By day Michael Stickles works as an engineer for a Denver-based software
company, but at night he becomes a Internet political fighter on behalf
of Western Journalism Center, WorldNetDaily.com’s parent company, in its
David and Goliath battle with the Clinton administration and the
Internal Revenue Service.
Acting on his own initiative, Stickles, 36, has set up a support
website, with
links to articles about the ongoing confrontation between the IRS and
Western Journalism Center, and, at the same time, provides web activists
with a means to voice their concerns to Congress and to make donations
to the center and to Judicial Watch,
the Washington-based legal watchdog.
Except for a couple of e-mails to the Letters to the Editor, Stickles
said he had had no prior contact with Joseph Farah, editor and publisher
of WorldNetDaily.
“I’m just trying to make a difference,” Stickles told WorldNetDaily.
Stickles said he was inspired in part by the success of the e-mail
campaign to repeal the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Know Your Customer regulations, first exposed by WorldNetDaily and buried politically in an avalanche of Internet activism.
“I saw how the Internet was used to stop that program,” Stickles
recalled. “There was this flood of e-mails and faxes that went into
Congress and that program was pushed back, at least for a while.
Watching something like that, it seemed to me that if you get enough
people together you can make a difference.”
Political activism of any kind is a new experience for Stickles, who
became aware of the problems Western Journalism Center was facing
through reading WorldNetDaily.
“I’ve basically given up on the mainstream media,” said Stickles, who
says he relies for news on WorldNetDaily. That’s how he learned of the plight of Farah and the center.
“That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Stickles. “I’ve
gotten tired of reading of one abuse of power after another and writing
my congressman. I could make phone calls and send e-mails, but there
didn’t seem a whole lot more I could do.”
When WorldNetDaily broke the story a week ago of the “smoking gun”
letter,
which prompted the White House to sic the IRS on the center, Stickles
was galvanized into action.
“I had been thinking for some time about what I could do,” he said, “I
can’t make big donations and I don’t have a lot of time for serious
activism, but I can put together websites. I figured I could at least do
that. Something positive. Something constructive.”
As an integral part of his site, Stickles has developed a red, white and
blue ribbon campaign, an idea he attributes to writer Justin Raimondo.
“That little suggestion of Raimondo’s that he wrote about in his column
at antiwar.com kind of hit me, about the
red, white and blue ribbon campaign,” said Stickles.
“The way I’ve seen it working online, people indicate support of some
group or issue with a little graphic linking to either the homepage of
the organization they’re supporting or some kind of page for the host of
the support campaign,” Stickles explained. “A couple of sites did that
to show support for Free Republic when
they were having trouble. A free speech-blue ribbon campaign was
launched in support. Blue ribbons were posted on sites and these linked
to the support page.”
In Stickles’ view, “There’s nothing worse than a ribbon campaign that
raises people’s awareness, then after they’re aware they don’t know what
to do.”
To counter this problem, Stickles has a “What You Can Do” page, inspired
in part by an editorial by Farah in which he urged readers to
call Rep. Bill Archer, R-Texas, the head of the Joint Committee on
Taxation, which at one time was looking into the alleged policy of the
IRS singling out enemies of the Clinton administration.
“I’ve built on Mr. Farah’s idea,” said Stickles. “But instead of calling
only Rep. Archer, I suggest people contact their own senators and
representatives as well, and I’ve linked the directory pages on the
House and Senate websites and crosslinked the donation pages of
WorldNetDaily and Judicial Watch.”
Stickles sent an e-mail to about 20 groups with websites,
asking them to link with his support site — and to use the ribbon
graphic.
“I haven’t heard back from any of them yet, but I don’t really expect
any immediate response,” he said. “My hope is to get enough people
together to make donations and call congressmen and really get some
action — like there was to get rid of the Know Your Customer
regulations.”
Stickles links his new website to another website of his Great Books
and Classic Works of Western Civilization.
The Western Journalism Center was audited by the IRS in 1996. Farah felt he had reason to believe the audit had been politically motivated, after being informed that Thomas Cederquist, the Sacramento
agent in charge of the audit, told the Center’s accountant, “Look, this is a political case and the decision is going to be made at the national level.”
Apparently this was because of the active role the center had taken in conducting an investigation into the death of White House counsel Vincent Foster in 1993 and exposing other Clinton administration scandals.
Former IRS Commissioner Margaret Milner Richardson, a close friend of
Bill and Hillary Clinton, resigned soon after the statement by
Cederquist was publicized in the Wall Street Journal. Archer began a probe into the matter of
targeting groups, shortly before Richardson’s resignation, but the probe as well as the reasons for it were all soon forgotten.
Documents recently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act
provide strong evidence the audit was politically motivated as
Farah has insisted all along. A resident of Beverly Hills, having seen
an ad in the Los Angeles Times requesting donations for the center and
its investigative work into Foster’s death, faxed the ad to the White
House and suggested the IRS check out Western Journalism Center. The
White House and the IRS agreed and the audit was subsequently launched.
WorldNetDaily was exonerated and cleared of any wrongdoing.
The center is suing the IRS for $10 million for political harassment.
Regarding the ribbon campaign and his website, Stickles said, “My hope
right now is to get enough people together to make donations and call
congressmen. Maybe that can make a difference. I’d rather do something
constructive than sit around mumbling and muttering and doing nothing.”
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