{"id":21700,"date":"2011-08-11T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=21700"},"modified":"2011-08-25T15:10:18","modified_gmt":"2011-08-25T20:10:18","slug":"the-common-trough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=21700","title":{"rendered":"The Common Trough"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading the news here at Shot In The Dark puts you ahead of the entire lefty community.<\/p>\n

For example, it was a week or two back that we pointed out that the MinnPost was peddling a poll re<\/a> the government shutdown that, to be mild, deserved some scrutiny; it was produced in conjunction with Rob Daves<\/a>, the former majordomo of the Strib’s <\/em>“Minnesota Poll”, <\/em>a longtime laughingstock among polls which, I strongly suspect<\/a>, served mainly as rhetorical Prozac for DFLers.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, the various chains of the Minnesota non-profit cluster-hug – and the MinnPost<\/em>, we must duly note, is a Minnesota non-profit, albeit one that makes magisterial protestations of journalistic detachment – are reciting the chanting point. \u00a0The latest? \u00a0The “Minnesota Budget Project” – of whom more later.<\/p>\n

They write<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Two out of three Minnesota residents want state leaders to balance the budget using a mix of tax increases and spending cuts, according to a new MinnPost poll. It found 66 percent favor a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. Only 23 percent want spending cuts only.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you’re of a mind to connect dots, here’s how it looks; one non-profit – one with protestations of objectivity, but whose entire chain of command and most of whose staff has a long association with at least the center-left – uses a source that, long history of curious and one-sided inaccuracy<\/a> notwithstanding, has a veneer of “authority” via a long, ostensibly prestigious association with the Star-Tribune<\/em>; other non-profits, in turn, use that (possibly gravely flawed) information to try to skew public perceptions of a debate of vital importance to the DFL, to whom all <\/em>of the various non-profits are in one way or anotehr associated.<\/p>\n

Now, the MinnPost <\/em>will protest that they are an independent, detached, “objective” news organization. \u00a0For purposes of this discussion, I’ll even take them at their word.<\/p>\n

But this “story”, and the chain the information takes, suggests something that we need to look into more deeply; the closely-intertwined nature of Twin Cities’ “non-profit” political action organizations.<\/p>\n

More later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading the news here at Shot In The Dark puts you ahead of the entire lefty community. For example, it was a week or two back that we pointed out that the MinnPost was peddling a poll re the government shutdown that, to be mild, deserved some scrutiny; it was produced in conjunction with Rob […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21700"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21930,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21700\/revisions\/21930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}