The sickness that is The Providence Journal

Bobby, Froma, Eddie, and the rest of the gang actually blamed the floods in Rhode Island on public employees. No, they really did.

It is clear that much of the infrastructure relating to flood control is seriously out of date. One problem is that more and more of municipal budgets in recent years have gone to support vast public-employee benefits, especially retirement benefits, so that there is little left to cope with a host of maintenance problems, especially given the public’s dislike of tax hikes.

Here is a real alternative vision from People's World:

Even as public workers labored around the clock to contain the flooding and aid the public, the corporate-minded Journal blamed "vast public-employee benefits, especially retirement benefits" for taking municipal funds from infrastructure repair.

But the Rev. Duane Clinker, minister at Open Table of Christ, a Methodist church in Providence, has a different view. He said as a community organizer in 1973 he saw how the city used a flood plain along one of its rivers as a waste dump, and then turned the land over to a speculator to build a high-rise project. Today, "the high-rise still exists but the flood plain doesn't and so the Valley Street neighborhood floods instead," he said. "Much of the flood plain in Warwick was filled and now the Warwick Mall floods. Developers made money on the destruction of the plains, now they will be compensated by the public for their loss of property."

He added, "All of this is made worse, of course, by decades of planned neglect of Rhode Island bridges and roads in order, in part, to cut taxes for the very wealthy. Now it is considered a 'natural disaster' that bridges buckle or wash away."

The voice of the elite strikes again

Spoken like a true elitist:

Capitalism might be fun to disparage at cocktail parties, in Capitol Hill cloakrooms and in college classrooms, but in hard times most working families can see how crucial it is to have a robust economy producing jobs, mainly from small businesses.

So let me see if I get this straight: Ed Achorn thinks that it is the people who benefit the most from capitalism that hate it and that the people who are hurt the most by it embrace it? Obvisouly, he hasn't spent much time in the break room of a warehouse or the faculty room in a public school. Keep telling youself these myths Eddie, they may helkp you sleep at night.

Working Moms vs. Poor Kids: Cynicism on display

This has to be the most cynical thing I have ever read in the Providence Journal:

Central Falls High School is ground zero in a battle between radical education change focused on the needs of students, and the hard-won labor rights that protect the jobs and working conditions of adults.

See, when they frame the issue as working moms versus poor kids it is the embodiment of what robber baron Jay Gould said:

I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

Forget doing the hard work of addressing poverty; forget taking on the politically difficult task of dealing with racism and immigration. Why touch those third rails? Let’s just play cynical politics and make the people at the bottom fight each other.

Projo proven wrong, yet again

 In a vindication for the community group ACORN, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service has exonerated the organization of any wrong doing after employees were video taped by right-wing activists saying, admittedly, some really stupid things.

The report is also a vindication of our own Senator Sheldon Whitehouse who was one of only 7 US Senators who did not vote to end federal funding for ACORN ( a move, as David pointed out, was ruled unconstitutional.)

The real question for me is: will the editors of the Providence Journal have the courage of character to admit that they were wrong, that they rushed to judgment, and that they were caught up in a frenzy created by the rantings, and for the ratings, of right wing talk media?

In case you don’t remember, this is what Projo Columnist Froma Harrop wrote:

ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — has long served as a walking parody of the poverty pimp popularized by the right.

And here is what far right wing columnist and deputy editorial page director Ed Achorn wrote :

These crusaders want prostitution to be treated as just another business, and consider any opposition to it that is based on moral values to be hopelessly old-fashioned. It’s not a giant leap from there to ACORN employees volunteering advice for gaming the system to run a brothel of underage immigrants. It’s all about “jobs in the community.”

And this is what the full editorial board published:

The stench of fraud surrounding the community activism group ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has become so pungent that the Democrat-controlled Senate — by the resounding margin of 83 to 7 — voted to strip the group of millions of dollars of funds in an appropriations bill.

How embarrassing to them now since, as NPR reports, the CRS says that their rush to judgment was complete baloney:

A couple passages are worth highlighting. I'm going to put some phrases in bold because they contain key information about what CRS actually did. The "you" CRS is addressing is Conyers:

-- You asked for a description of all federal funding received by ACORN over the last five fiscal years and a description of instances where ACORN violated the terms of federal funding. ... A search of reports of federal agency inspectors general did not identify instances in which ACORN violated the terms of federal funding in the last five years.

-- You asked CRS to research improper voter registrations that resulted in people being placed on the voting rolls and attempting to vote improperly at the polls. ... A NEXIS search of the ALL NEWS file did not identify any reported instances of individuals who were improperly registered by ACORN attempting to vote at the polls.

Read the full report http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/CRS-ACORN091222.pdf

If the Projo has a shred of decency they will publish a retraction and a full apology to ACORN and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.  Who’s willing to take odds on THAT happening?

But wait, there’s more!  NPR also reports  the video taping  leading to the furor over ACORN may have been itself an illegal act.  And even better, the video may have included evidence that would have cleared ACRON from the start…but the right wing activists that filmed it have refused to allow the full video to be released!  From NEWSHOUNDS:

One of them, Hannah Giles, has admitted to having an anti-ACORN agenda before she started the project and she has been caught lying on television about the results. Furthermore, exculpatory footage was edited out of the videos. Media Matters has called on Andrew Breitbart, the mentor for young Giles and her video “pimp,” James O’Keefe, to release all the unedited ACORN videos. So far, he has not.

So if you ever needed more reasons to doubt what you read from the Projo editors…here is an early Christmas present.  Let’s hope that Santa brings them something nice to open tonight….like a box of integrity.

Projo versus reality

The broken record on Fountain Street keeps skipping

Indeed, high taxes and the poor economic climate are already driving away well-educated middle-class citizens,

Well, no, they are not. Been shown time and time again.

Yet Rhode Island’s taxes are among the highest in America,

Or not.  Certainly not our income tax, where we rank in the bottom half of the country (26^th….see how you can use words for spin?) or our sales tax (which is 37^th in the country) .

So, like we have said over and over again, it is the property tax that is the problem for people….and why is that? Because of the very same economic principles advocated for by the Projo.

Another Embarrassment for Eddie's Gang

The Projo editorial page is absolutely useless.  It is so devoid of fact that if it were an advertisement people would be able to sue for malpractice.  Take today’s simple example, and we don’t even have to get into the merits of the so-called argument they are making (which is bizarre all on its own).  Read this sentence:

It came as something of a surprise that 57 percent of generally tolerant, left-leaning Swiss voters supported a ban on the construction of new minarets, symbols of Muslim culture.

On what planet are the Swiss left-leaning?  Based on what? That they are European? This is such a hap hazard, reckless use of adjective that more then ever, the Projo editorialists should be embarrassed by their work.

In fact, the right-wing Swiss People Party is the largest party in Swiss Government, and has been the dominate party for years.  And how did this dominant political party run the campaign to ban minarets?  Pure racism:

The main poster, which shows a woman in a burka and a Swiss flag with minarets springing out of it, implies that "the Muslim minority living in Switzerland may represent a terrible danger" the commission said in a statement.

Very tolerant indeed. And how did the leading political party in Switzerland respond to criticism of its propaganda?  Just like American Tea Baggers:

Representatives of the People's Party said the commission is censoring free-speech like Nazis and communists.

Now if I can figure this out between making scrambled eggs for the kids, feeding the dogs, and putting a load of laundry in the washer you would think Eddie’s gang would be able to have an intern do a little research.

They just make stuff up

Wow.   The Projo editors are so scared at being called out for their lack of ethics they even have to make stuff up when they chastise people writing letters to the editor. In today's free online version of the Journal, Michele Gousie of Bristol takes the Journal on for their hap hazard and politically motivated spin on whether State Senator John Tassoni would be an arbitrator.  In response, they let rip with this doozy:

 

Editor's note: We know the difference between the two. The Oct. 21 editorial "Sen. Tassoni's new job?" referred to both labor arbitrators and mediators. While the binding-arbitration legislation has not yet been approved, typically state-approved arbitrators are chosen from among a group of different names than state-approved mediators. As the editorial states, Sen. John Tassoni, a former public-employee union official, has landed on the state's list of qualified mediators. In the U.S. economy, mediators often become arbitrators and the reverse.

 Complete nonsense.  That is not even how arbitrators are chose now.  As I explained on the Projo Exposed blog last week, the process for choosing arbitrators is already statute:

§ 28-9.3-10  Arbitration board – Composition. – (a) Within seven (7) days after arbitration has been requested as provided in § 28-9.3-9, the negotiating or bargaining agent and the school committee shall each select and name one arbitrator and shall immediately notify each other in writing of the name and address of the person so selected. The two (2) arbitrators selected and named shall, within ten (10) days from and after their selection, agree upon and select and name a third arbitrator. If within the ten (10) days the arbitrators are unable to agree upon the selection of a third arbitrator, the third arbitrator shall be selected in accordance with the rules and procedure of the American Arbitration Association.

 

The unnamed Projo editorialist is just making things up.  As I explained in this post, AAA has a very stringent arbitrator process:

A fair question (3.00 / 1)

The arbitration process is coordinated by an neutral private company called The American Arbitration Association.

http://www.adr.org/

here are the qualification to be an arbitrator for AAA

http://www.adr.org/si.asp?id=4223

This is the process for selecting an arbitrator in a typical arbitration.  I am not sure it will be exactly like this in the proposed bill because I haven't seen the bill but it will likely take a form similar to this

The matter is submitted to AAA for arbitration.   AAA sends a list of ten arbitrators, with their CV's, to the parties.  Each side strikes the names that are unacceptable to them, mostly because those people's backgrounds would lend one to think they are biased against their case. Hopefully, there are names left on the list that each side finds acceptable.  If there are, one of those people is assigned the case.  If there are not, another round of names is submitted to the parties.

The key part is that the arbitrator has to be acceptable to both sides.