DC Smart Growth has hired MAGA political operatives to steer it. Is it any surprise that GGW tries to conceal conflicts of interest and dirty money sources of funding? |
When the group in question is issuing endorsements, you need to disclose this. Why are they trying to bury this fact? |
No international wars. Closed borders. Reduced crime. Low interest rates. What’s wrong with MAGA? |
Agree it should have been disclosed as part of the endorsement. But it is absolutely absurd to think it should be permanently in a bio. |
What is the “animating purpose” of the Piedmont Environmental Council? You seem to lack reading comprehension because that is clearly what the PPP was referring to. This seems like a very common GGW-type of response to things, which is why I dislike the organization, the people who work there and I find their policy positions suspect. They misrepresent the views of those that disagree with them to the extent that it is an intentional propaganda tactic to lie. It was a “guy with a blog”, but that blog was being run under the auspices of CSG/PEC. Even worse than this, the “guy with a blog” was never upfront about the financials of his “blog”, including donors and when people would raise these issues in the comments of his blog, he would delete the comments and ban those users. The issue came to a head where GGWs political lobbying activity was looking extremely unethetical and also compromising CSG/PEC and as a result, they had to finally legally separate. To the current GGW leaderships credit, they have been a lot more transparent about this than the “guy with the blog” ever was. Here are some of the things that GGW has done in the past that have been obviously dubious: - Receive money from developers and advocate for those developers projects without disclosure of the financial relationship or disclose the political lobbying - Receive money from WMATA and advocate for public policy on behalf of more WMATA without disclosure of the financial relationship or the political lobbying - Receive money from docked and undocked bike sharing companies and advocate on behalf of docked and undocked bike sharing without disclosure of the financial relationship or the political lobbying |
Do you have anything at all to show that the blog was being run "under the auspices of CSG/PEC"? In fact, can you draw any link between GGWASH and PEC? This is what the poster originally said: They have a long history of intentionally obfuscating their donors going back to their original founding, when they were basically a dba under the Piedmont Environment Center - which is an organization run by the DuPont’s and other gilded age families that own estates in the Piedmont region. Their entire animating purpose was NIMBYism to prevent development near their estates. That is false. |
You guys have a serious problem with truth, which is why no one trusts you. It’s all lies, dissembling and propaganda. Why don’t you go and ask GGW for their financial statements prior to 2015? |
I'm really not sure how this discussion progresses when I am asking for information and you are calling names. Here are some sources about the origin and funding of GGWASH. Do you have anything that disputes them or adds another color? Again, anything at all linking them to PEC? https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/03/08/greater-greater-washington-lost-a-big-chunk-of-its-funding-now-what/ https://ggwash.org/view/87759/a-look-at-ggwashs-2023-budget-forecast-and-how-you-can-help https://ggwash.org/view/70367/state-of-ggwash-a-lot-has-been-changing-sustainable-future |
Please post a 990 or financial statement from before 2015. I will wait. |
Do not have access to one. But I am also not the one making the assertion. I was intrigued by the assertion that GGWASH was started as an arm of a NIMBY group and spent a lot of time online looking for any evidence. I found none. What I did find was a fairly comprehensive explanation of how GGWASH was started and its original funding. Nothing corroborates your claim. |
Per the article linked above, to the extent it had funding, it was self-funded by the founder until 2014 when it first started soliciting donations from readers. It became an official nonprofit in 2015, so there would be no financial statements prior to then. |
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Nadeau’s husband is a healthcare executive.
Definite conflict of interest given his wife is a council member. |
Can you explain? |
Yes, it's a bad sad to see their decline. I think the decline of blogs generally hurt them. Even disagreeing, I enjoyed the well-written articles and the old comment section. Good history lessons for those new to DC. I disagree slightly in the exact issue: I think young urbanists (which I'm not) are interested in both YIMBY and progressive political views outside rent control and the such. GGWash tried generally (and failed many times) to restrict itself to housing issues. The demand just isn't there. |
They have funding issues because Alpert turned off the money spigot when he left, and they can't count on the same 40 supporter lemmings to float them forever. They stopped accepting money directly from developers after (rightly) realizing it was a horrible look, though they're still clearly astroturfing for developers because their board is full of them. It's all a grift. |