Bait and Switch Anyone? "The Bloggers" Preview Posts and a Citizenship Academy to Come in 2010

Our recent appearance on Ted Baker's WGVA morning radio show featured a discussion of our post on Tiger Woods, Obama, and spin. We also previewed the themes we're looking to cover as NoStringsGeneva enters its fourth year, this coming March.

True to our original mission, we remain focused on public decision-making and accountability. We also remain committed to providing a fact-based point of view, resisting the urge of other media sources to rely on sound bites from local leaders without verifying the accuracy of those statements. We believe that our readers have come to rely on us for the "whole story" surrounding critical local issues, and we plan to keep delivering on that. As we mentioned to Ted, we will be starting with a look back at critical issues that have dominated community discourse in the past year.

Those include the Geneva City School District elementary school realignment plan (Were the projections accurate?), the City's Neighborhood Initiative (Is it catching on and how much is it costing?), City subcommittee work (What are those groups up to?), leachate (It keeps coming in, but what is the ‘it’?), and the ever looming national, state, and local budget crises (Who’s going to be hit the hardest by a failure of forward-thinking?).

Baker also engaged us in discussion of “bait and switch,” a political term Capraro first encountered when he entered public life in a big way in the early 1990s. He has been intrigued with it ever since, because it is so common in public affairs.

The term refers to presenting one set of reasons, rationalizations, premises, arguments—whatever will get elected officials, boards, or the public to agree on a certain action—and then, once taking that action is passed, changing the action, or the reason.

Ted’s example was selling the U.S. invasion of Iraq with fears of weapons of mass destruction, and then, once it happens, saying the invasion was about regime change and state building all along. And locally, we can think of several examples, like promising job creation to receive Empire Zone benefits, but never actually producing any new jobs, or pitching a new idea as a cost-saver but then watching costs soar after it’s implemented.

According to WiseGeek, “bait and switch” is an old marketing ploy:

“The bait and switch begins with the bait, an advertisement for a product at what seems like an extremely low price. Sometimes these products, such as a mattress, are of very low quality. Other times, the price may apply to one specific style of, or model of an item. In general, the bait is stocked in very low numbers. In some cases, only one or two of items are available at the low price.
Once the customer has walked into the retail establishment, the bait and switch moves to the switch. The salesperson will inform the customer that the store has sold out of the advertised item and offer a similar item at a higher price. Alternately the salesperson may push hard to be certain the customer understands that the lower-priced product is of inferior quality, and try to sell a better quality product at a higher price. Bait and switch may also be used to bring in customers with bait, low prices, and also raise prices of unrelated items that customers might also pick up at the time.”

Any sportsperson will tell you that deception is inherent in a bait scenario. If there were no barbed hook inside the worm, you’d just be feeding the fish one worm at a time on a string. We told Ted we’d be doing more posts on bait and switch, perhaps some case studies, of which there is never a shortage.

Our hope is that our readers will come to recognize the bait, uncover the hook, and not get caught up in the deception! This is the essence of accountability, getting to the core reasons, the true reasons, for public decision-making and making sure those, and only those, guide the public policy debate.

Of course, we want to cover the issues that matter the most to you. While we think the topics above are a good start, we welcome your suggestions!

In 2010 we also hope to begin a NoStringsGeneva “Citizens Academy” that will give anyone who's interested the opportunity to learn about and participate in local government decision-making, from filing FOIL requests to effectively debating the policy that arises from those assembled sets of facts. All in all, it looks to be an exciting year and we look forward to having you join us on the journey!