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Edit-splanations
*She's a well known sodomite. All will reveal in good time. --[[User:TK|<small>Sysop-</small>TK]] <sub>[[User_talk:TK|/MyTalk]]</sub> 05:18, 11 May 2007 (EDT)
*She's a well known sodomite. All will reveal in good time. --[[User:TK|<small>Sysop-</small>TK]] <sub>[[User_talk:TK|/MyTalk]]</sub> 05:18, 11 May 2007 (EDT)
==My Most Humble Edits==
A new Pelosi paragraph shows up, and it has some issues—typos, grammar mistakes, unsupported factual assertions, incomplete information. I spend a few minutes cleaning it up, and doing so in a way that (I thought) was completely “fair and balanced”, as they say. But [[User:TK|TK]] reverts the whole enchilada with nary a how-do-you-do, and then locks the article as if I’m vandalizing or somesuch. So let’s go over said edits in the interest of full disclosure:
[[User:RobS|RobS]] wrote: “In may 2007 Pelosi stuck in a $25 million pork project that would benefit her rich husband, Paul Pelosi, in the Water Resources Development Act. The project involves renovating ports near four separate commercial real estate properties near owned by Paul Pelosi and will significantly boost the property values.”
*I changed “may” to “May”, as proper nouns should be capitalized. No clue why that should be reverted.
*I added a comma after “2007”. Ditto.
*I added in the source of the earmark request, the Port and mayor of SanFran, which happens to be fact (according to the cited National Review article). The original sentence made it sound as if the earmark was completely Pelosi’s idea, which is not the case. Even assuming that Pelosi agreed to the request solely to increase her riches, it’s still a fact that it was not (apparently) her idea. To suggest otherwise is [[deceit]].
*I changed “pork project” to “earmark”. “Pork project” is a loaded term, a value judgement—one person’s pork project is another’s vital economic development—so I went with the more neutral “earmark”. In addition, the previous paragraph had already noted that “earmarks” are often a source of corruption, so the reader understands that “Pelosi’s earmark” may equal “corruption”.
*I added “Republicans charge” before “would benefit her rich husband”. “…''(W)ould'' benefit is a factual assertion, one that is impossible to support. “Republicans charge…” is more accurate (as that’s what’s going on here). I’d also accept “conservatives charge…”, or “some charge…”, or drop the “Republicans charge…” and change “would’ to “could”.
*I removed “rich” modifying “husband”, because A) it’s extraneous (we already know the Pelosis are rich), B) it’s irrelevant to the issue, C) it comes across as pejorative (is it wrong to be rich?).
*I added “$15billion” in front of the name of the bill, because that’s the size of the bill, and to give some sense of scale to the earmark.
*In the portion, “…project involves renovating ports near four separate commercial real estate properties…”, I changed “near” to “only a mile”. “Near” is nebulous, unclear—how near is “near”? In this case, “near” is a mile or so. I first considered just “a mile”, but then added “only” to try to keep within the spirit of the original.
*Later in the same sentence, I also removed a second “near” that was clearly placed there in error (“…''near'' four separate commercial real estate properties ''near'' owned by Paul Pelosi.”—makes no sense). Again, no need to revert that.
*Changed “will” to “may” in, “will significantly boost the property values.” As above (see “would”), an unsupportable factual assertion.
*At the end of the paragraph, I changed “Pelosi’s” to “Pelosis” (plural, not possessive). Once again, no reason to revert spelling/grammar errors.
In addition, the article could/should note (if you want to make Pelosi sound more craven) that, A) the Pelosis increased their SF real estate holdings in December, perhaps in anticipation of her Speakership (and therefore the ability to get the previously-rejected earmark passed), and B) new House ethics rules (pushed by Pelosi) require sponsors of earmarks to sign a statement saying they will not personally benefit from said earmark (which Pelosi did), and that the nature of the controversy is “whether she acted properly when she certified that she had no financial interest in the waterfront redevelopment project, given the possibility, however speculative, that it could cause the value of her husband’s property to rise.” Both points are in the cited article, and would bring clarity to that section of the entry.--[[User:WJThomas|WJThomas]] 12:22, 14 May 2007 (EDT)