Commentary, Part 1: Melanie Salins – a pattern of scare-tactic disinformation and one BIG LIE

It has been brought to my attention that in Facebook posts early in the week of August 14th to her social media “friends” in response to Royal Examiner reporting on school board issues and my Op-Ed on implications and potential strategies surrounding Ms. Salins initiative to remove the Warren County School Board from the Virginia School Boards Association, she identified me as “the self proclaimed communist” of the Royal Examiner staff.

Plain and simple – this is a lie. The only question is whether it is a conscious one or a haphazard passing on of false information one didn’t bother to fact-check. But that it is a lie is indisputable because neither she, nor anyone else has ever heard me self-proclaim to being a communist. Because, not only have I NEVER embraced communism as a socio-political system, but I have never, even jokingly, self-identified as such because I don’t think that inherently totalitarian communist rule is funny. However, having a political and socio-economic opinion to the “left” of many in this community, including many I count as friends, some of my more conservative friends and acquaintances will jokingly greet me as “the commie” in public places.

My verbal response to all such negative stereotyping, done jokingly or not, has ALWAYS been: “I am NOT a communist – I DO believe in private property, just not TOO much of it. When you’re into that second or third billion dollars of personal wealth you can come off some of it in federal and state taxes to support governmental programs to help raise the working poor and middle classes’ educational, employment, and living standard opportunities. So, you could call me a progressive socialist, but NEVER a commie – or a liberal. Don’t call me liberal, liberals are too ineffectual!”

Am I surprised that Ms. Salins has publicly lied about me, consciously or carelessly, in an effort to try and discredit Royal Examiner reporting and opinion pieces concerning her actions as an elected county school board official? Somewhat. And I guess it’s a sign of the times to see a supposedly mature adult elected to public office, and she is not the first, acting like bullying kids in the use of their social media platform to throw out stereotypical labels (“left-wing media”) and outright lies (“self-proclaimed communist”) to deflect focus away from her own disinformation campaign in support of her, dare we call it partisan, agenda for Warren County Public Schools.

As for her social media criticism of Royal Examiner articles referencing the potential of cuts to teacher salaries, we will note that cuts to salaries was one of a long list of potential cuts to the public schools budget in an agenda document the County-Schools Liaison Committee presented to the board of supervisors as late as an August 9 supervisors work session. And material in that document was referenced by public speakers the following week at the August 16 board meeting at which a final budget, including those raises, was approved by the supervisors as Royal Examiner reported. We suggest Ms. Salins not “kill the messenger” for reporting on the content of documents produced by Schools and County officials in their discussion about the final school budget.

Melanie Salins

As for her Facebook page friends debate over whether Publisher Mike McCool or his editorial staff is “the problem” in not reporting school board news as she would have it framed, I would suggest that the fact that Mr. McCool, a well-known conservative and Donald Trump supporter, and his more left-leaning editorial staff, including this one who doesn’t trust either major political party, can work together to report local news and offer individual opinions clearly labeled as such, is a strong indication our agenda is not a partisan one, but rather unity in a search for the TRUTH of local issues – or “The News Behind the News” as an early Royal Examiner slogan stated.

There will be a second installment to this rebuttal, further exploring Ms. Salins inaccurate public pronouncements about continued membership in the VSBA. Our information is that a school board vote on that membership is likely to come at a school board work session on the third Wednesday of September (Sept. 21).