It's been brought to my attention that Mr. Slager has made accusations that people on this site have refused to answer his questions, and that he has cited this refusal as evidence that "this side" of the Wareham political spectrum is disingenuous in its pursuit of open and honest dialogue.  Well, as usual, that's just silly.  Mr. Slager has refused to answer just about every question I've ever asked him.  Below are a couple of samples of questions that he hasn't answered, as well as a snippet of a conversation he and I had via AOL Instant Messenger showing some of his thought process (and showing him calling me "full of shit" and "an asshole").  AS ALWAYS, these are direct copy-and-paste from our conversations.  However, please note that much of the surrounding text has been removed for the sake of brevity.  Should Mr. Slager again try to falsely accuse me of "distorting the meaning" of his words, I do have the entire contents of these conversations, and would be happy to share them with everybody.

Some people might wonder why I have posted these pieces of conversations.  I believe it's important to see the truth behind accusations that are made.  That's why I post here, and that's why I spent so long dissecting Mr. Slager's posts before realizing that he doesn't have enough readers to make it worth the continued time.  However, I was able to pull these together in about 10 minutes of searching through my email and Instant Messenger records, and as I've said repeatedly, it's very important to see the truth behind the man slinging these accusations. 

From an email I sent him shortly after the now-infamouse comptuer audit/selectmen meeting broadcast happened, and before I started posting on this site.  Mr. Slager did not respond to this email, and when I followed up with him, he responded saying he wasn't going to answer the questions:

1. You recently stated "In the private sector, no one would have batted an eye over such an audit. Employers have every right to know what their employees are doing on company time".  While it is true that employers have that right, this is most definitely a non-standard approach to performing such an audit.  I have spent my entire career in IT, specifically in information security, and I have significant experience performing these types of audits.  If I were a taxpaying citizen of Wareham, I would be furious at the cost incurred given the overall financial difficulties.  If the employer is searching for evidence of specific misconduct, a "carpet bombing" approach like what appears to have been performed seems improper.  If it's specific to Internet use, such information can be gleaned rather simply by installing monitoring software at central access points, bypassing the need to spend the time copying so many hard drives.  I would be interested to see a cost/benefit analysis of this investigation once information becomes public - do you have plans to write something to show if it was truly worthwhile?
   2. You also state "...the logic question to ask is if nobody has anything to hide, why is there so much panic?" (SIC: I believe you meant to say "the logical question").  This seems to be a bit of a slippery-slope argument - taken to the fullest extent, why do we need the fourth amendment?  If nobody has anything to hide, shouldn't the government be able to examine everything, at any time, for the sake of our protection?  From what I've seen, there is a certain element of crazy-blogger-types who are freaking out and typing ignorant comments in all caps, but there's also a rational subset who is angry at the fact that the selectmen a;ppear to be targeting specific groups of employees, or even individuals, and they are doing so with great cost to the town.  The silence from the selectmen and the TA can be deafening in this case, as it only spins the rumor mill up higher.
   3. In your article when you state that two selectmen are convinced that the broadcasting of the executive session meeting was intentional, are you going to update it to denote WCTV's position that the broadcast was due to human error, and that Mr. Sanguinet apparently knew that "something" was wrong, but assumed that he fixed the problem when he turned off the speakers?
   4. I am most definitely not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that executive sessions can only begin after a public meeting with a noted statement of purpose.  It seems that the executive session in question was held before the selectman's meeting - is that correct?  If so, is this a violation of MA meeting laws?  Also, you indirectly accused (through the "we're not accusing anybody of anything, but...." technique) a WCTV employee of being in league with the bloggers, otherwise how else would they have known to watch?  Will you be reporting anything about the claims that people tuned in to watch the public meeting, but heard the executive session instead?
   5. I'm quite intrigued by the position you have taken regarding reporting of information from the broadcast.  If one of your sources gave you the same information as was included in the broadcast (which I have not heard), would you print it?  It is difficult to understand your position on this after you published some information from the investigation - specifically, the pornography that is alleged to have been found on police computers.  Where do you draw the line between what is, and is not, able to be reported from such an investigation?
   6. You accused the Courier of giving Chief Joyce a "free pass", making it obvious why the Chief would talk to them to "spin" his resignation.  Would you agree that your publication has been predominantly supportive of the current Board of Selectmen?  If so, do you think that affects your access to the Selectmen for quotes, and do you feel that they view your publication to "spin" their initiatives?
   7. When I look to the national media, the comparison I can make to your publication is Fox News (Depending on your political affiliation, you probably either absolutely love, or absolutely hate that comparison).  Fox has historically claimed to be independent, when it has statistically been shown that they are supportive of conservative and/or Republican causes.  However, the argument for their independence can be made with the balance that it brought to the traditionally liberal media spectrum.  Do you feel like your publication is truly "independent", or that it is supportive of one side of the debate, but balances said debate overall?
   8. I have noticed that some of the articles on your website change without notice.   For example, the paragraph "On Wednesday morning, Sauvageau said Town Counsel is drafting a letter to be sent to the Plymouth Country District Attorney's Office as well as one to be sent to Wareham Community Television, requesting a full investigation." appears to have been added to your "Warrehamgate" article after it was written - it originally showed up in a different font than the rest of the article, but has since been changed to be the same font as the rest of the article.  Will you be adding notification when you modify articles to denote any changes that are made?  This seems to be standard practice on other media websites, and I'm surprised you don't have a policy to do the same.
   9. Out of curiosity, do you have plans to update your website to use current technology standards such as RSS feeds to be able to follow the stories more easily?

From an email I sent him after he "jeered" the stats from this site and his analysis was as close to 100% incorrect as one can get.  Mr Slager never replied to the email containing these questions:

Out of curiosity, what were your hits, requests, etc for last month?  Are you going to publish this information?

After he stated that Hammatron5000 "has at least a dozen screen names":

As for your accusations about Hammatron, what are you basing that on?  What are his/her other screen names?  I don't know who he/she is, so if you have evidence behind this claim (IP addresses, his/her other usernames, something like that), I would be interested to know.

When you previously wrote about your website statistics, and Mr. Brady accused you of making them up, you threatened him with legal action because you said the reports were provided by Bondware and he didn't have the information to make such a claim.  Now, you're making claims without information (unless you've seen Bill's logs), or knowledge of basic terms in the world of web applications, and his reports are provided by the same software.  How is this situation different?

You'll notice that I've never backed down from a question from you.  You may disagree with the responses, but I hope you can afford me the same respect that I've afforded you in this regard.

From my email response where he challenged me to print some of his writings on this site:

1.  When you say "We both know you will never print this", do you mean that we both know I won't post it on warehamobserver.com?  I'm not sure where you are challenging me to "print" it.  I can print it here at home, but I'm a bit of a tree-hugger and don't want to waste the paper.
   2. Assuming that you meant to say "post" and not print, I have to ask how this does not fly in the face of your lawyer's advice to not engage in discussion with people on the site.  We definitely don't want you getting in trouble!  You have been engaging in debate with people on that site for weeks, if not months, so I'm just trying to look out for you.
   3. A while back, IHS posted your claimed statistics for one month as: 17,192 VISITORS, 57,805 PAGE HITS, 443,498 STORY HITS.  Do you stand by these numbers?  As I've mentioned, I don't read your paper, so I don't know if this was accurate.  If these numbers aren't accurate, what are the accurate numbers?
   4. Are you ever going to respond to my last email, specifically my offer to take you up on your challenge to join your site if you remove the fees, the challenge for evidence of your claims about Hammatron, and the question about your accusations around Billw's numbers?  Or should I assume that the answers to those questions aren't good for you, so you're going to ignore them?
   5. Would you like to address anything else that you have ignored in the past?  Suggestions include, but aren't limited to the items below (feel free to just answer this as a yes or a no)

    * You providing permalinks to your stories so that they can be referenced
    * You noting when articles are updated, and what those updates are
    * Your ridiculous math about Bill's website numbers
    * The fact that you said the audit was taking so long b/c K&P was going through the results
    * The fact that you blatantly misrepresented the first ammendment to your readers while trying to stir up energy for a boycott of the OVM
    * The fact that you claim "semantics" on wording issues, but consistently word things in a way that supports your agenda (e.g., saying the trustees "played" the stock market instead of "invested in" makes them look like reckless gamblers, or implying in your headline that it was only the Trustees that settled)
    * The fact that your view of a critical article contains 5 sentences critical of the board, 3 supportive, and focuses the rest of the time bashing the opposition, and the math shows that your articles have been overwhelmingly supportive of the board and negative towards their "opponents"? (https://warehamwater.cruelery.com/viewt … 050#p54050)
    * Why you attack the Wareham Recall people for not revealing their names, but have no issues with Cape Verdeans for Free Speech remaining anonymous
    * Any of my original 9 questions from my email several months ago
    * Other topics of your choosing

For the record, his response to that series of questions is below.  Note I have repeatedly asked him to call me, as he knows who I am and my phone number is listed, but he has declined to do so, implying that I would file a harassment claim if he did.  I have promised publicly and privately that I would do no such thing if he contacted me and/or published my name, but he has declined to do so.

Ahhhh, as expected you didn't address a single thing in my note to you. All you can do is try to change the subject. That's the lack of courage I expected from you. Debating you isn't even fun. It's no challenge at all. Time to crawl back under your rock.

   P.S. I know who you are.

   Cheers.

Now, some snippets from a conversation we had over AOL Instant Messenger.  Note that I have replaced his actual screen name with "Slager" in the content below.  Also note that he thrice avoided my request for him to show me an email conversation we had that I posted to edit the content before we had this convo:

(2:17:50 PM) Slager: Ahh, here is the big question: What makes you think I am obligated to answer any of your questions? You won't even tell me who you are. And what possible questions would I ask you in return?
...
(2:18:06 PM) casualobserverma: You're not obligated to answer them - that's the thing
(2:18:07 PM) casualobserverma: BUT
(2:18:33 PM) casualobserverma: to say that I'm editing the meaning of what you're saying based on the fact that you won't answer any of the questions is disingenuous
(2:19:01 PM) casualobserverma: I have answered all of your questions, except for my identity which you claim to know anyways, even though you won't tell me in public or in private who i am

Finally, since he has accused people of ad hominem attacks, and made a bunch of claims that he hasn't done anything 'hateful' on the courier blog.  First, he calls me 'full of shit' and makes a sarcastic comment about my family:

(2:03:28 PM) Slager: My god it''s funny watching you throw a tantrum just because I proved just how full of shit you are. In your response to my response, you say we had 2,592 visits. No, that is 2,592 unique site visits. The number of visits were 18,804. Are you having trouble keeping your lies straight? But I do have a question, why are so so absolutely obsessed with the number of people who visit our site? It's scary the lengths you are going to. Is it ego, boredom, mental illness? I would really like to know.
(2:04:15 PM) casualobserverma: exact quote from my response: "While there were 2,952 total visitors to his site in the month"
(2:04:22 PM) casualobserverma: so you even lie in IMs
(2:04:46 PM) Slager: Oh, I was out with my family. I just got back. Take a chill pill, buddy. Your blood pressure must be through the roof right now.

Then we had some back and forth where he repeatedly accused me of being 'obsessed' with him and his site, and then claimed that I said he was 'jealous' of me....which led to him calling me an 'asshole', as follows:

(2:19:37 PM) Slager: You actually accused me of being jealous of you. I burst out laughing. Somebody who won't reveal their name is claiming I'm jealous of them. If, as you claim, I don't know who you are, who exactly would I be jealous of? An anonymous screen persona?
(2:19:49 PM) casualobserverma: when did i claim you were jealous of me?
(2:20:02 PM) casualobserverma: Please send me the source of that comment, because I don't remember saying it
(2:20:20 PM) Slager: I recall reading that on one of your posts. To be honest, I don't remember which one.
(2:20:32 PM) casualobserverma: ok, so this is another accusation with no supporting evidence
(2:20:35 PM) casualobserverma: got it
(2:21:00 PM) casualobserverma: (for the record, you still haven't given me an example of something i've edited to distort the meaning of what you wrote)
(2:22:15 PM) Slager: There have been quite a few. But let's get back to a question you are dodging. Why do you care about our web stats? The number of unique visitors and site visits have grown. So how am I lying when I say the site is growing?
(2:22:32 PM) casualobserverma: "there have been quite a few". All I'm asking is that you name one
(2:22:40 PM) casualobserverma: not even "quite a few" or "numerous examples"
(2:22:44 PM) casualobserverma: all i want is one
(2:22:48 PM) casualobserverma: and you can't do it
(2:22:54 PM) casualobserverma: yet you hide behind the claim
(2:24:10 PM) Slager: For the record, you still haven't given me your name. When I wrote "quite a few" I meant you have made quite a few posts overall, which is why I can't recall which one I remebered the "jealous" comment coming from.
(2:24:29 PM) casualobserverma: so i claimed you were jealous of me "quite a few" times?
(2:25:01 PM) Slager: Please slow down. You are again jumping to conclusions. Let me finish my response before you ask a new question.
(2:25:07 PM) casualobserverma: ok
(2:25:10 PM) casualobserverma: let me know when it's my turn
(2:25:52 PM) Slager: I am attempting to engage you, which is what you have sought for some time. If you would stop being an asshole maybe we can get somewhere.

Note that he did eventually apologize for making this particular false claim, though not after he accused me of "attacking" him by asking for the evidence (which, again, does not exist because it never happened).  We did eventually have a decent conversation afterwards, but as I mentioned - given that he continues to post about others dodging questions and being hateful, I felt it was important to show the other side of the coin.

Auto-edited on 2020-08-11 to update URLs

LETS SEE ACCTOUNTANT FIRED FOR 35K LOSS OF MONEY, FOR  A 2MIILION MISTAKE WHAT IS THE PUNISMENT,, THEN THERE IS THE 2MILLION LOSS OF MONEY IN SWIFTS BEACH , WHO IS RESPOSIBLE? A 4MILLION LOSS OR A 35 K LOSS WHICH IS MORE   IMPORTANT, I SAY WE CANT AFFORD THESE SELECTMAN IDIOTS AND SLAGER THE RAGER ANY MORE.

Larry, you should see the ridiculous email he sent me earlier.  I'm not going to post it, but he's so far off his rocker that I've decided to auto-delete anything he sends me from this point forward.  It's just not worth the time to delete it by hand.

ham thats great.. just proves that slager has no understanding of the english language..

kitty liners=the wareham observer..

dick isnt that a good use of a metaphor??? hahahaha