“Apparently in the Monopoly game of liberal argumentation, invoking the name of Koch (or, for that matter, Pope) is treated like drawing a Get Out of Fail Free card.” — written here just last week

A new organization has formed in North Carolina. Priorities North Carolina, headed by former conservative talk radio host (and former JLF colleague before that) Chad Adams, describes itself as “a nonpartisan coalition of concerned and engaged citizens, community leaders and other stakeholders interested in promoting a strong economy and an environment of opportunity for all North Carolina families.”

Its web site announces:

PNC will be advancing public policies that limit government regulation, reduce taxes, increase public safety, improve economic opportunities, and protect property rights in the state of North Carolina. PNC will conduct polling, hold public forums, and conduct research to inform North Carolinians about the benefits of economic freedom and limited government.

PNC will also be promoting the advancement and implementation of such policies by federal, state and local officials to carry out these goals.

Limited government, economic freedom, property rights protection, reduced taxes, improved economic opportunities — how is a political reporter to describe such an organization? Those sound nice, but as mentioned above, there’s a conservative involved. There needs to be some way of dismissing those … things.

There’s an app for that, fortunately. The N&O used it in handily dismissing expert consensus on the folly of light rail in such a “very decentralized, very sprawled metropolitan area” as the Triangle. Turned out that one of the experts is connected to an organization whose board members include a Koch brother (David); therefore, he is flat wrong, and so is any expert who agrees with him, by the transitive property.

Here is how WRAL plays the game:

The new group’s mission sounds similar to that of Americans For Prosperity, a national conservative group founded by the Koch brothers.

The transitive property thus applies.