Yahoo News wants you to know that he is evil...
Posted on 03/25/2015 5:57:13 AM PDT by sickoflibs
John Menard Jr. is widely known as the richest man in Wisconsin. A tough-minded, staunchly conservative 75-year-old billionaire, he owns a highly profitable chain of hardware stores throughout the Midwest. He’s also famously publicity-shy — rarely speaking in public or giving interviews.
So a little more than three years ago, when Menard wanted to back Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — and help advance his pro-business agenda — he found the perfect way to do so without attracting any attention: He wrote more than $1.5 million in checks to a pro-Walker political advocacy group that pledged to keep its donors secret, three sources directly familiar with the transactions told Yahoo News.
Menard’s previously unreported six-figure contributions to the Wisconsin Club for Growth — a group that spent heavily to defend Walker during a bitter 2012 recall election — seem to have paid off for the businessman and his company. In the past two years, Menard’s company has been awarded up to $1.8 million in special tax credits from a state economic development corporation that Walker chairs, according to state records.
And in his five years in office, Walker’s appointees have sharply scaled back enforcement actions by the state Department of Natural Resources — a top Menard priority. The agency had repeatedly clashed with Menard and his company under previous governors over citations for violating state environmental laws and had levied a $1.7 million fine against Menard personally, as well as his company, for illegally dumping hazardous wastes.
“This, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with the dark-money world we live in,” said Bill Allison, senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based based nonprofit group that tracks the influence of money in politics. “Here’s somebody who obviously has issues before the state, and he’s able to make a backdoor contribution that nobody ever sees. My sense is [political] insiders know about these contributions. It’s only the public that has no idea.” Menard did not respond to email and phone requests from Yahoo News for comment about his contributions. (His company’s spokesman, Jeff Abbott, said he was not authorized to speak for the company’s owner and could not respond, either.)
Unlike all those public and totally transparent Obama campaign donations
Unlike all those public and totally transparent Obama campaign donations
Good for Mr. Menard!!!
Would someone please flush Michael Isikoff down a toilet?
When the unions buy big labor influence it’s okay.
Nice to see the establishmedia is back to work after a 6 year vacation. Menard’s is a great company that puts thousands of people to work, how about you Michael?
Pray America is waking
Isikoff, isn’t there a Clinton that you need to protect and spike stories for?
Worthless turd.
...enforcement actions by the state Department of Natural Resources — a top Menard priority….
Because Hardware retail chains are known serial environmental violator /s
At least Walker isn’t trying to horn in on all that middle eastern kings and sultan cash Clinton rakes in.
We've been manipulated so many times by the elite. This time, we would be wise to stick with someone who has a DC voting record.
Yeah, something about the Clinton foundation receiving donations from foreign gov’ts during the time that HRC was Sec State...
yeah... no conflict of interest there...
Yahoo News wants you to know that he is evil...
One wonders if the “Sunlight Foundation” that tracks donations in politics with even 1% of the resources they have devoted to investigating the Clinton Foundation and its tens of millions of questionable foreign donations.
Don’t hold your breath for a report on that.
My bottom line is “is it illegal?” If not, then STFU
No septic system wants him. He will have to remain a “journalist”.
This one has earned it’s place in the Bogus Non-Story Hall of Fame.
Yahoo
[yah-hoo, yey-, yah-hoo]
Spell Syllables
Word Origin
noun, plural Yahoos.
1.
(in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels) one of a race of brutes, having the form and all the vices of humans, who are subject to the Houyhnhnms.
2.
(lowercase) an uncultivated or boorish person; lout; philistine; yokel.
3.
(lowercase) a coarse or brutish person.
Need any more evidence?
Standard 501(c) issue advocacy of a kind that, when compared with the similar hundreds of millions spent to destroy him barely paid for those "tell Gov. Scott Walker (blah, blah, blah) 1-800-555-1041"
Unless they can show a quid pro quo, there's nothing here.
I also do not think Menards advocates stoning women caught in adultery, throwing blindfolded gays off the tops of tall building, beheading Coptic Christians and Yazidi’s and raping and killing enslaved women.
Many of Hillary’s donors are guilty many of the above.
Big deal. That’s the paradigm now...a billionaire or two stakehorses a candidate with money, oops, I mean speech. But at least our political system isn’t for sale.
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