Hieb Compares Guilford to Jefferson County, AL
Art Pope’s Stooge has a post up comparing Guilford County to Jefferson County, Alabama:
In fairness, Jefferson County leaders believed they were providing an essential service, which conservatives maintain is the true key to economic development. But they went overboard with the “Taj Mahal of sewage systems.” As you can imagine, it doesn’t end well —the county borrows vast sums of money, which in theory would be paid off in revenue. But when the revenue didn’t materialize —you guessed it— everyone’s rates went up.
In fairness, that is not at all what happened. The Jefferson County authorities, like many municipalities, school systems and universities, engaged in interest rate swap derivatives sold by NY banksters promising low pay back rates. What they failed to say was that should the economy go Tango Uniform, these public entities would find themselves upside down on the trades and forced to pony up much more than the customary loan payment.
Additionally, Jefferson County, like much of the Deep South, had neglected sewer services for generations, often resulting in little more than ditches to dispose of human and industrial effluent. Also, the officials entrusted to manage the process received large kickbacks from the banksters, resulting in a few being prosecuted.
Leave it to Art Pope’s Stooge to get it wrong. He compares our recent news about econ dev bonds to Jefferson County’s sewage improvement effort – definitely a case of apples and oranges. He could have at least compared Guilford County’s long partnership with Greensboro to charge homeowners for a fund to build out water and sewer at Forest Oaks and the I-40/85 corridor, but that would have exposed a visionary program of responsible planning. No, the JLF journalist knew what he was doing by pointing to the econ dev bonds instead.
This is just the most recent example of willfully inaccurate reporting from an organization which has recently become infamous for telling lies about such things as a “food police” in our schools, substituting parent-provided turkey sandwiches with school cafeteria chicken nuggets.
Has he corrected his misquote of Greensboro City Councilor Zack Matheny yet?
He links to the N&R’s admission of a misquote.
He does so away and apart from his original which still has the misquote uncorrected. I can see why it would be problematic to correct it there though, the whole conspiracy theory of the post would implode without it.
http://triad.johnlocke.org/blog/?p=15271
I never quite get used to calling dumb conservatives on their duplicity and their nonsensical denials which prove they aren’t even aware of their duplicity. It’s booger-eating moron on autopilot. I like to think that way upstairs somewhere in Art Pope’s network, hopefully not so high as John Hood, there is an apparatchik who actually understands how mind-numbingly stupid Hieb is.