George Rebane
Tonight I ‘discussed’ Prop23 with Steven Frisch on KVMR-FM 89.5. News director Paul Emery did his best to moderate the forty minute discussion which turned out to be something else. Steve was in his element and smooth as silk. I felt like I was pushing a car with three flat tires up a hill. Paul’s questions were broad and general, each of which would require a considered dissection and response. Wrong. It required the recitation of a well-rehearsed litany of ‘facts’ that were anything but.
But that doesn’t matter in a half-hour give-and-take with no clock on the respondents or systematic order of ‘but and rebut’. To be fair, we were all trying out an unknown format in real time, and to an extent we were all finding our way. But as a professional environmental lobbyist, Steve definitely appeared to fly a very familiar route. I discovered that going second to a laundry list of practiced propaganda is a losing proposition. Do you address each of the just stated ‘errors’, or just ignore what the other guy said and give your own pitch, regardless of the question?
Doing the former is what my training and instincts compel, but that takes excess time because you have to first again state the other’s original error before you can refute it. I could have just said ‘Bullcrap, none of that is true!’, but mom unfortunately taught me different rules for polite company. Going first with your claims is definitely the preferable high ground. Taking an independent tack would wind us up talking past each other with the listener having no way to actually evaluate the points advanced. But listening to the Barbara Boxer – Carly Fiorina debate that followed, ‘damn the torpedos’ would definitely have been the correct order of the day.
Afterward, as I was trying to screw my head back onto my shoulders, I was puzzling on how many times Steve actually does this every day or week. My goodness, the man is truly a pro who spouts this stuff effortlessly. And here I had prepared a ¾ inch stack of tabbed notes in my lap from which I tried to find the exact citation that would blow his last ‘glib’ right out of the water. Sorry Rebane, this is not a well-tempered battle of reason and logic, but the recitation of quick lists that pass for facts – you lose.
Before yielding the field, I do want to point out that voting YES on Prop23 would do nothing to “roll back” our air quality laws as claimed by the left. Everything we have in place, stays in place. Also, the so-called 500K “clean tech” jobs and “12,000” companies that are supposed to be in danger of being lost if AB32 is not fully implemented, is beyond hogwash. Those jobs exist now without all the new taxes and regulations, are already in place, and will remain at their profit making companies. They were labeled ‘clean tech’ jobs through an arbitrary and politically dictated procedure that makes sausage stuffing look like assembling microchips in a clean room. (more at NC Media Watch here and here.)
No doubt about it Steve, you were slick: Frisch – 1, Rebane – 0.
rebanesruminations.com 
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