the start of neutral, objective, even-handed news reporting in the Minneapolis paper<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe Strib’s<\/em> headline reads “Oil refineries seek huge tax refunds that could force schools to give back money”, and as Joe notes…:<\/p>\nThey couldn\u2019t have been any cruder if they\u2019d said: \u201cGOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry taking money from schools to give to oil companies.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the perfect Progressive attack headline.<\/p>\n
Naturally, the story is written in modern techno-thriller style: start with an explosive scene, randomly jump around introducing characters without any context, play up the human tragedy about to unfold unless a hero steps in, blame the usual villains.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It does read a little like someone who didn’t make the cut as a writer for “24” is slumming as a journo…<\/p>\n
The story is much less compelling if laid out in a logical format.<\/p>\n
\n- There\u2019s crude oil under the ground in Texas.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Crude oil must be refined to be useable as gasoline, diesel fuel, etc.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Hauling crude oil to the refinery is expensive, so<\/span><\/li>\n
- Oil companies built refineries in Texas near the oil fields<\/span><\/li>\n
- People who wanted good-paying jobs came to work for the refineries<\/span><\/li>\n
- Merchants who wanted to sell things to high-paid oil refinery employees built stores near the refineries<\/span><\/li>\n
- Refinery employees, merchants and merchants\u2019 employees built houses near the refineries and started raising kids<\/span><\/li>\n
- The kids needed to go to schools, built near the homes that were built near the refineries<\/span><\/li>\n
- Schools are expensive and are paid for from local property taxes<\/span><\/li>\n
- Property taxes are based on local valuation and refineries are valuable so they paid huge property taxes<\/span><\/li>\n
- Huge property tax payments by refineries meant lower property taxes levied on homes, paid by employees<\/span><\/li>\n
- School districts got used to funding schools with huge property tax payments by refineries<\/span><\/li>\n
- Merchant and employee property tax payers got used to living large on the refineries\u2019 dime<\/span><\/li>\n
- But federal law requires refineries to invest in pollution equipment<\/span><\/li>\n
- And state law gives a tax refund to refineries that invest in pollution equipment<\/span><\/li>\n
- So refineries that did invest in pollution equipment, filed for refunds<\/span><\/li>\n
- Refunding money to refineries would reduce their huge property tax payments<\/span><\/li>\n
- The money refunded to refineries cannot be given to school districts<\/span><\/li>\n
- School districts will have to cut spending or raise local property taxes to make up the shortfall<\/span><\/li>\n
- The state, knowing this, denied the refund claims, which were appealed<\/span><\/li>\n
- The governor appointed a commission to study the problem<\/span><\/li>\n
- The governor is Rick Perry, Republican candidate for President<\/span><\/li>\n
- The governor\u2019s hand-selected commission is leaning toward giving the refunds; therefore<\/span><\/li>\n
- Rick Perry is taking money from schools to give to oil companies<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It is <\/em>a lot more mundane. \u00a0It’d sell fewer papers – or get fewer people inflamed against the GOP, whichever.<\/p>\nWell, I guess, in a way, the headline is half-assed, sort-of-true. Good enough for the Star Tribune.<\/p>\n
But the entire thing could have been summed up more succinctly as:<\/p>\n
\u201cGravy train ending, women and minorities hurt worst.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hell, that\u2019s not news.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But it is <\/em>campaign material.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Doakes from Como Park writes: Ah, political season, and the start of neutral, objective, even-handed news reporting in the Minneapolis paper. The Strib’s headline reads “Oil refineries seek huge tax refunds that could force schools to give back money”, and as Joe notes…: They couldn\u2019t have been any cruder if they\u2019d said: \u201cGOP Presidential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,4,130,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-media","category-tc-media-bias","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23168","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=23168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23169,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23168\/revisions\/23169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}