Ask not for whom the bell tolls, my GOP friends. It tolls for thee as well when it comes to scandals. I hope you are all as outraged about Christopher J. Ward as you were about Chad Schuldt.

An excerpt from Saturday’s Washington Post:

The former treasurer of a key Republican campaign committee embezzled more than $500,000 over a five-year period, using it to fund mortgage payments and a six-figure remodeling of his Bethesda home, according to court documents filed yesterday.

The papers were filed by federal prosecutors in an attempt to force the former treasurer, Christopher J. Ward, to forfeit his home to the government…

Ward, who was fired earlier this year, has not been charged with a crime, but the civil action filed yesterday seeks to seize his home in the 6300 block of Massachusetts Avenue. Such efforts prevent subjects of investigations from selling properties that were allegedly part of their crimes and hiding the proceeds….

I’m just sayin’.

Technorati Tags: Chad Schuldt, Christoper J. Ward, Republican scandals

I do not have personal verification of this, but a source I have known and have relied on in the past informs me that Chad Schuldt is working at the Office Max in Sioux Falls.

If I get confirmation, I’ll let you all know.

I hope things are going better for Chad. 

Randall Beck, Argus Leader executive editor.Argus Leader executive editor Randall Beck’s column today is a big whiff on the paper’s coverage of the Hildebrand Tewes embezzlement.

My Rightwing friends might be surprised by this point of view. But I come at it from another journalistic point of view.  If a news organization knows something and can confirm it, they should print or air it.

We know these things:

• The IRS says someone was reporting but not withholding taxes from Hildebrand Tewes.
• The owner of the organization, Steve Hildebrand, has publicly named the person he believes is responsible for the theft, Chad Schuldt.
• Chad Schuldt himself has spoken on the record.
• Steve Hildebrand is a public figure.
• Chad Schuldt is a public figure.
• While criminal charges may come along, they may not necessarily be filed.

While I’m not sure what Schuldt is accused of doing is news that most people care about, since the Argus Leader first broke the story of the embezzlement and the story has been advanced by other credible news organizations (Rapid City Journal, Roll Call) and not just mere blogs, then I believe the Argus should name Schuldt as the suspect.

But Randall has another way of thinking about this:

Case in point: Last month, we first reported on our Web site that an employee of a Sioux Falls firm, Hildebrand Tewes Consulting Inc., had been fired after more than $100,000 turned up missing at the company. The story also appeared in the next day’s print edition.

While we knew the identity of the employee in question, we didn’t name him because no charges of any kind have been filed. That’s been our standard for a long time, and it still is…

Today, the political factionalism fueled by the Internet - or is it the other way around? - can create a small, but vocal backbeat exerting enormous pressure on the standards journalists (and most readers) have long held dear.

That pressure - part competitive, part browbeating - can and does cause journalists to do things they might not once have done. And that includes identifying the Hildebrand employee and publicly branding him as a thief before the law has made a move…

It’s not ours. Ironically, our attempt to set a standard of fairness has become, to a radical few, evidence of a coverup. And so it goes.

The true believers out on the blogosphere - that strange world in cyberspace where the political and social fringes thrust and parry - can make life miserable for an everyday media elitist like me. Few rules and no standards apply.

Steve “Sibby” Sibson, Sibby Online.I think Beck’s application of “old media” standards as he describes above is a cover.  Unfortunately, I have to agree with Sibby, who also writes today that the Argus doesn’t always follow the “criminal charges must be filed” rule before naming names.

As Steve points out, last year, Republican operatives knee-capped then PUC commissioner Bob Sahr, a Republican, in the Argus Leader on yet identified charges of wrong doing.  There was far less information to go on than what we have with Schuldt.  There were no sources on the record.  That is not the case here.

And does it bring about a suspicion of bias on the part of the Argus?  Yes.  That the Argus cannot see it is troubling.

This story was not broken by us scumbags in the blogosphere. It was broken by the Argus Leader.  To now blame us—even my buddy Sibby who calls me a Communist and all sorts of other terrible names—for calling for answers and fair reporting—is arrogant and ultimately, poor journalism.  Sibby proves the old adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.   

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The hardasses in the regional blogosphere mischaracterize what might be Chad Schuldt’s gambling addiction as somehow giving him a free pass.

I don’t think I or anyone else has said Chad gets a free pass should he be found guilty or held liable for embezzlement from Hildebrand Tewes.

Addiction isn’t an excuse but it is a reason for bad behavior.

Obviously, the hardasses have never faced their own human frailty or have had loved ones with addictions.  My guess is that they have, but they are too emotionally stunted to admit that they or their loved ones have had such problems.  The macho culture we live in says to never admit such weaknesses.  But if you participate in AA or other such programs, you learn that you have to admit your weakness over your addiction or you never get better.  

As South Dakota artist Harvey Dunn once said, “Without strength there is no tenderness.”  In the world of addiction, without strength, there is no admission of your weaknesses. 

Alcoholism, drug abuse, and gambling addictions are too widespread even here in our perfect little South Dakota that they haven’t at least touched nearly all of us in some way.  To think that Republicans are somehow immune from such problems is patently insane.

I have a very close family member who is an alcoholic.  When they were at their worst, there was no arguing with them, no reasoning with them, no convincing them that the path they chose was the wrong one.  My close family member bore the consequences of their actions through loss of liberty, placement in treatment programs, and probation.

My family member was also fortunate that the State of South Dakota, courts, and the agencies involved (and more importantly, the judges, lawyers, social workers, counselors, and Department of Corrections staff involved) all worked hard to help my loved one recover from their problems.  They just didn’t chalk up my loved one’s problems to “lack of moral fibre” but worked with my loved one to make them a productive member of society again. 

Frankly, they helped save my loved one’s life.

Ultimately, however, my loved one had to come to conclusion that they had to change their ways and take advantage of the help that was being made available to them.

My loved one bore terrible consquences for their behavior and addiction.  But just as if they had a physical ailment, they needed treatment to make them better. 

When my loved one was drinking, the addiction to drink was so strong that it overpowered their love of their family, friends, and future.  They made exceedingly bad decisions.

Addiction doesn’t excuse bad behavior but it does help to explain it.  This isn’t victimhood, this is understanding the nature of addiction and its terrible power that makes good people do bad things.

While my Rightwing buddies can continue to bash Chad and this situation, just remember, there but for the grace of God go I.    

When I want to know if something is really important or if it is something “normal/regular” people will care about, I have what I call “The Donna Test.”

The “Donna” is my wife Donna M. Epp, Ph.D.  It’s not the Ph.D. that matters so much in these instances (though frankly, she’s a lot smarter than me and getting a Ph.D. is a lot harder than getting a law degree), it’s her common sense, her intuition, and her closeness to “the peeps” that I trust.

Donna spends her day with real people, not on the Internet worried about what PP or SDP or Sibby or even I have to say about some blogger that maybe 500 people care about.  She runs a multi-million dollar business, manages staff, and helps patients get the dialysis treatments they need to stay alive and stay healthy.  She deals with real problems in the real world. 

And in “The Donna Test,” the Chad Schuldt story is a non-story.  Donna has been around Democratic politics some and Chad a little bit and frankly, she doesn’t care.  

Which is the same point that Denise Ross makes in her always excellent blog, The Hog House Blog. 

Chad Schuldt is inside the ballpark bullshit for us political types.  For the Donnas of South Dakota and the Sioux Empire, they could care less.  And these are smart, educated, informed people.  

It simply has no impact on most people’s lives.  As Denise, the daughter of a banker notes:

In these embezzlement cases, which are - tragically - quite common, it’s typical to get the story from the cops and courts beat reporter. So-and-so has been charged with X crime for allegedly embezzling X amount from X business/organization.

To the people who know “so-and-so,” it’s titillating. To the rest of us, it’s of passing interest at best.

To bloggers whose scorn or, less often I suspect, admiration Chad Schuldt (aka Clean Cut Kid) has earned fair and square, his personal downfall is of high interest. But to read any more consequence into it than that it will profoundly affect Schuldt personally is to engage in fantasy.

I’m not excusing the Argus Leader’s lack of interest in the story after names have been named, particularly after they broke the story first.  Why they didn’t simply ask Steve Hildebrand for an on the record comment after the Roll Call story is beyond me.

One thing that unites all South Dakotans of whatever political stripe is that we all, at some level, hate the Argus Leader.  Maybe not for the same reasons, but I view it as something that helps bind us together in the Mt. Rushmore State.  It is a tradition like going out to hunt on the pheasant opener or stopping at Al’s Oasis for coffee on a trip to the Black Hills or making fun of Iowa drivers or calling Nebraskans “sand lizards.”  Hating the Argus is our birthright as South Dakotans.

But I digress. 

But on the same token, Schuldt’s problems won’t impact the Barack Obama race, Tom Daschle or much else.  It will only impact Chad and to a lesser degree, Steve Hildebrand’s company, which is probably still on the hook to pay the IRS.

Meanwhile, most of the “normal/regular” people we know have other things to worry about other than whether some snot-nosed blogger got his comeuppance via his own hands.

Sound and fury, signifying nothing comes to mind.  If anyone thinks this episode means that Democrats are somehow morally inferior to Republicans, um, I wouldn’t be throwing stones, my GOP friends.  This could just as easily happen to your operatives as well.  And, those among you with some savvy and some experience know that’s the truth.>