Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Tully Keeps RFRA Lie Alive

Star political columnist Matt Tully is not just highly unethical; he's also a reliable pimp for whatever lie the downtown mafia wants to feed to an uninformed public. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act permanently damaged Indiana's reputation, it's all Gov. Mike Pence's fault and that's all there is to it. No matter what happens now, fault must always be blamed on RFRA and Pence. Indiana State Fair Commission Executive Director Cindy Hoye, a Mitch Daniels crony, tells Tully the International Association of Fairs & Exposition chose San Antonio over Indianapolis to play host for its conventions in 2018 and 2019. Their decision had absolutely nothing to do with RFRA, notwithstanding Hoye's contrary suggestion. Nonetheless, Tully is their go-to guy to keep the lie alive:
The state legislature, which recently concluded its disaster of a session, can’t hide from the mess it left behind. Neither can the governor, even as he spends a few days traveling in China.
No, the damage done by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act lives on. And it’s costing Indiana in ways critical to its economy.
If you doubt that, consider a recent email Indiana State Fair Commission executive director Cindy Hoye sent to local convention, business, political and community leaders. In the email, Hoye noted with disappointment that Indianapolis recently lost out on a bid to become the 2018 and 2019 convention host for the International Association of Fairs and Expositions. That organization bills its massive four-day convention as the nation’s “largest event serving fairs, shows, exhibitions, and expositions.”
It’s the kind of event Downtown Indianapolis has been built on. The kind that brings the city a flood of visitors on expense accounts. The kind that fills restaurants, hotel rooms and museums. By all measures, it’s a great event. But it won’t be coming here. And neither will its 4,500 attendees or estimated $5 million in economic impact.
“The IAFE Board was presented pros and cons about each destination,” Hoye wrote. “RFRA was listed as a negative to choosing Indy and the IAFE Board voted to take their convention to San Antonio. … More work must continue.” . . . 
When Indianapolis loses out to another city for a convention, it's for one of three reasons: (1) the organization liked the amenities offered by the city it chose to host its convention better than what Indianapolis had to offer; (2) taking into account all factors, the host city chosen was a cheaper place to put on a convention; or (3) the preferred city offered better bribes to the organization to choose its city over competing cities. If Tully wants to do real reporting, he would investigate Visit Indy and the reputation it has nationally for its willingness to bribe convention planners using our tax dollars to choose Indianapolis over other cities. And while he's at it, he should start asking questions about why Leonard Hoops is making over $600,000 a year, along with other outrageous six-figure salaries paid to more than a half dozen other Visit Indy executives with our taxpayer dollars. Why is it Visit Indy is able to spend our taxpayer dollars buying off convention planners to host their conventions in Indianapolis? Would it be acceptable for lobbyists to do what Visit Indy does to lure conventions to convince lawmakers to vote for their special interests? Now there's a real story, Mr. Tully, not the manufactured stories your newspaper has become synonymous for publishing. There is not one organization that has turned Indianapolis down as a host city because of RFRA. That's a fact, and everything you hear to the contrary is a lie. Hoops, Hoye, Tully et al. know the truth, but the lie fits the agenda so let's go with it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hoops said quite plainly that we had lost a convention due to RFRA. I think Indiana has been completely tainted by the Act. Corporate America has spoken. Our Indiana Universities all decried the intent. I don’t know why you continue to advance the argument that RFRA was this meaningless, toothless, benign thing when everybody else extrapolates its evil intent. Why is everything a conspiracy? The answer is right in front of your face. Opponents of marriage equality stopped arguing some time ago that same-sex marriage was sinful or too immoral to tolerate. The arguments now range from states’ rights justifications to claims about optimal child rearing to the need to preserve marriage for heterosexuals. With similar attempts at subtlety, the religious liberty justifications for RFRAs are not presented publicly as affording a license to discriminate. They are swathed instead in arguments about recalibrating the freedoms of believers. Strip away all the justifications and excluding gays and lesbians seems to be precisely the impetus for the passage of these newer laws. And because nobody wants to say so, the pretexts collide. Ask Christians why they’re so mad about losing the original RFRA and they say they shouldn’t have to serve gays. Duh.
Opposition to marriage equality and the passage of Indiana’s capacious new RFRA are inextricably connected. Indiana enacted its law after the federal courts ruled that same-sex marriage was now legal in the Hoosier state. … RFRA was seen as a way to give residents and businesses that objected to same-sex marriage a way around having to cater to same-sex couples. And yet nobody—or at least nobody who doesn’t make pizzas—seems to want to fess up about the real reason for the sudden burning need for these new, turbocharged RFRAs, much less admit that they are aimed at the same group as the marriage bans. Indiana has been seriously tainted by this RFRA experience, and we will continue to lose business, including conventions, because of our new reputation as a State of Christian hate mongers.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Hoops claims an unnamed executive with an unnamed national association decided against Indianapolis because of RFRA. I'm calling him out on it because I know when we're being played by these criminal minds. Texas has been far more discriminatory and intolerant towards its gay population than Indiana. If the argument carried any weight, they would have never gone to Texas. The same can be said for Florida and Arizona, particularly Arizona, which has passed a lot of anti-immigrant legislation. Nobody mentions boycotts in those sunbelt states because they know when push comes to shove that the milder weather wins the day over what they may or may not think of the culture of the local people. I will not argue it anymore. Indiana's law isn't any different than the majority of other states. That's a fact. Lie all you want but I deal with facts here, and practically speaking, Indiana's law was no different than more than half of the other states in the country. Some people made a lot of money playing the lie. I don't get paid to lie here so take your propaganda and shove it where the sun doesn't shine. Real Christians weren't mad about the law's passage. I've heard the people talk. They aren't Christians, not by a long shot. They're people who belong to social clubs where they want to see and be seen.

Paul K. Ogden said...

Anon 12:59, "everybody" thinks RFRA would have an evil, discriminatory impact? What about all those law professors who said the law didn't affect anti-discrimination laws one bit.. Surely if they're wrong, and you're right, you can point to ONE case where RFRA allowed someone to deny service in violation of an anti-discrimination law. Of course you can't provide that case because it's never happened. Anywhere.

Paul K. Ogden said...

So the Association of Fairs and Expositions was so bothered by Indiana's RFRA so they chose San Antonio over Indianapolis. Do they not know Texas has an RFRA? I think the claim is so BS.

Pete Boggs said...

Tully won't tell readers about the canal killings or gondola murders of 2011; hardly a comfort to RIRA opponents. And he's not going to report on the LGBT vendor who refused to sell cotton candy to Colts fans at the Texas State Fair. Then again, we might as well have fun making this stuff up as they do...