Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Speaking of false claims made to discredit (per yesterday’s LINK about the fibs IRV opponents tell), check this out from the Washington Times, which is like Fox News in print, using a mainstream format to package its propaganda. The newspaper is so opposed to Election Day registration and similar measures that it grabbed a tidbit from a Ohio news story about dead people voting and ran an stinging editorial against voting rights advocates: “The Obama administration and liberal bureaucrats are working to help everybody vote, whether or not they are eligible (or even alive),” it asserts.  But the Washington Times deliberately misquoted the Ohio news story which explained that officials found that the votes cast by “dead people” were actually due to clerical or other errors. Chris Fitzsimon of NC Policy Watch gives another example by exposing the deceitful manipulations behind a Civitas Institute/John Locke Fnd report that claims NC General Assembly members are making an excessive “average pay” compared to private-sector workers. For starters, Fitzsimon points out that legislators must use this “pay” for out-of-town travel and lodging for dozens of days a year, whereas regular employees are reimbursed for such expenses on top of their basic salary, so the comparison is fundamentally flawed. Telling the truth is apparently not a core value for these “conservative” outfits.