Inside The Fake News Sausage Factory

Maybe there's a whole bunch of of unsold books moldering in Russell Gold's basement?  What other reason would there be to create fake news plugging a book you wrote that was published last year?  That seems to be what happened last week on Twitter.

See that article he quoted in the original post.  Here it is.

It's not a very long article, around 250 words.  Probably takes all of a minute to read, if that.  But it looks like Russell didn't bother to read the article before tweeting.  He tries to blame the closure of the "wind turbine factory" on Arkansas' Congressional Delegation (who, BTW, seem to be busy with real stuff and couldn't be bothered to play the fake news game with Russell or the reporter from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette).

Here's what the article said about why the "factory" is closing.

The decision to close the site wasn’t a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the company said. Rather, the industry is moving toward wind turbine blades larger than the 44- and 62-meter blades made at the Little Rock facility in order to bring down the cost of renewable energy, according to the spokesman.

The factory is closing because it cannot manufacture blades large enough for new wind farms.  It has nothing to do with elected officials, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the failure of the Plains & Eastern Clean Line.

But Russell said the closure was "the consequences of political decisions."  And some reporter with little to do tried to gin up a fake news story using Russell's made up "news" about the factory closure, instead of actually asking the people at the factory (or reading their own dang story on the closure, for goodness sake!).  To add absurdity to insanity, Michael Skelly was reached for comment.

In an interview Friday, Skelly said the wind farms would have required 3,500 to 4,000 blades. The Little Rock factory would have had plenty of business, he added.

Opposition from the state's two Republican U.S. senators, John Boozman of Rogers and Tom Cotton of Dardanelle, played a major part in derailing the effort, Skelly said.

"They tried to pass a law in the United States Senate that would kill the project," Skelly said. "That does have a chilling effect on a project and on customers for a project, more specifically."

Except, according to the factory (and a prior news story) the Little Rock factory could not have made blades big enough to supply the fabled wind farms of the Plains & Eastern Clean Line.  The factory would not have had any business even if the project had been successful and would likely be closing anyhow.

And except that the legislation introduced by Boozman and Cotton was not successful and played no part in derailing Skelly's transmission project.  The project failed because there were no customers.  It's as simple as that.  It wasn't wanted or needed.  It was a stupid idea that wasted hundreds of millions of dollars of investor cash.  Plains & Eastern had no customers before Boozman and Cotton introduced legislation, and they still had no customers afterwards.  There's no proof that the legislation had any role in driving away customers.  I'm pretty sure they could have escaped any contract if the legislation had been enacted, but it never even got close, not really.

Skelly is still making excuses for why he failed.  It's always someone else's fault.  Might as well be, since he wasted someone else's money on it.

This is one guilt trip that has no passengers.  Nobody cares anymore.  Good luck selling any moldy leftover books!