Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog! This blog is a temporary project whose purpose is to publicize the abuses perpetrated by the editors of the Kittanning Leader Times newspaper, in hopes that shining a light on their misdeeds will lead to positive change.

For the most part, posts to this blog will appear once a week or less, as the Leader Times only publishes editorial content on Saturdays. Occasionally news stories are so slanted that they beg for criticism. As I have time I may post about those. If it happens that the paper shows significant improvement I will post about that too.

For a long time I let my frustrations with the paper's editorial stance fester. I figured their parent company was already taking plenty of hits from 2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com over the editorial content of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Trouble is, out here in Armstrong County, PA people generally don't pay much attention to what goes on in the Tribune-Review and they certainly don't visit the 2 Political Junkies blog. People who are exceptions to this observation are welcome to correct me (please!). Every once in awhile I would write a letter to the editor which invariably did not get published.

This last week the editorial staff took a series of steps that finally provoked me to action. First, they published an editorial critical of the Clean Power Plan finalized and presented by President Obama August 3rd. This editorial was based on a post to a right-wing website by Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist who has a track record of opposing the consensus of climate science with bad data and bad arguments. It was bad enough that the editors relied on Joe Bastardi, but they also told their readers that his opinions on the Clean Power Plan were "all they needed to know" about it. Oh really? I wrote them a letter pointing out that it would be in their readers' interest to know that Bastardi is a serial kook when it comes to climate science. Not only did they not publish the letter, they doubled down the next Saturday with another editorial critical of the Clean Power Plan, this time based on an article in the Wall Street Journal written by Thomas Pyle. See my next post for a detailed debunking of the editorial. Let me just say here that somehow the editors did not see fit to inform their readers that Mr. Pyle is a former lobbyist for Koch Industries and whose current employment at a D.C. non-profit is largely funded by gas, oil, and coal interests. I guess if the editors cite the study rather than publishing it directly they don't have to tell their readers that the author whose arguments they rely on may have a bias?

If anyone finding this blog wants to contribute, please let me know via a comment.  I could sure use help.