresses when you searched Emanuel’s block on our web site.
4228 N. Hermitage is listed as the mailing address on the tax records. Had you taken the trouble to contact the Assessor’s office, we could have told you that — and told you that it is not at all uncommon for addresses to be merged for properties on two lots.
According to the Cook County Treasurer’s web site, Emanuel and his wife paid $13,022.60 in property taxes this year.
For some reason, Ms. Eaton continuously deleted that information as Mr. Hermann tried to post it in comments. Once again, she eventually disabled comments entirely. If it weren't for Rich Miller's journalistic endeavor, we wouldn't even know about this info.
Now that she was informed of the error of her ways and another blogger had published the corrective info, Ms. Eaton published the fact that the Emanuels paid href="3,022.60 in property taxes last year in the new UPDATE post. (Recall that she originally wrote that their neighbors' tax bills range from $3,500 to $7,000.)
She also claims in that UPDATE that the information from Mr. Hermann raises some new questions, which I'll answer because they have very simple answers...
- Why is Rahm Emanuel's residence listed on the State Board of Election as 4228 N. Hermitage, while the Cook County Assessor's website and the Cook County Treasurer's website have it listed as 4232 N. Hermitage?
- The Assessor's deleted comment (now recovered by Rich Miller at Capitol Fax) clearly states that the Emanuel property is actually a double-lot, technically with two street addresses.
- Is Rahm Emanuel's property tax based on the value of the empty lot at 4232 N. Hermitage or on the value of the lot (4228 N. Hermitage) where his house and his tax exempt, non-profit foundation are located?
- Both, because it is a double-lot. As the Assessor's deleted comment indicates, they Emanuel family has one PIN number for both lots. Again, the Assessor's Office goes by PINs, not street addresses, to avoid this very sort confusion.
- Why is the property's PIN number out of sequence?
- What does this have to do with anything? The PIN numbers are assigned at different times. My home's PIN could be out of sequence for all I know. These aren't addresses, they're PINs. The sequence of a PIN number has nothing to do with the taxes assessed for the property (properties) associated with that PIN. It's akin to asking, 'Why does this home have more tomatoes in its garden than the one next door?' The question has nothing to do with the taxes.
- Is the yearly property tax liability of a home valued at $695,000 in 1998 really only $13,022.60?
- $13,022.60 for a double-lot is in the range of double (or more than double) the earlier figures that Ms. Eaton quoted of $3,500 - $7,000 for single-lots. Logic would dictate that this answers itself.
If you click through to the link at Illinois Review, you'll see that her second post on the topic also now has comments disabled. This means that anyone attempting to answer her simple questions cannot do so directly.
But, lo, Ms. Eaton was not finished. Later Thursday -
The Illinois Review editor posted a third entry -- also with comments turned off -- later in the day Thursday after several other bloggers began to call her out on the smear campaign based on her own miscomprehension of the Assessor's Office data. These bloggers -- Progress Illinois, Sadly No!, Archpundit (here, here, here, here, here and here), and others -- were left with no choice but to generate their own posts because Ms. Eaton had deliberately disabled the comment functions on just her posts dealing with Rahm Emanuel's property. (Other Ill Review posts are still accepting comments.)
In this third post, Ms. Eaton blames liberals for her mistakes, calling one of the premier political journalists in Illinois and others who pointed out her obvious errors "liberal hit-men" and claiming that they, not her, were "ignoring the truth".
She claims she's simply raising these points and asking these questions because she believe there may be more to this story... even though several folks have now pointed out that there is no story other than the one she's creating by so badly misunderstanding the basics of property taxes.
And she goes on a whiney rant covering the "facts" as she knows them:
FIRST: We stated that the address 4228 N. Hermitage, which is where the very foundation of Rahm Emanuel's home (the structure in which his family lives) does not appear on the websites of either the Cook County Assessor's Office or the Cook County Treasurer's Office. This is true. A search of those websites' databases proves it.
Yes, this is true. But Ms. Eaton misinterpreted the lack of an address in the database to mean that Rahm Emanuel wasn't paying any taxes. As shown above, taxes are based on PINs, not street addresses.
SECOND: We stated that contrary to the Cook County Assessor's website and the Cook County Treasurer's website, Emanuel's home address is listed as 4228 N. Hermitage on the Illinois State Board of Elections website. This is also true. A search of the ISBE's website proves it.
Again, yes, it is true. But, again, Ms. Eaton isn't understanding that the Emanuels' double-lot means that they own two street addresses (both right next to each other) which both fall under one PIN for tax purposes.
THIRD: We stated that there seems to be no public record of Emanuel paying property taxes on his home, which is listed on the ISBE website as 4228 N. Hermitage. This is true as well. Again, a search of the Assessor's and Treasurer's websites proves this.
As clearly demonstrated through the information presented and linked above, Ms. Eaton stated "that there seems to be no public record of Emanuel paying property taxes" because she simply didn't comprehend how the taxes were actually billed. Her follow-ups obviously show that she now knows that Rahm Emanuel in fact did pay over $13,000 in taxes for his double-lot, which is in the range of about double (or more) to his neighbors' single-lot tax assessments.
FOURTH: We suggested that Emanuel's non-profit foundation, which is listed as being headquartered in his home at 4228 N. Hermitage might be the reason that no tax payments on that address are found. We did not state this as fact. We merely questioned whether it could have an affect. Fact is, Emanuel's foundation has no impact on his property taxes, and we updated the post once that question was answered.
The update to which she refers is simply linked in the original post. Her original erroneous suggestions and other incorrect statements in the first post have neither been removed nor clarified within the post itself.
Ms. Eaton concludes with what can only be described as a severe case of myopic rhetoric:
But, alas, these facts, clarifications, and questions don't faze the liberal hit-men who prefer to ignore the truth and spin the story to be about those who question rather than those who rule.
Note again that there actually is no story here. Rahm Emanuel pays his property taxes and his property taxes on his double-lot are about twice what his neighbors pay for their single-lots.
For our part, we'll continue to ask questions and provide facts about anyone in power, and any connection they may have to this murky and unnecessarily complex Cook County taxing system.
That's a very noble sentiment, but it relies on an accurate reading of all the facts, something that clearly escaped Ms. Eaton in this episode. As for the Cook County property tax system somehow being "murky" or "complex" ... that's just an excuse for her own apparent misunderstandings. The Cook County system is actually quite beneficial to homeowners, as our taxes are much lower than those in nearby counties -- but apparently conservative partisans only like lower taxes when they don't fit into some non-story about the next President's Chief of Staff designee.
Where there is smoke, there is usually fire. Especially when it comes to Chicago politics.
Quite obviously, the only smoke here was that which was being blown out of Ms. Eaton's bottom, especially when considering it was coming from an avowed anti-Obama partisan's politics of misinformation and infopimping.
End of day Thursday -
Unfortunately, the net effect of Ms. Eaton deciding leaving that original post up and uncorrected (at least within the post itself -- either through a direct correction to the post or by turning comments back on) is that now several other conservative bloggers are picking up on this non-story without bothering to question it. The result is they're falsely claiming that Ms. Eaton's nemesis is some sort of tax cheat.
If that was Ms. Eaton's intent, she's reached her goal...
UPDATE 1: Well, who woulda thunk it...? The Quinn and Rose conservative talk-show on XM Satellite Radio picked up Fran Eaton's original, uncorrected story this morning and ran with it as if it's somehow true and loyal listeners are now unwittingly "spreading the word". Common sense ethics would indicate that once the original hypothesis ("Why doesn't Rahm Emanuel pay property taxes?") was proven wrong she would do the right thing and either completely delete the post or run a correction inside the post indicating her errors (he actually did pay $13,022.60 in taxes last year, which she admits in a later, separate post).
At the end of my own post, I indicate that if such false rumor-mongering was Ms. Eaton's actual intent, she's reached her goal. Now that this fallacy has hit talk radio, that's crystal clear. Fox News and other national conservative media may not be far behind.
UPDATE 2: Fran Eaton has deleted her earlier, false posts (though now that it's been a day they will live on at other links).
However, she defiantly still doesn't seem to understand that asking "Why doesn't Rahm Emanuel pay property taxes?" as if it's true is a problem in light of the fact that he actually does pay taxes. In reality, he pays taxes that are about double the rate of his neighbors, as her own research and numbers illustrated. (It makes sense he'd be paying about double since he owns a double-lot.
It's not that she was asking questions and doing research. We all have the right to hold our leaders accountable. It's that she made a mistake in doing her research (we're all human) and then, when the mistake was pointed out to her, instead of immediately owning up to it she hemmed and hawed and continuously deleted direct comments noting and correcting her mistake. Even today, her tone is angry and stand-offish as if she takes issue with anyone having the temerity to question her just as she demands to question others. Indeed, Ms. Eaton ends with the rhetorical equivalent of flipping the bird by exclaiming: "Now stop asking questions!"
And, apparently, pointing out facts and questioning why comments relaying those facts were being deleted is somehow "vile" and "thuggery."
Ok, so what is presenting a wholly inaccurate story about a President-elect's Chief of Staff designee and then attempting to backtrack and stand by the false story for a whole day after being called out on it?