A little bit of perspective

First sent as a private message March 8th:

Hello Cypresso,

Thanks for your comments. I take them in the spirit in which I believe they were given. In my 30 minutes of exposure to NowPublic last evening I had already seen an opinion piece in which someone had called for the opinion flag to be added, and I wholeheartedly agreed in that instance. This little piece, on the other hand, is all factual, and in fact, after hearing the information on a podcast, I began a little bit of research to verify the information and this research was what actually led me to NowPublic (I hadn't heard of it). For my research, I went to an extensive article on Wikipedia (which I know to be of uneven quality) and thence to Parker Brothers (now a division of Hasbro), which as maker of Monopoly since 1935, is probably the most reliable source. I used facts currently on their website. The only number in the piece not verified is the budget figure, where I relied on the agreement of Fred Barnes (Executive Editor of the Weekly Standard) with the podcast host's quote of the budget amount. My research showed the statement in the podcast to have a mathematical error based on the rounding of $15,140 down to $14,000 that subtracted from its credibility, so I corrected the numbers and that is why I left off a citation of the podcast as my original inspiration. I realize that many longer pieces use citations and I could have provided a link to the Parker Brothers pages, but this piece was just to get a few people thinking without demonizing any individual, and to see how the process of being a part time news-gatherer works. I won't have the time to write often.