Speaker's chum annointed New York's top judge

The Village Voice has a scathing article about the appointment of Jonathan Lippman as head of New York's high court. Lipmann has negligible experience as a jurist. According to The Voice, Lippman's written a mere 16 signed judicial opinions, has been a judge for only a few years and has never practiced as a private attorney. He is the first person in over a century to preside over New York's highest court without ever having previously been an associate judge. He's now in charge not only of New York's top court but of the state's entire judicial system. But Lippman did have one thing going for him: a lifelong friendship with the state's powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a man around whom a whiff of backroom dealing and sleaze is never far. The article does nothing to dissipate that whiff.

Textbook case of media bias update

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

An addendum to my most recent entry on the topic.

Most mainstream media outlets make it out like covering smaller party and independent candidates requires massive amounts of time and resources. They seem to think it requires something like sending questions to 'third party' candidates via carrier pigeon and then conducting a national search someone to translate the response from Ancient Basque into English. Perhaps they don't realize that many 'third party' candidates are not kooks who live in mountain cabins and that many of them know how to use fancy new inventions like telephones and email. The modest Adirondack Daily Enterprise shows that it's possible to cover such candidates (Libertarian Eric Sundwall in this case) with neither sky nor bank account collapsing.

Another rationalization for what some call 'political bigotry' is that no one cares about smaller party and independent candidates. Something like 1/3 of Americans are registered as members of a smaller party or as independents. Why SHOULDN'T the points of view of a third of the country be reflected?

By contrast, I've seen countless articles in The Post-Star and other print media outlets (such as here and here and here and here) about the analog to digital television transition.

Now, this only affects people who get TV over the air (such as by rabbit ears). It does not affect people who subscribe to cable or satellite. Most estimates peg the number of Americans who receive TV this way at between 6-7 million, or around 2 percent of the country. This might be overestimating because it likely includes those who don't watch television at all.

So The Post-Star and other media have no problem bombarding us with articles about a digital TV transition that affects only 2 percent of the people, but when it comes to reflecting the beliefs of over 30 percent of the people, it's 'irrelevant.'

Some have described our society as being entertained to death. Perhaps it's no accident that the media caters to the 2 percent of the people who risk being deprived of shallow, mind-numbing entertainment but refuse to acknowledge the 30+ percent who are already being deprived of political representation.

Morons in high places

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


Nigeria's Vanguard reports on some rather bizarre comments by the country's foreign minister.

Under its universal periodic review mechanism proceedure, in a session lasting three hours Chief Ojo Madueke presented an overview of Nigeria's human rights situation... His presentation caused a stir when he informed members of the council that the government of Nigeria had been unable to locate persons of gay and sexual orientation, despite concerted efforts by his ministry to include this category of persons in the consultations on the human rights situation in Nigeria.

The foreign minister is part of a government which has proposed to throw people in jail for up to five years who 'witnesses, abet and aids the solemnisation' of a same sex marriage. Two years ago, the foreign minister's party proposed a bill which would criminalize free speech that suggested that gays and lesbians deserved 'rights of recognition'.

Striking a blow for sectarian harmony, the government's virulent anti-gay crusade is one of the few things on which the country's normally fractious Muslim and conservative Christian communities can find common ground.

Given the government-sanctioned assault on (at the very least) their freedom, is it really much of a shock that gays and lesbians in Nigeria aren't eager to discuss their sexual orientation with a rabidly homophobic government?!

Obamania vs progressivism

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald has a good piece on how the liberal cult of personality around Obama and their complacency at being rid of Bush and the theocrats holds back the progressive agenda.

A textbook case of media bias (Post-Star style)

(Ed. note: My friend at Planet Albany blog used that title for a recent entry so I offer this title not as plagiarism but as an hommage)

Last night, New York Libertarian state chair Eric Sundwall was in Glens Falls to talk about his participation in the race for the state's open 20th Congressional District seat, vacated by US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

I will have a report on the event hopefully tomorrow or Sunday. I was the only journalist in attendance for the whole event, as the two members of the local commercial media left after 15-20 minutes and missed 75 percent of what happened.

I am not yet endorsing a candidate, as I know little about Democrat Scott Murphy (though I've been very unimpressed by what I've seen so far).

However, this blog has taken a consistent position in favor of real multipartyism. This blog has also consistently advocated in favor of smaller party and independent candidates getting comparable media coverage to Democrats and Republicans, for such candidates to be included in all debates and for electoral law to be unrigged to allow more candidates to make the ballot without gigantic and unreasonable hurdles. I maintain it is indispensible to our democracy to reintroduce real choice to our democracy. There is no reason why Americans can handle 50 different choices of white bread in the supermarket but will faint with confusion if they have more than two political candidates.

When I report on such "third party" candidates or post information about them or their websites, it's not necessarily because I endorse them (unless I explicitly say so). I do so because I believe that voters should have as much knowledge as possible so they can make an informed decision. And if the corporate media is going to refuse to provide that information, I will fill in that gap as much as I can as a non-professional blogger.

For example, last year, I provided information about and websites for ALL the smaller party and independent presidential candidates on the ballot in New York. I did so as a public service, even though it was clear I only endorsed one. I did so because even though I believed one was the best candidate, I wanted to make sure everyone had access to the same information so they could make that decision. I am a citizen first and a partisan advocate after. I didn't decree who was "serious" or not. I provided the information and let people make up their own minds.

I believe that voters alone should decide who is viable. When the mainstream media blackout "third party" candidates decreeing them "not viable," it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy... especially since the media inevitably give oodles of free coverage to Democrats and Republicans.

I will always bang the drum for the right and the rightness of any smaller party or independent candidate to get a decent amount of coverage from and to be included in any debate sponsored by any media outlet that pats itself on the back as fair and claims some sort of public service role for itself.

If you want us to think you are fair, then don't tell us. Show us!

The local Post-Star hasn't learned this lesson.

In his blog, the daily's managing editor Ken Tingley wrote of the 20th CD special election:

With two new candidates from last fall’s election, we want give our readers a chance to get to know the candidates. We are planning on doing personality profiles on each of the candidates. In our Sunday meeting, we were already discussing in what order and how far removed from the general election the profiles should run.
We really do try to be as fair as possible. We plan out our Sunday stories three and four weeks in advance in an effort to have our very best stories in the Sunday newspaper.

I wrote a comment on the blog pointing out that there were not two candidates for the seat, but three. Democrat Scott Murphy, Republican Jim Tedisco and Sundwall.

Tingley pointed out that right now, only the first two were on the ballot. Sundwall has to get signatures to make that happen, while Murphy and Tedisco were anointed by a couple of party bosses.

Usually, the mainstream media's bias against smaller party candidates isn't overt. You have to read carefully to notice the obfuscation and rationalization. The typical arguments against such candidates are...

-"They have no chance of winning" (which becomes true when the media blacks them out... the media here makes news rather than just reporting it)

-"People aren't interested in 'third party' candidates" (which is impossible to determine if people aren't made aware anything about them)

-"We DO give them coverage" (almost always a token sentence at the end of an article about the Dem and GOP stating 'Conservative Party candidate Jim the Electrician is also running.')


The 'people aren't interested' myth is also belied by evidence. In a Zogby Poll last year, 44 percent of those polled agreed that the United States' system is broken and cannot be fixed by traditional two-party politics and elections.

Some of my friends attribute this bias to a corporate conspiracy against smaller-party and independent candidates. And frankly I think there is some truth to that at the higher-level races. I'm not so sure about the local races, though it's possible. Frankly, I'm reminded of the phrase "Never attribute to malice what can easily be ascribed to incompetence."

I think much of the bias is down to pure laziness. Professional journalists intone that there are two sides to every story. That's not true. For most stories, there are more than two sides. That takes a little digging. That takes a journalist who's willing and able to venture from the standard narrative to give a fuller, more nuanced picture. Giving 1 tablespoon "establishment liberal" plus 1 tablespoon "establishment conservative" plus "mix well" is a much easier recipe. Varying from the Script and offering alternative points of view takes a little more work.

But in reality, this is a pathetic excuse because it doesn't take much more work. If a reporter is going to call up Tedisco and Murphy and get their views on stimulus or agriculture or whatever, is it really that hard to phone up Sundwall and get his views on the same issue? ESPECIALLY in a special election like this where there are no other races to spread thin the paper's resources.

I hope it's down to laziness or to small minds refusing or unable to think outside the corporate box. I hope that's the case because if it's not, then maybe there really is something more sinister.

But while such contempt toward "third parties" (either conscious or through sloth) is usually more subtle, Tingley has decided to come out and admit his bias. When I asked him to promise a profile of Sundwall should he make the ballot, the Post-Star supremo responded:

If a third candidate makes the ballot that has a legitimate chance or seems like an interesting candidate, we would always consider doing a profile on them as well.

So in order to get a profile, you have to be seen as legitimate (hard to do when the media consciously ignores you) and you have to be 'interesting' (Scott Murphy doesn't seem to fit this bill).

I take that back.

You need those things before they will CONSIDER giving you a profile.

Translation: Sundwall has no chance in hell of getting the hagiography that The Post-Star has promised to Murphy and Tedisco.

Even my father, an old-school journalist and establishment Democrat with little sympathy for smaller parties, described Tingley's comments as unprofessional.

Tingley is openly admitting that he has differently rules for how "third party" candidates are treated than for how Democrats and Republicans are treated, the very definition of the phrase 'double standards.'

"We really do try to be as fair as possible," whined Tingley in his blog entry.

Openly admitting you have double standards does not fit most people's definition of "as fair as possible."

"We really do try to be as fair as possible."

Refusing to give comparable coverage to all the candidates, when it's quite easy to do so, does not fit most people's definition of "as fair as possible."

"We really do try to be as fair as possible."

Clearly they're need to try a lot harder.


Update: In another blog entry on the topic, Tingley reiterated that they "do try to be fair and balanced and we talk about how to maintain that balance all the time. And that includes third-party candidates as well."

The very definition of the word balance requires that his paper give equal (I'd settle for comparable) coverage to all the candidates.

If he's going to pat his paper on the back for these qualities, he has to expect others to hold the paper to the standards they set for themselves! The paper demands accountability of others. Readers need to demand the same of the daily.

There's only one thing better than beating Mexico

And that's beating them again and again and again.

Oh yea... and again!

Updated blog policy on commenting

Here's a hopefully clearer explanation of this blog's policy on commenting. Thanks for reader feedback on this issue.


I do accept anonymous comments, which means you can comment without signing your full name.

I do not accept unsigned comments, which means you have to sign it with something, even if just your first name or a nickname/pseudonym.


If you sign in via a Blogger account, that is sufficient.

If you do not have or wish to create a Blogger account, you can still post. Under 'Choose an Identity,' click 'Name/URL'. The URL is optional. But under 'Name,' you can include your full name or your first name. If you wish, you can also comment under a nickname/pseudonym.

Regardless of which you choose, I just ask that you use the same handle each time you post, so I can follow your line of reasoning.

Comments signed with a full name, first name or nickname/pseudonym will be accepted.

Comments that are completely unsigned will be rejected.

All signed comments will be published unless I consider them potentially libelous or defamatory or if they are spam/ads. If you are going to make serious allegations, you are strongly encouraged to provide evidence or attribution.

Obviously I ask readers to keep their comments pertinent to the topic of the essay in question or to the posted comments. In the unlikely event I reject your comment, you are welcome to contact me and ask why.

Tabloidism vs journalism

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


The Post-Star is on a crusade to (hold hand over heart) protect the taxpayers. Nothing else matters in local quality of life except (hold hand over heart) protecting the taxpayers. And the paper gets annoyed to no end when locals think of themselves as citizens or parents first rather than only caring about their wallet.

Their most recent whipping boy is the Glens Falls school district's (GFSD) board of education and teachers' union for approving a new contract which gave the teachers 4 percent annual raises but forced them to contribute more to (always skyrocketing cost of) their health insurance.

The monopoly paper has two objections.

The first criticism is that the board and union refused to release details of the contract until AFTER it was approved. This made it impossible for the public to comment on it.

Many local school districts have followed this same, wrongheaded route. They claim they want the public's input but deny the public the information they'd need to formulate any input one way or the other. It's one thing to not publicize every crossed t and dotted i of the negotiations. But once a tentative agreement has been approved by the union and makes it to the board's agenda, it must be made public well-enough in advance for the public to scrutinize it if they so choose.

Teacher salaries make up a huge chunk (I want to say around 70 percent, but don't quote me) of the typical school district's budget. A budget which is funded in large part by local property taxes. The public ought to be given a chance to comment on that contract before it becomes written in stone.

As the last eight years have shown, secrecy is the enemy of democracy and good government.

On this, The Post-Star is spot on.

But the second objection is more interesting. After bungling numerical analysis in the original article, they ran a corrected piece claiming that the new pact would add up to an extra $1.4 million to the local tax burden.

'$1.4 MILLION' screamed the headline!!!

But a little math puts it in a different context.

There are about 14,000 residents of the city. This number isn't perfect because it includes residents of the Abraham Wing district on the city's east side but excludes residents of the GFSD who live in the town of Queensbury. But this is a good approximation of the number of residents in the GFSD.

$1.4 million divided by 14,000 works out to an increase of $100 per resident divided by the four year length of the contract works out to an extra $25 per GF (at most) resident per year or a little more than $2 a month. So for a household of four, it would work out to around $2 extra per week... or the cost of one Sunday Post-Star (maybe that's why the daily is so worried!).

Then again, $1.4 MILLION (OMG!!@#!) makes for a more dramatic headline than $2/person/month.

But what really gets The Post-Star's goat is that people are not as outraged as the paper's ivory tower editors think they should be.

They continue to bang the drum to whip up outrage that isn't there. In addition to two articles on the topic (one bungled and one apparently correct), they've published an indignant editorial (Update: now two indignant editorials), an indignant opinion column by the always-pompous Managing Editor Ken Tingley and several blog entries (alternatively indignant and defensive) by Tingley.

The tone of all these pieces is that we should be outraged because the eminent newspaper told us to be so. And if we're not, it means either that we're rubes or that we're secretly in league with the leeches in the teachers' union.

There is a reasonable debate to be had on this issue, but the arrogant tone of The Post-Star's brain trust prevents this from happening. They insist on perpetuating the simplistic dichotomy that the only way to alleviate the overwhelming tax burden on local property owners is to target teacher salaries. It's either well-paid teachers and overtaxed residents or underpaid teachers and slightly less overtaxed residents.

A more reasonable debate would ask whether the fundamental structure of education funding in New York state is broken. It would ask why so much of the mandatory education programs is funded locally when the crushing majority of mandates for those programs come from state and federal authorities.

But such a debate requires more nuanced discussion, less scapegoat and faux indignant outrage, fewer tabloid headlines and less reporting driven by editorial positions.


Update: And as some commenters to the paper's website have pointed out, their $1.4 MILLION (!!!!) figure is a maximum. According to the daily's own reporting, the figure assumes that no higher-paid experienced teachers will retire or leave the district to be replaced by lower-paid, less experienced teachers. Given the near impossibility that no teacher will leave the district in the next four years, the $1.4 million ($2/week/family of four) figure will almost certainly be lower.