Burlington's nearest neighbors to the proposed F-35 base are largely of the opinion that the best neighbor the F-35 could be would be to be someone else's neighbor, but Schneider didn't get to that question anywhere in the five reports.
In Part 3, the reporter spends still more time describing various noise levels, but manages to avoid mentioning that the Air Force's own environmental impact statement states unequivocally that the FF-35 will make about twice as much peak noise as the F-16s currently based in Burlington. He does get a colonel to comment about the community that "We are their Guard, and we want to be good neighbors."
The reporter does not ask the colonel how wanting to be a good neighbor squares with the Air Force estimate that as many as 3,000 homes in Winooski and South Burlington will be rendered uninhabitable, and thus unsalable on the open market.
Fact-Checking
Can Be So Time-Consuming
In Part 4, the reporter talks to a Winooski resident who expects to have to move. But when she tells him the Air Force environmental impact statement is flawed because it's based on date from the 2000 censes instead of the 2010 census, he doesn't bother to check this easily verifiable assertion. (A letter from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force last July says: "I want to assure you that Burlington" was scored correctly in 2009 [emphasis added]. The Air Force has refused to make this scoring public.)
Schneider also refers to "a petition that garnered more than 10,700 signatures," but he leaves hanging the "question how many of those people who signed the petition actually live in the affected areas." He does not mention the deceptive nature of this "petition," which shows clearly on camera. He does talk to a real estate agent with a clear conflict of interest to the effect that home values won't suffer, but he leave out the factor that sustains home values in the uninhabitable zones -- that the Federal Aviation Administration has a program to buy these homes eventually.
Nor did the reporter connect this circumstance with his interview with UVM professor Arthur Woolf's observation about the consequences of an F-35 base in Burlington: "Almost always the case is that when there's costs, the costs are impacted on a relatively small number of people and the benefits are widely diffused." There was no follow-up question about whether this was a justified transfer of wealth, or a form of class warfare, or was motivated by the immigrant communities it would displace.
Valparaiso,
Florida, Suffers Its F-35s Painfully
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
