State Rep Candidate Dennis Malak’s Lies, Bankruptcy, Victoria’s Secret, Campaigning At Work (EIU) –

CHARLESTON, IL. (ECWd) –

In a post on Dennis Malak’s official campaign facebook page, he took to telling lies…about us…which is why this article was written.

For the record, the Edgar County Watchdogs had never written any articles in reference to Malak, and never intended to write any. Until Malak started making wild, unsubstantiated claims that the “Edgar County Watchdogs and Tea Party Bloggers taking mean, personal hits” – trying to gain sympathy from his followers.

After a google search, there were recently a couple of articles written about Malak:

• From BLNNEWS.com – a site run by Diane Benjamin, who has been writing about local public bodies for several years and has a very good track record of reporting the truth, no matter what it may be.
• From DisclosureNewsOnline – a monthly news magazine who reports on all kinds of issues, including election issues, and has been in operation for more than 14 years, and covers most of Southern Illinois, including most of the 110th District.

Neither of those publication are affiliated in any way with ECWd, and most importantly, they have the same access to all of our information that any other news publication has as evidenced on our “about us” page (here). We share all kinds of public records that we may never write about but may be of interest to others who do write.

Both BLN and Disclosure wrote articles talking about Dennis Malak’s claims that his opponent cannot be an independent voice by taking money from the Republican Party, while failing to mention his taking of money from out-of-district unions – somehow thinking that will not impact his own ability to be an independent voice – and his untruthful statements as to his reason for filing bankruptcy (here) and (here).

For his bankruptcy, which he claimed on his own campaign website was due largely in part because of his “drowning in medical bills” turned out to be inaccurate. Looking at his bankruptcy filings, only about $3,500 of the massive debts were from medical bills, while the remainder were from car payments, tons of student loan debts, house payments, and large amounts of credit cards with debt attached to them, including Ameren, Capitol One, Citibank/Sears, Discover, GE/JC Penny, John Deere Credit, Kohl’s/Capitol One, TD Bank/Target, U of I Credit Union, and a Victoria’s Secret credit card and Toy’s-R-Us credit.

It appears to me there was a lot of shopping going on with the Sears, JC Penny, Kohl’s, target, John Deere, Toy’s-R-Us, and Victoria’s Secret charge accounts. His bankruptcy filing lacked any evidence of “drowning in medical bills” due to his wife’s illness that he posted on his website, and allegedly talked about in a radio interview.

Nothing like throwing your wife “under the bus”…with the medical bills claims. If it appeared to be a true statement, it would be different. His own court filing only listed $100 per month in medical and dental expenses (page 39, item 11).

The worst part of all of the wild claims on his bankruptcy was that he blamed “the system” for his bad financial decisions, as if “the system” owed him. He actually stated that “the system failed us” and claimed he only did what he was supposed to do in life..you know…purchase everything on credit and then whine when you can’t pay it back, and blame “the system” instead of yourself.

I did make comments on the “independent voice” claims, in my individual capacity, and none of the comments would be considered “personal hits” unless talking about his own campaign donations are personal hits. I just commented that he cannot claim to be an independent voice when 96% of his campaign donations came from mostly out of district unions – just like he was attempting to make that same claim against his opponent.

We never wrote about his allegedly campaigning while on the clock at his state job at Eastern Illinois University – I personally talked to him on the phone this past summer about his campaign – while he was at work at EIU. We never wrote about all the Facebook posts that were posted during what we believe was his working hours at EIU (see his timesheet here).

We never wrote about his stance on the second amendment, even though it was quite clear with this Facebook comments where he stands – and it doesn’t seem like he stands with the vast majority of voters in the 110th on that issue, with is statements of “excessive weapons, lock boxes, gun registration fees, new taxes, etc”…. No, we didn’t write about that either.

We do wish he would explain how the ECWd took mean, personal hits about him, or even post a link to those so we can figure out what he is talking about. Until then, we will say he lied to the potential voters of the 110th.