Shill to Hack (Kos co-author exposed)

New York Post ^ | June 18, 2006 | RODDY BOYD

[veronica]

CELEBRATED LIB STRATEGIST HAS SHADY MARKET PAST

Jerome Armstrong, the political strategist who followed a famous Internet fundraising effort for Howard Dean in 2004 with a book on "people-powered politics," has a sordid past as a shill for a worthless dot-com stock.

Armstrong, 42, touted a dubious Chinese software company, BluePoint, beginning in 1999, without disclosing that he accepted "below-market" shares in exchange for the glowing reports he posted on a site called Raging Bull, according to a 2003 civil suit that named him as a defendant.

"Armstrong posted over 80 times on the BluePoint message board located on the Raging Bull Web site in the first three weeks [it traded]," reads the complaint, filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

At no point in any of the 80 posts did Armstrong disclose he was paid for the service, the suit alleged. In fact, The Post has uncovered hundreds of Armstrong posts from 1999 to 2003, many supporting now virtually or entirely worthless stocks.

[vetsvette]

A dishonest liberal??

Shocking Indeed!!

[mhx]

Why even bother going after these losers? It's just going to give them more publicity.

[thoughtomator]

If you're getting stock tips from a site called "Raging Bull", you ought to have your head examined (to see if there's actually a brain in there).

[God luvs America]

wonder why Tim Russert didn't point this out during MTP last week when he glorified the rat-bloggers and DK as the second coming of the wheel.....

[veronica]

Must have just slipped his mind.

[bitt]

ping

[ncountylee]

Russert was still thinking about weepy Aaron.

[Thombo2]

I'm assuming he promoted the stock causing it to rise.Then sold his shares and leaving duped investors holding the bag when the house of cards collapsed?He should be doing time.Unfortunately there is no shortage of gullible investors.Before investing-Research!

[OldFriend]

The culture corruption on the left runs deep, very deep.

[Incorrigible]

KOSsack Bump!

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

"If you're getting stock tips from a site called "Raging Bull", you ought to have your head examined (to see if there's actually a brain in there)."

Yeah -- stick to "Motley Fool". :-)

[devane617]

Good find! If any of you are active investors and frequent Message Boards, you will be familiar with his bashing type. They are paid by these boiler room stocks and or Hedge Funds to flame stock message boards with garbage noise in an effort to move the stock pps. The lowest form of life IMHO.

[Sam Hill]

As you know, Armstrong and Kos (Markos Moulitsas Zúniga) were both secret paid shills for Howard Dean until they were busted and forced to confess their arrangement.

They are probably still being paid by Dean.

[jwh_Denver]

"At no point in any of the 80 posts did Armstrong disclose he was paid for the service"

There are tons of these people working the message boards who don't disclose anything. I don't believe there is a law against doing this.

[Sam Hill]

"At no point in any of the 80 posts did Armstrong disclose he was paid for the service, the suit alleged. In fact, The Post has uncovered hundreds of Armstrong posts from 1999 to 2003, many supporting now virtually or entirely worthless stocks."

Much like what he did for Howard Dean.

Is somebody going to sue him for that, too?

[kcvl]

Armstrong signed off on a settlement of the charges on Dec. 16, 2003, barring him from touting securities. In addition, Armstrong agreed never to deny any of the SEC charges. It was not immediately known if his statement to The Post denying guilt would violate the settlement agreement.

[kcvl]

Armstrong now directs Internet strategy for 2008 presidential hopeful Mark Warner.

[kcvl]

"On Dean's campaign, we paid Markos and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean. We paid them over twice as much as we paid two staffers of similar backgrounds, and they had several other clients."

[kcvl]

Moulitsas (Daily Kos) joined Armstrong in a political consulting partnership called Armstrong Zuniga. Howard Dean hired them for a time as technical consultants (an action they disclosed to readers), with Jerome shutting down MyDD for a year to work on the campaign.

Mat Gross, creator of the blog on Dean’s Web site, was another contributor to MyDD. Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean, describes meeting Mat Gross: "One day, soon after we'd moved to a larger quarters in a South Burlington office park, I looked up to see this tall young guy with an earring and a nearly shaved head wandering around the office. Security had just grabbed him and was hauling him away when he yelled out to me: 'Wait! I blog on MyDD.com!' This was, of course, the political Web site where I'd first heard about Meetup.com. 'You're hired!' I yelled, and they brought him back to me. ... Within 48 hours he had created Call to Action, the first-ever blog of any presidential campaign." [30] Call to Action eventually became Blog for America. [1]