This essay is part of an occasional feature on this blog that presents compelling stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, IsraelStine and the Trumped Up Enemy of the Month. A list of all pieces in this series can be found found here..
In his sentencing hearing today, evil scum and war criminal Charles Taylor pleaded for mercy from the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone... without acknowledging any guilt. The former Liberian dictator was convicted by the court of knowingly aiding and abetting war crimes in that country’s civil war (he’s never been charged for his role in the barbarity in his own country).
Taylor had the gall to praise himself as bringing healing and reconciliation to Liberia. He is correct.... sort of. Healing and reconciliation arrived in his country, but only after he fled the country in disgrace.
Prosecutors called for an 80 year sentence for the convictions, a term which defense attorneys called ‘disproportionate.’ They are correct, it is disproportionate. Taylor’s reign of terror which destabilized an entire region merits a much harsher sentence.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Buy A Falling Star
by contributor Mark Wilson
Part of a series on the troubles at The Post-Star and its parent company Lee Enterprises.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations has released paid newspaper readership figures for the six month period ending March 31. The report brings more hard news for the Glens Falls Post-Star. With average daily circulation standing at 24,578, the paper showed a loss of 1,455 paying readers since last October. Compared to a year ago, the average daily circulation is off 1,029 or roughly 4 percent. This places the Post-Star in the middle of the pack of nearby newspapers—the Albany Times Union showed a slight gain in paid readership over last year, while the Saratogian and Troy Record reported heavier losses of 5.7% and 7.5% respectively. Of the four regional papers, only the Post-Star showed deteriorating numbers in the second half of the past twelve month period.
With the latest report, the Post-Star has officially broken below the 25,000 average daily circulation level, a threshold which many organizations recognize when bestowing annual newspaper awards. With the general collapse of newspaper circulation over the past decade, the number of newspapers occupying the under 25,000 category has swelled, far surpassing occupants at higher levels.
While the Post-Star’s circulation losses are middling in comparison with neighboring papers, its performance against the rest of the newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises were considerably worse. Over the past six months, the Post-Star suffered the third highest percentage circulation losses of all fifty papers owned in whole or part by Lee. Perhaps of greater concern, against the firmament of Lee papers, the Post-Star has dropped farther than any other over the past five-and-a-half-years, dropping from the twelfth largest Lee property in October 2006, to twentieth (the ranking figures in the accompanying table take into account the various Lee properties that either merged or were sold over the years).
The Post-Star’s harrowing circulation drop might well explain why the newspaper moved so suddenly at the end of April to subscribed access for its online content: while plenty of people may be reading the Post-Star, fewer and fewer are buying it.
Part of a series on the troubles at The Post-Star and its parent company Lee Enterprises.
With the latest report, the Post-Star has officially broken below the 25,000 average daily circulation level, a threshold which many organizations recognize when bestowing annual newspaper awards. With the general collapse of newspaper circulation over the past decade, the number of newspapers occupying the under 25,000 category has swelled, far surpassing occupants at higher levels.
While the Post-Star’s circulation losses are middling in comparison with neighboring papers, its performance against the rest of the newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises were considerably worse. Over the past six months, the Post-Star suffered the third highest percentage circulation losses of all fifty papers owned in whole or part by Lee. Perhaps of greater concern, against the firmament of Lee papers, the Post-Star has dropped farther than any other over the past five-and-a-half-years, dropping from the twelfth largest Lee property in October 2006, to twentieth (the ranking figures in the accompanying table take into account the various Lee properties that either merged or were sold over the years).
The Post-Star’s harrowing circulation drop might well explain why the newspaper moved so suddenly at the end of April to subscribed access for its online content: while plenty of people may be reading the Post-Star, fewer and fewer are buying it.
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
NC writes discrimination into constitution; Taliban, ayatollahs approve
Tonight, voters in North Carolina went out of their way to pass an amendment to the state's constitution to ban marriage equality; it's already banned by state law.
"And the point -- the whole point -- is simply that you don't rewrite the nature of God's design for marriage based on the demands of a group of adults," said Tami Fitzgerald, head of the main anti-equality movement.
History scholars might be surprised to read Ms. Fitzgerald's words. Interracial marriage was not part of 'God's design for marriage,' as per the north Carolina constitution, until it was 're-written' in 1971.
In other news, the Taliban and the Iranian ayatollahs both praised North Carolinians for their judgment.
'Accountability' for teachers (but not anyone else in education)
Here is a great story from a family friend on the pitfalls of so-called ''accountability' in schools... a notion that sounds glorious in the theory world of vacuous political sound bites but is pretty tricky in practice to implement in the real world of public education. Reprinted with permission...
My oft-repeated story of my first year of teaching (a million years ago) is about being called into the principal's office to explain why ALL of my elementary students scored below average on their achievement tests. I thought the principal was joking. You see, that year I had taught a special education class of students with IQs in the range of 50 to 75. My boss thought the kids should still be scoring in the average range. Talk about Lake Wobegon! And folks wonder why some teachers are worried about job evaluations being based on student test scores ...
Monday, May 07, 2012
Thieves and the thieving thieves who gouge us
I feel like even if I used no electricity at all, I’d still
owe National Greed at least $25.
My current bill...
Supply (actual usage): $17
“Delivery” (that includes ‘basic service,’ which is ‘not
including usage’, AND ‘delivery’... as two distinct categories): $44
Saturday, May 05, 2012
New York comptroller exposes IDA racket
Late last year, New York's attorney general concluded that regional economic development and industrial development (EDCs and IDAs) slush funds were rife with the potential for seal-dealing, nepotism, improper loans and exorbitant expenses.
These taxpayer-supported rackets do government business but have little oversight and are exempt from being audited by the state comptroller's office. To say nothing of the massive redundancies of similar overlapping agencies. I've opined many times that a sober and thorough cost-benefit analysis would show this.
So it's little surprise that the comptroller has recently concluded that IDAs are a huge waste of money. Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said more than 4,000 businesses received the tax breaks, but that IDAs realized 22,000 fewer jobs last year than the year before while using the economic development tool. "Taxpayers are not getting enough bang for their buck when it comes to IDAs,"DiNapoli said, according to the Associated Press.
The comptroller noted that the cost of the average IDA-secured job increased 9 percent from 2010 to 2011.
DiNapoli proposed a bill that would allow taxpayers to better analyze the effectiveness of IDAs and their tax breaks. His bill would require clearly described job goals when a tax break is provided, followed by an accounting when the tax break expires. If the jobs promised weren't created, local governments would have a "claw back" provision to extract the avoided taxes from the company.
DiNapoli's proposal would also require annual reports from IDAs and a report card on projects and their job success.
Update: The Innovation Trail public radio project has a great piece on the lack of transparency in IDAs and its consequences.
These taxpayer-supported rackets do government business but have little oversight and are exempt from being audited by the state comptroller's office. To say nothing of the massive redundancies of similar overlapping agencies. I've opined many times that a sober and thorough cost-benefit analysis would show this.
So it's little surprise that the comptroller has recently concluded that IDAs are a huge waste of money. Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said more than 4,000 businesses received the tax breaks, but that IDAs realized 22,000 fewer jobs last year than the year before while using the economic development tool. "Taxpayers are not getting enough bang for their buck when it comes to IDAs,"DiNapoli said, according to the Associated Press.
The comptroller noted that the cost of the average IDA-secured job increased 9 percent from 2010 to 2011.
DiNapoli proposed a bill that would allow taxpayers to better analyze the effectiveness of IDAs and their tax breaks. His bill would require clearly described job goals when a tax break is provided, followed by an accounting when the tax break expires. If the jobs promised weren't created, local governments would have a "claw back" provision to extract the avoided taxes from the company.
DiNapoli's proposal would also require annual reports from IDAs and a report card on projects and their job success.
Update: The Innovation Trail public radio project has a great piece on the lack of transparency in IDAs and its consequences.
Friday, May 04, 2012
Governor One Percent pretends to denounce his puppetmasters
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is jumping on the fake populist bandwagon by pretending to rail against so-called Super PACs -- even as the largest and most secretive one in the state, the ironically-named Committee to Save New York, is spending huge sums of money on his behalf. That Super PAC was given an 'F' by Common Cause New York for its complete lack of transparency; by contrast, none of the public sector unions so demonized by Cuomo received anything close such a failing grade.
Governor One Percent is obviously counting on liberals to pay more attention to pious words than actual deeds, which is usually a good bet. A bill before the state legislature would implement a degree of public financing of political campaigns. We'll see if the governor, so beholden to corporate campaign bribes (I mean, "donations"), will throw his considerable influence behind public financing or if his words on this are as hollow as his promises on mandate relief.
Thursday, May 03, 2012
Arrogant Post-Star launches outrageous campaign against privacy
The Post-Star engages in a lot of self-righteous crusades, perhaps as reflection of the paper's increasingly desperate attempts to stay relevant in the midst of a changing media landscape and self-cannibalization. One of the most prominent is related to teen drinking/binge drinking/drunk driving, which the paper dishonestly conflates as a single issue - a crusade so carefully demolished by Mark Wilson here and here.
More recently, the daily has taken the Lake George School District (LGSD) to task on a pair of controversies.
At a public hearing on the budget, LGSD asked for people who wanted to receive budget information *from the district* to sign up to an email newsletter. Those interested provided their email addresses (*to the district*).
But a critic of the school board inexplicably felt he was somehow entitled to those email addresses, so he could give these people his version of things. The Post-Star, even more inexplicably, backed his Freedom of Information request, under some demented notion of "transparency."
Apparently, private citizens who want to stay informed actually owe transparency to the presumptuous newspaper. Who knew?!
Eventually, a quasi-public, two-person body called the Committee on Open Government (COG) decreed that these private emails were in fact public information.
In a recent blog piece, the daily's pooh bah Ken Tingley again denounced LGSD superintendent Patrick Dee for "playing games." He agreed with the COG that decreeing the email addresses public information did not constitute "an unwanted invasion of privacy."
According to Tingley, the superintendent made the issue about privacy when it should be about transparency. There is no privacy risk here.
Dee should not have dithered or played games. Instead, he should've been direct. He should've said HELL NO. He should have said that the district will not give the paper the email addresses of private citizens. He should have told the paper that since the *private* emails weren't given to The Post-Star, IT'S NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS.
I believe in transparency for public officials and generally agree with most of the COG's decisions. But I also believe that private citizens should be able to maintain a level of privacy judged by their own discretion, not by an unaccountable newspaper or a mysterious two-person panel.
Mr. Tingley says there is no threat to privacy. He implied that the paper wants the private emails not for any actual newsworthy purpose, but just to set a precedent that they are public information.
He is dead wrong.
What the paper intends to do with the email is completely irrelevant. Once the precedent is set that private emails are public information, then anyone can get them via a Freedom of Information request and do whatever they want, including publishing them in print or online. Clearly, the activist in Lake George wants them so he can spam people with unwanted propaganda. How Tingley can say that this is not an invasion of privacy defies any sensible analysis.
I make no value judgment on the worthiness of the activist's campaign. If he wants to get people's private email addresses, he has every right to do what LGSD did: ask people for them so they can choose of their own free will who they want to share their private details with. Instead, he's choosing the lazy way of essentially trying to steal them.
Ironically, The Post-Star's crusade will deter participation more fully in civic bodies, the lack of which it often bemoans. Many people may want to stay informed on public issues, but may want not to do so at the cost of potentially broadcasting their email addresses to the world's spammers.
If I were Superitendent Dee, I would appeal this via the courts. Anything else is a violation of trust given to the district by the people who voluntarily submitted their email addresses under the expectation that it would be for internal use only.
If The Post-Star really wants more transparency, they should do a little digging on the opaque workings of Fred Monroe's taxpayer-funded Local Government Review Board... though since the Review Board and the newspaper share the same activist agenda, that kind of "transparency" is pretty unlikely.
More recently, the daily has taken the Lake George School District (LGSD) to task on a pair of controversies.
At a public hearing on the budget, LGSD asked for people who wanted to receive budget information *from the district* to sign up to an email newsletter. Those interested provided their email addresses (*to the district*).
But a critic of the school board inexplicably felt he was somehow entitled to those email addresses, so he could give these people his version of things. The Post-Star, even more inexplicably, backed his Freedom of Information request, under some demented notion of "transparency."
Apparently, private citizens who want to stay informed actually owe transparency to the presumptuous newspaper. Who knew?!
Eventually, a quasi-public, two-person body called the Committee on Open Government (COG) decreed that these private emails were in fact public information.
In a recent blog piece, the daily's pooh bah Ken Tingley again denounced LGSD superintendent Patrick Dee for "playing games." He agreed with the COG that decreeing the email addresses public information did not constitute "an unwanted invasion of privacy."
According to Tingley, the superintendent made the issue about privacy when it should be about transparency. There is no privacy risk here.
Dee should not have dithered or played games. Instead, he should've been direct. He should've said HELL NO. He should have said that the district will not give the paper the email addresses of private citizens. He should have told the paper that since the *private* emails weren't given to The Post-Star, IT'S NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS.
I believe in transparency for public officials and generally agree with most of the COG's decisions. But I also believe that private citizens should be able to maintain a level of privacy judged by their own discretion, not by an unaccountable newspaper or a mysterious two-person panel.
Mr. Tingley says there is no threat to privacy. He implied that the paper wants the private emails not for any actual newsworthy purpose, but just to set a precedent that they are public information.
He is dead wrong.
What the paper intends to do with the email is completely irrelevant. Once the precedent is set that private emails are public information, then anyone can get them via a Freedom of Information request and do whatever they want, including publishing them in print or online. Clearly, the activist in Lake George wants them so he can spam people with unwanted propaganda. How Tingley can say that this is not an invasion of privacy defies any sensible analysis.
I make no value judgment on the worthiness of the activist's campaign. If he wants to get people's private email addresses, he has every right to do what LGSD did: ask people for them so they can choose of their own free will who they want to share their private details with. Instead, he's choosing the lazy way of essentially trying to steal them.
Ironically, The Post-Star's crusade will deter participation more fully in civic bodies, the lack of which it often bemoans. Many people may want to stay informed on public issues, but may want not to do so at the cost of potentially broadcasting their email addresses to the world's spammers.
If I were Superitendent Dee, I would appeal this via the courts. Anything else is a violation of trust given to the district by the people who voluntarily submitted their email addresses under the expectation that it would be for internal use only.
If The Post-Star really wants more transparency, they should do a little digging on the opaque workings of Fred Monroe's taxpayer-funded Local Government Review Board... though since the Review Board and the newspaper share the same activist agenda, that kind of "transparency" is pretty unlikely.
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