Category Archives: Media

“Winning for Education” Makes Losers of Teachers, Veterans

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If you are a teacher, know a teacher, and/or are part of a teacher’s organization, you need to read what we are going to tell you about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2, which is deceptive and hardly moves the financial needle for teacher’s salaries.

If you are a veteran, know a veteran, and/or are part of a veterans group, you need to read what we are going to tell you on Wednesday about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2. It makes veterans even bigger losers than they have been.

Today we’re going to talk about the casino industry’s manipulation of voters with its campaign that will not deliver, by far, the great benefits to public education system the casino industry wants voters to think it will.

We are going to throw a lot of numbers your way today. The numbers are based on the casino industry’s own statistics as reported annually to the Missouri Gaming Commission and a couple of other sources.

They again suggest the casino industry is not shooting straight with us. But that’s not unusual.

We do not mind if you favor sports wagering.  But if you vote for it on the basis of the advertising by “Winning for Education,” the front organization for the casinos and their sports team bedmates, you need to know what you are doing TO our teachers, not for our teachers.

First: some basic information.  Missouri’s thirteen casinos generate revenue for state programs and services from two sources: a 21% tax on casino adjusted gross revenues (what’s left after all successful bettors are paid off) and admission fees ($2 per admission; we won’t distract you with the process of determining admissions; that’s for our next post about making veterans bigger losers than they have been for more than a decade).

Missouri had 521 school districts in fiscal year 2023. We will use that number in our calculations. It had 88,669 classroom teachers and 18,097 administrators and supervisors (including people such as guidance counselors, school nurses, and librarians), in 2,355 buildings.  The enrollment for the 2022-23 school year was 861,494.

The legislature approved a budget for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education of $10,394,092,704 for the 2022-23 fiscal year.

Gaming consultant Chris Krafcik estimates total state revenue from the 10% tax on sports wagering will produce $4.7 million in the first year and $38.7 million in the fifth year of sports betting.

If we divide those figures by 521, the number of school districts, we find that sports wagering will produce an average of only $9,021 per district in the first year.  In year five, the number rises to $74,280 per district.

If we divide those numbers by 88,669 (the number of classroom teachers listed above) we find the average teacher could get a raise of $53.00 in the first year and a raise of $436 in the fifth year. Not even close to keep up with the cost of living.

If we spread those amounts among teachers AND administrators, all 106,756 of them, the average wage increase in the first year is $44 and in year five, it is $369.

That’s less than a tank of gas in the first year and not many groceries in the fifth one.

If, after looking at these numbers, that you still believe the industry commercials saying sports wagering will make any significant difference in the Missouri teacher salaries, I will sell you the Gateway Arch. The attractive teachers in the commercials who talk of sports wagering generating more than $100 million dollars in five years are blowing smoke.  While the statement might be true in terms of raising that amount of money, the suggestion that it will produce anything meaningful for teachers is cattle byproduct.

Let’s assume the elementary and secondary education budget does not increase in the next five years.  Simple division indicates $38.7 million for education in the fifth year of sports wagering would add .00037% to that budget.  Four ten-thousandths of one percent, to round things up.

It’s even worse. These numbers only involve elementary and secondary education.  The proposed amendment says funds will go to higher education, too.

Missouri has SIXTY-SEVEN institutions that are accredited as degree-granting post-secondary education institutions. There are thirteen public universities.  There are 39 private universities (which are not excluded. The language of the amendment says only “higher education.”), and thirteen community colleges.  There also are some schools from other states that offer programs or degrees in Missouri.  The amendment contains no language limiting the funding to public post-secondary schools, not does it address in any way those out-of=state institutions with degree programs here.

We haven’t come up with how many faculty, staff, and administrative employees those higher education institutions would add to the pie.

But the school won’t get all of that money to begin with, assuming there is money from casino taxes.

Money for education will not be used for education until amounts are taken out for:

—Regulation.   The Missouri Gaming Commission can have some of that money if the various licensing fees casinos will pay do not fully pay the costs of regulation, and

—“the greater of 10% of such annual tax revenues or $5,000,000 to the Compulsive Gamblers Fund.”

Those paltry raises we’ve calculated for our elementary and secondary school folks might wind up being measured in pennies, or pocket change.

If, after looking at these numbers, that you still believe the industry commercials saying sports wagering will make any significant difference in the Missouri teacher salaries, I will sell you the Gateway Arch. The attractive teachers in the commercials who talk of sports wagering generating more than $100 million dollars in five years are blowing smoke.  While the statement might be true in terms of raising that amount of money, the suggestion that it will produce anything meaningful for teachers is cattle byproduct.

Let’s assume the elementary and secondary education budget does not increase in the next five years.  Simple division indicates $38.7 million for education in the fifth year of sports wagering would add .00037% to that budget.  Four ten-thousandths of one percent, to round things up.

And that doesn’t even calculate how much MORE education would get if sports wagering would be taxed at the same rate as other forms of Missouri gambling, 21%.  But Amendment 2 sets a rate at less than half of that and then has provisions that can significantly lower taxable revenue or even make it a deficit, meaning there will be some months when the casinos put NO money into the education fund.

The amendment also allows casinos to carry over the loss to the next month’s calculations, lowering tax revenue for that month too—or increasing the possibility that a casino can calculate another zero-revenue/zero tax month.

In the 2023 legislative session, a Senate bill proposed boosting the minimum teacher’s salary from $25,000 to $38,000 and increasing the salary for a teacher with a master’s degree and at least ten years of experience from $33,000 to $46,000.  The bill never came to a vote because of internal dissension within the Senate, thanks to the Freedom Caucus.

The National Education Association  April 24, 2023 released a report showing Missouri ranks 50th in starting teacher pay with an average of $34,502 with only 43 districts paying started new teachers $40,000 or more. The report calculated a minimum living wage was $46,944.

A World Population Review study of 2024 salaries lists Missouri as one of seven states starting teachers at less than  $50,000 with only Montana paying less.  The overall Missouri average teacher salary in this study is $53,999, ranking Missouri 46th ahead of Mississippi, South Dakota, Florida, and West Virginia.

Yeah, sports wagering will solve a lot of problems with our teacher salaries and other education system problems.. Suuuure it will.

Don’t bet on sports wagering because it will do wonderful things for our schools. It won’t.  Amendment 2 just makes the drop in the bucket even smaller, thanks to the sweetheart tax rate and the deductions that now will allow a reduction of taxable revenue.

We aren’t sure why any dubious proposition that appears on our ballots thinks it can succeed by telling you it will do great things for education. They don’t. And this one surely won’t.

Governor Joe Teasdale once told me, “I’ll never lie to you but there will be times when I won’t tell you the truth.”   I interpreted the second half of that sentence to contradict the first.  But that’s the kind of disinformation campaign being waged by the casino industry and its bedmates, our major league sports teams.

But what do you expect from an industry that is built on the concept that you will be a loser more often than you will be a winner?

Give your local education leaders these numbers and see how many of your teachers would make commercials endorsing this proposal.

Amendment 2 will be a loser for our schools.  You can bet on it.

Decision 

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(Originally this entry was called “Discussion” because it addressed—when written last week—that President Biden might decide to pull out of the presidential race.  I didn’t post it because I was going to be out of town through the weekend and didn’t want the comments outdated before they were posted.  We’ve done some editing to account for the decision yesterday that President Biden would withdraw from the race and endorse Vice President Harris to for President.

Rather quickly the public dialogue about the Democratic ticket for November seems to have reached an important stage.

The matter of President Biden’s mental and physical health has become secondary to the DISCUSSION about his mental and physical health.

We are pretty sure that some sophisticated polling is being done about whether TALK is robbing the Democratic Presidential Campaign of its ability to focus on issues.

Republicans are no doubt relishing the distraction because they are talking about their issues, their ticket clearly assembled and aggressively spreading the GOP word regardless of its truth.  Nothing internal is stopping the Trump bandwagon at this point, certainly not Democrats.

The Democrats are limited in talking about their issues because they have one issue right now and it’s a giant one and it is completely internal. The public, including THEIR public, has nowhere to go.

(Events have rendered the original paragraph’s speculation about whether the party would go with Vice-President Harris. That speculation has been fully answered as we revise this. Now back to the original narrative.)

Who should be her running mate?  She’s about 60, about average for a President.  But an aggressive running mate in the 40s would send an interesting message to many voters who have not been entertained by two geezers calling each other liars.

Plus a running mate in the 40s could dilute whatever advantage among young voters that the Republicans have by running someone who is 39 as their Veep.

(There was some historical stuff in the original post about presidents who had decided not to seek another term but we will hold those until later.)

As we drove home from Indianapolis last night and early this morning, we spent some of that time listening to the coverage on the satellite channels for CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News.  While CNN and MSNBC had their talking heads discussing possible Harris VP choices and understanding what’s next for the Democratic Part, FOX already was Full Doberman in attacking Harris.

And we thought in those long, dark miles (we got home at 2:30 this morning) about how the complexion of this contest has suddenly changed.

Now, the old man with questionable mental health is the Republican candidate.  The shoe is on the other foot and the GOP is stuck with it.

The outlook for Democrats has changed dramatically and all of the sudden they, and Kamala Harris, have control of the spotlight and they’re suddenly gifted with a convention that can have an impact far greater than they had expected.

The immigrant issue now has a new dimension because the presumptive Democrat nominee is from a state that has been dealing with Mexican immigrants for almost 400 years, since Juan Cabrillo led an expedition into the area in 1542.  AND Harris’ mother is an immigrant from India and her father is an immigrant from Jamaica.

She would be a formidable debate opponent for Donald Trump who has given her a derogatory nickname.  But he’ll need something more than a nickname for her when he meets her on a debate stage. You can be guaranteed that a Trump-Harris debate would not degenerate into a discussion of golf scores. One does not become a federal prosecutor and then the Attorney General of California without some sharp edges.  By now, he should have some appreciation for the skills of prosecutors.

President Biden’s decision within hours awoke the sleeping Democratic Giant and now it is Mr. Trump and the Republicans who should be nervous.

And finally, this occurred early this morning.

This race will offer widely contrasting issues of character—-and when all else fails for the undecideds who might make the fractional difference in the polls and at the polling places, character might be the deciding factor.

Contrast President Biden’s response to the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump.  He called Trump, referring to him in public remarks as “Donald,” not making any dismissive and derogatory comments but only expressing sympathy and respect.

Then consider Mr. Trump’s response to the Biden withdrawal: “Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President and is certainly not fit to serve—And never was!”  And he ranted on from there, showing once again a distinct lack of character.

And white nationalists who have made Mr. Trump their totem have been presented with a real quandary—The daughter of a Hindu woman born in India and a Jamaican husband, and who is married to a Jew and attends a black Baptist Church in San Francisco now look at Mr. Trump’s chosen running mate, J. D. Vance and they have a fit about Vance’s wife, Usha, who was born in India. Podcaster Nick Fuentes asked, “Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?”

Trump supporter and J6 veteran James Foxx, has complained, “JD Vance gets tapped as VP and immediately there’s a Hindu prayer at the RNC. Next we’ll see Sen. Mike Lee and JD Vance team up to convince Trump to let in 10 million Indian immigrants. Green cards on diplomas!”

A few days ago we had a competition between a couple of old coots who were about as exciting as a nursing home checkers game.  And all of the sudden, a new head nurse has roared into the parking lot in her Corvette.

Things are about to change.

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For They Have Sown the Wind 

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We have come within an inch—honestly, an inch—of a terrible tragedy for our country. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has brought solemn calls for reducing the toxic level of political discourse.

On the other hand, there is not-unexpected finger pointing that indicates those calls will be ignored soon.

Junior Trump said right afterward, “He will never stop fighting to save America, no matter what the radical left throws at him.”  House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, whose life was almost ended by an attack on a congressional baseball practice, said on FOX News that fears that a Trump victory in November would be a threat to America were “incendiary rhetoric” that could encourage “one person who is just unhinged to hear that and…think that’s the signal to go take somebody out.” He called on candidates to “focus on the issues that people care about.”

(“Unhinged” is the word we’ve heard most frequently applied to Trump’s speeches.)

The Daily Caller conservative website blamed “Liberal Media” for downplaying the assassination attempt at first. Columnist Harold Hutchinson accused “multiple corporate media outlets” of not reporting shots had been fired at the Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania—as if reporters on the scene should have filed comprehensive stories about the incident when the first shot was fired.

(FYI:  He could have said the same thing about FOX News but conveniently didn’t. The first report on FOX news referred to “some kind of disturbance” and about a minute and a half after the shots were fired the anchor said, “This is happening quickly; we are trying to ascertain what’s happened.”)

Hutchinson and Florida Senator Marco Rubio placed media-bashing at the top of their priority list by urging readers to think reporters on the scene should know the entire story before the last shot was fired—before it was understood that the noises had, in fact, been gunfire, not fireworks.

Hutchinson noted NBC’s post on X, “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after popping noises heard at his Pennsylvania rally,” and a Los Angeles Times posting, “Trump whisked off stage in Pennsylvania after loud noises rang through the crowd.”

Florida Senator Marco Rubio took CNN to task when it posted on X, “JUST IN: Donald Trump is rushed offstage by Secret Service during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Follow live updates.”  He wrote on his own X account, “Really? No mention of the attempt to kill him?”  And when CNN said, “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally,’ Rubio wrote, “Even in a horrifying moment such as this they just can’t help themselves.”

No, it was Marco Rubio who just couldn’t help HIMself.

Reporters on the scene, in fact, knew no more than any other observer—and there were hundreds of those, many of whom talked about the instant confusion of the moment.

The reporters reported at that instant what they KNEW.  A few chaotic seconds later, updates went out—the Secret Service had covered Trump; Trump had blood on his ear; the “pop-pop-pop” was gunfire and some people in the audience had been hit; Trump was up and being escorted to a vehicle and hustled off-site.

Bill Goodykoontz, the media critic for the Arizona Republic, commented later in the day, “Cable and broadcast outlets covered the news in remarkably similar ways…they both covered it well and, for the most part, they covered in responsibly.”

“What was perhaps even more impressive was what journalists didn’t do — they didn’t jump to conclusions, whether about exactly what happened, about Trump’s condition or about motives. Being first is important in breaking news, but not as important as being right, and most networks hewed to that Saturday.”

He also said, “Neither CNN nor Fox News jumped to irresponsible conclusions. In fact, they didn’t even call it a shooting until that could be confirmed, in a show of near-miraculous restraint.”

Fox wouldn’t put up with former Congressman Jason Chaffetz when he went off on a rant: “They tried to incarcerate him; they’ve now had an assassination attempt on the president. The temperature in this country, we all need to take a deep breath. But at the same time, you know what this country we have got to make sure that we can have free fair elections.”

Goodykoontz commented, “Whether by coincidence or wise decision-making, the network drowned him out with a replay of the incident.  Good.”

Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, reportedly on Trump’s short list as a running mate, went on X and said President Biden’s rhetoric “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” a totally irresponsible allegation at a time when the shooter’s name was not known and, as we write this, his motivations are unknown.

Samantha Vinograd, a former Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism, Threat Prevention, and Law Enforcement Policy in the Homeland Security Department told CBS’s Margaret Brennan, “It is frankly unpatriotic at this moment to be stoking the flames when we know that we are sitting on a cauldron of tensions. … The counter-terrorism officials and homeland security officials that I’ve spoken to in the last few hours are deeply concerned that this event will be used as a rallying cry to launch attacks against individuals associated with the Biden campaign and lead to broader domestic distress.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who has been an analyst on diverse media outlets, wrote for The Hill, “The assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump left a nation stunned. But the most shocking aspect was that it was not nearly as surprising as it should have been. For months, politicians, the press and pundits have escalated reckless rhetoric in this campaign on both sides.”  He called it “rage rhetoric” in castigating both the right and the left

“Rage is addictive and contagious. It is also liberating. It allows people a sense of license to take actions that would ordinarily be viewed as repulsive. As soon as Trump was elected, unhinged rage became the norm,” he said.

He spends most of his article criticizing the Left for its rhetoric, suggesting it is not reported on with the same emphasis the press gives to Trump rhetoric.  He concludes, “We have come full circle to where we began as a Republic. In the 1800 election, Federalists and Jeffersonians engaged in similar rage rhetoric.

“Federalists told citizens that, if Jefferson were elected, “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.”

“Jeffersonians warned that, if Adams were reelected, “chains, dungeons, transportation, and perhaps the gibbet” awaited citizens and they “would instantaneously be put to death…”

“In our current age of rage, politicians have sought to use the same anger and fear to rally support at any cost. This is the cost.”

He makes an excellent set of points that support the immediate post-shooting suggestions that it is time to tone down the rhetoric.  The question now is—who goes first?

Some readers will see the following comments as indicating a bias.  It might be so.  But as we watched the events unfold, and as we were grateful that Mr. Trump escaped with his life, we nonetheless were aware that he is the one who calls people by derogatory names, who has ridiculed in some of his speeches a disabled person, who has shown disrespect to judges and the judicial system, who continues to spout outright lies on numerous fronts, who encouraged followers to show up in Washington on January 6, 2021 with the promise that “it will be wild,” who did nothing to reduce the violence later at the Capitol by so-called “innocent tourists,” who to this day censures his own Vice-President because Mike Pence followed the Constitution, and who maintains that he, himself, is above the law—

And, God help us, we could not avoid thinking of two verses from the Bible:

Paul’s letter to the Galatians, a congregation in present Turkey, in which we find, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap.”

Or an earlier observation from the Old Testament prophet Hosea: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”

Mr. Trump is not alone fulfilling these warnings but he is the most vocal representative of them.

Let us watch him as well as the people who oppose him to see if this terrible brush with tragedy really changes anything.   Or whether it’s just more post-near-apocalyptic talk.

 

Salting the Mine

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Out in the Old West, there were stories told of people who wanted to sell a worthless gold mine to a gullible individual by putting a little gold dust into a shotgun shell and then shooting the gold into some of the mine’s rock, making it appear that there was gold waiting to be mined.

It was called salting the mine.

A few days ago, Philadelphia radio station WURD fired one of its talk show hosts who admitted she used some questions supplied by the White House in an interview with President Biden.  Andrea Lawful-Sanders has lost her job because she let the White House get away with it. .

She admitted on CNN that the White House sent her eight questions to ask when the interview was scheduled after the Thursday night debate disaster. She said she “approved” four of them.

WURD CEO Sara Lomax said in announcing the firing, “WURD Radio is not a mouthpiece for the Biden or any other administration.” She said the station’s trust by its listeners  to “hold elected officials accountable” had been jeopardized.

A second local radio host, this one from battleground state Wisconsin, has admitted he was given five questions.  But Earl Ingram has told ABC News he was not able to get through all of them in the limited time scheduled for the interview.

This story deserved to be made public.  This practice is not unusual.  There were times when the Missourinet newsroom got calls from campaigns suggesting we should interview their candidates.  In this case, a spokesman for the Biden campaign admitted to FOX News Digital, “It’s not at all uncommon practice for interviewees to share topics they would prefer. These questions were relevant to the news of the day.”  She maintained that acceptance of the questions did not determine whether the interview went ahead.

One night, when a presidential election was very tight, we got a call about 7:10 from one of the campaigns wanting to know if we wanted to interview its candidate about the importance of getting out and voting.  The person calling apparently was not aware that Missouri’s polls had closed ten minutes earlier and sounded shocked when he was told, “Mr. _____ never wanted to talk to us during the campaign and we’re sure not interested in talking with him now.”

“You mean, you don’t want to talk to the next President of the United States?” came the incredulous response.”

“What did I just tell you?”

“Oh.  Ohhhhhh—kay?”

The Missourinet had no patience—-and the current generation of reporters at the network is the same way—with people who want to salt the political mine, who think news reporters should be their mouthpieces.

Sadly, there are those willing to put candidates on the air on radio or TV just because they can—-and they lob a few softballs at them or ask the supplied questions because the interview makes great promotion material regardless of the informational value.

Candidates love “free media” and rely on outlets to become their mouthpieces.  And it’s easier to become a mouthpiece than it is to try to nail a candidate with a touch question that’s not part of the script.

It might be promotable but it’s not honest and the fallout from the Biden “salting” after the debate is deserved.

This stuff happens and it is painful to even discuss it openly because it justifies the thinking by some people that the media are controlled by whatever political ideology is different from theirs.

I don’t believe that.

I do believe there is too much talk and not enough hard reporting in my lifetime industry, which is why I also believe it is important for citizens to avoid focusing on a single information source. At our house we wander around among CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and we occasionally take a look at One America Network and Newsmax, the blatantly pro-Trump organs. And we check in with the traditional three networks from time to time.

We have our opinions and we like to think we have formed them independently because we evaluate competing ideas.

I would love to interview our ex-President.

I would introduce him as “Mr. Trump,” not “President Trump” because I believe in Harry Truman’s comment that when he left the White House he was “promoted” back to being a common citizen.  Some offices and some ranks are left in the office or should on a hanger in the back of the closet when a person retires from them or is excused from them.

We’re straying from our topic.

The temptation to accept an interview offer with someone who thinks they are important or someone who wants to be important comes to reporters all the time. Good reporters make it clear they, not the interviewee, are in charge of the interview and they are free to challenge answers or bore in when a straight answer is not given to a straight question.

And sometimes they should just say “No,” and enjoy the astonished reaction from the other person who has been thinking the talk show host or the reporter is just some clay to be manipulated.

I rather enjoyed doing that, in fact.

If you wanted to be interviewed on my air, I controlled the rules, not the candidate.  And to be honest, there were times when we covered an event or did an interview and put nothing on the air because nothing newsworthy was said.  We did not waste our listeners’ time because somebody had caused us to waste ours.

 

 

Creating News Deserts 

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A Facebook comment from Moberly noted last week: “The Moberly Monitor-Index (once a daily, now a weekly) made a brief reference to the situation on its Facebook account today as well, but I didn’t see anything on its website. Aside from any TV coverage from Columbia, that’s going to be the only local news outlet henceforth.”

The comment was about Alpha Media’s layoffs of all on-air employees at radio stations in Moberly, turning the station into just another satellite-provided bunch of programs with no local relevance.

The comment points to another alarming trend—the death of the local newspaper.

Small and medium-market newspapers have been swallowed up by Gatehouse (or as a friend of mine from one of those newspapers calls it, “Guthouse”) Media, including the Gannett chain.  Gatehouse now uses that name—Gannett, and other newspaper conglomerates.

The practice has been to buy small or medium market newspapers, hollow out the staffs, turn dailies into weeklies and weeklies into digital products as much as possible, again to the detriment of the local markets but to the great financial benefit of the corporation.

With gutted local newspapers and gutted local radio stations, we are seeing more and more news deserts being created.

At a time when we as a nation and we as a state desperately need more eyes on newsmakers and more diverse voices in our social dialogue—and more attention to local issues—we are getting less and what we are getting shows no industrial responsibility to giving consumers diverse viewpoints.

The corporate monopolization of our mass media is one of the greatest threats our country faces but one that gets little public attention.

More than a century ago this nation was crippled by the power of trusts, whether it was steel or petroleum or transportation trusts (even baking powder, which triggered Missouri’s biggest political scandal early in the last century) that limited competition  and put acquisition of corporate wealth above public interest, convenience, and necessity in so many parts of American life.

We are there again and media control is one of the most dangerous of all of those trusts.  Dwindling sources of information and increasing control of the remaining sources increases our national weakness.

An ignorant nation cannot be a free nation. And Alpha and Gannett/Gatehouse and their ilk are among the corporations that are controlling more and more of our information sources and reducing local service, replacing it with national voices that probably could not point to a map and show you where Festus, Moberly, Farmington, Lebanon or Bethany Missouri are.

Some degree of re-regulation of broadcasting is warranted requiring meeting a certain level of local responsibility. Some degree of trust-busting to provide an opportunity for more independence of opinion in our media is increasingly necessary.

While government can play a role—a carefully modulated role—in these ares is not beyond consideration, the ultimate responsibility for demanding greater diversity in media voces lies with the listeners, readers, and viewers of our electronic communications.

Letters to the FCC and to congressional delegations from places like these communities can carry some weight in Washington.  Boycotts from local advertisers, many of whom already rely on direct-mail or independent internet messaging, can carry weight with corporate broadcasting owners.

Newspaper corporations have one important thing that broadcasters do not have—the First Amendment. Government control of newspapers, as the FCC exerts licensing control over broadcasters, cannot exist and should not exist.

How anti-trust laws could be applied to newspaper conglomerates will be a difficult conversation, even more difficult than the conversations about internet abuses, although similar when the First Amendment enters the discussion.

Nonetheless, all of us are victims of those who control increasing percentages of our media outlets and see no responsibility for diversity of thought and opinion or of local involvement. We are victims only so long as we allow ourselves to be victims, only so long as we refuse to seek out challenges to our own ideas.

Why should we fear that?  Why should we let others tell us what to think and regard those who think differently as enemies?

The trusts were broken when they became so oppressive that the public forced governments to act.

We have reached that point now in our information industry. And we should not accept it.

Guillotines for Fun and Profit

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Alpha Media owns more than 200 radio stations across the country.  Its recruiting web page is loaded with corporate-speak buzzwords about “having a passion for great radio” and a “highly-functioning, best-of-class team on all levels” that goes about “building strong relationships in our local communities.”

“If you are looking for an environment where management has a passion for our business; in working hard to provide the best possible live and local radio in the industry; and in having fun, then Alpha Media is for you,” it says.

You will excuse a lot of people in Moberly, Festus, Lebanon and the Farmington/Park Hills areas if they gag on those words. They’ve been stabbed in the back by the owner of their legacy radio stations.

Alpha Media assassinated local radio in those communities last week, laid off—with no notice—entire on-air staffs including some folks who had been everybody’s neighbors for decades.

In place of the voices who talked about local things including local sports, weather, and events, listeners of radio stations in those markets will be hearing syndicated programs from Alpha. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is not new.

Local radio has been dying by self-inflicted corporate wounds for a long time.

Your loyal observer, who believed throughout his professional career and continues to believe in the value of local radio, is astonished by the total hypocrisy of Alpha Media claiming it is “working hard to provide the best possible live and local radio in the industry and having fun.”

That’s precisely what these stations have been providing for decades.

Having fun?

If you think running a guillotine is lots of yucks, you’d probably be in total agreement with Alpha’s actions in these three communities. .

These radio stations were once owned by a man named Jerrell Shepherd, a small market radio entrepreneur who believed radio stations should not just be IN communities, they should be OF communities. The idea that grandpa or grandma might hear their grandchildren’s names mentioned during broadcasts of local high school sports events; the idea that the new president of the Lions Club would talk about an upcoming peanut sale fund-raising event; the county fair livestock auction; the hospital auxiliary ice cream social; Sunday morning church services; what the city council or school board did last night; that people might instantly go to their local radio station when bad weather approaches or has arrived—street closings, lunches at the schools or the senior center, obituaries—-are immaterial.  But those were and are part of being a locally responsible corporate citizen, especially in markets this size.

But that was then; this is now. The Hell with being a locally responsible corporate citizen.

The big-growth media companies, more interested in bottom lines than community responsibility and identity, only want to make money. And that’s why the familiar voices went to work one day last week and were told they would no longer have a job at the end of their shifts.

The “best possible live and local radio in the industry” became a lie that day in those towns.  And the definition of “having fun” became gallows humor.

Reporters from various central Missouri media who contacted Alpha to get an explanation have received nothing back.  A full-page ad in the local newspapers explaining, without the corporate doublespeak, why ditching true local radio is justified would be a courteous thing for Alpha to do. But don’t count on it.

There is no doubt that local newspapers and local radio stations have faced some struggles as more business is done through the internet.  And the issue with some businesses is not that they don’t make a profit—they just don’t make a big enough profit.

Employees reduce profits in all kinds of businesses which is why all kinds of businesses are finding ways to dump workers (Notice how few people at McDonald’s take orders at the cash registers lately?).  It would be nice if Alpha explained that to the people in these towns who no longer have a radio station they cared about because it cared about them.

Satellites and the internet allow for cutting the overhead of a radio station by allowing layoffs of as many of those dollar-consuming staff members as possible, replaced by voices of strangers from who-knows-where and who are unlikely to ever set foot in places like Moberly, Festus, Lebanon, or Farmington.

Broadcasting used to be regulated by the Federal Communications Commission which required broadcasters to operate “in the public interest, convenience, and necessity.”  But the industry back de-regulation in the Reagan years and got it.

I was part of a national professional organization that supported de-regulation because we thought some regulations stifled public discussion of important issues more than it promoted it.

We supported it because it required stations to meet certain standards of public service that really were hollow standards.  We believed that serving the public did not mean government dictating, in some instances, what had to be said before a counter argument could be aired.

We were wrong.

We never anticipated the homogenization of broadcasting that comes with owning hundreds of stations, with the death of local programming thanks to satellite-delivered syndicated shows—Rush Limbaugh being the first of the great influencers, a man who is considered the savior of AM Radio.

But now, we are faced with asking, “Saved from what?”

Radio began to lose its soul when communities became markets; when stations became properties, and when staffs became overhead expenses.

Part of the answer to “saved from what?” was delivered last week in Moberly, Farmington, Lebanon, and Festus.

Alpha Media is advertising for new employees at the Missouri stations it has hollowed out. The openings listed on the company web page say something about how it will provide “the best possible live and local radio in the industry.”  The company wants a business office part-timer and a part-time board operator/production assistant and a business office/sales assistance person. They want an Integrated Marketing Consultant (Sales) for their stations in Bethany and Moberly and on-air programmer/board operators in Farmington and Festus.

Local news people? Local sports people?  Local talk show hosts?  Those are the people who are “live and local.” The company isn’t looking for any of them.  Board operators are the ones who throw a switch in the studio to bring in a syndicated show off the satellite or internet.  Production assistant?  Well somebody has to record or produce commercials—if sponsors want to buy them now.

What has happened in these markets and is happening in broadcasting generally also is happening in the newspaper industry. We’ll look at that on Wednesday.

The (Robert) Reich Stuff 

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We subscribe to several newsletters at our house, liberal and conservative, because we kind of want to take the pulses of the various parts of the political spectrum. One of those we enjoy is by Robert Reich.

He worked in the administrations of Republican Gerald Ford and Democrats Jimmy Carter, and was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor. He also was part of President Obama’s economic transition advisory board.

He’s been the Chancellor’s Public Policy Professor at UC-Berkeley for eighteen years. He used to be a lecturer in government at Harvard, and a prof of social and economic policy at Brandeis University. Time magazine said he was one of the ten best cabinet members of the Twentieth Century (2008) and ranked sixth on the Wall Street Journal’s list of Most Influential Business Thinkers.

So it appears he has some pretty solid bipartisan credentials.

A few days ago, he explained why prices remain high despite the slowing of inflation. His explanation recalls a warning I heard thirty years ago or more from Abner Womack, an Ag-Econ professor at the University of Missouri, a co-founder of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute.  He warned of the dangers of vertical integration in the agriculture industry—a time when only a few companies controlled the agriculture industry from providing the seeds, providing the fertilizer, processing the harvested product, and marketing it to consumers, and doing the same thing with the livestock part of agriculture. In effect, he was talking about the growing tendency of creating agricultural monopolies.

In his column on February 16, Reich began with a chart:

The chart shows corporate profit trends from 1946 through the third quarter of 2023.

This, he says, is why President Biden is not getting the credit he deserves to improving the economy—-corporate monopolities are unnecessarily increasing prices, or charging the same prices but reducing the size of the products.  For example, he says—

“In 2021, PepsiCo, which makes all sorts of drinks and snacks, announced it was “forced” to raise prices due to “higher costs.” Forced? Really? The company reported $11 billion in profit that year. 

“In 2023 PepsiCo’s chief financial officer said that even though inflation was dropping, its prices would not. Pepsi hiked its prices by double digits and announced plans to keep them high in 2024.

“How can they get away with this? 

“Well, if Pepsi were challenged by tougher competition, consumers would just buy something cheaper. But PepsiCo’s only major soda competitor is Coca-Cola, which — surprise, surprise — announced similar price hikes at about the same time as Pepsi, and also kept its prices high in 2023.

“The CEO of Coca-Cola claimed that the company had “earned the right” to push price hikes because its sodas are popular. Popular? The only thing that’s popular these days seems to be corporate price gouging.” 

And that is why, he explains, consumer prices are still high even though inflation is down and prices are rising “far more slowly” than in the past couple of years. However, those trends are not reflected in the prices of the products.  The result is that the corporations can “get aay with overcharging you” because corporations have few competitors who can force them to lower prices to compete for customers.

Why are prices thirty percent higher than they were in 2020?  Because “four companies now control processing of 80 percent of beef, nearly 70 percent of pork, and almost 60 percent of poultry.”  He suggests, but offers no proof, that these companies coordinate price increases.

Reich says it’s time federal antitrust laws be enforced, noting the Biden administration has been more aggressive in this field than any administration for the last forty years. It has acused the meat industry of price fixing. The administration is suing Amazon with “one of the biggest anti-monopoly lawsuits in a generation.”

He points to legislation suggested by Senator Elizabeth Warren and others. She says, “Giant corporations are using supply chain shocks as a cover to excessively raise prices and sometimes charging the same price but shrinking how much consumers actually get.”  Among other things, the bill would force public companies to divulge more about their costs and pricing strategies.

But, he says, don’t expect this idea to go far because Democrats have only a slim majority in the Senate and Repulicans have a slim majority in the House that enables them and their business allies to blame the Biden administration instead of solving the problem by going after that important constituency for the GOP.

So ends Robert Reich’s basic economic course for the day. He’s clearly a liberal but that doesn’t automatically mean he’s not worth appreciating any more than a conservative’s thoughts are automatically worthy of dismissal.  And those who wear the label “conservative” honorably will find some points of agreement with him, perhaps.

Late in the 1890s and early 1900s, it was popular in politics to be a “trust buster.”  Reich has suggested targets for a new generation of them.

It’s time to get started.

Languages

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I am proud to say that I passed three out of four semesters of college French courses.

That means I am, or once was, somewhat fluent in TWO more languages than our most recent former president uses.

The latest nonsense to cascade in a disorderly tumble from his lips adds an additional damnation to immigrants who, he has claimed, “are coming from jails, and they’re coming from prisons, and they’re coming from mental institutions, and they’re coming from insane asylums, and they’re terrorists.”

Of course, he never offers any proof of such things.  Now, during that same visit to an area near Eagle Pass, Texas on the southern border, he is piling on:

“Nobody can explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages. We have languages coming into our country. We have nobody that even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them, and they’re pouring into our country, and they’re bringing with them tremendous problems, including medical problems, as you know.”  He has asserted in a previous rant that when one migrant showed u, “We don’t even have one translator who could understand this language.”

Various media outlets, including the once-chummy FOX News Channel,  jumped all over that disjointed estrangement from reality, one of the fact-checkers being CNN’s Daniel Dale who found the comment about a translator, “nonsense,” and said it had been “conjured out of thin air.”

The former president says people such as Dale shouldn’t taken him so seriously. He told Sean Hannity recently, “You take a look at when I use Barack Hussein Obama and I interject him into where it’s supposed to be Biden, and I do it purposely for comedic reasons and for sarcasm.”

Whew!   That’s a relief.  I hope all of his MAGA friends realize he’s just pulling their legs and don’t bother repeating his fun-loving remarks as serious messages.

About those languages that nobody speaks:

Analyst Philip Bump with The Washington Post wrote last week that the former president’s remarks were “remarkable” and proved again that “there is no limit on the fearmongering Donald Trump will deploy when it comes to the U.S.-Mexican border.”

Bump points out that there’s a CIA database that includes the spoken languages of more than 220 places.  Here’s an interesting statistic he cites from that database:  Canada, which has two official languages (English and French) “has a higher percentage of English speakers than the United States has of people who speak only the language.”  He says only about seven percent of our population speaks something other than English or Spanish.

Bu contrast, about 30% of Canadians speak French. About 16% of Canadians use both languages.  Four percent speak Chinese. Three percent speak Spanish with an equal amount speaking Punjabi. Arabic, Tagalog, and Italian are spoken by two percent each.

The truth, he says, is that “fewer people speak less frequently-spoken languages. Therefore, those people are less likely to arrive at the U.S.-Mexican border. If they did so, though, there seem to be good odds that someone within the federal government (much less the broader population would be able to understand what they’re saying.”

On top of that, the State Department has translators in some 140 languages or combinations of languages. “The CIA, meanwhile, has an incentive program to encourage people who speak particular languages to work with them. If you speak Baluchi (spoken in Oman) or Ewe (Togo and Ghana) or Lingala (both Democratic Republic of Congo and Republic of Congo), ping your local CIA recruiter. There’s cash in it for you.”

As far as immigrants being criminals or more likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans—as the ex-President claimed in his Texas speech, Terry Collins wrote this week in USA Today that research indicates immigrants “actually commit fewer crimes than people born in the U. S.”

Trump and his supporters are quick to capitalize on a serious crime committed by an undocumented immigrant, such as the high-profile murder in Georgia.

But Collins points to the work of immigration policy analyst Alex Nowrasteh with the Cato Institute, a self-described “Libertarian think tank,” who says, ‘The findings show pretty consistently undocumented and illegal immigrants have a lower conviction rate and are less likely to be convicted of homicide and other crimes overall compared to native-born Americans in Texas.”

“They’re coming from jails and they’re coming from prisons and they’re coming from mental institutions and they’re coming from insane asylums and they’re terrorists,” Trump said in Eagle Pass.

He clearly has never heard of Nowrasteh, whose studies of undocumented immigrants from 2012-2022 show undocumented immigrants have a homicide rate fourteen percent under that of native-born citizens and a 41% lower total conviction rate. Legal immigrants have a 62% lower homicide rate

He told Collins, “I don’t think that Trump’s statements accurately convey the reality of immigration.”

The problem with all of this is that a lot of Americans are buying what the ex-president is selling.  The Pew Research Center, in a survey a few weeks ago, found that 57% of Americans think immigration leads to more crime.

Here’s some more research reported by Collins:

Stanford University Economics Professor Ran Abramitzky’s research shows the rates of crimes committed by immigrants in this country have been lower than those committed by native-born Americans. Incarceration rates have been dropping for the last six decades.  Nowrasteh says there’s a powerful reason for that: “Deportation is a hefty penalty, as being removed and sent back to their home country where they have fewer job and quality of life opportunities is enough to scare most immigrants.”

As far as criminals crossing the border in droves—-

The Border Patrol checks for criminal backgrounds before releasing them to enter this country, pending a hearing. The Patrol arrested more than 15,000 people with criminal records at the border last year, three-thousand more than in ’22.  So far this year, the number is more than 5,600.

Responsible people who know what they are talking about know that our border is not a sieve that leaks insane criminals who have been released from prisons throughout the world to come here and “poison” our country. It is not to our credit that we would listen to an irresponsible monolingual figure who hopes we drink HIS poison instead.

Books and Beyond

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I am not happy if I do not have a book within reach.

I have upstairs books (Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers). I have downstairs books (Bob Edwards’ A Voice in a Box). I have doctor’s office books (finished reading Steve Inskeep’s Disagree We Must in an office this week). When we go on a trip, I pack at least two paperback whodunnits (John Grisham has shortened a lot of flights over water) that won’t be much of a loss if I leave one in a hotel room or an airline seat pocket.

The box next to the chair is waiting to be re-filled at the Missouri River Regional Library’s used book sale in a couple of weeks.  I have a porch book—-to take out on the screen porch on nice days and sit in the glider with Minnie Mayhem, one of our cats who likes to glide, and I read a bit, nap a bit, read some more and then come inside to write.  Or fix a salad for dinner or something. The book is called Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History from the Alphabet to the Internet by William J. Bernstein.

The preservation of language, he argues, did not begin with writing; it began with mathematics in “a small area of southern Mesopotamia about five millennia ago…The first writing arose not from the desire to record history or produce literature, but rather to measure grain, count livestock, and organize and control the labor of the human animal. Accounting, not prose, invented writing.”

It is a long way from then to now and our emphasis on technology and all of the uncertainties we feel as we plunge into worlds of information that we could not have imagined as recently as yesterday. Bernstein is an optimist:

“When viewed over the ages, technologies do matter; a writing system that is simple to master is inherently more democratic than one that is difficult; a printing press capable of inexpensively turning out thousands or millions  of tracts is inherently more democratic than limiting book production to a few Church-controlled scriptoria, and two-way cell-phone and Internet communications are inherently more democratic than mass-market one-way radio and television…Over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, an ever greater portion of the human race lives under democratic rule, and it is not difficult to credit this happy result to recent advances in two-way communications technologies.”

He concludes by noting that the technology of information distribution did not change much after Gutenberg’s invention of movable type moved Martin Luther’s status from being a dissatisfied German Catholic priest to being the creator of the Protestant Reformation and the 1840s that saw the development of the high-speed press and the telegraph. But the ongoing, though slow “empowerment of ordinary people” took a step back in the late 1800s and early 1900s—-an era most of us might think was a time of great growth in the flow of democratizing information. To the contrary, he argues, that era brought “the advent of the penny newspapers, radio, and television—expensive, complex media that could be controlled by only a few hands.”

But, “Fortunately, the new digital media have once again dramatically moved the empowerment needle back toward ordinary citizens. For the first time, a significant fraction of the world’s citizens can be in instant communication with one another.”

He is confident MOST of the changes affecting our political, social, and cultural lives will be positive.  But he warns this new world also could give governments more ways to control their citizens.

It seems from our high observation position that we are just entering that era in which we as free or potentially free people will be the determining factors in whether technology continues to enhance more democracy in our country and in the world—-or if we allow that technology to turn us against one another, which will only ennoble and enhance those who wish to use communication technology for repression and control rather than for Expression and freedom.

We have to control technology, not let technology control us.

The Fix Was Only Partly In 

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It was all planned, wasn’t it?  Except it all fell apart.

The MAGA people in their tinfoil hats had predicted the Super Bowl would be rigged so the Chiefs would win—in fact, the playoffs—if not the whole season—had been rigged by he NFL so the Chiefs would win and then Travis Kelce and girlfriend Taylor Swift would announce their endorsement of President Biden during the halftime show.

We must have missed that announcement.  We were chowing down at a friend’s “Souper Bowl” party while Usher’s spectacular halftime show was under way. It’s probably all coach Andy Reid’s fault that he would not let Kelce leave the locker room while the Chiefs rehearsed the NFL and the Democratic National Committee’s plans for the Chiefs to win.

How clever of the Chiefs and the 49ers to heighten the drama by taking the game into overtime. But that was part of the plan, wasn’t it?  More commercials at $7 million for each thirty seconds.  And how much of that will secretly wind up in the Biden campaign account (that wasn’t part of any conspiracy theory that we heard before the game but it came to mind in the aftermath)?

And when Kelce and Swift met on the field afterwards, they appeared to get lost in their own hugging and kissing that they forgot about making the endorsement. Up to then, things were pretty good and then they forgot their lines and messed it all up.

Maybe it was because they engaged in alternate activity because they were afraid they would say something that would prove claims that she is some kind of a Pentagon asset, although the tin hat folks have not specifically defined what that asset might be. If she ever slips and introduces herself as “Swift, Taylor Swift,” we’ll all know.  So far she hasn’t let it slip, but in the exciement of the Super Bowl she might have done it, so that’s why the Pentagon probably ordere Kelce to plaster his lips to hers because it’s hard to give away high-security secrets when your lips are linked with someone else’s lips.

President Biden commented on X, “Just like we drew it up,” again showing his decline in mental acuity by forgetting they were supposed to endorse him or that the scheme was to be top secret.

Noted liberal mainstream media talking head Joe Scarbrough the next morning disguised the failure of Kelce and Swift to perform by focusing instead on “all the MAGA, ultra-MAGA freaks” and Biden’s comment being “him mocking the snowflakes.”

Biden, showing that he is more contemporary than many give him credit for being, used TikTok to stream a video showing him answering questions about the Super Bowl. He refused to acknowledge that the fix was in by refusing to pick a winner.

“I’d get in trouble if I told you,” he told an interviewer who succested there had been “deviously plotting” for the Chiefs to make the playoffs and then taking the Super Bowl.

Sorry, Joe B.  You can run but you can’t hide.  All right-thinking—or is it ultra-right thinking?—people know the truth.  Kelce and Swift dropped the ball.

One more thing:

President Biden declined to do a pre-game interview, something called “a traditional sit-down” by one news agcncy although it hasn’t been a “tradition” very long. And guess who volunteered to replace him?

Ah, it’s not that hard a question. Our ex-president “praised” the incumbent’s decision, diplomatically noting, “A great decision, he can’t put two sentences together. I WOULD BE HAPPY TO REPLACE HIM – would be “RATINGS GOLD!”

He seemed to have a different attitude when HE skipped the pre-game interview in 2018.

As far as Ms. Swift is concerned, our former president thinks she would be a traitor if she endorsed the current president.  He figures she owes him, big time because he signed the Music Modernization Act “for Taylor Swift and all other Musical Artists,” he put it on Truth(?) Social.

“I signed and was responsible for the Music Modernization Act for Taylor Swift and all other Musical Artists. Joe Biden didn’t do anything for Taylor, and never will. There’s no way she could endorse Crooked Joe Biden, the worst and most corrupt President in the History of our Country, and be disloyal to the man who made her so much money.”

“Was responsible for?”

He had nothing to do with the bill, officially called the “Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act,” which had gotten unanimous passing votes in both the Senate and the House. It is, to oversimplify things, a major update in copyright laws to deal with use of music on streaming services.

HE “made her so much money?” Last time we looked, that sure wasn’t Donald Trump dancing and singing  under the spotlights in various venues around the world.  It appears she is capable of making “so much money” on her own.

So he’s upset that this ungrateful superstar might think she has a much better person to endorse. Four years ago she ripped the then-president for “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency.”

As a side note, has anyone compared the sizes of the audiences for her performances with the sizes of audience for HIS performances?

The former President about eight years ago professed to be a regular reader of Rolling Stone who likes Elton John, Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi. He “new Michael Jackson very well…I knew him better than almost anybody.”  Pavarotti was a “very dear friend.”  Not on his lis are the numerous artists who have asked him to stop using their music at his campaign rallies including The Rolling Stones. His favorite song? Peggy Lee’s “Is that all there is?” The lyrics are about a person disillusioned with life events.

But it’s not all bad with the former president. “I like her boyfriend, Travis, even though he may be a Liberal, and probably can’t stand me!” he said on his page.

Sorry, Donnie, that’s probably not enough to get you a seat in the Chiefs’ luxury box so Taylor can hug you in celebration of one of Travis’ great plays. And I don’t think Travis would want to hug you, either, despite your grudging admiration of him.

In keeping with the spirit of Tinfoil Hat Sports, Inc., we offer this conspiracy theory for the 2024-25 football season;

The NFL will restructure its schedule so the Super Bowl and inauguration day fall on the same day.  The inauguration will be moved from the Capitol to the halftime show in New Orleans. The Chiefs will survive a tough, but rigged, schedule and will be down by at least ten points at the half and Andy Reid will forget about taking the team to the locker room so Travis and Taylor can perform a poem they have written and set to music for the occasion before their choice for President takes his oath of office. The Vince Lombardi Trophy will be awarded to the Chiefs by the President at the end of his speech although the game is only half over, However it will continue as arranged to make sure all of the commercials are run and to formalize the pre-arranged result. There will not be an overtime because the inaugural ball will begin in a hail of confetti after the Chiefs pull out another close victory that beats the spread.

And eight Clydesdales will circle the stadium pulling a Bidenweiser beer wagon.

Bet the farm.  It’s already been arranged. You read it here first.

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