MORE WHERE THIS CAME FROM. Last week, Think Progress called attention to an excellent local news report out of California debunking a new right-wing myth about Nancy Pelosi. In his compendium of agitprop, Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, Peter Schweizer of the Hoover Institution accuses Pelosi of hypocrisy because her vineyard in Napa Valley doesn�t use union workers. Since the election, with the right desperately trying to turn Pelosi into a Democratic liability a la Newt Gingrich or Tom DeLay, the claim has been getting attention in the conservative media. You will be shocked to hear that the charge is bogus. As the San Francisco ABC affiliate demonstrated in a news report, Pelosi pays more than the average union wage in her area. More to the point, unless workers decide to form a union, it is beyond her control whether they belong to one. It is illegal for her to discuss a union contract with her workers unless they first vote to unionize. I wrote a piece and edited another about the factual inaccuracies and logical fallacies in Schweizer�s book when it came out, so the fact that this particular claim has proven utterly dishonest is of no surprise to me. But it�s depressing to think that with the Dems in control of Congress that these kinds of dishonest smears will be flying all over talk radio, and believed by millions.
--Ben Adler
