"If you tell a lie that's big enough, and you tell it often enough, people will believe you are telling the truth, even when what you are saying is total crap."
--Richard Belzer, "UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Believe"
The all-out, big-bucks assault on Sen. Steve Goss and Rep. Cullie Tarleton by the Eshelman-Pope smear machine alleges that Goss and Tarleton are tax-and-spend liberals who are bad for business, among additional total crap.
The Wilmington Star News editorialized yesterday about the Eshelman-Pope Big Lie:
The website for Real Jobs NC, which is seeking to toss out alleged Democratic spendthrifts and replace them with virtuous Republicans, declares that "North Carolina is currently rated as having one of the worst tax environments for business in the Southeast."
You've heard similar statements before. Stated as gospel, they suggest that North Carolina's tax policies practically drive off honest businesses.
If that's so, why has Site Selection magazine -- whose subscribers are corporate executives who make decisions about where to locate plants -- ranked North Carolina at or near the top of the list of states with the best business climate for nine years running? We must be doing something right....
Why do people automatically assume that a heavily taxed and regulated economy is bad for business? When I look at the GDP per capita, Norway, which has high taxes and a heavily regulated economy, also has one of the highest GDP's per capita of any country in the world.
ReplyDeleteNorway, shmorway, the issue is The Big Lie. I don't know this guy who wrote about Elvis (what was his big lie, anyway?) but it was your friend and mine Adolf Hitler who in Mein Kampf said the same thing. We have got to get the media to keep calling out and calling out these total falsehoods being put out by Republicans who will do anything, even emulate Hitler, to get into office.
ReplyDeleteGodwin's Law in one step.
ReplyDeleteMike D.:
ReplyDeleteNOT Godwin's law at all. Historical truth. You are not applying the law correctly. It is when you call Hitler to attack an argument. This was just asigning, correctly, its origins.