Abraham Lincoln was once asked, as the story goes, "If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does it have?"
Lincoln: "Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
So the challenge to the voter or the buyer is to distinguish between real legs and phony ones. How to do that?
Well, there are well known, timeworn techniques that blur the distinction between illusion and reality. Learn to spot the techniques, and you become a lot harder to sell to, regardless of what's being sold.
One is selling the image: whatever it is, wrap it in the flag and high-flown phrases, preferably from our great founding documents or others equally well known. The goal is an automatic, unthinking response.
Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. The Center School is draining the taxpayers. The trustees have spent over $650,000. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. With luck, the voters will be seeing that number in their sleep.
Fact: Depending on what kind of analysis is being made of the numbers, here are two sets. One is Marie's analysis of the cost to the Township taxpayers. Over the life of the lease-purchase agreement to date, the cost of approximately $102,000 has worked out to about $25.00 per person. Remember: This is over the life of the project, not per year.
The second set is what Mark Hall presented at (I believe) the October 6 Trustees meeting. Mark went through the cost in terms of various funds that the money came from or had to come from. The total that I remember was in the neighborhood of $305,000.
Both are a LONG way from the claimed and trumpeted $650,000 to $675,000 that gets repeated at every opportunity.
But how did the critics get that number? By adding absolutely every item related to the school .
Well, but isn't that right?
Hmmm. How much did you spend for your last car? Eighteen thousand? Nah.
You spent almost $55,000 for it. After all, let's say you borrowed the whole amount, and then you had to finance the sale. The loan ran for 48 months--four years. So $!8,000 plus what you paid back should come to about $40,000, shouldn't it? And then there is insurance, maybe $1,000 per year. So the car has cost you $44,000. And then tires, at $100 each, maybe only one set, but $400. So now we're up to $44,400. Oh. Service. $750 per year. Another $3,000, and the ka-ching is up to $47,400. Actually, since the cost of gasoline was not factored in, you probably paid over $53,000 for your car. Didn't you?
And then the $53,000 gets chanted at every possible opportunity.
Soft Soap. "The lifestyle I have come to love." I have looked at Mr. Festa's website, and I have to say that I don't quite feel the love in what look like attacks on people living and perhaps struggling in the Township.
And that brings us to another time-honored technique: Killing the messenger that brings bad news. A Greek messenger came to the city (Athens? Perhaps) and reported this: "Your excellency, our soldiers have lost the battle." He was executed.
Now, what if he had said this: "Your excellency, our soldiers fought like schoolboys and threw away the battle"?
One is a statement of a really nasty fact. The other is negative--a slur.
So if I state that a person has 45 court records, ten of which clearly list the person as "Debtor", what is negative--the report, or the behavior that made the report possible?
Calling it a leg doesn't make it a leg.
About This Blog
The purpose of this blog is to give an accurate account of what is said during Public Comment at Mantua Township Trustees meetings.
Trustees' decisions are in the official minutes, available on request from the Mantua Township Fiscal Officer, Jodi Thompson, at 330-274-8443. The Township charges 10 cents per page. FAX, 330-274-8447. E-mail, fiscalofficer@mantuatownshipohio.gov. The minutes are also posted on the website after they have been approved. That means that there is usually a two-week lag between a given meeting and the minutes being available to read on the website.
Since meetings are the first and third Thursdays of the month, there is a three-week wait during months with five Thursdays.
Other items of interest or the writer's opinions will be included from time to time, clearly identified.
This is not a forum or chat room, but a source of information, so it is closed to outside input.
During the time I have been doing the blog, the posts have expanded to become very detailed accounts of the meetings. Doing that is time consuming, to say the least, and I am going to try to return to the public comment focus, with background and perspective (and the occasional pointed editorial comment). Such additions are usually enclosed in brackets. However, since some extended accounts of the meetings reveal significant things--and character--better than I could by commenting, there will probably still be a fair amount of semi-transcript. (Sigh.)
My thanks to the readers who have found the blog, and to the ones who from time to time tell me that they value it. You have encouraged me when the tedious work of keyboarding has made me wonder why I am doing this. Then you have reminded me, and I am grateful.
Trustees' decisions are in the official minutes, available on request from the Mantua Township Fiscal Officer, Jodi Thompson, at 330-274-8443. The Township charges 10 cents per page. FAX, 330-274-8447. E-mail, fiscalofficer@mantuatownshipohio.gov. The minutes are also posted on the website after they have been approved. That means that there is usually a two-week lag between a given meeting and the minutes being available to read on the website.
Since meetings are the first and third Thursdays of the month, there is a three-week wait during months with five Thursdays.
Other items of interest or the writer's opinions will be included from time to time, clearly identified.
This is not a forum or chat room, but a source of information, so it is closed to outside input.
During the time I have been doing the blog, the posts have expanded to become very detailed accounts of the meetings. Doing that is time consuming, to say the least, and I am going to try to return to the public comment focus, with background and perspective (and the occasional pointed editorial comment). Such additions are usually enclosed in brackets. However, since some extended accounts of the meetings reveal significant things--and character--better than I could by commenting, there will probably still be a fair amount of semi-transcript. (Sigh.)
My thanks to the readers who have found the blog, and to the ones who from time to time tell me that they value it. You have encouraged me when the tedious work of keyboarding has made me wonder why I am doing this. Then you have reminded me, and I am grateful.
Principles
Two ideas guide and support me:
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
______Attributed to Edmund Burke
GOOD PREVAILS.
Those ideas are also the reason I have been doing the blog since late February 2011.
I have discovered that a transcript is almost impossible to do and that verbatim accounts are usually not absolutely necessary. When in doubt, I check against a recording.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
______Attributed to Edmund Burke
GOOD PREVAILS.
Those ideas are also the reason I have been doing the blog since late February 2011.
I have discovered that a transcript is almost impossible to do and that verbatim accounts are usually not absolutely necessary. When in doubt, I check against a recording.
