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February 20, 2011 01:51 AM UTC

Defense Denver's latest lie: John McBride, "Team Leader"

  • 100 Comments
  • by: bullshit!

(There is probably more than one “John McBride”.  there is certainly more than one MADCO – though I love to dance. – promoted by MADCO)

Picking at the loose strings dangling from the poorly organized and very possibly illegal efforts of the undocumented organization Defense Denver to recall Denver Public Schools board member Nate Easley, I’ve found some remarkable things. In my last post, I showed evidence I Googled that raises serious questions about the role of fellow DPS board member Andrea Merida in this recall effort, despite her denials of any involvement. The truth is, Merida proudly advertises her work on behalf of Defense Denver, as part of her political consultant business Progressive Juice.

http://coloradopols.com/diary/…

Today, I give you another piece of the puzzle.

Possibly a very important piece.

As MotR ably documented, the recall petition against Mr. Easley was filed by a failed DPS school board candidate named John McBride. Defense Denver, asserting its lack of any requirement to file disclosures, has insisted that they are not involved with McBride in any way. As MotR explained in her excellent post, the lack of any relationship, as denied by Defense Denver, between that organization and McBride is a crucial point for the legitimacy of their undisclosed activities.

Caplis & Silverman would know to contact John McBride about the recall, since as a media outlet, they would know to use the official information.  John McBride is not a DeFENSE organizer, as has been said before.

That’s what Defense Denver said about Mcbride on 2/02.

The recall committee is filing (may have already filed) an issue committee.  Expenses for that, like copying petitions, are being tallied and will be reported.  The recall filer, John McBride, is not DeFENSE organizer.

Again Defense Denver, 2/02.

The recall was initiated by McBride. Not DeFENSE. MotR is right to question the viability of an organization that lacks transparency, but I’m not seeing any evidence that links the two other than similar policy goals.

Former FPE redstateblues, making a very honest and laudable attempt to defend Defense Denver on the (at the time) unknown question of McBride’s involvement with the group.

Are you referring to the recall committee filed by John McBride?  That was filed too.  Entities don’t file recalls. People do.

Defense Denver again drawing a line between itself and McBride just yesterday.

It should be obvious why Defense Denver cannot have any involvement with McBride, because that would completely obliterate their claim that they are just a group of parents and really super dedicated volunteer community heroes who are not formally connected to the recall. This is the basis of their response that they don’t have to file disclosures.

Defense Denver’s account on the blogs has said that several people have access to it.

It looks like they didn’t all get the message about McBride “not being involved!”

http://www.squarestate.net/sho…

Here are some point-person contacts.

You’re welcome to call and find out more.

To get involved contact our Team Leaders:

Montbello/Far North East Jackie Skalecke 303-371-3811 *

Northeast – Mandy Hennessy – 720-224-412

Spanish Speaking Parent Organizer – Mario Ramirez – 303-526-8712 *  

Media Inquiries – John McBride 720-270-3527      

by: DefenseDenver @ Sat Feb 19, 2011 at 14:39:09 PM CST

Despite repeated statements from Defense Denver denying that the filer of the recall, John McBride, is involved with their organization, today Defense Denver identified him as one of “our team leaders,” specifically the “leader” who handles Defense Denver’s media inquiries.

Ladies and gentlemen, either Defense Denver needs to immediately correct a hugely embarrassing misstatement, or this house of cards is about to fall…

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100 thoughts on “Defense Denver’s latest lie: John McBride, “Team Leader””

  1. First, Merida builds Defense’s website and “accidentally” leaves her phone number as the contact.

    Now Defense Denver denies involvement with recall filer McBride out of one side of their anonymous mouth, and directs press inquiries about DD to McBride out of the other side of their mouth.

    I can’t believe these guys expect people to approach them with anything other than suspicion. It’s totally ridiculous. They INVITE SUSPICION every time they open their own traps.

    I was wrong to compare these jokers to Doug Bruce. I think that could be insulting to Doug Bruce. Doug Bruce is not nearly this amateurish.

            1. Mea culpa.

              That said, you’re equivocating. Why would GG do that? Hell, why do YOU act as their guard dog? Because you’re involved.

              We’re not dummies here. When we put two and two together, the answer is always four.

          1. What have I “denied”?

            Oh, and:

            You strike me as a pathological liar.

            Funny, I have the same impression of you, except that I additionally suspect you’re an abusive, self-centered ogre that nobody in your life can bear being in the same room with.  

            1. I additionally suspect you’re an abusive, self-centered ogre that nobody in your life can bear being in the same room with.

               

              I am.  Ask anyone on here who knows me.  GRRRRR!

              And never end a sentence with a preposition.  You’re supposed to be representing teachers.

      1. 1.  No explanation is better than a bad explanation.

        (Maybe this Borg has finally started to learn one thing?)

        2.  No explanation is enough.

        (Because, that’s all anyone has gotten from any question to this Borg.  And, the number of satisfied Borgettes Borgers Borgarenos concerned citizens has been growing exponentially daily — just look at all the new recruits signing on from Pols?)  

        1. From what I can gather…

          McBride is the media contact for the recall committee, and he is the petitioner- the guy who filed the recall.

          DeFense is NOT the recall. They, and other organizations are supporting the recall. People who have attended  DeFense meetings are actively supporting the recall, training petitioners, etc. They have explained his repeatedly.

          McBride is not the spokesman for DeFEnse. He is the leader of an ages-old Northeast Denver education group. deFense is a johnny-come-lately group, energized in part by the closure of Montbello and six other schools. get it, trolls? defense has said repeatedly, if you want info, email them, and someone will get back to you.

          There has been so much supposition, spun up by corporate reformers, or political operatives getting their piece of the Donnell-Kay, Piton, hedge-fund pie, that the simplest explanation- given by DeFense, has been ignored.

          DD can’t come to our level to tell us that load of complete and utter bullshit that contradicts nearly everything else they’ve written. Some people are just better than “us.” (At the link above.)

  3. Not only is this making skeptics go “WTF,” we even have ass here and “Mucius Scaevola” there (both confirmed pro-recall people) asking that question too (not in so many words…)

    1. I smell rope-a-dope.

      That, or they’ve really fucked up and don’t know how to deal with it.

      Either way, I hope I stay on Bullshit’s good side. I wanted to be LB’s avenging angel, but this will certainly do!

  4. This is just a blatant self-contradiction. True is false, up is down, Schrodinger’s cat is both dead and alive simultaneously, and John McBride is an official contact who has nothing to do with the organization. This is messed up, even if (as I do) one still tries to give them the benefit of the doubt and say Guerin Green was acting on his own when he threatened LB and outed MOTR.

    1. This is worse than hearing the relatives at a family union complain for the 11 millionth time that someone didn’t invite someone else to their wedding in 1948. When are you guys going to stop with this stupid Guerin Green story?

      Newsflash: Only Pols regular bloggers care that MOTR was outed. Only (some) Pols regular  bloggers know to this day who LB is, and many couldn’t care less. Only Pols bloggers can stomach this stupid incestuous story that will not end.

      No wait, this is like the news teams in the movie Anchorman fighting in the street, except no one hear (except Voayageur) is a real journalist.  

      1. Why are you posting this?

        This diary is five months old. The comment to which you’re responding is five months old. It’s not current.

        How did you even find your way back here?

  5. Damn I love the clockwork predictability of this shit. All of the DD trolls have fled. They were all here, there is no question they read this blog. And no response. Poof!

    Love it. Don’t stop until all of these bad actors are tarred and feathered!

    And don’t. Fuck. With. The. Blog. (note proper nouns)

          1. after a correction to a phone number? So even if we assume they left out a word or clarification, they at least read it once after posting.

            Single number v entire sentence of separation… CoPols is so fucking unreasonable. Babies. Every last one.

    3. 1) it’s dinner time

      2) they’ll all got Sat night plans and went out

      3) they need to talk and decide how to “respond” (in quotes cause their responses so far are the non-response type.

      4) they are just screwing with us

      5) happen stance, ie. coincidence

      6) something else I haven’t thought of

  7. I mentioned S2 user Mucius Scaevola upthread – someone who is solidly in DD’s corner over there. He (I assume “he” since the handle is a man’s name) posted this question in response to DD’s comment…

    John McBride?

    Hmmm. Didn’t expect to see that name there. Can you explain his connection to your group?

    … which solicited this kind of testy reply from DD:

    He’s the filer of the recall committee

    So he’s the contact for his committee.  End of story.

    That quote can be seen at the same hyperlink.

  9. A spokesman for their group made an impassioned plea to support the recall.

    I didn’t find any true conflict of interest by Mr.Easley in the affair. It appears that it’s basically a power struggle within the DPS school board.

    The minority voting group seems to blame everything on Sen.Bennet. This seems unrealistic.

    I don’t live in Denver anymore, but did attend DPS for the majority of my public education.

    I don’t believe that charter schools are designed to bust the teachers’ union.

    The idea of integration was to promote the ability of students to improve both race relations and not to be limited in the quality of education available due to a zip code that people live in.

    I believe that the recall will fail. The previous recall effort did, and it involved a clear conflict of interest of a member being paid for purported organizing, not revealing being paid, and having access to confidential meetings and materials directly related to the paying entity’s primary opponent being publicized.

    During court orderd integration, I recall the buses being blown up at 6th and Federal. I would hope that the rancor in public policy doesn’t reach the level of opposition that the city experienced in my youth.  

    1. I mean, they’ve got a non-entity organization.

      They’ve got resources and media savvy.

      Plausible deniability, lax Denver & Colorado election rule enforcement.

      What could possibly go wrong?

        2. I’ll say it again: I don’t live in Denver, and I have no dog in this recall fight whatsoever. The truth is, I opposed SB-191, I support teachers, and I don’t think the solution to our education crisis is writing off the public schools for the sake of a few model charters.

          Meaning I am somebody Defense Denver might have persuaded.

          What put me on their trail was their nutjob hostility in the face of the very simplest questions, the holdover grudge settling from the Senate primary, their refusal to disclose, and above all their petulant attacks on this blog, which I read every day and happen to like reading. And that was before they started harassing and threatening individual bloggers here.

          For all of these reasons and more, they’ve made enemies of people who might have been their friends.

            1. PTA tiffs, church and synagogue board tiffs, book club tiffs, is a time honored tradition.  The smaller the pond, the more petty the stakes, the more vicious the politics.

              I bet there are still people not speaking over board struggles at the congregation my family belonged to in the 60s.  And you wouldn’t believe the intensity of some of the back stabbing power struggles that have gone on  within the Arapahoe County Democratic party in some of the past years.  This despite everybody being a volunteer with no money or even opportunities for patronage or graft involved.

              And the PTA? There are some very scary moms in the PTA, don’t you doubt it. Caligula would be scared of some of them.

                1. I thought any of the other Mom’s who had had school age children and been active for many years and had way more experience (at that point I had none) would be a better choice but the teacher really pushed hard and I said yes.

                  It soon became clear that she wanted me specifically because I was brand new and not yet part of the power struggle and feuding factions that had made things dicey between the other moms. I was to be the fresh face that nobody had a problem with, a virgin so to speak, and therefore provide some smoother sailing. I think she thought everybody would be nice and helpful to poor little green me.

                  Ha! The back stabbing continued unabated until I found myself this close to being overthrown in a coup from a position I never asked for or wanted in the first place.  I never volunteered to be in charge of anything like that again.  If they wanted me to bring brownies, fine, just tell me where and when.  Other than that I would have just as soon jumped into a tank full of sharks.  

          2. Only the people in NE Denver can vote on the recall.  This is another  pile-on..by people who don’t live in Denver. .and I do not understand the attraction of helping to FU the poor decrepit DPS system, even more. It is doing the job so well without any outside help.

            UNLESS, BS, you are part of a state wide coalition to pass a constitutional amendment to get rid of elected school boards.  I believe that there may well be money for those who want to promote that idea……some people want the mayor of Denver to run the schools….and the more the Denver BOE is dysfunctional, the easier that amendment will be to promote.

            I am out of here….wake me when the mayoral and/or recall elections are over and the dems can get back to their real focus:  Losing in 2012.

            1. If you really are out of here, you won’t see this, but…

              Since when does living in some place where a battle is taking place preclude legitimate interest? You have some explaining to do, dwyer. Asserting that it’s fucking it up even worse is not supportable.

            3. I don’t live in Egypt – who cares what they do.

              Bahrain, Libya, North Ireland, South Africa, Pueblo, Trinidad, Greeley,  – I don’t live in  any of those places, so I don’t care.

              Hey, I don’t live in Texas either, so if they want to secede so what?

              I care about public education. I care more about public education in my neighborhood. And I care about public education in the neighboring districts.  If Denver gets it “right” metro districts everywhere will follow the lead and it will be a win win win all the way around.  If they get it wrong, well, everyone suffers.

        3. They want to take over the school board and fire Boasberg. Period. Then they’ll turn back the clock and we’ll go back to have a really great school system. Hooray!

          The school board members (Merida, Kaplan, Jimenez) are behind this. They hated Michael Bennet, they hate Tom Boasberg. It’s purely political.  

              1. was unrelated to anything political. It just was that Boasberg wanted to move on soon. If the majority stays the same, I’m sure they would appoint a superintendent along the same lines as Boasberg.

        4. He pointed out that Denver’s graduation rates are the most repeated. Then it hit me that he was quoting the minority specific.

          Apparently people move companies or don’t based on these numbers. Ignoring that most upper middle class (people who would transfer with a company, or who work with companies who need an educated workforce) with children won’t live in Denver at all, but there it is. I think the suburban counties could have better graduation rates, they aren’t scary though.

          I think our board is important for the same reason our mayor is. And for the same reason the old guy was surprised I made it to work everyday last week in spite of the snow.

          That’s why everyone should care. I guess it doesn’t explain why anyone wants the responsibility since normal people aren’t aware that there is a board, let alone who’s on it. So I think your final verdict is probably close to being correct; big ass egos. I’d add “with dreams of higher elected office.”

  11. THIS IS WHERE YOU COME IN.  We need help to collect signatures from eligible voters, and you don’t need to live in northeast Denver to help.  We have a meeting/training scheduled for this coming Saturday, Here are the details:

    Saturday,  January 22

    9 a.m.

    Oleta Crain Center,2102 Marion Street, Denver

    Petition-gathering training and information meeting.

    Will you join us?  Click here to RSVP.  We can’t set the course aright for our schools without your help.  Please help us stand up and say “No More”!

    The DeFENSE Team

    When you’re organizing help for the guy it makes sense to have him as your contact.

    http://defense.createsend2.com…

    OTOH, if they are still trying to sell that they are not involved with putting the recall on the ballot they should probably fire their media contact. He’s apparently not bright.

    2. Formerly affiliated with the Panthers and had a couple of other warrants.

      He was a teenager (18) when the firebombing thng happened and no one was hurt.  But.

        1. Perhaps he has become a good person. Maybe he was a good person who made a grievous mistake.  Possibly he’s a self centered, irrational felon who has no business being around a school board, let alone in a leadership position.

          Perhaps, maybe, possibly…I don’t know him, it’s not my school board, I was just confirming that it is him and that he was a kid when that happened.

              1. All his tickets for reckless driving to not having his un-vaccinated dog on a leash are available on-line. ’75 is as far back as Colorado criminal records go electronically.

                FWIW, the article implies that he admits to doing it because he was mad. The punishment of course isn’t there. If someone has a mind to use their library card, I’m sure it was in a local paper. I’m not the type of girl to whip anything out.

                http://denverlibrary.org/datab…

              1. It’s unlikely the community members concerned about students know anything, but you could always check with their media contact, he might know something.

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