There He Goes Again
Andrew Kujan is beaming about the Maryland Stadium Authority’s vote to increase the pay of day laborers who clean Camden Yards to fall in line with Maryland’s new “living wage law”.
My colleagues Brian Griffiths and Brian Gill dealt with the economic argument of why this might not be such a good idea, and Kujan’s craptacular responses. See here, here, and here.
However, I take issue with Kujan’s bad habit of Dowdifying quotes and ascribing motivations to people he disagrees with, that just aren’t true.
Kujan pulls a passage from the Sun article concerning Dennis B. Mather the MSA board member who voted against the wage increase:
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Stadium authority board member Dennis B. Mather, who voted against the change,
said he was concerned that the workers the authority was trying to help would
end up losing their jobs, pointing out that more people would be willing to work
the graveyard shift at Camden Yards for $11.30 an hour. “My concern is that the
people we are trying to protect may not have a job,” Mather said. Later, he
added: “Often, when we pass laws, we intend to do one thing and something else
happens.”
Kujan says, “Of course, not everyone is happy to see some working folks catch a break. One member on the Stadium authority who voted against the increase was Dennis B. Mather, who also happens to be an “expert” at a conservative think tank…He is so concerned about the people who will be making a living wage, but of course he wouldn’t mind seeing them fired.”
Where in any of the information, reported by the Sun, can any honest person ascribe to Mather the notion that he is unhappy to see working folks catch a break, or that he would be happy to see them fired. In fact, Mather’s comments are a a short form of the larger extended arguments my colleagues already made.
Also, notice the snarky quotes around the word expert. I checked the link, Mather has an MBA and he was former chairman of the Insurance and Tort Reform Committee of the Health Council of the Policy Forum of the Republican National Committee, he gave frequent testimony in Annapolis on health-reform legislation, and was legislative chair and executive vice president of the Maryland Association of Health Underwriters. I’d say given Mr. Mather’s experience he is qualified to speak and write about those issues.
Of course we know why Kujan pulls these little stunts. It is an article of his progressive faith that
anyone slightly to the right of Mao is a greedy, mustache twirling Robber Barron, who has it in for the working man, and free market ideas and arguments are without merit.
Its time for Andrew Kujan to grow up and realize that his political opponents are not evil corporate toadies keeping the working man down or oppressing any other victim class designated by the left. We are advancing an intellectual an political philosophy we believe in. Whereas progressives like Kujan and Isaac Smith are part of an angry movement bereft of any intellectual heft, more concerned with taking power than advancing any new ideas.
Kujan’s use of Maureen Dowd tactics crystallizes another key difference between conservatives and progressives. In general, progressives tend to think conservatives are evil, whereas conservatives don’t necessarily think progressives are evil, so much as they are just wrong.
