{"id":7436,"date":"2016-12-19T07:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7436"},"modified":"2016-12-18T19:24:22","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T00:24:22","slug":"governor-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7436","title":{"rendered":"Governor Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the reasons why Donald Trump was elected President is that he made things up out of thin air and the press, for the most part, let him get away with it.\u00a0 Now Governor Larry Hogan is doing the same thing.\u00a0 And so far, it\u2019s working.<\/p>\n

We refer of course to the Governor\u2019s all-out campaign to repeal this year\u2019s transportation transparency law<\/a>.\u00a0 The law, passed over the Governor\u2019s veto, would require the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) to rank transportation projects according to a variety of numerical criteria to bring transparency into what has been an opaque funding process.\u00a0 The Governor claims that it would require him to kill most state transportation projects.\u00a0 But in fact, the plain language of the law lets the Governor have final say over which projects get funded<\/a>.\u00a0 It states, \u201cNothing in this Act may be construed to prohibit or prevent the funding of the capital transportation priorities in each jurisdiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

So just like Trump, the Governor is making things up and trotting them out to the press.\u00a0 How did the press react?\u00a0 Erin Cox of the Baltimore Sun got the facts right<\/a>, quoting both the law\u2019s language and an advisory letter from the Attorney General\u2019s office to demonstrate that Hogan is wrong.\u00a0 A reader had to review the article carefully to glean these things, however, as it also included lots of back-and-forth between politicians.\u00a0 The Washington Post<\/a> and the Capital Gazette<\/a> also quoted the law\u2019s language, though only in passing.<\/p>\n

Other press outlets got suckered.\u00a0 The Hagerstown Herald-Mail<\/a>, Frederick News-Post<\/a>, Ocean City Today<\/a>, WMAR (Baltimore)<\/a>, WJLA (Washington)<\/a>, Bethesda Magazine<\/a>, Afro-American<\/a>, WMDT<\/a>, WTOP<\/a> and Montgomery Community Media (MCM)<\/a> never mention what the law actually says, depicting the issue as a he-said-she-said dispute between politicians.\u00a0 Ocean City Today, WJLA and WMDT never bothered to quote any Democrats, giving the Governor free rein.\u00a0 WJLA, WMAR, MCM and the Afro-American stated falsely that certain transportation projects either \u201cwere,\u201d \u201cwill be\u201d or \u201chave been\u201d canceled.\u00a0 Again, the law says no such thing and a simple fact-check could have uncovered that.<\/p>\n

The real story here is that one side is accurately characterizing state law and the other side is making stuff up.\u00a0 No one in the press wrote that story.<\/p>\n

Even more incredibly, the Governor said in his press conference about the law that the General Assembly \u201crammed it through without hearings or any public input.\u201d\u00a0 You can see that in the video below at the -10:40 mark.<\/p>\n