The Arrogance of Incompetence

This is something that sticks in my craw as the saying goes, and I bet my fellow professional investigators too. As a profession we are constantly belittled by those who think they're above what we do. For example, we are not some hoity-toity "Opposition Research Firm" that does really piss poor work, but gets paid a whole bunch of money. Then, when their candidate is losing to our candidate, they run to the media and say "looook they are paying a sleazy PI to do exactly the same kind of work that we do" (well, let us be honest- the quality of the op-research firm's work pales in comparison to what we pros do" but they do get paid a bunch more for it.

This happened not just when Edward's folks tried that with the national bloggers, but also when I did Ben Ray Lujan's campaign. I unearthed a consent decree with the federal trade commission for price fixing by BRL's opponent, and the high and mighty "we are op-researchers NOT sleazy investigator" spent 20K of BRL's opponents money researching how many times BRL showed up at a volunteer non-profit board that he was gracious enough to donate time to. BRL wiped his opponent off the floor by a double digit margin in no small part do to the great price fixing commercials we ran against his opponent.

I have also been the target of campaign mailers myself- rather than the opponents focusing attacks on the candidate himself- a clear sign that their campaign was in disarray.

Anyway-- I am going to say this for all the professional investigators out there. We are a whole lot better at investigation than you wannabees. Perhaps we don't bill the five figures you folks can because of your political connections. But, it's doubtful that you get panicked calls from campaigns that hired us pros first, unlike the calls I get after they see your work...