Here is an excerpt from a great post Jay Greene had over on his blog.

Teacher Unions Will Do Absolutely Anything to Win

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If you don’t believe me check out this political ad from Alabama. Robert Byrne was in a Republican primary contest for governor of Alabama, but the teachers unions didn’t want him to win. So they “gave $1.5 million to 10 PACs, which in turn gave nearly $1 million to True Republican PAC. Joe Cottle, a lobbyist for the teachers’ group, is the treasurer of five of the PACs, and Rudy Davidson, a former education lobbyist and a contributor to A VOTE, was treasurer of four others.”

Fueled with laundered teacher union money, “True Republican PAC” ran the following ad accusing Robert Byrne of believing in evolution and doubting that every word of the Bible was true:

The Alabama Education Association, the local affiliate of the NEA, admitted to funneling this money to True Republican PAC despite the fact that the NEA has repeatedly declared its support for the teaching of evolution.

Truth, consistency, educational excellence, honesty, the well-being of children — none of this matters to the teacher unions. The only thing that matters is winning so that they can extract as much money from the public as possible.

The teacher union-funded ad has attracted some funny parodies. Bill Maher fails to correctly describe the origin of the ad, but has this howler:

I spit my mouthful of iced-tea halfway across the room today (figuratively) when I heard that Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan wanted to give $19,000 to Terry Bradshaw and a fake news outlet so they would produce a fake news segment promoting Fayetteville.  Here’s a link to the Northwest Arkansas Times story.  Here’s an excerpt:

“Fayetteville could gain national exposure when a production crew for the show “Today In America” arrives to showcase the area’s economic development possibilities and the good qualities of living here.

But it also comes with a price tag of more than $19,000.

“Today in America” is a nationally broadcast cable program moderated by NFL icon Terry Bradshaw. It features inspirational stories from across the country centering on a range of topics such as travel and lifestyle, business or medicine.

The Fayetteville spot will be about five minutes long and will include interviews with Fayetteville leaders, according to a memo Smith sent to the City Council. The project is not a typical news feature. Instead, it’s a collaborative project between the city and “Today In America.” The city will assist in script-writing by filling out a questionnaire, and gets final edit approval, according the participation agreement document.

In the case of the local segment, the producers contacted Fayetteville officials several weeks ago to inquire about shooting the piece, said Mayor Lioneld Jordan. The production company took interest in the Fayetteville Forward economic development initiative Jordan used to ask residents what sort of community they wanted Fayetteville to be.

Lindsley Smith, the city’s communication director, said the show’s producers are also interested in taking a closer look at what contributes to what many see as Fayetteville’s high quality of life. The segment will highlight why Fayetteville is a top environment for business.

“We really want to highlight the city, and I think this will put us on the national scene,” said Jordan.”

According to the city’s agreement with “Today in America,” Fayetteville will pay $19,800 for production. The money will come from the city’s economic development fund, Jordan said.”

Is it a scam? A lot of people certainly think so.  Read for yourself.  Here’s an article from CBS Moneywatch.  Here’s an article from ripoffreport.com.  Here’s a forum of others discussing that they think it is a scam.  And apparently, the group Bradshaw is with isn’t the only outfit soliciting anyone and everyone to pay for a fake news story to promote themselves.  There’s a little industry of these players.

Of course, one might argue that if  “Today in America” actually buys some time at 3 a.m. on some lame cable channel and mentions Fayetteville a few times, then the 19k is well-spent.  Scam or no scam, our name would get out there.

Then again, is that really the demographic we should be going for?  Folks watching fake-news infomercials at 3 a.m.?  I’d rather send the money to this guy.  He says he can guarantee prosperity.

UPDATE: The Fayetteville City Council approved the infomercial.  I have a new post about this topic here.
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Earlier we made the case (here) that changing Fayetteville’s HMR tax so it could be used for development and maintenance of parks, instead of just development of new parks, was a bad idea.   We argued that we’d rather see the money for park maintenance come from just about anywhere else before the park development fund was robbed.

Well, in what we are sure will eventually become a long list of expenses we would have preferred the city cut back on in order to maintain our parks, we begin with Bikes, Babes, and Bling.  $20,000 from the HMR tax was spent for the great festival that wasn’t.  Here’s a video of the festivities:

According to the Fayetteville Flyer, KHBS/KHOG is reporting that the “city” is estimating that the economic impact of the festival was $430,000.  They’re also asking people what their impression of the festival was.  The comments are pretty hilarious.  Read more here.

Updated for clarity.

There wasn’t really enough coverage this week about the demise of the so-called “climate-gate” scandal.  Sure, you can read in the Washington post here, or the Wall Street Journal here, or CBS News here how Michael Mann–one of the scientists whose reputation was tarnished by accusations that he had “fudged” data–was cleared by Penn State of any misconduct or wrongdoing.

From CBS News:

“The review cleared Mann of charges that he falsified climate change data, manipulated that data, improperly refused to share his research data and–generally behaved badly by trying to discredit other researchers’ work.”

From the Penn St. report:

“…the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.”

In response, the Republican chair of the House Science Committee, Sherwood Boehlert, said that “the attacks on scientists were a manufactured distraction, and today’s report is a welcome return to common sense.”

Media Matters is asking whether the news outlets (think Fox) that so-heavily pushed the climate-gate story will be as eager to report about the investigation that puts the controversy over Mann to rest.  Not likely. The coverage in Sunday’s Dem-Gaz amounted to about a one-inch by one-inch sentence in the newspaper’s sidebar.

That’s pretty much how it goes.  It’s much easier to start a lie than to end one.  “Climate-gate” will be forever with us.  It will always give certain people who prefer conspiracy theories to common sense a way to believe what they want to believe.  Accusations certainly don’t need to be true to be effective, they only need to be made.

Over at Education Next, Paul Peterson has a very astute piece about the good news found in the recently released evaluation of the DC voucher program (full disclosure, I am a co-author of the federal report).  You can read Peterson’s article here.

This is the same voucher program that Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln voted to kill.