Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Gannett Continues To Propagate RFRA Fraud

The psyop operated out of Langley, Virginia on the people of Indiana continues. The Gannett-owned Indianapolis Star provides a completely bogus survey of convention planners to try to make the case that the lies it told last year about Indiana's RFRA law are having a lasting damaging impact on the decision of convention planners and tourists to visit Indianapolis.

This survey was commissioned by Visit Indy, which spends tens of millions of our tax dollars each year bribing incentivizing convention planners to host conventions in Indianapolis. They first have to sidestep Visit Indy's admission that the number of rooms it claims it booked last year actually exceeded its goals for the year. Visit Indy paid Research Market Planning & Walker Research to survey national meeting decision makers and Chicago residents. Why Chicago residents? Supposedly because they are Indy's largest source of leisure travelers.

So the survey question is whether those surveyed agreed that Indy "welcomes all." According to the survey, 45% of the decision makers agreed with the statement while only 43% of Chicago residents agreed with the statement. The survey result dropped to 28% and 38%, respectively, when the question was broadened to include Indiana in general. While those surveyed were not asked directly about RFRA, they were asked to comment if Indianapolis had been in the news lately. supposedly 58% brought up RFRA or LGBT rights without being prompted. So Gannett uses its national newspaper chain to talk negatively about Indiana's RFRA law and LGBT rights non-stop for the past year, and it wonders why that issue would pop into minds of those surveyed. Have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Gannett says that a separate survey by Smith Travel Research that Indianapolis was only second behind St. Louis for having negative publicity that might deter convention planners and travelers from visiting the city. Apparently there's no "Houston, we have a problem" after the city's voters there voted last year to repeal the city's human rights ordinance protecting its LGBT community from discrimination. The most truthful finding in the poll was the fact that the vast majority of those surveyed had a vanilla reaction to Indianapolis, another way of say it's boring. But Leonard Hoops, who earns more than a half million buck a year thanks to Indianapolis taxpayers wants to blame RFRA for the fact that he's got fewer conventions in the pipeline.
. . . Many of those surveyed had no opinion at all of Indy, reflecting past perception data showing Indy as "vanilla," Hoops said. About 70 percent of Chicago residents who hadn't visited Indy said the city either had no image or that it was boring. Among those who had visited Indy, most described it as fun but didn't recall specifics.
“With the exception of RFRA, there are no significant negative perceptions of Indy; rather there is a void,” the poll summary says.
Further muddying the waters, early indications from industry officials are that tourism was strong in 2015, with Visit Indy surpassing its goal of 775,000 hotel night bookings. But those who have seen data that's expected to be released next week say there are also troubling signs that RFRA's true impact will be felt in years to come, because of a delay in when conventions are booked.
"Jan. 1, 2016, we have less in the pipeline today than we did in '15, '14, and '13," Hoops said. "It’s better than '12, but it’s worse than the last 3 years.”
Hoops suspects his staff is competing for fewer conventions than in prior years because event planners may have crossed Indy off the list over RFRA concerns. But, he acknowledges, that's difficult to prove . . .
Why won't the lying scumbags at the Indianapolis Star won't talk about is the wars playing out between the taxpayer-financed tourism agencies across the country to lure conventions to their respective cities? There is a bidding war taking place, particularly between cities like Indianapolis and Chicago which pour tens of millions of dollars into these taxpayer-funded tourism agencies to essentially bribe convention planners to come to their city. They offer discounted convention rooms. They give away free use of their convention facilities, and in some cases, actually provide direct subsidies to help underwrite a group's convention costs. That's on top of all of the wining and dining, free sports and concert tickets and other freebies they throw at key decision-makers, which would be front-page news when lobbyists use the same tactics to convince lawmakers to support their legislation at the State House. No, the Indianapolis Star and the rest of the useless news media in Indianapolis are covering up that criminal enterprise, which they actually approve of. The Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune have been doing everything they can to pry open records to show what's going on. Not here. They want the dirty secrets kept away from the public because it doesn't fit their agenda for us.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

. . . psyop operated out of Langley, Virginia on the people of Indiana . . .

I know you didn't like the tourism survey, but wow...

Just for the record, they're talking about rfra in Atlanta this week as they open their legislative session, and the same issues are being talked about. How Brewer vetoed Arizona's bill but Pence signed it and the backlash that followed. There is also a Baptist lawsuit against the revised rfra that doesn't exactly make Indiana look progressive. And dozens of mentions in the national press, from the way Pence's State of the State gave people who want to discriminate on the basis of rfra hope, to left wing surveys and legislation trackers that rank Indiana among the most repressive States. Notice how nobody, and I mean nobody, talks about Pence as a national candidate anymore. At one time he was the fourth highest ranking member of the Republican party, but now he's kind of a joke. Sticking your head in the sand doesn't make reality go away. Indiana was a laughing stock not that long ago. People remember that. Claiming it never happened, and that its all made up by the CIA is hardly persuasive.

Anonymous said...

Gary, I note quite non-judgmentally your interest in the CIA and I thought you might enjoy seeing what their counterpart in Britain had been up to lately:

LONDON — A UK equality charity has named Britain’s domestic spy agency its employer of the year.

Stonewall, a UK charity devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality gave MI5 top marks Tuesday among 400 employers. The results are based in part on a confidential survey of 60,000 staff members, who are asked about workplace culture, diversity and inclusion.

The annual survey underscores the strides made by the spy agency, which failed in the past to welcome gay candidates. Critics had argued that disclosing sexual preferences would leave spies more vulnerable to blackmail.

But after the 2005 London transit attacks that killed 52 commuters, Britain’s spy agencies — both MI5 and MI6 — have led aggressive recruiting drives for candidates from diverse ethnic and sexual backgrounds.

Anonymous said...

And lest we forget who the real enemies are, perhaps we here in Indiana forget what ISIS is doing to Christians and to gay people, every day, in the name of their religion.

ISIS militants have destroyed the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, the AP reported Wednesday. Satellite photos obtained by the AP show St. Elijah’s Monastery on the outskirts of Mosul has been completely leveled after surviving attacks for 1,400 years. The 27,000-square-foot religious building has joined a list of more than 100 religious and historic sites in Iraq and Syria that have been destroyed at the hands of the terror group. “Bulldozers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly explosives turned those stone walls into this field of gray-white dust,” said imagery analyst Stephen Wood. “They destroyed it completely.”

If Isis were able to march thru Indiana, they would kill every Christian, and they would kill every gay. I would like to think we Christians and gays can find a way to get along a little better. It works just fine in a lot of States. I just wish here in Indiana we could do it on our own without intervention by the federal courts. Remember when Ronald Reagan said that he thought if there were an outside threat from space, how all our internal disagreements would fall away and we would unite. I know two gay couples who have been married in the last 3 months. And they all get up every Sunday morning and go to church.

Anonymous said...

If Indianapolis lost every convention, every sports team, every boondoggle the Cap Board fools with...the effect on the Indiana economy would not approach the level of a mite bite on an Elephant's Ass.

As for thread hijackers...were the four words and a comma, "Muslims, have at it"

Anonymous said...

Well, isn't that special. Another thinly veiled "tossing of the gays to the Muslims" by 1:04. I just can't get enough of that Christian compassion. Its almost as if Jesus is in the room with us.

Anonymous said...

Anon 5:41 - Your comment is a bit disingenuous at best and outright mean-spirited and misleading at worst. I'm leaning towards worst. You don't know that he's a Christian, but you assume he is because it fits your agenda. When it comes to spewing hatred and vitriol, gays have the market cornered which wouldn't bother me one way or the other if you weren't so self-righteous about it. I am a Christian, and I certainly don't wish the Muslims on you. In fact, you despise what I wish for you, which is a change of heart and salvation, so I won't say it. That leaves nothing at all. Increasingly, that's what I feel for gay America. Nothing at all.

Anonymous said...

Anon 9:32 - Pence was never a serious candidate for any national office. I know this is hard to get your Hoosier head around, but Indiana candidates don't play well with national audiences. They just don't. This is a peculiar state. It's totally out of step with what's happening elsewhere. It's stubborn and obstinate and full of itself and thinks having more freeways per capita than kentucky makes it special. No, Pence's fall from grace had nothing at all to do with RFRA no matter how much you wish it so. He was never a serious candidate. He was the Rick Perry of Yankeeland.

Pete Boggs said...

The Scar is jour-nihilistic fraud. It's a view-scraper; not a newspaper. Denying the spirit of the Lord; they idiotically embrace tyranny.

Anonymous said...

7:21, your response is so typical. You Christians go from preaching against us nonstop with your hate the sin love the sinner nonsense, to admitting all you care to wish on gays is a change of heart and salvation, which is basically just saying you don't understand us at all, to then admitting you've moved on to not thinking about us at all, which is probably where you started. Its just so holier than thou. I don't care about you at all, and I don't care if you change. If you find that self-righteous, screw you. I'm not trying to win your approval. They hypocrisy of Christian conservatives is right out there for everybody to see. I'm not special. But neither are you.

Pete Boggs said...

Anon 9:07: However witting, you "basically" say you don't understand Christians at all; hypocrisy being more familiar to you than you're willing to admit...