Photo Courtesy Crooks and LiarsFollow as Logan Murphy, nails it when he points to the best part of this absurd statement:
The comments afterward!
Personal favorite?
michstjame: @petehoekstra Laughed so hard at your tweet water came out my nose. Now I know what waterboarding feels like. #GOPfail
This of course made me laugh until I realized that this idiot could be our Governor soon.
Nahhh! that would kinda be like.....
Posts
17 comments:
After reading the editorial in the last Banner, I was wondering where our local news was coming from, regarding events and issues outside of Hastings. Now I know. Twitter!
Log off and read the latest info on health care in the June issue of the President's Council of Economic Advisors. Print a copy for the newsroom. It is 50 pages of big words, but it has a lot of pictures and graphs, tables and factual data.
Obviously, Hoekstra is not qualified for his job or any other elected office. The fact that he gets his information from Twitter (alternating no doubt with MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook) should confirm that his perspective is shallow and filled with tittilation. I suppose that he listens to AM shock jocks while he types.
Do you suppose that we could get him an honorary diploma from an elementary school to enhance his credentials?
... and Grover Norquist is still trying to explain to Newt Gingrich why the rats are abandoning the sinking GOP ship.
Do you suppose that allowing the number of hungry people in the world to set a new record of over One Billion poses a security risk comprehendable to such an ignorant fellow?
Maybe if we had them tortured they would forget how hungry they have become.
How much is Al Queda paying Hoekstra to recruit for them?
Perhaps Jon Gambee was logged on to Twitter when he should have been doing his homework for the front page of the Banner on March 26. I have taken the time to collect the pertinent stats and find it difficult to justify reporting the "skyrocketing attendance" claimed by Keith Ferris.
"Annual Visitors
1997 – 2003
Historic Charlton Park Village, Museum & Recreation Area
(Parks and Recreation Plan, Feb. 2004, p. 13)
……..Visitors…..Vendors
1997 – 33,7753…..3,060
1998 – 32,868 …..3,058
1999 – 24,557*….3,160
2000 – 29,746…..3,148
2001 – 33,215…..6,232
2002 – 34,693…..5,347
2003 – 34,253…..7,052
*Inconsistent counting
(Hastings Banner, p. 16, March 26, 2009)
2006 – 9,803
2008 – 11,238**
2009 – 14,000 est.
** “skyrocketing attendance”
I suppose that the reporting will continue like this until after the next millage campaign.
Obviously, the taxpayers need to continue to write a blank welfare check for non-performance, since the Park Board has never intended it to be self-sustaining or to offer itself as as a tourist attraction.
On the other hand, this will not be on the list of fabulous success stories if any of the current County Commissioners has his eye on a more lucrative State elected position. This is a leadership failure.
Failing to recruit a qualified replacement for the successful Park Director in 2003 has had the predictable results. 20,000 people went elsewhere!
Mr. Grillo,
Have you asked anyone on the CP board if they changed their counting methods? That "drop" seems suspicious as I doubt 20,000 were so offended by the lack of a qualified director they decided to not attend a car show, watermelon seed spitting contest or go to the beach. Also, note that they lost one of their big events- likely they counted the people participating in the Civil War event as well as the visitors. I know it plays into your belief that the park millage is a "free ride/blank check" that isn't deserved (and I'm not exactly arguing with that here and now) but those numbers don't make sense- since it's actually 25,000 that went elsewhere in only a 3 year span.
Let's say the Civil War event is a 3-day event (I can't remember now but I know it's at least 2 days) and each of those days sees 1,000 re-enactors coming into the park. That would be 3,000 people. Now, let's say when you lose that even there's no reason for say another 3,000 visitors to show up each day. That's 6,000 people. By losing that event you've lost 9,000 people- I think those numbers are way high and they still don't add up to your 20,000 or even 25,000 (vendors at those shows would add an insignificant amount as well).
But why does the current effort to make something of the park keep getting discounted because previous regimes had no clue what they were doing and in fact seemed to be doing everything they could to manage it poorly? I don't disagree the effort still may be misguided and still not managed as well as it could be but it's like the people blaming Obama for bailing out banks that got our money while Bush was still in office, isn't it?
Also, it is true that not only stopping a freefall but adding 5,000 visitors in 3 years fits the definition of skyrocketing. Again, without knowing how the numbers get added I won't argue the math isn't being fudged to justify a budget and campaign for more money.
Well, I suppose that lacking a reliable source of local news information (a word derived from the infinitive: to inform) each of us is now obliged to personally explore all of the options alone. What is referred to as the "information age" should probably be referred to as the "age of misinformation" which keeps us on the thread of Twitter-derived reporting.
The numbers I presented, and referenced, were limited by my lack of data from the Park after 2003, when I lost interest in the leadership bungling. When the Park Board coup by the County Commissioners hired George Shannon to carry out the power struggle of a few Commissioners without checking on his ability, it is very likely, as you suggest, that the statistics were manipulated to reflect more wonderfulness than was actually happening.
I might suggest that you are correct, and perhaps the count no longer reflects the school children, since the Boards see the Park as an educational museum and not a source of entertainment or a tourist attraction. Perhaps there is a number greater than 10,000 that is a separate count called the "Education Division", that the news account missed because his cell phone went off or something.
My logic assumes that when the report by the Co-Directors was made to the County Board they would have dug up the largest possible numbers, knowing that only a nut-job like myself would pay any attention, and that nobody from the Banner would do any research.
The only reason it caught my eye was that the comparison was made with 2006 after attendance had crashed and the welfare checks had been threatened. I suppose that the headline could have stated that attendance "had nearly doubled", or had "increased astronomically" or had "dramatically improved", without implying that any homework had been done to check the figures. "Sky-rocketing" is so,...so,... well,...old-fashioned.
I added the issue of vendors to the stats because they were easily available and because they are an indication of a trend to provide attractive services up until 2003, when my info ended. Vendors typically don't increase unless they see a trend for more customers. Every tourist attraction I've visited had a definite focus on selling me stuff. The closest one being well-operated might be Binder Park Zoo, which could also use the excuse that it is an educational experience and is not required to provide entertainment, attract outsiders, or make any money. Take your grandkids and your credit card.
I deliberately avoided including some security issues that are harder to research. The biggest thieves don't appear to be coming out from the hoosegow in orange jumpsuits, but that is just rumor and inuendo that no self-respecting local paper would want to do investigative fact-finding about. Something about a cube-van being loaded up with stuff. Probably not anything that was recorded or listed as valuable artifacts (not that much of the stuff has been).
Maybe I should subscribe to Twitter for some accurate accounting.
Did you enjoy the Fathers Day Car Show...
...in Nashville?
BTW, thanks for the link to Daily Kos. Time-consuming but far more informative than most hard copy sources. I'm following the Honduran coup as closely as I can, and piecing the truth together has been enlightening.
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