J.D. Prose – 11/3/12

This page was last updated on November 4, 2012.

Here’s the least surprising endorsement ever; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; November 3, 2012.

According to his Twitter page, Mr. Prose is a self-described “Surly progressive.” 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.

Rather than critique the Prose column as I normally would, I thought it would be better to avoid Mr. Prose’s vitriol and instead tell you why he takes his positions.

Back in 2004 before he became a convicted felon, then-State Rep. Frank LaGrotta (D-Ellwood City) made the following comment: “If my parents didn’t have Social Security around to take their money and invest it for them, and if they’d have had to make their own investment decisions, they would have lost it all.” (Business Technology: The Silos Of Protectionism: Time To Raise Them, Or Raze Them?; Bob Evans; InformationWeek; March 15, 2004).

When I ran across Mr. LaGrotta’s comment a couple of years later, I wrote, “I don’t know Mr. LaGrotta or his parents, but I think it’s sad he has no little confidence in them.” Name-calling, personal attacks, and rants aside, I believe sentiment like Mr. LaGrotta’s is behind Mr. Prose’s support of leftist ideology. That is, whether he recognizes it or not, Mr. Prose has little confidence in his ability to provide for his and his family’s needs so he looks for someone to handle it or provide him with a “safety net.” In the world of government, though, safety nets have a bad habit of getting bigger and bigger and covering people who don’t need the handouts from taxpayers.

I’m not picking on Mr. Prose; I believe most rank-and-file Democrats share this behavior. (Note: It’s different for lefty activists, leaders, and politicians, but that’s a whole other discussion.) When lefties say they take their positions “for the children,” “for the elderly,” and so on, they really are talking about their lack of confidence in themselves to provide for their kids, their parents, and their old-age. This position attracts many people because they believe it lifts a burden from their shoulders. For example, a local lefty who supported a government-run, taxpayer-funded healthcare monopoly wrote, “Far from limiting your freedom, it would free you from any worry about healthcare bills.” This line of thinking also provides a person with a built-in excuse when the inevitable happens and government fails to meet its commitments regarding education, food, healthcare, retirement income, and so on; it’s the government’s fault, not Mr. Prose’s.

That explains Mr. Prose’s ideology, but not his vitriol. I’ll leave that to my readers (reader?) to figure out for themselves.

As an FYI, at least three of my four grandparents (including both grandfathers) didn’t attend or graduate from high school or trade schools. They raised their families in the late 1800s and early 1900s, before social programs. Both households were single-income and neither of my grandfathers worked at “skilled” labor or high-paying jobs. Despite that, they eventually managed to own their homes and saw to it all their children either went to college (Carnegie Tech) or trade school (Grace Martin Secretarial School), even during the Great Depression. They also managed to prepare adequately for retirement.