It’s time to change the name of the United States to the United Socialist States of ACORN.

Illegal immigrants voiting for the Democrat/Socialists with the help of “community organizers” such as ACORN.
Election boards dominated by the Democrat/Socialists disgard more than 25 percent of US soldiers’ ballots. Major manufacturers are “nationalized” by the new one-party system.

Note to cool, trendy Obama supporters: Only U.S. Citizens over 18 are allowed to register to vote. Illegal immigrants and felons (in most states) do not have the right.

“It’s not who wins the votes, it’s who counts to vote,” Stalin.

ATLANTA — The Obama  Justice Department has rejected Georgia’s system of using Social Security numbers and driver’s license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was a subject of a federal lawsuit in the weeks leading up to November’s election.

What’s wrong with a real ID check? 

“This flawed system frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote,” Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said. 

The decision comes as Georgia awaits word on whether a law passed in the spring that requires newly registering voters to show proof of citizenship will pass muster with DOJ. Under the law that takes effect in January, people must show their proof up front just as everyone does when paying with a check.  

The Soviet Plan
Lessons were learned by watching the socialists take over Russia and transform through class and race warefare. The one-party Bolshavics took control and held it for 70 years before the people of Poland, Georgia and Romania took down the tyrants. Lessons were taken and used to prepare the American liberals for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and political insiders.

These observations are published in Pravda: 

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes.

America has traded places with the USSR. It’s time to congratulate the Democrat/Socialists and change the name of America in the spirit of “truth in advertising.”

New York ABC radio newsman George Weber was a gay pedophile, killed by his boy date. Sanchez, the gay pedophile train engineer was texting teenage boys seconds before he crashed and killed 25 people in LA

The mainstream news has been filtering the news and making everything nice and PC for the dumbed down readers. They only report what fits the “progressive” agenda. 

With the rise of blogs, the truth can now be reported. Did you know that the longtime New York radio newsman was paying teenage runaways for gay sex? George Weber was found stabbed to death in his Brooklyn apartment Sunday morning, cops said. Now we find he was accidently killed by a troubled teen, paid to have rough gay sex with the radio newsman. 

The bloody body of Weber, a passionate liberal fan of the city who spent a decade doing local news on WABC morning radio, was found just after 9 a.m. when he didn’t show up for work. It can now be told that Weber, an outspoken Democrat, was a gay pedophile. He was a chicken hawk who paid teenage boys, often runaways money for sex. A boy who just turned 16 accidently killed Weber during a session of “rough” gay sex.

Weber, 47, was freelancing at ABC’s national radio network after being laid off last year.

 

What kind of books or DVDs did Mr. Sanchez have in his home? Doesn’t the media look into these things? Oh, wait, Sanchez was a gay pedophile Democrat, not a Christian Republican.

The first results of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation are in. Surprising no one, it’s now confirmed that train driver Robert Sanchez was sending text messages moments before crashing a train full of people into an oncoming freight train, killing 25 people. His last text message was sent 22 seconds before the two trains collided. Sanchez was an outspoken Democrat and Obama reporter with a keen interest in teenage boys.

While we’ll likely will never be able to definitively say one way or the other due to the lack of eyewitnesses, those 58 seconds between received message and sent message are likely the reason why Sanchez missed the “red lights” on the track as the freight train approached. Shouldn’t we know what Sanchez was texting? What if it was something like “the brakes don’t work well?”

The cellular network clock and the train’s onboard computer clock are almost certainly set slightly differently, so the final, incoming text message may have arrived somewhat earlier or later than 22 seconds before the crash. If the timestamps are reconciled exactly, the NTSB could then use information about the speed and location of the train to determine exactly where Sanchez’s train was when he took his eyes off the track ahead and whether that is what likely caused him to miss the signals. The content of the message is important, also. If it was a urgent warning, rather than just a friendly “HOW R U?” Sanchez shouldn’t have had to rush back with an answer. Was he having text sex games with the teenage boy?

Why didn’t you read about this in the LA Times or San Francisco Chronicle? How about this?

There is a dark side to the tragedy

Sanchez’s “partner,” Daniel Burton, allegedly hanged himself in the garage of the home they shared in Crestline, a community in the San Bernardino Mountains about 80 miles east of Los Angeles.

Burton’s sister, Carolann Peschell, said she suspected foul play and never believed her 39-year-old brother, who was HIV-positive, would have killed himself. He had found a job at a gourmet restaurant and sounded well when she spoke to him two weeks before his unusual death.

“He was doing fine; he was happy, no signs of depression,” Peschell said. “We didn’t feel my brother was capable of doing this to himself.” He was a gentle man and hanging is a brutal way to kill yourself.

Peschell, who described Sanchez as “very odd, very strange, and obese” said her suspicions were not investigated throughly by San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators.

A coroner’s report said the two men had argued the night before Burton’s body was found; Sanchez had told Burton they should break up. That would draw attention by a professional CSI team.

Peschell kept her brother’s purported suicide note, which read: “Rob, Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you. Please take care of yourself and Ignatia. I love you both very much.” Ignatia was their dog.

From KFI radio, the John and Ken Show, Los Angeles

Newsman Eric Leonard reported on KFI radio (3:15 PT today) that the driver in the LA Metrolink crash last week, Robert M. Sanchez, is suspected of having killed his male lover 5 years ago. Leonard reports that the that the family of the lover, Daniel Charles Burton, has always believed that Sanchez killed Burton. The Burtons tried to get the police to investigate their son’s death as a murder to no avail. The death appeared to be a suicide, but the family has handwriting experts who say that the handwriting on the suicide note was not Burton’s. The family also told the police that Burton was HIV positive and that he and Sanchez had a fight right before the “suicide.” More recently, the Burtons called Metrolink to warn them that Sanchez was unstable.

Eric Leonard also reports that “it looks clear from [Metrolink’s] review of the [train] controls, that Sanchez did actually apply some speed controls within seconds of the crash but never braked.”

Would Sanchez have lost his home? That could be a motive. Was Sanchez a chicken hawk preoccupied with teen texting? He was arrested and plead guilty to theft of expensive electronic gaming equipment. And on Sept. 2 his train killed a pedestrian. Was Sanchez texting then too?

Progressive Democrats set stage to bring back ‘The Fairness Doctrine’

The Orwellian “Fairness Doctrine” is  about to be forced on America by the Democratic party. 

It is a throw back to FDR when Democrats (America’s socialists) were in complete power in the government and the Fairnes Doctrine is anything but fair. Look for a name change here. 

President Reagan ended the “Fairness Doctrine”

 

As heard on the Bill Press Radio Show on Thursday, February 5, 2009:

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) spoke with Bill about the possible return of the Fairness Doctrine in some form.

BILL PRESS: So, is it time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine?

SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI): I think it’s absolutely time to pass a standard. Now, whether it’s called the Fairness Standard, whether it’s called something else — I absolutely think it’s time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves. I mean, our new president has talked rightly about accountability and transparency. You know, that we all have to step up and be responsible. And, I think in this case, there needs to be some accountability and standards put in place.

BILL PRESS: Can we count on you to push for some hearings in the United States Senate this year, to bring these owners in and hold them accountable?

SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI): I have already had some discussions with colleagues and, you know, I feel like that’s gonna happen. Yep.

Gannett is building the model of the profitable newspaper

A new bold initiative is about to unfold in Detroit. Overnight, profitability will be restored to the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News and the joint operating agency that serves them, the experiment in non-daily home delivery could be common practice in the next two years.

Desperate times create desperate measures. The new model even cuts down on newspapers’ carbon footprint.

There is a widely reported plan that the Detroit dailies will restrict home delivery to Thursday and Sunday and perhaps one other day of the week. While papers on the other days of the week presumably would be available for single-copy purchase in busy downtown and suburban shopping centers, the rough draft of this plan is that the subscribers to  the Thursday and Sunday  newspapers would get full access to the news online.  

Gannett owns the Free Press, which is reported by the Gannett Blog to be preparing to eliminate 300 jobs. MediaNews Group, (Singleton) which in part is financed by Gannett, owns the News. 

Let’s face it, newspapers should not be printed and delivered each day. What a waste of energy.

Buyouts, layoffs, big declines in readership and ads — it is a bleak Christmas for newspapers

The decline of the newspaper media monopoly never slows. If you have any stock in newspaper-heavy media, it’s too late to get out. As of the end of 2008, 30 daily newspapers are for sale. Buyouts were the good old days. Now there are brutal Christmans-time layoffs. Google the Gannett Blog and find a running count by an ex-Gannetter. 

The layoffs and firings that started this week at newspapers owned by Gannett, including at the flagship USA Today, have been especially ruthless,  in addition to being timed just weeks before Christmas, they number in the thousdands.  But why not? These are mainly socialists and athiests who mock families and call moms breeders. 

It’s bloody news for newspaper journalists. Even the sill profitable Gannett newspapers (many still have profit margins at 20 percent) are shedding employees at a breathtaking rate. 

This week  a Gannett spokesperson said the cuts are being managed locally, at each newspaper, which is why as a company they’ve not released figures on specific jobs other than to say it’s a 10 percent cut companywide. While early figures compiled paper-by-paper totaled 1,700 Gannett jobs cut, it looks like that number may well pass 2,000 by next week.

In just the past week several thousand newspaper employees in America have lost their jobs, Cox Newspapers announced the closing of their Washington, DC, bureau, and the Tribune Co. will lay off more people at their flagship paper in Chicago.

In Chicago the credit analyst Fitch Ratings predicted that the continued decline in advertising revenues will cause some newspapers to default on their debt in 2009, and rated the debt of two huge newspaper companies – The McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. – ask “junk.” Fitch also predicted that several cities could find themselves without daily print newspapers by 2010.

As many as 1,700 Gannett jobs were cut this week, from assistant managing editors on down, including reductions of up to 31 percent of the staff at one newspaper, The Salinas Californian, according to a reader tally on a blog published by a former Gannett worker, Jim Hopkins.

 

The most recent E&P (an online Web site on newspapers that ironically ended its print edtions a decade ago) reports that recruitment advertising declined in May. The Newspaper Conference Board, which measures job ads in 51 print newspapers across the country, said its Help-Wanted Advertising Index is 33. It was 38 one year ago.

“This is certainly a more negative picture going into the second half of the year, compared to the beginning of the year,” Ken Goldstein, a labor economist at the Conference Board, said in a statement.

In the last three months, help-wanted advertising fell in all nine U.S. regions.

 

The Dallas Morning News (a monopoly) said today it’s going to offer buyouts to the newsroom. That means waving a modest proposal of a few extra weeks of severance pay in front of the noses of older employees. Reality check: the UAW buyouts give auto workers 90 percent of their pay and free health care for life.

 

I was walking my dog this morning at 5:30 a.m. and watched a newspaper carrier in a junk car speeding around my neighborhood to drop a paper at every 20th house or so. Just a few years ago, 40 percent of the homes subscribed to the paper. 

Imagine the carbon footprint of that old smokestack medium. 

McCain picks Sarah Palin! McCain picks Palin! The Energy to Run America!

Published on Aug 29, 2008 

Sen. John McCain has taken center stage the day after Obama’s coronation at the Democrat Convention by announcing his VP at high noon. It’s Sarah Palin she has it all, good looks right out of central casting, intelligent speaker, family values and governor of Alaska. She is an environmentalist and understands drilling for oil is a must for U.S. energy independence.

She has positive energy and wit. She will be able to out debate Biden and show that the Republicans trust a women for high office. She has a  real life, not a life-long  politician like Biden and so many other Big Brother Democrats. 

The mother of five is an avid runner. Here is an article from the WSJ in September:

WSJ. Magazine
Gov. Sarah Palin: Midnight runs and caribou dinners

Coming Saturday Sept. 6 in the debut issue of WSJ. Magazine, a conversation with Gov. Sarah Palin about her unusual workout and fitness routine. Preview excerpt

By JEN MURPHY
August 29, 2008 1:42 p.m.

Brian Adams for WSJ. Magazine

Gov. Sarah Palin has always been a runner. Her parents were marathoners and high school track and cross-country coaches. “Running was a family affair,” she says. “I didn’t have much choice. Thankfully, I’ve never tired of it.”

Gov. Palin, a mother of five kids, says exercise is still very much a “family thing.” She and her husband, Todd, also an athlete, named their first son Track because he was born in that sport’s season. Gov. Palin (above, near Mendenhall Glacier, outside of Juneau) and her family live in Wasilla, about 45 miles north of Anchorage.

Workout

MORE ON GOV. PALIN
 

 

• McCain Taps Gov. Sarah Palin as Presidential Running Mate

• Bio and Photo Gallery

“Conventional running is my sanity,” Gov. Palin says. Having recently given birth to her fifth child, the governor is trying to get back to her old workout routine. She was running 7 to 10 miles almost every day but switched to aerobics classes at her gym when she became pregnant. She has worked her way back up to running three miles every other day.

In the summer, when it’s always light, she’ll sometimes run as late as midnight. In the dead of winter, when it’s dark, she sneaks in an afternoon run, or else grudgingly runs on the treadmill at home or at the gym in the evening. Gov. Palin keeps dumbbells at home, but she says most of her upper body strength comes from snowmobiling with her family. “It’s the best upper body workout you could ever have,” she says. “You’re maneuvering through hundreds of pounds of powder.” (Todd is a four-time champion of the Tesoro Iron Dog, the world’s longest snowmobile race.)

Brian Adams for WSJ. Magazine

Gov. Palin in Juneau, Alaska

Diet pitfall

“My family and I eat a healthy diet heavy in wild Alaskan seafood, moose, caribou and fresh fruit,” she says. “I guess my biggest pitfall is breakfast. I know it’s the most important meal of the day but I still haven’t bought into it. I hate to admit it, but a skinny white-chocolate mocha is my staple in the morning.”

Workout gear

“My ideal fantasy is to be running on a hot dusty road just wearing running shorts and some kind of top that wicks away sweat. But in reality I’m running in 20-below temperatures, so I wear layers of fleece and always a good outdoor waterproof trail shoe. Right now I’ve been running in Nike Air Structure Triax. And I always wear sunglasses. My kids tell me to put them on so I don’t freak people out when they see me with a goofy hairdo and no makeup.”

While I’m working out

“I’m thinking about my next speech. I usually write my best speeches and letters [in my head] while out running. That is my inspired time.”

Postworkout food

“Nothing. I just drink water.”

Workout pitfall

“Being pregnant every few years. If I get lazy and go weeks or months without exercising it’s not because of circumstances but because I’m being less disciplined. Shame on me.”

Visit http://palinforvp.blogspot.com/

Drill here, drill now!

Sarah Palin

Bump from Biden. Not so much.

Pew, NYT, Gallup, Rasmussen, CNN, CNBC and Huffington Post are all scrambling to get a poll out showing a spike in support for their Obama/Biden dream ticket. But so far, silence. That means no bump. Hillary still has a chance in Denver next week.

In fact, Gallup shows McCain up! Can Hillary do anything about it?

It’s official: Barack Obama has received no bounce in voter support out of his selection of Sen. Joe Biden to be his vice presidential running mate.

Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 23-25, the first three-day period falling entirely after Obama’s Saturday morning vice presidential announcement, shows 46% of national registered voters backing John McCain and 44% supporting Obama, not appreciably different from the previous week’s standing for both candidates. This is the first time since Obama clinched the nomination in early June, though, that McCain has held any kind of advantage over Obama in Gallup Poll Daily tracking.

Ugly racism behind the flight attendant’s lawsuit against Victoria Osteen

Victoria Osteen, the wife of Joel Osteen, best selling author and pastor of the Lakewood mega church was sued by a flight attendant. A jury returned a verdict of innocent, no incident took place.

“If I had to go through this, I could at least be an example of trying to live out what’s right, trying to stand strong and trying to just keep my faith intact,” she said. “I stood strong because I believe in the truth,” she told an AP reporter after the trial.

Victoria Osteen said she never touched Continental Airlines flight attendant Sharon Brown and a jury on Thursday believed her, deciding that the co-pastor of Houston’s Lakewood Church did not “attack” the airline employee. Here are some facts that were left out of the coverage in the mainstream media.

Sharon Brown is an African American who according to co-workers was jumping on the opportunity to embarrass the Osteens into settling out of court for six figures. Brown’s attorney was most likely working on contingency.

The frivolous lawsuit was started while the Duke lacrosse team travesty was taking place.

The dirty secret that has been kept out of the reporting, is that there is in deed racism in America; the “get whitey” brand.

After the jury’s verdict, which came following a week-long trial, Victoria Osteen began to cry and hugged her attorneys and several supporters in the courtroom as she said “thank you God” and “praise God.” The 12 jurors deliberated for just 2 hours.

Brown had testified Victoria Osteen got so upset when a spill on her first-class seat’s armrest was not quickly cleaned up that she threw the flight attendant against a bathroom door and elbowed her in the left breast while attempting to rush into the cockpit.

But Victoria Osteen testified no such incident took place, as did her husband and other first-class passengers. No body saw that dramatic attack in a crowded first class section.

Brown quickly left the courtroom without talking to reporters.

She had been seeking at least $405,000 for actual damages — physical and mental pain as a result of an attack she alleged took place before the start of a December 2005 flight from Houston to Vail, Colo.

The jury’s foreman, Gilles Labbe, said he and other jurors believed what happened on the plane was not an attack but a disagreement between a passenger and one or more flight attendants.

“This lawsuit in my opinion should not have been filed because nothing happened,” he said.

“It’s a great vindication …” he said.

In his closing argument earlier Thursday, Rusty Hardin, Victoria Osteen’s attorney, dismissed Brown’s lawsuit as a made-up story concocted to land a courtroom payday.

In his closing argument, McKamie told jurors that because of Victoria Osteen’s status as a religious leader, she felt she had “favor from God.” That led her to believe she was above reproach for humiliating and assaulting his client, he said.

Besides money for actual damages, Brown had requested punitive damages amounting to 10 percent of Victoria Osteen’s net worth as part of her lawsuit. He said it’s just the sliver of the amount of a Monet painting… That’s all.

Norway is the world’s third largest oil exporter and second ranked environmentally friendly country

Did you ever read about Norway’s offshore oil production in your daily newspaper or see a report on the major networks? You have to wonder why?

Norway’s massive oil reserves are all offshore on the Norwegian continental shelf. Their’s is a prime example of how fast the oil can go into production in just three years.

Follow the Norway way to see that a beautiful coastline remains preserved while large-scale oil production goes on off shore. In fact, Norway is ranked second only to Switzerland in environmental stewardship. Another fact on statistics, Norway is one of the richest countries per capita in the world, out ranking many oil-rich nations.

Up until the 1960s very few people believed that the Norwegian continental shelf had oil and gas deposits. With the Ekofisk discovery in 1969, the Norwegian oil boom began. Deep-water production from the field began in June, 1971. During the next few years, a number of major oil discoveries were made. Today, there are 52 major fields in production. In 2006, these fields produced 2.8 million barrels of oil per day and 88 billion cubic meters of gas. Norway ranks as the world’s third largest oil exporter and the tenth largest oil producer, in 2006 figures. Some reports but them second only to Russia.

Ironically, it was the U.S. that first developed offshore oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Companies such as Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil with the expertise of oil services companies including Halliburton and Schlumberger.

Most of the U.S. continental shelf has been left untouched for 20 years by a series laws enacted by the “green” political movement, bought hook, line and sinker by the Democratic party and in some cases Republicans to keep pace with the propaganda movement of man made global warming.

Former VP Albert Gore made an amazing speech yesterday claiming we had just 10 years to save the world by transforming to wind and solar energy. Had Gore been working in the real world and made such an un-researched claim at a corporation, he would be sent to a detox center for psychological testing.

This week, President Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore continental shelf drilling. But the Democrat controlled U.S. Congress refuses to do so. Think about that when you pay more that $4 a gallon at the pump today. The Republicans wanted to start drilling in ANWR Alsaska in 1993, but Bill Clinton vetoed the bill. That field could have been producing 1 million barrels per day in 1998.

The world price for oil is already dropping. Investors do their homework and have a good idea that the American people are starting to figure out the facts. There could be a landslide sweep of victoroies for Republicans in November.

Mick Gregory

Zell tells it like it is for newspapers

Sam Zell, the real estate tycoon who now runs the combined Times-Mirror/Tribune newspaper empire,  said some shocking statements today. 

Mr. Zell was on the CNBC “Squawk Box” show (June 27) when he said,
“I think that because newspapers have historically been monopolies, I think they’ve been insulated from reality. I, you know, am in the position where I’m going to have to, quote-unquote, deliver reality.

I think we can have terrific newspapers, but I think the newspapers have to respond to their customers. In many cases a lot of the things we’re doing right now were all identified in focus groups over the last eight years. And the focus groups were made, were taken, and nobody paid attention to them.”

You are right on Mr. Zell. Not only did the “editorial elite” ignore the research, they laughed about it.

It’s time you model newspapers after real businesses starting with demoting the “executive editors” to proof readers and replace them with real managers with MBAs.

Major newspapers have been monopolies, owned by absentee, wealthy families who let left wing editors with a life-long hate for business, run the show.  

 

 

 

China and Cuba drilling for oil off Florida’s coast. The Democrats say the U.S. can’t.

Mick Gregory

The Republicans have hit a political gusher. The Democrat/socialists hiding under the friendly Green flag of environmentalism are being exposed today. I predict the Democrats will vote against the issue of drilling off U.S. coasts.

This while Cuba and China begin drilling off the Florida/Cuba shore. They will have their straw in our oil reserve milkshake.

Next, I predict, President Bush will issue an Executive Order opening up drilling.

The coastal reserves are estimated to be 18 billion barrels from 20-year-old studies. That is the short estimate equal to the amount of oil the U.S. would produce in almost 10 years (that’s 3,600 days producing 5 million barrels per day). The coastal reserves are also nearly equal to what some experts believe can be recovered at Anwar Reserve in Alaska. The reserve that the Democrats and Jimmy Carter put under lock and key over 20 years ago as well.

Tonight, look for the new reality show called “Black Gold” syndicated on cable channels across the country on TruTV. It’s a show that drills down into the ongoing oil explorations going on in West Texas today.

The U.S. still has oil! In fact, almost 70 percent of the oil in mature wells, some over 100 years old, is attainable with today’s technology.

The timing is right for U.S. oil industry stocks to rise. Meanwhile, the world market of crude will soon fall to below $100 in my guestimation.

Four major league oil companies are in negotiations for contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein socialized the oil companies and grabbed power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP and Chevron — and a number of oil-service companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to press releases.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will begin the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since Hussein ordered the burning of his country’s oil fields and the start of the Iraq war.

UPDATE: Time to ask why the Democrat Congress doesn’t do anything about the oil crisis.

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.

Newspaper editors believe they run the show

The Los Angeles Times news “executives” are in troubled waters. They believe they run the newspaper and Web site. A recent example — the publisher made plans to update its monthly magazine  — replacing the magazine’s deteriorating editorial staff with a new crew of pros experienced in real-world magazine publishing, fashion, creative and communications according to two executives at the newspaper.

The liberal editors fawning for Obama will not publish this candid AP photo of Obama and friends. Why not? Do you have to ask?

Back to the insider info. The new plan for the magazine goes well beyond the stale tradition of monopoly newspapers, which keep business operations, public relations, marketing and advertising, separate from the editorial department. An archaic system that has no other peers in the real world, except for organized religion. The Vatican comes to mind.

A casual reader of magazines such as Cosmopolitan, People, Vogue and Maxum can see that they are much more hip and marketing driven (not to mention, profitable) than big city newspapers’ thin, wordy, dull, 24-page poop wrappers. Look at the national newspaper magazines,  they too are marketing  driven. Do you ever read  Parade and USA Weekend.? They sell stuff.

A new magazine editor and staff have already been picked by Zell’s lieutenants without consulting the “editoriali.” Future issues have been planned, and mock-up covers were made — all without the knowledge of anyone in the newsroom.

How dare they not involve the editorial suite of cheap suits!

Why should the editors be in on enterprise/marketing decisions? Answer: because they always have been calling the shots at the LA Times, Chicago Tribune and SF Chronicle. They are all losing millions of dollars.

The LA Times top editor, Russ Stanton, especially had his tighty whities in a bunch.

They said that Mr. Stanton, after hearing about the move, asked the publisher of The Times, David D. Hiller, and the president of the newspaper, Jack D. Klunder, to change the name of the publication, which is now called Los Angeles Times Magazine. He argued that to keep the name would lend the newsroom’s credibility. It has not been blessed with the holy water from the high priests.

The Los Angeles Times is one of the large metropolitan dailies owned by the Tribune Company, which was bought a year ago or so by the real estate developer Samuel Zell. He has articulated an aggressive view of the newspaper business and its future, and recently announced plans to cut back news pages of AP stories and save the carbon footprint.

Both before and after Mr. Zell took control, there has been an unusual amount of turnover at the helm of The Times. Before Mr. Stanton took the top editorial job in February, his three predecessors had left in a semi-annual succession after refusing to make staff and budget cuts to stop the million dollars a week in losses at The Times.

It looks as if Mr. Stanton will be making a career move soon. Maybe the Santa Barbara News-Press will have a spot for him? Maybe he will go back home to the San Bernadino Sun?

The fate of The Times’s regular Sunday magazine has been grim for years when left to the editors to run it as they saw fit. Profit? Editors are not concerned with lowly issues like that. Cater to advertisers? No!

(The editors seem to be the only people in all of SoCal who don’t realize that retail, glitz and promotion are king in LaLa Land. The editors wanted to write hard-core stories, not glamour pieces with photo-shoots of skinny runway models.

The arrogant news staff asked publisher of The Times, David D. Hiller, and the president of the newspaper, Jack D. Klunder, to change the name of the magazine, which is now called Los Angeles Times Magazine. They argued that to keep the name would be a smear on the “good name” of the editorial department. Talk about the tale wagging the dog. Did they have an alternative name, like “adverising crap?” That’s what they think of the businesses that pay for their Men’s Warehouse suits.

Earlier this year, when it became public that Mr. Hiller was considering giving control of the magazine to the paper’s marketing and advertising managers, editors and reporters voiced fears that it would become less a work of journalism than a lightweight vehicle for currying favor with advertisers. Like Vanity Fair, Car and Driver, Cosmo,  GQ and Architectural Digest?

The issue is an especially sensitive one at The Los Angeles Times. In 1999, the paper published a special magazine section about a new sports arena, the Staples Center. Editors and reporters rebelled after learning that the paper shared the section’s profits with the arena and executives apologized for the arrangement. Soon after the “rebellion” the Times-Mirror family sold the troubled company to the Tribune Corp. The Chandler family didn’t like the slow motion, editor-centric management and soon after, forced the sale of the Tribune Co. They wanted their money. Mr. Zell bought it and took command of the empire in rot.

Now he is being fought tooth and nail by the stuffy “executive editors” of the old Times-Mirror empire.

The new editor, it is said, is Annie Gilbar is a former editor of InStylemagazine and has written or co-written a number of advice books, like “Wedding Sanity Savers.” Calls to Ms. Gilbar were not returned.

Nine magazine employees will have to find editorial work somewhere else in the building. Obits seem to be a good fit.

–Mick Gregory

The most dramatic dip in U.S. home prices in history — There will be blood

New figures the first week of June reveal that house prices in the U.S. have already fallen by more over the past 12 months than in any year during the Great Depression. This study comes from the Economist. You didn’t read about it in your LA Times, SF Chronicle, Chicago Tribune or Washington Post, did you?

These are national figures. Some of the country didn’t see any dip. For example, there are areas of Houston such as EPCOT village-styled, heavily wooded community called The Woodlands that experienced price increases in homes near The Waterway and Town Center, some call the Lake District, the homes in Panther Creek. Here you can buy a 3,500 square foot brick mansion with pool, granite counter tops, Brazilian cheery floors, glass conservatory, rot iron fence for $420,000-$500,000.

There are other areas of Houston, such as Sugar Land, Kingwood and Katy that have increased in value as well. Houston area properties didn’t go through the heady spike in prices that San Diego, Hollywood and the San Francisco area did from 2001-2005. Houston has become one of the safe havens of high-quality housing. Austin, San Antonio and Dallas have also survived the drop in prices.

Another factor saving the Texas economy — oil. U.S. oil production has sharply increased due to the price per barrel hitting $135. Old oil fields are pumping again due to high-tech well enhancement operations by Texas E&P oil service companies. In addition, Houston is second only to New York in Fortune 500 companies.

Which costs taxpayers more: the war in Iraq or illegal aliens?

You guessed right. It’s the illegal aliens.

Here is a story that has been avoided for the past 20 years — the cost of illegal aliens.

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year. http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens. http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens. http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English! http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by the American taxpayers. http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html

9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt01.html

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US . http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border. Homeland Security Report. http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12. The National Policy Institute, “estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.” http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

14. “The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States “. http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml

Total cost is a whooping… $338.3 BILLION A YEAR!!!

She Lives! Hillary Rodham Clinton Wins Kentucky

Hillary Rodham Clinton calls them the working class Americans. But who are they? Don’t most Americans work for a living?

I think we all know what she means by working class, they are uneducated, low income, below average IQ, drug abusing white trash. It’s the economy she and her machine will say.

We all know it’s about race. It always has been with the Democrat party.

While at the Getty home in Pacific Heights (San Francisco), Obama calls small-town whites, Bible thumpers, gun-loving bigots

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…

A look at the mind set of newspaper columnists and journalists as security boxes their belongings

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.

Mainstream media didn’t hide the housing bubble — They didn’t see it. They were too busy writing puff pieces on celebrities making millions on their mansions

Mick Gregory

I really do like to say “I told you so,” once in a while, especially to liberal Californians in the mass media. My family and I moved from the Bay Area to Houston, Texas three years ago at the peak of the housing bubble. We were watching the market trends and came to our own conclusion well before the “experts” in the media. Our neighbors, both attorneys, had also noticed the growth was hitting 30 percent a year in our San Francisco suburb. Those stats come in every month by realtor associations; polished up by their PR departments — they are finally picked up by journalists and edited neatly following the AP style book. There are a lot of hacks in the industry who think that’s what makes good journalism. No analysis, just following the rules of serial comma usage and the very important difference (in their minds) between that and which.

Never mind that the price per square foot was over $350 and there were multiple offers coming on homes. The time spent on the market wasn’t measured in days, but hours.

Three years ago, there were very few reporters at the LA Times or SF Chronicle looking at the historic, unreal climb in prices. “This is California, there will always be a market for a piece of paradise,” we’ve seen in various versions in the entertaining Homes sections that ran every Saturday and Sunday.

Reports on the housing bubble and wobbles were rare. How could you expect anything better? Business reporters don’t have the resume to get an administrative assistant job at Fortune 500 companies or with developers. They don’t have the ambition to sell real estate, or the skill to be a property flipper.

More important than that, journalists are tied to their home town newspapers or TV stations. They can’t be objective in reporting bloated housing prices or comparing the quality of housing between markets such as LA and Houston.

The free fall of California real estate is finally front page news. Now that foreclosures are equal to home sales in some California neighborhoods. All this sudden analysis is 2.5 years too late for the thousands losing their homes.

Back then, the “executive editors” promoted cute columns called Hot Properties with features on how celebrities were tripling their prices on Bay Area and Malibu homes.

The party is over. That was the last time newspapers made windfall profits off of 5 pound Sunday newspapers.

Here is an excellent look at the media circus from Dan Gillmor’s blog on citizen journalism is among the best in the blog biz. Gillmor gives journalists too much credit. He should know some 94.5 percent didn’t even take Economics 101.

Housing Bubble Coverage: Defending the Indefensible

Editor & Publisher: Newspaper Biz Editors Defend Mortgage Crisis Coverage. Did the growing mortgage credit crisis, which took a huge turn with last week’s collapse of Bear Sterns, get enough early coverage from newspapers? Top business editors at several of the nation’s major papers say yes, although a few admit some of the more complicated elements may not have been broken out enough for readers.

“What tripe. The newspaper industry almost totally failed to do its job, and the public got screwed once again.”

Citing a story here and there, as several editors do in the E&P piece, is not evidence of newspapers doing their job. It’s quite the opposite.

When an economic catastrophe of this sort — and entirely predicable one — is building, journalists are failing to do their jobs when they don’t harp on it.

As I said in a previous posting, newspapers and broadcasters were raking in billions in advertising from the real estate and banking industries as this bubble inflated. I do not believe this is a coincidence. I also don’t believe it was deliberate malfeasance; but you just don’t see lots of tough coverage in media of the people and companies paying the bills.

Many if not most papers have special weekly real estate pages or sections where you would find little hint of the potential for trouble. I know I looked for it in the papers I read. That’s where the discussion belonged — as well, of course, as Page One — not solely in the occasional business page stories. Hundreds of references to bubbles, most in the past year and not when there was a chance to slow down that train, were dwarfed by comparison to the buying advice that dominated coverage of real estate overall.

Oh, sure, there were extremely infrequent stories containing warnings in a few publications — and occasional quotes from skeptics in the prices-just-keep-rising stories that overwhelmingly dominated the coverage. But the reality is that journalists mostly didn’t have a clue, or didn’t want to have a clue. I don’t know which is worse.

Some bloggers, and some economists, did shout warnings. They were ignored, or worse, insulted by wishful thinkers and (I suspect) people who stood to gain from the continuing bubble.

Again, from a previous post, here are some questions the media all but ignored until too late:

Where were the stories we should have been seeing, noting that “buyers” — a word that is ludicrous in context –were running headlong toward a financial cliff? What happened to the coverage of a housing market that fewer and fewer people could afford to enter except with no-interest or no-down-payment loans, where home prices were so far out of sync with the economy that there was no precedent for such imbalance?

Where were the stories pointing out that the secondary (and far beyond) mortgage markets were salting hugely risky debt all through the American economy? You think your bank or pension fund doesn’t have some of this garbage somewhere in its books? Think again.

The media also bungled by not fingering the makers of this bubble apart from foolish “buyers” who proved to be such suckers. This boom was fueled by people who knew it couldn’t last: brokers, bankers and, above all, Wall Street’s ever-clever wizards who risk other people’s money for gigantic fees.

This is another journalistic scandal. It’s not quite on the order of the bended-knee, pre-war coverage — stenography of government officials’ lies and deceptions — that helped steer America into the Iraq war, but only because it’s not killing people in large numbers.

It’s a massive enough scandal, though. There’s plenty of pain left in this deflation, possibly including an outright tanking of the economy.

The journalism craft should take a long, hard look at what it’s failed to do, yet again, in the housing bubble. It has failed to warn — as loudly and incessantly as it did in promoting the housing bubble — that a financial crunch was on the way.

There’s plenty of blame to go around in this mess. The finger-pointing has barely begun. But when it gets going for real, I hope that journalists who do some of that pointing will at least look in a mirror.

“I can remember the yards of copy written about new developments and real estate sections filled with puff pieces promoting house buying, with no hint of any risks involved with these investments. For the few stories you cite, what about those that quoted the National Association of Realtors about how this was the right time to buy a house, and that house prices have never declined. Remember how we were told house prices were supposed to be “sticky” and that when there was a downturn, the prices would stick rather than fall precipitously. Where were the investigative pieces about how low-income people were being ripped off by subprime mortgages? Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal you cite ran endless stories about high prices for New York apartments, with appropriate pictures of the luxury amenities that came with them. In my lifetime, newspapers have missed the S&L excess of the 1990’s, and they dropped the ball on this one, too. And what about the culpability of Congress in this? Where are the investigative pieces of House and Senate banking legislation that opened the door to easy lending, no-document loans and giving mortgages to people with lousy credit reports — including illegal aliens working day work construction jobs? From what I’ve heard on CSpan, Sen. Jon Kyl has reams of information documenting how Congress contributed to the collapse now happening, but no reporters seem interested.”

DanGillmor.com Home page

Nearly 70 union members fired at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News

Philadelphia Newspapers Lay off 68 Guild Union Members

Feb. 27, 2008

The Company laid off 68 Guild members today from the advertising, circulation, customer service, finance, marketing communications and systems departments.

“If the revenue is not there, then we have to cut expenses,” Michael Lorenca, executive vice president of Human Resources, told Guild officers. He said he did not know how much savings would result from the layoffs.

The layoff is effective March 28. However, the Company has told members to leave today and plans to reassign their work to surviving staff.

The Guild will begin working with the company to establish which of the laid off workers have “bumping rights” into other positions. That works the good old fashion union way. Those with seniority, bump those with less seniority if the position is comparable. The trouble with that is, once the laid off worker gets a lower position back, with less pay, they will soon realize they would have been better off being with the fired employees. HR gets a two-for.

Hey, maybe Hillary or Obama can save their jobs.

People cutting up their Bank of America and Capital One credit cards in record numbers and taking advice from Dave Ramsey

By Mick Gregory

The sub-prime mortgage meltdown has been one of the major news events of 2007. People in California with $5,000 monthly mortgage payments are just handing over their keys to the banks. But wait, there’s more.

Americans are stopping payment on their credit cards at an all-time record rate, sending delinquencies and defaults surging by double-digit percentages in the last year and prompting warnings of big hits to banks with more to come.

An Associated Press (AP) report of financial data from the country’s largest card issuers also found that the greatest rise was among accounts more than 90 days in arrears.

Finacial experts say these signs of the deterioration of finances of millions of American households are partly a result of the subprime mortgage crisis and could spell more trouble ahead for millions of Americans and some banks.

Timing is everything. Talk show host Dave Ramsey has seen his nationally syndicated show grow exponentially the past 18 months. He is telling listeners to cut up their credit cards and pay off those with the smallest balance first. But even before that, Ramsey says pay for your food, mortagage, car payment and sock away $1,000 for emergencies.

There are a lot of methods for trying to dig yourself out of financial problems, and this may not necessarily be the best one for you. The “Baby Steps” are, however, a very workable plan for most people. They’re simple, straightforward, and they work. Ramsey has callers every day screaming “I’m debt free!” He is attracting a following with a cult atmosphere.

“The bottom line?” asks Ramsey. “It’s easy to become wealthy if you don’t have any payments.”

The best and most-detailed version available of these Baby Steps can be found in Ramsey’s book The Total Money Makeover.

It’s like the chicken or the egg proposition. Did the banks start the credit crisis with their easy “come on” rates then turned on the juice to 30 percent of millions of customers, or was it Ramsey’s advice to stop paying these excessive fines and cut up your cards?

This was the first Christmas we didn’t use credit cards. What a nice feeling.

What are the consequences?

The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier at 17 large credit card trusts examined by the AP. That represented more than 4 percent of the total outstanding principal balances owed to the trusts on credit cards that were issued by banks such as Bank of America and Capital One and for retailers like Home Depot and Wal-Mart.
At the same time, defaults – when lenders essentially give up hope of ever being repaid and write off the debt – rose 18 percent to almost $961 million in October, according to filings made by the trusts with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Serious delinquencies are up sharply: Some of the nation’s biggest lenders – including, GE Money Bank and HSBC – reported increases of 50 percent or more in the value of accounts that were at least 90 days delinquent when compared with the same period a year ago.

The AP analyzed data representing about 325 million individual accounts held in trusts that were created by credit card issuers in order to sell the debt to investors – similar to how many banks packaged and sold subprime mortgage loans. Together, they represent about 45 percent of the $920 billion the Federal Reserve counts as credit card debt owed by Americans.
Until recently, credit card default rates had been running close to record lows, providing one of the few profit growth areas for the nation’s banks, which continue to flood Americans’ mailboxes with billions of letters monthly offering easy sign-ups for new plastic.

Even after the recent spike in bad loans, the credit card business is still quite lucrative, thanks to interest rates that can run as high as 36 percent, plus late fees and other penalties.

But what is coming into sharper focus from the detailed monthly SEC filings from the trusts is a snapshot of the worrisome state of Americans’ ability to juggle growing and expensive credit card debt.
The trend carried into November. As of Friday, all of the trusts that filed reports for the month show increases in both delinquencies and defaults over November 2006, and many show sequential increases from October.
Discover accounts 30 days or more delinquent jumped 25,716 from November 2006 and had increased 6,000 between October and November this year.
Many economists expect delinquencies and defaults to rise further after the holiday shopping season.