Mixed Message
I want to thank Tony Collett for the pass-along alert on a piece concerning Ralph Nader's association with organizations that through a mixture of covert and deceptive fees, mostly at the collegiate level, extract money for groups rightly or wrongly claiming to be operating in the public interest. This is an important issue on two levels: An alert that these built-in, often non-negotiable fees exist, and that Nader is a party to the system that creates and sustains them. For that message, I commend the author for fulfilling the role of a journalist.
Other biases in the piece, however, are strong. It would have been far more effective if the author, Radley Balko, stuck to the underlying and worthwhile alert to the public and apparent hypocrisy of Nader being involved in organizations that attempt to either pick the pockets of, or even directly extort money from, people seeking an education. That part is what people need to know. However, if one is to maintain a biweekly showcase at FoxNews.com he may have to at least tip his hat in deference to the hand that butters his bread some of the time. (I have no idea if his column displays such strong biases normally, as I'd never heard of the man before this morning. I have seen Fox News' political tilt up close too many times to pretend it's not there.)
However, the author shows he has an unrelated, partisan axe to grind as he repeatedly leans, with intended irony, on the PIRGs' "apolitical" label as he more than suggests that any recommendations against such things as the drilling of ANWR, the weakening of forest protections, or advocating tougher CAFE standards, are blatantly political. This is similar to the GOP's insistence that Congressional resistance to backwards-looking judicial nominees are nothing more than partisan obstructionism... as opposed to, well, them doing their job to help protect their constituents from the Bush administration's attempt to turn the clock back to someone's conception of the 1950's. Of course, it isn't as if Bush actually needs any cumbersome approval process to push his rejected nominees into position.
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