The end of elite liberal media empires and rise of citizen journalism

Mick Gregory

Hugo Chavez has the support of Democrats such as Barbara Boxer, Bernie Ward, Nancy Pelosi, the entire Kennedy clan… Why? Chavez wants to turn the Americas into communist nations, that’s one reason. Why is oil selling for $125 per barrel? About $75 dollars of that can be pointed to Chavez and Iran’s OPEC manipulation.

Where does Obama stand on Hugo Chavez and his brand of politics?

Today (05/09/08), The Wall Street Journal published a report that outlined the ties between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and communists attempting to overthrow Colombia’s government. Chavez has been linked to Colombian rebels previously, but the paper reported it had reviewed computer files indicating concrete offers by Venezuela’s leader to arm guerillas. That appears to heighten the chances that the U.S. could impose sanctions on one of its biggest oil suppliers.

“If we put on sanctions, I’m sure Chavez would threaten to cut off our oil supply,” said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. “Obviously that would have a major impact on oil prices.”

Light, sweet crude for June delivery vaulted to a new record of $126.20 in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange before retreating to trade up $1.28 at $124.97 a barrel.

Even if Chavez cut oil shipments to the U.S., Venezuelan oil would still make its way to the U.S. via middle men, who would buy it from Venezuela and resell it to the U.S., Flynn said. But that new layer in the supply chain would bump up costs.

By Mick Gregory

A street smart publishing group that started with a sweet deal from the former Hearst San Francisco Examiner has the business model that I predict will sweep the newspaper industry within the next decade.

Clarity Media Group, which ownes the free Examiner newspapers in Washington, D.C., Baltimore and San Francisco, plans to add a Sunday edition to each and expand the current Thursday editions, the company revealed Thursday.

Home delivery, which had been delivered each weekday, will be scaled back to only Thursday and Sunday, according to Clarity Media Group CEO Ryan McKibben. “We are shuffling assets that were of marginal value to better serve the reader pre-weekend and Sunday and on the web,” he told E&P. “They have the most opportunity and the most demand.”

The free Examiner papers are owned by the Anschutz Company, controlled by Denver-based billionaire Philip Anschutz, who launched them in 2004 with the first in San Francisco, followed by those in Washington and Baltimore in 2006. Ironically the Hearst company paid first the Fong family then, indirectly Anschutz to keep the Examiner a float for a while to please the FCC. For the record, Anschutz made his billions by selling right of way to fiber optic phone and cable companies on land that he bought cheaper than dirt from failed railroad lines.

McKibben said changes also will include doubling the number of single-copy papers circulated through newspaper racks and street distribution teams and offering home delivery of the Sunday and Thursday editions.

One other big change: the newspaper bias in these newspapers is toward the right of middle.
They are considered the FOX News of print.

“When the changes begin taking effect Sunday, July 13, the Examiner will be published in its three markets Monday-through–Friday and on Sunday and home-delivered on Thursday and Sunday,” a company statement read. “The Examiner’s internet presence continues to grow and mature. Newspaper websites associated with the Washington, Baltimore and San Francisco Examiners are being upgraded to better support local newsroom operations.”

“Through extensive discussions with our readers and advertisers we have been very pleased to learn how much they value the Examiner,” McKibben added in his statement. “Also emerging from these discussions were suggestions about what would make the Examiner even more relevant to them. Consumers and advertisers alike confirm the significant value provided by our subscription-free newspapers and the Examiners’ strong emphasis on local news.”

UPDATE: By Mick Gregory
Suicide by hanging is the perfect cover for murder.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known as the “DC Madam” of the agency Pamela Martin, once said in public that suicide was cowardice. So, in the end, why did she end up hanging herself?

Questions that mainstream journalists are not asking: What percentage of women attempt suicide by hanging? A: Not so much. Less than 10 percent of female suicides are by tying a rope around your neck and strangling yourself to death. And what percentage of those “suicides” are really murder? No one knows. It is a quiet, much less messy way to take them out. If it were a gun, thee is the issue of when did the victim buy the gun, did they even own a gun? The sound of the shot. The possibility of witnesses who hear the shot and see people running from the scene. This was a professional hit.

Another strange coincidence, one of the top escorts at the Pamela Martin agency, Brandy Britton, was also found dead several months ago of an apparent suicide by hanging. 

That “accident” may have been performed to scare Palfrey into silence. It did, but then she was convicted of prostitution, and was awaiting sentencing in July. So she was ready to let loose some top names.

One has to wonder what Lloyds of London would put the odds of that happening to two high-priced call girls involved in a high profile court case?

These women who earned their pay on erotica and good looks, had access to drugs, a painless and more glamorous way to go. The way Marilyn Monroe went out. Hanging yourself? It doesn’t add up.

First of all, in the United States, hanging is the least “popular” way to off yourself as a man or woman, of all female suicides very few are by hanging, it’s been out of fashion for the past 100 years. The few people (again men) who commit suicide by hanging, jump from a chair or a ladder, choking to death slowly. Rarely is the neck broken. In order to break a neck, a drop of six feet or more is required, which rarely happens except in execution hanging.

Hanging, whether done with rope, an electrical cord or a belt, always leaves an inverted V bruise, and is easy to tell from ligature strangulation (murder), which leaves a straight-line bruise. Hanging compresses the veins, but arterial blood flow continues, causing small bleeding sites on the lips, inside the mouth and on the eyelids. As with ligature strangulation, the face and neck are congested with blood and become dark red.

Ligature strangulations are almost always homicide and the victims are almost always women. Often the murderer uses more force than necessary to kill the victim, causing deep bruises and abrasions around the neck. The victim will usually struggle, which results in damage to both the interior and exterior structures of the neck and throat. Hanging is a very good coverup for murder by strangulation.

After Madam Palfrey’s conviction, it has been reported that she was going to name names or else. She hoped to get a payoff. She didn’t realize how dangerous top politicians can be. 

The building manager, who did not want to show his face, talked with Palfrey Monday before she left for her mother’s in Tarpon Springs. He strongly believes Palfrey’s death was not a suicide.
“Jean Palfrey was a class act. She wore very good clothes. She was well educated. Her way out of this world certainly would not have been in an aluminum shed attached to a mobile home in Tarpon Springs, Florida,” he said.
Palfrey was convicted of running a high-profile escort service for Washington’s elite and faced a sentencing this summer that would likely lead to many years in prison. But she was found hanged Thursday at her mother’s home and investigators said they have no doubt it was a suicide.
“A couple handwritten notes. At least one note was found inside residence indicating her intent to take her life,” Capt. Jeffrey Young of the Tarpon Springs Police Department said of Palfrey’s death.
Palfrey’s building manager said she often told him she believed she was being followed and he thinks there may have been some former clients of her escort service who wanted her dead.
“She insinuated that there is a contract out for her and I fully believe they succeeded,” her building manager said.
Palfrey’s Lexus is still parked in the Park Lake garage and the staff said on Monday, she asked about making sure her condo fees would continue to be paid during what Palfrey anticipated would be six years in prison.
They said she left that day with some suitcases and a box.
“She had one white paper file box that she told me had some important paper with her and then she just kind of raised her eyebrows like you’re supposed to think oh yeah, that’s all the information that she had on her business in Washington,” her building manager said.
Palfrey never denied running an escort service for 13 years, but she did deny any knowledge that any illegal sexual activity was occurring. — Ch. 2 News, Orlando.
 

Who could be in the little black book that would go to this extent to keep their name out of the media at this time?

When a former employee of Palfrey’s, Brandy Britton, hanged herself before going to trial, Palfrey told the press, “I guess I’m made of something that Brandy Britton wasn’t made of.”

Who would benefit most by snuffing out these women? Who had the most to lose at election time? 

Is this is the May Day surprise; the blockbuster that will expose the Clinton machine for the power hungry monsters they appear to be?

What happens if she wins the Democrat primary in Indiana and comes close in North Carolina? She will still be behind in delegates, but the “big wigs” in the Democratic super delegate meetings will vote for the big Clinton machine. That’s why Obama supporters should be concerned, very concerned.

Examples of murder covered up by suicide:
November 3, 2006
Independent Movie Actress Adrienne Shelley Found Dead
Adrienne Shelley, the actress of seminal independent movies Trust and The Unbelievable Truth, was found dead on Wednesday in her Greenwich Village office. Her husband Andrew Ostroy found her hanging from a shower rod in the bathroom in an Abingdon Square building. The Post reports that the police are “inclined” to beileve it was suicide (no signs of a struggle or forced entry at the door). The ME’s office conducted an autopsy, but has not released the results.
Update: Three days later the suicide was changed to murder when medical examiner found defensive wounds on Shelley. Next the NYPD tracked down a construction worker who when confronted about being in Shelly’s apartment, confessed to the murder that he set it up to look like suicide.

Do you have as much confidence in the Pinellas County Police of St. Petersburg Florida?

By Mick Gregory

What kind of mind set is inside newsrooms today?

Here is a comment from Amy Gahran, a media consultant who instructs newsrooms and PR departments on Web 2.0. This is how elitist journalists think of themselves as they rearrange the deck chairs of the Titanic. Close-minded, pompous and they believe superior to any other members of the new media.

I’ve been getting quite aggravated at the close-minded and helpless attitudes I’m still encountering from too many journalists about how the media landscape is changing. Those attitudes are revealed by statements, decisions, actions, and inaction which belie assumptions such as:
The only journalism that counts is that done by mainstream news orgs, especially in print or broadcast form. Alternative, independent, online, collaborative, community, and other approaches to news are assumed to be inferior or even dangerous.
Priesthood syndrome: Traditional journalists are the sole source of news that can and should be trusted — which gives them a privileged and sacred role that society is ethically obligated to support.
Journalists and journalism cannot survive without traditional news orgs, which offer the only reliable, ethical, and credible support for a journalistic career.
Real journalists only do journalism. They don’t dirty their hands or distract themselves with business and business models, learning new tools, building community, finding new approaches to defining and covering news, etc. As the Louisville Courier-Journal staffer Mark Schaver said just this morning on Twitter, “[Now] is not a good time [for journalists] if you don’t want your journalism values infected with marketing values.”
Journalistic status and authority demands aloofness. This leads to myriad problems such as believing you’re smarter than most people in your community; refusing to “compromise” yourself professionally by engaging in frank public conversation with your community; and using objectivity as an excuse to be uncaring, cynical, or disdainful.
Good journalism doesn’t change much. So if it is changing significantly, it must be dying. Which in turn means the world is in big trouble, and probably deserves what it will get.
There’s a common problem with all these assumptions: They directly cut off options from consideration. — Amy Gahran

Yet here is the reality. Newspapers are losing ciculation/readers in droves.
Layoffs continue across the country at large and small newspapers.

Journalists jump on every liberal crisis bandwagon without a clue.

Let’s look at a newspaper’s carbon footprint
-Tons of newsprint wasted every day
-Adult carriers drive 200 miles circling neighborhoods
delivering the inky newspaper to every 20th house.
-Most often they are driving beaters polluting the dawn air
-Half of all home delivered newspapers end up in the trash bin
-The printing presses run for hours eating up enough energy to run a small town
-Paper and plastic — you get both with your home-delivered newspaper, plastic bags are perfect for picking up dog poop.

Check out this blog:
http://angryjournalist.com

It’s a fact-filled site of the state of the industry. They have some very funny T-shirts for sale.
Here are some:
-30-
Low Pay Creates Writers Block

Here are some of mine:

Ask me about my carbon footprint!

$12 an hour, but I work 12-hour days. You do the math
Will follow AP style for food
Newspaper Interred
The only journalism that counts is from mainstream newsrooms
Make way for the professional journalists
I’m a $32,000 a year professional
On a mission from Guild

Now the once tower of the holy, the New York Times, is one notch above junk bonds.
Credit-ratings agency Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services on Tuesday cut its long-term rating on newspaper publisher The New York Times Co., as its advertising revenue continues to fall.
S&P cut its corporate credit rating and senior unsecured debt rating to “BBB-” from “BBB.”

“BBB-” is one notch above “junk bond” status. The ratings were removed from CreditWatch, but the outlook is negative, meaning another downgrade could occur.

“The rating downgrade reflects a worsening pace of decline in advertising revenue at the company’s newspaper publications,” said S&P credit analyst Emile Courtney in a statement.

Shares fell 35 cents to $19.96 during midday trading on April 29.

Watch the “managing editors” call out the newsroom cuts soon to help the stock bounce back a little.
Too little too late.

Average Sunday Circulation at Top 25 U.S. Daily Newspapers from ABC.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: 1,476,400 — 1,627,062 — (-9.26%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES: 1,101,981 — 1,173,095 — (-6.06%)
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: 898,703 — 940,621 — (-4.46%)
THE WASHINGTON POST: 890,163 — 930,989 — (-4.39%)
DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK: — 704,157 — 775,544 — (-9.20%)

HOUSTON CHRONICLE: 632,797 — 677,425 — (-6.59%)
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: 630,665 — 672,953 — (-6.28%)
DETROIT FREE PRESS: 606,374 — 639,531 — (-5.18%)
DENVER POST/ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS: 600,026 — 704,169 — (-14.79%)
STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS: 534,063 — 574,385 — (-7.02%)

BOSTON GLOBE: 525,959 — 562,273 — (-6.46%)
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS: 520,215 — 563,079 — (-7.61%)
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC: 515,523 — 541,757 — (-4.84%)
NEWARK STAR-LEDGER: 500,382 — 570,523 — (-12.29%)
THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: 497,149 — 523,687 — (-5.07%)

NEWSDAY: 441,728 — 464,169 — (-4.83%)
ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES: 432,779 — 430,893 — 0.44%
CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER: 428,090 — 442,482 — (-3.25%)
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: 424,603 — 438,006 — (-3.06%)
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH: 414,564 — 407,754 — 1.67%

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, TIMES: 409,231 — 423,634 — (-3.40%)
NEW YORK POST: 401,315 — 439,202 — (-8.63%)
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL: 384,539 — 400,317 — (-3.94%)
THE SUN, BALTIMORE: 372,970 — 377,561 — (-1.22%)
THE OREGONIAN: 361,988 — 375,914 — (-3.70%)

The layoffs continue…

While the media circus continues to focus on a predetermined outcome, (Hint: Hillary will take the Democrat party endorsement behind closed doors), Hugo Chavez, the socialist dictator takes over more companies (for the children). Look familiar?

Hugo Chavez’s dictatorial powers are in over drive. He has decided to nationalize Venezuela’s largest steel maker, just days after announcing the takeover of major cement companies, the vice president said Wednesday on his government-owned TV stations.

The nationalization of large industries has been a promise of Chavez to fulfill his socialist agenda. The government took majority control of telecommunications and electricity companies last year, along with Venezuela’s last remaining privately run oil projects.

Chavez also announced plans to nationalize major cement companies last week, and his government is in talks on the terms with Mexico’s Cemex SAB, France’s Lafarge SA and Switzerland’s Holcim Ltd.

Is this what the U.S. can expect from an Obama/Hillary socialist presidency? Just have union workers ask them to nationalize their companies. It’s that easy. Did you know that the Kennedy clan has business with Chavez through Citgo?

Isn’t this more important than the baseball scores in April?

Update:
Mick Gregory

This is the current state of California. But you haven’t read about it in the LA Times or SF Chronicle. It’s being reported by the BBC and YouTube and by citizen journalists.

I’m not surprised the elitist mainstream newspapers are not reporting that 500 homes a day are foreclosed on in California now. But when will they?

“Tent cities have sprung up outside Los Angeles as people lose their homes in the mortgage crisis.”
Granted, the climate is nice and these tent cities are nothing new.

Now this: Vallejo, a suburban city outside of San Francisco faces a $16 million deficit in the 2008-2009 budget starting July 1 and unsuccessfully negotiated with its government employees including electrical workers unions for contract concessions through 2012. Public safety salaries comprise 74 percent of the city’s general fund budget.

John Riley, president of the International Association of Firefighters, said he is disappointed by the 7-0 vote to file bankruptcy. Any ideas Mr. Riley? How about you get the average benefits that the taxpayers of your community get? Not full-pay after 20 years of service and free medical for life.

Ask your average newspaper reporter if their benefits come close to that.

There will be no bail out for the “free” press, but I’d bet that there will be for these city service union employees. Just raise taxes.

By Mick Gregory

PC journalism’s New Speak

You don’t have any idea how elitist newsrooms at the nation’s top newspapers are. Did you know that illegal aliens murdered a young mother in Houston because she wouldn’t give up the keys to her car because her baby was inside? That is a fact that his been erased from the shocking murder, not unlike a PhotoShop airbrush of a portrait to take out blemishes.

How much of this type of truth filtering has gone on? Shouldn’t ethics come into play? Isn’t this a type of ethnic cleansing?

Check out MichaelSavage.com for the complete story.

Newsrooms actually think it is in bad taste to publish the facts.
Take a look at this article on Poynteronline.com:

Deciding Whether to Publish the Immigration Status of Crime Suspects
By Mizanur Rahman

It’s becoming an uncomfortably familiar question in newsrooms when someone with a Spanish surname is a crime suspect: Is he illegal?

The climate is ripe for local stories about illegal immigrants charged with crimes to explode into the public’s consciousness. Like the story of Juan Leonardo Quintero, an undocumented worker accused of fatally shooting a Houston police officer in 2006.

The feverish reaction to this case is mirrored by similar stories in Phoenix, Los Angeles and South Florida.

So it was not surprising when an Arizona Republic editor recently contacted the Chronicle inquiring about our policy on identifying the immigration status of crime suspects. Like many newspapers, we don’t have one since it’s a recently emerging issue. It was also understandable when a Chronicle reporter asked me, the immigration editor, if the paper was on a witch hunt against Hispanics after our most recent story about a homicide involving an immigrant.

Immigration, in some respects, is like another thorny identifier in stories: race. We’ve been taught that you only identify one’s race if race is central to the story. Immigration status mandates a similar threshold. (Of course, identifying someone’s race will never get them deported.)

Officer Rodney Johnson’s killing, on first glance, is a story about a horrible crime. But if questions about the suspect’s legal residency emerge, then his immigration status becomes important because of this fundamental point: The crime might not have happened if the suspect wasn’t in the U.S. without authorization. It’s a concern family members of victims, prosecutors and others will raise.

For example, say an illegal immigrant faces intoxicated manslaughter charges for killing someone while driving drunk. Immigration status is relevant in this case because in states such as Texas, illegal immigrants are prohibited from getting a driver’s license.

The residency status of immigrants (legal and illegal) charged with a crime is also pertinent because that status determines if they face deportation. Even legal permanent residents can be deported if they’re convicted of aggravated felonies or minor theft crimes.

Listing punitive consequences a charged suspect faces is important in any story. It’s why we include how much prison time a criminal conviction carries.

That’s a case for including immigration status in some crime stories.

But in daily practice, journalists now face a minefield of questions. Should we call ICE to check the immigration status of ALL Hispanics charged with serious crimes?

Why not help journalists understand their role. Tell Mr. Rahman what is common sense to most of us.

Mick Gregory

Update: California homes lost to foreclosure in the first quarter surged 327 percent from year-to-date levels — reaching an average of more than 500 foreclosures per day — DataQuick reported, warning that the widening foreclosure problem could “spread beyond the current categories of dicey mortgages, and into mainstream home loans.”

From DataQuick’s report on California foreclosures in the first three months of 2008: “Trustees Deeds recorded, or the actual loss of a home to foreclosure, totaled 47,171 during the first quarter. … Last quarter’s total rose 48.9 percent from 31,676 in the previous quarter, and jumped 327.6 percent from 11,032 in first quarter 2007.” That translates into 517 foreclosures every day in the first quarter of 2008.

Imagine a California wildfire destroyed 500 homes a day since Jan. 1?

DataQuick president Marshall Prentice: “The main factor behind this foreclosure surge remains the decline in home values. Additionally, a lot of the ‘loans-gone-wild’ activity happened in late 2005 and 2006 and that’s working its way through the system. The big ‘if’ right now is whether or not the economy is in recession. If it is, the foreclosure problem could spread beyond the current categories of dicey mortgages, and into mainstream home loans.”

From The L.A. Times’ Peter Hong: “Sinking home values and the collapse of flimsy mortgages sent a record number of California homes into the foreclosure process in the first three months of this year, a real estate information service reported today.”

Default notices — which mark the beginning of the foreclosure process — increased sharply, but not as rapidly as outright foreclosures. From Bloomberg News: “California mortgage defaults more than doubled in the first quarter to the highest in 15 years as a drop in sales and prices prevented some homeowners from selling their properties to pay debt, DataQuick Information Systems said.

More: “Homeowners received 113,676 default notices in the first quarter, up 143 percent from a year ago, La Jolla, California- based DataQuick said today in a statement. The level was the highest since at least 1992, when DataQuick’s statistics begin.”

Despite well publicized federal efforts to reach out to homeowners in default, the odds that they will ultimately lose their homes appear to be increasing. DataQuick reports that, of the homeowners in default, “an estimated 32 percent emerge from the

California’s taxpayer revolt, Proposition 13 , is turning 30 this June. The mainstream media will begin to write their politically charged attacks on the subject in the coming weeks. But you will see some glaring omissions. For example, property values had continued to grow steadily in the Golden State until the real estate bubble swelled to what may be remembered for a hundred years as a time of irrational greed, and insane speculation. None of it reported by the major newspapers until after the bubble burst.

The law was passed by consumers before the state turned liberal, a time when there was a strong economy and bright future. Now it’s known as the Left Coast and has an historic flight of educated, intelligent middle class families who have seen real estate value take a blood bath. The people fleeing are the core taxpayers. They are moving to Texas at such a high rate, that last year, four Texas cities were in America’s top 10 fastest growing metropolitan areas. Texas has no state income tax; California’s is close to 10 percent. But the argument has been that California had low property taxes thanks to Prop 13. Not any more.

The famous voter initiative in 1978, the time of Ronald Reagan, that rolled back property tax assessments and sparked a wave of tax revolts across the country has helped real estate prices climb for a generation. But the real estate bubble burst and property taxes are averaging $800 a month, on par with rent. Now property taxes will fall with the home value and lower sales price. What will Big Government do? Raise taxes everywhere else. Cut expenses? No way, (San) Jose!

To Republicans, Prop. 13, as it is known, amounted to a revolution by The People against Big Government. No longer would homeowners, particularly elderly people on fixed incomes, have to watch their property taxes skyrocket just because land values soared. No longer would governments grow wildly, their treasuries swollen by soaring real-estate prices. The people had finally had their say: ”Enough!”

Insofar as Prop. 13 did benefit homeowners, it did so by picking the pockets of wide-eyed yuppies buying new houses.

Current home buyers still get slammed on property taxes, because their rates are pegged to current land values. By contrast, people who bought their homes before 1978 (retirees) pay taxes based on their home’s 1975 assessment, which can be hiked by no more than 2 percent a year. This is what helped Prop 13 pass, elderly could stay in their homes without being taxed out of them.
Since the median price of homes in California has multiplied by 10 times or more since 1978, the disparities between identical homes can now be huge. According to Jeff Reynolds, head of research for the state’s Board of Equalization, pre-Prop. 13 homeowners pay one-tenth the tax rates of more recent home buyers.

The local government solution, instead, has been to charge vastly higher ”impact fees” on new homes. Theoretically, impact fees cover the cost of new streets and sewers associated with new homes. When tax revenues financed these costs, impact fees were minimal or nonexistent. Since Prop. 13, though, they’ve been soaring. In 1983, they averaged about $5,700. By 1987, they had zoomed to $11,807, according to a survey by the National Association of Home Builders. In 2007 they were averaging $19,000 a year on a new single family home. On top of that, cities now frequently demand that developers also foot the bill for new parks and schools. Big deal, the builders put the parks and schools in flood zones.

Now what? Who can afford $1,500 a month in property taxes on top of a $4,500 a month mortgage? Not many. The Democrats have hiked up every other tax available. Now what? Both the husband and wife not only have to work, they have to earn $100,000 or more each.

What a dream it was, what a nightmare it has become.

Mick Gregory

The California meltdown caused by the historic housing bubble burst that led to tens of thousands of foreclosures and dramatic dip in real estate tax collections has some other issues coming to the table. Contra Costa County, and affluent suburban Bay Area commuter area is deep in debt, on a scale of some countries.
CC County Supervisors took a first look today at the county’s $2.6 billion projected debt for retiree health benefits and set the bar for a round of labor negotiations later this year, endorsing a pullback in benefits for about 1,100 nonunion employees and retirees.

Those employees, many of them middle managers, (in the real world these would be white collar exempt positions) attacked the supervisors for, among other steps, seeking to cap the county’s health care subsidy beginning in 2010. What kind of plan is so expensive? How about retire at full pay after 20 years plus free HMO coverage. That is what government employee unions have done to the California dream.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, foreclosure filings jumped 57% in March compared with the same month last year and rose 5% versus February, as the nation’s housing market continues to deteriorate.
Keep reading →

What does Hillary, Obama or Jimmy Carter have to say about this news item? You didn’t see it in your San Francisco Chronicle or New York Times, did you?

Ternium-Sidor, which is sixty percent owned by Argentineans was not able to reach an agreement with unions on wages. When the work force went out on strike President Hugo Chavez ordered its nationalization.

The leader of the union at the sprawling Ternium Sidor complex about 300 miles southwest of Caracas, said workers were pleased with the decision, made after months of short strikes in a fierce labor dispute with the company.

“We are here celebrating in an assembly the decision that Sidor returns to state hands,” leader Nerio Fuentes told Reuters.

Venezuela’s Vice President Ramon Carrizalez said parent company Ternium would be compensated for the takeover and could even stay on as a minority partner, but accused it of holding an arrogant attitude toward employees.

Chavez says that the steel workers will be in much better hands if they work for the state. The nationalization is the most recent in a series of take-over in Venezuela.

Earlier this week Foreign-owned cement companies operating in Venezuela were nationalized, and the Venezuelan oil, energy and telecommunications sectors are now largely in the hands of the state.

By Mick Gregory

Here is why I’ve created this blog on citizen journalism: to expose the cozy relationship between the mass media and Democrat political machine, and let you into the mansions and “elegantly casual” settings. Here is a prime example. Who, what, where and why? The basic questions a reporter asks are often glossed over to protect the politician.

Sen. Obama, while speaking at the Getty’s private mansion in Pacific Heights, San Francisco, the richest enclave of society in America, condemns small-town, lower middle class whites in suburban America for their belief in God, Second Amendment rights and being bigots and idiots. Let me tell you a little bit about Getty. He bought the mansion next door to his to garage his 12 luxury sports cars.

No talk of a carbon footprint among friends. Did Sean Penn attend the gathering? I’d like to know, because his movie “into the Wild” (a very good movie and book) is about a rich kid who graduated from Emory University and was accepted to Harvard Law School, but instead he burns and gives away $20,000 and goes off to live off the land.

Penn is also a big supporter of Hugo Chavez, who is a de-facto dictator of Venezuela and is one of the key OPEC members behind the recent spike of oil.

Here is the report on the citizen journalist from the Huffington Post who attended the “gala.”
Ms. Fowler, who graduated from Vassar in 1968 and had dabbled in writing, became a “citizen journalist” last summer when the Huffington Post started “OffTheBus.net,” a new venture that has now expanded to a network of about 1,800 unpaid writers and researchers. I wrote about O.T.B. in October, by which time editors at the Huffington Post had already identified Ms. Fowler as one of O.T.B.’s “emerging star correspondents.”

Ms. Fowler has spent a lot of time (and her own money) following the presidential campaign– and participating in it. She has maxed out at $2,300 to Mr. Obama, starting in increments last fall. She said she has also given money ($100) to Mrs. Clinton, because she is roughly Mrs. Clinton’s age and liked the idea of a woman president and she attended two Clinton fund-raisers with her sister, a devoted Clinton supporter. And she also gave $500 to Fred Thompson, of Tennessee, even though he is a Republican, because that’s where she is from and her family has been steeped in Tennessee politics since the 1790s (that’s not a typo).

As a supporter who had made donations, Ms. Fowler had been invited before to Obama fund-raisers — and written about them on O.T.B. After the Ohio and Texas primaries, she was back home in the Bay Area and heard that Mr. Obama would be holding four fund-raisers there on April 6. She had not been invited but asked a friend if she could go. She was put on the list for the last of four events, this one at a mansion in Pacific Heights.

There’s a bit of a brush fire in California about how Ms. Fowler got in, and Ms. Fowler is protecting the person who secured her a ticket. That person has since called her and said that fund-raisers are always off the record.

“This was never conveyed to me,” Ms. Fowler said. “I was invited to the event, I had written on fund-raisers in the past, why wouldn’t I this time?” She said the Obama campaign had never objected before to her having written about fund-raisers (though admittedly, nothing much of interest had happened). And the invitations said nothing about being closed to the press. Besides, she said, several guests brought people and children and who had not been invited.

Please write me if you see this reported in the San Francisco Chronicle or New York Times.

Did you read that Jimmy Carter is going to meet with Hamas leaders, a group of terrorists headed by Khaled Meshal. A group that killed hundreds of Americans and thousands of their own people and Jews in a blood-thirsty drive to wipe out Israel and Christians in the Middle East?

Did you know that Carter already met with Hamas a year ago?

It should be front page news today. It’s not any different than if FDR had gone on a trip to visit with Hitler and his inner circle in 1942.

More…

By Mick Gregory

After the spring break/Easter holiday retail promotions, newspapers have a long, low period of advertising drop off, followed closely by subscription and single-copy sales declines. That’s when the next big wave of head-count cuts usually hits. It’s as predictable as a 2-hour commute in So Cal. The newsrooms don’t see it coming any better than hogs at a Bakersfield slaughter house. I take that back, hogs do get the picture about five minutes before the drill.

UPDATE:
(CAN YOU IMAGINE? WRITERS COMING UP WITH THEIR OWN HEADLINES?)

Word out of the Los Angeles Daily Journal newsroom is that the legal paper lopped off its copy desk last night — the whole thing. I’ve heard it from a few sources, one of whom emails that deadlines will be pushed earlier in the day, writers are being asked to suggest their own headlines and line editors will back read each other’s edited copy. The editor staffing was already thin, with recent departures not replaced. Emails one staffer:

Honestly, how do you put out a paper without a copy desk? We’re all very shell-shocked. The lay-offs included a veteran copy-editor who had been at the paper for 15 years, and who was completly unaware she was on the chopping block. We’re all scrambling around, trying to figure out how we’re going to keep doing our jobs without copy editors. — Kevin Roderick of the LA Observer

TIP TO PUBLISHERS: TRY USING WEB-BASED CONTENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE AND HAVE COPY EDITORS IN PUNE, INDIA DO THE EDITING FOR 20 PERCENT OF THE EXPENSE. THOUGH, GIVE YOUR WRITERS A CHANCE. ALL THEY NEED IS ABOUT A WEEK OF PRACTICE.

Here are the latest cuts:
The Seattle Times –175 to 200.
The Dizzy Dean Singleton cuts in California — bottomless.

Here is some open grieving from what was once a real fluff position, sports columnist in Southern California. Free food in the press box, jokes about the sports stars, great seats for all the best games, somebody had to do it. Well, not any more.

I have a suggestion for your exit interview, say “Pull my finger!”
And blow one a burrito/beer fart that they will remember.

…
‘We’re Eliminating the Position of Sports Columnist’
It took me, oh, about three seconds to process the meaning of the call from the newsroom secretary.

“Steve wants to see you in Louise’s office.”

Steve would be Steve Lambert, editor of The Sun/Bulletin/Titanic. And Louise is Louise Kopitch, head of personnel for the same foundering entities.

These days, your editor wants to see you (in tandem with the HR boss) for one reason only. And it’s not to congratulate you on being named Employee of the Year.

It was about noon, and I was in the new, north San Bernardino offices of The Sun to do my weekly IE-oriented notes column. I was going to lead with several paragraphs on Don Markham, the mad genius of Inland Empire prep football who, at age 68, is attempting to put a maraschino cherry atop his “mad genius” credentials by starting up an intercollegiate sports program (and, more importantly, to him, a football team) at something called American Sports University (current enrollment, about 30). A school planned and created by a Korean mad-genius businessman who either is about to fill a niche in academe or lose a boatload of money.

As it turns out, American Sports University is located in downtown San Bernardino in the very same collection of buildings occupied until October of 2006 by The Sun. The same buildings I reported to for my first day of work, Aug. 16, 1976, and then spent the next three decades of my working life. Later, I found that meaningful.

When the phone rang, my colleague, Michelle Gardner, had been talking to me about Cal State San Bernardino basketball, the aspect of her beat that most interests her. As usual, she was highly animated and barely paused for breath as I took the call, said, “OK,” and hung up. Michelle resumed describing the permutations of the CCAA basketball tournament and what it meant for the Division II NCAA playoffs. She was just getting warmed up. I basically had to walk away from her to answer the summons. Michelle does love her beats, and I admire her for that.

I may have laughed aloud as I went down the stairs. Certainly, I smiled. It seemed so silly. “They come for me at a random time and a random day. A Thursday. At lunch. Huh.”

I walked down the hall, looking for the personnel department offices. All the doors were closed, so I had to glance through the glass to find one occupied. I noticed a guy sitting across the walkway, a guy whom I once had worked with on a daily basis, when he was in the plate room and I would run downstairs to build the agate page. Mark Quarles. I remember wondering if he knew what I was doing down there, Thursday afternoon, and whether he might actually call out to me. Or whether it’s politically dangerous to acknowledge a Dead Man Walking.

I pushed open the door to Kopitch’s office, was invited in, and there was Lambert, looking smaller and thinner than I recalled him. Not that I had seen him often the past year, between my doing so many L.A.-oriented columns and him doing whatever it was he does. Corporate stuff, meetings off site, whatever.

I said, brightly, “I’ve been trying to think of a scenario in which this meeting is a good thing.”

Lambert said something like, “It’s not a good thing.”

I sat on the other side of Kopitch’s desk. As did Lambert, but he was turned slightly toward me and was about six feet away. Maybe that’s the way you do these things? On the same side of the desk but a bit removed? I remember a managing editor, name of Mike Whitehead, telling me, 20-odd years ago, that you never fire someone in your own office because if they insist on talking/complaining you can’t get up and leave. It’s your own office, see? So you fire people somewhere else.

Anyway, Lambert had a bit of a preamble. Something we hate to do, forced on us by economic realities, sorry … “but we’re eliminating the position of sports columnist for the Inland group.” I remember that fairly clearly, and I recall thinking “hmm, they leave it to me to grasp that I am not just a columnist but “sports columnist for the Inland group,” a title I’d never heard, let alone used. There was a flicker of “what if I were really dim, or contentious, and made him say it more directly? Like, “you’re fired.”

Lambert may have said he was sorry another time or two. How often he said it doesn’t matter because I don’t believe he meant it in the least. He could have said it 20 times or not at all and it wouldn’t have mattered. The guy hasn’t liked me since, oh, 2004, and I bet whacking me was the easiest call for him, of the 11 Sun newsroom people he fired that day. Dump a big salary (by Singleton standards) and a guy you don’t like at the same time? Easy. Fun, actually.
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