ProgressNow’s odd email obsession

The far-left group “ProgressNow” seems to think they have some kind of “smoking gun” in that the Rio Grande Foundation and/or proponents of a “right to work” law in New Mexico are doing something unsavory. They continue to use stolen emails from a man who remains in prison for his crimes in an attempt to make the Rio Grande Foundation look bad (even ProgressNow can’t come up with anything illegal or unethical done by RGF). In other words, advocates of making New Mexico more economically-competitive through a “right to work” law are winning on the merits (witness bi-partisan support in the first Committee) so they are getting desperate.

The “case” such as it is can be summarized in one of the emails (stolen from a third party) below in which I ask Mickey Barnett, a prominent attorney and conservative political activist familiar with “right to work” in New Mexico for advice on whether or not to have a study done on the issue. The study was to be based on methodology used in a similar report from a free market think tank in Minnesota:

Barnett’s response which includes cc’s to several other conservatives argues for funding and for using the “right to work” issue in future political campaigns (Right to Work is supported by 65% of Democrats nationwide).

RGF didn’t find any one person or organization to fund the study, so we used funds from our 2012 operating budget. Barnett’s email didn’t generate so much as a response from any other party on the email indicating that there was no outpouring of money from conservative political insiders to fund the project.

Lastly, it is pretty rich indeed for an organization funded in part by George Soros and relying entirely on stolen emails for evidence, to have their panties in a bunch over some offhand remarks by someone who has no formal role with Rio Grande Foundation.