Category Archives: Dinosaur Media Watch

Repeating Losing Tactics

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The RNC is meeting this week supposedly to address issues for the upcoming mid-term elections. Instead, they are talking about changes for the 2016 presidential election. Their idea? Move the party’s convention date forward, from September to June. Mitt just didn’t have enough time before the November election.

Once again, the ‘Pub establishment refuses to really examine the 2012 presidential loss. Romney didn’t lose because he didn’t have enough campaign time. He lost because he was a weak candidate, another wishy-washy ‘moderate’ with no real conservative roots. Romney and the ‘Pub establishment alienated the GOP core voters who, instead of following the party in lockstep, stayed home rather than vote for a candidate with no discernible values, platform nor agenda.

RNC LOOKS READY TO ROLL THE DICE ON 2016 PRIMARY PLAN

The Republican National Committee, meeting in Washington this week, is talking a lot about beefing up its ground game for midterm elections. What’s really driving the discussion among committee members, though, are proposed changes to the party’s presidential nominating process. Casting an eye back to the grueling primary process of 2012, committee member seem inclined to shorten the nomination process for 2016 – with a nominee and running mate emerging from a convention in June rather than September. Getting Republicans to coalesce around a frontrunner sooner would have likely helped 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, but the strategy holds its risks for the next cycle.
 
Advantage – Cutting down the calendar and the number of debates means less infighting and enables a nominee to preserve resources for a general-election fight. If the nomination has been locked up as early as March, that’s much more time for Republicans to turn their fire to the Democratic frontrunner.
 
Disadvantage – That’s a long time for a GOP nominee (and running mate) to sit on the shelf to be scrutinized by the press and Democrats. The status quo puts the ticket out on the trail for a six-week mad dash to Election Day. This would mean three months of microscope gazing. And while the goal is to make it harder for flash-in-the-pan candidates since a shorter process means a greater need for big money and national organization at the outset of the primary race, a rapid-fire primary could also work to the advantage of a surge candidate. Romney was able to weather multiple surges from the likes of Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. A well-timed burst in a quick process might have made either of them the GOP nominee last time. — FOXNewsletter, January 23, 2014.

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Matt Bevin, who is running against RINO Mitch McConnell in Kentucky’s primary for the US Senate, picked up another endorsement this week. Freedom Works announced yesterday they will be supporting Bevin against McConnell.

FreedomWorks backs McConnell challenger in Kentucky

Tea party group to spend heavily against GOP leader

By Kellan Howell, The Washington Times, Wednesday, January 22, 2014

U.S. Senate candidate Matt Bevin speaks at a meet and greet, Tuesday Jan. 14, 2014 in Henderson, Ky. The Louisville businessman is running against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky's GOP primary next May. (AP Photo/The Gleaner, Mike Lawrence)

U.S. Senate candidate Matt Bevin speaks at a meet and greet, Tuesday Jan. 14, 2014 in Henderson, Ky. The Louisville businessman is running against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky’s GOP primary next May.

Conservative superPac FreedomWorks has endorsed the primary challenger to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the upcoming Republican primary in Kentucky.

The Louisville Courtier Journal reported that tea party group would spend as much as $500,000 helping businessman and political newcomer Matt Bevin against Mr. McConnell in the Republican primary in May.

FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe told the newspaper that the group will help organize grassroots opposition to Mr. McConnell, who Mr. Kibbe said has been in Washington for too long.

“For far too long Mitch McConnell has sat on the sidelines of pivotal fights, helping the Democrats pass unprecedented surveillance powers, the TARP/Wall Street bailout, numerous tax hikes and debt-ceiling increases, and Medicare Part D. Most recently, he orchestrated the McConnell-Reid sellout bargain to increase the debt limit and fully fund a broken health care law, getting a $1.2 billion “special project kickback” in the process,” Mr. Kibbe said. 

He added, “Kentucky deserves better, and looking at the dropping poll numbers for McConnell, there’s no reason to settle.”

In response, the McConnell campaign said FreedomWorks has lost its way.

“FreedomWorks was a constructive partner in the conservative movement and had been supportive of Senator McConnell’s efforts to stop Obamacare and protect the First Amendment when many organizations were afraid to speak out, but internal problems unfortunately have changed their focus from conservative reform to conservative cannibalism in order to pay the bills,” McConnell spokeswoman Allison Moore said in a statement.

Freedom works has changed to “conservative cannibalism in order to pay the bills,” according to McConnell’s campaign. They must be scared and that couldn’t happen to be better RINO. McConnell must go!

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Remember the electric car fad? Yeah, the one that was supposed to cure all the ills of the internal combustion engine. ‘Course the proponents forgot all about that one important detail…generating electrical power, to recharge those electric cars, burns coal. Now there’s another issue that has appeared. Another scarce resource has arisen—charging stations!

Charge rage’: Too many electric cars, not enough workplace chargers

By Dana Hull, dhull@mercurynews.com

Eager to reduce energy use, German software company SAP installed 16 electric vehicle charging ports in 2010 at its Palo Alto campus for the handful of employees who owned electric vehicles.

Just three years later, SAP faces a problem that is increasingly common at Silicon Valley companies — far more electric cars than chargers. Sixty-one of the roughly 1,800 employees on the campus now drive a plug-in vehicle, overwhelming the 16 available chargers. And as demand for chargers exceeds supply, a host of thorny etiquette issues have arisen, along with some rare but notorious incidents of “charge rage.”

“In the beginning, all of our EV drivers knew each other, we had enough infrastructure, and everyone was happy. That didn’t last for long,” said Peter Graf, SAP’s chief sustainability officer and the driver of a Nissan Leaf. “Cars are getting unplugged while they are actively charging, and that’s a problem. Employees are calling and messaging each other, saying, ‘I see you’re fully charged, can you please move your car?'”

SAP is now drafting charging guidelines for its EV-driving employees.

You can read the entire report here. Another ‘unintended consequence’ of the greenies.

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In closing today, I’ll label this report as another entry in the Dinosaur Media Deathwatch—CNN lays off 40 ‘journalists.’

CNN lays off more than 40 journalists

By Matthew Garrahan in Los Angeles

CNN has laid off more than 40 senior journalists in its newsgathering operation – including a pregnant producer who was two weeks away from giving birth to twins – as part of a reorganisation of the business under Jeff Zucker.

The cutting of production and editorial staff at the Time Warner-owned group comes as Mr Zucker tries to re-establish CNN as the dominant force in 24 hour cable news, a crown it lost several years ago to Fox News Channel.

The lay-offs at CNN and HLN, its sister network, were concentrated in Washington, Atlanta and Los Angeles at the end of 2013. CNN declined to comment on the laying off the pregnant news producer, who worked for the company for more than a decade, saying it could not comment on individual employees.

The lay-offs at CNN and HLN, its sister network, were concentrated in Washington, Atlanta and Los Angeles at the end of 2013. CNN declined to comment on the laying off the pregnant news producer, who worked for the company for more than a decade, saying it could not comment on individual employees.

The lay-offs coincide with changes to the network’s programming. Mr Zucker has hired new presenters and diversified CNN’s output, adding documentary and reality series to its traditional live news coverage.

Zucker thought adding documentaries and reality shows would boost CNN’s ratings against FOX. Evidently, the thought of reporting unbiased news never occurred to him.

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Dinosaur Media Watch

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Over the last few years I’ve posted numerous times about the death of media dinosaurs—here, here, and here. The Boston Globe is one such. It was up for sale some years ago and there were no takers. It’s owned by the parent company of the New York Times who is also on shaky ground. The NYT is putting the Boston Globe up for sale, again.

New York Times puts Boston Globe up for sale again

By Jennifer Saba, NEW YORK | Wed Feb 20, 2013 6:06pm EST

(Reuters) – The New York Times Co is putting The Boston Globe on the auction block for a second time as it seeks to focuses solely on growing its flagship newspaper.

The company said in a statement that it had hired Evercore Partners to advise on the sale, which also includes the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

The sale is expected to come at a big loss. Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell Research, estimated that the Globe could fetch about $150 million. The New York Times paid $1.1 billion for the newspaper in 1993.

The New York Times is putting all its effort into being a global information source and “the Globe is a distraction,” Doctor said.

Morningstar analyst Joscelyn MacKay said in recent years revenue at the Boston Globe had declined much more than at the New York Times.

…

The New York Times first put the paper up for sale in 2009 as it struggled with losses. But it halted the sale process and decided to hang onto the paper after winning concessions from Globe’s unions and implementing cost cuts.

Most print media organizations in the US, and in Europe,  have umbilical cord ties to unions. The unions block modernization that would reduce production expense while demanding higher wages and benefits. The unions have been sucking the economic blood from their partners until, one by one, major metro newspapers are dying.

Given the fact that newspapers have devolved into liberal propaganda tools, their passing is a good thing. The internet—and bloggers, are replacing them. And that, too, is a good thing.

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Illinois tyrants are trying to kill free speech in the state. Illinois state Senator Ira Silverstein wants to prohibit the use of “anonymous” comments on websites. Now on one hand, I can sympathize. Ninety percent or more anonymous postings are spam of one form or another. Another six or seven percent are vitriol by opponents of the post or of the author and use “anonymous” to hide their identities. I’ve had a few of those on my website as well. The remaining percentages are those who don’t have an internet identity they wish to publicize.

It is the last two catagories above that involve free speech.  As much as I hate the rants spewed by liberals directed to my site by the Democrat Underground or the Daily Koz, they do have a right to say their message—just as I, as a website owner, have to right to remove their posts when they exceed the bounds of propriety.

Silverstein wants the state to enforce those prohibitions. Why? The site owner may approve of the statements and if/when those same statements offend Silverstein or his liberal buds, he has no recourse to force the removal of those statements.

His bill would grant him that authority regardless whether the website owners agree or disagree with Silverstein’s demands. It’s nothing more than another liberal attempt to stifle free speech.

Illinois state senator pushes anti-anonymity bill

3:42 AM 02/21/2013

A recently introduced bill in the Illinois state Senate would require anonymous website comment posters to reveal their identities if they want to keep their comments online.

The bill, called the Internet Posting Removal Act, is sponsored by Illinois state Sen. Ira Silverstein. It states that a “web site administrator upon request shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate.”

The bill, which does not ask for or clarify requirements from entities requesting the comment removal, would take effect 90 days after becoming law.

Pseudonymous and anonymous comments have long been a critical part of U.S. public discourse, though, and the bill may be on shaky legal ground.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) noted on its website that the “right to anonymous speech is also protected well beyond the printed page.”

“Thus in 2002 the Supreme Court struck down a law requiring proselytizers to register their true names with the mayor’s office before going door-to-door,” wrote EFF, noting that the Supreme Court protects Internet commentary as it does pamphleteering.

The bill is part of a larger trend of lawmakers seeking to censor anonymous online speech.

Of course we must realize this is Illinois.  New York tried to pass a similar bill last year by establishment ‘Pubs. They failed.

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This last item needs no added comments. It speaks for itself. New Yorkers, the British are coming. Where is your militia?

Report: Prosecutors to pursue felony charges against ex-soldier for possessing high-capacity magazine

New York prosecutors will pursue felony criminal charges against retired special forces soldier Nathan Haddad, who was arrested in LeRay, New York in January for allegedly possessing five 30-round AR-15 magazines, according to conservative law blog Legal Insurrection.

Prosecutors had reportedly offered Haddad a plea bargain that would spare him jail time if he admitted to five misdemeanors, according to Legal Insurrection. But Haddad’s attorney told the blog that Haddad, who currently works at the Department of Defense, will not accept the deal.

It is unclear how Haddad was arrested or discovered with the magazines.

Haddad was deployed four times during his ten-year Army career, and was once injured during special forces training in South Korea. He was discharged in October 2010.

A website established to pay Haddad’s legal expenses has collected more than $35,000.

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Take that!

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If there are two politicians that I have less use for than John McCain and Ron Paul, I can’t think of them at the moment.  Well, OK, Lindsey Graham is close. John McCain and Ron Paul finally said something that I can “like.”

John McCain was speaking to some reporters about the Benghazi investigation when a reporter attempted to divert the conversation to Patreaus’ resignation. McCain, as he has before on occasion, let his temper flare.

John McCain To Reporter: ‘That’s One Of The Dumbest Questions I’ve Ever Heard’ (VIDEO)

Posted: 11/14/2012 1:21 pm EST Updated: 11/15/2012 1:55 am EST

Wednesday seems to be a testy day for press conferences.

John McCain smacked down a reporter following his remarks on the Benghazi investigation.

In response to a question about whether classified documents found leaked in the Gen. Petraeus scandal posed a greater national security threat than the Benghazi attack, McCain quickly responded, “Well I say with great respect, that’s one of the dumbest questions I’ve ever heard.”

He continued, “There’s 4 dead Americans. There’s 4 dead Americans. Not a socialite.” The reporter attempted to interrupt but McCain quickly stopped him. “I’m answering your question. Ok, do you want me to answer your question or do you want to interrupt? Which do you want?”

After a short pause he continued, “There’s 4 dead Americans. The lives of other Americans were put in jeopardy. This is a matter of 4 dead Americans. I think that the other issue raised is very serious and I think it deserves a thorough and complete investigation. But it does not rise to the level of an attack on an American consulate that took four American lives.”

 The reporter failed in his attempt to divert attention to Obama’s failures and mismanagement of the Benghazi attack. McCain rightly slapped him down.

The second occurance was during Ron Paul’s farewell speech to the US House…a speech long overdue. Be that as it may, Ron Paul finally said something that agrees with my views—the coming extinction of the MSM.

Ron Paul: Internet is the alternative to ‘government media complex’ that controls the news

November 14, 2012 | 3:33 pm

During part one of his farewell speech to Congress, Rep. Ron Paul insisted that the internet remain free, as it is an important alternative to the “government media complex.”

“The internet will provide the alternative to the government media complex that controls the news and most political propaganda,” Paul stated. “This is why it’s essential that the Internet remains free of government regulation.”

The media is not our friend. At best it is a some-what useful tool to be understood and used when appropriate. Unfortunately, the MSM does have a captured audience who are oblivious of alternate news and information outlets. If we are to be able to present our views and arguments over the MSM propaganda outlet, we must find a means to infiltrate into those areas of the internet where that “captured” MSM audience can be found…Facebook, YouTube, twitter and other social sites. The trick is to find a method when you cannot force your audience to join you or read your posts. We need a means to attract that audience to us.

Frankly, I don’t know how to do that. But if we are to reclaim our government, end the runaway spending and taxation, we’ll have to find a means to attract more of the nation’s population to us and to join us. Waiting for the collapse of the economy and government is NOT a viable plan.

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Another print MSM outlet heading towards extinction

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Two items caught my eye this morning. First, Newsweek announced they are going all digital, a new digital newsletter called Newsweek Global. Newsweek is throwing in the towel and is being absorbed into The Daily Beast—a liberal internet outlet. The last print edition of Newsweek will be the December 31, 2012, issue.

Newsweek Global, as the all-digital publication will be named, will be a single, worldwide edition targeted for a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context. Newsweek Global will be supported by paid subscription and will be available through e-readers for both tablet and the Web, with select content available on The Daily Beast. — The Daily Beast.

When I was in college living in a dorm, we were provided with discount subscriptions to a number of news magazines from Time, U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and others at about 1/3rd of the usual rate. I subscribed to Time for several years. At that time, in the mid-1960s, network news on the TV was only 15 minutes in the evening, usually from 6:00pm to 6:15pm. The news expanded to a half-hour a few years later as the Vietnam war grew. Most of our national, political and world news came from those magazines.

Even at that time, we could see the political bias. Time Magazine was more conservative, the others more “liberal.” Over the years, Time became just another liberal media outlet.

I’ve called the print media, the dinosaur media for a number of reasons. First, they’ve failed to adapt to changing technology. Second, they’ve failed to adapt to the changing political environment—rather they acquired the idea they are the leaders of social and political evolution. Unfortunately for them, evolution takes its own path regardless of the intentions of the MSM.

The MSM has refused to acknowledge that their failure is not solely due to technology. Their failure is their refusal to acknowledge the changing political and social environment. The current generation is NOT that of the ’60s. The current generation is the child and the grandchild of the ’60s and they’ve seen, personally, all the failings of the ’60s generation—including their slavish devotion to Marxism and Socialism.  It is easy for the child to see the failures of the parent.

This new transition by Newsweek to an all-digital mode will end in failure as well. It retains the subscription model and will retain its leftist bias…two of the failings that killed the print version. Failure to learn and adapt is a powerful contributor to evolutionary extinction. It’s the content and management, not solely the media, that is leading Newsweek to join other print news outlets that have closed over the last decade.

The second example is from the UK. The Guardian and the Observer newspapers are about to abandon their print media outlets as well.

Guardian ‘seriously discussing’ end to print edition

The publisher of the Guardian and Observer newspapers is close to axing the print editions of the newspapers, despite the hopes of its editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger to keep them running for several years.

The Guardian and Observer publisher has spent the last few years battling to stem losses of £44m a year. However, it has been slow to make savings and any money that it has clawed back has been spent on expanding its US and online operations.

The drivers toward the extinction of the print paper in the UK includes those of the US media with some additions.  The unions and Britain’s welfare state has sucked the profits from the papers.  The move towards a digital-only media is an attempt to shed significant portions of the paper’s expensive union workforce. Whether that move will be sufficient is unknown at this time. The unions are more powerful in the UK than in the US and in many areas practically own the government.

The idea of content subscription for information is evolving. Some, like Rush Limbaugh’s newsletter, are successful because of their unique content. Limbaugh announced recently that his newsletter will be available digitally at a reduced price. I’m unsure if there will be reduced content. We will know when we compare the printed version next to the digital version.  I would suspect they will be the same. The difference in price will be due to the cost difference between the printed version and the digital version.

However, for most information, people do not need subscription to acquire information. Limbaugh and others like him, survive due to their unique content that is unavailable elsewhere. For the MSM, it’s different. For every subscription MSM news-outlet, there are ten or more free news-outlets with the same information.

I expect within a few years, Newsweek will join the other dinosaur media—like the Rocky Mountain News, et. al., into extinction.

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Dinosaur Media, Revisited

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I have, from time to time, mentioned the Dinosaur Media. Usually in the context of another newspaper biting the dust—a paper unable or unwilling to enter the 21st Century and to leave their liberal bias behind.

That trend does not apply to the print media alone. It also applies to the broadcast media. They have not made the transition to cable nor the web successfully. I need only to cite MSNBC as an example. It’s interesting that Microsoft has withdrawn from the operation of MSNBC. In coming months Microsoft will slink away from that cesspool completely.

It is not MSNBC that is in the news today. It’s CNN. The Washington Examiner reports on the shrinkage of CNN.

CNN, newspapers hammered as Americans turn to mobile news

September 28, 2012 | 11:10 am

Americans are fast turning to mobile devices to get their news, resulting in stunning viewership declines for CNN and existence-threatening readership drops for newspapers, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The winners: social network sites, online news and websites like the Drudge Report and Yahoo.

…

CNN is not the only one hurting: Newspaper readership has dropped in half since 2000, with only 23 percent of those polled saying they read a paper. Magazine readership, meanwhile, has dropped to 18 percent, and those getting their news from TV is down to 55 percent, a troubling trend.

…

As Americans turn away from traditional news platforms, they are embracing mobile delivery, either through cellular phones, computers or wireless tablets, said Pew. And that has naturally given the advantage to social websites like Facebook, traditional news outlets with established websites or web-only sites like Drudge and Yahoo. Pew, for example, included Drudge in their list of the top 18 news websites, reporting that 2 percent of those surveyed get their news most often, the same percentage as the websites for the Washington Post, USA Today and ESPN.

The article continues at the website.

Instead of being dispassionate observers and reporting the news without bias, the media has, for the most part, become nothing more than the propaganda arm of the democrat party and transnational liberals. The article by DOUGLAS MACKINNON appeared in today’s Investor’s Business Daily.

Mainstream Media: Public Enemy No. 1

By DOUGLAS MACKINNON, Posted 09/27/2012 04:43 PM ET

Mitt Romney can still win this election, but first he has to confront the largest single domestic threat to our liberty, our values, and our national and economic security — the mainstream media.

Most mainstream “journalists” unethically supported then-Sen. Obama in 2008, and most have doubled-down on that bet in 2012. And that biased and corrupt support may be the least of their professional sins.

The nation and world face an epic crisis made more dangerous by the proliferation of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and twisted minds who’d think nothing of using them to advance their cause or “theology.”

Yet, our mainstream media deliberately choose to ignore these exponentially growing threats while working in concert with the Obama campaign to ensure the president’s re-election.

Much worse, some in the media are themselves betraying national security secrets in an effort to make Obama look more “presidential” or harm the conservative narrative.

Beyond their leaking of highly classified information, the media are a real threat to security because they flat-out know:

• Public employee unions have decimated the finances of an expanding number of cities, counties and states.

• Poverty is rising, unemployment is accelerating, median household incomes have fallen and Obama has created a debt poison-pill that will cripple our economic future.

• Teacher unions are destroying the futures of poor and at-risk children, but the media look the other way to protect one of the largest special interests of the Democrat Party.

• Obama has no foreign policy, and his ineptitude, along with that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was exposed with the planned terrorist killings of U.S. diplomats in Libya — murders the president dismissed as “bumps in the road.”

Yet the media choose to attack Romney for rightfully calling on the president and Clinton to stop their campaign of appeasement and apology.

• “Green” initiatives such as Solyndra are paybacks to major donors, outright frauds or alternative energy “solutions” with one real purpose: to give liberals false talking-points while sucking hundreds of billions more out of taxpayers’ bank accounts.

The list goes on, but suffice it to say a case can be made that the mainstream media represent a clear and present danger to our well-being.

They also represent a clear and present danger to Gov. Romney’s chances for election.

Even in the age of the Internet, blogs, cable shows and alternative news, I maintain that upwards of 80% of Americans still get 80% of their “news” from the left-leaning mainstream media.

The bias isn’t limited to large metro papers. It continues in local and county wide papers as well.  Our local county weekly, the Democrat-Missourian, is owned by The McClatchy Company, the same company that owns the Kansas City Star. In fact if you subscribe to our county paper, you get the Star’s Sunday edition free. If you look at that paper’s website, you’ll see that it is woefully out of date. Under the “News” tab, the most recent article is dated August 24, 2012. I suppose they’re embarrassed to show their bias on the web, leaving that to their print edition.

We, as subscribers, can work against the liberal bias in our local papers. How? By writing Letters-to-the-Editor. Do your homework, check your grammar and spelling, have someone proof-read your draft and get your facts straight. If your local paper won’t provide fair and unbiased reporting of issues, do so yourself. I had a letter published last week and I submitted another this week. If you are unhappy with the presentation of issues in your paper, tell them and provide your view on the subject.

Who knows? Maybe even a dinosaur can learn when it’s faced with survival…or extinction.

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A Review of KC Star articles

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Survived the weekend.

That used to be a joke.  But…as we get older it becomes prophetic perhaps. I had a PT session Friday afternoon. On the way home I stopped at our park and walked a bit.  It was cloudy and threatening rain. The rain just threatened and fortunately, never appeared.  By the time I got home, I was whupped.

Saturday and Sunday was reserved for graduation parties. On Saturday, one of our church boys, man rather, graduated from Pitt State with an Education degree. Sunday was the graduation party for our church’s high school grads. We had two, a boy and a girl. They graduated from two different schools. They have known each other a long time and we expect a wedding at some time in the future.  They are a part of our church family and we’re all close-knit. These two, as a couple, have had some really stressful problems to overcome; they have done so successfully beyond most of our expectations.  Both will be heading off to college next fall and we wish them well.

The parties, the scurrying around, Mother’s Day prep, what a weekend.  I’m glad it’s over.

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The rezident political commissar at the KC Star must have been out of town this last week.  The Star actually performed a Random Act of Journalism. Not only did the paper commit an act of journalism, it was about a union—a big liberal contributing union complete with three families of nepotists living grandly off the union membership while those members are losing jobs and the union rolls are dropping. Usually, the Star is nothing more than a liberal propaganda organ. This time they actually reported something important.

Boilermakers union leaders receive lofty pay, benefits

By JUDY L. THOMAS, The Kansas City Star

A prime suite at Kansas Speedway. First-class travel. Six-figure salaries for half the staffers. Plenty of plum jobs for family members.

Life is good at the top of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers.

The union, with its headquarters in Kansas City, Kan., represents about 59,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada who make and repair boilers, fit pipes and work on ships and power plants. The recession has hit their trade hard, reducing union membership.

At the same time, the president’s salary has surged 67 percent in the past six years, not counting a recent raise. Add in travel and some other expenses, and Newton B. Jones totaled more than $600,000 last year, putting him at the absolute top of the presidents of the dozen biggest unions in the country.

The Boilermakers value families — of officers, certainly. Many relatives ride the payroll.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/05/12/3608026/united-in-largesse-boilermakers.html#storylink=cpy

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If you scan that same webpage of the KC Star you may see this headline. There’s no accompanying text to explain it, just a video. The only viewpoint you get, the only explanation of the article is the contents of the video. The video is  anti-Romney propaganda. The Commissar had his finger in this one. Oh, and that website, Midwestdemocracy.com? That’s the KC Star’s writers blog.

Obama uses KC steel plant in ad targeting Romney — but ad won’t run in KC

The ad mentioned in the title is a closed steel plant in eastern KC.  The primary product was steel wire in various forms.  There is no text in the story, just a video of the ad.  The reason it’s not being shown in KC is that we locals know the real reason the plant closed: unions, strikes, the refusal of the union to allow upgrades in the plant equipment (would cost some jobs donchaknow?), increasing operating costs due to the union wage scale and out-of-date equipment—equipment that was failing at an increasing rate due to lack of parts—many which had to be made on site. I serviced computers at that plant. I visited it regularly. I saw first hand the problems operating that plant.  It’s closing was NOT the fault of Bain Capital. It closed due to the direct acts of the steel workers union.

The ad was created for Obama’s re-election campaign to blame the closing on Romney. It won’t be shown in KC. We know it’s a lie from beginning to end. The union killed the steel plant, not Romney. Businesses can not be operated at a loss and that’s what happened to that steel plant.

You didn’t see those counter-arguments on the blog site, though. The video was presented complete and without explanation, as fact. That was an endorsement by the Kansas City Star.

They think we’re stupid.

They’re wrong.

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This report from the KC Star caught my eye.  On the surface it appears to be about unequal application of the law.  Some years ago the Missouri Legislature passed a law governing the treatment, sentencing and post-incarceration activities of sex-offenders. A reader asked why these laws weren’t being applied to some individuals.

Christine Vendel | Missouri laws are in a time machine

By CHRISTINE VENDEL, The Kansas City Star

A Cass County resident recently wrote me to ask why a particular sex offender didn’t have to comply with the same laws that other sex offenders do.

I think the resident posed it as a rhetorical question, to point out that this guy was getting away with breaking laws.

But the fact is the offender doesn’t have to comply with the same laws as other offenders.

The reason lies in an unusual provision in the Missouri Constitution that forbids retrospective application of civil laws. Missouri is one of five states to contain such a provision.

So although Missouri passed a “buffer zone” law forbidding certain sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools or day cares, it only applies to offenders whose crimes occurred after June 5, 2006, when the law was last altered.

…

For example, the Cass County resident wondered why the sex offender could work at a business that employs teenagers. He also allegedly lives near a youth sports area.

His probation contained 10 restrictions, including that he have no contact with minors and avoid places that entertain or cater to children, like zoos and libraries. But he completed probation years ago and those restrictions no longer apply.

Legislators have tried at least three times since 2008 to allow citizens to vote to change the constitution, to allow the laws regarding sex offenders to be applied retrospectively. The most recent effort died last week when it failed to pass the House Judiciary Committee.

But experts say a constitutional amendment may not legally permit laws already on the books to be used retrospectively because the right has already been vested. Laws passed in the future, however, could benefit from the change.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/05/10/3605120/christine-vendel-missouri-laws.html#storylink=cpy

There’s a provision in the U. S. Constitution prohibiting Ex Post Facto laws, law created “after the fact.” That is what is at issue here.  As despicable as is the crime, our Constitution prohibits applying law retroactively.  There is a very real reason why we don’t want Ex Post Facto law. For instance, would all you libs care to have a law that any journalist who committed plagiarism be imprisoned? Anything you wrote all the way back to the first grand in elementary school?

No, I didn’t think so.  The principle is the same regardless of the offense.

Mz Vendel thinks we should ignore that provision of the Constitution.  She acknowledges it is a hindrance but she thinks legislation can change this constitutional prohibition.  (Where have we heard this before? Oh, yes, from Obama’s defense before the US Supreme Court on Obamacare.) Mz Venel appears to believe the same.

The Star’s Rezident Commissar must have returned when Mz Vendel submitted her story. It’s approach certainly is different from the one about the Boilermaker’s Union.

***

I had a momentary hope when I read the Boilermakers Union report that the KC Star had actually returned to its social function. Root out the news, report the news factually, and present the news in a fair and factual manner.  Silly of me, wasn’t it?

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Dinosaur Media Watch: Circulation down 5%

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For the State Media, there just isn’t any good news. They somehow have the belief they can continue to publish their biased propaganda as news and the people will buy it.

Wrong!

The circulation numbers have been released and as you look down the list, only the Wall Street Journal had an increase in circulation. Perhaps due to its conservative editorial board, hmmmm?

US newspaper circulation down, decline rate slows

By ANDREW VANACORE, AP Business Writer Andrew Vanacore, Ap Business Writer

NEW YORK – U.S. newspaper circulation fell over the past six months at the slowest rate in two years.
Figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that while circulation is no longer in free fall, spending on newspapers is not picking up the way it has for many other consumer goods coming out of the Great Recession.
Several trends factor in the decline. Free news on the Web is a big reason. Publishers also have been looking to offset reductions in advertising revenue by raising newsstand and subscription prices, losing some paying customers in the process. And some newspapers have reduced delivery to less profitable areas, figuring the cost of trucking newspapers far afield doesn’t pay off in extra advertising dollars.
According to the audit bureau, average daily circulation fell 5 percent in the six months that ended Sept. 30, compared with the same period a year earlier. That’s better than the 8.7 percent drop seen in the previous reporting period, which ran from October 2009 to March. The last time the reduction rate was lower was in the April-September period of 2008, when circulation fell 4.6 percent.
Sunday circulation fell 4.5 percent in the April-September period, also smaller than the 6.5 percent drop in the six months before that.
The comparisons are based on 635 weekday newspapers and 553 Sunday newspapers that had comparable data for the recent six months and the same period a year ago.

There’s more at the site.

Below is the list of papers, their circulation and the amount of increase/decrease of subscriptions.

Total Paid Circulation
State Newspaper Name Frequency As of 9/30/10 As of 9/30/09 % Change
NY WALL STREET JOURNAL AVG M (M-F) 2,061,142 2,024,269 1.82%
DC USA TODAY AVG M (M-F) 1,830,594 1,900,116 -3.66%
NY NEW YORK TIMES AVG M (M-F) 876,638 927,851 -5.52%
CA LOS ANGELES TIMES AVG M (M-F) 600,449 657,467 -8.67%
DC WASHINGTON POST AVG M (M-F) 545,345 582,844 -6.43%
NY NEW YORK DAILY NEWS AVG M (M-F) 512,520 544,167 -5.82%
NY NEW YORK POST AVG M (M-F) 501,501 508,042 -1.29%
CA SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS AVG M (M-F) 477,592 N/A N/A
IL CHICAGO TRIBUNE AVG M (M-F) 441,508 465,892 -5.23%
TX HOUSTON CHRONICLE AVG M (M-F) 343,952 384,437 -10.53%
PA PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER AVG M (M-F) 342,361 361,481 -5.29%
NY NEWSDAY AVG M (M-F) 314,848 357,124 -11.84%
CO DENVER POST AVG M (M-F) 309,863 340,949 -9.12%
AZ ARIZONA REPUBLIC AVG M (M-F) 308,973 316,873 -2.49%
MN MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE AVG M (M-F) 297,478 304,544 -2.32%
TX DALLAS MORNING NEWS AVG M (M-F) 264,459 263,810 0.25%
OH CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER AVG M (M-F) 252,608 271,182 -6.85%
WA SEATTLE TIMES AVG M (M-F) 251,697 263,588 -4.51%
IL CHICAGO SUN-TIMES AVG M (M-F) 250,747 275,641 -9.03%
MI DETROIT FREE PRESS (e) AVG M (M-F) 245,326 269,729 -9.05%
FL ST. PETERSBURG TIMES AVG M (M-F) 239,684 240,146 -0.19%
OR OREGONIAN AVG AD (M-F) 239,071 249,164 -4.05%
CA SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE AVG M (M-F) 224,761 242,693 -7.39%
CA SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AVG M (M-F) 223,549 251,782 -11.21%
NJ NEWARK STAR-LEDGER AVG M (M-F) 223,037 246,006 -9.34%

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