Musings of a (Fairly) Young Contrarian

Saint Reagan's bloody legacy in Central America

2012-01-31T08:38:00.001-05:00

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.This essay is part of an occasional feature on this blog that presents compelling stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, IsraelStine and the Trumped Up Enemy of the Month. A list of all pieces in this series can be found found here.

As the clowns seeking the Republican presidential nomination fall over themselves to claim to be Ronald Reagan, a couple of articles I read recent cast a different shadow on the late Republican's legacy in Central America.

In The New York Review of Books' blog, the excellent Alma Guilermoprieto ran a chilling piece on the new ganglands of El Salvador. The country was the location of the most bloody of central American wars in the 1980s, as the Reagan administration backed a brutal junta and savage right-wing death squads which murdered tens of thousands of people, including most infamously Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Another mass murderer backed by Saint Reagan was Efrain Rios Montt, the military dictator of Honduras. He has been indicted on charged of genocide for his alleged role in mass war crimes and human rights abuses in the 1980s.

Bad News On the Doorstep: Lee’s First Quarter Report

2012-01-20T18:01:00.001-05:00

(by contributor Mark Wilson, as part of his series on the troubles at Lee Enterprises and The Post-Star)

In its quarterly SEC filing for the period ending December 25, 2011, released this week, Lee Enterprises announced its intention to seek stockholder approval for a reverse stock split. The annual meeting will be in Davenport, Iowa in March this year. The report did not state the ratio of the reverse split. Lee CFO Carl Schmidt also foreshadowed trouble for Lee’s NYSE listing with the minimum market capitalization standard, the cure period for which expires next month.

Other bad news in the SEC report:

Operating revenue declined 3.9% over last year’s first quarter report. This included a 6.1% drop in advertising (digital and print advertising combined). Real estate advertising led the decline, dropping 17.9%.
Employee compensation dropped 5.7%. The number of full-time equivalent employees dropped 7.2%.
Debt financing and reorganization costs increased 66% to $3,265,000

While visits to Lee’s digital products increased 10.4%, this good news does nothing for the bottom line. In his From the Editor column last week, Post-Star Editor Ken Tingley lamented: “The problem is more and more readers are visiting newspaper websites for free while abandoning their subscriptions to the newspaper. Unfortunately, we don't make money on our websites.”

He also stated, “We have no plans to charge for use of our website right now. . .”

Bear in mind that this reassurance comes from an organization not known for its candor in reporting on itself. Last May in a letter to Lee's investors, CEO Mary Junck wrote, “We are not, as some in the national media have imagined, staving off bankruptcy.”

Dr. King's real dream: dignity for all

2012-01-16T10:24:00.000-05:00

Below is my annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day essay. Those who turn Dr. King into some sort of saccharine saint, as being solely about government equality under law for all skin colors, trivialize his struggle. He was about that, but about much more than that. His struggle was about the dignity of human beings, in the broadest sense. This New York Times essay says it best: Martin Luther King Jr. Would Want a Revolution, Not a Memorial.

***

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy against segregation and other forms of state-sponsored racism. On this national holiday honoring him, it's worth remembering that King viewed as more than mere legal racial equality. He viewed the struggle more broadly as one in favor of human dignity. This is why he did not retire from public life following legalistic victories such as Brown vs the Board of Education or the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. Although legal segregation was crumbling in the last years of his life, Dr. King did not diminish his activism in any way. He merely refocused it toward another aspect of human dignity.

At the time of his assassination in 1968, King was in Memphis as part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SLCC) Poor People's Campaign, where the city's garbage workers were protesting against unlivable wages. The SLCC had conceived the campaign as a way to mobilize poor people of all skin colors on behalf of a federal economic plan to rebuild American cities.

King realized that the end of state-imposed segregation would not improve the lives of black people if they remained miserably poor. In much the same way the lives of blacks in the south remained virtually unchanged long after the 'transition' from slavery to sharecropping.

King viewed the campaign part as the second phase of the civil rights' struggle. He viewed endemic poverty as a civil rights' issue.

This commitment to human dignity animated another lesser known aspect of King's work: his opposition to the Vietnam War and to militarism more broadly.

During his Beyond Vietnam speech given exactly one year before his murder, he explained why opposition to the aggression against Vietnam had entered into his activism:

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men [in the ghettos of the north], I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

Americans were being shipped off to Vietnam to kill, to destroy and to die. Nothing good was happening because of this. And King knew that the war machine specifically sought those with few other economic options to serve as its cannon fodder, a situation that's little different today.

Like many social justice advocates before and since, he deplored how much of our national resources (both financial and human) was wasted on fabricating foreign enemies to obliterate. "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom," he warned.

King probably realized that the fact that many young people had few other economic options was no accident, but the result of conscious policy choices made to ensure an insatiable monster created, funded and propped up by your tax dollars always had food.

(It's not the only insatiable monster but the other main one merits an entry of its own)

To restrict Dr. King's legacy to the fight for legal equality for black people is to sell him short. And it's misleads people into believing that his dream has been realized. His true struggle was the quest for human dignity for all people.

He could be no clearer about this when he concluded his Beyond Vietnam speech:

We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

If you truly want to honor him, then follow this injunction.

Lee Enterprises Inc., with its back to the wall, faces a reverse stock split

2012-01-15T17:39:00.000-05:00

(by contributor Mark Wilson, as part of his series on the troubles at Lee Enterprises and The Post-Star)

As a last-ditch effort to raise the price of its stock shares and stave off delisting from the New York Stock Exchange, the Iowa-based owner of the Post-Star has reached the point where it must now seek approval from shareholders for a reverse stock split. The move, if approved at the company’s annual meeting next month, would multiply the share price of Lee stock, automatically raising it above the NYSE’s one dollar delisting threshold, while decreasing each shareholder’s holding by the same multiple.

When the NYSE issued Lee the first of two notices of non-compliance last summer after the company stock’s per share price slipped below one dollar, it gave Lee six months to correct the situation. When that “cure period” expired last week with Lee still trading in the 70¢ range, it became clear that Lee had one remaining avenue to escape being removed from the exchange.

The NYSE’s Listed Company Manual, as provided by Judy Shaw from NYSE’s Media Relations division, allows non-compliant companies one final stockholder-approved remedy if all else fails:

802.01C Price Criteria for Capital or Common Stock

A company will be considered to be below compliance standards if the average closing price of a security as reported on the consolidated tape is less than $1.00 over a consecutive 30 trading-day period.

Once notified, the company must bring its share price and average share price back above $1.00 by six months following receipt of the notification. A company is not eligible to follow the procedures outlined in Paras. 802.02 and 802.03 with respect to this criteria. The company must, however, notify the Exchange, within 10 business days of receipt of the notification, of its intent to cure this deficiency or be subject to suspension and delisting procedures. In addition, a domestic company must disclose receipt of the notification by issuing a press release disclosing the fact that it has fallen below the continued listing standards of the Exchange within the time period allotted by SEC rules for the making of a filing with respect to Exchange notification of that event, but no longer than four business days after notification. A non-U.S. company must issue this press release within 30 days after notification. If the company fails to issue this press release during the allotted time period, the Exchange will issue the requisite press release. The company can regain compliance at any time during the six-month cure period if on the last trading day of any calendar month during the cure period the company has a closing share price of at least $1.00 and an average closing share price of at least $1.00 over the 30 trading-day period ending on the last trading day of that month. In the event that at the expiration of the six-month cure period, both a $1.00 closing share price on the last trading day of the cure period and a $1.00 average closing share price over the 30 trading-day period ending on the last trading day of the cure period are not attained, the Exchange will commence suspension and delisting procedures.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, if a company determines that, if necessary, it will cure the price condition by taking an action that will require approval of its shareholders, it must so inform the Exchange in the above referenced notification, must obtain the shareholder approval by no later than its next annual meeting, and must implement the action promptly thereafter. The price condition will be deemed cured if the price promptly exceeds $1.00 per share, and the price remains above the level for at least the following 30 trading days.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, if the subject security is not the primary trading common stock of the company (e.g., a tracking stock or a preferred class) or is a stock listed under the Affiliated Company standard where the parent remains in "control" as that term is used in that standard, the Exchange may determine whether to apply the Price Criteria to such security after evaluating the financial status of the company.

At the pit of the recession in June 2009, Lee’s board—faced with a similar non-compliance notice after its stock price slid below fifty cents—opted not to pursue a reverse split when the Exchange issued a general moratorium on delisting. No such amnesty is available to the newspaper publisher this time.

If and when the company brings its stock price back into compliance, Lee still faces a second non-compliance notice issued last August when its market capitalization (the share price multiplied by the number of outstanding shares) dropped below $50 million. The reverse stock split will do nothing to improve this number, as the increase in the share price will be balanced by the decrease in the number of outstanding shares.

It is a safe bet that Lee’s financial directors are hard at work on a plan to boost its market capitalization. The company’s first quarter report is due out Tuesday morning.

Occupy Wall St. validates Ralph Nader

2012-01-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

No man is a prophet in his own land.

Dear Occupy Wall St. Sympathizers,
Occupy's message is virtually identical to that which many (most?) of you have spent the last dozen years smearing Ralph Nader and his supporters for while you've voted for militaristic, anti-civil liberties, corporatist Democrats. Glad you've finally come around. I just hope you don't develop amnesia between now and November.

Obama finishing what Bush started: a 'historic assault on American liberty'

2012-01-03T16:57:00.000-05:00

This New Year's, with conveniently little fanfare, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA would allow the president to indefinitely detain American citizens arrested on American soil. This act by our Democratic president was described by the UK Guardian as a 'historic assault on American liberty'.

This is not only a blatant violation of the 4th Amendment but an affront to the most basic value of a free society: the right to not be imprisoned without charge. The right to due process is one of the oldest recognized rights in western civilization, dating back to the 13th century Magna Carta.

It's a good thing we have a Democratic president and Democratic senate protecting Americans from the abominable assaults on civil liberties perpetrated by the much demonized Republicans. At least that's what the Democratic scaremongers would have you believe.

Thanks a lot you donkeys!

Bike friendly in the snow belt

2012-01-01T13:18:00.000-05:00

The excellent Yes! magazine has a great piece entitled Lessons From a Surprise Bike Town. The #1 bicycle city in America is not Portland, OR, but snowy Minneapolis. That a city with weather colder that Moscow's can be so bike-friendly is a lesson to towns all across the country. No more excuses!

AG targets 'economic development' slush fund corruption

2011-12-27T08:34:00.000-05:00

A preliminary investigation by New York attorney general's office uncovered the potential for self-dealing, nepotism, improper loans and exorbitant expenses at some, reported The Associated Press.

These non-profit, taxpayer-supported rackets do government business but have little oversight and are exempt from being audited by the state comptroller's office.

Such findings echo an earlier assessment from this writer.

A message for the season

2011-12-25T16:28:00.000-05:00

Non-ethics in NYS: more of the same

2011-12-23T16:24:00.000-05:00

New York state’s new ethics panel has already destroyed its own credibility after a mere two meetings. I reported here about its first introductory meeting, held behind closed doors.

Earlier this week, it had its first working meeting. The Associated Press reported that members of the panel receive $300 for each day they attend meetings, members will be asked to sign non-disclosure' agreements barring public comment, and that its secretive practices will continue.

Then, the board went behind closed doors. The reason? None was given.

This is how ethics oversight works in New York... even under a 'reform' minded governor. Secret meetings with no public announcements. Going behind closed doors without even contriving an excuse. The fact that all this is legal, that this body charged with regulating ethics and transparency is exempt from the Open Meetings Law in the first place, is a damning indictment of what passes for ethics in state government.

Bob over at Planet Albany doesn't appear to be impressed. He quotes someone named David Grandeau: the state ethics body "doesn’t have to abide by Open Meetings Law. Nor does it have to abide by the Freedom of Information Laws... Those laws apply to every other government body, but not the state ethics panel... Tell me again why that is? Tell me how that inspires confidence in government? Tell me how it sets a standard for others to live up to? Tell me how it represents good government?"

The answer is simple. It doesn't.

How ethics and transparency work in NYS

2011-12-19T16:15:00.001-05:00

The new panel charged with regulating ethics in stategovernment met late last week.

It met in secret.

It met with no public notice.

A spokesman for the Joint Commission on Public Ethicsdefended the move, citing the board’s exemption from the state’s Open MeetingsLaw.

That’s right: a committee set up to regulate public ethicsand transparency is legally allowed to meet in complete secrecy.

Is it any wonder why New York state government hassuch an abysmal reputation for good governance?

Down by the Levy: the Sinking of Lee

2011-12-18T11:36:00.000-05:00

(a continuing series by contributor Mark Wilson on the troubles at Lee Enterprises, Inc. and the Post-Star)

On April 22nd of this year, the Mississippi River, nearing historic levels, jumped its banks and rose to within a city block of Lee Enterprises’ Davenport, Iowa headquarters.

Inside, financial and executive officers for Lee—the corporate owner of the Glens Falls Post-Star—were planning a junk bond issue large enough to pay off nearly a billion dollars in debt that was coming due within a year’s time. The subsequent failure of the junk bond issue ten days later set off a slide in the company’s stock price, as well as its fortunes, that came to a head last week when Lee sought Chapter 11 protection in a Delaware bankruptcy court. Court papers tabulated by Bloomberg News revealed that Lee and its subsidiary companies had—in the vernacular of real estate bank foreclosures—been under water all along.

Total assets: $1.2 billion
Total debts: $1.3 billion
Net worth: minus $100,000,000

In the initial stage of the bankruptcy case, Lee was granted permission to borrow $40 million more to pay bills, meet payroll and keep its presses rolling. The rest of the bankruptcy proceeding will determine whether or not Lee can extend the due dates on its outstanding debts from 2012 to 2015 and 2017, in exchange for double-digit interest rates. Most of Lee’s creditors have already signed on to the refinancing plan, and it is widely seen that the bankruptcy court will play along. The hope underlying the new debt timeline is that within three years the economy will recover enough to rescue the paper with real estate, automobile and jobs advertising revenue, and that by 2017 news publishers will have figured out how to better monetize their internet traffic and stem the collapse of their print audience.

While the courts sort out the longterm picture for Lee, it might be well to consider a more immediate threat in the company’s path. Back in July, the New York Stock Exchange issued a compliance warning to Lee when the price of its stock slipped below one dollar. The warning stated that if the share price did not regain the dollar mark within a six month “cure period,” the exchange would remove Lee from its trading list.

A useful primer on the significance of a stock delisting can be found online at Investopedia.com. The NYSE Listed Company Manual, Section 802.01 C addresses the delisting timeline for companies whose stock price drops below one dollar.

In short, Lee’s one remaining hope to avoid delisting would be if its stock were to close over one dollar per share on January 6th 2012, having sustained an average closing price of one dollar or more over the previous 30-trading-day period.

Fifteen of those thirty trading days have already elapsed with Lee’s daily closing share price averaging only 65 cents. So starting Monday, Lee’s share price must close at or above $1.35, and keep that price (on average) for three straight weeks. This at a time of year when many portfolio managers are tidying up client accounts by killing off their biggest turkeys. To put it bluntly, Lee’s thirty-three-and-a-half year association with the New York Stock Exchange is over.

Apart from the general stigma of joining the ranks of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Bros. and MF Global, perhaps the most troubling consequence of delisting is that it may well trigger the automatic sell-off of stock holdings by many of Lee’s institutional investors (many pension funds restrict their investments to listed stocks). This in turn could set off a chain reaction run of individual stockholders, driving the share price—and any chances of eventually paying off its debts—to historic, even unsalvageable depths.

Quotes of the week

2011-12-18T11:34:00.000-05:00

"So weird to go into journalism to completely obsess on the horserace of who might get power-& be totally indifferent to what they do with it." -Glenn Greenwald, via Twitter, on how 'analysis' has increasingly replaced real journalism.

"Maybe police who stop and ticket people for use of cell phones while driving should be required to confiscate the phones until they show up in court to answer charges." -Commenter Pete Klein on NCPR's In Box blog.

RIP Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T07:07:00.001-05:00

The prolific and controversial polemicist Christopher Hitchens died yesterday at 62. Although he alienated many on the left with his full-throated support of the Iraq aggression and alliance with Bush-Cheney militarism, his essays were always incisive and relentlessly thought-provoking. This blog is titled as a tribute to his book Letters to a Young Contrarian. NPR has a nice remembrance of The Hitch.

The lobbyists of Gov. One Percent

2011-12-14T17:08:00.000-05:00

The New York Public Interest Research Group (via the Albany Times-Union) has revealed the 100 top spending special interest groups in New York. Who was the most free spending group? The health care workers union? The evil teachers union? Supporters of civil rights for gays? Opponents thereof? Nope. #1 slot goes to the misnamed Committee to Save New York. This is an organizing comprising the top "donors" to the campaign of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and is dedicated to lobbying on behalf of the agenda of the One Percent.

When did Republicans start hating the rich?

2011-12-12T08:43:00.001-05:00

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

I've been a bit bemused by the latest irrelevant kerfuffle obsessing the chattering classes: about Mitt Romney's $10,000 bet gaffe. When a self-entitled multimillionaire wants to dodge taxes, he's an "job creator." But when that self-entitled multimillionaire is a political enemy, he's an "out of touch elitist." Funny how that works.

That saintly bipartisanship in action (or: it's not just the 1st Amendment they're trying to invalidate)

2011-12-08T23:08:00.001-05:00

It's not just the 1st Amendment they want to get rid of. Federal senators have put rancor aside and are working tireless lyto destroy the American way of life before al-Qaeda gets the chance to. They inserted language into a defense budget bill (a way of essentially blackmailing legislators into a yes vote) which would allow American citizens arrested on American soil to be detained indefinitely in military custody. In other words, it would essentially invalidate the 4th Amendment of the Constitution.

As one commentator put it: People in Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria have engaged in revolutions to replace these undemocratic and unjust practices.

There's one other country that engaged in a revolution to get rid of arbitrary arrest and detention without trial or charge: the United States of America.

Fracking companies lie about leases: homeowners

2011-12-04T09:23:00.001-05:00

The excellent non-profit journalism site Pro Publica has done some fantastic journalism about hydrofracking, the hugely controversial natural gas extraction process that is being hotly debated in New York state. Proponents say that it will be a jobs boom in a region that badly needs it. Opponents offer many criticisms, including that the process poisons drinking water. Another site offering good information on fracking is The Rural Blog of the University of Kentucky.

The blog offers statistics that amplify a fear of fracking opponents. Drilling is regulated by many states, but very ineffectively. It notes that in Texas, 96 percent of the tens of thousands of regulatory violations in 2009 resulted in no enforcement action. West Virginia, Wyoming and fracking hotbed Pennsylvania were also cited for their uselessness in protecting citizens from drilling pollution.

The blog also links to a New York Times article which cites the negative experience of homeowners who signed leases with gas companies.

The NYT added that disappointed landowners in Pennsylvania, Colorado and West Virginia have spent hundreds of dollars monthly on bottled water or maintaining large tanks of drinking water in their front lawns. Thousands of landowners in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas, who claim "they were paid less than they expected because gas companies deducted costs like hauling chemicals to the well site or transporting gas to market," have responded by joining a class action lawsuit.

The site also offered some useful advice to Republicans in southern New York like powerful state Sen. Tom Libous who are enamored with drilling, regardless of the consequences: sustainable agriculture could improve health, economy for rural areas... presumably without poisoned drinking water.

Lipstick on a Pig: Lee Enterprises Declares a “Favorable” Bankruptcy

2011-12-03T17:22:00.001-05:00

(a continuing series by contributor Mark Wilson on the troubles at Lee Enterprises, Inc. and the Post-Star)

Despite efforts to spin the news favorably, Lee Enterprises, Inc, the deeply-indebted corporate owner of the Glens FallsPost-Star, announced late Friday afternoon that it had failed to reach a refinancing agreement with at least 95% of its lenders. It will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection later this month.

The move is an effort by the Iowa-based news publisher to coerce a reluctant six percent of the banks who have lent it money to extend the maturity date of roughly one billion dollars in loans. The loans are currently due to be paid in full this coming April.

The refinancing plan, crafted by Lee earlier this year—after it failed to find backing to pay off the banks by issuing junk bonds—divides its current debt load into three parts:
a $689.5 million term loan with an additional $40 million revolving credit, both due in December 2015. The interest on this debt will be a minimum of 7.5%.
a $175 million second-tier loan with a 15% interest rate due in April 2017.
an unspecified $175 million refinancing deal for the balance of the debt the company incurred when it bought newspapers from Pulitzer, Inc. in 2005.
Lee’s failure to find backing to restructure the remaining Pulitzer debt was the deal breaker for the more cautious lenders who must now be forced by the Delaware bankruptcy courts to accept the pre-packaged bankruptcy plan. In place of a new financing to cover the since-adjusted $138 Pulitzer balance, the bankruptcy will extend the maturity of $126 million of the existing notes to December 2015 at an interest rate that starts at 10.55% and increases by .75% annually.

One other significant condition of the bankruptcy plan is the issuance of 6.7 million shares (roughly 13% of outstanding shares) of stock to be divided among second-tier lenders.

Diluting stock to this degree will depress the share value of Lee stock. Apart from the impact this will have on individual and institutional stock holders (including any Post-Star employees who hold stock and stock and options as part of their compensation packages), the move means Lee’s stock most certainly will be removed from the New York Stock Exchange listings in the new year. As a condition of continued listing, the NYSE requires a company stock to hold a minimum share price of $1.00 and not drop below that threshold for more than 30 days. Lee’s share price dropped below the threshold in mid-July this year and has not risen above it since. In an official delisting warning issued in August, the NYSE compliance board gave Lee until January to correct the situation.

A share of Lee traded at 53¢ at Friday’s closing bell—shortly before news of the impending bankruptcy filing was released.

Quote of the week

2011-12-02T19:35:00.001-05:00

From a piece on Yahoo! News:

"I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death. They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.” –Republican spinmeister Frank Luntz.

Bits and pieces

2011-12-01T07:05:00.000-05:00

DEATH THREATS IN THE NAME OF ‘LAW AND ORDER’
Albany (NY) County’s district attorney David Soares has admitted that he and his office has received death threats in response to his refusal to prosecute participants of the Occupy Albany movement for non-violent activities like violating curfew. From the infamous pepper spray police thug in Davis, CA to the violent crackdown against peaceful Occupy movements in places like Oakland and Denver to the above death threats, you’ve seen remarkably little violence from those protesting in the name of democracy with most of the violence being committed by people doing so in the name of ‘respect for law and order.’ Quite a different reality to the one intoned by the yapping heads.

WHAT’S THE STRANGE COMBINATION OF LETTERS ON THAT STREET SIGN (B-I-K-E L-A-N-E) SIGNIFY?
Bravo to the Burlington, mayored by a Progressive Party mayor not coincidentally, for lowering the speed limiton the Vermont city’s streets. The Burlington Free Press reports that it was done to enhance the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians. Yet another reason Burlington is probably the coolest city in the northeastern US.

YES, EVEN REFS ARE HUMAN TOO
Recent stories in the soccer world a very troubling, from the attempted suicide of two referees, to the apparent suicide of Wales national team manager Gary Speed to the suicide not that long ago of German goalkeeper Robert Enke. It should serve as a wake-up call reminding soccer fans that a little re-humanization is long past due. There is so much vitriol and nastiness in soccer fandom that it’s easy to forget that the targets are all human beings, with families and emotions. Passion should never be used as an excuse to act like barbarians.

IN DISTRACTION WE TRUST
Economic inequality, unemployment, massive corporate welfare, institutionalized anti-democracy... the country is facing so many problems and what is the latest meaninglessness that Theocrats want us to freak out about? The president’s failure to mention God in his Thanksgiving address (only the spoken one; he did include it in the written one). You can just call it The Great Distraction.

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED... JUST NOT HERE
I saw this great graphic on Facebook, which showed the covers of TIME magazines editions for other parts of the world compared to its US edition. Gives you an insight into the editorial judgment [sic] of their vaunted professional editors.

THE PROBLEM WITH COLLEGE STUDENTS: THEY HAVE TOO *LITTLE* DEBT
I was gobsmacked to read a newspaper article with this headline: "The other student loan problem: too little debt." Only a bank-obsessed culture would look at this issue and wonder if the problem is students with too *little* debt rather than taking a hard look at whether a university education, whether the cost of a fancy piece of paper is massively overpriced. Investigative journalism at its finest.

Radical moderation is no virtue

2011-11-30T16:12:00.001-05:00

A follow up to the previous entry...

I believe that consensus is the preferred route for societyand government. In fact, I'm fairly uncomfortable with conflict, at least face to face. I think civility should be the default pathway for society. I simply don’t believe weshould be a slave to it merely for its own sake. In fact, we mustn’t. Radical moderation can be just asdangerous as radical extremism. It seems counterintuitive but it’s true.

I believe that consensus is the preferred route for societyand government. It should be the default route. I simply don’t believe weshould be a slave to it. In fact, we mustn’t. Radical moderation can be just asdangerous as radical extremism. It seems counterintuitive but it’s true.

Without agitation and contestation, we would not have hadgreat social advances like: women’s voting, the end of slavery, the end ofsegregation/apartheid, consumer protection laws, health and safety laws, workerprotection laws, unemployment insurance, the 40 hour work week and many otherthings that make America a first world country.

Warm and fuzzy bipartisanship has led to many abominations including: thePatriot Act and the war on civil liberties, the deregulation of the financialindustry that led to recent economic meltdown, the aggression against Iraq, theVietnam War, the internment of American citizens of Japanese origin in the1940s, the genocide against Native Americans, to name but a few.

Yes, the ultimate purpose of agitation is to form a newer,better consensus. But neither is of any value in and of itself. The objectiveis that which is better. Not only can you not make omelettes without breakingeggs, but even after you break the eggs, you still have to stir things up toget something useful.

Think of it this way. Pick any despotic regime in history.It was no doubt led by extremists. But the extremist regime could not havesurvived without the active cooperation and acquiescence of moderates. Ofpeople who maybe didn’t agree with the regime but didn’t want to shake thingsup or were afraid to make waves. Sometimes extremism is actually principle.Sometimes moderation is complicity. Not always but at times. Neither is avirtue in and of itself. The key is know when which is appropriate.

Instead of radical moderation, how about moderation inmoderation.

Maybe we need a little more incivility

2011-11-30T08:23:00.001-05:00

Civility and consensus are my default preferences, but boy, they make it hard sometime. In mainstream political analysis, the description 'bipartisan' is designed to make us turn our brains off, clap our hands like robots, squeal in joy like school girls and sing Kumbayah about 'cooperation,' 'civility' and the like. So imagine my reaction I read about this Congressional effort to invalidate the 5th Amendment by allowing the head of state to detain his nation's citizens indefinitely and without charge. Initially, I was outraged. This isn't possible. After all, wasn't such an abomination one of the main grievances in America's Declaration of Independence? But then, I just numbed my mind and intoned warm-over nothings about this joyous effort at bipartisanship and that made it all better.

The class warfare against the Occupy movement

2011-11-29T08:16:00.000-05:00

The UK Guardian has a great op-ed about the well-coordinated police crackdown on the Occupy movement.

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality, it notes.

Where liberals go to feel good

2011-11-28T18:34:00.001-05:00

This wonderful column entitled Where Liberals Go to Feel Good by Chris Hedges (one of most astute observers of contemporary society and politics) should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the complete impotence of the liberal class and the death of the Democratic Party as an instrument for progressive change.

The Occupy movement in one sentence

2011-11-21T09:11:00.001-05:00

The best, most succinct sign I've seen about the current situation:

'More equal economies grow faster'

2011-11-18T18:42:00.001-05:00

Even the very establishment journal Foreign Policy ran a piece conceding that international evidence suggests that more equal economies grow faster.

It notes that equality of opportunity and the famed pursuit of the American dream are not quite what they are advertised to be. According to an analysis by economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis at the Santa Fe Institute, of children born to the poorest 10 percent of parents in the United States, more than half remain in the bottom fifth of incomes as adults.

In other words, socialism (to employ the most grotesquely misused word in American politics) is good for everyone.

Want smaller government? You got it!

2011-11-14T07:43:00.001-05:00

One of the easiest ways to get elected is to promise smaller government and lower taxes. It sounds great as rhetoric because it's removed from context. In first world countries, there is an equation, a link between taxes paid and services to citizens provided. Different countries define that equation in different ways but it's there in every developed country. One of the most brilliant things strategically the American far right has done is to break that link, to focus only on the undesirable part (taxes) without discussing their relationship to the desirable part (services).

I'd have less problem with the smaller government/lower taxes rhetoric if its espousers were honest about the consequences. Yeah, they sometimes use rhetoric like "We all have to make sacrifices" (all usually meaning the 99%) or "tough choices have to be made. But it's all passive tense stuff, vague, nebulous and deliberately evasive. Just once, I'd like someone to have the guts to run for office on the platform of "crappier roads" or "higher crime."

Here are a few examples I've heard in the media recently about people who got their desire for smaller government...

-School districts across Indiana are getting rid of busing;

-Some municipalities are dealing with budget shortfalls by turning off streetlights;

-Warren County (NY) tried to seriously scale back its meals for seniors program until town supervisors (all conservatives) in the municipalities affected revolted.

It's funny how everyone loves smaller government and lower taxes when it's a theory but a bit less so when it actually affects them (THEM!). No wonder conservatives typically avoid being completely honest about the *full* consequences of their rhetoric.

Occupy vs the Tea Party

2011-11-13T07:25:00.000-05:00

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

The American political system pretty much boils down to the craven and corrupted Democratic Party, the venal and corrupted Republican Party and smaller parties who are mostly well-intentioned but don’t show the tiniest desire to become remotely electable (bearing in mind there are thousands of public offices below the presidency). What a depressing state of affairs. No wonder there’s so much frustration and anger that’s been expressed via the non-partisan Occupy movement and the formerly non-partisan Tea Party.

The Tea Party has been taken over by the Republican Party (the Dems would love to co-opt Occupy but they haven't succeeded yet), but there are still strains within it that remain independent and certainly the anger that originally animated it was organic; most of them are part of The 99 Percent too. The left likes to look down their noses at the Tea Party as comprising The Other, ignorant, racist rubes, but this ignores what the two movements share.

Both the Tea Party and Occupy reflect the anger of ordinary people against a corrupt system that serves the elites and not the people... or rather, at the expense of the people. The main difference lies in the response. The objective of the Tea Party is to starve government of money, since cash is what feeds the beast of corruption. Occupy's is to re-direct that money so it's used in a more humane manner. Both want to blow it up. One wants to replace it with something better; the other believes that something better is not possible so replace it with nothing.

Both really diagnosis the same problem, but offer different prescriptions.

APA critic pleads guilty to pollution charges

2011-11-11T14:55:00.001-05:00

Last year, the Post-Star published a controversial story on Adirondack Park Agency critic Leroy Douglas and his battles with the agency.A follow up: Adirondack Almanack reports that Douglas recently plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of pollution.

Occupy is not about more handouts, but fewer

2011-11-08T17:33:00.000-05:00

"If money is constitutionally protected 'speech,' then so are tents." -seen on Twitter

NPR's All Things Considered did a piece on Wall St. profits. It noted that Wall St. has made more money during under 3 years of the Obama administration than it did during all 8 years of the Bush administration. A Washington Post reporter pointed out that these profits were the direct result of government policies -- across two administrations -- in response to the financial crisis.

THIS is what Occupy is all about.It's not hostility toward people for having money or at corporations for existing.It's an anger at public policy that represents taking money from working people to hand out to corporations making record profits. It's an anger at the most grotesque form of of wealth redistribution.

Occupy is based not on a demand formore handouts, but for fewer.

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

Help Occupy Glens Falls

2011-11-07T09:02:00.004-05:00

If you're following the global Occupy movement and would like to participate, Occupy Glens Falls has twice weekly general assemblies at the Civil War monument downtown (across from the library). They are typically held Saturdays at noon and Wednesdays at 5:30 pm. You can also follow their Facebook page or Twitter feed for further updates.

The Latest Circulation Numbers for Lee Enterprises, Inc. and the Post-Star

2011-11-06T11:09:00.003-05:00

14th in a series by contributor Mark Wilson

The semi-annual report of American newspaper paid circulation was released this week by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Readership of Lee Enterprises, Inc. daily newspapers continues to drop, with total circulation loss from a year ago at 41,298 (or 2.99 percent).

The Post-Star, which in recent years has suffered some of the worst percentage circulation losses of all Lee newspapers, improved its standing among its peers in the latest filing. The paper—still fourteenth largest in Lee’s stable with average daily circulation of 26,113—lost 665 paying readers since last year. That loss amounted to less than 2.5% of its circulation, which is better than Lee’s average percentage loss since last year, and better than the numbers the Post-Star posted six months ago. A complete breakdown of the latest circulation figures can be found here.

Since the last circulation numbers came out, Lee has combined two Illinois dailies—the Journal Gazette of Mattoon and the Times Courier of Charleston — reducing to 52 the number of daily newspapers owned or partially owned by the company. Since 2008 Lee has shuttered two papers and merged two others. The Davenport, Iowa-based company is still looking to restructure a roughly one billion dollar debt that comes due in just over five months.

On a personal note: Friday, November 4th was Mark Mahoney’s last day as the Post-Star’s Editorial Page Editor, and chief editorial opinion writer. He will soon put his legendary reasoning and writing skills to work for the New York State Bar Association in Albany. As a onetime contributor to Mark’s pages (and who, on at least one occasion, caused him all sorts of grief), I wish him all the best in his new career.

No wonder old media is dying

2011-10-26T22:16:00.000-04:00

And media pooh-bahs wonder why people are increasingly unwilling to pay money for work which fails to meet their most basic expectations for the profession.

I recently sent an email to a senior figure at a local news media outlet complaining about a shoddy piece of reporting. In it, the journalist reported claims that were obviously untrue... to the point where if the reporter had paid attention to another part of his own story, he ought to have figured this out.

The response began, "While the reporting [sic] is not responsible for inaccurate conclusions from someone he has quoted, I would agree that the reporter did a poor job..."

So a professional reporter is not responsible for checking the veracity of claims made by someone he interviews.

Wait, WHAT?!

Call me old school but isn't verification the fundamental difference between journalism and transcription?

Occupy America

2011-10-25T09:31:00.001-04:00

Last Sunday, I took a day trip to Vermont's largest city. While there, I attended a bit of the Occupy Burlington general assembly. There were probably 100 people gathered in front of City Hall. It was an interesting gathering and process. Facilitators observed a loose agenda. Speakers used a "human microphone" in which their words were essentially repeated by the crowd to ensure everyone heard. There were a diversity of topics raised but they all revolved around the themes of abuses of power and the diminishing influence of citizens in American democracy.

The event was complete with a heckler (singular), who was largely ignored. He was a bit amusing though, berating protesters for not being as 'patriotic' as he. However, I noticed he didn't dare address his nastiness toward the elderly gentleman standing next to me wearing a Veterans for Peace hat.

While I've always supported its ideals, I was initially skeptical that the Occupy movement would actually influence anything. But clearly, it has the political elite nervous.

In New York state's capital, Gov. Andrew Cuomo put heavy pressure on Mayor Jerry Jennings to crack down on the Occupy Albany gathering.

As Gotham Gazette reported:Cuomo is concerned that protests could linger and add momentum to the push to renew the millionaires tax.

Jennings was rumored to be under consideration for a position in the Cuomo administration and at even one point rumored to be a choice for lieutenant governor. Jennings, according to the Times Union directed the police to make arrests but they didn’t.

The piece also quoted Albany County District Attorney David Soares as not wanting to waste scare resources on peaceful protesters.

Cuomo is now described by the protesters as "Governor One Percent," which has really been accurate since his election anyways.

Similarly, Long Island Congressman Peter King expressed his fear that the Occupy movement might change things. King told a radio shock job that he remembers a 1960s left-wing movement that took to the streets and caused policy changes... [and that] He hopes that the Occupy Wall Street protesters aren't re-creating the spirit and influence of that historical protest movement.

Inadvertently, the control freak governor and the neo-McCarthyite Congressman have conferred great legitimacy on the Occupy movement. If these erstwhile shills for The One Percent elite are this nervous, then clearly the movement is on to something.

Note: This site has information on Occupy events near you. There are events throughout not only the country but the world... in 2144 cities on all six inhabited continents.

From Occupy Burlington - 23 Oct. '11 - (c) MOFYC

Video from Occupy Burlington general assembly - 23 Oct. '11 - (c) MOFYC

They may be loathe to admit it, but deep down, liberal Democrats know this guy has always been right.

Like any other drug, hydrofracking has serious side effects

2011-10-21T23:31:00.001-04:00

As if poisoned drinking water isn't enough, the controversial natural gas extraction process known as hydrofracking has another serious side effect. Although backers pass it off as an economic panacea, WAMC is reporting that fracking lowers property values and, in the event you want to move away to a place with clean drinking water. it can make it almost impossible to sell your house.

New hires, a significant departure and a welcome return at The Post-Star

2011-10-19T15:17:00.001-04:00

13th in a series by contributor Mark Wilson

The human resources department at the Post-Star is busy. News today that Editorial Page Editor Mark Mahoney is leaving the newspaper to take a job with the New York State Bar Association is only the latest in a list of recent personnel changes.

Post-Star Managing Editor Ken Tingley announced in a blog post last week that the newspaper recently filled three editorial positions that have been vacant since last summer. The three new writers are Mary Albl and Michael Bonner in sports and Jamie Munks in news, covering Washington County.

As well, in the past week, two other names have been added to PostStar.com’s contact page. They are Danielle Johnson, who will write obituaries, and former Post-Star Assistant Features Editor Rhonda Triller.

Triller returns to the paper's staff after a four-year stint at the Albany Times-Union. In 2007 Triller accepted a copy editing post at the Albany paper. In May 2009 she started a TimesUnion.com blog focused on her newborn triplets. She signed off from the blog (and the Times-Union) this past Monday. Triller’s new role at the Post-Star will be as copy editor.

[The hiring of quality control is long overdue at the Post-Star. In a recent post on his blog, The Front Page, Editor Ken Tingley thoroughly trashed the English language in defense of an editorial which some readers saw as critical of South Glens Falls High School. Unless his ten paragraph post was a deliberate attempt to lend the offended educators some consolation in the knowledge of their comparative literacy, uploading the scolding copy without first vetting it with a proofreader was ill-advised. Welcome back, Rhonda!]

For those keeping score, the recent hires brings to 60 Post-Star employees listed on the paper’s web site. This is four more than last month's low of 56, but one fewer than the names listed on August 2nd. The organization must hire eight more staffers to return to its June 2nd staffing level.

A comparison of the executive and editorial positions listed at PostStar.com to its nearest-sized sister publication in the Lee Enterprises barn shows a sizable staffing gap: The Lacrosse (Wisconsin) Tribune contact page lists 24 employees in these positions while the Post-Star has over forty percent more at 34.

Hydofracking worse for environment than coal?

2011-10-17T09:18:00.001-04:00

Hydraulic fracturing (know as 'fracking') is the controversial natural gas extraction process that's being proposed for much of central and southern New York. It's been controversial because the fracking represents a serious threat to safe drinking water.

However, The Cornell Daily Sun reports on other major side effects of the extraction process. A university study concluded that hydrofracking may harm the environment even more than the mining of coal and will exacerbate the effects of climate change. This is significant because natural gas has long been touted as the cleanest fossil fuel.

“We looked at the greenhouse gas in comparison to conventional natural gas,” [Cornell Prof. Robert] Howarth said. “Our research showed that carbon dioxide is only part of the problem, and natural gas, which is mostly methane, is far more potent. Even small leakages have a large footprint, leading to our conclusion that natural gas actually has a bigger impact on global warming.”

Further Reduction at Lee Newspapers

2011-10-11T23:27:00.000-04:00

12th in a series by contributor Mark Wilson
(©2011 Mark Wilson)
In a move yet to be officially announced, Post-Star owner Lee Enterprises, Inc. of Davenport Iowa merged two of its central Illinois newspapers on September 26th.

The move combined the Journal Gazette of Mattoon and the Times Courier of Charleston into a single publication now called (unsurprisingly) the Journal Gazette & Times Courier.

The neighboring communities of Mattoon and Charleston,12 miles apart, are located in southern Illinois, about 130 miles northeast of St. Louis, Mo. The combined average daily circulation of the papers is roughly 13,000. Since 2006 the Charleston Times Courier has lost over one quarter of its average daily circulation, placing it ninth on the list of Lee Enterprises’ worst performing newspapers.

The move by Lee to merge an underperforming publication with a nearby neighbor may foretell the fortunes of other newspapers in the Lee portfolio. The Lompoc (CA) Record with a daily circulation of 3,874, and the Beatrice (NE) Daily Sun with a circulation of 5,321 have lost even more readers than the Times Courier over the past half decade. Both may well be merged with larger nearby publications: In the case of Lompoc, the Santa Maria (CA) Times is forty miles away, and the Lincoln (NE) Journal Star is only 43 miles from Beatrice. By comparison, the Auburn (NY) Citizen—whose size and recent circulation losses are in the same ballpark—is over 150 miles from its nearest merger candidate, the Post-Star. This summer Lee placed the staffs of the Helena (MT) Independent Record and the (Butte)Montana Standard (a distance of 68 miles) under a single editor, though the offices of each paper were not combined.

Lee Enterprises, Inc., which is experiencing financial difficulty, has not yet officially acknowledged the merger of the two Illinois papers. However, a press release dated October 10, announcing the appointment of a new publisher at the Carlisle (PA) Sentinel, did mention that Lee wholly owns 48 daily newspapers. Last month the number stood at 49. Lee has yet to report how many staffers were laid off in the most recent consolidation.

The 20 year war in Afghanistan and the failure of regime change

2011-10-08T22:02:00.000-04:00

Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of the start of the American invasion of Afghanistan. A decade into what's already this country's longest war, former US commander of NATO forces in the country (retired) Gen. Stanley McChrystal says that the mission in Afghanistan is only half done.

The Guardian article added: McChrystal said the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq less than two years after entering Afghanistan made the Afghan effort more difficult. "I think they were made more difficult, clearly," he said, because the Iraq invasion "changed the Muslim world's view of America's effort..."

He pointed out that, as is so often the case in the United States' clumsy foreign policy decisions, everyone involved "had a very superficial understanding of the situation and [Afghan] history" and culture and that US forces did not make an attempt to learn the country's languages -- not a task one would normally expect of soldiers but critical to any successful nation building.

The morass in Afghanistan is so deep that the country's president Hamid Karzai, took a (very brief) break from blaming Pakistan, to admit his own government's miserable failure in the security realm.

Speaking of the topic, this essay in The Boston Review points out that, despite supposedly altruistic reasons and despite widespread bipartisan support most of the time, US-imposed regime change simply doesn't work... at least not for the people of the 'helped' country in question.

Americans tend to personalize their conflicts. Almost every target of U.S. intervention in the post-Cold War world has been labeled another Hitler... Since the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the United States has become the world’s foremost practitioner of regime change...

More on the Occupy Wall St. movement

2011-10-07T21:10:00.000-04:00

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

A follow-up to my post on the Occupy Wall St. movement...

The excellent and highly recommended Yes! magazine has a good piece on Where the 99 Percent Get Their Power. The biggest single factor: it embodies real democracy.

Economic injustice in America is so obvious that even the very establishment Foreign Affairs journal explored Why the Rich Are Getting Richer... subtitle: American Politics and the Second Gilded Age.

It notes that: [Economists Jacob] Hacker and [Paul] Pierson refreshingly break free from the conceit that skyrocketing inequality is a natural consequence of market forces and argue instead that it is the result of public policies that have concentrated and amplified the effects of the economic transformation and directed its gains exclusively toward the wealthy.

It's amusing to hear clever politicians like Pres. Obama and NY Gov. Cuomo express a certain degree of sympathy for the Movement, considering they represent the One Percent. I just hope that corporate Democrat organizations like MoveOn and Democracy for America don't co-opt (neuter) this populist movement.

Occupy Wall St.

2011-10-06T00:01:00.000-04:00

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

I am remiss for not having yet mentioned the growing Occupy Wall St. movement that is holding marches on in New York City and many other cities around the country protesting greed, excess and corporate domination of American government and society.

A few good websites about and covering the movement...

-Occupy Wall St. website

-Occupy Wall St. Facebook page

-Democracy Now

Readers are free to leave other suggesting in the comments field and I will add them.

Commenter John Warren adds: The Village Voice.

More on Cuomo's cowardly tax cap

2011-10-05T20:31:00.002-04:00

I guess I'm not the only one who says Governor Andrew Cuomo's property tax cap is cowardly. Even conservative town leaders in conservative upstate agree.

Moneyball: Lee Enterprises and the Post-Star by the numbers

2011-10-03T23:51:00.000-04:00

Eleventh in a series by contributor Mark Wilson
(©2011 Mark Wilson)

With the end of September comes the end of another semi-annual survey of the number of newspaper readers conducted by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The results of the latest audit will not be released until the first week in November.

While the ABC’s last audit showed the Glens Falls Post-Star in the middle of a haggard pack of regional newspapers when ranked by percentage of lost circulation, it might be useful to assess the recent performance of The Post-Star in context of the 53 daily newspapers owned by its parent company, Lee Enterprises, Inc. of Davenport, Iowa. After all, for as much as the Post-Star wants readers to see it as a paragon of small-town local journalism, it is ultimately just another property in a corporate portfolio—a corporation under the shadow of overwhelming debt, impending stock exchange delisting and possible bankruptcy.

Lee Enterprises operates 53 newspapers and their satellite publications in 23 states, with heavy concentration in the country’s northern midwest region. As of a year ago, the audited daily circulation of Lee’s properties ranged from 207,145 (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) to 3,821 (Baraboo [Wisconsin] News Republic). With its circulation of 26,798, the Post-Star reached the 14th largest audience in the Lee stable. A year ago the paper accounted for 1.94% of Lee’s entire weekday paid circulation.

Over the five-year span bracketed by the 2006 and 2010 annual reports, while every Lee paper but one posted losses in circulation (combined, Lee papers lost 256,338 paying readers or 15.66%), the Post-Star lost readers (6,473—or 19.46%) at a pace well above the average. In percentage of circulation losses, the Post-Star ranked fifteenth worst of the 56 Lee papers that were extant in 2006.

Perhaps of greater concern to Lee management, the Post-Star appears to be shedding its print audience at an increasing rate compared to the rest of the field. Between 2008 and 2010 the Post Star ranked tenth worst in Lee circulation losses; between 2009 and 2010—a year after winning the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing—the Post-Star moved to fourth place among Lee’s biggest losers.

While no two newspapers are alike, and the regional forces influencing circulation figures vary from year to year, finding yourself routinely on the list of under-performers (and sinking) in a corporate portfolio is not good. Particularly when the corporation is under tremendous pressure from creditors to increase its liquidity.

All the grim statistics might yet point up an opportunity—both for the Post-Star and its sister newspaper the (even worse-performing) Auburn [NY] Citizen. Should the time come when Lee is forced to divest its geographical or financial outliers, perhaps a local (or at least regional) interest will step forward to buy the undervalued properties. Should that happen the Post-Star will be able to stake a valid claim (for the first time in four decades) of being a genuinely local newspaper.

Class warfare

2011-09-26T00:13:00.000-04:00

The fiction of the big-time student-athlete

2011-09-23T22:35:00.000-04:00

The Atlantic has a good piece exploring "The Shame of College Sports." Big time college athletics (by this, I mean Division I men’s football and basketball) is the biggest sham this side of that other so-called non-profit: the Olympic “movement.” No one believes the purity the NCAA tries to peddle.

What should happen is that the NFL and NBA should create minor leagues and return college athletics to their original intent as extracurricular activites rather than replacing-curricular activities. But absent that, these athletes are earning mega bucks for the universities' coffers and deserve to be paid for it.

And don’t give me that nonsense about how they get a college education. Even those big time football and basketball players who actually do want a good education aren’t really permitted to maximize it due to the exigencies of travel. For example, just ask how many gridiron and hoops games are available on your TV screen during mid-week and ask how many classes the away team's players are attending that week. Give these athletes the equivalent of four years tuition and see how many of them actually spend it on a degree.

Yes, I do enjoy watching big college football games and March Madness, but I do so eyes wide open, fully aware that it's minor league sports. I'm under no illusion that the participants in this meat market bear any resemblance to the typical college student or even the true student-athlete, far more prevalent in Division III. Yet the NCAA insists on maintaining the fantasy pretense that no one buys anyway.

70% of Israelis want Palestinian statehood: poll

2011-09-22T14:29:00.007-04:00

This week, Israel's lawyer Barack Obama made the case before the United Nations that the UN should not recognize Palestinian statehood and that negotiations should allowed to drag on for however long the Netanyahu government wishes to stall. This is the same United Nations that, in 1947, recognized Israeli statehood.

However, an interesting poll was conducted by the Hebrew University and published in the Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post: 70% of Israelis say their government should accept the UN decision on the question, even if it results in Palestinian independence.

That's 70% of Israelis. So whose interests is lawyer Obama representing: the Israeli government's or the Israeli people's?

Republicans’ class warfare

2011-09-19T09:45:00.002-04:00

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

It’s a brilliant perversion of language to hear Republicans complaining that President Obama’s jobs plan constitutes class warfare. I make no commentary about Obama’s plan, though, as with most of what the president has done, it’s probably too little to matter and I’m sure he’ll end up capitulating on whatever minor improvements the plan may contain anyways.

However, GOP complaints are the height of hypocrisy. From demanding cuts to Medicare and Social Security in order to extend tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires (who already pay lower tax rates than the working class) to taking money away from ordinary working Americans to subsidize the recklessness of bankers and other financial institutions, the entire Republican economic agenda is based on class warfare. Privatize corporate profits, socialize the losses.

A result of Republican warfare against people who work for a living? The Census Bureau reported that more Americans are living in poverty than in any time in the 52 years they’ve been keeping such statistics.

It was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period [since 1999].

Tips for driving like a non-crazy person

2011-09-13T13:38:00.014-04:00

As many of you know, bicycling is my primary form of transportation. To my amazement, I was once told that some people thought I didn’t drive because maybe I’d been convicted of DWI (not correct, for the record). Around here, like most of America, biking as a form of transportation is as incomprehensible as the notion of reading a book for enjoyment.

For the second time in eight days, I came within less than a yard of being hit on my bicycle by a clueless driver, so it’s unfortunately time for a bit of a rant on the topic.

I’ll say this as clearly as I can.

DRIVERS MUST SHARE THE ROAD

I don’t care if you like it. I don’t care if you resent it. My taxes help pay for that road too so deal with it.

Being impatient and self-absorbed are qualities we easily slap on teenagers, but the truth is that adults in today’s society are just as guilty of this. In fact, their careless self-absorption is often more harmful because they have more means to inflict harm, however inadvertently.

Some argue that senior citizens should be subjected to regular re-testing to maintain their driver’s licenses. I’m starting to believe that all drivers should be subjected to this. I’ve been nearly hit many times over the years and while sometimes it’s been a younger driver and sometimes an older driver at fault, most often it’s been middle aged people. And contrary to popular belief, males tend to be worse drivers than females. Sorry guys, it’s true. If you don’t believe me, ask an actuary.

So here are a few tips I have for how not to be a complete twit while driving...

-Realize that you do not have the right of way while turning over a biker who’s going straight. You may, with every bone in your body, want to run him over so you can get to the next stop sign two seconds faster, but you really shouldn’t. The Big Mac you're so eager to scarf down will still be there.

-You are legally obligated to use your turn signal every time you turn, even when (you think) there is no one behind you. I will signal to help you out; you can do the same.

-Just as turn signals on your car are not merely decorative, neither are mirrors. You can look at them for reasons other than just fixing your hair. I'm told some drivers actually check mirrors to see if anybody's behind them.

-Even in supermarket/big box store parking lots, stop signs are not suggestions.

-If there is a car stopped and waiting to turn left and you want to go right into the shoulder to go around him, actually look before you do so.

-If you are yacking on your cell phone or texting while driving, I hope you get a ticket every single time. Truth is, you’re not nearly as good doing those two things at once as you think.

Until drivers start doing these things and actually respecting the rules of the road, I think I should start carrying a paintball gun while I’m biking.

Reflections on 9/12

2011-09-10T22:33:00.004-04:00

On this eve of the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, The New York Review of Books re-ran an excellent essay (from 2003) by Joan Didion. In it, she explores the ways in which Americans did far more damage to our own society in the post-9/11 period than al-Qaeda ever could.

What if a corporate party threw a bash and nobody came? The paper would still report on it

2011-09-02T15:14:00.002-04:00

Today’s Post-Star had a story about a Democrat running against Congressman Chris Gibson. The Democrat held an ‘event’ at the Washington County Municipal Center... except the only person he apparently talked to was an aide to his opponent, who happened to be there on other business.

So an event held by a corporate party candidate where nobody shows up merits a story (with photo!) on the front page of the local section. But when it comes to an event by smaller party candidate (Howie Hawkins) held at a local cafe jam packed with dozens of people in which the candidate gave detailed answers to dozens of intelligent and pertinent questions from ordinary citizens? It gets only a cursory mention buried in the newspaper’s blog.

Maybe next time, Greens should hold a flash mob doing Zumba and then maybe the local ‘news’ organization would notice.

Cuomo's cowardly tax cap

2011-09-01T16:18:00.010-04:00

I was reading an article in the Adirondack Journal on the cowardly, undemocratic property tax cap pushed through by NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

It's undemocratic because school budgets are voted upon by residents so the grand pooh-bah is saying that the unwashed masses are too stupid to be trusted with running their own affairs without conditions from the overlords; now school tax increases above 2% are invalid unless approved by a supermajority of the peons.

It's cowardly because he's imposing legal restrictions on how OTHER government bodies spend money, but not on the one he himself runs. Further, he's taking credit for the lower property tax but washes his hands of any anger at the accompanying cuts in services. Tell other people what to do. Don't tell them how to do but tie their hands (see below). That's cowardice.

But the biggest problem with Cuomo's cowardly property tax cap was summed up quite nicely in the Adirondack Journal piece.

Keene town supervisor William Ferebee, a Republican, stated: "I’m opposed to the cap. If there was a cap on state mandates, that would be a different story."

And the Keene supervisor had his comment before his town was devastated by Tropical Storm Irene.

The Minerva supervisor [Sue Corey] said she thought the idea of managing costs was a good one, but living with a cap without mandate relief is "going to be tough."

Lake George Mayor Robert Blais, another Republican, said he was opposed to the tax cap so long as it was not balanced with mandate relief.

Sensing a trend?

Irene: much ado about a lot in the Adirondacks

2011-08-31T11:31:00.008-04:00

There were a lot of snarky comments on Facebook and Twitter by people who expressed disappointment in Irene, even boredom. They seemed to think that more should’ve happened given all the media coverage. ‘Witty’ comments like ‘hurri-lame’ were prolific. Even the normally reliable Howard Kurtz expressed his “great relief that the prophets of doom were wrong about Hurricane Irene.”

This may be true of those cocooned in comfortable offices in Manhattan or DC but I don’t think anyone living in upstate New York’s Adirondack region, an area more used to heavy precipitation of the colder variety, would agree with these clueless assessments

Those ignorant enough to still think Irene was much ado about nothing ought to visit North Country Public Radio’s website. Their news page and news blog both have extensive coverage and photos of the massive devastation caused by this ‘non-event.’ Adirondack Almanack also has a good report and a compelling first-hand account.

Bummer no one ever scores in soccer

2011-08-29T12:26:00.001-04:00

Due to the pretty strong ‘remnants’ of Hurricane Irene, I did little much yesterday except watch soccer. The scores of the matches I watched were 5-1, 8-2, 4-3 and 2-2. I only saw highlights for the one on Saturday that finished 6-2. Too bad all soccer games end 0-0.

Failing Circulation Forces Newspaper Awards to Break the Rules

2011-08-28T10:46:00.016-04:00

Tenth in a series by regular contributor Mark Wilson

(©2011 Mark Wilson)

Cascading newspaper circulation numbers are causing problems in more than advertising revenues, newspaper staffs, and corporate media stock prices. They now appear to have compromised the integrity of newspaper awards.

The New York State Associated Press Association (NYSAPA) announced its annual awards earlier this month for writers, editors, photographers and graphic artists working at daily publications across the state. A total of 240 awards (82 first, 80 second and 78 third prizes) in 27 categories went to numerous employees of 34 newspapers.

According to the official rules, entrants for the writing categories are divided into four separate circulation classes: Under 25,000; 25,000 to 50,000; 50,000 to 125,000; and over 125,000. At present, the Audit Bureau of Circulations lists only six newspapers in New York State with circulation between 25,000 and 50,000. While there is no indication of how many newspapers submitted entries to the competition, of these six papers, only three -- The Poughkeepsie Journal, The Observer-Dispatch of Utica, and The Post-Star of Glens Falls -- won any writing awards. Inexplicably, a fourth newspaper, The Watertown Daily Times, also won awards (three) in this class. The Audit Bureau of Circulations lists the daily circulation of the Watertown paper as 20,475—4,525 readers shy of the minimum standard for the judging class.

When asked to explain the discrepancy, contest organizer and AP New York Bureau Chief Howard Goldberg initially explained that because of shifts in newspaper audiences from print to online editions, the NYSAPA decided to use 2009 circulation figures for this year’s competition. Asked then why the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle won ten writing awards this year in the 50,000—125,000 class when its 2009 daily circulation was 130,506, Mr. Goldberg retreated. He clarified that for this year’s contest classes NYSAPA “mostly stuck with the print circulation numbers we had used for last year’s contest.”

This explanation raised a few questions:

*Did NYSAPA modify the circulation numbers for all participating papers?
If so, did they use the same formula for each paper?

*Why did the official rules fail to mention the change?

*How were the participating newspapers notified of the change in rules?

*And who authorized the change?

Mr. Goldberg declined the opportunity to answer these questions. Mr. Goldberg also did not share the number of submissions for each category within each class of the writing competition. Along with the four newspapers that divided 45 prizes for writing in the 25,000 to 50,000 circulation class, the over-125,000 circulation class distributed 39 writing prizes among four newspapers, and six papers with circulation between 50,000 and 125,000 shared 45 prizes. In the most competitive class, 18 newspapers with circulation under 25,000 shared 44 writing prizes in 15 categories.

The Associated Press determined its New York State awards prestigious enough to send out a wire story nationwide. Likewise, eight of the 14 newspapers whose employees were honored for writing in the three least competitive classes devoted newsprint to coverage of their own successes. None bothered to report the narrowness of the classes in which they competed.

At The Post-Star in Glens Falls, Editor Ken Tingley, who sits on NYSAPA’s Board of Directors, announced his paper’s new honors in a blog post that cited 33 awards. A story soon followed (attributed to “staff”) in his paper’s business pages under the headline, “Post-Star wins total of 33 state Associated Press awards.” As a matter of fact, the newspaper actually won 34 awards—none for fact-checking. In a sign of these hard economic times for the news publishing sector, four of the nine Post-Star staffers awarded first prize in the NYSAPA contest have left the paper since their honored work appeared in print.

As for NYSAPA’s apparent breaking of its own rules in an effort to beef up award classes and lend the contest some semblance of legitimacy, Howard Goldberg claims that contest reform will be on the agenda at the organization’s September board meeting. Perhaps his board might consider scrapping the self-indulgent exercise altogether. It has passed the point of resembling Prize Day at Low-Self-Esteem Summer Camp far more than a valid gauge of professional merit in a benighted industry.

From the wisdom of Twitter

2011-08-26T11:07:00.003-04:00

There was just a 5.8 earthquake in Washington. Obama wanted it to be 3.4, but Republicans wanted 5.8. So he compromised. -@TheTweetofGod

Local bookstore shutters: we've met the enemy and it is us

2011-08-21T11:45:00.009-04:00

Like most other local bibliophiles, I was incredibly saddened to learn of the closing of Red Fox Books in Glens Falls. They did a great job in reaching out to the community with a wide variety of programs, in bringing in a wide variety of authors both local and national and providing great, engaging customer service. It managed to survive for five years in an area which has struggled economically for the last 30 years and is a tough market for independent retailers. Red Fox’s demise was particularly disappointing since its opening was the culmination of a several year campaign to bring a full service bookstore to Glens Falls.

Like many other local bookstores in the country, Red Fox was badly affected not only by online retailers (which were in existence when RF opened) but particularly by the sharp rise in popularity of Amazon.com’s Kindle e-reader. Once you factored in shipping, the amount you’d save shopping at Amazon was usually quite minimal unless you bought a lot of books at a time. You could order just about any book via Red Fox’s website and pick it up at the store at no extra charge. You could buy e-books via Red Fox’s website and their pricing was pretty comparable to the Barnes and Noble, iTunes and the like. But many locals insisted on shopping at BN.com or Amazon to save 25 cents. The result: a failed local business, local people unemployed, the loss of choice for local bibliophiles and the loss of a good amount of local sales tax revenue. Enjoy that quarter!

One thing people who prefer this digital method of reading need to understand is that not all e-readers are created equal. If you buy the B&N Nook, the Apple iPad, Sony e-reader or some other kind, you can buy e-books at the site of the company who produced the e-reader but you can also buy them at your local independent bookstore (if you have one) and you can also get them via the library. But if you buy a Kindle, you have no choice; you are shackled to Amazon.com as your sole vendor. E-book readers have a choice that we physical book readers just lost... but make sure your decisions don’t eliminate that choice.

Of course, a great big thank you goes to Red Fox's owners Susan and Naftali for their great contribution to our community. It will be sorely missed.

A somewhat related piece of news that caught my eye was the closure of the Lowe’s big box home improvement store in Ticonderoga. Chains and big corporations do have some advantages over independent businesses, but one big disadvantage that can be summed up quite simply: easy come, easy go. Lowe’s lasted on two years in Ti before pulling the plug. Of course, one wonders what sort of damage it did to locally-owned businesses in that brief time period.

On North Country Public Radio’s In Box blog, commenter and Adirondack Almanack founder John Warren asked: How many people lost their jobs in Jay, Ticonderoga, and Port Henry because this store sapped their local business over the past several years? Those who opposed this store as strip development blight out of character with the rest of the community and a drain on local economies were right. Who will move into this 440-car parking lot and empty 150,000 square foot big box?... NCPR should now be holding those elected officials accountable by asking why they pushed for such risky development without concern for the locally owned businesses and historic character of Ticonderoga...

Local officials should definitely focus on helping small and medium locally-owned businesses, as the Lowe’s debacle illustrates. But the community has a responsibility too. Those locally-owned businesses can survive if local people are spending their money instead supporting chains half a country away.

Locals like to scapegoat boogeymen like 'big government' and 'onerous regulations' for the region’s sluggish private sector economy. And yet how many of us CHOOSE to send their own money to private sector businesses halfway across the country rather than comparable ones on Main Street in our own towns?

From the wisdom(s) of Twitter

2011-08-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

Debt increase by presidents: Reagan 186%, Bush 54% Clinton 41% Bush II 72% Obama 23%. Source CBO. -@paulfreid

Unemployment is 8.2% in TX, 5.5% in Socialist Republic of VT. -@dankennedy_nu

Post-Star: Help Wanted (guest essay)

2011-08-17T23:25:00.002-04:00

9th in a series on the troubles at The Post-Star and its parent Lee Enterprises

by Mark Wilson

Astronomy informs us that at the end of a star’s useful life, when it has burned through all its fuel, it expands into a loose assemblage of cosmic dust centered on a collapsing carbon and oxygen core. The outer shell eventually dissipates, leaving the ultra dense, sparkless core to mark a once-bright spot in the heavens. This post-star phase of stellar evolution is known as a “white dwarf” or “degenerate dwarf.”

In Glens Falls, the Post-Star is in transition. Dire financial crises at Lee Enterprise Inc—the Iowa corporation that owns the newspaper, along with about fifty other dailies across the country—have forced another round of staff cutbacks in all departments. Since Memorial Day, the Post-Star has lost nine of the 68 staffers (13.2%) listed on the “Contact Info” page at poststar.com. The loss of editorial staff includes Drew Kerr from the Saratoga Bureau, feature writer Jordan Reardon, veteran photographer and photo-illustrator TJ Hooker, and sportswriter Alex Matthews. In the past week the paper has also lost its online editor Jonathan Davenport (particularly painful as the news organization attempts the difficult transition to an internet-based model) and Washington County correspondent Lydia Wheeler, whose name has yet to be removed from the web page.

Characteristically, Post-Star Editor Ken Tingley wrote a vague blog post attempting to spin this bad news into something positive: a portent of a strengthening business climate in the newspaper publishing industry. His implication that the missing writers left for better jobs in the industry seems not to be true in all cases. When asked, Tingley declined to identify the recently-departed editorial staff; the transparency-crusading editor who publishes the names (and salaries) of public-sector employees as a service to the taxpayers who underwrite them proves himself unwilling to even confirm the employment status of his own byline journalists as a service to the subscribers, readers and advertisers who support them.

This summer’s staff cutbacks at the Post-Star mark the second major round of shrinkage for the newspaper (and the parent corporation) since the recession took hold in 2008. In December of that year an article in the Post-Star announced the firing of four of its full-time employees. The story stated that the cuts amounted to two per cent of the paper’s workforce, reducing the staff from 161 full- and part-time employees to 157. The following March, an article announcing the layoffs of eleven more employees cited a decrease in the paper’s payroll from 147 to 136 full- and part-time staff. Using their own numbers, in the three and a half months between those two news items ten more staffers disappeared, unreported. In total, the attrition in Post-Star staff between December 2008 and March 2009 amounted to 25 employees, or 15.5% of the original 161. By comparison, the Post-Star’s parent company reported a 12.2% decrease in total employees in the fiscal year ending September 2009.

Perhaps a better measure of the net loss of Post-Star talent (that accounts for staff increases as well as decreases) is a comparison of the staff “Contact Info” pages from poststar.com at various dates. The page from September 14, 2008 lists 84 employees. (Notably vacant on this list is the position of Publisher, which would not be filled by Rick Emanuel until October 20, about a month prior to the layoffs.) The same web page today lists 60 employees. Accounting for the previously mentioned departure of Lydia Wheeler, in less than three years the newspaper has suffered a net loss of nearly 30% of the staff it distinguishes with a listing on its own website.

While Editor Tingley, may try to put some positive spin on this grim statistic, the fact remains that the Post-Star continues to shine ever and evermore dimly.

A Peace Corps history

2011-08-16T17:34:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I finished reading When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and its First Fifty Years by journalist Stanley Meisler, an excellent history of the widely respected agency. Meisler's book is very well-written and easy to follow. It provides a lot of inside details, particularly in the early days, but it is no hagiography. It does not shy away from some of the more controversial incidents and aspects of the Peace Corps first half century.

Dear Verizon

2011-08-08T21:13:00.001-04:00

Dear Verizon,

When you are making record profits with your existing labor contract and you do nothing but raise rates on consumers, it doesn't exactly make me sympathetic when you claim to "need" to wring more concessions out of the workers who made you those record profits.

Regretfully yours,
The (Fairly) Young Contrarian

Lee Enterprises, Inc’s 3rd Quarter Report: Black & White & Red All Over (guest essay)

2011-08-07T10:19:00.008-04:00

8th in a series on troubles at The Post-Star and its parent Lee Enterprises

by Mark Wilson

The Iowa corporation that owns the Glens Falls Post-Star, Lee Enterprises, Inc., released its third quarter financial statement late Friday afternoon. As any reporter will tell you, the vacant lot between the close of stock markets Friday and Monday’s opening bell is where you go to bury bad news.

While many of the headlines from Lee’s SEC filing were made public soon after the fiscal quarter ended on June 26th, the aggregate bad news and the details of the measures the company is undertaking to stay afloat make for compelling and distressing reading.

The Big Picture
Lee Enterprises lost $155.5 million over the last three months. That compares to last year when they gained $10 million for the same quarter, and 2009—at the bottom of the recession—when they lost only $24.5 million. Even if Lee repeats last year’s fourth quarter gains (unlikely in what looks like a secondary recession) it will outpace its 2008-09 recession year losses by nearly $10 million or 7.85%.

Revenue Loss
While representatives for Lee Enterprise (including management at the Post-Star) continue to accentuate the increase in online ad revenue (up 22% over last year), those sales amount to only 12% of total advertising income. Combined print and digital advertising lost 5.6% over last year with real estate ads leading the decline (down 20%). Revenue from circulation was off .4%, a figure that reflects the unfortunate tug-of-war between the increased newsstand and subscription prices at some of Lee’s papers and the drop-off in readership.

Layoffs and Benefit Cuts
With revenues plunging and material costs on the rise, Lee has resorted to the one revenue stream under its control: laying off staff and cutting back on employee and retiree benefits. Lee saved $4 million over the last three months through layoff, buyout or “coerced attrition.” Full time equivalent employment at Lee (a term that balances out full and part time labor) decreased 4.8% from last year. (these savings were offset by increased $1.6 million “workforce adjustment costs” (outsourcing, contract labor, etc.).

Lee also saved $4 million by eliminating post-retirement medical coverage for its employees and freezing some pension benefits. Ominously, the report looks ahead to decreasing these operating costs another 4-5% in the coming quarter.

Corporate Debt
Lee Enterprises continues to struggle beneath a $1 billion debt burden which comes due in eight months. This picture may soon brighten,however, if only for the short term.

Reporters Mike Spector and Matt Wirz for the Wall Street Journal broke the story last Wednesdaybthat Lee has approached its principal lenders with a new plan for reorganizing its debt. The new plan divides the current debt obligation into three parts: $675 million in first lien senior debt; $175 million in second lien debt; and $175 new bond debt. The senior debt holds an interest rate of 7.5% over a term of four years (compared to the 4.25% they are paying now). The second lien debt holds an interest rate of 15% over five years (compared to 10% now paid on the debt remaining from the purchase of Pulitzer newspapers) and offers lenders a 13% stake in the company. Lee’s lenders Goldman Sachs and Monarch Alternative Capital have tentatively agreed to hold the publisher’s second tier debt in exchange for the over 1/8th ownership stake.

If the new arrangement holds to the previous terms (apart from interest rate and maturity dates) a very rough calculation of Lee’s new debt looks something like this:

•$675,000,000 over 4 years at 7.5% interest (in quarterly installments) comes to $197 million/year
•$175,000,000 over 5 years at 15% interest (in quarterly installments) comes to $50 million/year

When combined, Lee will have to come up with about $147 million/year to satisfy its creditors (before even considering the new bond debt service). This payout would be 2.25 times larger than the $109 million debt service it managed to come up with this past year. For an advertiser/subscriber/investor–dependent company going into the second wave of a national recession, this will be a very tall order to fill.

In the increasingly likely event that Lee ultimately fails to meet the new debt obligations and declares bankruptcy, the new arrangement with its banks sets up a dynamic similar to the Journal Register Company, which emerged from its 2009 bankruptcy last month as the privately-held property of the hedge fund Alden Global, the newspaper’s principal lender.

Anyone who was disappointed three years ago in their newspaper’s failure to hold financial institutions accountable for the nation’s real estate and stock market collapses will not see this infiltration into the publishing sector by many of the same banks as a move in the right direction.

Late in the week, following news of the debt refinancing plan and in anticipation of the quarterly report, Lee’s stock dropped to a 2-year low of 68¢ per share.

'Violent counter-jihadism' and its threat to western democracies

2011-08-02T22:32:00.000-04:00

Foreign Affairs has a good article on "counter-jihadism," a violent ideology in itself, as exemplified by the Christian terrorist who committed mass murder in Norway last week.

Lee Enterprise newspapers moving (fast) to subscription-based web content (guest essay)

2011-08-01T08:57:00.012-04:00

7th in a series on troubles at The Post-Star and its parent Lee Enterprises

by Mark Wilson

The on-again-off-again romance between the Post-Star and the internet subscription paywall looks like it might soon heat up again.

Lee Enterprises, the Davenport, Iowa-based parent company of the Post-Star announced suddenly yesterday that it will begin requiring visitors to the websites of its Montana and Wyoming newspapers pay a subscription if they wish to read more than a few stories per month. Access to the papers’ home pages, classified sections, and a few other features will remain free, regardless of the number of visits. According to the editor of the Montana Standard, the subscription plan begins today for the Billings Gazette, the Helena Independent Record, The Missoulian, and Ravalli Republic in Montana, and the Casper Star Tribune in Wyoming.

The head office’s new policy seems to have blind-sided some of the publications. The Billings Gazette and the Ravalli Republic in notices to their readers claim the new “reader meter” allows visitors twenty free stories in any given thirty day period, while the Montana Standard and Helena IR claim the system will allow fifteen free pages for any of the affected websites. Neither The Missoulian nor the Casper Star Tribune websites made any announcement of the new policy on Sunday.

No telling if this policy in the northern rockies will spread to any of Lee’s 43 other newspaper properties (including the Post-Star). The company is in financial disarray, and is looking for any way to generate new income and attract investors to boost its dangerously deflated stock. This might be the company’s next hail Mary pass.

The Post-Star flirted with subscription-based web content a decade ago—a move which led to the online division between PostStar.net (for paying customers) and PostStar.com (for everyone else). Visitors preferred the free site in numbers large enough to convince the publisher to drop the firewall altogether and offer all content for free. In February last year, after deciding to pull Letters to the Editor and other items from the website, Editorial Page Editor Mark Mahoney sent out an e-mail plea to editors around the country for information on how to make the paper’s website profitable. The plea made its way online, where it was unfortunately ridiculed for its loose grammar and desperate tone.

Perhaps enough time has passed since the Post-Star’s last traumatic break-up with subscriber-only content. After all, the paper and its readers are older, more mature. Maybe the paper is ready for a fuller commitment to the relationship this time. After all, the Schenectady Gazette is making a go of it with its readers. So is The New York Times. Maybe, by golly, its time to take the big plunge. No regrets. ‘Til death do us part.

Then again, maybe the Post-Star won’t have a choice in the matter. A shotgun marriage is being arranged at this very moment in Iowa. Expect an invitation from the Lee family at any moment.

Republicans are holding the economy hostage and thumbing their nose at the Constitution

2011-07-30T21:13:00.015-04:00

I'm not a Democrat or a supporter of President Obama, but the Republicans' actions with regard to raising the debt ceiling is completely disgraceful, although that's probably an understatement.

To recap...

-Congressional Republicans are refusing to raise the debt ceiling to pay for expenditures Congress has already authorized as part of the regular budget. Given that 'Tea Partiers' yammer on incessantly about strict fidelity to the Constitution, perhaps they can explain how their demand that spending be approved by Congress twice squares with the 14th Amendment.

-The current federal fiscal year ends on September 30. This means that Republicans and their 'Tea Party' fringe are holding the economy hostage to their probably unconstitutional ideological posturing rather than waiting two months for budget negotiations, where such grandstanding belongs.

A piece from last year in The Washington Post sheds some more light on the widening inequality in the US.

From World War II until 1976, considered by many as the "golden years" for the U.S. economy, the top 10 percent of the population took home less than a third of the income generated by the private economy. But since then, according to Saez and Piketty, virtually all of the benefits of economic growth have gone to households that, in today's terms, earn more than $110,000 a year.

Even within that top "decile," the distribution is remarkably skewed. By 2007, the top 1 percent of households took home 23 percent of the national income after a 15-year run in which they captured more than half - yes, you read that right, more than half - of the country's economic growth. As Tim Noah noted recently in a wonderful series of articles in Slate, that's the kind of income distribution you'd associate with a banana republic or a sub-Saharan kleptocracy, not the world's oldest democracy and wealthiest market economy.

It's worth noting that not only Republicans but Democrats, like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have been complicit in crafting policies to this effect.

Clerks claim 'right' to flout law

2011-07-30T16:45:00.000-04:00

WAMC News did a story about how some municipal clerks in New York are claiming the 'right' to refuse to issue same sex marriage licenses, now that it has become law in the state. The so-called Alliance Defense Fund rails against "threats from top officials of the Empire State to charge clerks who decline to issue such licenses with a criminal offense--forcing clerks to decide between their career and their faith"... as though this is somehow both illegal and unprecedented.

If a Muslim clerk wanted to refuse to issue marriage licenses to Christian couples because of religious beliefs, would these organizations defend their right to do so? What if a gay clerk wanted to refuse to issue marriage licenses to a straight couple? What if a racist white clerk wanted to refuse a marriage license to a black or interracial couple?

Let’s take this further. What if an evangelical clerk wanted to deny a birth certificate to the newborn of an unmarried woman? What if a strict Muslim DMV worker wanted to deny driver's licenses to women? What if a Protestant bureaucrat wanted to deny a building permit to a Catholic church?

Would any of these be tolerated on the basis of the ‘rights’ of the bureaucrat? Of course not.

The clerks, like all citizens, have the right to their religious beliefs. They do not have the right to a job.

A job is a privilege, not a right, and is subject to conditions and expectations defined by the employer. For example, I may have the right to freedom of speech as a citizen, but if I exercised that right by shouting in the workplace that my boss was a lying crook, I probably wouldn’t have that job much longer. No one would argue with a straight face that my firing would be a violation of my free speech rights.

Rights outside the workplace and those related to the execution of your job duties are two very different things. Why should religious public sector workers be subjected to a different standard?

Taxpayers have the right to expect that public sector workers they are paying will apply and respect the law as written, regardless of their personal biases, prejudices and beliefs. They have a job to do. If they can’t do their job in good conscience, they should have the principle to resign, as some already have. If they won’t do their lawful jobs, the public has the right to replace them with somebody who will.

Male victims of sex crimes in war 'almost equal' number of female victims

2011-07-29T21:53:00.000-04:00

This essay is part of an occasional feature on this blog that presents compelling stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, IsraelStine and the Trumped Up Enemy of the Month. A list of all pieces in this series can be found found here..

In recent years, there's been quite a bit of press coverage of the rape and sexual assault against women during war time, and rightly so. However, there's virtually no awareness of such crimes against men. Both al-Jazeera (here) and the UK Observer (here) have done pieces on this mostly ignored scourge.

Both news outlets report the claim that sex crimes against men during war is nearly as common as those against women, some of the victims having been gang raped repeatedly for months or even years. But The Observer points out that the problem is so little thought of that such statistics are hard to find. Because there has been so little research into the rape of men during war, it's not possible to say with any certainty why it happens or even how common it is – although a rare 2010 survey, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 22% of men and 30% of women in Eastern Congo reported conflict-related sexual violence.

They note that, in addition to the taboos (and in some places, laws) preventing many such men from getting help, many non-governmental organizations are set up to help female victims of sex crimes but not males.

"The organisations working on sexual violence don't talk about it," says Chris Dolan, director of the Refugee Law Project (RLP) at the Makerere University in Uganda.

But it goes beyond not talking about it to an active muzzling of reality.

"I know for a fact that the people behind [a 2006 United Nations] report insisted the definition of rape be restricted to women," [Dolan] says, adding that one of the RLP's donors, Dutch Oxfam, refused to provide any more funding unless he'd promise that 70% of his client base was female.

The Observer article concludes depressingly: Before receiving help from the RLP, one man went to see his local doctor. He told him he had been raped four times, that he was injured and depressed and his wife had threatened to leave him. The doctor gave him a Panadol.

Christian Jihadists

2011-07-27T15:06:00.005-04:00

So reading this piece on the terrorist attack in Norway committed by a white, blond-haired Norwegian, could someone please remind me why violent, conservative Muslim theocratic extremists are so much more dangerous to safety, democracy and civilized western values than violent conservative Christian theocratic extremists?

From the wisdom of Twitter

2011-07-23T15:17:00.001-04:00

"When its a Muslim [who commits a heinous crime], every Muslim in the world somehow shares responsibility. When it's a white Christian, he's always a lone wolf." -@Gazamom

"Reporting on a murder is taking a pro-homicide position" and other absurdities

2011-07-19T11:39:00.010-04:00

North Country Public Radio announced that it is planning on doing a story on area gay couples who are getting married when it takes effect in New York. Seems pretty straight forward (no pun intended). Gays have never been able to legally marry in the state so doing a story on something that's never happened before seems a no-brainer.

Some of the enlightened commenters on NCPR’s In Box blog whined that such reporting constitutes the station “taking a political stance” on marriage equality.

Strangely, the “political stance” accusation wasn’t leveled at the public radio station when it aired a long interview with the Catholic archbishop of Ogdensburg railing against the gay marriage bill.

According to this sad logic, if a news outlet interviews a convicted murderer, it’s taking the political stance of being pro-homicide.

Those fishing for the dreaded “liberal bias” ogre will look under every nook and cranny for the tiniest semblance of evidence and are not bound by the logic of normal people.

In the same announcement, NCPR also mentioned that it was going to include in the report the views of municipal clerks who have religious reservations about issuing marriage licenses to gay couples (of course they should issue the license or resign on principle).

For some reason, this inclusion was not subjected to the “taking a political stance” accusation; in fact, it wasn’t even acknowledged by the whiners in question. According to the whiners, NCPR's real bias isn't that it's ignoring the anti-gay marriage position; it's that the station is including the pro- side.

But it’s well-known that selective vision and hearing are critical elements in any martyr complex.

Income inequality and economic growth

2011-07-11T17:51:00.005-04:00

NPR's All Things Considered ran an interesting story exploring whether the exploding gap in income inequality is holding back economic growth. It notes that income inequality is worse in the US now that at any point since the year before the start of the Great Depression and that it's 'in the same inequality ballpark' as countries like Cameroon and Ivory Coast.

Obama's illegal war in Libya

2011-07-10T00:10:00.000-04:00

Here are a couple of articles regarding Pres. Obama's illegal war in Libya...

-Obama rejects top lawyers' legal views on Libya (that the war required Congressional approval): Salon.com

-Obama is bringing America closer to the imperial presidency than Bush ever did: Foreign Policy.

Congratulations South Sudan!

2011-07-09T11:03:00.001-04:00

Congratulations to the Republic of South Sudan, the world's newest nation, which achieved independence today. To the country's government: it took you a long time to get to this day. Don't screw it up.

Those darn 11 year old teenagers!

2011-07-08T10:35:00.008-04:00

A followup to yesterday's post about media hacks...

The Post-Star ran different articles yesterday and today about an 11 year old girl from Galway who appeared on the TV show Jeopardy!

In both cases, the headline referred to the 11 year old as a 'teen.'

While the prominence given to the Casey Anthony garbage (lead story on the front page for the 2nd day in a row today) doesn't inspire confidence in the 'news judgement [sic]' of the daily's 'professional editor,' repeatedly referring to an 11 year old as a teenager doesn't speak highly of the attention to detail provided by our region's most prominent news institution.

Once a tabloid lemming hack, always a tabloid lemming hack

2011-07-07T11:23:00.004-04:00

In a recent blog entry, managing editor Ken Tingley whined about the lack of content over the holiday weekend (as though this is different from the usual state of affairs in the paper). But then he expressed relief that there were some excellent wire reads available to us for the front page today.

In an older blog entry, Tingley pat himself on the back, bragging that One of the services you get with every newspaper is the news judgement [sic] of a professional editor.

One of the “excellent wire reads” as determined by the “news judgement of a professional editor” was a front page lead story about the Casey Anthony garbage, a ‘story’ that should be of no interest to anyone outside the local area of wherever it took place. Then again, this is the same “news judgement” that brought us other front page stories on a bridge in Scotland that dogs like to jump off and a house in Idaho infested by snakes.

If I want sensationalist tripe like this, I will just give my $1 directly to The New York Post. I suspect they do a better job at tabloid nonsense anyways.

I was also surprised that WAMC News wasted member donations by contriving a local 'story' out of this, since people tune in to public radio to avoid such tabloid garbage, but maybe I shouldn’t have been.

Living up to the words

2011-07-04T00:48:00.004-04:00

Today being Independence Day here in the United States, it's worth remembering the most famous lines of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It is thus poignant that the legislature and governor of New York chose to put those words into application so close to the anniversary of their authorship.

'Cuz God says so' is not good enough anymore

2011-07-02T13:31:00.023-04:00

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.” ~James Madison, one of the main authors of the US Constitution.

I read a comment on a blog that two people of the same gender living together, having kids and getting married was “the slippery slope to moral decline.” Ten years ago, cultural warriors were telling us that people living together, having kids and NOT getting married at all was the slippery slope to moral decline. It’s a mark of the culture warriors' adaptability that, as society evolves, they can switch scapegoats so easily.

And that's what the passage of marriage equality in New York was such an achievement. The main benefit is, of course, to gay couples who want their union recognized by law and thus to receive the attendant benefits. It's also important to legislation reflect the equal protection of the law provisions of the state and federal constitutions.

But one of the secondary benefits was to strike a blow against theocratic tendencies. In the NYS debate, the main argument against marriage equality was simple: "God's law says marriage is between one man and one woman. And Man does not have the right to change it."

Except that the debate was not about changing God's law. It was about changing Man's law. The NYS marriage law was written by men and thus men (and women) have it entirely within their power to change that law. "God's law" remains unaffected. Man's law ought to be democratic. God's law can't be.

One reason marriage equality was such an important victory is that it reminds us that we don't live in Iran or Saudi Arabia. We live in a state run by secular and constitutional values. If you are going to deny equal rights to a group of citizens, if you want to change or defend any piece of governmental action or inaction, you have to come up with a better reason than just "Cuz God says so."

Climate change undermines roads... literally

2011-07-01T08:18:00.005-04:00

In NCPR's In Box blog, reporter Brian Mann linked to two piecces relating to climate change.

A column in the Albany Times-Union asked if extreme weather is the new normal.

The article in the Glens Falls Post-Star explained how climate change may alter the way highways and rural roads are constructed. It noted that the region had seen a rash of so-called "100 year events" (extreme weather that normally happens only once in a lifetime) this year alone.

Jon Alexander's piece noted:

"The books we've always used to design culverts, you can throw them all out," Dave Wick, district manager of the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District, recently said. "What was once called a 100-year event is now a 50-year event, and a 50-year event has become a 25-year event."

Wick said that precipitation that once fell as snow is now reaching Earth as highly localized super-rainstorms, overwhelming culverts designed using potentially outdated pre-construction models.

For years, scientists have been tracking an increase in global temperatures. They predict the warming trend will generally lead to warmer, wetter weather in the Northeast's boreal forests, while desertification will continue to see places like the Sahara expand outward.

Locally ecologists are already seeing changes.

Ultimately, people who understand the threat of climate change need to just ignore those rejectionists who oppose it for ideological reasons that have zero to do with real science.

Rejectionists don't accept science, not merely climate science specifics but science in general (unless of course they're sick and need medicine) and they do so for ideological reasons. If you say 2+2=4, they will reject it not for any scientific or mathematical reason but solely because they fear the imagined POLITICAL consequences of the sum equalling four.

People who understand the threat of climate change ought to stop using scientific jargon to convince ordinary people and start referencing more practical issues. 350 is not something people can easily latch on to (sorry Bill McKibben), but they sure understand road collapses and damaging flooding.

Folks in the North Country may be of conservative temperament but they are also practical. And as pragmatic people, collapsing roads and flooding lakes in our own backyard, as well as the financial costs of such disasters, are things they can grasp much more easily.

Rejectionists blithely dismiss climate science as hooey. "The Earth's climate is always changing," they say, as though the world's pre-eminent climate scientists aren't aware of that. And they are right, even as human behavior is distorting this wildly; natural climate changes occur over centuries and millennia, not decades.

The threat of man-inflicted climate change is less to the planet itself. As rejectionists point out, the climate has changed before and will change again. But with such UNNATURAL climate change, the planet will survive, but it's an open question whether the human race would do the same.

Africa has been affected by climate change for a few decades. Hunger 'emergencies' have become regular staples of life in the African Sahel, a border between the expanding Sahara Desert to the north and the coastal rain forest to the south that stretches across the continent.

Africans don't need to argue about climate change's existence. They aren't twiddling their thumbs, letting themselves be hijacked by ideology. They see and experience it directly. They aren't wasting their time arguing about settled science. They have more important things to do, such as adapting to the reality they're already being forced to live.

People may not understand the number 350. But they do understand numbers like $1.5 million and $7 million.

The former is the annual budget for the Warren County town of Thurman. The latter is the amount of damage to roads and bridges caused by recent flooding. The number of severe flooding incidents in Warren County has significantly increased in the last few years. If flooding damage that amounts to more the six times a town's annual budget becomes more than a once in a lifetime event, will the ideology of climate change rejectionists still hold water?

Climate change is real and destructive and those who understand this can't be paralyzed by the rejectionists who refuse to be engaged in any rational way. We have real world consequences to deal with and, hopefully, prevent. It's these real world consequences we should be using to try to educate the open-minded part of the public and encourage to live in a more sustainable fashion.

Editorial comment of the day

2011-06-29T16:58:00.002-04:00

Courtesy of Bob Englehart of The Hartford Courant:

WAMC: AWOL (guest essay)

2011-06-28T00:01:00.000-04:00

by Mark Wilson

As the 2011 Legislative session in Albany was reaching its dramatic climax last Friday—with the tax cap/rent control/mandate relief bill, the same sex marriage legislation and the SUNY 2020 tuition indexing bill (among others) still hanging fire—listeners to WAMC and affiliated stations tuning in for the 9 AM Roundtable program were met with a surprise. Instead of an informative discussion of the unresolved issues before the New York State Senate, or an analysis of the political dynamics taking pace behind closed doors, the Roundtable staff—host Joe Donohue, producer Sarah LaDuke and WAMC President & CEO Dr. Alan Chartock—were broadcasting live from North Adams, Massachusetts at Mass MoCA, the site of the “Solid Sound” festival.

While Albany burned with speculation on the final day of government business for the term, WAMC “treated” its listeners to two hours of interviews with festival organizers, local officials, headliner acts, and a falconer friend of Dr. Chartock’s who informed listeners that nothing had really changed in his vocation for the past four thousand years. Not one word about the chaos that was coming to a head in their home state. Even the hourly newsbreak: BBC World News followed by four local/regional news reports (Rebuilding of a catholic school in Springfield, MA; 2 stories from Vermont; one from Connecticut) completely overlooked New York State news. They did manage to give the Albany weather, however.

While WAMC was on vacation, over at 1300 on the AM band, Fred Dicker was eating Dr. Chartock’s breakfast, interviewing E.J. McMahon of the Manhattan Institute. McMahon was describing last minute changes to the tax cap bill, particularly a bonding clause that substantially neutered the legislation’s impact.

WAMC has always had an affinity for the Berkshires. From Great Barrington to Tanglewood and the Edith Wharton estate in Lenox, to Williamstown and North Adams. Certainly no one could begrudge the hard-working journalists some time off during the summer. Still, it would be reassuring to those who follow New York State political news and government affairs closely to know that the WAMC news staff is committed to staying focused on their number one job until the lawmakers leave town.

"We don't budget for sidewalks"

2011-06-27T08:32:00.006-04:00

The Saratogian ran an article about how residents in Saratoga Springs want more and better sidewalks. The request was pooh-poohed by city leaders. DPW Chief Skip Scirocco said, "We don’t put any money in our budget for sidewalks."

(Probably not a surprise to Jim Kunstler)

Cool... that must mean that people in Saratoga who walk, bike and take the bus everywhere don't have to pay taxes... right?

A great day for civil rights

2011-06-25T08:12:00.010-04:00

After intense debate, the New York Senate finally voted on and passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. The bill was quickly signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The irony is that a similar measure failed two years in a Democratic-controlled Senate. But this bill was approved by a GOP-controlled chamber.

Interestingly, a combined 55% of legislators supported the civil rights measure, which is actually a lower percentage than in the 2009 vote. Perhaps surprisingly, a recent Siena poll showed that 59% of Catholics in New York supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, despite the obstinance of their leaders.

Shortly after the bill was signed, someone I know announced that she and her partner were engaged. I checked outside and noticed that the sky did not appear to be falling.

Critics make the farcical claim that allowing gays and lesbians to marry will cause society to implode. I think the real sign of the apocalypse is that the legislature actually did something to make us proud to be New Yorkers.

The Chronicle should give credit for using MOFYC/Wilson piece (and did... updated)

2011-06-23T16:26:00.014-04:00

The Glens Falls weekly Chronicle picked up the most recent story published here written by Mark Wilson... sort of. This was part of Wilson’s series examining troubles at the rival daily Post-Star. But in his article, Chronicle editor Mark Frost referred to, “A blog that a Chronicle reader referred us to put those numbers in perspective...”

His piece did not include the name of this blog, a URL to Wilson's article or, what should have been the bare minimum, Wilson's name.

The excellent blog entry did not appear out of thin air. Mark Wilson has done a lot of research to put together that piece and the entire series. Frost ought to have acknowledged Wilson in his article as the person who “put those numbers in perspective.”

We hear mainstream media journalists complaining all the time about bloggers ‘stealing’ their content without attribution but here it’s just the opposite.

Blogger Wilson did all the work of “putting those numbers in perspective” in a piece of journalism as good as anything you’d read in either The Chronicle or The Post-Star. But Frost used the material Wilson compiled without bothering to credit him. Frost mentioned that he saw it in a blog but consciously chose to not include details about the source, which is even more of a slap in the face to Wilson’s efforts.

This amateur blog’s policy is to always give attribution to material taken from other sources and, whenever possible, to link directly to it. I’ve occasionally referenced articles from The Chronicle, but always with credit given. A professional newspaper operation should do the same.

As such, I’d like to remind readers of that which is listed in the blog’s masthead: Essays are available for re-print, with the explicit permission of the publisher. mofycbsj @ yahoo.com. If brief excerpts are going to be used or if the piece is going to be mentioned in passing, attribution must be given.

Although I don’t usually agree with Frost’s political opinions, I generally consider him someone who tries to be fair-minded. Frost does like claim he stands up for the little guy. As such, he could start by giving the little guy credit for his work.

A discussion is planned with Mr. Frost and we hope they will run a clarification in the next issue. Stay tuned!

Update: The weekly agreed to run a clarification in the next issue crediting Mr. Wilson for his work. We thank Mr. Frost for his cooperation.

Further update: The weekly did run a clarification in yesterday's issue. It was something like "Mark Wilson stopped by the office to request attribution" rather than "I (Mark Frost) failed to give attribution" (which should have been a no-brainer in the first place). But proper credit was finally given albeit, it seems, grudgingly.

English soccer's cluelessness and FIFA's war against honesty

2011-06-20T10:25:00.008-04:00

I saw an article in the UK Guardian about the English soccer team crashing out of the European Under-21 Championships. Manager Stuart Pearce blamed his side’s failure on their lack of ‘doggedness.’

And this is the English mentality in a nutshell. To them, dealing with repeated failure doesn’t mean improving skill, technique or tactical awareness, areas where the English are light years behind countries like Spain, Germany, Argentina and Brazil. Their solution to everything is always to just “be more dogged”... which, without the aforementioned improvements, equates to banging your head against a stone wall a little bit harder.

Why American soccer has taken this as its model, as opposed to those of countries which actually challenge for top level championships and produce world class attacking players, is beyond me.

***

Speaking of soccer dysfuction... the sport’s international governing body FIFA has been tarnished by an avalanche of corruption and bribery accusations. It’s become so controversial that even a newspaper in Nigeria, no stranger to graft, has noted that “FIFA has become so corrupt that it no longer knows that it is corrupt.” FIFA’s tinpot dictator Sepp Blatter has acted in the same manner as every other tinpot dictator, doling out slush funds and ruthlessly punishing anyone who dares challenge his rule. But what do you expect from a man who once dismissed a journalist's query by saying, “I am the president of FIFA and you cannot question me.”

FIFA is so committed to secrecy that not only does it refuse transparency in its own operations, but it even relentlessly squashes any attempts at transparency in its member organizations.

Given the entrenched nature of the organization's corruption, I suspect pressure from their highly-paying sponsors is the only chance of badly needed reform.

The new African land grab, brought to you by Harvard

2011-06-18T18:17:00.001-04:00

I don’t discriminate against Catholics... I just want them to have fewer rights than everyone else

2011-06-17T00:01:00.004-04:00

George Wallace at the University of Alabama during his notorious "Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!" speech.

The title of this essay is obviously exaggerated to make a point but there actually were those amongst our country’s sainted Founding Fathers who wanted to deny Catholics the right to vote. Would that have constituted discrimination against Catholics? Perhaps not, according to Timothy Dolan, the Catholic archbishop of New York.

If you want an classic Orwellian read, check out this blog entry by Dolan. (If you want to read pure vile hatred and lies, check out some of the reader comments at the bottom)

It was a pretty standard regurgitation of the Vatican’s position.

And no Chicken Little hysteria would be complete without an evocation of a fascist or Stalinist regime -- in this case, North Korea.

The particularly Orwellian passage by the archbishop that caught my attention was this: Our beliefs should not be viewed as discrimination against homosexual people.

Except that applying different standards to different people on the same issue is the EXACT definition of discrimination.

Discrimination is not always bad. DMVs discriminate against the blind in issuing driver's licenses. The Constitution discriminates against young people in who can run for president. Voting laws discriminate against non-citizens. All of these forms of discrimination are generally considered legitimate. But legitimate discrimination is, by definition, still discrimination.

As such, one might argue that the Church’s anti-marriage equality position constitutes legitimate discrimination but even if that's so, it’s still discrimination. It’s one thing to defend a pro-discrimination position; the Catholic Church has a number of them. It’s another thing to deny its reality.

(The most enraging thing about the position of the Vatican and many other religious organizations is not that they are defending their own right to discriminate internally, which would remain unaffected by same-sex marriage bill; it’s that they are trying to mandate that the state practice discrimination itself based on the Church’s own religious beliefs)

The archbishop insists that marriage was invented by God and can’t be modified by Man, even in our non-theocracy. A cursory look at history shows that this is demonstrably false.

But I say that if Albany can’t redefine marriage, then Dolan can’t redefine the dictionary.

***

Opponents of equal rights in New York state have recently invoked the Torah (even though we're "not a theocracy"), the Holocaust and, of course, the totalitarian North Korean regime. State senator and evangelical minister Ruben Diaz, New York's own George Wallace, compared marriage equality proponents with the Ku Klux Klan.

(Maybe there is hope... Wallace eventually came around to the fairness position, recanted his anti-civil rights views and apologized for the damage he helped inflict).

Surely that can’t be it! No Chicken Little hysteria is complete without a Nazi reference. He may have sent gays to the gas chambers, but Hitler would've supported same-sex marriage too, right?

***

A few days ago was the 44th anniversary of the Loving decision, named after the plaintiffs Richard and Mildred Loving. That was the US Supreme Court ruling that struck down all state laws banning interracial marriages.

In his ruling, the initial trial court judge ruling against the Lovings said: Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

The rhetoric sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it.

In a statement a few years ago marking the 40th anniversary of the case, Mildred Loving wrote: I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no
matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over
others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

She then expressed her pride that her husband's and her name is on a court
case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life.

I couldn't have said it any better myself.

If "Wallace" Diaz's assertion is correct, then the African-American Mrs. Loving was no doubt wearing a white hood.

Why Dolan and Diaz, both self-proclaimed men of God, are so rabid in demanding the state deny this basic humanity is beyond me. I just hope the God who they claim to be representing will ask them that exact question when the time comes. I will leave the judgment up to Him. I'd urge them to do the same.

Update: the United Nations passed a historic resolution insisting up equality for all humans, without regard to sexual orientation. The Vatican joined Saudi Arabia, China and Russia in opposition.

The power of the Punch

2011-06-16T23:59:00.000-04:00

Watching the Stanley Cup final, you probably thought the triumph of my Bruins was down to Tim Thomas' amazing goaltending, hard-working forwards and the generous hospitality of Vancouver's defenders and goalie. I'm here to tell you it's just an illusion. In fact, the Bruins' Stanley Cup victory was proof positive of the power of Hawaiian Punch.

When I was in high school, I drank nothing but Hawaiian Punch. Lord knows why. It probably has more crap in it than a McDonald's McNugget. But I was addicted to the stuff. It was my superstition to drink it around gametime. The Punch became the official drink of the Stanley Cup finals. During that time period, the Bruins made it to a pair of Stanley Cup finals and went deep into the playoffs every single year. Coincidence? I think not. Proof?

By the time I got to college, I outgrew my taste for the drink. And the Bruins became crap, with the occasional foray into the choking domain. After 1992, the team never once made it even to the conference finals. Some blame it on the demise of the Wales Conference and the identity-shattering re-naming of the league's groups with boring geographical references. But I know better. I'd betrayed the Punch.

This season, the Punch reprised its role as the official drink of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The B's became the first team ever to win three Games 7 in one playoff series and won their first Cup in my lifetime. In a nod to tradition, I drank a glass of the Punch to start each period of Game 7. This ritual so emasculated the Canucks that they knew the jig was up and played like it. Why do you think the first place targeted by Vancouver rioters after the game was the Hawaiian Punch merchandise store.

As Zdeno Chara hoisted the big mug to celebrate, I hoisted my own mug, downed it and saluted the Punch. I shall never again doubt its power.

He knows its awesome power.

May you get what you want

2011-06-16T13:20:00.001-04:00

"People tend to get the kind of government they deserve." -Thomas Jefferson

This blog has a good commentary slamming liberals who voted for Andrew Cuomo and his regressive agenda and are now whining about Cuomo actually trying to implement that agenda.

Despite the fact that Cuomo openly promised BEFORE THE ELECTION to wage war against unions, one of the groups who endorsed Cuomo was none other than the AFL-CIO.

I guess it would've made too much sense for unions to endorse the only candidate who was not only pro-union but an actual union member.

Obama's illegal war

2011-06-15T13:15:00.003-04:00

Even the establishment magazine Foreign Policy ran a piece highlighting the illegality of Pres. Obama's war against Libya.

Update: Obama's spokesman offered a defense of the imperial presidency that would have made Karl Rove blush (if such a thing were possible). Liberals would not doubt have burned him in effigy were his name George W. Bush. Instead, the silence of liberals who once patted themselves on the back for being “anti-war” is deafening.

I saw somewhere a Q&A on the War Powers Act and I was going to forward it to Obama and to Congress, but apparently there are actually a few lawmakers who are familiar with the law. 10 of them filed suit against the president and secretary of war for violations of the act.

No News May Be Good News, But Less News Is Bad News (guest essay)

2011-06-14T00:01:00.004-04:00

5th in a series on troubles at the Post-Star

by Mark Wilson

In his Sunday column, From the Editor, Post-Star Editor Ken Tingley this week announced the latest cutbacks in store for the troubled regional daily. Owing in part to the rising price of newsprint, starting next week the paper will resort to eliminating an entire newspaper section (one of five*) from Monday and Tuesday editions.

*-Editor's note: the fifth section is classified advertising.

To accommodate the decreased comics and puzzle pages on those days, the paper will also axe four nationally syndicated comic strips throughout the week. The abbreviation of the newspaper’s content for the first two days of the work week may be seen as an unfair burden by readers who buy their papers at the newsstand on those days—a burden not shared Wednesday through Sunday. Subscribers to the Post-Star’s e-edition who receive digital PDF files of the paper as laid-out in print, will also bear the cost of the lost content, even though their subscription requires no commitment of newsprint whatsoever.

The new round of economizations comes on the heels of the paper’s promotion of a new director of circulation, Michelle Giorgianni, following the departure of former director Matt Lang. After doubling their newsstand prices fourteen months ago, the Post-Star has seen a dramatic decline in circulation numbers for its print editions.

Despite the evident turmoil in daily operations, Editor Tingley seems preoccupied by the future of news distribution. Even while admitting to conflicted feelings on how to treat digital media scandals in his paper, Mr. Tingley has been bringing himself quickly up to speed. In May he spent a couple days in Washington attending seminars on the future of newspapers in the digital age. He returned to report many “fascinating factoids,” perhaps unaware that a factoid is not, in fact, a fact.

Mr. Tingley also tuned into an American Society of Newspaper Editors webinar last week on the future of print news. He now sees the Apple iPad and similar tablets as the most promising technology for delivering an increasingly digitized news product. The Post-Star, having devoted time and resources most recently into developing software to convert its content to the black-and-white interface of Kindle, is now hard at work coming up with an app to adapt itself to tablets. Tingley hopes to have it ready by fall.

Recently, in defending the newspaper’s sudden doubling of its newsstand price to a dollar last year, Mr. Tingley stated in his blog, “there is essentially nothing you can get for a dollar anymore.” (Countless dollar stores to the contrary notwithstanding.) The passage of time has provided at least one: a share of stock in the Post-Star’s parent company Lee Enterprises ended last week trading at 95¢ per share, the first time it has ended a trading week below the one dollar mark since the depth of the recession in 2009. Along with the stock certificate and a few pennies change, you also get an invitation to the annual shareholders’ meeting in Davenport, Iowa, in February.

Last month, In the wake of a failed attempt to refinance the corporation’s crushing debt, Lee CEO Mary Junck assured investors and the market in general that they will continue tightening their belts. That may be good news for the bottom line, but it would appear to be bad news for regular Monday and Tuesday readers of the Post-Star.

Mark Wilson is a freelance artist and writer who contributed cartoons for the Post-Star from 2001—2003.

Editor's note: Tingley bragged about how much more local content the paper has now as compared to 1900 and 1956; but a more ingenuous comparison would be to 10 or 20 years ago. A Tweet from the Federal Communications Commission notes that the Baltimore Sun produced 32% fewer stories in 2009 than in 1999. I wonder what percentage drop the local daily has seen.

Food co-op to start in Glens Falls

2011-06-13T00:01:00.002-04:00

The Post-Star had a report on an organizational meeting held by those hoping to start a food co-op in Glens Falls.

The group is also keeping people updated via its Facebook page.

Risking a fracking mess in southern NY

2011-06-12T00:00:00.000-04:00

One of the important debates in the New York relates to hydrofracking (“fracking”), a natural gas extraction technique that’s incredibly destructive and threatening to the safe drinking water supply. Fracking companies are salivating over the possibility of operating in southern New York’s Marcellus Shale, which also extends into Pennsylvania where it’s already been very damaging.

The public radio show On Point had a good discussion about the basics of fracking.

Then-New York governor David Paterson issued an executive order imposing a temporary moratorium on fracking. Planet Albany blog reports that the state Assembly wants to extend that ban until June 1 of next year, so that the state Department of Environmental Conservation can complete a study into its damage to the environment and drinking water. It is unclear if the Senate will follow suit. The deputy majority leader, Republican Tom Libous, is from Binghamton, in southern New York, where some officials want the jobs that fracking would bring.

This is also called into a question by a Rochester Democrat and Chronicle report that the state’s pension fund has over $217 million invested into natural gas and fracking companies and $1 billion in total invested in the energy industry. "The main objective [of the pension fund] is to make money, so that's always a primary concern,” said state comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who is sole trustee of the fund.

The great non-profit journalistic website Pro Publica had a telling story on the fracking industry’s well-funded and –organized opposition to any safety disclosure requirements whatsoever. ProPublic has done a series of articles on hydrofracking and the natural gas industry.

Important Wikileaks stories ignored by the corporate media

2011-06-11T23:52:00.005-04:00

Alternet has a good summary of five stories revealed by the whistleblower website Wikileaks that are being ignored by the corporate media.

Among them: how "the worst of the worst" of the kidnapees in Guantanamo Bay include children and the elderly; how key US allies are among the world's top sponsors of international terrorism; and yet another story about the US government acting as a surrogate for corporations, both at home and abroad.

Panning the New York state ethics bill

2011-06-10T12:36:00.011-04:00

The Glens Falls Post-Star is generally known for offering poorly thought out, small-minded editorial positions completely devoid of any nuance or forward thinking. The one exception is that they typically run pretty good editorials on issues related to governmental transparency, the topic which earned its editorial writer, Mark Mahoney, his Pulitzer Prize.

An editorial earlier this week dealt with the proposed bill in the New York state legislature on ethics and public integrity (try saying that without a snicker). The governor and two legislative leaders fell over themselves patting themselves on the back and describing the agreement as ‘historic’ about as often as Rudy Giuliani invokes 9/11.

The Post-Star points out that the bill is seriously flawed and said that it is, at best, a mere first step. Unfortunately, we know that it’s not to be; Albany only ever does the bare minimum necessary to give the illusion of something meaningful.

It points out that the new ethics commission would have even fewer investigators and less time to do its work than the current, ineffectual panel. The bill makes it virtually impossible for the commission to actually take action, since nearly everyone has veto power.

State electoral law is rigged to ensure that the two corporate parties are the only ones realistically able to win any party-based election. Leaders are so confident of the rigged system that the ethics bill contains no provision for enforcement against elected officials who are outside the two corporate parties. They can’t conceive that there would ever be a non-Democrat or –Republican in state government to worry about.

Ethical standards as well as the organization and conduct of elections are supposed to be non-partisan, not bipartisan. Kudos to my friend Bob over at Planet Albany for being one of those rare mainstream journalists aware enough to actually understand the difference.

Weiner's pickle and how journalism blew it

2011-06-07T08:55:00.005-04:00

The Anthony Weiner controversy is a great example of the hypocrisy of political horse race junkies. They hold their noses up to view their interest as intellectually superior to estrogen-driven soap operas or 'white trash' hobbies like pro wrestling or Jerry Springer.

But ultimately, it's the same thing: the voyeuristic glee of watching others take a fall. Even more so than those other forms, this is quite literally navel gazing.

Yes, Weiner's a bald faced liar and should resign. But unless he's your Congressman, you shouldn't waste emotion on it.

It's a zillionth example of a national "scandal" that would be nothing more than a local story if we had a responsible journalistic profession.

No more taxpayer funded health insurance for state legislators

2011-06-06T17:25:00.004-04:00

The Adirondack Daily Enterprise ran a piece how some of the region's town and village boards are stopping board members from getting taxpayer-funded health benefits because they are only part-time elected officials.

As an excuse against ethics regulations relating to disclosure, state legislators in Albany claim that, despite their very hefty salaries, they are part-timers as well...

For a second, I thought this referred to political reporting's reliance polls as a substitute for actual journalism

2011-05-28T09:24:00.004-04:00

Bigotry today! Bigotry tomorrow! Bigotry forever!

2011-05-24T16:30:00.004-04:00

Regular readers will know that I am a staunch supporter of equal treatment under the law for all citizens, including based on sexual orientation. In short, I believe in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. That gays should have the same civil rights as other law-abiding Americans seems a no-brainer to me. And it isn’t just that I support civil rights for gays. It’s that, for all the heated rhetoric, I’ve yet to hear a single compelling argument against it. Not even necessarily one I agree with... just one that I think isn’t completely ludicrous.

Not everyone thinks that way.

My friend Bob over at Planet Albany blog has a report on a march in Albany against equality for gays.

I want to preface my remarks by saying I do not know for sure what Bob’s position is. I have never heard him state his own personal position explicitly. Mostly, he just relays the position of the Catholic Church and other social conservatives which is, of course, staunch hostility toward these civil rights. Given his avowed status as a social conservative and his megaphoning of the Catholic Church’s positions, one can infer his own view but I do not wish to put words into his mouth (a courtesy not often extended in the other direction). Hence, an explicit statement would be welcome.

But to sum up his reporting, here is my take...

-Opposition to civil rights for gays has “religious foundations” (no surprise there) and is a heart rendering example of unity between fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims;

-Democratic state Sen. Ruben Diaz, the leading opponent of equality in the New York legislature, has “love in his heart” for gay people... he just doesn’t think the state should treat them as full-fledged citizens. Gay people might have a little less objection to this view if they weren’t forced to pay the same taxes as full-fledged citizens. Maybe Diaz should show his “love” by getting them a tax break. If not, Diaz should understand that I love Hispanics too... so long as they don’t expect any rights;

-Saint Diaz, a Pentecostal minister, doesn’t appear have an actual legal argument for why gays should be denied constitutional rights, at least as reported by Bob, but he does object to people calling him meanie names. Diaz seems to be under the impression that him being a minority gives him license to take discriminatory positions against other minorities and then snivel when he’s criticized for it; bullies usually are the ones most hypersensitive to criticism. Diaz vowed that he is “not keeping his mouth shut” despite the fact that he has nothing of substance to say... though that’s usually the case about those who talk to loudest;

-A speaker from the New York State Catholic Conferences fears the ramifications of the Church having to (gasp) treat gay people decently. The Church might, for example, have to choose between its anti-gay positions and its participation in the adoption industry. Sorry, but that’s a pathetic argument against equality. Equal treatment under the law a constitutional right. Participation in the adoption industry is not. It’s that simple;

-That speaker wrongly claims that Catholic Charities has already been forced to close adoption agencies in Boston and Washington, D.C. In actual fact, they were not forced to close such agencies. What they were actually forced to do is to choose between helping kids and their anti-gay positions. That they chose the latter is sad and telling, but it was their choice and the consequences are on their conscience;

-A “Reverend” Duane Motley implied that tolerance for gay people was responsible for straight people getting divorced and living together unmarried... going so as to invoke the menace of health problems, school dropouts and crime;

-Motley also made the counterintuitive claim that legalizing gay marriage would weaken the institution. It’s more likely marriage would be STRENGTHENED by the inclusion of people who believe so strongly in that institution that they want to participate in it and are willing to struggle to do so.

-Some wonder why there’s a growing backlash against churches who are abuse their tax-exempt status to lobby for the arbitrary denial of rights by the state to citizens based on nothing more than their personal religious whim. Some feel churches should not receive these *SPECIAL RIGHTS*. Here’s why. Churches can get a tax exemption while demanding gays be denied rights by the state... and this tax exemption might be threatened if gays were ever granted equal rights. Gays must pay full taxes even while being denied full rights. The revenue not paid by tax-exempt churches is a burden passed on to all taxpayers, including gays. So the cruelest irony of all this is that gays are essentially helping, against their will, to fund organizations hell bent on making sure they are treated like crap. Churches are benefiting from services paid for by those whose oppression they are committed to. No grounds for resentment there!

It’s unfortunate that religious leaders hide behind their religion to excuse their own bigotry. The Constitution gives anyone, individuals and churches alike, the right to be a bigot; it does NOT give the state the right to act in such a fashion toward law-abiding, taxpaying citizens. The state does not follow religious diktats. This is because (and Bob would certainly agree with this) neither the US nor NYS is a theocracy.

At least opponents of black civil rights in the south tended not to hide their prejudices behind the respectable veneer of religion. They simply came out and said, “We hate (black people) because they are inferior beings.” Ditto for those who wanted to keep treating women like chattel. Such candor may be crude but at least it’s honest enough to drop the intellectually insulting pretense of something loving and holy.

Note: Clearly, this is just my take on the anti-fairness rally. You can judge for yourself by reading Bob’s report directly by clicking here.

The toll of the economic collapse on newspaper circulation (guest essay)

2011-05-23T18:31:00.013-04:00

Note: This is the fourth in a series of reports on local newspapers.

by Mark Wilson

The newspaper circulation numbers released two weeks ago by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show a continued attrition among hard copy readers of newspapers from New York’s capital region north to Glens Falls. While the latest figures were reported by Chris Churchill in the Albany Times Union, he failed to offer earlier reports for comparison, a basic way to measure the precipitous drop in paid circulation over time. As unpleasant as it is for professional journalists to contemplate, the magnitude of that drop is the real story behind the new ABC numbers.

Fortunately, the Times Union archives offers a baseline of sorts for seeing the new numbers in their deeper context. In October 2006, Alan Wechsler reported on ABC’s circulation numbers for most of the region’s papers for the April-September 2006 period. Side by side, the pair of reports, spanning the severe recession over four and a half years, yields insights into the state of print journalism in the digital age.

As reported earlier in this series, The Post-Star of Glens Falls has seen a circulation drop of 26.5% (35,000 to 25,705) over a slightly wider time frame. While the Wechsler story from 2006 doesn’t report Post-Star figures, Lee Enterprise’s 2006 annual report states its average daily circulation for that period to be 33,271. This makes the circulation drop for the Post-Star over the past four and a half years 22.7%.

By comparison, the Times Union’s average daily circulation dropped 30% from 95,456 to 66,835.

Coincidentally, both The Post-Star and the Times Union doubled their newsstand price over this period. The TU increased its price from 50¢ to 75¢ at the end of 2008 and added another quarter a year later. The Post-Star moved from 50¢ to $1 in one jump last spring. Both newspapers’ price hikes happened at a time when the papers were growing discernibly thinner and transferring more and more content to the internet. Hardly opportune circumstances for large price increases.

The region’s second largest paper, the Daily Gazette of Schenectady showed a rare ray of hope for newspapers looking for ways to make money from their readers as they transition to digital platforms. In August 2009 the Gazette placed the majority of its content behind a pay wall online. The most recent ABC release, the first to include online subscriptions in its circulation figures, shows that average weekday paid circulation increased from 48,780 to 62,015, (with roughly 21,000* of the latter paid online subscriptions). For paid print readers alone, the Gazette saw a drop-off of 16%. With the digital subscriptions included, the paper saw a 27% gain in paid readers overall.

Note: The Gazette offers a discounted digital subscription rate for ongoing print subscribers. It is unclear from the ABC’s new methodology whether or not they count these supplementary subscriptions as independent subscriptions. Counting each supplementary subscription as an independent subscription would inflate the overall circulation figures.

The Record of Troy sustained the hardest hit of all the region’s dailies. Over the past four years the Record’s circulation dropped from 15,233 to 9,951, or 34.7%. Though the Wechsler story did not report the baseline figures for the Saratogian’s daily circulation, the 2007 annual report for the Journal Register Co. puts the October 2006 circulation at 10,629. With the latest ABC report showing a circulation of 7,220 the Saratogian has lost 32% of its readership.

The accelerated shift away from print readership of newspapers in our region and the consequent chaos within newsrooms is one of the under-reported stories in the wake of the financial and economic collapses of 2007-2008. When reported, the stories are usually on an incremental basis or abstracted to a national trend.

Newspaper editors and publishers are traditionally loathe to shine a light on themselves with the same precision or persistence they use on other institutions. Such shyness toward self-examination (and examination of their colleagues) becomes a genuine problem when their medium becomes an integral part of the story. At this critical juncture in the information age, the absence of honest self-assessment within the news media in general and newspapers specifically, comes at the expense of professional credibility and readers’ credulity. It is a lapse newspapers cannot afford.

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