More Susan Boyle

Here is more from Susan Boyle, this time from a charity CD

she made in 1999. Absolutely astonishing!

Cry Me a River

Susan Boyle Makes Me Happy

I’m probably the last person on the internet to discover this clip. Whatever. Just the thought of her success has given me joy and delight since I first heard it last night. Ms. Boyle was a contestant on “Britain's Got Talent.” When she walked on stage this 47 year old, slightly dumpy, woman elicited eye-rolling, ill concealed, smirks.

I’m sure the audience was expecting to have a little fun--something along the lines of Florence Foster Jenkins. With the first notes of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables, when this simply enormous voice poured forth, it literally popped eyes open and snapped heads back.

Listen

Krugman On Tea Parties

Oh, what fun! The wacky world of the Republic Party.

".... President Obama is being called a “socialist” who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre.

Read Krugman here.

A Speech From the Past, A Manifesto for The Future

Occasional readers of this occasional blog will remember that I regularly follow Professor David Kaiser’s blog, “History Unfolding.” In a recent post, dated April 4th, 2009, he quotes a campaign speech that FDR made on November 1, 1940. That speech is so eerily pertinent today that it justifies my re-quoting it here, despite its unbloglike length.

It perfectly characterizes and justifies what I believe to be the function of government and the unalterable opposition to that function by the Republican Party.

After nearly seventy years nothing has changed. 

FDR:

Back in the 20's, in the years after the last World War, Americans worked and built many things, but few of our people then stopped to think why they were working and why they were building and whither they were tending.

Those were the days when prosperity was measured only by the stock ticker.

There were the factory workers forced to labor long hours at low wages in sweat-shop conditions. They could look forward to no security in their old age. They could look forward to no insurance during periods of unemployment. There were the farmers of the Nation, overburdened with debt and with farm surpluses, their income vanishing, their farms threatened with foreclosure.

There were the natural resources of the land, being wasted-soil, forests, minerals and water power.

There were millions of workers, unable to organize to protect their livelihoods, unable to form trade unions.

There were the small businesses of the Nation, threatened by the monopolies of concentrated wealth.

The savings of the many were entrusted to supposedly great financiers, who were to lose those savings in fantastic adventures of giant holding companies and giant investment trusts.

The crash came as it had to come. And then for three years the American people waited and suffered. For three years the American Government did nothing to help.In 1933, the American people began to bestir themselves. They had come to learn that inaction offered no escape from the problems of a troubled and changing world. The American people determined then and there that what could not be done by individual effort could be done through joint effort; that what the industrial and financial leaders could not do, or would not do, a democratic Government could do and would do

You all know the history of recovery, beginning in 1933, and progressing ever since.

Our economic system began again to function. Then came the suggestion from monopolistic finance that while the Government had done a good rescue job, the best thing it could do at that point was to forget all about it, and to turn the whole economic system back to Wall Street to run again.

But they little knew the temper of the American people. The New Deal was no mere rescue party to restore to a chosen few their old power over the people's savings, the people's labor, the people's lives.

We all remember how negligible was the opposition that this Administration met in the early days when it was cleaning up the wreckage, which had come from the era of speculation.

The bitter opposition from Republican leaders did not come until a little later. It came when this Administration made it clear that we were not merely salvaging afew things from the past, but that we were determined to make our system of private enterprise and private profit work more efficiently, more democratically, to fill the demands and needs of all the people of this land.

We understand the philosophy of those who offer resistance, of those who conduct a counter offensive against the American people's march of social progress. It is not an opposition which comes necessarily from wickedness—it is an opposition that comes from subconscious resistance to any measure that disturbs the position of privilege. It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

I am, as you know, a firm believer in private enterprise and in private property. I am a firm believer in the American opportunity of men and women to rise in private enterprise. But, of course, if private opportunity is to remain safe, average men and women must be able to have it as a part of their own individual satisfaction in life and their own stake in democracy.

With that in view, we have pushed ahead with social and economic reforms, determined that this period in American life should be written down as an heroic era—an era in which men fought not merely to preserve a past, but to build a future.

You and I have seen nations great and small go down in ruin, or get backed up against the wall, because the reactionary men who led them could not see the real danger that threatened. They were afraid of losing their own selfish privilege and power. They feared the legitimate forward surge of their own common people, more than they feared the menacing might of foreign dictators.

From them, we in the United States take warning. Most Republican leaders in our own country for the last seven years have bitterly fought and blocked that forward surge of average men and women in their pursuit of happiness. And let us not be deluded that overnight those leaders have suddenly become the real friends of these average men and women.Oh, they may say at election time that they approve the social gains and social objectives of the last seven years. But I say that these men have not yet proven that they even understand what these social gains or social objectives have been.

The people throughout this country know how many and how difficult were the battles that we have fought and won in the last seven years.

Do you want to abandon the protection of people's savings from fraudulent manipulators, the curbing of giant holding companies that despoiled investors and consumers alike, by delivering them into the hands of those who have fought those reforms?

Do you want to abandon the responsibility for the well-being of those who live and work on the farms of the Nation to those who fought against the farm program every inch of the way?

Do you want to abandon collective bargaining, the outlawing of child labor, the minimum wage, the time-and-a-half for overtime, the elimination of sweat-shop conditions, by turning them over to the proven enemies of labor?

Do you want to hamstring the old-age pension system, or unemployment insurance, or aid for children, or maternity welfare, or vocational training for the physically handicapped, or financial aid to the blind by delivering them into the hands of those who have fought and misrepresented those reforms?

Do you want to abandon slum clearance to those Republican leaders who have fought against every appropriation for decent housing?

Do you want to turn over your Government to those who failed to have confidence in the future of America and who now preach fear for the future of America? As an example of that doctrine of fear, certain insurance companies are now sending letters to their policyholders, warning them that if this Administration is retained in office, their policies will shrink in value.

That is just another form of things we have seen before, another form, for instance, of that pay-envelope campaign—that campaign of fear of the last week of 1936.

The fact is that the very existence of most of these insurance companies I speak of was saved by this Administration in 1933. They are today more solvent than they ever were before.

Our program in the past, our program for the future, is, as you know, equality of economic opportunity. Such a program calls for many things. It requires an orderly settlement of industrial disputes not by those devoted to company unions, but by agencies alert to the requirements of labor and mindful of the responsibilities of industry.

This program entails old-age insurance and unemployment insurance, operating on an increasingly wider base, so that eventually it will include every man and woman in the country.

It makes available cheap credit to impoverished tenants, to consumers, and to small business. In fact, it has always seemed to me that our program starts with small business, so that it may grow and flourish.

It curbs the old predatory activities of high finance and monopoly practices.

It guarantees that our national resources are used for the benefit of the whole people—and not exploited for the benefit of a few.

It provides for the resettlement of farmers from marginal lands to richer lands, and for farm ownership for enslaved tenants.

Monopoly does not like this program. Certain types of high finance do not like it. Most of the American plutocracy do not like it.

But the vast majority of American business, the backbone of American business, continues to grow and flourish under it. For that business is interested in reasonable profits, not in promoters' tribute. That business is interested in freedom from monopolistic restraints and economic imperialism. That business knows that the farmers and the workers, the great mass of our citizens, have never asked for more than equality and fair play.

Is Rio Nuevo Based On A Mistake?

I’d like to suggest that it is. The mistake is a mixture of two things: A sentimental yearning for something that never quite existed in reality, and the failure to see that much of what we realistically expect of a downtown already exists.

This nostalgia for something that never was quite real is captured in this song by Petula Clark. Remember? A kind of fantasy land where all the good stuff was; lit by neon. My guess is that underlying our businesslike arguments for “development” is some similar emotional engine.

In the meantime we easily forget what is already there. Museums and galleries and the public library. The Symphony, Opera, a variety musicals, and performances at the Leo Rich. Theater? You bet: ATC, Beowulf Alley Theater, the Rogue Theatre upstairs at The Temple of Music and Art . At either end of Congress The Fox and The Rialto. Club Congress of course, although not for elderly ears.

It’s not likely that you’ll go hungry, either: Poca Cosa, The Cup Cafe, Barrio Grill, Maynards, El Minuto, and others that I can’t name. Fourth Avenue is alive and well and no more removed from the places I’ve named than some venues in Manhattan or Chicago’s Loop.

Finally, there’s more of Tucson’s great “downtown” actually spread all across the city, at its theaters, galleries and truly wonderful restaurants. Frankly I’m glad it isn’t all crammed into the handful of blocks in the old downtown area.

So... let’s build a new hotel and convention center, which I believe might actually be an important economic resource, get the trolley rolling... and then call it quits.

What Fools These Mortals Be

Well, one mortal anyway. The Arizona Guardian reports that State Senator Thayer Verschoor has dipped into the Republic Party’s bag of tricks and come up with a nifty money saving strategy: No state employee should be paid more than the Governor; 95 thousand bucks a year.

Do that and the sucking sound you hear will be all the state’s highly paid professionals--docs, lawyers, scientists, university professors and administrators--- getting out of town.

An Odd Editorial

There’s a very odd (dare we say snarky?) editorial in this morning’s Arizona daily Star. It respectfully bows in the direction of all those brave contributors to its Letters section who sign their names. 

This, of course, is not the case where commentators in the “comments” section are concerned, those folks are described as “stealthily posting a drive-by snipe or a gratuitous rant.” These snipes and rants are frequently directed at the Star itself.

I’ve always been a John Hancock sort of guy. Ever since I started blogging I have signed my name to what I write. When I comment on someone else’s blog I sign my name. I can’t really fault the Star’s requirement for full disclosure.

But at the same time there are many posters who might legitimately fear their comments would put their jobs at risk.

You can cruise all the comments here. I particularly direct your attention to comments #9 and #13.

The Star’s editorial is not signed. I'm shocked, shocked.

Tucson Citizen...A Temporary Reprieve

A late story (on line) in the Tucson Citizen reports that the scheduled March 21st closing of the Citizen has been delayed while negotiations with two prospective buyers continue.

Renee Horton’s  article on the Tucson Citizen’s web site gives all the details that are available .

Pure speculation: The announcement that the Seattle Post Intelligencer was going all digital may have moved Gannett to drop the “no digital” barrier to sales. Who knows? 

Socialism? Yes, Please!

x4mr, over at “Sustainability...etc” has posted an excellent observation springing from Thomas Friedman’s NY Times piece “The Inflection is Near.” I recommend x4mr’s post and the comment thread it generated.

Perhaps Data Port readers would also be interested in the Barbara Ehrenreich/Bill Fletcher article in the March 6, 2009 issue of The Nation:

“If We Are in the Death Spiral of Capitalism, Can We Start Using the "S" Word?” (Click)

Tucson Citizen- Is There a Buyers’ Group In The Wings?

Citizen reporter, Renee Shafer Horton, posted a report yesterday afternoon about the Justice Department’s querying of potential buyers. Her story appears in the Business section of today’s Citizen. click

What caught my eye was this: 

"Mike Hamila, owner of UNIsystems MS LLC in Phoenix, told the Citizen on Feb. 23 that he had been contacted by Justin Dempsey of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. Dempsey wanted details of Hamila's conversations with Broadwater. Though Hamila said Tuesday that he was working on a bid, he would not comment further, citing a confidentiality agreement he signed Monday as part of the bidding process."

Saying Goodbye to The Rocky Mountain News

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Tucson: A One Paper Town

No miracle is going to save the Tucson Citizen and the chance of a miraculous intervention saving the Citizen’s journalists is small to none. On March 21st Tucson will become a one newspaper town. That was perhaps inevitable, and we are at least better off than San Francisco, which runs the risk of becoming a no newspaper town with the possible demise of the San Francisco Chronicle.  

The only chance that a brave little band of Citizen alums might keep the Citizen alive as an all-digital paper has been put paid by Gannett’s conditions of sale, so if a group does strike out on its own it will not be as the Tucson Citizen.

The staff is going to receive what they have been assured is the “standard” separation compensation: One week’s pay for each year they’ve been employed up to a limit of twenty-six years. After which they will drift off to whatever fates await unemployed journalists: positions as corporate flacks, advertising copywriters, freelancers or taking school yearbook photos.

Tucson Citizen Sale. The Department of Justice is Curious.

Because I wanted to nail down the details of Gannett’s sale of the Tucson Citizen I went right to what I hoped would be the horse’s mouth: Robert J. Broadwater.

Broadwater is the managing director of Broadwater & Associates. I e-mailed him asking to be sent any boilerplate he might have, outlining the details of the sale. In other words I asked for the offering memorandum. He e-mailed back saying he would be glad to talk to me. Note: No

offering memorandum was sent. I called.

During our conversation I confirmed what I had heard from another source, namely that the only things being sold were the name, “Tucson Citizen,” the archives, the subscriber list and the names of the carriers. The JOA was not for sale. Okay.

Being an online sort of guy I thought why not put a group together and publish an entirely digitized version, so I asked what might be considered a non-frivolous offer. I was told that it would probably take pretty deep pockets in addition to a substantial buying price because, get this: It would be a condition of the sale that the buyer would have to publish a dead tree (a paper) newspaper.

And of course since the JOA was not for sale that would mean finding a new printing plant.In other words the sale was being structured so that no one would buy the Citizen and Gannett could close it down but retain the income flow from the JOA with the Star.

When I expressed my dubiousness about the deal Mr. Broadwater indicated that it had been vetted by the DOJ.

I’m not the only person to make enquiries. An attorney friend, whose practice includes advising clients on investment opportunities, called.My friend was told that before any offering memorandum could be sent a full financial disclosure would have to be made by any potential buyer. That put paid (at least for now) to any further interest on my friend’s part.

I pretty much bagged stirring up the pot until yesterday, when I received a call from Justin Dempsey of the DOJ. He had heard, I don’t know how, that I had spoken with Broadwater and wanted to know the details of my conversation so far as I could remember them. I told him.

He seemed quite surprised when I said I thought the DOJ had already vetted and approved the deal.

More to come.

Tucson Citizen Deathwatch

On March 21st the Tucson Citizen will fade into history and Tucson will be a one-newspaper town. Sadly, its passage will be mourned by few. The cranks who regularly add to the paper’s comments section understand the cause: The Citizen has become too liberal, too biased, too socialistic.

Huh? I suspect the real reason is that Gannett wants to profit from a phantom JOA, reaping the rewards of a joint operating agreement without actually jointly operating anything. 

Tucson will lose more than it realizes when the Citizen closes down; it will lose a large part of its corporate memory, for that’s what a newsroom staff is. They are the folks who remember and pass on to the new arrivals in the newsroom, and to their readers, our community’s history.

Historical context is important. It’s good for a city to remember where the bodies are buried and who buried them. We are less likely to be taken advantage of if we do.

More about the "phantom JOA" phenomenon later. (Added at 6:21 pm Monday)

Welcome To The Class War

The expression “class warfare” suggests an enraged proletariat barricading the streets and tearing up paving stones to defend themselves against the tyranny of the ruling class.

That was then, this is now, and class warfare has a different face; it is subtler and the ordinary citizens who are its victims passively accept loss after loss. The ruling elites of Washington, the financial upper class, the corporate and financial interests and their party are more than willing to sacrifice the little guys in the interest of a “national good.”

They will wring their hands in despair at the prospect of increasing the national debt, unless that debt balloons for the benefit of the wealthy. What gets cut from legislation? Extension of unemployment benefits, health care, education. In short, the safety net we should all be willing to provide for the common good.

These rascals are like the guys who refuse to throw a rope to a drowning man because it won't do anything for the bathing suit industry. Here’s the rule for recovery: Privatize profit, Nationalize debt.

I recommend an article by William Greider in The Nation, reposted to AlterNet.org

Here’s the lede:

Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever "grand bargain" they want President Obama to embrace in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. But an impressive armada is lined up to push the idea--Washington's leading think tanks, the prestige media, tax-exempt foundations, skillful propagandists posing as economic experts and a self-righteous billionaire spending his fortune to save the nation from the elderly.

Read the whole piece here.

 

Bob Cauthorn Did It

A shocking report just issued by the prestigious Journalism Society Review indicates that the collapse of the newspaper industry may have begun right here in Tucson. Local Data Port readers may remember the pride we pioneer StarNetters felt when the Arizona Daily Star first went on line; a journalistic 'first.'

Star reporter and computer guru Robert Cauthorn was hailed as the saviour of journalism for the digitalization of our daily paper. As much as techies loved the accomplishment some of us, this reporter included, were heard to mumble, "Who the hell wants to read a newspaper on a computer."

Pretty soon we all did, especially as we left heavyweight desktops behind for teeny cell phone screens and we could take our electronic papers to the outhouse with us.

Unfortunately we also left behind the idea that we ought to pay for our news. Right there the rot began; and it was all Bob Cauthorn's fault. 

The Incredible Shrinking (Arizona Daily) Star

A story in Sunday’s Star announced a reshaping of the paper and the reduction of certain types of coverage. Stock listings will be gone, except the listings for local companies. Wire stories related to entertainment and lifestyle will disappear.

The Accent section will be gone Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday Accent will be re-branded as Food, The Arts, and Out and About.

Monday through Saturday, Business and Tucson & Region will become part of the A section. The new A section will start as it does now with national and international news, followed by Business, Tucson & Region, obituaries and the Editorial pages.

The Sports Section (of course) and Caliente will remain the same as will the Sunday  paper.

Exactly how many column inches of news will  be lost is very hard to determine, since the changes are intended in part to do away with odd pages that had to be filled with self-promotions to make he page count come out.

But things don’t look good. Sigh.

Arizona Guardian Reporters Denied Access

My suspicions are confirmed: Republican politicians, particularly the ultra conservative sort, prefer to hunker down in dark corners where they can work undisturbed by nagging questions from reporters.

The Data Port has received e-mail from the Arizona Guardian reporting that

"Senate officials are denying access to lawmakers' offices and even the Capitol press room to some media organizations that don't have a lease with the Senate. And, despite a much-ballyhooed budget shortfall and extra space available in the press room, Senate officials refuse to issue any new leases, even short term through the end of the upcoming legislative session. The ban on some reporters primarily affects the Arizona Guardian staff, which started operations at the Capitol on Monday. Arizona Capitol Times reporters, who also do not lease space from the Senate, are still allowed to roam the halls outside of lawmakers' offices and but can't use the desks in the press room."

Read the Arizona Guardian story here.

Call the office of the State Senate President to comment.

(602)926-3559 or toll free 1-800-352-8404

Arizona Guardian Launches

Is it a newspaper or is a blog by any other name still a blog? Four Arizona journalists have launched a newspaper based on “a new business model.” The reporters and editors are the owners and publishers.

We may be seeing more undertakings of this sort across the nation, as newspapers cut newsroom staff. For that matter we may see established “dead tree” newspapers giving up paper for electrons.

A recent report about the LA Times indicated that for the first time its electronic edition was actually paying for itself, covering editorial costs. How long before owners find deep-sixing paper attractive?

Check out the Arizona Guardian and its staff here.

Wish them well.

The Michael Moore Solution

Moore’s latest comment on the auto industry bailout is well worth reading, which you can do if you click here.

You’ll see that Moore is pretty skeptical about the auto industry and also scathing about the treatment Congress handed out to the leadership of that industry at the hearings.

“Two weeks ago, the CEOs of the Big 3 were tarred and feathered before a Congressional committee who sneered at them in a way far different than when the heads of the financial industry showed up two months earlier. At that time, the politicians tripped over each other in their swoon for Wall Street and its Ponzi schemers who had concocted Byzantine ways to bet other people's money on unregulated credit default swaps, known in the common vernacular as unicorns and fairies."

What particularly caught my attention was one of his suggested solutions to the crisis.

"You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company! (You're going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the "loan," and because we know they will default on that loan, you're going to own the company in the end as it is. So why wait? Just buy them out now." 

Of course this is not a complete solution, since buying only the extant stock leaves the companies, particularly GM, on the brink of financial collapse.  Ownership of voting stock, rather than simply Warrants, gives you greater corporate control through seats on the board of directors. Yes, the tax payers still have to invest billions in GM, but they are investing in a company they own. If the nation's wisdom comes to be that the company should go public then the shares can be sold.