Progressives Regresssives are renowned for making claims and not providing evidence. Propogandist Patrick Range McDonald provides an example in an article titled “Corporate landlords’ misinformation campaign to stop rent control.” Including the headline, on eight occasions McDonald claims that opponents of rent control are engaged in lies, disinformation, or misinformation. Despite the repetitive claims, he provides only one dubious example of a lie. Claims without evidence prove nothing.
Corporate landlords and the California Apartment Association (CAA) are the targets of McDonald’s diatribe. They are opposing a ballot initiative sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (ADF) called “Justice for Renters Act,” and are attempting to get their own initiative—Protect Patients Now— on the ballot. He calls this a
troubling abuse of the ballot initiative process to destroy an opponent, silence free speech, and stop Californians from voting on measures like Justice for Renters.
In other words, it’s okay for ADF to use the ballot initiative, but it’s an abuse of the process if landlords and the CAA use it.
McDonald goes on to claim that corporate landlords are donating money to a political action committee, which in turn gives the money to Protect Patients Now. He calls this an “outrageous shell game that lacks all transparency.” If he is aware of this, then apparently the “outrageous shell game” isn’t the nefarious secret that McDonald implies. Interestingly, after making claims without evidence, McDonald provides evidence that belies his claim.
This is the kind of confused and contradictory thinking that occurs when one does not employ the proper methodology. Part of a proper methodology is to consider the full context—all of the relevant facts and information. For example, a spokesman for Protect Patients Now said that “every” study shows that rent control harms housing production. After calling this a lie, McDonald counters with the claim that there “are numerous studies that say the exact opposite.”
McDonald is correct that there are studies that show that rent control doesn’t harm housing production, but there are even more studies that show that it is harmful to the housing supply. New construction is typically exempt from rent control for a period of years, so developers often continue to build housing. However, the owners of housing subject to rent control begin to pull their properties out of the rental stock. In most communities with rent control, the number of properties removed from the market exceeds the number of new units built. If we want to make good decisions regarding rent control, then we must consider the full context. And we must not accept claims without evidence.