Well, after those two statements, and in the very same paragraph, Jim Charles Dougherty wrote about "the objection." Now, I read this to mean MY objection, since the whole paragraph, so far, was about me. If Jim Charles Dougherty was changing the subject of his accusations, he should have done more than shifted a pronoun that was, even if that was what he was doing, vague at best. Either way, whether he was writing about me, or about the opposition in general, I am part of his target, when he writes about "the objection" to Woodstock Commons. He writes that "The persistence in the objection to the RUPCO development appears to be stemmed in bigotry, either economic or racial." So, either way, he's writing about me.
In this week's letter, Dougherty denies calling me/us a bigot. I wonder how that works... Is the fact that he uses the modifier "appears to be stemmed in" with "bigotry" the technical excuse for not actually labeling me/us a bigot? He only perceives me/us to be a bigot? Is that better than labeling me a bigot? I don't think so. I think it is all the same thing, and Dougherty is caught. He called me a bigot with fancy words. Or, he called a group, of which I am a part, bigoted.
(he's wrong.)
Dougherty also accused me of writing my letter when I did in response to his letter of the prior week. This is also untrue. I wanted to write a letter of endorsement for Joe Nicholson, and Joe and I are similar in our roles in town as dissenters, but not as negative people. I chose to defend myself and to promote Joe at the same time, in the same theme. I had never defended myself against Dougherty's bigot accusation, and finally I chose to.
Dougherty accused me of writing a false statement about him. Let's see. Here is what I wrote:
Jim Ethics Board Dougherty, in his professional life, identifies “non-performing” mortgages, meaning people whose properties are headed for foreclosure, and tips off banks and other potential “investors” to these “opportunities.” Pass the barf bag. Just because my position on RUPCO is a dissenting one does not mean that I prey on the poor and help the wealthy. That person is Jim Charles Dougherty.
Dougherty has a company called Lender Asset Solutions. From the top of the first page:
"
Our ever growing contact database includes over 3,500 real estate professionals including many investors who are available to purchase residential or commercial non-performing loans or lender owned properties"
What this says to me is that Dougherty sends out, to people who want to buy up non-performing mortgages, lists of properties that are in foreclosure or on the way there. There are many stages of foreclosure, and it is part of his service to pick up on them at certain points in the process and list them. That is what I meant by identifying and tipping off.
Dougherty argued this week that banks do not need to be tipped off to their loans, but I did not mean the banks that gave the mortgages. I meant other banks. I thought that was obvious. I guess I had to spell it out.
I wrote that he preys on the poor and helps the wealthy. Is that a false statement? I don't think so. I think he has a business that helps banks and investors, and does nothing to help the people who are in trouble and cannot pay their mortgages. If he does help them some other way, yipee, give him a public service award. But according to his website, he works for banks and investors. He helps money turn itself into more money. There is nothing criminal about that. I just think it is not very honorable. That's my opinion.
Dougherty can say that my comments were false, but they were either true, or a matter of my opinion against his. Perhaps he is a trickle down guy. He did however just accuse me of defamation. That requires proof that what I wrote last week harmed him in some demonstrable way. How did I harm him? Can he show me? I think Jim Dougherty is still sore about being caught at lying about his identity when he signed his accusatory letter "Jim Charles."
Dougherty admits that "perhaps" his using a pseudonym to call me a bigot was in poor judgment. Perhaps???? Wow... He is still trying to explain how he was trying to dissociate his personal comments from reflecting on the Ethics Board, of which he used to be the chair. Well guess what. The Ethics Board is made up of people. If you sit on the Ethics Board, you don't get a fake ID for after hours so that you can behave in a way that is below the standard of the service you take an oath to render. Lying about your identity is the most basic lie there is. I think that is what hurt Jim Dougherty: lying about his identity so that he could call me (or my neighbors and me) bigot(s) and not answer for it. If Dougherty thought that making his accusation was ethical, why hide it? If he thought that members of the Ethics Board should refrain from voicing opinions about political matters, then he should have not written it at all.
Jim, listen. Every person only gets to be one person. Not two. Not five. Just one. Decide who you are and don't try to negotiate the inner conflict you feel and blame others and threaten to sue the newspaper or the TV host when they declare that your interpretation of ethics is not only NOT a model for the town, but way WAY inferior than average.
I never accused Dougherty of anything criminal. What does it mean to "tip off" somebody? I like horse racing. People at the track sell tip sheets. The tips are opinions. Opinions can be about which horse is going to run fastest, or which investment will be richest. The fact that Dougherty sees something illegal in my description of him tipping off potential investors only shows that he is maybe a bit, or a lot, paranoid. Too bad for him.
As for violating the rules of the Woodstock Times, give me a break. I never wrote anything about this Dougherty guy that I knew was untrue, in fact what I wrote about him I got from his website, and then wrote my opinion about it. That's all. I also did not write for malicious purposes. It was Jim Dougherty who labeled me a self-appointed expert, my opinions stemmed in bigotry, and my purpose to scare the town into rejecting the housing of poor people. I was defending myself, and I have the right to do that. I also have the right to compare my own performance in local activities and overall as a contributor to society through my job, to demonstrate my social values. I did that. The response I wrote came four months later. Is there a statute of limitations on self-defense? At first I spoke about this to the Town Board, and one board member heckled me. Another board member announced that a young person in the audience should not grow up like me. It took me a while to rally and decide how to respond to the person who made the accusations about me in the first place.
I responded reasonably, when I could, when I decided what to say. There was nothing Ad Hominem about my statements and my statements were not attacks, they were self-defense. When somebody as loathsome as Jim Dougherty, a lying, opportunistic faker, is brought down the way he was brought down, shamefully, hard, and publicly, he's going to be mad. Of course he's mad. He had to step down from the Ethics Board because he called me names and took no responsibility for it. It was he who made Ad Hominem attacks against me, and false accusations, and did not even stand behind them with his own name.
Jim Dougherty ought to be ashamed of what he did, and what he wrote, but he's not. That in itself is the biggest tip of all that he's not right in the head.
