"Truthiness" and Being Manipulated

Lately, I fell like I am asking myself the same questions more and more: "Am I being manipulated," or more to the point, "Am I getting screwed?" Those feelings have popped up in everything from paying my bills, filling up my fuel tank, reading the national news, and now even reading the local news. The way I usually combat that feeling is educating myself more, reading more, and trying to understand. Unfortunately, one recent conclusion that I entertained was: gee, maybe ignorance is bliss. Through continuous learning, and being an involved citizen I try not to let apathy take root; however, occasionally it does and I have to weed it out.

A buzzword that went around the media a few years ago was truthiness. It stemmed from the satirical show on Comedy Central, The Colbert Report. It was awarded Merriam-Webster's 2006 Word Of The Year, and it was defined as:

truthiness (noun)

1 : "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005)
2 : "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect Society, January 2006)

In a 2006 interview with The A.V. Club, Stephen Colbert said, "It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything." (1)

Personally I disagree with Mr. Colbert. Facts matter to me a great deal. I certainly hope I am not alone. I don't want truthiness, and I don't want to be blissfully ignorant. If I am to make the best decision or form an intelligent opinion to persuade people, I need the facts, not some one's perception of the facts. Truthiness is just a new word for the old art of rhetoric and manipulation.

Sometimes the best school is the old-school. When listening to people, or reading opinions, I turn to logic to try to find out if I'm being manipulated. I recently read this by Tim Holt of logicalfallacies.info :

"The ability to identify logical fallacies in the arguments of others, and to avoid them in one’s own arguments, is both valuable and increasingly rare. Fallacious reasoning keeps us from knowing the truth, and the inability to think critically makes us vulnerable to manipulation by those skilled in the art of rhetoric."

So I am here to fight the apathy of my generation by fighting my own apathy. I'm here to say that I will not be manipulated, and I will not be lied to. Most importantly I want the facts, not truthiness.

--------------
References

(1) http://www.avclub.com/content/node/44705

The Way Business Is Done

If you create more jobs in Manchester, you can extort the taxpayers and by-pass the living wage ordinance. I have to give credit to the owners of Vision Technical Molding and Advance Mold, they have taken advantage of a perfect storm to come out ahead. That storm is made up of a U.S. recession, Republicans in the majority, and Mohawk Cable (Belden, Inc.) closing its doors in Manchester and sending jobs to Mexico. I also have to give credit to the Manchester GOP. This is the first chance they’ve had to poke a hole in the Living Wage Ordinance that they voted against when it was enacted by the Democrats.

“Less than two weeks after local officials learned that the Mohawk Cable plant on Progress Drive was closing, town directors approved a tax abatement for two companies that suggested they, too, might close and move their operations out of the country.” (1)

According to the Hartford Courant article, this “suggestion” was made two days after the announcement of the closing of the Mohawk plant in a letter to the General Manager from one of the partners of the company. Is it just me, or does this sound something like this: give my company a tax abatement and let my company bypass the living wage ordinance or I will move my plant and lay-off 160 people. I’m asking myself, how is this not extortion?

Extort: to wrest or wring (money, information, etc.) from a person by violence, intimidation, or abuse of authority; obtain by force, torture, threat, or the like. (2)

In the business world, it isn’t called extortion, it’s called “leveraging your position.” I have no issue with businesses making money. It’s what they do. What I have a problem with is how this deal went down. It was introduced in an executive session of the April 1st BOD meeting. It was then added to the agenda for the second meeting of the month with no public announcement that the BOD agenda was revised. Now, when I was a teenager, and I tried slipping something under my parent’s nose, it was called, “pulling a fast one.” How is this open and accountable government?

In the end, the upside is that Vision Technical Molding and Advance Mold are creating fifteen new jobs now and fifteen more over the next year. Hopefully those jobs can go to people being laid-off at the Mohawk Cable plant. Those being laid-off should take advantage of the retraining being offered to get the skills they would need to work in an injection molding plant. Also, in seven years, Manchester will be able to add this company’s addition into the grand list.

The downside is that Manchester's taxpayers are footing the bill for $85,000 over the next seven years, and nineteen people at those plants will not be making the Manchester living wage of $11.40 per hour. Incidentally, a recently published study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition stated that a person would need to earn $18.64 per hour to have a modest two bedroom apartment in the Hartford area. (3) So those nineteen people will need to get a second job, or if they have a partner or spouse, they will have to work full time as well.

I’ve been laid off before. It’s very scary. I ask you this: Should businesses and town governments use that fear to their advantage? In this taxpayer’s opinion, it’s extortion, but that’s the way business has always been done.

------------------------------
References:

(1) Uhlinger, Nick “Manchester Approves Tax Break For Two Companies” Hartford Courant 10 April 2008

(2) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/extort

(3) National Low Income Housing Coalition “Out of Reach” study. 2008

Welcome

“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”

-Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Welcome to the Silk City Independent. This will primarily be a political commentary blog containing the perspective of an Independent voter in Manchester, Connecticut. I research and weigh both sides of any issue, because the world is not black or white, Republican or Democrat, but many colors and shades; and in the case of Manchester, largely unaffiliated with a political party. In this writer’s opinion, the political climate in town has become increasingly divisive and partisan. It is time to add a voice from the greater percentage of voters in Manchester.

Do you know what the make up of Manchester is when it comes to voter registration? According to the Connecticut Secretary of State on Oct. 30, 2007 :

Republican	6,103	18.9%
Democrat	11,320	35.0%
Minor Party	257	0.8%
Unaffiliated	14,685	45.3%
Total	32,365	100.0%

If the Board of Directors, BOD, or Board of Education, BOE, were apportioned by voter registration, there would be two Republicans, three Democrats, and four Unaffiliated or Independents on each of the governments bodies in town.

Connecticut has been called the land of steady habits. I can’t argue with Mr. Paine’s thinking, “…a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT…” Political issues are almost always dependent on perspective. It is time to add a non-partisan, common sense perspectives to the dialog in Manchester.

Columns will be published on a minimum of a weekly basis. If you are a civic minded, unaffiliated voter in Manchester and would like to be a regular contributor, please leave a comment to let me know. Reader comments are welcomed; however, as with any publication, the editor reserves the right to moderate those comments.