Rucker needs to prove he's not lying about PMUA

Today, Rucker shows Storch with PMUA logos.

 

Who knew Tony Rucker, Jerry Green's candidate for the Ward 2 council seat, was such a fan of Nazi leader Adolph Hitler and his propaganda chief Josef Goebbels? Yet it seems that he is.

Goebbels, you will recall, elaborated on Hitler's 'Big Lie' concept, that if one tells a lie big enough and repeats it often enough, people will believe it (see more here).

Last Thursday, Rucker suggested Storch had taken money from the PMUA and that he had family members who had worked for the Authority.

Last night, Rucker said loudly, 'The PMUA gave Storch money...'

Today, he writes in his blog 'if you attended [last night's forum] you would have heard Cory Storch have to admit he took money from the PMUA' (see here).

It ain't so and sayin' so don't make it so, though it is outrageous and could qualify as a Hitler/Goebbels style 'Big Lie'.

So much for the 'high road' that Rucker's campaign manager  Dwayne Wilkins told me in an email the Rucker campaign would adhere to. (For rhetoric hounds, the device by which Rucker indirectly slimes Storch in the Thursday post is known as 'praeteritio' [see here and here], a means of making a subversive ad hominem attack, as in 'I've agreed not to mention that your brother is a serial killer and your sister an ax murderer, so let us focus on the real issues...')

I challenged Rucker immediately following last night's forum in a face-to-face conversation, telling him that his statement COULD NOT BE TRUE ON ITS FACE because the PMUA is prohibited by law from contributing to political candidates; no ethical candidate -- like Storch -- would accept such a contribution; and people who monitor misdeeds by public agencies would surely have found and publicized such a deed by this time (it allegedly happened in 2003, during Storch's first run for Council).

I said to him, 'If you're going to make statements like that, you better have specific facts to back them up.'

So, Mr. Rucker, to prove you are NOT lying about the PMUA contributing to Storch's campaign, produce the documentation, chapter and verse.

If you cannot produce the documentation, then apologize publicly to Storch (through your blog and a letter to the Courier would be nice).

I am disappointed that Rucker has chosen the Jerry Green-style low road, especially since he holds himself out as being a much better sort of candidate.

But then, he did the same thing in his losing run against Storch four years ago.

In that race, he alleged that Storch was trying to close the Park Hotel and throw its clients out in the street, leaving them homeless to shift for themselves.

That lie also wasn't true, but that didn't prevent Rucker from exploiting the Park Hotel's clients by paying them to sit outside polling places all day during the Primary with signs urging voters to cast ballots for Rucker and not Storch.

Rucker exploited Park Hotel residents to sit outside Evergreen School
on Primary Day, 2007 (photos courtesy Maria Pellum).

This exploited Park Hotel resident sat outside Cook School
on Primary Day 2007, urging votes for Rucker (photo courtesy Alexa Storch).

Seems his admiration for Goebbels is of long standing.

---

• Wikipedia:  "Big Lie"
• Queen City Progressive --
• "Thursday, May 26, 2011"
• "Storch offers no denial at Cook School debate"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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