By Curmudgeon
The Standard Examiner has up an editorial this morning morning that provides a good example of how, by carefully applied vagueness, a paper can editorially dissemble in the service of office-holders --- in this case, Mayor Matthew Godfrey:
• Our View: Don't Waste $50,000The editorial opposes Ogden City spending $50K to study winter sports in Mt. Ogden Park. And whose idea was that foolish idea which the SE sensibly opposes? The Editorial Board doesn't want to tell us. From the editorial:
"Spending $50,000, or a similar sum, to study how to bring winter sports activities to the Ogden course is wasteful idea.So, who came up with the idea? The editorial speaks only vaguely of "brainstormers" and "officials." True, once it lauds "the mayor, the city council and others" for work they've already done to improve the course's finances. But no hint for readers of where the $50K study nonsense came from.
We don't blame brainstormers for wondering if winter activities there could bring in money but don't spend large amounts of money to determine what's already obvious after a little thought....
We appreciate the work the mayor, city council and others have done to try to find ways to make Mount Ogden Golf Course less disastrous to city finances.
We encourage officials to keep working on ideas that have a reasonable chance of success."
Unless of course those readers happen to recall a story the SE did on this by Scott Schwebke which made no bones about whose idea it was. Here's the headline and lead on that story, which the SE ran on 16 June, only ten days ago:
Ogden mayor proposes $50,000 study of golf course ---OGDEN -- Mayor Matthew Godfrey is proposing to spend up to $50,000 to study the implementation of winter sports activities at financially troubled Mount Ogden Golf Course.Not anonymous "brainstormers" or anonymous "officials." Not "the mayor and city council and others." The Mayor. Period.
Don't the members of the SE's editorial board read their own newspaper? And if they do, why the mincing editorial tip-toeing around what their own paper reported prominently just ten days ago: this turkey of an idea was the Mayor's.
Nor will readers learn from the editorial that the City Council cut the Mayor's suggestion from the City's budget just last week. How do I know? Why, I read it in the Standard Examiner one week ago:
Although Godfrey got what he wanted regarding the garages, his requests for $1 million in future capital improvement funds for construction of a velodrome and field house along with $50,000 in BDO lease revenues for a winter activities study at Mount Ogden Golf Course aren't included in the city council's proposed budget.So while we can all approve the good sense of the SE Editorial Board in recognizing the foolishness of spending $50K to study sledding in Mt. Ogden Park, I can't help wondering why the Editorial Board went to such lengths to conceal the facts reported in its own paper: (a) the proposal was the Mayor's, and (b) the City Council wanted nothing to do with it and sensibly excluded it from the budget it passed last week. The dissembling turned what could have been, should have been, a hard-hitting editorial about wasteful spending, targeting the elected official who proposed it, into mush wrapped in cotton wool criticizing only un-named "officials," "brainstormers" and "others."
Wimpy work, guys. Wimpy work.
