Bogeyman politics sows fear into us all

Wyoming newspaper reporter catches competitor using AI to make up quotes

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Joe Biden has always been a vanilla milkshake.

He is Clark Kent without any super powers.

He is the character actor in film you can never remember.

He is the football coach who never passes, three yards and a cloud of dust.

The fact that he became president of the United States is one of the most remarkable political accomplishments in this century and a testament to failings of his opponent.

Biden's politics have always been middle of the road, never going too far out on a limb, but plugging away and getting things done for the long haul. His experience in the U.S. Senate allowed him to get things done on infrastructure and climate change that will benefit the country for generations. Billionaires got a tax cut under the previous administration.

He is probably the most conservative liberal Republicans have ever seen.

There is a case to be made that the only reason Biden won the presidency in 2020 was because after four years of Trump, the country was looking for a yawn and a good night's sleep.

Yet, for the past five years Republicans portrayed Joe Biden as the bogeyman who would lead our country to ruin.

Yet, we are still standing.

We are still free.

Everyone still has their guns.

The stock market is at near record highs.

And while we still have many problems, we have a few less than we did before he took office.

But of course, Joe Biden got four years older - imagine what a young Joe Biden could have done? - and there is nothing worse than a senile bogeyman. So Biden did something unimaginable by his opponents - he yielding power for the good of the country.

His opponent summoned a mob to the U.S. Capitol.

But this is not intended as a Biden love letter, but a concern that bogeyman politics has become the norm in our country.

Instead of attacking their positions on the issues, candidates are demonized as the devil incarnate.

Remember how Barack Obama was going to take away everyone's guns. My cousin's husband was so sure, he started purchasing $100 worth of ammo every month so he would be ready for the revolution. After eight years in office, everyone still had their guns, and many health insurance to boot. And my cousin's husband has boxes of unused ammunition.

Hillary Clinton's misdeeds including storing her emails improperly, not preventing a terrorist attack in Benghazi and becoming the first woman to be nominated for president. For that, thousands demanded Donald Trump to "Lock her up!"

Yet, she was never indicted, sued for sexual assault or convicted of running a business illegally.

The guy who won was indictred, held liable for sexual assault and convicted of falsifying business record to cover up an affair.

When Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election she conceded.

When Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he summoned a mob to the U.S. Capitol to stop the electoral count.

On January 6, a mob rampaged through the U.S. Capitol searching for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Perhaps, no woman in American politics has been more reviled than this San Francisco congresswoman.

She became the ultimate bogeyman of the Republican Party.

Moira Donegan explained why in The Guardian:

"To Republicans, Pelosi has long taken on a kind of mythic malice. To the Fox-watching white male, Pelosi symbolizes liberal elitism, a vague but totalizing specter of corruption, and that particular kind of liberal decadence that can be evoked by the name of the city that makes up nearly all of her longtime congressional district: San Francisco. She’s a woman in power, and she’s long been supportive of gay rights, and she opposed the Iraq war. She’s been a reliable opponent of conservatives’ favorite culture war crusades: she supports gun control and opposes Confederate statues. In an association facilitated by misogyny, her very face is a shorthand for liberal extremism, a visual code that denotes secularism, taxation and frightening new pronouns."

She was guilty of fighting for AIDs research, opposing a war where there was no threat to our national security and fighting for the rights a predominant group of her constituents - gays. She also opposed Democrats attempts to impeach President George W. Bush. You don't hear about that.

Ultimately, the Republicans spent more than $65 million on anti-Pelosi advertisements as the face of the opposition.

The mob did not find Pelosi on January 6, but in the fall of 2022, a man broke into her home and found her husband. He beat him with a hammer.

That's the power of bogeyman politics.

Yet Pelosi has never been indicted, accused of sexual assault or falsifying business records.

As we head into to the 2024 presidential election, the Republicans are running out of bogeymen. Biden, Clinton and Pelosi are all mostly on the sidelines now.

As we saw with Rep. Elise Stefanik this week, it's just a matter of passing the torch to a new monster.

Bidenomics has become Kamalanomics and Harris-Walz are now the "most dangerous and radically far left ticket in American history," replacing the Biden-Harris ticket of a few weeks earlier.

When Elise Stefanik tweets, lock your door and look under your bed for a monster.

Remember, the bogeyman we were so frightened of as children was a figment of our imaginations.

Republicans will argue that Donald Trump is attacked in exactly the same way.

There is one difference,

He has been indicted, held liable for sexual assault, convicted of illegal business dealings and announced he will misuse the Justice Department and FBI to settle all scores.

Maybe there is a bogeyman after all.

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Raising sales tax

Every decade or so, some enterprising county official suggests raising the local sales tax as a way to increase revenue.

At 7 percent, Warren, Washington and Saratoga counties have the lowest local sales tax in the state. Local businesses argue this brings more tourists to the region who then shop at the outlets and other area stories because of the lower sales tax.

Others argue that most consumers don't think about the sales tax at all when visiting another region.

As background, New York State's state-wide sales tax is 4 percent. Each county then sets its own sales tax on top of the state's. Most set rate of 4 percent for a total of 8 percent. Most of New York City has a sales tax of 4.875.

Warren, Washington and Saratoga counties have a 3 percent rate.

The Warren County Board of Supervisors will hold a workshop meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 14 to discuss the pros and cons of increasing the sales tax. This is just a workshop meeting, so no vote will be held on Wednesday. Other public meetings will be held in the future as well.

Below is a press release regarding the rationale for increasing the sales tax 1 percent. If Warren County goes forward, the state Legislature also has to approve it. The earliest it could be increased is 2026.

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Journalism police

Perhaps the Supreme Court could learn something about ethics from a reporter at a small newspaper in Wyoming.

CJ Baker, a staff writer for the Powell Tribune in Wyoming thought some quotes he was reading in another publications sounded odd. The quotes were not sensational or controversial, and probably might have been said if the subject was asked.

Baker made a few phone calls and found seven different people who were quoted in the Cody Enterprise newspaper who were never interviewed. Baker met with the reporter and his editor to find out what was up.

It turned out the reporter had been using AI to make up quotes from a liquor store owner, a game warden, an astronomer and a deputy district attorney.

It's never comfortable to confront someone, but it's especially uncomfortable when it involves colleagues (and competitors) in the media world,” Baker told the Poynter Institute this week. “What helped is that the editor at the Cody Enterprise, Chris Bacon, was gracious and receptive.”

The reporter later resigned.

It is that standard of ethics that makes reporters and editors stand out from other professions.

In this case, one reporter was holding another reporter accountable because he knew what was being done was wrong.

When people accuse those in the media of bias, or lying it rankles me. The vast majority of journalists are just trying to get it right.

One reporter made a huge ethical mistake and was caught by another reporter, who called him out. That did not surprise me in the least.

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Southeast vulnerabilities

For those of you hoping to trade in your North Country winter for a milder climate in the Southeast, there were words of warning in a New York Times article Friday.

David Gelles, a reporter at the Times, wrote that while every part of the country is being affected by climate change in different ways - we are seeing more humidity and sea level rise in coastal areas in the Northeast - the Southeast is experienced a little bit of all of them. It makes that region unique.

"When you look at, like, the variety of different stressors that climate change brings, the Southeast experiences each and every one of them,” Jeremy Hoffman, the director of climate justice at Groundwork USA, told Gelles. “And most of the time, it’s the most intense version of the expected change.”

Some predictions say that the Southeast will experience average temperatures of 95 degrees or higher on an additional 20 to 50 days in the future.

And while hurricanes get most of the attention, the Southeast is increasingly being affected by weather fronts that unleash torrential rains. A 2019 Columbia University study found that the Southeast experience a 40 percent increase in precipitation during the fall season over the past 124 years.

The winters are nicer in the Southeast. And more dangerous.

Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.