Feb 7, 2014
On January 31, the San Jose Mercury News printed a column by Lisa Rickard, President of the U.S. Chamber Institute of Legal Reform. Ms. Rickard strongly criticized the decision by Santa Clara County Judge James Kleinberg to employ public nuisance statutes to hold paint manufacturers responsible for health problems associated with the use of lead paint. Specifically, she stated, “It…
Jan 24, 2014
Mega Whopper In a recent editorial, the editors of the San Jose Mercury News supported efforts of the San Jose City Council to “tweak” (the Mercury’s term) the provisions regarding disability retirement in Measure B, Chuck Reed’s flawed and failing pension reform initiative. While agreeing that some tweaks needed to be made, and pointing out the Mercury News had in…
Jan 17, 2014
Galactic Whopper During the 2012 elections, opponents of increasing San Jose’s minimum wage spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to spread distorted and false information. Although the voters decisively rejected their fear tactics, they’re still at it. This time they’ve published a phony report and bought advertising to show the negative effects of the minimum wage increase on “San Jose…
Jan 17, 2014
I am pleased to inaugurate this new column entitled “Whopper of the Week.” The mission of the column is to identify statements, quotes, articles, reports, and other forms of communication that contain a “whopper,” – a presentation that is highly inaccurate, misleading, distorted or deceitful. Three categories of whoppers will be identified – based on the scale of the misinformation…