The Wall Street Journal's First Smear Of The New Year

In its first edition of the New Year, the Wall Street Journal allows a Republican hack to smear a generous Democrat.

Ted Hayes, a recent Republican convert who imagines himself a homeless activist, writes:

Here's how the situation played out. Recently, I was invited to address a local Republican Women's Club; my landlord read an article in the local paper reporting on the event. Soon after, I received a notice raising the Dome Village rent from $2,500 a month to $18,330. Shocked, I inquired as to the seriousness of the change, and the property owner blurted out that the cause of our "eviction" was "because you are Republican." He said that as a Democrat, he was tired of helping me and the Dome Village. In other words, let the homeless be damned.

And people think the Democrats are the party of compassion and tolerance.

Here's the facts, which the Journal understandably omits:

Mike Sidley, the attorney for the limited-liability partnership that owns the land, and son of Milton Sidley, confirmed the rent increase but vehemently denied it had anything to do with politics.

"For 12 years, they've allowed [Dome Village] to remain there at below-market rent," Mike Sidley said Saturday. No one has ever come forward to attempt to purchase it at a market value and donate the land to Dome Village, he added.

Sidley said his clients were upset that Dome Village was announcing the rent increase close to Christmas, placing his clients in a bad light.

"When no one else would step up to the plate [to help Dome Village], my clients did. But there was never a thank you. Never a Christmas card. Nothing," he said. "No one in the city of Los Angeles ever stepped forward."

The owner subsidized "Hayes"'s project for 12 years, and the ungrateful douchebag Hayes thanks the owner by putting the words "let the homeless be damned" into his mouth.

Even more egregiously, Hayes attempts to smear the owner by suggesting he is racist. Hayes lards his article with alleged (and to the extent specifics are mentioned, bogus) claims of racist slurs against African-American Republicans. Yet there's no evidence, or even an allegation, that the owner spoke such slurs against Hayes or anyone else, or that the owner is in any way racist. Hayes and the Journal are the true bigots, by equating the owner's conduct with the alleged biased statements.

Hayes ends his article with the standard Republican lies about "Democrats persecuting black Republicans" and African-Americans "[who] have ourselves curtailed the freedom of political expression through the threat of retaliatory consequences." Here we see the Journal admit, by its actions, that it doesn't have much use for the free market, private property, private charity or freedom of expression. But it loves the G.O.P.