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Posted on 10/30/2003 9:43:19 PM PST by GOPcapitalist
METRO-sexual:
The Chronicle's 'unctuous' love affair with light rail
For the past several election cycles Houstonians have been subjected to a biannual barrage of propaganda for light rail and the candidates who support it, only this time they decided to make it into a yearlong jubilee. The celebration got off to a bumpy start for the city’s venerable leading disinformation source last year when somebody accidentally posted their battle strategy on the internet. The Chron’s internal memo, which was first reported on by the Review, outlined in detail a year long plan to use their newsprint as a campaign organ for METRO’s at-the-time unannounced rail expansion referendum. The scheme was supposed to kick off with an onslaught of editorials with the “specific objective” of making “rail a permanent part of the transit mix here.” Far from stopping there, the editorials were to be “built upon” by an “equally specific” “news-feature package” of hatchet job stories on rail opponents such as Rep. Tom DeLay.
It is almost a year since the Chronicle’s campaign plan slipped onto their website one late November evening. Sensible Houstonians knew all along what it was going to entail and surely enough the Chron has not failed to disappoint. Since June alone the Chronicle’s editorial page has run at least:
DeLay, the ‘chief conspirator’ discussed in the secret rail memo and the Chron’s favorite scapegoat for anything and everything that is wrong with Houston, has not fared much better than his colleague from the neighboring 7th district. The editorial board recently described the Republican leader as an “exterminator” who believes that good can come from “spreading poison around the environment.”
The habitually bilious Cragg Hines took it a step further in an anti-redistricting diatribe, labeling DeLay a “self-righteous prig” who reigns in Republican legislators like “specially encrypted robots” to use on nefarious redistricting and highway expansion schemes. Hines, the Chronicle’s primary columnist, further demonstrated his curious lexigraphic skills in the same rant by urging one of those alleged DeLay robots, State Rep. Phil King, to “give the unctuosity a rest, baby cakes” (Editor’s Note: unctuosity is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as possessing the “characteristics of oil or ointment”). The paper’s editorial cartoonist Clyde Peterson (aka CP Houston) has joined the attacks as well, setting aside his multi-gigabyte clip art file of anti-death penalty grim reaper images to pursue humor-challenged caricatures of Culberson and DeLay.
To the Chronicle it appears that DeLay is an evil anti-rail puppet master – the leader of a “tiny cadre of wealthy, selfish developers, highway contractors and ambitious Harris County officials” who have maliciously ganged up on the benevolent and all-caring Metropolitan Transit Authority. Yes, to them METRO is actually a victim. DeLay, Culberson, and virtually anybody who dares to speak out against the Holy Rail falls immediately into the paper’s journalistic crosshairs.
The sum of the Chronicle’s campaign described so far would easily provide enough garbage, bile, vomit, and wholly unsubstantiated innuendo to fill an average sized swimming pool. Amazingly, that is just the content of their two-page daily editorial section. Just as the secret memo proposed, rail propaganda has drifted over to the news section as well.
Located deep within the Chron’s secret light rail game plan is an item labeled “Ground zero for November: The campaign…to defeat rail expansion.” Based on its title, this plank seemingly calls for an orchestrated effort in the month before the election to attack and discredit referendum opponents. Naturally, a series of “news” articles will provide the medium. Subsequent bullet points propose articles targeting the funding behind any political organization that opposes rail and implying that highway contractors are pulling their strings. As the “ground zero” date passes by throughout the month of October, the evidence for full implementation of this plank is overwhelming. In the last month alone the Chronicle has run at least:
Even the headlines of a so-called “news” articles are replete with pejorative and biased language about rail opponents. An October 26th title reads “Referendum's defeat sought so money can be redirected to asphalt.” Another announces “Opponents eye METRO rail funds for highways” as if to suggest that rail critics are trying to steal money that rightfully belongs to METRO!
Though the Chronicle has done its best to implement its secret memo with these and other shady journalism tactics, one of its bullet points proved to be more of a tangle than anticipated. The Chron’s game plan announced intentions to determine “[w]ho is doing the funding” of organizations “doing the research to discredit rail.” The plank specifically alluded to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, but recent Chronicle behavior indicates that their focus has shifted to Texans for True Mobility, another group that opposes rail.
Texans for True Mobility is in fact organized into two separate entities. The first is a transit policy organization that falls under a 501(c) category of the United States tax codes. This group has been circulating transit studies, including several published on its website (www.texansfortruemobility.com), that evaluate METRO’s light rail plan and its shortcomings. As a 501(c)6 filer this entity, like any think tank or policy group, does not have to publicly disclose its finances. Though some 501(c)’s do release the names of some of their donors, Texans for True Mobility has opted against doing so. That noted, one could hardly blame them considering that a certain local “news” outlet is publicly foaming at the mouth to relentlessly attack and smear those donors in a daily barrage of printed propaganda.
A second entity, Texans for True Mobility PAC, has filed its paperwork as a political action committee to explicitly advocate the defeat of METRO’s referendum. Since, unlike the public policy organization this group supports a position in an election, this PAC is required by law to file a disclosure of its donors. To date Texans for True Mobility PAC has readily filed its disclosures as required by law.
Though any fair-minded and honest observer must admit that Texans for True Mobility has properly filed its paperwork for both organizations, the manner in which they did so also denied the Chronicle its long-planned October Surprise on rail opponent finances. So how does the Chronicle respond? They took a page out of the book of their parent company’s founder William Randolph Hearst and invented a scandal. On October 11th the Chron filed a criminal complaint against Texans for True Mobility with the district attorney alleging a class C misdemeanor. The allegation? Texans for True Mobility, the 501(c)6 not the PAC, had “failed” to file a disclosure of its donors to the Texas Ethics Commission. Never mind that the 501(c)6 is exactly that – a 501(c)6 – and as such falls under the federal tax code, not the Texas election statutes. A criminal allegation, no matter how frivolous and contrived, provides news for the Chronicle to run with.
About a week after the Chronicle decided to formally join the pro-rail political campaign by filing criminal complaints on their behalf, District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal notified them of the complaint’s receipt and indicated that his office would look into the allegations. For the city’s sleaziest newspaper this amounted to nothing short of 30 years hard labor on the prison farm for any and all rail opponents. Within a few days Texans for True Mobility’s routine story identification as “a group that opposes rail” became “a group under criminal investigation for failing to disclose its contributors.” It naturally has the ring of “former exterminator Tom DeLay” and “millionaire publisher Steve Forbes.” The only problem is that Rosenthal’s decision had virtually nothing to do with the merits of the Chronicle’s frivolous complaint. Though they neglected to report it, Texas law requires Rosenthal to investigate the Chronicle’s allegations. Chapter 273 of the Texas Elections Code requires that upon receipt of “affidavits alleging criminal conduct in connection with the election” the “district attorney shall investigate the allegations.”
According to the letter of the law, the DA had no choice in the matter but to proceed. Yet for the Chronicle’s purposes that was all it took to turn a politically motivated smear attempt into a scandalous criminal act that could even carry with it a criminal fine of, gasp, five hundred dollars! The so-called “criminal investigation” of Texans for True Mobility only became “news” because the “news reporter” himself made it so. He fired the shot to start the war then arrived just in time to “report” on its horrors and carnage. Hearst could not have pulled this one off any better himself.
For all the huffing, puffing, and scandal mongering about evil highway contractors supposedly bankrolling “illegal” anti-rail campaigns (presumably at Tom DeLay’s command, of course), the Chronicle has yet to name even one such firm let alone document a single fiscal connection. The ‘victimized’ METRO, by contrast, has widespread and fully documented links to a tiny cadre of wealthy, selfish developers and light rail contractors who stand to gain substantially from the referendum’s adoption. But don’t expect that to be reported on any time soon. The Chronicle is having a love affair with METRO and in typical leftist fashion their only response to revelation of its sordid details is to smear those brave few who have directed public scrutiny upon the light rail boondoggle.
Our In-House Light Rail Newsletter
As they always have, Metro's light rail warriors go into battle knowing at least one thing: They have the power of the Houston Chronicle behind them.
The Chron has been a tireless promoter of rail. Propose a system, and they're for it. Check the archives for the words "rail" and "world class" (an admittedly unscientific experiment) and you get 132 hits dating back to 1985.
Here's one of the latest, from a June story fretting that the Main Street rail line might not be ready for the Super Bowl: "Shedding the title of the only major U.S. metropolitan area without a rail transit system is part of efforts to improve the city's glamour and make Houston, as Mayor Lee Brown frequently proclaims, 'world class.' " That wasn't quoting or paraphrasing anybody, by the way, that was sheer factual reportage.
The Chron may have stubbed its toe a bit for this upcoming election, however. In November a member of the paper's editorial board mistakenly posted an internal memo on the Chron Web site. For a few hours the entire world could see how one staffer hoped to link pro-rail editorials with "a news-feature package with an equally specific focus." Story ideas included an irrelevant, if not utterly bizarre, look at Elyse Lanier's path "from jewelry saleswoman to Houston political insider."
Anti-rail troops howled, crowing that finally hard proof was in hand on the Chron's chronic bias in favor of rail. The memo was read countless times on KSEV-AM, and it was reprinted on conservative Web sites. Chronicle editor Jeff Cohen said the memo was merely one of many story pitches he got and would not influence the paper's undying efforts to provide comprehensive and fair and informative and zzzzzzzzzzz.
In the end, though, the only people who will remember the memo are the people who never believe a word the Chron prints about rail anyway. (Unless it's stories about Metro projects being over budget and busting deadline.)
We can only wonder if the paper will repeat its series from a while back, when it sent reporters to various U.S. cities to write about how wonderful rail was in those locales. There's only so much one needs to know, for instance, about the terrific-ness of light rail in Portland, unless you need to get somewhere in Portland that day.
But whether they go to such lengths or not, it's safe to say the pro-rail folks will get plenty of space to tell their story, and that the editorial pages will wax thunderously in favor.
http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2003-09-11/feature.html/1/index.html
LOL! They sure do, don't they!
If you should visit Houston sometime in the near future get a hotel somewhere near downtown. Stay up late one night then after midnight step outside briefly. You will probably see several empty METRO busses driving around every which way. Other than NYC, which runs its transit 24 hours a day, we're probably the only big city in the nation that seems to have as many busses on the 2 AM route as they do during the daytime. They are literally all over the place and not one of them has more than a single rider or two.
Call me paranoid, but I'm convinced that it is some sort of secret Keynesian jobs program of the Lee Brown administration - i.e. They hire welfare bums who sleep all day anyway and pay them taxdollars to drive empty busses in circles all night!
Mmmm! My kinda guy!
I will never do that again.
Yup! Over-sexed and under-represented in the State Senate!!! (Because: "Cows Don't Vote!)
As always, a FReep mail will get you on or off this Houston topics ping list.
I don't know what to make of that, although I'm quite confident that they would not publish the results of a poll showing a lack of support.
Metro's ads gave lofty generalizations.... dreams about efficiency, less pollution, less traffic and no new taxes Who doesn't want that?
Texans for True Mobility gave specifics, facts, examples, and references. Their arguements were concise. I think it will cost too much to do too little.
Of course the final arguement against the rail is that I saw a sign that Sheila Jackson Lee was for it. Since this was the same Sheila Jackson Lee that was upset that hurricanes didn't ever have black names, I instantly became against it.
Busses in Dallas are driven around? Most of the Metro busses I see in Houston are parked in traffic lanes while the drivers take their break. I believe that the primary purpose of Metro is blocking traffic. They've been fairly successful.
You hit the nail on the head. METRO's light rail system is a poorly designed, horrendously expensive fiscal black hole.
Harris County, by contrast, is currently developing a proposal for an alternative commuter rail system modelled after some of the ones in Maryland, Virginia etc. Their plan seeks to rent old underused Union Pacific tracks that go into downtown and put passenger cars on them out to the suburbs. Since the tracks are already there and since passenger cars, unlike light rail cars, are generally compatable between cities the Harris County plan will probably end up costing about 1/20th of METRO's while going twice as far out to the suburbs.
Yeah, and the engines are always running of course. As a general rule for travel in Houston: if you see a huge cloud of thick black smoke coming up over the trees and you aren't in either 5th ward or Pasadena, it's a safe bet that a METRO bus is near.
Well, they gotta implement it first. Harris County is saying that could be done as early as 2006.
The idea behind it though is to drive to a commuter rail station in the suburbs, park at a station garage, get on the rail, and ride it into downtown or across town or wherever.
So, your very right about that.
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