When we last left Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Ron Johnson, his campaign was trying to put out the fire from yet another revelation that his vocal "anti-big government" teabaggerism ran contrary to his "hand out to the big government" business record.
How does a good teabagger try to reconcile such an uncomfortable part of his history? Easy...by rewriting his own history, of course:
It's one thing to flip-flop on the issues.
But who's ever heard of a candidate rewriting his own company history?
That's exactly what U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson did last week.
For nearly nine years, his plastics company has carried this online description of its beginning:
"Founded in 1977, Pacur occupies a facility constructed specifically for sheet extrusion, which provides polyester and polypropylene sheet and rollstock to converters, distributors, and end users," said the website for the Oshkosh-based factory.
But that changed on Wednesday.
Johnson's firm tinkered with its website to move up Pacur's first day of operation by a couple of years.
"Founded in 1979*, Pacur occupies a facility constructed specifically for sheet extrusion, which provides polyester and polypropylene sheet and rollstock to converters, distributors, and end users," the site says now.
Why the shift? Because the government-financed rail line that was the crux of last week's story was approved in the Spring of 1979. At the time, Pacur was known as Wisconsin Industrial Shipping Supplies. It changed its name in 1979, but the existence of the company (and the involvement of Johnson's brother-in-law, Pat Curler) predated the name change.
Johnson is clearly trying to make the case that WISS and Pacur are two totally separate entities, which would put his involvement in the company AFTER the rail line was built.
Of course, that still doesn't explain his firm's acceptance of $4 million in government-backed cash during the 1980s for expansion of his company. It is estimated that getting the cash from local government development bonds saved Pacur over a million dollars in financing costs.
It is those bonds, incidentally, which now have the Wisconsin Democratic Party now calling for Johnson to release his corporate tax returns.
With that in mind, expect this update to the Pacur site: "Pacur was founded in 1979, but Ron Johnson really, honestly, had nothing to do with it until...until...hey, when was the last time we had our hand out to the government?"
