Politics is all about the lying
Newspapers face rising costs; Baseball seeing fewer fans
The Front Page
Morning Update
Friday, June 17, 2020
By Ken Tingley
Four years ago, I wrote an editorial in The Post-Star that appealed to the “humanity” of congressional candidates Elise Stefanik and Tedra Cobb.
I appealed to their patriotism as Americans.
I asked them to set an example that could be the first step in pulling our political process out of the swamps of partisanship.
I asked them not to lie.
Can anyone disagree with that?
Unfortunately, in the four years since it was written, things have gotten worse.
Here is part of what I wrote at the time :
We understand that requesting both candidates to conduct a campaign of civility based on issues, ideas and facts makes us seem out of touch and naive.
So we are asking a commitment from both candidates.
And it is a big one.
We ask them to commit to one overriding principle over the next four months: We ask them not to lie.
Rep. Stefanik did not make that commitment not to lie then and there appears to be no desire to do it now. Or actions have shown that repeatedly. It is the one thing all voters in her district should remember. If you can’t commit not to lie, can you be trusted about anything?
The January 6 committee is now reporting on the extent of the lies about the 2020 election and they are now touching on Rep. Stefanik.
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency reported in November 2020.
Yet North Country Public Radio reported that Rep. Stefanik “amplified the false conspiracy theory anyway.”
“I have concerns about the software, the fact that Dominion software - and it’s not just Republicans, it’s Democrats who have raised issues about the process and making sure we have the integrity in the counting process,” Stefanik said in an interview with the conservative TV outlet Newsmax in December 2020
North Country Public Radio has repeatedly asked Rep. Stefanik to clarify her statements about election fraud, but she has repeatedly declined interview requests, including one since the Jan. 6 committee addressed the matter when the Dominion voting machines came up during the second hearing.
“I specifically raised the Dominion voting machines, which I found to be among the most disturbing allegations. Disturbing in the sense that I saw absolutely zero basis for allegations,” former Attorney General Bill Barr told the committee in a video deposition. “But they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people - members of the public that there’s was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes didn’t count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually determining it, which was complete nonsense.”
Rep. Stefanik would have been able to read the same information in an Associated Press report in December 2020.
Barr went on to say that spreading the Dominion claims was a “grave disservice to the country.”
That’s what our congresswoman did, according to the Republican attorney general.
North Country Public Radio pointed out that Rep. Stefanik has still not admitted her doubts about Dominion were not based on facts or evidence, nor walked back any of her claims about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.
I’m not sure if you call that lying, but it is certainly not telling the truth.
We should always demand the truth from our representatives. We are not getting that from Stefanik.
Voters should ask her not to lie.
Another problem
The newspaper industry is facing another problem.
Over the past two years, the cost of newsprint has gone up more than 30 percent as mills close or shift production to e-commerce.
One newsprint mill closed in Washington state and another has cut back its production according to the Spokesman-Review in Spokane.
Gannett announced in April that its nearly 200 newspapers would publish one less day a week.
Who are these people?
Speaking on a conservative talk radio show this week, Rep. Elise Stefanik called the 1/6 hearings a “political circus.”
In a story from North Country Public Radio, Stefanik was quoted saying to the radio hosts, “When I go home to my district, which is all the time, people are talking about inflation, gas prices, the crime crisis in America, the border crisis. I didn’t have a single constituent ask me about January 6 during our last two-week district work period.”
The NCPR article went on to say it was unclear who Stefanik met with or where she visited during her two-week tour of the North Country because NCPR was not informed of any of her visits.
I would have to concur. I can’t remember the last time Stefanik had an open forum with her constituents in the Glens Falls area. It has been years since the town hall meeting in Hudson Falls.
It’s also unclear which parts of her districts are experience spikes in crime. It certainly does not seem to be happening locally.
Perhaps, she should invite members of the local media to these events so they can hear her constituents’ concerns first hand.
National pastime?
My colleague Eric Mondschein recently shared with me a survey done by “Rasmussen Reports” about Major League Baseball.
It confirms what we already knew. Baseball is no longer America’s pastime.
The survey finds that just 12 percent of adults have attended a Major League Baseball game this year and less than half have watched a game on television. You can blame Covid-19 to a degree, but I wonder if the exorbitant ticket prices and the slow pace of the game continue to be larger culprits.
Just not at Harvard. I don’t think they will let her anywhere near Cambridge.
That is the important part for me. Why have local politicians not called her out on their lives. Do they fear she will not endorse them?