J.D. Prose – 5/19/12

This page was last updated on May 21, 2012.

Even state legislators know ALEC’s bad news; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; May 19, 2012.

As you read this opinion column and his Twitter “tweets,” keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the BCT. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a part-time reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2? Does he have a “Chinese wall” in his head to keep his opinions from bleeding into his reporting? (You may recall NPR claimed it fired Juan Williams for doing exactly what Mr. Prose does.) If it can get worse than that, Mr. Prose has made name-calling and personal attacks a foundation of his columns. If pushed, I’d be willing to bet Mr. Prose would try to excuse his writing by claiming he’s paid to be controversial and stir debate. The problem is, you don’t need to get into name-calling and personal attacks to accomplish those goals.

You can find the archive of my Prose column critiques here.

Below is a detailed critique of portions of this column.

“We first told you about the innocuous-sounding American Legislative Exchange Council back in August when Keystone Progress exposed it as a front for right-wingers to get like-minded politicians to champion their dangerous cookie-cutter legislation.”

[RWC] You can learn more about American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) being “exposed” in my critique of the Prose op-ed piece entitled “This group isn’t a bunch of smart ALECs.” As in that previous op-ed piece, Mr. Prose told us nothing about “the innocuous-sounding” Keystone Progress (KP). You can learn more about KP in that critique, but here’s something I failed to note. KP is a subsidiary of ProgressNow, self-described as “a year-round, never-ending progressive campaign.”

As for “get[ting] like-minded politicians to champion their dangerous cookie-cutter legislation,” isn’t that what KP and its St. Paul, MN-based parent ProgressNow do?

“Among the GOP state legislators identified as ALEC members were House Majority Dictator Mike Turzai, retiring state Sen. John Pippy of Moon Township and, least surprisingly, everyone’s favorite Lunatic Cranberrian, state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, affectionately known around these parts as ‘Nutcalfe’ for all-too-obvious reasons.”

[RWC] It took only two sentences for Mr. Prose to get into name-calling mode. Unfortunately, that’s not a record for Mr. Prose.

“ALEC crouches in the shadows, like the cockroaches they are, scheming to inflict whatever damage on the country their warped minds can conjure.

“Most recently, though, ALEC popped up in media reports as the brains (for lack of a better term) behind the effort by several Right-Wing state legislatures to pass intrusive, insulting and medically unnecessary ultrasound requirements for women seeking LEGAL abortions.”

[RWC] Though I agree with the stated goal (making sure a woman seeking an abortion sees the unborn child is not just some pre-cancerous colon polyp), I’m not in favor of government forcing a medical procedure on someone even in this circumstance.

This is off-topic, but how much do you want to bet Obamacare would eventually make various “intrusive, insulting and medically unnecessary … requirements” mandatory in the name of cost-cutting if we let it survive, and Mr. Prose would support it?

“Miraculously, some Pennsylvania legislators — Republicans and wayward Democrats — are coming to their senses (it is possible!) and distancing themselves from ALEC’s nonsense.

“Keystone Progress said last week that 14 legislators, including GOP state Rep. Mark Mustio (of the ethnic baiting D. Raja ads), Democratic state Rep. Nick Kotik of Robinson, Pippy and even Turzai have publicly cut ties with ALEC.”

[RWC] Mentioning D. Raja was probably a faux pas by Mr. Prose. Why? Since he did not appear on any Beaver County ballots, some of us may not be familiar with D. Raja. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mr. Raja was “[b]orn in India and [is] a naturalized U.S. citizen.” Perhaps Mr. Prose can explain how racist, anti-immigrant Republicans voted for a dark-skinned immigrant to be their candidate in the 2012 general election. Below is another example of Mr. Prose ignoring facts that undermine his positions.

“Huh. Seems there’s one name missing. Let’s just go down the ... Heyyyyy, our main man Nutcalfe! He’s still on a list of 51 state legislators (available at keystoneprogress.org) sticking with ALEC’s 19th century agenda.

“We guess you at least have to admire his loyalty. Mmmm ... On second thought, no you don’t.

“BIRTHERS OF A NATION

“It’s that quadrennial time again. Yep, time for the Lunatic Fringe to ratchet up their nutty birther attacks on President Obama all because they don’t want a black man in the White House. Save the phony outrage, we all know it’s true.”

[RWC] As a reminder, it was the (racist? – see Mr. Prose’s comments below) supporters of then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in the 2008 primaries who started the whole birther “movement.”

You may recall, within days of the 2008 election, Mr. Prose started peddling his position that opposition to Mr. Obama is the result of racism. A few days before that election you were guilty only of “fear and ignorance” if you didn’t “do the right thing.” Other examples of Mr. Prose pushing the racism smear are here and here. In my critique of “Don’t look now, but is Jay Paisley peaking?,” I opined, “I wonder how Mr. Prose will spin Herman Cain winning the Florida GOP straw poll for president. Maybe Mr. Prose will claim Mr. Cain’s win proves Republicans are sexist.” So how did Mr. Prose explain Mr. Cain? Mr. Prose didn’t mention Mr. Cain even once in his op-ed pieces. Perhaps Mr. Prose should look in the mirror before he writes of alleged racism by others.

“In Arizona (Motto: More Nuts Than Planters), Secretary of State Ken Bennett — a GOPer, of course — ludicrously insisted he’s not a birther, he just might keep the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES off the ballot because he, the great Ken Bennett, has been unable to verify the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES’ birth certificate.”

[RWC] Don’t candidates, regardless of office, have to provide proof of eligibility before being put on a ballot? If not, what good are eligibility requirements? Based on this Huffington Post article, it appears Mr. Bennett’s predecessor, current Gov. Jan Brewer (R), did not require the 2008 Obama campaign to provide of eligibility. The article didn’t mention if Sen. John McCain’s campaign provided proof of his eligibility.

“Over in Colorado, U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, a (wait for it), that’s right, a Republican, said at a fundraiser last week that he didn’t know if the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES was born in America. Coffman’s comments, Mother Jones reported, were ‘met with applause, tentative at first.’”

[RWC] In case you’re not familiar with Mother Jones, it’s another lefty advocacy outlet posing as a “news organization that specializes in investigative, political, and social justice reporting.” Mr. Prose omitted the “deafening silence” part of the MJ quote. Just an oversight, I’m sure.

Thanks to folks like Mr. Prose, I don’t know “if the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES was born in America,” or Mr. Prose, and so on. I’ve gone from “trust, but verify” to “verify, then trust, but keep verifying.”

“Maybe there is hope. After all, the audience did pause before clapping for Coffman’s thinly veiled racism. In Rush Limbaugh’s GOP that counts as a real profiles in courage moment.”

[RWC] As noted above, you’re a racist if you are not an Obama supporter and/or do not support his, and Mr. Prose’s, leftist ideology. So, was it racism when lefties questioned Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) eligibility? You may recall some people claimed Mr. McCain was ineligible for office because he was born on a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone while his father was stationed there. Taking the challenge seriously, the Democrat-majority Senate unanimously passed a non-binding resolution declaring Mr. McCain to be a “natural born Citizen” of the U.S. I listened to Mr. Coffman’s comments as posted by The Huffington Post and missed “[Mr.] Coffman’s thinly veiled racism.” Then again, I’m not a lefty race baiter.

As for Mr. Prose’s Rush Limbaugh comment, it appears Mr. Prose lifted the idea from Mr. Coffman’s opponent, Colorado state Rep. Joe Miklosi (D-9). According to The Huffington Post, a lefty source Mr. Prose likely endorses, Mr. Miklosi said, “These outrageous comments once again make clear that Mike Coffman is Colorado’s version of Rush Limbaugh.”

“SEEN & HEARD

“• Our own right-wing U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey earned some high marks from the politically astute thinkers at ... the Independence Hall Tea Party. Tough crowd for him, we’re sure.

“Back in March, the IHTP gave Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey just a 6 percent rating, but bestowed a 100 percent voter rating on Toomey. Wow, a perfect score!

“What could Toomey have ever done to earn such an honor? Well, among other things, he supported repealing health care reform and implementing Environmental Protection Agency ‘reforms,’ (i.e., rolling back environmental laws so corporations can pollute as much as they want).

“In other words, Toomey got a perfect score from a crazy group that wants to dismantle any improvements of the last 40 years or so. Sorry. We checked. He’s got four more years in office.”

[RWC] Sen. Toomey has made it clear from the beginning he would vote to repeal Obamacare. Other than that piece of common knowledge, I was unable to verify anything Mr. Prose wrote about the IHTP and Messrs. Casey and Toomey. Unfortunately, Mr. Prose didn’t cite the source of his info. I did quick Google and Yahoo searches with various search terms and found nothing to support Mr. Prose’s claims. The only relevant hit I got was Mr. Prose’s column and this seems odd. I have to wonder if I screwed up my searches, but I don’t know how. I say that because when I seek to verify a lefty claim I usually find the claim is a misrepresentation of something real, not nothing.

Following Mr. Prose’s line of “thinking,” those of us on the right are really from another world and we require polluted air and water similar to that on our home world.

Since Mr. Prose raised the topic of “a crazy group,” the NAACP gave Mr. Casey a 100% rating and Mr. Toomey a 0% rating. It can’t be long before Mr. Prose tells us Mr. Toomey earned his 0% rating because he voted in favor of legalizing lynchings and reinstating segregation, slavery, et cetera. Oh, wait, I forgot; these were practices supported primarily by Democrats.

“• U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire’s days are numbered so it’s not unexpected for staffers to move on to greener pastures. This week we said goodbye to Richard Carbo, Altmire’s spokesman for the last 11 months. Godspeed, Rich!

“With just six months to go, Jason might as well handle his own press inquiries. After all, we and Fox News might be the only ones calling him.”