Citations please

About a week ago, Ken Ham made the following claim in a video he posted to Answers in Genesis' (AiG) facebook. 

We even looked into building in Indiana, but Kentucky’s incentive encouraged us to build here. Yet most secular bloggers and many in the media would have you believe that we are asking the state for money to complete the Ark. So let me say again, that’s simply not true.

Now I have tried to validate this claim and find out what in the world Ham is talking about.  I admit about three years ago, there was some confusion for me about the nature of the tax incentives.  After doing some research, some on AiG's website, I learned that the incentives were a rebate on sales tax at the park.  The state would only give this rebate if the Ark Encounter (AE) generates a required amount of sales tax and even then they would only refund a certain amount.  There are no tax breaks from Kentucky until after the park has been opened.  Still Ham admits, like any good businessman, he was counting on those rebates similar to how people count on their tax returns.  You do not have to have them, but they sure help.

Still, I find it hard to believe that "most secular bloggers...would have you believe that we are asking the state for money to complete the Ark."  Who are these bloggers?  They are certainly not PZ Myers, Hemant Mehta, Dan Arel, JT Eberhard, and Michael Stone.  So who is Ham talking about?  I have listed five bloggers, Ham would need to list at least six to validate his claim.  Ham knows that Myers is not one of them, but more on that later.

Ham has taken issue with some in the media, particularly Rachel Maddow.  However, as far as I can tell, Maddow has never said that AiG is using tax dollars to build the Ark.  In this 2010 video, she said "tax breaks" which is what rebates are, though Ham disagrees.  May 28, 2014, Ham had this to say about a May 2014 Maddow segment. (The bold is in the original.)

First—and I don’t know how many times we’ve had to correct the urban myth that is being spread by the secular media and bloggers—no Kentucky taxpayer money is being used to “build” (her word) the Ark Encounter. It’s a lie that won’t die, and the journalists at MSNBC should know better.

So Maddow should know better according to Ham.  Though Ham provides the entire video, he only quotes in this blog one word, "build", that he takes exception.  This word is a "lie" according to Ham. This is the full quote that Ham is referring.

And when the creationist group Answers in Genesis announced their plans to build their Noah’s Ark theme park, the state of Kentucky offered them $43 million dollars in tax incentives for them to build that theme park.

No where does Maddow claim that "Kentucky taxpayer money is being used" to build AE.  She said, "the state of Kentucky offered them $43 million dollars in tax incentives for them to build that theme park."  The Christianpost in their May 28, 2014 article seemed to try and help Ham out by providing another quote that Maddow could have meant that "taxpayer money" was being used to build the AE.

There will be dinosaurs on Noah's ark, just as soon as the creationists finish finding the dinosaurs in piles of leaves and plant debris, and putting them on the ark with little assist from state government – 43 million in tax incentives. Your tax dollars at work – amazing.

Still here, Maddow is very clear, saying that AE has received tax incentives. "Your tax dollars at work" is a well known chastisement of government officials and government programs. It does not necessarily mean giving tax dollars to a program.  In his May 28, 2014 blog post, Myers took issue with Ham's rebuttal to Maddow.

[Ham] declares that no Kentucky taxpayer money is being used to construct the Ark Encounter, but that is a claim no one made. Maddow says quite clearly several times that the Ark Park has been given $43 million in tax incentives — that is, Answers in Genesis has been exempted from a requirement to pay taxes on their for-profit enterprise, and will also receive rebates on sales taxes. So all Ham has done is rebut a claim that Rachel Maddow did not make.

May 30, 2014, Ham used his facebook to rebut Myers. After citing the first Maddow quote he wrote,

You can hear Maddow say it for yourself at around the 1:55 mark of the video captured at https://answersingenesis.org/…/media-co…/rachels-rant-msnbc/ . The atheist blogger has once again, as such secularists often do, did not tell the truth—and of course Rachel Maddow didn't tell the truth, either. These atheists realize that if you "throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick." Others sadly believe their lies and then continue to spread them.

Ham is convinced that the infinitive, "to build", makes the sentence a lie. In the comments he states that he does not even want to call the tax incentives, "tax breaks" like Maddow did in 2010.

Like with the ChristianPost, someone tried to help Ham out, but Ham was having none of it.

Further even while rebutting a secular blogger who continues to claim that no one is saying AE is receiving money for constructing the Ark, he concluded with this point.

Now that we've pointed this out for the "millionth time," I fully expect the atheists to simply ignore it and just continue to disseminate untruths--it's the nature of the spiritual battle in which we're engaged.

It shouldn't be surprising that in a sinful world, those who oppose our Christian message will take what is an obvious situation and claim the opposite is true!

Myers responded with a blog entitled, Is Ken Ham literate?

I said, and Rachel Maddow said, that Ham received $43 million in tax incentives. We know exactly what that means: he got tax exemptions and rebates that would total $43 million as an incentive to construct his monument to idiocy...Which I also clearly said in that bit of mine that he quoted.

You know, on the cop shows when a suspect is accused of X, and he immediately starts blustering “I did not do Y!”, you kind of suspect that he’s guilty of something. What is Ken Ham hiding?

 Remember Ham's big fuss is over the word "build".  Do you remember what he said in the quote that I started?

We even looked into building in Indiana, but Kentucky’s incentive encouraged us to build here.

A little over a week ago, Ham said essentially the same thing that he chided Maddow for saying.  There is not much difference between Ham's comments and this contested quote:

And when the creationist group Answers in Genesis announced their plans to build their Noah’s Ark theme park, the state of Kentucky offered them $43 million dollars in tax incentives for them to build that theme park.

 So far Ham cannot back up his claim that most secular bloggers "would have you believe that we are asking the state for money to complete the Ark."  If most secular bloggers would have me believe that, then citations should not be hard to come by.  His argument about Maddow rests on stretching an infinitive that he himself has been caught using.  If these things are really being said, you should not need to rest your arguments on parsing verbs.