The Left's zeal to prosecute Bush administration over torture will cost them one of their own

Since 2002, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew the extent of torture the Bush administration was using on terrorists, and did not speak up in protest -- publicly on in private.

That's according to The Washington Post and further reporting by Politico.

So the Left's hunt for Bush administration officials to prosecute -- with the release of torture memos -- should logically and morally include one of their own -- Speaker Pelosi and other high-ranking Democrats.

At times of crisis, few in power are innocent.

Politico reports:


Nancy Pelosi didn’t cry foul when the Bush administration briefed her on “enhanced interrogation” of terror suspects in 2002, but her team was locked and loaded to counter hypocrisy charges when the “torture” memos were released last week.

Many Republicans obliged, led by former CIA chief Porter Goss, who is accusing Democrats like Pelosi of “amnesia” for demanding investigations in 2009 after failing to raise objections seven years ago when she first learned of the legal basis for the program.

“As soon as the president made the decision to release [the memos], I was telling people that the Republicans were going to come after us, saying she knew about it and did nothing,” said an adviser to Pelosi (D-Calif.), speaking on condition of anonymity. “And I’m sure we’re going to get hammered again when they release all those new torture photos,” the person said.

But Pelosi’s allies were less prepared to confront the fallout from her convoluted answers during three sessions with reporters last week — answers that raised new questions and handed Republicans a fresh line of attack on a speaker at the height of her power.

“I’m puzzled, I don’t understand what she’s trying to say,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and currently the committee’s ranking minority member.

“I don’t have any sympathy for her — she’s the speaker of the House; there should be some accountability. She shouldn’t be given a pass,” added Hoekstra.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised to keep up the heat, telling reporters last week, “She and other leaders were fully briefed on all of these interrogation techniques. There’s nothing here that should surprise her.”

EU health chief says avoid trips to Mexico, U.S.

The Associated Press reports the following warning to European travelers.

What I'd like to know is what we as American citizens should be doing? Should we be wearing masks out in public and avoiding large crowds since this respiratory illness is so catchable?

I'll be asking my hematologist that question today.

LUXEMBOURG - The European Union's health commissioner urged Europeans on Monday to postpone nonessential travel to the United States or Mexico due to swine flu.

EU Health Commissioner Andorra Vassiliou met with the EU foreign ministers on the subject as Spain reported the first confirmed case of swine flu in Europe. That was also the first swine flu case outside North America.

On arriving in Luxembourg, Vassiliou advised Europeans to reassess their travel plans.

Swine flu threat to United States is real and growing; NYT says it will take time for laboratories to determine if it's outbreak or edge of pandemic

In an ominous story just published late this evening, The New York Times describes the swine flu outbreak in Mexico and now with 20 confirmed cases in the United States as now possibly approaching the edge of a pandemic.

But we won't know for some time the size of threat due to the lack of facilities in North America to determine everything from the potency of the virus to how easily it is transmitted and who has an official case of the illness.

Reporting from Los Angeles, The Times of London sounded this ominous note about some Americans on the border being told to get painter's masks from hardware stores:

North of the border, in the US, doctors were advising people worried about the illness to buy painters’ masks from DIY stores as a precautionary measure. Authorities across the globe were torn between the imperative of slowing the spread of a potential flu pandemic and the need to avoid bringing every big city to a grinding halt.

Last night the US authorities were still allowing people to cross the border from Mexico, where it is thought that the swine flu emerged. But customs officials at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa crossings were given protective clothing.

The New York Times reports on this fast evolving story:

Responding to what some health officials feared could be the leading edge of a global pandemic emerging from Mexico, American health officials declared a public health emergency on Sunday as 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed in this country, including eight in New York City.

Other nations imposed travel bans or made plans to quarantine air travelers as confirmed cases also appeared in Mexico and Canada and suspect cases emerged elsewhere.

Top global flu experts struggled to predict how dangerous the new A (H1N1) swine flu strain would be as it became clear that they had too little information about Mexico’s outbreak — in particular how many cases had occurred in what is thought to be a month before the outbreak was detected, and whether the virus was mutating to be more lethal, or less.

“We’re in a period in which the picture is evolving,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the World Health Organization. “We need to know the extent to which it causes mild and serious infections.”

Without that knowledge — which is unlikely to emerge soon because only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case — his agency’s panel of experts was unwilling to raise the global pandemic alert level, even though it officially saw the outbreak as a public health emergency and opened its emergency response center.

Mother regains custody of daughter only after husband is charged with child sex offenses; something is really wroing with our family courts

Bonnie Russell, long-time fighter against abuses by divore courts, reports a victory in one California case that was long coming and hard won.

Russell says the woman in this case originally came to her through one of her websites, www.FamilyLawCourts.com, in trying to keep her daughter from her husband whom she suspected of sexual abuse because of his affection for child pornography.

And the woman only won after her husband was ultimately charged years later with sexual offenses against minors. The case is indicative of family courts operating completely beyond community moral standards and the law in decisions being rendered. If you are a woman with less money, you are at a distinct disadvantage that can result even in your jailing for speaking out in court and then losing all visitation rights to your children.

As Russell tells me, this case could be from Anytown, USA. From what we've seen in Tennessee, she is right. Something must change now with too family/divorce courts operated according to the judge's whim and bar association connections, not our standards of justice and what is best for the child. These are our courts, not the players in the judicial system.

The ABCNEWS affiliate in San Diego reports:

SAN DIEGO -- When Joyce Murphy gave birth late in life to a beautiful, healthy little girl, it was a surprise. Murphy was told she couldn't have children.

"I was ecstatic," she said.

She is a 20-year employee of the University of California, San Diego, and was married to Henry Parson when her daughter was born.

"In the beginning, he was very charming," she said.

But as their child grew, Murphy said, her husband's behavior became disturbing.

"He would wake me up at two o'clock in the morning, tell me about pornography he'd seen and wanted to reenact, and it was pornography about kids."

She became frightened of his post traumatic stress disorder from his tour in Vietnam, which included a story about raping villagers. She filed for divorce in 2002 when her daughter was 6.

A battle ensued in San Diego County Family Court over custody of the little girl.

Murphy claimed that her daughter was afraid of Parson.

"She would cry if she had to be left with him," said Murphy.

The young girl told a doctor that when Parson was angry he pushed down on her shoulders and injured her. The doctor reported it to Child Protective Service, which Murphy said termed the incident inconclusive.

"From that point on, I was demonized by the courts," she said.

She said she was viewed as a delusional, argumentative trouble maker, while Parson was viewed more favorably.

One therapist appointed by Family Court, Marilyn Marshall, wrote that Mr. Parson was "no danger to anyone, especially his daughter."

"So this therapist said it was my fears of the father that was making the child afraid," Murphy explained.

Parsons was granted immediate overnight visits.

"And I just broke," said Murphy. "I thought, either I go to jail or I protect my child. It was like a primal instinct."

Murphy took her daughter and ran. She was arrested in Florida, brought to San Diego and tossed in jail.

She eventually pleaded no contest to felony kidnapping, accepting the charge without admitting guilt. She was placed on probation.

"I was told I was toxic to my daughter," said Murphy.

Her bosses at UCSD stood by her, but she lost her daughter to her ex-husband and was granted only limited visitation.

"And I thought, all I'm trying to do is protect my little girl from someone I know is a danger," said Murphy.

So she waited and worried for six years, until a call last November. Murphy had to pick up her daughter, because another young girl had bravely come forward, accusing Parson of molesting her. Parson was now the one behind bars.

"This man is a monster, and he hurts little girls," said Murphy.

The criminal complaint charges Parson with hurting three girls, two of them younger than 14 years old. The charges include oral sex with a child, molestation, possessing child porn and using a child to make porn.

A report from the District Attorney's Office said, "The defendant's computers and camera were seized ... revealed numerous photographs of young girls."

Using those photographs, an Oceanside police officer was able to identify and speak with one of the girls, which led to more charges against Parson.

Joyce Murphy feels vindicated, but it's bittersweet.

"I blame the entire family court system," she said, "because they are not held accountable."

I-Team reporter Lauren Reynolds posed the question to the supervising judge of the San Diego County Family Court, Lorna Alksne.

"Is family court doing a good job?"

"Family court is doing an excellent job," Alksne said.

She said each judge must juggle between 200 and 300 cases every month. She said the judges read before work, after work and during breaks to be prepared for their full day of hearings.

She can't comment directly on the Murphy case, and was not involved, but she acknowledges the need for improvement in how child custody cases are decided.

"Family Court has, statewide, some issues on how do you really make a determination on where children should live?"

Joyce Murphy said Family Court's only good decision in her case was granting her full permanent custody of her daughter after her ex husband was jailed.

Henry Parson's daughter is not one of the victims alleged in the criminal complaint. Parson declined to speak with the 10News I-Team. His attorney has a policy of not commenting on pending criminal cases.

Gore hands Blackburn her head in hearing on climate change; she was one brain short in battle of wits on a topic way beyond her understanding

In a match of Tennessee intellect, former Vice President Al Gore on Friday showed Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn to be one brain short as he made her look very foolish for questions she asked concerning whether he was personally profiting from climate change legislation.

You can see the exchange at http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=326113.

Gore was testifying as founder of the Alliance for Climate Protection, a non-profit working to try and save this world from its ongoing environmental mistakes.

Blackburn cited a New York Times story about an environmental firm Gore has invested in and questioned whether he would profiting from legislation he was supporting before the congressional committee.

Gore rightly unloaded on Blackburn for her low-blow tactics and told her any profits from his environmental investments go to fund the non-profit he heads to educate the world.

Blackburn said she was only asking questions asked of her by constituents. Gore said he knew her true motivations and that he has been working on climate change for 30 years. And greed has not been his motivation.

Nice try, Marsha.

Next time, Congresswoman, don't match wits unless you have some wits of your own. Gore made you look very foolish and petty considering the incredibly serious matter at hand being discussed by the committee.

Fewer Americans see TV as necessity: I agree; I'm into my second month without it and doing fine

Floyd Norris of The New York Times writes that a Pew survey released today found the lowest percentage of Americans -- in 36 years of questioning -- consider TV to be a necessity.

Yes, just 52 percent of Americans see it as a must.

I agree. I'm finishing my second month without television and doing quite dandy.

For more of us, a computer, Internet and cell phone are the necessities of living a connected life. And I believe that means connecting to more people than through watching the boob tube.

Change is good. Twitter, anyone?

Veterans get apology from Obama Cabinet member for memo connecting them with right wing extremist groups as terrorist threat

Veterans yesterday got an apology from the head of the Department of Homeland Security for a memo she put out concerning domestic terrorist threats and who among us might be more prone to join.

The apology was needed along with an assurance that veterans from the Iraq war would not be singled out for more scrutiny than any other citizen. The only way to get that assurance and sense of respect for service rendered is to press for an apology and explanation.

CNN reports:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized Friday for a department assessment that suggested returning combat veterans could be recruited by right-wing extremist groups.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says she offered her "sincere apologies for any offense."

She met with American Legion National Commander David Rehbein at Homeland Security headquarters.

"The secretary started the meeting with an apology to me personally, to the American Legion and to the entire veterans community," Rehbein told reporters after the meeting.

In a statement issued by the department, Napolitano said, "We connected meaningfully about the important issues that have emerged over recent days, and I offered him my sincere apologies for any offense to our veterans caused by this report. ... I pledge that the department has fixed the internal process that allowed this document to be released before it was ready."

The report was an unclassified assessment sent to law enforcement agencies. It was titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."

The mention of combat veterans surfaced on a conservative radio program earlier this month, and it drew the scorn of commentators and conservative members of Congress. Rep. John Carter, R -Texas, called on Napolitano to resign.

Now it's time to move on.

Mayor, school board on collision course: How can Nashville build a $1 billion convention center when it is cutting teachers for failing schools?

In this ongoing tale of two cities, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean on Thursday described the "about to wet his pants" need for the city to build a $1 billion convention center with a hotel.

Entertainer Keith Urban, who provided entertainment for the State of the City speech, even chimed in about the need. I didn't even know he and Nicole Kidman lived in Davidson County.

Yet a day later in what is supposed to be the Athens of the South, the Metro school board was forced to pass $15 million in cuts on the working poor employed by the district and teachers. Yes, teacher positions will be cut in a school district that has failed to meet No Child Left Behind Act standards for five years.

More, the board discussed the need to cut another $20 million because the mayor does not want to do the politically unpopular thing of raising property taxes. And with the recession, there certainly is not enough sales tax to go around. So let's get rid of textbooks while we're at it.

How can teachers bet cut when the district is out of compliance with federal education law? This is a gross civil rights violation. Is there any attorney and organization out there willing to go to federal court to ask this question and slap a TRO on Dean's budget and his convention center plan?

The gross immorality of pushing a convention center -- that the Nashville Scene in its most recent edition proved would not meet pie in the sky economic projections -- while cutting teacher positions and boosting class sizes is truly Bredesen-like. And it is appropriate that Dean is Bredesen's student when it comes to compassionate government.

But the movers and shakers in this community don't send their kids to public schools anyway, or manage to get them into magnet ones while the majority of Nashville children flounder in a dysfunctional education system.

If the people of Nashville allow this tale of two cities to continue, they'll pay the price with higher crime, more exodus of families and schools that never will be turned around. Folks, you only get one chance to do the right thing.

Here is why some Tea Party protestors gathered and shouted: General Motors gets another $2 billion in taxpayer money on its way to bankruptcy

For some reason, MSNBC decided Janeane Garafolo was an appropriate political analyst to offer a sane comment on the reason behind all the taxpayer Tea Party protests on April 15.

And Garafolo, who was an abject failure as an Air America radio political host, went on to label all protesters as racists, that there only reason for protesting was that a black man was in the White House.

The insanity of that remark would make Charles Manson blush. And it is indicative of extreme comments I find more common from the Left than the Right. That MSNBC would air the kind of caustic crap reduces the little credibility it has with Keith O. and Rachel M. rattling on.

The reason for the protests, at least how I viewed them, was the derelict amount of spending in Washington to bail out an entire industry and corporations that made arrogant mistakes and in some cases committed fraud. I don't believe in corporate welfare or socialism.

Meanwhile, people paying their bills and doing the right thing get nothing as unemployment rates in more states hit double digits. Tennessee is at 9.6 percent.

Yet today, the U.S. Treasury announced that it has given General Motors another $2 billion in taxpayer money for working capital. This is a company headed to bankruptcy. It is like giving a person who is going to drink and drive an extra gallon of gas.

Who voted for Barack Obama to bail out the AIG of automakers?

Despite what Garafolo and MSNBC say, there remains plenty of reason to protest.

AP reports:

WASHINGTON – Taxpayers invested another $2 billion in General Motors Corp. this week as the struggling auto giant continued efforts to restructure and avoid bankruptcy court.

The Treasury Department said Friday it lent the additional money to GM on Wednesday to provide working capital. The loan pushes the total amount of GM's government aid to $15.4 billion after the company said it would need more money in the second quarter to stay afloat.

A government report revealed earlier this week that the Treasury was prepared to provide GM with up to $5 billion more in federal loans and Chrysler with up to $500 million more in bailout support as they race against deadlines to restructure.

Intolerance by the Left remains its biggest handicap that mitigates its effectiveness

In my political writing, I have found people on the Left much more intolerant of different thinking on issues than those on the Right.

And in its most recent act of arrogance, the Left has made a media darling of a Miss USA runner-up contestant who had the courage to say she was against gay marriage -- then lost the crown.

A gay judge on the Miss USA panel has flip-flopped on whether her answer lost her the crown. But he and the crowd sure did not like her answer and booed.

The appropriateness of the question in the contest should have been criticized instead of the contestant's answer. What a Miss USA contestant thinks about gay marriage or federal bailouts means nothing to wearing the crown.

Riding in parades and cutting ribbons at business openings do not require such positions. And if asked by the media in interviews, all she has to say is "no comment; that has nothing to do with my title. The USA I represent has to do with finding common ground and unity, not debating divisive issues".

Politico reports:

Miss California may have lost her shot at becoming Miss USA after expressing her opposition to same-sex marriage but she’s nevertheless emerged as a star.

After getting booed by the beauty pageant crowd and berated by one of the contest judges Sunday, Carrie Prejean is suddenly a conservative sensation, a poster girl for the right who has bloggers, talk show hosts and Republican pols singing her praises.

Prejean’s beauty contest saga began Sunday when competition judge and openly gay blogger Perez Hilton asked her if she supports gay marriage.

“We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman,” she responded during the televised event. “No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised.”

Her response wasn’t exactly what Hilton—or the crowd—was expecting. Prejean ultimately finished as the first runner-up in the competition to Miss North Carolina, who drew a less combustible question about taxpayer bailouts. In an interview the next day with NBC “Today Show” host Matt Lauer, Prejean said she knew she wasn’t going to win the moment she answered.

Hilton later said in a video on his blog that Prejean’s answer did not sink her chances of winning, though his disdain for her was unmistakable.

“She lost not because she doesn’t believe in gay marriage. Miss California lost because she is a dumb [expletive].”


What a class guy.

Forget about Rush Limbaugh. The Left often is its biggest enemy.

Warning to readers: If you comment anonymously on Gannett newspaper websites, company reserves right to identify you to powerful who ask

Readers be warned.

If you sign up and register for a Gannett newspaper website, and then comment anonymously about an article, your identity can be disclosed to someone who asks -- in this case, a powerful local official in Wisconsin angry over continuing criticism by a reader.

The case in Wassau has resulted in the powerful public official sending a letter on government stationery threatening to sue the reader for libel since he commented on the official's weight and appearance in his criticism.

Gannett says its reserves the right to release your information for legal and business reasons. That's a really broad avenue. And it offers a potentially stifling impact on public comment in the marketplace of ideas.

To read more about the case, go to www.gannettblog.blogspot.com.

New national study on test score disparity proves the truth: poor, minority child's plight determined by quality, training of teachers and principals

A new national study on test score disparities between white and minority students has reaffirmed an essential truth that operators of charter public schools have always known and state teachers unions have tried to avoid and even lie about.

It is the quality of the teachers and principal at a school that is the biggest determinant in closing the achievement gaps. And if we did, the national GDP would gain %3 billion to $5 billion more each day from a more educated workforce. Then, America would not have ship in computer software and programming specialists from overseas.

President Barack Obama has asked for education reforms aimed directly at the quality of teachers and principals by calling for open enrollment for charter public schools. They are allowed to set new standards for curriculum geared to the child's needs and set higher standards for teacher performance. They also spend much less money on administration and political patronage jobs.

Teacher unions don't want such changes. And in Tennessee, the state teachers union is fighting legislaton to open up enrollment for charter schools and lift the cap on their numbers. Sadly, they have black Memphis lawmakers on their side even though African-American children are suffering in traditional public schools and from a system first geared to preserving union member jobs no matter the poor level of performance.

The evidence continues to mount that the problems in public education do not primarily belong with the parents and the environment from which the poor and minority children come. It is with the training and commitment of the people running the schools and the lack of accountability for their poor performance in turn for your tax dollars.

And universities are not turning out teachers with the experience of how to nurture and teach children from difficult environments. Practicums are based on the ideal, not the reality.

Too much in American public education is geared to serve money-sucking institutions -- from the teaching colleges to the teacher unions to the vast district administration. The child comes last, as do taxpayers who are always told they need to provide more funding.

There is enough public education spending in this nation. There is not enough accountability for those dollars in performance and results.

These test score disparities are going to sink this economy in a new century of dramatic economic change. We won't have the educated workforce to compete with China and India. And our standard of living will plummet.

It's our choice. Support the change of charter public schools and tell the teacher union to put the children first before members' job security.

The New York Times reports in this excerpt:

WASHINGTON — The lagging performance of American schoolchildren, particularly among poor and minority students, has had a negative economic impact on the country that exceeds that of the current recession, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The study, conducted by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, pointed to bleak disparities in test scores on four fronts: between black and Hispanic children and white children; between poor and wealthy students; between Americans and students abroad; and between students of similar backgrounds educated in different parts of the country.

The report concluded that if those achievement gaps were closed, the yearly gross domestic product of the United States would be trillions of dollars higher, or $3 billion to $5 billion more per day.

This was the second report on education issues by the firm’s social sector office, which said it was not commissioned by any government, business or other institution. Starting in fall 2008, the researchers reviewed federal and international tests and interviewed education researchers and economists.

In New York City, an analysis of 2007 federal test scores for fourth graders showed strikingly stratified achievement levels: While 6 percent of white students in city schools scored below a base achievement level on math, 31 percent of black students and 26 percent of Hispanic students did. In reading, 48 percent of black students and 49 percent of Hispanic students failed to reach that base level, but 19 percent of white students did.

The New York City schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, who introduced the findings at the National Press Club in Washington, said the study vindicated the idea that the root cause of test-score disparities was not poverty or family circumstances, but subpar teachers and principals. He pointed to an analysis in the report showing low-income black fourth graders from the city outperformed students in all other major urban districts on reading (they came in second in math).

“Schools can be the game changer,” he said. “We are able to get very, very different results with the same children.”

State unemployment rate soars to 9.6; Tennessee joins Mississippi, North Carolina in rates near or above double digits; human misery much higher

Tennessee's unemployment rate for March matched anecdotal evidence across state communities, soaring to 9.6 percent. A year ago, the rate was 5.7 percent.

The national unemployment rate for March was 8.5%.

Perry County had the highest rate -- an incredible 25.4%. WPLN did a good story earlier this week in talking to residents about searching for work in such a desperate environment and how they want their children as adults to move away.

The misery in the county was most evident from the interviews that were very well done.

It also is evident each Sunday at churches, where parishioners and pastors talk openly about who has been laid off and trading recommendations on where people can look for work or get help.

Tennessee's unemployment rate truly is at a crisis level, considering that it does not consider people who have simply quit looking for work after many months of no luck. Nashville's rate is about 8 percent.

Somebody better tell Gov. Bredesen we have a crisis on our hands and lawmakers to quit taking up so much time worrying about where people can take their guns and debating resolutions about slavery.

Lord, if this is all lawmakers have to meet about, it would be better they stay home and turn over their per diem expense checks to the local food pantries in their districts. That would do the people of this state some good.

HOLY S**T! The Scene grows a pair and tells the truth about Mayor Dean's convention center

After its big tomato festival spread about east Nashville, the Scene fell off my reading list.

It had lost so much fire and fury with the departure of its leader Liz Murray Garrigan. And the changes brought in by the new editor watered down the product's sense of immediacy and its undeniable swagger.

But this week, the old Scene returned in spectacular fashion with a well-reported and deftly written cover piece taking apart the Chamber of Commerce rah-rah pitch by Mayor Karl Dean and his Dean-ees about the city's desperate, "I'm going to pee my pants" need to build a billion-dollar convention center and hotel.

I'm not going to recite every pie in the sky-popping point reporter Caleb Hannan wrote and key statistics cited -- from other cities that showed how projections never met reality in big-time convention cities such as Boston and St. Louis.

But he told a complete story that is going to become a fiscal tragedy for Nashville if it drinks the fiscal Kool-Aid Mayor Dean is offering.

Remember, Dean is a student of Gov. Bredesen. People really never meant a lot of Bredesen as Nashville's mayor. He just wanted to make big deals with fellow millionaires and build things. But his deals turned out to be losers for taxpayers.

Dean's dream will be no different.

Folks, Nashville was a great city way before the Titans or Predators came. It probably was America's best kept secret for a place to live and make a living. Now it is in immediate danger of becoming much less, as the profiteers make more snake oil appeals of incredible riches on the other side of construction worksite.

So here's to the Scene. Welcome back!

We've missed you.

More -- with Dean still pouring his Kool-Aid and The Tennessean setting on the horizon as far as offering any oversight of such boondoggles -- we need you, your courage and your edge.

Making a mockery of Mother's Day; U.S. couples are stealing Hispanic children as mothers cry

While much news media focus has rightly been placed on interrogation methods to which this nation stooped during the war on terror, more needs to be focused on the inhumanity the Bush administration unleashed here at home on immigrants during his last years in office.

Unable to get his own political party to back reform of immigration law, Bush turned punitive on immigrants as his poll numbers plummeted. Yet he did not impress his own party. Nor did he make the nation safer by deterring people crossing the border. He just raised the misery level and degree of inhumanity here along with that overseas in Iraq.

The New York Times today reports that the Bush administration push to make illegal immigrants detained in worksite raids to serve prison sentences has led to mothers of children losing custody of their children to adopting American couples.

It is nothing short of theft, the most immoral kind. And it is being allowed because the skin of the mothers is brown and they do not speak the English language.

And instead of traveling thousands of miles to foreign lands and making several visits to adopt, American couples now are stealing Hispanic children simply by hiring a lawyer who makes a case to a local judge who doesn't like all the immigrants in his town.

Since these mothers are in prison, they are considered by state and local judges not to be able to care for their children. And the judges will not allow contact or provisions to be made with relatives back in home countries to take the children until mom gets out of her political imprisonment.

It is a misdemeanor to be in this nation illegally. And this nation has customarily simply deported offenders. But Bush decided to change policy and charge some offenders with a felony for showing false identification in the workplace.

And so there are prison sentences handed down, even to mothers responsible for children. Any American with money -- particularly a mother with the sole responsibility for a child -- could easily get out of serving any jail time for showing a false ID. But you can't if you don't have money to hire an attorney and speak the language.

Our laws must provide equal protection to even non-citizens, because we want the same afforded to Americans in foreign countries. This kind of injustice is far from equal protection.

The Times story is shocking and a gross miscarriage of natural law, let alone human rights. The Obama administration has promised to investigate. It needs to do more than that immediately.

As Mother's Day approaches, this outrage makes a mockery of the celebration in this nation. If American couples want children, they should not steal them from Hispanic mothers:

CARTHAGE, Mo. — When immigration agents raided a poultry processing plant near here two years ago, they had no idea a little American boy named Carlos would be swept up in the operation.

One of the 136 illegal immigrants detained in the raid was Carlos’s mother, Encarnación Bail Romero, a Guatemalan. A year and a half after she went to jail, a county court terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to her child on grounds of abandonment. Carlos, now 2, was adopted by a local couple.

In his decree, Judge David C. Dally of Circuit Court in Jasper County said the couple made a comfortable living, had rearranged their lives and work schedules to provide Carlos a stable home, and had support from their extended family. By contrast, Judge Dally said, Ms. Bail had little to offer.

“The only certainties in the biological mother’s future,” he wrote, “is that she will remain incarcerated until next year, and that she will be deported thereafter.”

It is unclear how many children share Carlos’s predicament. But lawyers and advocates for immigrants say that cases like his are popping up across the country as crackdowns against illegal immigrants thrust local courts into transnational custody battles and leave thousands of children in limbo.

“The struggle in these cases is there’s no winner,” said Christopher Huck, an immigration lawyer in Washington State.

He said that in many cases, what state courts want to do “conflicts with what federal immigration agencies are supposed to do.”

“Then things spiral out of control,” Mr. Huck added, “and it ends up in these real unfortunate situations.”

Next month, the Nebraska Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an appeal by Maria Luis, a Guatemalan whose rights to her American-born son and daughter were terminated after she was detained in April 2005 on charges of falsely identifying herself to a police officer. She was later deported.

And in South Carolina, a Circuit Court judge has been working with officials in Guatemala to find a way to send the baby girl of a Guatemalan couple, Martin de Leon Perez and his wife, Lucia, detained on charges of drinking in public, to relatives in their country so the couple does not lose custody before their expected deportation.

Patricia Ravenhorst, a South Carolina lawyer who handles immigration cases, said she had tried “to get our judges not to be intimidated by the notion of crossing an international border.”

“I’ve asked them, ‘What would we do if the child had relatives in New Jersey?’ ” Ms. Ravenhorst said. “We’d coordinate with the State of New Jersey. So why can’t we do the same for a child with relatives in the highlands of Guatemala?”

Dora Schriro, an adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said the agency was looking for ways to deal with family separations as it prepared new immigration enforcement guidelines. In visits to detention centers across the country, Ms. Schriro said, she had heard accounts of parents losing contact or custody of their children.

Child welfare laws differ from state to state. In the Missouri case, Carlos’s adoptive parents were awarded custody last year by Judge Dally after they privately petitioned the court and he terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to Carlos.

In February, immigration authorities suspended Ms. Bail’s deportation order so she could file suit to recover custody. Ms. Bail’s lawyer, John de Leon, of Miami, said his client had not been informed about the adoption proceedings in her native Spanish, and had no real legal representation until it was too late.

The lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, Joseph L. Hensley, said his clients had waited more than a year for Ms. Bail to demonstrate her commitment to Carlos, but the judge found that she had made no attempt to contact the baby or send financial support for him while she was incarcerated. The couple asked not to be named to protect Carlos’s privacy.

Ms. Bail came to the United States in 2005, and Carlos was born a year later. In May 2007, she was detained in a raid on George’s Processing plant in Butterfield, near Carthage in southwestern Missouri.

Immigration authorities quickly released several workers who had small children. But authorities said Ms. Bail was ineligible to be freed because she was charged with using false identification. Such charges were part of a crackdown by the Bush administration, which punished illegal immigrants by forcing them to serve out sentences before being deported.

Martin de Leon Perez and his wife, Lucia, who have been in a South Carolina jail for eight months, in their monthly visit with their daughter, Marisela Diana.
When Ms. Bail went to jail, Carlos, then 6 months old, was sent to stay with two aunts who remembered him as having a voracious appetite and crying constantly. But they also said he had a severe rash and had not received all of his vaccinations.

The women — each with three children of their own, no legal status, tiny apartments and little money — said the baby was too much to handle. So when a local teachers’ aide offered to find someone to take care of Carlos, the women agreed.

Then in September 2007, Ms. Bail said, the aide visited her in jail to say that an American couple was interested in adopting her son. The couple had land and a beautiful house, Ms. Bail recalled being told, and had become very fond of Carlos.

“My parents were poor, and they never gave me to anyone,” Ms. Bail recalled. “I was not going to give my son to anyone either.”

An adoption petition arrived at the jail a few weeks later. Ms. Bail, who cannot read Spanish, much less English, said she had a cellmate from Mexico translate. With the help of a guard and an English-speaking Guatemalan visitor, Ms. Bail wrote a response to the court.

“I do not want my son to be adopted by anyone,” she scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper on Oct. 28, 2007. “I would prefer that he be placed in foster care until I am not in jail any longer. I would like to have visitation with my son.”

For the next 10 months, she said, she had no communication with the court. During that time, Judge Dally appointed a lawyer for Ms. Bail, but later removed him from the case after he pleaded guilty to charges of domestic violence.

Mr. Hensley, the lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, said he had sent a letter to Ms. Bail to tell her that his clients were caring for her son, as did the court, but both letters were returned unopened. “We afforded her more due process than most people get who speak English,” Mr. Hensley said.

Ms. Bail said she had asked the public defender who was representing her in the identity theft case to help her determine Carlos’s whereabouts, but the lawyer told her she handled only criminal matters. “I went to court six times, and six times I asked for help to find my son,” she said. “But no one helped me.”

Ms. Bail got a Spanish-speaking lawyer, Aldo Dominguez, to represent her in the custody case only last June. By the time he reached her two months later — she had been transferred to a prison in West Virginia — it was too late to make her case to Judge Dally, Mr. Dominguez said.

“Her lifestyle, that of smuggling herself into the country illegally and committing crimes in this country, is not a lifestyle that can provide stability for a child,” the judge wrote in his decision. “A child cannot be educated in this way, always in hiding or on the run.”

Obama's budget cuts hit newspaper subscriptions

President Obama has shown a trend of not calling on newspaper reporters during his press conferences, inferring the industry's lessening impact on public opinion and in American households.

Now he's hitting the industry where it really hurts, reports AP.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Homeland Security Department is dropping some newspaper and magazine subscriptions to save money.

The agency has told its employees to cancel subscriptions to general interest newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post and to magazines such as Newsweek and Time by April 27.

Future subscriptions will have to be authorized in advance. The department says employees will still have access to news because most publications can be found online on an in-house Web site.

Limited subscriptions to those that aren't online will be kept in a public area and shared, cutting mail screening and delivery costs.

Spokeswoman Sara Kuban said the agency is expecting the moves to save money but does not know how much.

Read this Tribune piece that newspaper execs would rather you not; the loss of too many good journalists is why most papers won't survive

I had the privilege yesterday to catch up with Tim Ghianni, a former Tennessean columnist who was the only scribe in my time there to win the state AP's top award for commentary.

The guy could tell a story and spur a cause. More than anything, he just knew his community, and his readers loved him for it. Ghianni was part of a group of good, hustling journalists who came over from the Nashville Banner.

The day its owners decided to sell out to Gannett and close was the worst day in Nashville journalism. Everyone ultimately lost from that deal except the profiteers.

After I lost my job at The Tennessean, Ghianni accepted one of many buyouts America's news execs and managers have used to clear out a lot of the best talent and institutional knowledge in newsrooms. He served a stint as a Vanderbilt journalist in residence. He continues to write, and I'll post his writing on the passing of Banner Editor Eddie Jones on April 5.

Jones deserves to be remembered. The Banner knew Nashville as a newspaper should.

The point of me telling you about Ghianni is that he represents why print journalism will never rebound, and will probably continue to crater. When journalists like him leave and others forced out, the industry just loses another piece of its soul and further connection with its readers.

Below, you'll find another casualty, ironically a reporter directed by his managers at The Chicago Tribune to write a personal blog on the recession. His diary spoke of his family's fight to make ends meet.

Then, this week, he got laid off by the very newspaper that asked him to write about the effect of the recession on his household. I know that sounds hard to believe. The absolute cruelty of it and other decisions by newsroom managers across this nation -- who have no business having authority over the lives of good people -- are legion in what used to be my profession.

Below is the writer's last blog post for his diary. The Tribune pulled it down from its website. They did not want you or any other readers to see it.

But it deserves to be read. The Tribune Co. recently asked a bankruptcy judge to approve $13 million in bonuses to managers making these kind of decisions. Gannett, which owns The Tennessean, has been no kinder in its decisions while its execs and top editors still enjoy their bonuses and excesses. One high corporate exec recently charged the company $15,000 for his entry in a pro-am golf tournament. He then paid for it himself after his brazen act was revealed on www.gannettblog.blogspot.com.

Such an act is considered bad form when the entry fee represents half a laid-off journalist's salary.

For all the good and talented journalists who have left our profession or been forced out, there will be justice one day.

For now, let us not forget and find new ways to keep up with our friends -- who also happened to be our readers:



Goodbye from Lou Carlozo


The recession has truly hit home.

This will be my last post as a Chicago Tribune staff writer, and the author of the Recession Diaries.


Today, just an hour ago, I received word that this will be my last week as a Chicago Tribune employee. So as you can see, no one is immune from the recession–not even someone who writes about it daily, diligently and with an eye towards serving those who have had their bank accounts drained, their retirement accounts dashed, their hearts broken, and their hopes placed under a dangling sword of despair.

I, for one, refuse to be bitter or ungrateful. While it will take me some time to process being unemployed after 20-odd years in the field I love, I recognize now how much I need to take the advice I gave to you with every ounce of my passion. That is: Account for those things no recession can take away from you. Your faith in God. Your family. Your friends. Your health. Your many blessings.

I am part of an industry-wide trend that will likely result in the death of print journalism within five years time. That is not what the higher-ups would like me to tell you, nor is it a result of anything wrong that they have done. On the contrary, I admire Sam Zell and all he has done to keep this company going. I have not always agreed with the new ownership’s decisions or rationale, but my opinions come from an uniformed perspective. I write for deadline; I do not know the intricacies of finance and balancing the books. (Perhaps my early dispatches on the recession front have proved this.)

So where will I be? Looking for a job. Playing with my kids. Walking, talking and praying with my wife. And of course, praying for and hopefully hearing from you, my readers, who have made this year of 2009 one of the most rewarding ever. I started in this business in 1989 as a long-haired kid without a clue about journalism, but a heart for the written word, public service and fighting for the little guy. My hair has long since vanished–oh, the vagaries of middle age!–but the idealist and optimist in me refuses to walk gently into that good night. Nor will I allow it to do so.

Also, a tip of the hat to the best boss a man could ask for, Lara Weber. It was her idea to start this blog, and without her inspiration, support, and most of all guidance and good cheer, I could not have achieved anything on the recession reporting front. She’s a woman any journalist would be lucky to call boss, confidant and dear, dear friend. I will miss you, Lara.

Please stay in touch, and wish me luck. feedbacker@aol.com.
In God’s Peace, Lou

The first shoe drops: GM to shut most of its plants for 9 weeks this summer as inventories, debt build

The first of many cuts to come was leaked from General Motors this afternoon that the automaker would shut most of its plants for nine weeks this summer.

GM faces a June 1 deadline on debt payment that it does not expect to meet. The alternative is bankruptcy reorganization.

The economic ripple effect will undoubtedly be substantial, here in Middle Tennessee and in Michigan.

AP reports:

DETROIT (AP) -- General Motors Corp. is planning to temporarily close most of its U.S. factories for up to nine weeks this summer because of slumping sales and growing inventories of unsold vehicles, two people briefed on the plan said Wednesday.

The exact dates of the closures were not known, but both people said they will occur around the normal two-week shutdown in July to change from one model year to the next. Neither person wanted to be identified because workers have not been told of the shutdowns.

GM spokesman Chris Lee would not comment other than to say the company notifies employees before making any production cuts public.

The automaker is living on $13.4 billion in government loans and faces a June 1 deadline to cut its debt, reduce labor costs and take other restructuring steps. If it doesn't meet the deadline, the company's CEO has said it will enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

United Auto Workers officials at several factories said they have meetings scheduled Thursday and Friday with plant managers and GM human resource officials to discuss production changes.

The automaker's sales were down 49 percent in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, and GM had a 123-day supply of cars and trucks at the end of March, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank. GM already has more than a six-month supply of several models.

Southern Poverty Law Center calls treatment of low-income Latinos in Nashville and the South a civil rights 'crisis' demanding reform legislation

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the premiere civil rights investigatory organization in this region, has called the treatment of Hispanics in Nashville and the South a civil rights crisis that demands action.

In turn, Hispanics call their treatment here and in other parts of the South as like being in "a war zone", according to the report "Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South".

Nashville was one of five cities besides other towns examined by the center in its investigation.

Music City is a natural place to start due to the human rights abuse of a Hispanic woman about to give birth last July. She was arrested for a traffic violation later dismissed, tortured during labor by the Davidson County sheriff's department, requiring her to be shackled. She subsequently was separated from her child and and not allowed to express her milk for her infant's health and the relieving of her pain.

A federal lawsuit has been filed over her treatment.

The Southern Poverty Law Center cited numerous instances of Hispanics being denied their wages. There also is a presumption by law enforcement officials that they are here illegally just because of how they look.

That is called racial profiling.

Nashville, purported to be the cradle of the civil rights movement, has shown itself to be outrageously bigoted in how it treats Hispanics, here legally or not, born in this nation or not. Their status as being human beings, let alone heads of families, does not come into consideration.

The continuation of the heinous 287g deportation program by elected officials here has destroyed many families and resulted in the unlawful detention for hours of hundreds of immigrants legally here.

The report cries out for action by Nashville officials, and not just believing they have shown themselves to be a tolerant city simply by defeating an English only referendum. They did for Chamber of Commerce business reasons, not moral ones.

Finally, a prominent organization has put Nashville on record for its bigotry. Now let's see if Nashville responds to this blight on its image:

Low-income Latino immigrants in the South are routinely the targets of wage theft, racial profiling and other abuses driven by an anti-immigrant climate that harms all Latinos regardless of their immigration status, according to a report released today by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The report — Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South — documents the experiences of Latino immigrants who face increasing hostility as they fill low-wage jobs in Southern states that had few Latino residents until recent years.

"This report documents the human toll of failed policies that relegate millions of people to an underground economy, where they are beyond the protection of the law," said Mary Bauer, author of the report and director of the SPLC's Immigrant Justice Project. "Workplace abuses and racial profiling are rampant in the South."

Under Siege is based on a survey of 500 low-income Latinos — including legal residents, undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens — at five locations in the South. The locations were Nashville, Charlotte, New Orleans, rural southern Georgia, and several towns and cities in northern Alabama.

The survey findings, coupled with accounts from in-depth interviews, depict a region where Latinos are routinely cheated out of wages by employers and denied basic health and safety protections. They are racially profiled by overzealous law enforcement agents and victimized by criminals who know they are reluctant to report crime to these same authorities. Even legal residents and U.S. citizens of Latino descent said racial profiling, bigotry and other forms of discrimination are staples of their daily lives.

A number of immigrants in the survey described the South as a "war zone."

"The assumption is that every Latino possibly is undocumented," Angeles Ortega-Moore, an immigrant advocate in North Carolina, told SPLC researchers. "So it [discrimination] has spread over into the legal population."

Maria, who came to Tennessee from Colombia, told SPLC researchers her immigration papers are in order, but she is still afraid of being stopped by the police. "You never know when you will come across a racist police officer," she says in the report.

Discrimination against Latinos in the region constitutes a civil rights crisis that must be addressed, the SPLC report says. The report concludes that comprehensive immigration reform — including a workable path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants — is the only realistic, fair and humane solution.

Reform legislation must be coupled with strong enforcement of labor and civil rights protections. This would make crime victims and communities safer, curb racial profiling and other abuses, and better protect the wages and working conditions of all workers, according to the report.

"We're talking about a matter of basic human rights here," said SPLC President Richard Cohen. "By allowing this cycle of abuse and discrimination to continue, we're creating an underclass of people who are invisible to justice and undermining our country's fundamental ideals."

Geithner's rah-rah boosterism for TARP becoming less convincing each month as banks aren't lending

Each month, U.S. Treasury Timothy Geithner goes up to Capitol Hill to try and cheer up lawmakers that the TARP rescue of America's financial industry that began last fall is working.

Of course, these lawmakers are seeing differently back home in their districts and hearing the same from their constituents.

Geithner's monthly pleading is enough to convince investors not to completely desert financial stocks as they did on Monday. The Dow rose 127 points today.

But the evidence grows, and even Geithner admitted, that this nation's credit markets remain tight. Cash is not flowing into businesses to expand and hire people. Banks simply aren't lending.

And part of the reason is that home loan losses on their books are greater than believed. And so they need all the cash they can have on hand.

That point was stressed by the NYU economist who predicted this economic downturn. And he says we are in for even more bad news on banks and an end to what he calls the suckers' rally on Wall Street. That CNBC's Jim Cramer thinks differently makes Nouriel Roubini''s contentions even more convincing.

He has predicted a Dow 5,000. I believe he is right. Folks, we're not going to be done with bad times for quite a while.

AP reports:

Well-known economist Nouriel Roubini, one of the few experts to foresee the current global crisis, said Tuesday a recent "suckers rally" in stock markets would fade as the U.S. economy continues to wither and the financial system suffers unexpected shocks.

Hopes the world economy will stage a faster recovery this year have fueled a six-week rise in global markets, with major benchmarks on Wall Street and in Asia up more than 20 percent over just six weeks.

But Roubini, a professor at New York University's business school and former adviser at the U.S Treasury Department, was doubtful and predicted markets would test the lows seen in March.

"For people who say there are green shoots, I seen only yellow weeds frankly," Roubini said at a conference in Hong Kong. "It's not a true recovery. It's just a bear-market rally, it's a suckers rally."

That's because the U.S. economy won't grow again until 2010 after contracting by 2 percent this year, he said. Unemployment will hit 11 percent next year and corporate earnings will come in worse-than-expected, he predicted.

Troubles in the financial sector, meanwhile, are far from over and will be worse than many expect. The results of the government's "stress tests" will show even the biggest 19 American banks don't have enough capital to cope with the huge losses they'll inevitably suffer on souring loans.

"The losses are much more than people are predicting and (the banks) have not reserved enough," Roubini said.

"It looks ugly for every one of those 19 banks, let alone the smaller ones," he added. "So it's going to be ugly for the financial system."

Obama's paltry budget cuts give credibility to tea parties; $100 million is far from a good start

The Obama administration is sounding a lot like the Bush administration in its twisting of reality when confronted with an unavoidable truth.

On his blog, ABC News' White House reporter Jake Tapper recounts an exchange between him, an AP reporter and the WH Press Secretary over the minuscule size of the budget cuts the president asked of his Cabinet that morning and the size of the deficit he has created.

The Beltway two-step around the obvious by the press secretary does not provide much credibility to the Obama administration on ever being able to really cut spending and gives more credence to the complaints of Tea Party participants a week ago.

Give the White House Press Corps credit for taking the administration to task for several promises made on the campaign trail but not yet kept in office.

Tapper writes:

I interjected in an exchange between White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and another reporter today, so I've included their exchange (with my interruption) as well as my own.

JENNIFER LOVEN, AP: The $100 million target figure that the president talked about today with the Cabinet, can you explain why so small? I know he talked about -- you know, you add up 100 million and 100 million, and eventually, you get somewhere, but it would take an awfully long time to add up hundred million (inaudible) in the deficit. Why not target a bigger number?

GIBBS: (Smiling) Well, I think only in Washington, D.C. is a hundred million dollars...

LOVEN: The deficit's very large. It's not a joke.

GIBBS: No, I'm...

LOVEN: The deficit's giant. $100 million really is only a step.

GIBBS: But no joke.

LOVEN: You sound like you're joking about it, but it's not funny.

GIBBS: I'm not making jokes about it. I'm being completely sincere that only in Washington, D.C. is $100 million not a lot of money. It is where I'm from. It is where I grew up. And I think it is for hundreds of millions of Americans.

LOVEN: The point is it's not a very big portion of the deficit.

TAPPER: You were talking about an appropriations bill a few weeks ago about $8 billion being minuscule -- $8 billion in earmarks. We were talking about that and you said that that...

GIBBS: Well, in terms of -- in...(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: ...$100 million is a lot but $8 billion is small?

GIBBS: Well, what I'm saying is I think it all adds up just as the president said, just as Jennifer was good enough to do in her question. If you think we're going to get rid of $1.3 trillion deficit by eliminating one thing, I'd be -- and the administration would be innumerably happy for you to let us know what that is.

Changes in Atlanta Journal-Constitution's editorial board reflect industry recognition that its values should reflect public's, even in the South

The massive change in the composition and direction of the editorial board for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reflects recognition by the newspaper that it is indeed located in the South.

And the values in its positions on issues should at least try more often to reflect that of the region -- not a sense of Beltway elitism and entitlement.

Gone to Washington, D.C., where she fits in much more, is editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker. She was as much a celebrity as an opinion writer, albeit a very good one. Washington will suit her well to make the rounds of all the Sunday morning TV talk shows as an AJC columnist, not an opinion setter.

A couple of other editorial board members were jettisoned. And the newspaper's editor has said that the newspaper will focus on local issues more, not the hot button ones of abortion, the Supreme Court, etc.

Local is why people buy newspapers in the first place. The AJC was never a paper of record as The New York Times. But more, editorial boards such as that of the AJC and The Tennessean have defied area values on so many issues that did not even pretend to seek some common ground.

And matters of faith and devotion to the military and its service were infrequently addressed, let alone championed. While extolling First Amendment rights of free speech, the boards looked down their noses at just as precious Second Amendment rights and the right to bear arms.

But the marketplace changed, and readers found their values reflected more on the Internet, where issues were discussed and vetted.

Yes, there are times that an editorial board must defy local values, or perhaps the perception that the loudest are speaking for the majority. Boards must provide community leadership. The Civil Rights' history of AJC publisher Ralph McGill is a proud legacy for American journalism.

But too often, editorial boards come off as simply sticking their thumbs in the eyes of readers just because they can and their words are printed on paper and distributed to hundreds of thousands of households.

Yet its members are not seen in the community, nor is their availability advertised. Their work is not signed. The precept of holding them above the fray no longer is credible. The real world demands experience, knowing what people are feeling and living on the issues of the day and issues the board does not even know about.

Picking up the morning newspaper while members sit around a large table to discuss what's inside is NO way for an editorial board to operate anymore.

I've seen it firsthand. I've been on two editorial boards in my career.

The AJC's change simply reflects a business decision to try and keep the readers it still has, who happen to live in the South. The newspaper has realized or surrendered to the idea that Southern values are not bad values.

But better, its decision orders its editorial board members to finally come down from their Ivory Tower and engage the populace below -- instead of taking satisfaction in looking down on them.

Moody's says it may downgrade Gannett debt deeper into 'junk' status; more cuts needed to keep from violating lending pacts with debtors

Moody's Investors Service says that Gannett Co. Inc., owner of The Tennessean, has a big problem.

Its declining earnings are not going to be enough to pay off its debtors. Because of that, Moody's is downgrading its rating on the debt of the company and its ability to pay creditors without further action.

Such a rating tells buyers and holders of the company's debt that a company's ability to pay its debt is sinking further into trouble. And then a nasty word called "default" starts being thrown around in some circles.

That's why Gannett stock dropped a whopping 65 cents by 2 p.m. EDT. That's a whale of a drop considering the stock is only worth about $3 a share.

HOWEVER, Moody's believes Gannett will be able to meets its debt obligations with cash flow and further cost reductions.

Further costs reductions means you -- if you still subscribe or advertise with Gannett newspapers -- will be getting even less of a quality product.

AP reports:


NEW YORK (AP) -- Moody's Investors Service said Monday it may downgrade the ratings on newspaper publisher Gannett Co. Inc.'s debt further into "junk" status.

Moody's placed on review for possible downgrade the company's "Ba1" corporate family rating, "Ba1" probability of default rating and "Ba2" senior unsecured note ratings. All ratings are considered speculative grade.

The review stems from Moody's expectations for continued decline in advertising revenue, which will pressure the company's earnings going forward. Gannett, the publisher of USA Today and other titles, may be required to amend certain debt-to-earnings covenants in its bank credit facilities by the end of the year, Moody's said, to avoid a covenant violation.

Moody's said the company's free cash flow and cost reduction efforts should help it obtain an amendment to its loans.

Late last week, the McLean, Va.-based company reported a 60 percent drop in first-quarter profit as advertising revenue plunged. But results came in just slightly above analysts' expectations.

Gannett also pledged to use most of its cash flow to pay down debt, which stood at $3.7 billion at the end of March. The company's next big repayment, of $500 million, isn't due until 2011.

Moody's said about $1.56 billion in debt is affected by its action.

Newspaper publishers have been suffering from a sharp drop in advertising revenue, as the recession takes its toll on companies' budgets and more and more advertisers move to the Internet. Five other U.S. newspaper publishers have been driven into bankruptcy protection since December.

Credit markets worsening, says BoA chief; investors flee for safety as Dow falls 200 points

Even though Bank of America reported a nearly $3 billion profit for the first quarter, its CEO scared the hell out of the financial markets today by saying credit markets will worsen with many more bad loans mounting.

Troubled loans, or nonperforming assets for BoA, increased to $25.7 billion from $7.8 billion a year ago.

The Dow was down more than 200 points by midday, and a new group of analysts are starting to speak out that the current Bear market rally does not have the economic data to sustain it. One analyst said the coming fall in the value of equities will be more severe due to the current run up.

Easy come. Easy go.

Investors are starting to believe that the banks cannot sustain their first quarter profitability as the other shoe is going to drop in their home lending portfolios with ARMs coming due in giant housing markets such as California.

Credit markets are not going to thaw or will simply refreeze. Nashville Mayor Karl Dean has picked a hell of a time to try to sell a $600 million convention center project in the credit markets.

AP reports:

Bank of America warned of worsening loan default problems Monday even as it posted a first-quarter profit of $2.81 billion.

Investors concerned about the banking industry's health sent financial stocks and the overall market sharply lower.

Although Bank of America said higher revenue from the purchase of Merrill Lynch helped offset a surge in credit costs, it took a hefty $13.4 billion provision for credit losses during the first three months of the year.

The bank's stock [BAC 8.78 -1.82 (-17.17%) ] fell sharply as the overall stock market slid.

Although last week Wall Street was happy with better-than-expected results from JPMorgan Chase [JPM 31.37 -1.89 (-5.68%) ], Goldman Sachs Group [GS 118.64 -1.96 (-1.63%) ] and Citigroup [C 3.06 -0.59 (-16.16%) ], banking companies generally benefited during the quarter from unusually strong bond trading, a trend not expected to continue while loan problems persist.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America reported a similar performance during the first quarter.

"Like it or not, capital markets is now a core business for Bank of America, and that has more volatile returns than other businesses," said Celent banking analyst Bart Narter. "Bank of America is no longer exclusively a retail bank and there can be more fluctuations."

Bank of America earned $2.81 billion after paying preferred dividends, or 44 cents per share, compared with a profit of $1.02 billion, 23 cents per share, in the year ago period. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected profit of 4 cents per share.

Troubled loans, or nonperforming assets, increased to $25.7 billion from $7.8 billion a year ago. The bank also lost $1.8 billion on card services, after posting a profit a year ago.

"Credit is bad and we believe credit is going to get worse before it will eventually stabilize and improve." Lewis said during a conference call with analysts, noting that the bank continues to face challenges. "Whether that turn is later this year or in the first half of 2010, I'm not going to hazard a guess."

In his salute to his columnists, The Carpetbagger editor fails to mention that his writers simply promote the same Chamber of Commerce line

Running out of anything substantial to write about, The Carpetbagger editor of The Tennessean wrote yesterday about staff members who write -- columnists.

In his testimonial to them, Mark Silverman forgot to mention some important points -- all must follow the Chamber of Commerce line in positions taken. No rocking the boat, please. And don't say anything bad about Gov. Bredesen. He's always right because has a lot of money.

And there was no more sickening proof of these rules yesterday than Gail Kerr's column promoting the building of a $600 million convention center in the midst of a recession and budget cuts affecting police.

Kerr's point was that many of the skeptical folks in Nashville have always said no to projects that turned out great for the city. She cited the Parthenon, the Ryman and Bud Adams wanting to go the Super Bowl.

Wow, what a list!

But it was obvious from her writing that the financial considerations of such a project such as the convention center are beyond her. And entering the Muni bond market while credit markets still are mostly frozen will demand more from any annual bond payments the hotel/motel tax can cover. That leaves it to taxpayers locally to cover the difference -- as always.

Ironically, Kerr was the lead reporter on the Titans coming to Nashville and even got to go and sit in Bud Adams' office in Houston. That certainly would leave me emotional. But all the promotional work by all involved was based on a gross misrepresentation: that the Titans deal would not cost taxpayers a thing.

I arrived after the deal had been sealed. And then editor Frank Sutherland confronted me in the newsroom on a column I was writing about the actual cost of the deal. He repeated the line that deal would not cost taxpayers a thing.

After hearing Sutherland's loud protestation, the new city hall reporter, Mark Ippolito,, came over and told Sutherland in front of a lot of people that he was wrong.

First, taxpayers were being soaked for $56 million they had overpaid in water bills.

Second, each year's budget would first have to pay $4 million in bond payments on the financial vehicle used to the build the stadium.

Later, taxpayers found out that they had to pay another $1 million a year for maintenance on a stadium they technically owned but Adams controlled.

And now Adams has the right to call in $177 million in improvements on a stadium that is growing quite old by NFL standards. I wonder who is going to pay for all those improvements?

Kerr never has been able to recognize these things. Her purpose is to serve as a Chamber rah-rah writer. You'll notice in her column that she didn't mention other big projects that a lot of skeptics did not like and rightly so. These big deal have turned into money losers:

Americans Airlines,
Dell Computer,
The Arena,
The Predators deal.

Tennessean investigative reporter Shelia Wissner even proved the Dell deal would be a loser for taxpayers, but the newspaper still endorsed it. The Chamber rules.

Nashvillians have a right to be skeptical. And a $600 million convention deal while its public schools have failed and tent cities are rising around the area and police numbers may be cut is the very definition of greed to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

Unfortunately, this city doesn't have a columnist to say these things and present the full history of the bad deals in this city that should have been turned down.

Here's why newspapers lost to Google in making the Web proftable; too much greed to invest

Alan D. Mutter, now a Silicon Valley CEO but formerly a big-time newsman in Chicago and San Francisco, has some words for newspaper publishers and editors grumbling about how Google took away so much of their revenue and credibility.

Get over it. You had many chances and blew it.

From my point of view, newspapers in general -- with some notable exceptions -- were never willing to make the big investment in the new technology in the beginning ... and even now. That's because the industry was tied to unrealistic profit rates. And that greed has now killed the industry.

For instance, the web sites for Gannett Co., Inc. and The Tennessean are slow and cumbersome in a time that readers want news fast and easy to find. Gannett has never been willing to make the needed investment, because the profit margins at its newspapers have been so demanding.

Below, Mutter shows the opportunities missed by an industry over the past one and a half decades. Now, it suffers for its greed and finds itself on the verge of extinction in the print form:

:: Several newspapers launched their first websites by the time Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University in 1995 and started noodling on a research project called BackRub.

:: Two or three years before the first public peek of the still-nascent Google in 1998, the ill-fated and short-lived New Century Network had a plan to aggregate the content from 140 newspapers in searchable format for the web. The plan, which included the idea of inserting ads in selected markets at the push of a button, died when NCN succumbed to industry infighting.

:: It was not until October, 2000 – a good five years after most newspapers were up and running on the web – that Google figured out how to make money off its spectacularly growing traffic by selling keyword advertising.

As Google and many other savvy online publishers learned how to capitalize on the openness and interactivity of the Internet, newspaper publishers stubbornly spent the last 1½ decades trying to sustain their once-enviable print business model in the face of overwhelming evidence that everything was changing: technology, consumer patterns and advertiser behavior.

For an excellent example of the sort of opportunities missed by the industry, look no further than this tale of how the Boston Globe blew the chance in 1995 to buy a significant share of Monster.Com for a comparatively modest $1 million.

Or, ask yourself why Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, never started its own online stock site. Instead, Dow Jones waited until 2004 and spent $520 million to buy MarketWatch, faithfully printing stock listings in the newspaper all the while.

Today, print advertising has fallen off a cliff because consumers find it faster, easier, more timely and more fun to get their news online. Advertisers increasingly are gravitating to online media instead of print, because it is cheaper, highly targetable and the results can be readily measured and analyzed.

None of this is Google’s fault. Blaming Google won’t help.

Obama pledging budget cuts beginning Monday

Perhaps feeling the heat from last week's tea party protests across the nation, President Obama has pledged to begin program cuts tomorrow across all Cabinet departments.

The WSJ reports from the Summit of the Americas:

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad -- President Barack Obama promised Saturday to eliminate dozens of government programs that have been shown to be "wasteful or ineffective" and said he will call on his cabinet to hunt their budgets for more.

"There will be no sacred cows, and no pet projects. All across America, families are making hard choices, and it's time their government did the same," Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio and video address.

He said that on Monday, at his first, full cabinet meeting, he will ask all agency heads for specific budget cut proposals. He cited efforts under way at the Pentagon to reform contracting procedures and kill hundreds of billions of dollars in "wasteful spending and cost overruns." He also pointed to a decision to end a Department of Homeland Security consulting contract to create new seals and logos that has cost $3 million since 2003.

He said that in the coming weeks, he will announce dozens more programs to be eliminated.

"We need to restore the American people's confidence in their government -- that it is on their side, spending their money wisely, to meet their families' needs," the president said.

Why is the Left so angry? A Washington Post reporter wants to know what's up with liberals

With all the anti-tax or anti-spending tea parties of the past week, the political Right gets portrayed as being angry and irrational.

But a fascinating piece was written today by The Washington Post's White House reporter Dana Milbank on the venom coming from liberal readers.

It seems we have reached such extremes in this country in our thinking, which is a carry over from the Bush years and perhaps aggravated by the Great Recession. The New York Times reports today in an analysis piece that some folks on the Left are angry at the president for not taking hard stands to bring change to Washington.

I do not know if there is a Great Silent Majority as Richard Nixon claimed during Vietnam when it comes to public opinion. There wasn't an Internet back then.

But the polarization in this nation is most unfortunate at a time when it will take extraordinary consensus on some major issues to turn this nation around.

I had my share of readers from the extremes of political thought aiming their words at me when I was a political columnist for The Tennessean, Hispanic magazine and now on this blog.

It seems people want to label you as a writer, that way they can dismiss all your thoughts as "O, you're so right wing" or "that's just more bleeding heart liberal stuff".

In my writing, I take the issue and people involved in it, just like most Americans do. I value personal experience over ideology in taking a position. And I try and pray and listen to God and his wisdom.

Anger is too commonplace now. We need more time to think about what we're saying and writing. We are in unprecedented economic times in this nation and around this world.

Think about it. Pray about it. Then join the marketplace of ideas with words well chosen. And leave the labels at home.

Milbank writes:

Dear Reader:

I wish to apologize to you for my behavior last week.

On Tuesday, I learned that I am a right-wing hack. I am not a journalist. I am typical of the right wing. I am why newspapers are going broke. I write garbage. I am angry with Barack Obama. I misquote Obama. I am bitter. I am a certified idiot. I am lame. I am a Republican flack.

On Thursday, I realized that I am a media pimp with my lips on Obama's butt. I am a bleeding-heart liberal who wants nothing more than for the right to fall on its face. I am part of the ObamaMedia. I am pimping for the left. I am carrying water for Obama. Lord, am I an idiot.

I discovered all this from the helpful feedback provided to me in the "reader comments" section at the end of my past four columns on washingtonpost.com. I undertook this exercise on the advice of former washingtonpost.com editor Doug Feaver, who wrote on these pages recently that journalists need to take the comments seriously ["Listening to the Dot-Comments," op-ed, April 9]. Further, he added in his blog, "those who don't are making a mistake."

Now, I may be a pimp and an idiot -- but I did not want to make a mistake. So I reviewed all 1,800 comments posted on my columns over the course of a week. As a sociological experiment, it was fascinating.

The comments are naturally an unscientific indicator, but the impression I got is consistent with what I've heard from colleagues: The vitriol of last year's presidential campaign has outlasted the election. For the right, this isn't terribly surprising; their guys lost the White House in 2008 and control of both chambers of Congress in 2006, so lashing out in frustration is to be expected. The left, however, is more difficult to explain. It made sense for them to be angry when George W. Bush was in the White House. But now, even under Obama, the anger on the left is, if anything, more personal and vitriolic than on the right.

A reader in an online chat brought this to my attention a couple of months ago, noting the animosity in the comments following a column. "Did you torture their cats and grandmothers? Most of the truly unhinged comments appear to come from Democrats, who apparently think you're Cindy McCain in reverse drag."

I replied that, to keep my blood pressure under control, I don't read the comments, and that I did, in fact, torture their cats.

Well, last week I read the comments. On April 10, I wrote a column about an Obama appearance urging Americans to refinance their mortgages -- a fairly gentle piece pointing out that the president sounded like a LendingTree.com pitchman. The comments compared me to Bernard Goldberg and Glenn Beck. One complained that "I gave Bush and the Republicans a pass."

Actually, a National Review column called me "the most anti-Bush reporter" in the White House press corps, but never mind that. "Uh oh, Milbank," wrote commenter "farfalle44." "Now the Obamabots have labeled you an Obama hater -- watch out!"

For Thursday's column, I criticized the "tea party" outside the White House. Conservatives left hundreds of indignant comments -- I was an Obama "lap dog" and "licking Obama's shoes" -- but that didn't buy me credibility with the left. "You do a real good job of attracting all the ill-informed, mathematically challenged, left-wing haters," said one reader. "I bet ya mom's really proud!"

So why is the left so angry? I don't know (I'm an idiot), so I put the question to the readers in my weekly online chat on Friday.

A reader from Rockville described it as a "sore winner" phenomenon. "People get used to being angry and when things change, they don't. So they find stuff to be mad about." Another said that some on the left "feel obligated to stay in the fight" because of the harsh treatment of Obama by the right.

But many focused on a frustration on the left caused by Obama's centrism -- his opposition to prosecuting those involved with torture, for example. "I am angry because the whole Republican party has not been rounded up and thrown into a black site," one wrote. A reader in Evanston, Ill., took a similar view, that true believers on the left don't want "b.s. rhetoric about looking forward." Okay, but why wouldn't this be directed at Obama? Readers explained that some of it is. But, "if we yell obscenities at Obama," replied a reader in Dunnellon, Fla., "we get a visit from the Secret Service. Yelling them at you is worry-free."

So the angry left should thank me: I'm taking one for the team.

The doctors may be largest impediment to real health care reform to preserve American families

I've had three conversations this week about health care reform to finally do something about reducing the astronomical cost of coverage that simply continues to rise and bankrupt American households.

One conversation was with hospital medical specialist, who supports universal health care. I noted that the new economy will demand universal coverage since new jobs created will probably be contract ones without benefits of any kind. And people are not going to be able to afford coverage on their own, particularly if they have a pre-existing condition.

The doctor said that any reform must be brought about by equal sacrifice from doctors, insurance companies and hospitals. And he says that won't ever happen. The greed is too engrained.

Today I was talking over lunch with an auditor for one of the largest health care- providing companies in the nation. This person knows where all the waste and overspending is. And this person sees more doctors dropping patients tied to Medicare because of the slow and low reimbursement rates.

So where are these people to go just because caring for them by doctors is not profitable enough?

The final conversation comes in a note from a former professor and dear father-figure:

Tim, we hear a lot about health insurance, but that alone is not the solution to the medical care crisis in this country. I have two health insurance plans and yet the out-of-pocket costs for my wife and me totals more each year that all our other living costs combined. Such costs have plunged many into bankruptcy and home loss. The greed I see among health care professionals is enough to sicken one. Also, the insurance premiums alone are staggering for most people.

Something has to give!

So it looks like this cause has to first center its focus and passion on the health care professional, who are manipulating the system for treatments and other tasks that are running up the bills for American households.

That's fine with me. I just want to get started -- now. Let's go, Mr. President, and take on the AMA!

Obama, my Uncle Hugo share exchange at Summit; can diplomatic hugs be far behind?

My Uncle Hugo, president of Venezuela, is nuts. But he has a lot of oil underneath his country and just won a president election.

So that makes him an important nut.

At the Summit of the Americas, it was good to see President Obama shakes hands today and smile with President Chavez, adversaries at least able to be in the same room and act civil. Does the handshake mean more than that? I don't think so.

From what Reuters reports so far on what my uncle has said about Obama, a tad more graciousness may be necessary from my kin:

PORT OF SPAIN, April 17 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday greeted and shook hands with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez during an impromptu meeting with the anti-U.S. leader at the Summit of the Americas.

Photographs released by the Venezuelan government showed Chavez, a fierce foe of former President George W. Bush, smiling and clasping hands with Obama at the start of the summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Trinidad.

"I greeted Bush with this hand eight years ago; I want to be your friend," Chavez told Obama, according to a Venezuelan presidential press office statement.

Chavez, a staunch ally of Cuba, had became one of the Bush's administrations most strident critics. In March, he called Obama at best an "ignoramus" after the U.S. leader said Chavez obstructed progress in Latin America.

Ties between Washington and Caracas have frayed under Chavez, who often accuses U.S. officials of trying to topple him. Chavez expelled the U.S. envoy to Caracas in September in a dispute over U.S. activities in Venezuelan ally Bolivia.

Former soldier Chavez says socialist revolution can counter U.S. free-market policies in South America and he has become a standard-bearer for anti-U.S. sentiment in the region. But Washington has branded him a threat to regional stability. (Reporting by Patrick Markey; Editing by Eric Walsh)

Worldwide response to Susan Boyle represents new lesson for society: everyone has talents worthy of being offered, appreciated

I can't get enough of the Susan Boyle clip from "Britain's Got Talent", the first version of what became American Idol here in the states.

But the wonderful aspect of the British show is the absence of an age limit. And so a 47-year-old woman from Blackburn, Scotland, looking like Edith Bunker from the All In Family series, took the stage with snickers and rolled eyes from the audience and of course, Simon Cowell.

But her voice did all the talking, and she nailed "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables like she was part of the London or Broadway cast. I've only seen the Broadway version -- twice on Broadway. "I Dreamed a Dream" is always a show stopper for the breadth of emotion on the piece.

The moral of the Susan Boyle story is not everyone with talent has to have thin waistline, blonde hair and blue eyes. And they don't have to be in their 20s and 30s. If you haven't seen the clip, go to YouTube.com and plug in her name. It is well worth the watch over and over.

It inspires. It shows the power of the human spirit. This woman never really had a chance to pursue a career with her voice because she was busy taking care of her mother until she passed away recently. She built her voice singing Karaoke in the local pub.

For all of us, offer your talents. Join the choir, or some effort in your community. While you may not receive an ovation as Susan Boyle, you still will impress and inspire and make the world a better place with your presence.

Susan Boyle's gift is one that will be remembered with a smile for a very long time.

Never Forget: Saturday package drive is chance for you to tell our troops that their service still matters; contribute small items to package drive

For the past five years, a group of Tennessee Marine mothers have been making sure their loved ones and those in the other services are not forgotten.

So three times a year they send care packages, which to our men and women in the field treasure as a Godsend from home. These packages mean so much to these heroes giving so much in return.

The latest package mailing is Saturday in Mt. Juliet. Set up and the receiving of donations is from 4-7 p.m. the evening before.

Here is what is needed and where to go to make a difference for our troops:

PLEASE join us for our April 18th care package event!

Place : Grace Baptist Church
201 Belinda Parkway
Mount Juliet, TN 37122

SET UP : Friday, April 17th 4 PM - 7:30 PM
We will set up tables, sort and
organize donations.

CONTINUED SET UP: Sat., April 18 10 PM - Noon

LUNCHEON - BRING A DISH TO SHARE! WE EAT AT NOON

PACKING BOXES WILL BEGIN IMMEDIATELY AFTER LUNCH!

PLEASE MAKE AN EFFORT AT WORK OR WITHIN YOUR
CHURCH TO COLLECT ITEMS FOR OUR TROOPS. HERE'S
WHAT WE NEED:

TEA BAGS
POWDERED GATORADE (SMALL SIZE)
SLIM JIMS / BEEF JERKY
CRACKERS AND EASY CHEESE
KRAFT EASY MAC
INSTANT SOUPS
POUCHES OF TUNA/CHICKEN
SPICES (ONION POWDER ETC.) NOT LARGE SIZE
WHITE ATHLETIC SOCKS
CHAPSTICK / LIP BALM
SMALL PKG. BABY WIPES
FOOT POWDER
EYE DROPS
SUNFLOWER SEEDS
CANNED SPAGHETTI / RAVIOLI
VIENNA SAUSAGES (NO PORK)
CD'S / DVD'S
TRAVEL SIZED HAND SANITIZERS
INEXPENSIVE HAND HELD VIDEO
PRE PAID PHONE CARDS
AA BATTERIES

WE ALSO INCLUDE CARDS, LETTERS, AND DRAWINGS FROM CHILDREN
AND ADULTS. THIS ADDS A PERSONAL TOUCH THAT THE TROOPS LOVE
TO RECEIVE! THIS IS A WONDERFUL WAY FOR YOUR GROUP, CHILDREN
OR ORGANIZATION TO SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!!

WE KNOW EVERYONE IS HAVING A DIFFICULT TIME. PLEASE TRY TO
BUY ONE ITEM FROM THE LIST OR MAKE A CASH DONATION.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED GENEROSITY,

ARLENE SMITH
PACKAGE DRIVE CHAIR

Tea Parties and Progress: Protests should rely less on Republicans and find new common ground

I didn't join in the tea parties held here and across the nation yesterday.

I've never viewed tax day as a bad day, even though I paid my highest tax bill ever yesterday. But I had a great year financially with one-time gains I can only thank God for, not myself.

I've also view April 15 as an opportunity to say thanks for being born in the greatest nation in the world with the greatest opportunity for individual advancement and unchallenged religious liberty.

I also see it as a chance to invest in our military, and in the lives of loved ones like Marine Sgt. Zachary Ross of Nashville, my nephew Victor Chavez in the Navy and my cousin, Maj. Andrew Ferguson, in the Army.

These men along with women protect my freedom to have money on tax day to pay the government. Our debt to them can never be repaid.

Ultimately, it is nothing we really do that creates that wealth under which we live and for which we are taxed. It is all a matter of fate, or more specifically God's blessings, that one had two, great working parents as role models, or one didn't get cancer at 24 or terminal leukemia like me at 47, or there wasn't a drunken driver on the road at the same time when you were coming home tired from working all evening.

So I've always seen my ability to pay on April 15 as a wonderful blessing.

And it is on that point that it probably wasn't the greatest idea to hold tax protests on April 15. There is and should remain a big difference in paying for the workings of our government and blessings of being an American versus the bad direction we see current economic policy taking our country.

My protest would be one upon which conservatives and liberals could agree: that government should not be bailing out the financial industry and the automakers and whomever has the lobbyists and aides inside the Obama administration.

If you bail out one industry, then you bail out every American. The President's explanation that we receive eight dollars in return for every dollar invested in bailing out the financial industry just doesn't compute when AIG keeps coming back for more and Well Fargo says it doesn't have the $50 billion to pay back taxpayers.

Bailing out General Motors would become the same black hole.

We can call this socialism or corporate welfare. But it is wrong. And liberals and conservatives do agree on this point.

So if there are going to be tea parties, they need to be more focused. And Republicans do not need to be leading them, because their party was in control of things in Washington when spending got out of control under G.W. Bush. Obama has simply aggravated the problem, but this time with a Great Recession on his hands.

Seeing the same old anti-income tax faces at the state Capitol in Nashville was a real turn off. Marsha Blackburn, Steve Gill and Phil Valentine represent no needed change. Neither does the Republican Party.

Tea parties should be based on fundamental political change, which means alignment with no political party but the formation of a new one.

It should be dedicated to no bailouts. It should be dedicated to encouraging and protecting needed individualism in American public policy. And when the matter comes to needed research on the cost of policy change such as with universal health care, it should be there to provides the pluses and minuses to the American people.

It should not be intertwined with abortion, immigration or any other trade off issue just how American households would be hurt financially or helped. It should discourage class warfare.

I still believe the best policy is to leave as much money in the hands of the American people as possible to spend, since two-thirds of our GDP comes from consumer spending.

But when we can prove that an industry is fleecing the American people such as with health care, policy must adjust, address and regulate that industry and allow the American people to keep as much of their money as possible when they are sick. That is when they need it most, and that is when the fear factor weighs heaviest.

I truly believe there are enormous savings that can be garnered from the insurance companies, drug companies and the doctors if all are forced to sacrifice as the American people are now.

All households seem to be losing financial ground. Health care costs are one big reason.

Tea parties must not just be against everything, but also support aggressive measures that recoup money for American households. That's why Republicans taking advantage of the moment have little credibility when they had a president of their party in charge for eight years.

I love the power of people to protest. But such outcries ultimately must become more focused on definite steps to take to correct current policy and also to agree with it -- as with the huge savings that will come to each American household from health care reform.

Gannett profits fall a shocking 60 percent in first quarter; employees bracing for big cuts in newsrooms, drastic changes in their lives

The numbers are shocking. And the pain to come for employees will be numbing.

Net profits for Gannett Co. Inc. fell an incredible 60%. As reported by www.gannettblog.blogspot.com, earnings plunged 60%, to $77.4 million -- 34 cents per share -- from $191.8 million, or 84 cents a share, a year ago. Operating revenues dived 18%, to $1.38 billion from $1.68 billion.

For a company that once was amazingly profitable without having to do much for it, these numbers are unbelievable as far as how quickly the bottom is falling out from under the newspaper industry. Only $77.4 million profit for Gannett in a quarter is mindblowing. And the future for profits is only down.

The company's digital operations reported a loss, showing Gannett has little to offer to change its fortunes according to reader interests. The only things left are to sell a lot of its newspapers and lay people off to raise its profit numbers.

Gannett owns The Tennessean in Nashville.

One employee, writing the blog on Gannett, put the future in very bleak terms for many people still working for the nation's largest newspaper publishing company. These good people face a most uncertain, difficult road ahead:

folks we are going to hit, and hit hard. brace yourself.

don't renew a lease - go month to month. rent out a spare room to a college kid for the summer, or a foreclosure victim in your 'hood who wants to stay local. a family would love your basement or guest room so their kid can finish the school year, a huge issue for the foreclosure crowd. many have jobs but could not keep up with ARMs. they'll pay rent - ask your pastor. mine has a list of families who need shelter and can pay. my neighbor houses a single mom who works two jobs, she is never there but needed a mailing address for the teen. the teen is painting the house as barter. nice kid.

take on a moonlight gig - like UPS or other 24/7 operation.

don't lease a car, and try to turn yours in early. buy a junker - many on the market now at give-away prices. let your contract run out and switch to prepay cell phone - see Consumer Reports, you'll save about 40%. cut cable TV off and never eat out. hike your insurance deductibles to $5k for a 30% rate drop. compare online to see if you have the best prices.

save every penny of that tax refund.

pawn your gold - it is at record highs.

barter for haircuts, lawn mowing, catering, etc. conserve every dollar - this is mayday.

these quarterly results show that even an "improved" economy will not lift this boat.

apply now for fall classes at comm. college or take the GRE or LSAT soon. don't commit to a big-ticket college you can't send your kid to after all. most of us did fine at state u., with loans.

cancel any trips, plant a garden and offer your house for sale. lease-purchase will appeal to a BK victim who has a job but no down payment and bad credit. apply some of their rent to a down, and you will find an applicant.

if you think I am exaggerating then you are mistaken.

retrain and good luck.

Freedom from fear: Cancer is bad enough; fearing one's ability to pay for treatment to stay alive must be resolved -- universal health care

Having cancer is bad enough. But to have this killer inside your body and not be able to pay for your medicines to fight it and stay alive can be the real Hell of it all.

The New York Times reports today that cancer treatment is advancing toward more treatment by pills at home, instead of IV bags hanging above you and needles piercing your flesh in hospital cubicles -- requiring nurses to supervise your treatment.

A quarter of all cancer treatment will soon be by pills. Incredible. Most merciful. Less than 10 percent is now. Surely, this shift should produce savings in health care costs for the industry and employers.

But insurance companies are not keeping up with this advance, and chemo bills for pills are devastating household budgets. Insurance covers medicines delivered in the hospital where things are more expensive but not pills at home where people can continue to live and work and contribute.

That does not make sense, except when greed is taken into account.

This nation's safety net is so terribly worn. Reform of this industry, as is one of President Obama's priorities, will save money by virtue of reduced costs right there on the surface. And it will save lives by reducing fear and stress on the sick. Some cancer sufferers have to drive hours for treatment in a hospital. The mere trip is debilitating.

The health care industry has been allowed to remain so cockeyed for so long, because it makes money for its principals. This nation can no longer afford to let this kind of greed continue, particularly as more Baby Boomers get sick. When an industry fails to police itself, government has to get involved. And that means universal health care where coverage is required, along with common sense, savings.

That public policy change will free millions of Americans from unnecessary fear when cancer is more than enough to keep them scared.

I know.

And I know how it is to put your household on the financial edge of bankruptcy because of one's expensive treatment. I've worked since I was 13. I've paid for my health care coverage since I was 21.

Still, it wasn't enough. And it's the same for millions of Americans. None of us meant to get cancer, let alone leukemia. It just happens when you least expect it.

The scope of this problem will only grow wider. This nation is aging. Reforming the health care industry by extraordinary measures will become a must.

No one wants to hear about another government program on tax filing day. But we've known about this problem for a very long time. And a recovered economy will produce less jobs with health care benefits. Contract work will become more of the rule as businesses change their ways to save more on labor costs.

So, then, where are the people to go?

The Times reports:

Chuck Stauffer’s insurance covered the surgery to remove his brain tumor. It covered his brain scans. And it would have paid fully for tens of thousands of dollars of intravenous chemotherapy at a doctor’s office or hospital.

But his insurance covered hardly any of the cost of the cancer pills the doctor prescribed for him to take at home. Mr. Stauffer, a 62-year-old Oregon farmer, had to pay $5,500 for the first 42-day supply of the drug, Temodar, and $1,700 a month after that.

“Because it was a pill,” he said, “I had to pay — not the insurance.”

Pills and capsules are the new wave in cancer treatment, expected to account for 25 percent of all cancer medicines in a few years, up from less than 10 percent now.

The oral drugs can free patients from frequent trips to a clinic to be hooked to an intravenous line for hours. Fewer visits might save the health system money as well as time. And the pills are a step toward making cancer a manageable chronic condition, like diabetes.

But for many patients, exchanging an I.V. bag for a pill is a lopsided trade because the economics and practice of cancer medicine have not caught up with the convenience of oral drugs.

Start with the double ledger of drug insurance. Drugs that are infused at a clinic are typically paid for as a medical benefit, like surgery. Pills, though, are usually covered by prescription drug plans, which are typically much less generous; for expensive cancer pills, patients might face huge co-payments or quickly exceed an annual coverage limit. Sometimes, as in Mr. Stauffer’s case, a single insurer is involved.

Many times, though, a separate company — a so-called pharmacy benefit manager — provides the prescription drug coverage.

The growing use of cancer pills is also thrusting patients and doctors into new roles they have not yet fully mastered. Without a physician’s direct supervision, side effects can be missed. Some patients do not take all their medicine, raising the risk their cancer will worsen. Others take too many pills, risking toxic reactions.

For doctors, the new drugs also pose financial challenges. Physicians can profit from infusing drugs in their offices but not from writing prescriptions that are filled at a pharmacy.

With oral cancer drugs, “the technology has outstripped the ability of society to integrate it into the mainstream in a smooth fashion,” said Carlton Sedberry, a pharmacy expert at Medical Marketing Economics, a consulting firm.

Oregon, partly in response to Mr. Stauffer’s case, has passed a law requiring insurance companies to provide equivalent coverage of oral and intravenous cancer drugs. Some other states are now considering similar measures.

So far the health reform debate in Washington has not drilled into specifics like cancer pill coverage.

There's no free lunch ... or dinner; never do business with financial planners offering free dinner to sell you their spin; they'll cost you

A financial planning firm in Williamson County likes to send out invitations to dinner at places such as Mere Bulls and Stony River.

The dinner is free, but first you have to listen to its representatives claim how much they know about the financial markets and how they are going to be there to first serve you.

Don't believe them.

These planners make their money off volume of customers, which means they hold a lot of free dinners around the county and area to get new clients.

But because of the volume of clients, these planners don't have the time and staff to really serve your needs, particuarly if you are wanting to get out of a particular stock at a certain time or even day.

I know all this from experience of signing up with one of these free dinner planners, then firing them after two months.

You'll discover that the guy making the dinner pitch and running the place is never there in the office. He is either out pitching for new clients on the road or at a seminar in Los Angeles.

The only other person who can even look at your account to answer your questions is tied up on the phone doing his and her job all day. And she can't act on your account.

These planners are in so much of a hurry all the time that they forget to tell you the right facts about the investments they are getting you into. There's more.

Ultimately, your investments are held hostage until they find time for you, which can be several days later.

High-volume planners that send out free dinner invitations should be avoided at costs -- before it costs you.

March retail sales show recession is far from over; use hard times to learn lifetime lessons

More proof that all the giddy talk about an economic recovery was unfounded can be found today in retail sales numbers released for March.

Sales declined 1.1 percent, compared to an expectation of 0.3 percent increase by analysts. Such a large decline overshadows small retail sales increases in January and March and reflects more Americans shelving their credit cards and cutting their debt instead of spending. Good for them.

There is one truth about this Great Recession that cannot be avoided. It took us a long time to get into it, and it will take a long time to get out of it. Use these difficult times to learn how to manage money better and even do without with some things we thought were stapes. These are lessons that can benefit you and your children over a lifetime.

Marketwatch reports:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - U.S. retail sales dropped a seasonally adjusted 1.1% in March, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday, after two months' of gains had boosted hopes of a rebound in consumer spending.

Sales for January and February were revised higher in Tuesday's report by 0.4 percentage points, but the results were still much weaker than expected by economists, who thought sales would rise 0.2% in March.

With the recession entering its 16th month, consumers have been battered by staggering job destruction and the loss of trillions in wealth in their homes and investments.

Recently, however, some "green shoots" have appeared, in Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's words, including increases in consumer spending in January and February.

Against that background, retail sales in March were disappointing.
Sales fell in March for almost every type of store except the necessities of food and drugs. Sales of durable goods were particularly soft in March.

Excluding the 2.3% decline in auto sales, retail sales fell 0.9%, compared with the 0.2% decline expected. Excluding both gasoline and autos, sales fell 0.8%.
In the past year, sales are down 9.4%. The figures are not adjusted for price changes.

Retail sales in the first quarter were down 1.2% compared with the fourth quarter of last year, raising the possibility that real consumer spending may have fallen again in the first three months of 2009 after plunging at a 4% annual rate in the final six months of 2008

Wells Fargo fools stock market; last week it had profits, this week it needs $50 billion; only more jobs can deliver a lasting economic recovery

Here's the problem with all the giddy talk about an economic recovery: it's based on financial information coming from the same people who gave us the mortgage loan mess built on fraud and deceit.

Last week, the stock market's rally was fueled by first quarter profits for Wells Fargo. Yet this week, Wells Fargo says it will need to borrow $50 billion to pay back the federal government because the underlying trend in the economy still is bad.

And why is it bad? BECAUSE PEOPLE STILL ARE LOSING THEIR JOBS!

The Wall Street Journal reports that the health care industry is now cutting employees, a trend that will really hurt Nashville:

But the pace of job growth in health services has slowed sharply this year. The sector added an average of 17,000 jobs per month in the first three months of the year, less than half last year's pace. Health care usually weathers downturns better than many other industries because consumers tend to cut spending on cars or clothes before they forgo trips to the emergency room or pharmacy. But this recession is the deepest in a generation.

"To the extent that health care might have been recession-proof, it is no longer," said Paul Levy, chief executive of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, a teaching hospital for Harvard University. The hospital last month announced 140 job cuts, salary freezes, and reductions in vacation allowances and retirement-fund contributions to make up a $20 million budget shortfall.

Ultimately, there can be no economic recovery in America without a big part of the 6 million-plus jobs lost being regained. Why? Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of this nation's GDP; financials account for 14 percent.

And Obama's stimulus plan only delivers a quarter of its impact in the first year.

Don't be fooled. There is a long way to go before we can really talk about recovery. Keeping paying off your bills and cutting household expenses. And save money for a most uncertain economic future.

Bloomberg News reports on Well Fargo's continuing problems:

April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Wells Fargo & Co., the second- biggest U.S. home lender, may need $50 billion to pay back the federal government and cover loan losses as the economic slump deepens, according to KBW Inc.’s Frederick Cannon.

KBW expects $120 billion of “stress” losses at Wells Fargo, assuming the recession continues through the first quarter of 2010 and unemployment reaches 12 percent, Cannon wrote today in a report. The San Francisco-based bank may need to raise $25 billion on top of the $25 billion it owes the U.S. Treasury for the industry bailout plan, he wrote.

First-quarter net income rose 50 percent to about $3 billion, Wells Fargo said last week in announcing preliminary results that topped the most optimistic Wall Street estimates and sparked a 32 percent jump in the stock. The bank attributed the profit to a surge in mortgage originations and revenue from Wachovia Corp., acquired in December. Full results are scheduled for April 22.

“Details were scarce and we believe that much of the positive news in the preliminary results had to do with merger accounting, revised accounting standards and mortgage default moratoriums, rather than underlying trends,” wrote Cannon, who downgraded the shares to “underperform” from “market perform.” “We expect earnings and capital to be under pressure due to continued economic weakness.”

New face of local news after newspapers is not so bad; computers search, find news for you

The New York Times shows us the face of local journalism after newspapers, one that computers can compile for an arrest on the next street to articles on entire communities.

Williamson County, TN, with deep penetration by the Internet, would be perfect for what would be called "hyper-local" news.

The Times reports:

If your local newspaper shuts down, what will take the place of its coverage?

Perhaps a package of information about your neighborhood, or even your block, assembled by a computer.

A number of Web start-up companies are creating so-called hyperlocal news sites that let people zoom in on what is happening closest to them, often without involving traditional journalists.

The sites, like EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger and Patch, collect links to articles and blogs and often supplement them with data from local governments and other sources. They might let a visitor know about an arrest a block away, the sale of a home down the street and reviews of nearby restaurants.

Internet companies have been trying to develop such sites for more than a decade, in part as a way to lure local advertisers to the Web. But the notion of customized news has taken on greater urgency as some newspapers, like The Rocky Mountain News and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have stopped printing.

The news business “is in a difficult time period right now, between what was and what will be,” said Gary Kebbel, the journalism program director for the Knight Foundation, which has backed 35 local Web experiments. “Our democracy is based upon geography, and we believe local information is such a core need for our democracy to survive.”

Washington Times to feature daily page of stories by citizens on communities not being covered

The thing that I like about The Washington Times' project of giving space to citizen journalists to provide more news is that it admits to not properly covering the communities of these readers.

Other newspaper editors try and lie their way through spins of the truth that you're actually getting more through all their niche publications. You're not. And you know that.

You want your communities, their successes and problems covered just like everyone else's in the main newspaper. But the staffs there have been cut so savagely for the bottom line that such a guarantee is not possible.

So The Times' effort is most worthy of watching, particularly since it is based on a truth most newspaper editors will not acknowledge.

The Times reports:

The Washington Times' news gathering is about to become a whole lot bigger as the newspaper launches one full print page per day of news stories reported and written by average citizens in local communities.

The citizen journalism project, set to debut Monday, is a new take on a traditional idea.

Community-driven news has been a long mainstay in American newspapers. The Times' version ramps up the intensity and the outreach, focusing on six communities within the larger Washington area: academia on Monday, the Maryland and Virginia suburbs on Tuesday, the District on Wednesday, local military bases on Thursday, faith communities on Friday and the charitable and the public service community on Sunday.

The citizen journalists' work will be showcased in the A-section as an additional page of Metro coverage and will provide a natural complement to the work of the newspaper's reporters and editors.

"We know there are many issues and communities we have not been able to fully cover within the confines of a newsroom budget, and we are excited to empower citizens within those communities to provide us news that will interest all our readers, " Executive Editor John Solomon said.

"While we are expanding our reach through this project, we will not be diminishing our editorial quality. Citizen stories must meet the same rigorous standards for accuracy, precision, fairness, balance and ethics as those written by our newsroom staff," Mr. Solomon said.

Each citizen journalist is provided a set of rules for their reporting and newswriting, as well as copies of The Times' policies governing ethics, anonymous sources and other journalistic standards.

While the project calls for some first-rate news wranglers, The Times also is tapping into some of its own editorial talent known for its savvy - and heart.

Former Editorial Page Editor Deborah Simmons, a veteran newswoman with close ties to the local community, is supervising the coverage for the District, the suburbs, academia, faith and the charitable communities. Longtime Times columnist Adrienne Washington, a staple on local TV and radio, also will be a part of the outreach and the editing.

WSJ says Gannett preparing to release ugly earnings --- forcing readers to receive even less; though profitable, its newspapers are shrinking

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Gannett Co. Inc., the publisher of The Tennessean, is prepared to unveil some very bad earnings for the first quarter on Thursday, unleashing new demands for cutbacks that will diminish the poor product readers receive now.

The company already has laid off more than 300 employees in the second quarter.

Yet by Gannett standards, The Tennessean is doing remarkably well. It was just named a Gold Medal newspaper for the company and its editor received a president's ring.

Don't you feel like you're holding gold when you pick up a Tennessean? It's kind of like being the best general in the Iraqi army. Saddam Hussein had to decorate someone.

Here is what The WSJ has to say about GCI:

The depths of the newspaper industry's swoon will get a fresh sounding this week. Gannett Co., the largest U.S. newspaper publisher by circulation, reports earnings on Thursday, kicking off what is expected to be the ugliest quarter in recent memory for the industry.

Though there is little uncertainty about the short-term outlook, analysts and industry executives will be watching for any signs of a recovery in advertising. Declines in print ad revenue accelerated through the end of last year, and if early returns this year offer no clearer view of a bottom, publishers could start taking more aggressive action, including closing papers or shifting operations online.

"We're expecting particularly dismal results from newspapers," said Mike Simonton, an analyst with Fitch Ratings, adding that until classified ads disappear completely, there is "no bottom in sight" for the current revenue trends.

Already, heavy losses have forced publishers to close or threaten to close print operations in Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston. Many publishers have large debt payments looming and are bound to take similarly drastic steps if they determine their newspapers will never again generate revenues capable of supporting those obligations.

Gannett, publisher of more than 80 U.S. dailies including USA Today, faces many of the same pressures as its competitors. Though most of its papers are profitable, profits are shrinking. The company's entire debt structure is due to mature by 2012. To alleviate pressure, Gannett last week announced a bond exchange to push out some of its maturities.

Gannett has made some drastic cost-cutting moves at its newspapers to keep costs in line with dwindling revenue, including multiple rounds of job cuts and two furlough programs forcing employees to take unpaid leave. More changes could be in store, particularly as the outlook worsens for its flagship paper.

USA Today, which until recently had been somewhat insulated from the worst of the industry slump, has begun to take its lumps. Gannett executives recently projected a drop of as much as 35% in first-quarter ad revenue from a year earlier. And when the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases its numbers for the six-month period ended in March, the national daily's circulation is set to fall by about 100,000 just from lower occupancy in hotels, which account for more than half of its 2.3 million circulation.

Circulation is likely to take another hit in June, when Marriott International Inc. will start delivering papers at many of its hotels based on customer preference. The switch, expected to be announced Monday, will cut distribution by about 50,000 daily copies and mostly affect circulation at USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.

Gannett shares are down 53% since the beginning of the year, though the stock jumped 39% Thursday to $3.75 after Ariel Investments LLC more than doubled its holdings in the company.

Politicizing of captain's rescue is another example of what angers people about Tennessean

Among my friends, the one thing that really angers them about The Tennessean is an unncessary politicizing of the news.

This morning's paper was a prime example. The lead story about the Navy's daring rescue of the captain from pirates was led with how the successful action was a big victory for the Obama administration in foreign policy.

But The New York Times in its coverage of the same event gave the credit where it was due: the Navy Seals and their training, to wait until the time was right, then to take out the pirates with their sniper skills. And the captain was unharmed.

My nephew is in the Navy, and he has trained with the Seals for boarding ships and other hand-to-hand action at sea. He testifies to their incredible skills and endurance. These guys are our military's best.

We got to see our best in action this past weekend, and so did the world.

The silliness and brazen political pomposity of the story The Tennessean ran is just more proof of how little it respects the military, whose families dominate this area.

Yesterday was a very proud moment for this nation and those families, and it was our military that deserves the credit. I believe the president would agree, even as The Tennessean tried to make this event into a political event instead of one of courage and training of our nation's very best.

LEGISLATIVE ANNOUNCEMENT: Following bills affecting your rights and your pocketbooks to be considered this week by the following lawmakers

The Tennessee Environmental Council puts out the following warning on two bills to be considered this week by state lawmakers.


State Legislature to Consider Bills on Nuisances and Container Deposits

Bills depriving Tennesseans of the right to pursue nuisance complaints in certain situations and enacting a deposit for the recycling of beverage containers will be considered in the Tennessee General Assembly next week.

The nuisance bill, House Bill 2154, declares that any project that has a state permit cannot be considered a nuisance.

"This legislation basically allows developers to get a permit and do what they want without regard for their neighbors," said John McFadden, executive director of the Tennessee Environmental Council. "For instance, let's say you live next to a road construction or real estate development project, and mud from the project site is flowing onto your property and into your creek. This bill would make it almost impossible for you to do anything about it."

Citizens are encouraged to contact their state legislators in opposition to this bill.

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Joe McCord, R-Maryville and Sen. Lowe Finney, D-Jackson. It will be reviewed in the House Civil Practice and Procedure Subcommittee on Tuesday, April 14 at noon. Subcommittee members: Brian Kelsey, Chair, R-Germantown; Henry Fincher, Vice-Chair, D-Cookeville; Kent Coleman, D-Murfreesboro; Vance Dennis, R-Savannah; Jon Lundberg, R-Bristol; Mike Stewart, D-Nashville.

Another bill, to be considered in the Senate Environment, Conservation & Tourism Committee, would enact the Tennessee Deposit Beverage Container Recycling Act.

The act is similar to container deposit laws in 11 other states. It would require a 5-cent deposit for each container at the time of purchase. The consumer would get the deposit back for recycling the container.

The act would apply to beverage containers made of glass, plastic, or aluminum/bimetal holding beer, soft drinks, water, tea, coffee, and other beverages.

"The container deposit legislation would create jobs and clean up roadside litter," said McFadden. "States that have this type of legislation have experienced drastic increases in recycling and reduced littering."

Citizens are encouraged to contact their legislators in support of this bill.

The bill has numerous sponsors in the House and Senate. It will be reviewed on Tues., April 14 at 11:30 a.m. Senate Environment, Conservation & Tourism Committee members: Steve Southerland, R-Morristown; Ken Yager, R-Harriman; Eric Stewart, D-Belvidere; Tim Barnes, D-Adams; Charlotte Burks, D-Monterey; Mike Faulk, R-Kingsport; Doug Jackson, D-Dickson; Jack Jackson, R-Franklin; Jamie Woodson, R-Knoxville.

About Tennessee Environmental Council:
The Council's mission is to educate and advocate for conservation and improvement of Tennessee's environment, communities, and public health. The Council's efforts have been successful in protecting the Great Smoky Mountains, cleaning up the Pigeon River, reducing pollution from TVA's coal-fired power plants, and preventing degradation of high-quality streams and the globally significant Rumbling Falls Cave system. The Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1970.

AREA ANNOUNCEMENT: Job Fair coming to Clarksville April 25 with 65 employers

The economy continues to claim jobs. But the following announcement indicates some companies are hiring in Tennessee.

A job fair will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, April 24 in Clarksville at the Montgomery County Civic Hall. It is located at Veterans Plaza, 350 Pageant Lane.

Here is a list of employers:

5 Linx
AIG
Amsoil
Aramark Correctional Services
Army & Air Force Exchange Service
Austin Peay Personnel
Avon
Bethel College
Better Business Bureau
Bridgestone Metalpha
Brown Mackie College
Budweiser
Center for Independent Living
City of Clarksville Human Resource Department
Clarksville Police Department
Clarksville Transit System
Convergys – Silver Level Sponsor
CSC Applied Technology Division - Gold Level Sponsor
Cubic Omega Training Group
Department of Human Services
Draughons Junior College - Bronze Level Sponsor
Education Opportunity Center
Express Personnel
Federal Bureau of Investigations
Flying J
Fort Sill National Bank
Frontier Basement Systems
Goodwill Industries
Home Instead Senior Care
Hopkinsville Community College
Jenkins and Wynne – Bronze Level Sponsor
Job Corps
Liberty National
Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Center
Meijer, Inc. – Gold Level Sponsor
Montgomery County Election Commission
Montgomery County Personnel Dept.
National Council on Aging
Nia Association
North Central Institute – Silver Level Sponsor
Progressive Directions – Silver Level Sponsor
Randstad
Select Staffing
Servall
SHRM
Staff Partners
Stanley and Associates
Tennessee Community Services Agency
Tennessee Department of Corrections
Tennessee Health Careers
Tennessee Higher Education Commission
Tennessee Technology Center – Gold Level Sponsor
Tennessee Vocational Rehabilitation
Trevecca Nazarene University – Silver Level Sponsor
Troy University
United Chiropractic
United First Financial
United States Army
United States Marines
United States Secret Service
University of Phoenix
University of Tenn , Center on Disability & Employment
Veterans Upward Bound
Wal-Mart
Workforce Essentials – Driver’s Education

COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT: Landmark Supreme Court decisions affecting Mexican-Americans to be examined, discussed at Vanderbilt event

As Political Salsa approaches it one-year birthday, it is being recognized as a place to get out information to the community. My publishing of announcements I receive is not an endorsement, but recognition of the need to pass on important information to create a more enlightened society.

The following announcement comes from the loc the local chapter of the American Constitution Society. I wish it well with its event:

The Nashville Chapter and the Vanderbilt University Law School Student Chapter of the American Constitution Society, Active Voice, the American GI Forum of the United States, Equal Justice Society, Connexion Americas, the Hispanic National Bar Foundation, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, Latino Public Broadcasting, Public Broadcasting System and the Vanderbilt University Law School Chapter of the Latin American Law Students Association present:

A Special Screening of
"A Class Apart"

A documentary film chronicling the landmark 14th Amendment case,
Hernandez v. Texas

Post-screening discussion featuring:

A. Gregory Ramos
Member, North, Pursell, Ramos & Jameson, P.L.C.

Renata Soto
Executive Director of Conexion Americas


Thursday, April 16, 2009
5:30 p.m.
Vanderbilt University Law School
Renaissance Room
131 21st Avenue South
Nashville, TN

There is no cost to attend this event.

In the tiny town of Edna, Texas, in 1951, field hand Pete Hernandez murdered tenant farmer Joe Espinosa after exchanging words in a gritty cantina. From this unremarkable small-town murder emerged a landmark civil rights case that would forever change the lives and legal standing of tens of millions of Americans. "A Class Apart" tells the little-known story of a band of underdog Mexican-American lawyers who took their case, Hernandez v. Texas, all the way to the Supreme Court, where they successfully challenged Jim Crow-style discrimination against Mexican-Americans.

In the landmark case, defense lawyers forged a daring legal strategy, arguing that Mexican-Americans were "a class apart" and did not neatly fit into a legal structure that recognized only blacks and whites. As legal skirmishes unfolded, the lawyers emerged as brilliant, dedicated, humorous and at times terribly flawed men. This film dramatically interweaves the story of its central characters -- activists and lawyers, returning veterans and ordinary citizens, murderer, and victim -- within the broader history of Latinos in America during a time of extraordinary change.

Christ the Lord is Risen Today! Seeing is not believing; the hallmark of all faith is trust

The truth that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is difficult for some people to believe let alone respect those who believe as much.

Prominent people such as Ted Turner and Jesse Ventura have openly mocked faith as for the weak-minded. The nation's news media, while running the obligatory story today about Easter, see people of faith the same.

Yet the very foundation of faith and belief in the Risen Lord have nothing to do with weakness. To believe what one has not seen requires incredible strength. And it is a strength handed down through the ages by our descendants. My great-grandparents believed as their parents did all the way back to the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1531 north of Mexico City.

Our faith is our proudest identification.

Belief in today's miracle is as much about tradition as flying the American flag. But no one was there to see and record the resurrection. We only saw the evidence of it afterward, in Christ's appearances to his disciples of both genders and the modeling of his compassion and forgiveness by believers in the centuries after.

I had my best Easter since I was teen, singing last night and carrying a banner this morning during masses at St. Edward. In this Lenten season, I spent the most time of my life in church and prayer, particularly saying the Rosary daily. I consider Easter 2009 a milestone for my faith to take me to new levels of enlightenment and action.

I would prefer to be in heaven with my mother. But God and Our Lady decided to preserve my life from leukemia and my sinfulness. My life is theirs now. But I no longer fear death but look forward to its next visit -- because of what Christ did for all of us on this day.

God and man are reconciled. We can now return to Paradise. All we have to do is die as Our Lord. That's not a lot to ask.

Yes, a lot of wrong has been done in Christ's name throughout history and even to modern times. But what man has done cannot take from what God did that Easter morning. It never will.

You can trust in that.

Message from tragedies is cherish every moment; life is too good to neglect to appreciate each day

I don't know how his family would feel about it.

But the message the American people are drawing from the tragic, sudden death of Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart is to appreciate every moment of life, particularly the very good ones.

They are God-given.

After today's second round of Masters, The New York Times reported an eye-opening comment from golfer Anthony Kim, who had made 11 birdies on 18 holes. That's quite a feat on a traditionally unforgiving course.

The Times wrote that Kim decided after reading the story of the tragic death of Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart that he wasn't going to get too despondent about a missed putt or two.

''You have to live every moment of every day like it's your last,'' Kim said after shooting his 65. ''I don't want to go out whining about a three-putt.''

Adenhart, a rookie in his early 20s, pitched in his first game as a major leaguer and did not allow a run during six innings. Hours later, he was killed in a hit and run accident.

Here in Middle Tennessee, people still are talking about the sudden death of WSMV anchor Dan Miller. He died in Augusta, the home of the Masters and his hometown, as he walked to the streets of his old neighborhood to see his childhood home. Miller, 67, died of a heart attack.

Father Joe Pat Breen of St. Edward Catholic Church brought up Adenhart and Miller in his comments to his congregation after Stations of the Cross today.

"Cherish every moment of life God gives you," he said.

We know neither the day or hour that we will be called home. Make sure all the people you love know so. And make sure to cherish those moments of life that are special and good as testament to God's love for you here on this Earth and what awaits you in heaven.

LA Times unveils front page ad in form of story; newspapers willing to do most anything for cash

The Los Angeles Times, once a newspaper industry stalwart until bought by the now bankruptcy Tribune Co., Thursday unveiled an ad on the bottom half of its front page written as a news story.

Many newspapers have sold the very bottom of their front pages for ads. They, however, have been distinctively different and with a colored background to not blend with the rest of the page.

But The LA Times ad began just below the fold on 1A. It was heavily boxed with the word "advertisement" printed above it. But the very first paragraph of the ad referred to a reporter being taken on a wild rise, to promote an NBC cop show.

Adam Stotsky, the president of entertainment marketing for NBC, loved his ability to buy news content. He told The New York Times:

“What was great about this ad unit is it gave us a quote-unquote ‘editorial voice.' The more relevant you can make your advertising, the more contextualized you can make your advertising, we find the more engagement can be created, and ultimately the more effective your marketing can be."

Yes, advertising is more effective when it deceives, when it convinces buyers they are getting more than they actually are. So when an ad looks like a news story, the advertiser gets the credibility the news writers have built for decades and the trust readers placed in that reporting.

This precedent-setting move is a most discouraging ethically for an industry that has set new lows as far as quality, content and openness to new technology. And that's why revenues are declining, which The Times feels justifies this ad written as a news story.

Sad, but not unexpected. Expect more of this kind of weirdness and betryal from this industry as its decline accelerates.

In Christ's suffering on Good Friday there is assurance that we are not alone in our pain

The New York Times reports that many Americans who have jobs find themselves gripped with anxiety and waking up in the middle of night with fear of their future and the longevity of their employment amid this ongoing recession.

In Middle Tennessee this afternoon, tornadoes ripped through the very populated city of Murfreesboro, killing a mother and baby and injuring two dozen other people.

In California, a rookie major league picture had only hours before hurled the first six innings of his big league career and didn't allow a run. He then was killed by a hit and run driver at an intersection, along with the young lady he had just been dancing with.

There are more stories of tragedy on this day. But Good Friday teaches us that Our Lord has experienced every low and valley we have seen or endured. His blessed mother, Mary the Mother of God, with the seven sorrows that pierced her heart also knows our deepest hurts from personal experience.

Consider that the son she cradled before the manger she also cradled at the cross after his death on Good Friday. And also remember that the swaddling clothes she wrapped around him as a child in the stable she put around him in the tomb.

And because they know, along with our father in heaven, we have been provided ultimate consolation and joy after all the tears. Today, we commemorate the suffering of Our Lord so that we might have eternal life. And our remembrance is vivid recognition -- if we stop and open our eyes and hearts -- that he is truly present in our suffering, more than at any other time of our lives.

Just as with the beautiful story called "Footsteps", the single pair of impressions in the sand truly are when Our Lord carries us, as he did on this day with the cross to Golgotha.

In your pain, realize that it is in your suffering that God is most present. And believe that through his son, he has secured ultimate consolation and joy, not only for the moment here on this Earth but most of all for eternity in heaven.

The 'Good' of Good Friday is realized today in unexpected deaths in Iraq and in California

Some people have questioned why the word "good" is included the name for the Friday when our Lord and Savior was tortured, humiliated and murdered on the cross for our sins.

And each year brings more proof of why "good" is the appropriate word.

For without all the sufferings our Lord endured, we would not have the chance at eternal life and being reunited with our loved ones we so dearly missed now. As I get older, I realize this truth. I cannot wait to be reunited with my mother, and her three sisters and their mother I never knew.

And I can go down the list of people I know or news I know about and how the families left behind must view today and the hope and great consolation it brings.

This month marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Capt. Brent Morel of Memphis, who died saving his conovy from ambush in Anbar province. He was the only American to die in the confrontation, proving the truth of today that there is no greater love than give up one's life for one's friends.

Mike and Molly Morel of Martin, TN, counsel other Gold Star families upon their loss. They, along with their son, are real American heroes to emulate and admire. And we added five more Gold Star families today with a truck bombing in Mosul, Iraq.

The freedoms we enjoy truly are not free.

In the news today are reminders of the fleeting nature of this life and that Good Friday is about giving the certainty of eternal life and immeasurable joy. Three people were killed by tornadoes overnight in Arkansas. A rookie California Angels' pitcher and two other young people in their early 20s were killed by a hit and run driver whose license had been suspended for DUI.

Italy prepares for more than 250 funerals from earthquakes there.

WSMV anchor Dan Miller died unexpectedly from a heart attack in his hometown of Augusta, Ga. I was at church last night and outside a group of us including Father Breen were talking of how stunned we were over the news. Miller had become that much a part of the lives of many Tennesseans.

Today is for Dan Miller, Capt. Brent Morel and so many other souls that have passed on. And the good of today is that we, too, will pass on and join these souls eternally because of the suffering of our savior and the greatest love he displayed.

Reward good behavior in American business place and let the bad suffer needed consequences: here's why GM should go into bankruptcy

Why is Ford Motor Co. not asking for your tax dollars to bail out the poor decisions of its executives and union leaders?

Because Ford's top executive made the right kind of decisions before the Great Recession to put its business operations in line with efficiency and consumer demands. And the Ford example should be rewarded, and the GM and Chrysler examples should be allowed to push those automakers into bankruptcy. Or as with newspapers, out of business.

Many businesses and companies in this nation made the right decisions before the recession and continue to do so now. They, however, in economic policy from Washington are being largely ignored.

There needs to be visible support for them, and some punishment and no bailout for those companies and industries that sat on their hands or acted fraudulently. The Obama administration and Congress have yet to establish this defining and needed principle that reflects the side of capitalism that works, and works well.

What we need is the survival of the fittest. Because it actually is the survival of those who did not take their customers and market share for granted.

Ford to me still symbolizes quality, getting my money's worth. I still drive my 1994 Taurus. My favorite supermarket is Publix, employee-owned. Quality also is the rule. And the pricing is fair and bargains frequent.

That takes a lot of work. From Washington, it should also come with more visible support.


The New York Times reports in this excerpt:

On Nov. 29, 2006, Ford Motor made a surprising pitch to the nation’s biggest banks. In a packed ballroom at a New York hotel, Ford’s chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, said he would mortgage all the company’s assets for billions of dollars in loans to finance an overhaul of the troubled automaker. Although the economy was healthy then, Mr. Mulally said the money would give Ford “a cushion to protect for a recession or other unexpected event.”

At the time, the request was considered an act of desperation. But the $23.6 billion in loans it received turned out to be Ford’s salvation.

Plunging car sales have driven its two American rivals, General Motors and Chrysler, to the brink of bankruptcy, forcing them to borrow $17.4 billion from the federal government to stay in business. The future of both companies will be decided in the weeks to come by President Obama and his special auto task force.

But because of the money it borrowed nearly three years ago, Ford is in far better shape than its two crosstown rivals. The loans have kept it independent and on a course to survive the worst new-vehicle market in nearly 30 years.

“It was a defining moment for us,” Mr. Mulally said in an interview. “But they never would have been willing to lend us the money if we weren’t on a different path.”

Mr. Mulally had been on the job as Ford’s chief executive less than 90 days when he asked for the loans. But as he told the bankers, he was prepared to make tough decisions, including selling off brands, shedding jobs and focusing Ford’s efforts on small cars rather than trucks and sport utility vehicles.

Since then, he has accelerated Ford along that path, pursuing a top-to-bottom transformation that extends from its global product lineup to its renewed focus on the Blue Oval trademark.

The Obama administration is forcing GM and Chrysler to obtain big concessions from union workers and lenders to qualify for more federal aid.

Ford, however, is having better success on both fronts without a government mandate.

Unlike GM and Chrysler, the company has reached agreement with the United Automobile Workers to finance half of its new retiree health care trust with company stock.

Earlier this week, Ford also completed a deal with its creditors to retire $9.9 billion in corporate debt—some of which was part of the big borrowing in 2006.

Investors have welcomed the moves. Ford’s stock climbed 13 percent to close at $3.95 on Wednesday, the highest it has been since October.

That was when the car market crashed and the auto companies began burning through huge amounts of cash. A month later, Mr. Mulally was in the spotlight—along with GM’s chairman, Rick Wagoner, and Chrysler’s chairman, Robert L. Nardelli—during Congressional hearings on Detroit’s financial woes.

Mr. Mulally said Ford never intended to ask for federal help but needed to support the industry during its crisis.

“From Day 1, we had no desire to access the government money,” he said.

Ford parted ways with GM and Chrysler in December, when its two rivals effectively came under government supervision as part of their loan agreements.

Big retailers see big decline in March sales

The New York Times reports that the nation's big retailers had a worse March sales month than in February.

While one analyst said the numbers show it will be another six months before the nation settles into recovery, I believe the statistics show exactly the opposite.

And after Americans learn that they can live with all that extra spending of the past two decades, they are not going to return to their old spending ways. They are going to build up savings and emergency funds so they are not caught short again.

The shock and disbelief across this nation in its households is not going to dissipate for a very long time. America's buying habits will be forever changed, and so will the industries that have depended on excessive spending.


The Times reports:

Flowered dresses and linen jackets may be hitting store shelves, but it is not yet springtime for American retailers.

Major chains on Thursday reported March sales results that were worse than their February figures, though the rate of economic deceleration that plagued stores during the holidays has slowed a bit

The good news for March, retail analysts said, is that not every retailer was in free fall — which is what appeared to be the case during the holiday shopping season. Still, the word of the day is “caution.”

The prospect of a recovery, analysts at Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said, is being hindered by the rise in the average duration of unemployment and in the number of people working part time for economic reasons.

“I think we’re six-plus months away from settling into recovery,” said Matthew F. Katz, a managing director in the retailing practice of AlixPartners, a reorganization firm. “We still have to flush out everything that happened to us, and we’re just not there yet.”

Industry analysts estimated that for the overall retail industry, March sales will be down 0.4 to 1 percent compared with the period a year ago.

The biggest drop came from Abercrombie & Fitch, which posted a stunning 34 percent March sales decline compared with last year. Sales at Wal-Mart Stores, the nation’s largest retailer, were up 1.4 percent (not including fuel).

Condolences to WSMV and Tennesseans for loss of Dan Miller and his news sense, style, commitment

Dan Miller -- who died of heart attack last night in his hometown of Augusta, Ga. -- was easy to listen to and watch when he delivered the news.

It was like hearing from a friend telling you about what happened in his or her day.

There was no pretense, no pomposity, no sense of celebrity.

He was simply telling you about our day in Middle Tennessee.

And even if the news was bad, you felt better after getting it from him and his longtime partner on the WSMV set, Demetria Kalodimos. He was so steady, making you feel that the sun would rise another day in the best place to live in America.

Miller will be deeply missed by many Tennesseans. Since I've been here, we've now lost two, major local anchors -- Miller and Chris Clark to retirement.

A bond is created with these figures. They are more than journalists. They are neighbors, and you see them out in the community and you know that they recognize you and what you value. They know the news you want to hear; they recognize what symbolizes the preservation and progress of our communities and what should serve as a warning.

May God console Mr. Miller's family and his family at WSMV -- for their loss is ours as well.

Karl Rove offers political polarization in piece aimed at trying to pin that label on the president

What is Karl Rove smoking?

The genius behind the Bush ascendancy -- in a column for the Wall Street Journal -- is blowing a bunch of smoke in claiming that President Obama has now become a divisive figure in American politics.

I believe the exact opposite. I like him more. And as the economy gets worse, more people look to him as a needed leader, and perhaps our only leader. They sense hope in him. That can be said of no other figure in this nation or world. And his just-completed global tour confirmed that truth.

Rove cites a lot of poll numbers. But in my being out among just out among regular people, Obama is considered the only credible point of reference in Washington. At that is when it comes to negativity or positive comments.

Yes, I sharply disagree on his economic policies. But I do note that the stock market for some reason has been up for the past four weeks.

I love his education policy, which is the single greatest determinant of the American Dream and the preservation of American individualism. His push for many more public charter schools comes just as we are fighting before the Tennessee state Legislature to lift restrictive laws against such schools and the power of poor parents to choose the best public school for their children.

His foreign policy steps have been measured, while opening dialogue with Cuba and Iran, longtime enemies. Any time you are talking with someone, there is hope of perhaps change.

For his first 100 days, which the president still has not reached yet, he has done any incredible amount of work. And that's what the American people wanted, although I do not like some of the socialist leanings.

I hope he turns from more intervention in the capital markets and corporate America. His decision to let GM go into bankruptcy is a good step away from the troubling trend.

I'm more willing now to give the president more time to let his policies work than I was before. They must work for the good of this nation and to relieve so much suffering that is mounting here and across the nation.

The Republicans in turn offer no real alternative. They have no leader. Their most visible spokesperson is Rush Limbaugh, which is not good for the party to expand its ranks and offer new solutions to battle with those of the president.

Finally, we must pray for the president, that he will be open to always re-examining all he has done in yet his first 100 days to be sure we are on the right track. But we should also pray for his success, because his will be ours as well.

Here is an excerpt on Rove's piece:

The Pew Research Center reported last week that President Barack Obama "has the most polarized early job approval of any president" since surveys began tracking this 40 years ago. The gap between Mr. Obama's approval rating among Democrats (88%) and Republicans (27%) is 61 points. This "approval gap" is 10 points bigger than George W. Bush's at this point in his presidency, despite Mr. Bush winning a bitterly contested election.

Part of Mr. Obama's polarized standing can be attributed to a long-term trend. University of Missouri political scientist John Petrocik points out that since 1980, each successive first term president has had more polarized support than his predecessor with the exception of 1989, when George H.W. Bush enjoyed a modest improvement over Ronald Reagan's 1981 standing.

But rather than end or ameliorate that trend, Mr. Obama's actions and rhetoric have accelerated it. His campaign promised post-partisanship, but since taking office Mr. Obama has frozen Republicans out of the deliberative process, and his response to their suggestions has been a brusque dismissal that "I won."

Compare this with Mr. Bush's actions in the aftermath of his election. Among his first appointments were Democratic judicial nominees who had been blocked by Republicans under President Bill Clinton. The Bush White House joined with Democratic and Republican leaders to draft education reform legislation. And Mr. Bush worked with Republican Chuck Grassley to cut a deal with Democrat Max Baucus to win bipartisan passage of a big tax cut in a Senate split 50-50 after the 2000 election.

Mr. Obama has hastened the decline of Republican support with petty attacks on his critics and predecessor. For a person who promised hope and civility in politics, Mr. Obama has shown a borderline obsessiveness in blaming Mr. Bush. Starting with his inaugural address and continuing through this week's overseas trip, the new president's jabs at Mr. Bush have been unceasing, unfair and unhelpful. They have also diminished Mr. Obama by showing him to be another conventional politician. Rather than ending "the blame game," he is personifying it.

The question that will worry the Obama West Wing is whether the views of independents come to look more like Democrats or Republicans. Recent opinion surveys show that support for his policies among independents is slipping.

On both Mr. Obama's performance and policies, independents are starting to look more like Republicans. For example, the most recent Fox News poll (taken March 31 to April 1) found that Mr. Obama's job approval among independents has fallen to 52%, down nine points from the start of March and down 12 points from late January. Over the same period, the number of independents who disapprove of Mr. Obama's performance has doubled to 32% from 16%.

The same poll also found that 76% of independents worry that government will spend too much to help the economy; only 12% worry it will spend too little. Independents oppose Mr. Obama's proposed budget by a 55%-37% margin.

If independents continue looking more like Republicans, especially on deficits, spending and the economy, Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats could be in for a rough ride.

Wal-Mart lower than expected sales reflects declining buying by American consumers and bodes ill for any kind of economic recovery soon

Wal-Mart Stores reported significantly lower sale increases in March than analysts expected, reflecting a sharp decline in consumer buying that bodes ill for an economic recovery soon.

The data is part of a growing trend. Feburary Federal Reserve numbers on consumer debt released this week showed a record decline in credit card spending.

Americans are closing their wallets and preserving household income, which is good for them to survive a recession that no one knows its duration. They also are fearing losing their own jobs. The creation or preservation of emergency fund accounts in households is a must.

However, less buying means lower corporate earnings and more layoffs at jobs providing product and services people aren't purchasing.

CNBC reports:

Wal-Mart [WMT 50.14 -2.47 (-4.69%) ] stores says U.S. same-store sales rose 1.4 percent in March as consumers continued to hunt for bargains and bought necessities, such as groceries. But the results are below Wall Street expectations.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the world's largest retailer to post a larger 3.2 percent gain in same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least one year.

Two more mass shootings begin America's week

Five people were shot and one has died from a mass shooting at a Christian retreat in California and a father killed his daughter and three other relatives before killing himself in Alabama.

These shootings have begun another American week of mass violence that have marred the national landscape from coast to coast since mid-March.

So far, there has been little national response to the growing epidemic. What will it take and how many more people have to die?

Congressman Wamp grumbling as Knoxville mayor secures hold on big money, and the inside track on Tennessee GOP gubernatorial nomination

When the gubernatorial candidacy of Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam recently picked up Lamar Alexander's long-time chief of staff Tom Ingram as a top consultant, heads nodded that the GOP part of the Tennessee's governor race was being closed before it really opened.

And WPLN reported this morning that GOP contender, Rep. Zach Wamp, is grumbling, particularly since Haslam already has more than $2 million in his war chest. Wamp says big money of the elite should not take the race from middle class voters that rallied around Ronald Reagan. Interesting populist twist.

The only question now is whether the Democrats should even bother running someone in a state that Sen. John McCain carried by the largest margin of any other in the Union against President Obama. John Jay Hooker probably still is rested and ready.

The success of the anti-abortion movement to push SJR 127 through a House committee yesterday proves that the Democrats have little to run on in Tennessee. The resolution provides for a state referendum over whether the state Constitution provides more rights to choice than determined in the U.S. Constitution.

Democrats in the House have traditionally blocked this measure. The Senate, dominated by Republicans, will easily pass the measure. The state Supreme Court's contention that the Tennessee Constitution provides more rights has negated sensible safeguards passed by the state Legislature such as a 48-hour waiting period for abortions and all late-term abortions be conducted in a hospital.

In the gubernatorial primary, there will be little that GOP candidates differ upon, which makes Haslam's big warchest that much more of an advantage. But Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey -- another GOP gubernatorial candidate -- will have a legislative record to run on, which along with his name recognition could counter big money.

If you ask the average Middle Tennessean who Haslam is, he or she would be hard to come up with his title, let alone what he has done in Knoxville.

The East Tennessee Republicanism of Haslam and Ramsey is usually a tad more moderate than the red meat kind offered by party chairperson Robin Smith and the state GOP's most efficient attack dog, Bill Hobbs.

So the party leadership MAY have to tone things down a bit in a race the GOP should be sure to win. But as with the trickery that led to Kent Williams becoming House Speaker this session, nothing in Tennessee politics is ever a sure thing.

Big financial problems come to Tennessee and Lewisburg; NYT uncovers costly deals through the same instrument that brought housing mess: derivatives

The New York Times tonight reports on how communities such as Lewisburg, TN., and others across the country have been put in precarious financial conditions by a financial firm using that infamous instrument called a "derivative".

Derivatives helped destroy the housing industry and our economy. Now they have cropped up with municipalities purportedly taken down the wrong fiscal road with the promise of savings.

Pity the good people of Lewisburg. The cost of interest paid on their sewer bonds has quadrupled to a shocking $1 million.

Here is an excerpt of this emerging story for Tennessee and communities in other states:

LEWISBURG, Tenn. — Five years ago, this small factory town was struggling to pay the interest on a bond for new sewers. Bob Phillips, Lewisburg’s part-time mayor and full-time pharmacist, was urged by the town’s financial adviser, an investment bank named Morgan Keegan & Company, to engage in a complex financial transaction to lower interest rates.

When a Lewisburg official attended a state-sponsored seminar designed to lay out the transaction’s benefits and risks, he was taught by investment bankers from Morgan Keegan.

And when Lewisburg decided to go ahead with the transaction, who was there to make the deal? Morgan Keegan.

In January, local officials were shocked to discover that annual interest payments on the bond had quadrupled to $1 million. Morgan Keegan, they said, did not serve them well in any of its roles.

“We’re little,” Mr. Phillips said, “and we depend on people wiser than us in financial ways to keep us informed, tell us what things mean, and I really didn’t think we got that.”

Lewisburg is one of hundreds of small cities and counties across America reeling from their reliance in recent years on risky municipal bond derivatives that went bad. Municipalities that bought the derivatives were like homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages who refinanced by taking out lower-interest, variable-rate mortgages. But some local officials say they were not told, or did not understand, that interest rates could go much higher if economic conditions worsened — which, of course, they did.

The municipal bond marketplace was so lightly regulated that in Tennessee Morgan Keegan was able to dominate almost every phase of the business. The firm, which is based in Memphis, sold $2 billion worth of municipal bond derivatives to 38 cities and counties since 2001, according to data compiled by the state comptroller’s office.

After The New York Times made inquiries, the Tennessee comptroller, Justin P. Wilson, ordered a statewide freeze on bond derivatives and a review of the seminar taught by Morgan Keegan and others.

Representatives of Morgan Keegan pointed out that they saved cities and counties money for years by delivering lower interest rates, and that the economic decline that created the turmoil in the bond market was beyond their control. Moody’s credit rating agency on Tuesday issued a negative outlook for the fiscal health of municipal governments.

"Pissing off customers" no longer is a business model for newspapers that blew their chance at joining the 'Net', not fighting needed change

Jeff Jarvis with BuzzMachine.com has a helluva rant about newspaper bigwigs meeting this week in San Diego and how they "blew it" when it came to saving their industry when they damn well knew big change was coming.

Like Luther's 95 theses on the church door, his whole column should be posted in every newsroom across the country to encourage the younger generation to keep fighting the good fight against the mostly old white males running everything in the ground. Their days are numbered. Yours will be to remake what they ruined.

Jarvis wrote his piece in anticipation of a speech to the Newspaper Association of America by the head of Google, the entity widely dispised by newspapers as destroying their industry by taking away readers and classified advertising.

What these editors and publishers do not understand is that these readers, particularly the young ones, were never theirs in the first place. You're only as good as the next newspaper you put out and the technology of the moment.

Here is an excerpt:

Your Google snits don’t even address your far more profound problem: the vast majority of your potential audience who never come to your sites, the young people who will never read your newspapers. You all remember the quote from a college student in The New York Times a year ago, the one that has kept you up at night. Let’s say it together:

“If the news is that important, it will find me.”

What are you doing to take your news to her? You still expect her to come to you - to your website or to the newsstand - just because of the magnetic pull of your old brand. But she won’t, and you know it. You lost an entire generation. You lost the future of news.

You blew it.

You had a generation to reinvent the business but you did too little. I by all means include myself in that indictment because I spent my career in our industry: Guilty. I didn’t raise loud enough alarms (it felt as if they were too loud already) or accomplish enough change (not nearly enough). I blew it, too. But no last-minute hail-Mary passes will make up for our failings. Having not taken advantage of the last two decades to reinvent the news business, you’re not going to manage a rescue in two months, before the creditors come calling. That was your worst hail Mary: stoking up on debt and hoping to milk these cows for years to come. Mad cash-cow disease, that’s what too many of you had. Your other desperate moves: suddenly fantasizing that you can fix everything by going behind a wall (to tell with Google and its billions of readers!) and charging us because you think we “should” pay. Since when is a business plan built on “should?” I haven’t seen a sensible P&L justifying this dream from any of you. If you have one, please stand up show us now….. I thought so. Other desperation moves: fantasies of white knights from foundations buying you and letting you stay just the way you are…. government subsidies (do we even have to discuss the danger?)…. switching to not-for-profit, as if that suddenly takes away the need to sustain the business still… misguided, self-righteousness thinking that Google or cable companies owe you money, as if you have a God-given right to the revenue and customers you lost….. No, none of this will save newspapers and in your subconscious, at least, you know it. You know the truth.

You blew it.

So what can you do? Two years, even a year ago, I would have said that you had time to build the networks and frameworks and platforms that would support the ecosystem of news that will come next. I would have said you could retrain your staff to take on new responsibilities: organizing and supporting that ecosystem, curating the best, training people to be the best. I would have advised you to offer your staff members the opportunity to join that ecosystem, setting them up in business. I would have told you to take advantage of the efficiencies the web allows (do what you do best, link to the rest, I used to say). I would have argued that we need to invent new forms of marketing help for an entire new population of businesses-formerly-known-as-advertisers. I did say that. But the financial crisis only accelerated your fall. It didn’t cause the fall, it accelerated it. So now, for many of you, there isn’t time. It’s simply too late. The best thing some of you can do is get out of the way and make room for the next generation of net natives who understand this new economy and society and care about news and will reinvent it, building what comes after you from the ground up. There’s huge opportunity there, for them.

You blew it.

: LATER: When Eric Schmidt (of Google) did take the podium at NAA, as reported by PaidContent’s Staci Kramer, he expressed some nicely ironic befuddlement at the AP going after them when Google has “a multimillion-dollar deal with the Associated Press not only to distribute their content but also to host it on our servers.” Then he did chasten the publishers:

But Schmidt came down harder on concerns about intellectual property and fair use: “From our perspective, we look at this pretty thoroughly and there is always a tension around fair use … I would encourage everybody, think in terms of what your reader wants. These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you piss off enough of them, you will not have any more.”

Right, pissing off customers is not a business model. Not anymore.


Amen to that last line, Mr. Jarvis, particularly from my experience in watching newsroom decisionmakers during my 10 years at The Tennessean.

My, O, my, how they blew it, too.

Americans saying "no" to credit card spending by record percentage; now for the bad news -- less spending = less product purchased, more layoffs

Here's the good news: Americans by a record percentage in February put away the credit card. Good for them.

Now for the bad news: This breaking of a bad habit by a record percentage means a lot less spending is going to show up in first quarter corporate earnings and will mean more layoffs for the remainder of this year. That also means bad news for the direction of the stock market.

AP reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer borrowing plunged in February at a 3.5 percent annual rate, more than analysts had expected, as Americans cut back their use of credit cards by a record amount.

The Federal Reserve said Tuesday that consumer borrowing dropped at an annual rate of $7.48 billion in February from January, which amounts to a 3.5 percent annual rate of decline. Wall Street economists expected borrowing to slide by only $1 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

The decline was led by a record drop in borrowing on credit and charge cards, which fell at an annual rate of $7.8 billion, or 9.7 percent. That is the sharpest drop in dollar terms since federal records began in 1968, and the steepest percentage fall since 1978.

The report shows consumers reluctant to increase spending as employers cut millions of jobs in a recession.

Biggest casualty in decline of newspapers has been diversity of staffs; 43% of Americans say civic life will not suffer if their local paper folded

The biggest casualty in the decline of newspapers has been the diversity of staffs, ironically as the nation elected an African-American president and Hispanic births in this nation surged during the first decade of the new millennium.

And by ignoring the need to make their staffs -- by numbers -- resemble the communities and nation they are supposed to serve, newspapers have just ensured a speedier demise.

Incredibly, almost half of Americans surveyed of all races say their local civic life will NOT suffer when newspapers disappear or are reduced in scope and number.

Certainly, a more diverse America will not be reading a product that does not even respect both the positive and negative presence of all its peoples.

For instance, here is one giant opportunity mainstream newspapers have ignored. Hispanic households are much more diverse by age, which means there is a presence of older folks who still read the newspaper and can impress that practice on the younger generation in the same house and neighborhoods.

Hispanics will comprise a third of this nation's population in just three decades.

The Mexican culture in particular is still geared to the newspaper, -- from reading it locally and subscribing to it from their hometowns back in their native country or in Texas. My grandfather lived in central Kansas, but he still subscribed to a weekly edition of the San Antonio Express-News.

And after reading it, the newspaper is used to wrap food for family members to take to work. And people of Mexican descent make up two-thirds of Hispanics in this nation.

But Hispanics are not going to read newspapers that only feature stories about them being deported or accused of raising crime rates.

Neither are African-Americans. They long ago gave up on mainstream newspapers to be objective or to reflect the realities of their lives.

For example, The Tennessean's Sunday Issues' section recently featured all white faces over its six pages. But Nashville has a 25% African-American population and two historically black universities.

Such gross disrespect, however, should not be unexpected. The top decisionmakers at The Tennessean are white. Their lives do not regularly intersect with African-Americans and neighborhoods where their households predominate.

So it should be no surprise that layoffs at The Tennessean and other newspapers across the country have forgotten about the need to maintain needed numbers of diverse staff members -- in keeping with communities served.

Layoffs that have destroyed any sense of balance when it comes to diversity show how out of step newspapers are with this nation's rapidly changing demographics. And I have to believe that advertisers would want their products and services marketed to these growing populations.

Dori J. Maynard, in writing for the Knight Foundation and PBS' website, put it bluntly about the industry's lack of concern for diversity:

In a few weeks the American Society of Newspaper Editors will release its annual census. The census, created to capture an accurate picture of the industry's diversity, will also tell us how many jobs were lost in this year of layoffs, buy-outs and shuttered newspapers.

As newspaper companies struggle with advertisers and audiences continuing to migrate to the web, the horrifying and at times mind-numbing rate at which the industry appeared to be imploding has taken the question of diversity virtually off the table.

As one newspaper CEO said to me a while back, "Diversity isn't only off the front-burner, it's not even in the kitchen."

Two reports posted on the same day serve to remind us that the news industry has ignored diversity at its own peril.

In a bit of irony, in one case the very technological innovation the newspaper turned to in order to better connect with its readers gave a graphic illustration of just how out of touch the paper was to some parts of its communities.

On March 12, the Pew Research Center for People and the Press released findings that showed that less than half the population would care if their local newspapers disappeared. That same day a post on the Neiman Journalism Lab site about The Baltimore Sun's decision to live-stream its weekday story conferences inadvertently gave us clue as to just why that might be.

"As many newspapers struggle to stay economically viable, fewer than half of Americans (43%) say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community 'a lot.' Even fewer (33%) say they would personally miss reading the local newspaper a lot if it were no longer available," the Pew study says.

In his post for the Nieman Lab about the Sun's live-streaming experiment, Tim Windsor said about observing the story meeting, "...for those who do watch -- especially those who haven't been able to attend or participate in an actual news meeting -- the visit can be eye-opening."

Actually, the screenshot alone was eye-opening, though in a sadly predictable way. There we saw 13 people gathered around the table charged with putting together a newspaper in a city in which the majority of the population is African-American.

At that particular table, on that particular day all were white and most were male.

The wide-ranging effort by the Boston community to try and save The Globe from closure by the end of the month runs contrary to the feeling of the 43% in the above survey.

But the question in American households about whether a newspaper is an essential expenditure amid a recession makes Boston an exception instead of the rule in the newspaper industry. And this nation's increasing diversity just makes the answer to that question more certain.

Obama has looked very presidential in world tour; visit to Iraq and troops today is inspiring and boosts his legitimacy as our commander in chief

Pictures of President Obama with enthusiastic troops in Iraq today were most inspiring and evidence of their confidence in his leadership as our commander in chief.

He deserves ours as well.

Obama has been most presidential in trying to restore world confidence not only in America still being the top superpower but also in our economic leadership as a consumer of the world's goods.

His move to remove some restrictions on this nation's relationship with Cuba has also been a positive foreign policy step.

His inability to convince NATO nations to contribute more troops to Afghanistan was disappointing. Despite its protests, the world -- and especially Europeans -- still looks to this nation as the world's policeman. Somehow, Obama must change that.

Yet the inability of the European nations to even successfully intervene concerning the carnage in Darfur is a testament to that continent's historical failure to confront evils before they get out of hand.

Much work remains for the president when he gets home. But his visit overseas has built confidence here at home and prayers for his safe return and success here. We need him to be successful as the suffering mounts in this nation.

Reality catches up to Bear market rally as home foreclosure numbers continue to rise and U.S. CEOs say they'll lay off more workers in 2009

Reality as to how bad things are outside of Wall Street finally caught up with the Bear market rally today, as many of the nation's CEOs said they expect to lay off more workers and home foreclosures continue to rise.

The Dow was down by almost 200 points at noon. So be careful about jumping into this rally. It doesn't have the needed economic numbers behind it. And every economist and pundit out there is simply guessing about a market bottom. Investing on someone's guess or your own can be disastrous at this stage.

For now, there is more downside potential. That's not being hopeful about America's future or negative. It is reality.

As one analyst put it, until foreclosures start to fall, there will be no economic recovery. And the number of foreclosures are expecting to hit high tide in the coming months in the nation's largest housing market, California.

There, adjustable rate mortgages start charging their highest payments.

As for the CEOs, here how CNBC reported their sobering sentiments:

More than two-thirds of U.S. chief executives plan additional layoffs and expect sales to decline in the next six months as their confidence in the economy continues to fall, according to a survey released Tuesday.

The Business Roundtable's quarterly CEO Economic Outlook Index fell to negative 5 — the first negative reading in the survey's six-year history — and down from a fourth-quarter reading of 16.5. A reading below 50 means CEOs expect contraction rather than growth.

"This quarter's results reflect the complex ongoing challenges currently at work in the U.S. economy," said Harold McGraw, who serves as Roundtable chairman and is also chief executive of publisher McGraw-Hill [MPH 0.03 -0.005 (-14.29%) ]. "Reduced consumer demand both here in the United States and abroad has placed significant pressure on American businesses."

One hundred U.S. CEOs were polled between March 16 and March 27 — during the recent rally in U.S. stocks — said they now expect real U.S. gross domestic product to decline 1.9 percent this year. That is below their December forecast, which anticipated flat GDP.

New General Motors to be split into two units as bankruptcy filing speeds toward certainty

CNBC reports that a new General Motors will be split into two units of most and less profitable as its bankruptcy filing quickly approaches.


General Motors is in "intense" and "earnest" preparations for a possible bankruptcy filing, a source familiar with the company's plans told Reuters Tuesday.

A plan to split the corporation into a "new" company made up of the most successful units, and an "old" one of its less-profitable units, is gaining momentum and is seen as the most sensible configuration, said another source familiar with the talks.

If the plan goes through, the new GM is expected to assume some previous creditor debt from bankruptcy proceedings, such as secured debt, said the second source, adding that GM [GM 1.97 -0.30 (-13.22%) ] bondholders are likely to lose substantial value in bankruptcy.

Certain GM dealer and litigation claims would also be hurt if the new company structure is used as part of a company bankruptcy, said the second source.

The sources asked for anonymity, saying they were not authorized to speak on the record.

GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson has said the company prefers to restructure out of court but could go to court if needed. GM declined to comment further.

Moody's Investor Service maintains its view for a 70 percent risk of bankruptcy for Detroit's three automakers given the difficulty of restructuring out of court, the ratings agency said.

In the event of a bankruptcy filing by any of the Detroit automakers, there is a high likelihood that the government will act to prevent an uncontrolled bankruptcy in order to contain the severe disruption to the supply base and the broader economy, Moody's said.

Layoffs beginning again around Gannett newspapers; that's why stock price is up today

Investors love it when they hear that corporations are laying off workers. That means cutting costs and increasing profits, including important quarterly dividends.

The only constant source on all things Gannett, www.gannettblog.blogspot.com, says Gannett's newspaper division has commenced second quarter layoffs.

It would be hard to consider where, for example, The Tennessean could cut its depleted staff and subsequently its already substantially reduced coverage of Middle Tennessee.

But the layoffs this week and Craig Moon's retirement last week are not just coincidental. I believe Moon just couldn't take any more of this crap without knowing how diminished the USA Today product would become along with its credibility.

When I worked for him at The Tennessean, Moon was regularly about giving the reader more. And he was the last sane force on the corporate operating committee.

Today, the value of the company stock rose almost 8 percent.

Former USA Today investigative reporter Jim Hopkins writes:

I'm not counting on a single, big "announcement" -- a companywide job reduction memo from Corporate, like we've seen in the past. Instead, I expect a series of memos from individual sites this week and next.

Gannett has been laying off employees, mostly in the newspaper division, since at least late last week. I believe these layoffs will continue this week, and possibly into next. By "these layoffs," I'm referring to a specific round, driven by the start of the second quarter.

GM speeding up preparations for bankruptcy filing to shed 47,000 jobs and drastically slash costs

Each day brings more certainty that some U.S. state is going to be decimated economically as General Motors speeds toward bankruptcy reorganization that will force a large loss of jobs and jettisoning of once highly-valued assets.

Bloomberg News reports tonight that GM is speeding up that process, which makes sense that it is better to get this step over sooner than waiting many more weeks. That was my experience from covering Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases for 10 years in Oklahoma.

The fate of the Spring Hill plant in Tennessee is anyone expert's guess, but some unbelievable things obviously are going to come from this bankruptcy. And they are going to be devastating. The ripple effect through an area economy from a giant bankruptcy is like a Tsunami. And the full impact shows up in surprising places.

Bloomberg News reports:

April 6 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp. is speeding up preparations for a possible bankruptcy filing even as directors seek deeper savings this week to avoid that outcome, people familiar with the plans said.

The bankruptcy readiness focuses on forming a new company from GM’s best assets if necessary, said the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. The cost-cut discussions center on how to go beyond GM’s proposal to slash debt by 46 percent and shed 47,000 jobs in 2009, and will include talks with Treasury officials, the people said.

The moves are a response to President Barack Obama’s March 30 rejection of GM’s bid to keep $13.4 billion in federal loans. With bondholders and the United Auto Workers balking at concessions, a push for more savings makes bankruptcy more “probable,” Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson has said.

GM’s board met today and yesterday, and more discussions are planned inside GM and with the Obama administration, the people said. Obama gave the biggest U.S. automaker 60 days to restructure, without specifying what steps were needed to stem $82 billion in losses since 2004.

Another day in America and another mass murder

This time, America's trail of blood crosses the country from Binghamton, N.Y., to Seattle, where a father took the lives of all his children before killing himself.

Neighbors say the family that lived in a mobile home park seemed pleasant with one another. Dad was a mechanic. Mom worked at Wal-Mart.

Neighbors say, however, that she had left her husband after an argument before the murders.

This epidemic of mass murders sweeping this nation must be addressed.

AP reports:

GRAHAM, Wash. (AP) -- Neighbors left cards and bouquets of flowers Sunday at the mobile home where five children ages 7 to 16 were slain, apparently by their father, who also took his own life.

Authorities had not yet determined what might have driven James Harrison to slaughter his family.

The yellow crime-scene tape and dozens of investigators who responded to the scene on Saturday were gone Sunday. The home's front yard was littered with children's toys: bicycles, a swing set, a trampoline and a basketball hoop.

''How do you make sense out of something like this?'' asked Jeff Davis, superintendent of the 2,100-student Orting School District where the children attended school.

Four of the children were shot in their beds and the fifth was shot in the bathroom in Graham, 15 miles southeast of Tacoma, Pierce County deputies said.

Neighbor Ron Vorak said he called 911 at about 3:20 p.m. Saturday after one of the family's relatives couldn't get anyone to answer the door.

''He knocked on the door, and knocked on a couple of windows,'' Vorak said of the relative. ''He walked around the side of the house, looked into the window. He could see somebody laying on the bed.''

Earlier Saturday, police had found the 34-year-old Harrison dead in his still-running car near the Muckleshoot Casino in Auburn, about 18 miles north of Graham and 30 miles south of Seattle.

He had apparently killed himself with a rifle, Auburn Police Sgt. Scott Near said. No note was left in the car.

''This was not a tragedy. It was a rotten murder,'' Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor said. ''This appears to be the terrible work of the biological father. If that doesn't break your heart, I don't know what does.''

School officials were making arrangementst to have grief counselors available when teachers and students returned to school.

''We're going to try to get through this the best we can given the circumstances,'' Davis said. ''In a small community like this, we know these kids. Teachers know the kids. All the kids know the kids.''

Davis said the eldest, Maxine Harrison, was a 10th grader at Orting High School. Jamie was in the eighth grade and her sister Samantha in the sixth grade at Orting Middle School. The two youngest, Heather and James, were second-graders at Orting Primary School.

''How could something like this happen?'' asked Mary Ripplinger, whose kids were playmates of the slain children. ''Everyone's asking: Why did he do it? It's not right.''

Authorities have not released the names of the family, but the mother's aunt, Penny Flansburg, identified the couple as Angela and James Harrison. The father worked as a diesel mechanic, and the mother works at Wal-Mart, Flansburg said.

She was at a loss to explain the crime.

''They were pleasant together,'' Flansburg said. ''We can't even figure out why.''

Ryan Peden, a classmate of the eldest daughter, who was 16, said she told him Friday night that her parents had gotten into a fight and her mother had left. The father followed the mother and tried to get her to return, said Peden, 16.

Carolyn and Raymond Bader, a former neighbor of the family, told The Seattle Times they often heard the father yelling at the children. The Baders said they called the sheriff's department and Child Protective Services several times with their concerns.

''We did all we could to help these kids,'' Raymond Bader said. ''We tried to protect these kids. We did what we could.''

One neighbor, Sherre Lund, who lives in the mobile home park, signed a community notebook left in from of the family's house. She wrote: ''God Bless the five little ones. God bring peace to Mom.''

Not even the low-paying jobs are offering full-time; looking for work is becoming a disaster; 20,000 restaurants could close over three years

The Wall Street Journal reports that traditional low-paying jobs in restaurants and retail outlets are quickly disappearing, and no one is offering full-time work.

This tragic trend is a double-edged sword.

First, people with much more experience and education are willing to take those jobs, which aren't really going to help them meet their needs.

Second, these people will push out less educated folks from these jobs, who will have no where to go from employment.

Even the restaurant jobs some people get now will not last. CNBC reports that 20,000 restaurants will close over the next several years due to massive overbuilding:

Since 1990, the number of restaurants and bars has grown to 537,000 from 361,000, a 49 percent increase, according to the National Restaurant Association. Population in the United States grew 23 percent in that period.

Amid the seeming prosperity of a credit-fueled era, people got in the habit of eating more and more of their meals out. The association’s statistics show that 48 cents of every food dollar is now spent at restaurants, compared with 40.5 cents per dollar in 1985.

In a recent note to investors, John Glass, an analyst for JPMorgan, said the casual dining industry — midrange restaurants like Applebee’s — needed to shutter about 1,200 of its roughly 18,000 locations to regain financial health.

“The chain casual dining industry has been overbuilt since 2005,” Mr. Glass wrote, noting that was the last year the industry posted positive numbers for customer traffic. “It may take two or more years to reach equilibrium.”

Others said the pruning of restaurants would extend beyond casual dining to all types of restaurants. Bob Goldin, executive vice president at Technomic, a Chicago consultancy for the restaurant industry, predicted that more than 20,000 restaurants would close over the next three years.

“I think 20,000 is a minimum,” he said. “We probably need more than that. There are a lot of marginal players out there.”

I give a lot of credit to the WSJ for following this story from the job seeker's perspective. Someone needs to, because it is the source of all despair that is growing in this nation despite bank bailouts and Bear market rallies.

This is real life, and why our recession is actually a depression not only economically but emotionally.

The WSJ reports:

LEWISTOWN, Pa. -- The growing ranks of unemployed Americans are turning to the traditional fallbacks -- retail, restaurants, customer service -- to ride out a rough economy. The bad news is job openings there are growing scarce, too.

Widespread "trading down" is sparking a fight for low-wage jobs that employers once struggled to fill. Mark Hall, 24 years old, of Alexandria, Pa., lost his $12-an-hour gig as a videographer when his employer folded and is now looking for anything to make ends meet.

"Finding a regular job, not even in my field, is very challenging," said Mr. Hall. "Even working for Lowe's, I'd settle for that, and I have a four-year degree."

Last week, Mr. Hall joined more than 500 people at a job fair in Lewistown, a fading manufacturing hub. Hardware and appliance retailer Lowe's was among 30 employers recruiting, down from 46 last year, and looking for mostly part-time and seasonal employees.

Despite what objectives they may have put atop their resumes, when asked to describe the work they really wanted, the job seekers largely had the same goal: "I'll take anything right now."

In many cases, that desperation means that even educated workers must trade down to jobs below their potential and with lower pay. That results in painful, long-term effects, from hurting their own career advancement to displacing those with less education or experience.

It feels like 1968 all over again; America faces a call to action to stop more tragedies; terror threat is greater in USA than in Afghanistan and Iraq

I remember 1968 vividly, because even while I was growing up back then, I was avid reader of the morning newspaper and viewer of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

And in that year, it seemed each day brought forth a calamity that no one thought possible -- be it in Vietnam, or with the loss of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, or LBJ withdrawing from the race or a host of things on campuses and in deprived sections of urban centers. The Soviet Union was on the march in putting down rebellion in Eastern Europe. And the Middle East was still touchy after the 1967 war.

It was the year that the world cracked, as one magazine noted in an anniversary edition.

All I know is that "1968 Feeling" has returned to my gut with what I am seeing happening to this nation, where large and small communities take the world's attention with the latest mass killings or other tragedies.

Seven police officers have been murdered in one week. And these are the folks who are supposed to keep order.

There is more terror and threat of terrorism here than in Afghanistan and Iraq. President Obama should keep the 24,000 Marines he wants to send to Afghanistan in America and dispatch them across the nation.

As I have been trying to tell folks for months on this blog, this Depression in America's spirit and loss of wealth is unlike any other. We are going to keep seeing things unthinkable. And the reality of this doom coming to place near you like a crowded shopping mall is only one gunman away.

And it will be someone trying to make a larger statement of anger than the previous ones. That means more carnage.

The simple loss of a job has been shown to be the trigger. And this nation lost more than 650,000 in March.

I believe this nation barely survived 1968. I do not see the resilency in this generation as back then. A failure to cope is a clear and present danger.

Communities, politicians, mental health authorities and clergy had better start preparing a plan of action to reach out into these masses and disarm potential gunmen before they start shooting ... or 2009 will make 1968 into the good old days.

NewsChannel 5 sweeps three National Headliner Awards; that's a remarkable journalism feat

The National Headliner Awards were started when FDR was in his first term.

So to get one is a great honor in journalism circles. To win three in an annual competition as NewsChannel 5 just did is remarkable and proof that it is the best news operation in the state -- print, radio or TV -- and probably beyond Tennessee.

"Congratulations" do not do such an accomplishment justice. And such public service deserves to be recognized.

Here is its story:

The National Headliner Awards have recognized the NewsChannel 5 Investigates team with three awards -- for investigative reporting, business and consumer reporting, and environmental reporting.

In the judging of stories that aired in 2008, NewsChannel 5's investigative team competed against television news operations in all markets across the country.

A first-place award in the business and consumer reporting category went to "NewsChannel 5 Investigates: An Alarming Failure." That investigation highlighted the problem with a common type of smoke detector that may have trouble detecting smoke from smoldering fires.

In the investigative reporting category, the second-place honor was awarded to NewsChannel 5's investigation of the Davidson County General Sessions Court. Those stories exposed judges leaving people waiting while they ran personal errands and court employees goofing off.

And, in the environmental reporting category, a second-place award went to "NewsChannel 5 Investigates: Mountaintop Mining." That investigation revealed the potential threat from a type of mining making its way into Tennessee.

One newspaper holds another hostage: Boston Globe to close with major union concessions

The New York Times -- rescued financially by a Mexican billionaire -- is offering no such refuge to unions representing The Boston Globe with a threat to close the newspaper without major concessions.

Imagine Boston without The Globe. Although it may be inconceivable, it is how bad things have gotten for the newspaper industry. The Globe loses money. As one analyst said, advertising revenue has fallen off the cliff.

Boston is a two newspaper city, with The Herald, a conservative publication.

The Globe reports on its own hostage situation:

The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut the Boston Globe unless the newspaper's unions swiftly agree to $20 million in concessions, union leaders said.

Executives from the Times Co. and Globe made the demands Thursday morning in an approximately 90- minute meeting with leaders of the newspaper's 13 unions, union officials said. The possible concessions include pay cuts, the end of pension contributions by the company and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees now enjoyed by some veteran employees, said Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's biggest union, which represents more than 700 editorial, advertising and business office employees.

The concessions will be negotiated individually with each of the unions, said Totten and Ralph Giallanella, secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters Local 259, which represents about 200 drivers who deliver the newspaper.

"We all know the newspaper industry is going through great transition and loss," said Giallanella. "The ad revenues have fallen off the cliff. Just based on everything that's going on around the country, they're serious."

Catherine Mathis, a Times Co. spokeswoman, declined to comment. Globe publisher P. Steven Ainsley also declined to comment.

The newspaper industry, which had already been struggling as readers and advertisers moved to the Internet, has been hard hit by the recession, and the Globe is no exception. The newspaper's advertising revenues have declined sharply in recent years; once robustly profitable, it is now losing money.

Killings mount across America as economic downturn and national doom takes greater toll; something terribly is wrong with this country

The ongoing spate of national killings is cause for concern and perhaps even action by federal, state and local officials.

The killing of 14 people seeking to become American citizens and picking up the necessary skills at a non-profit in Binghamton, N.Y., is the latest tragedy. Just after that horror, three Pittsburgh police officers were gunned down responding to a domestic violence call.

On the West Coast, four Oakland police officers were killed on a routine traffic stop by a parole violator.

In Alabama, a man shot up several other locations, taking 11 lives.

A man shot up a North Carolina rehab center, taking eight lives.

Nashville just had two killings in one night. One victim was a star high school football player making his way through life by being a positive force and a kind person. He was shot and killed by another teen living on the same street.

It is easy to draw a line between the growing incidents and the nation's economic decline and a growing sense of doom. While Wall Street has rallied over derelict accounting changes called mark to market for banks suffering from their own bad decisions, the rest of the country is suffering from shocking levels of unemployment and a lack of employment opportunities.

AP writer Ted Anthony writes that we may be a nation no longer able to cope:

People are of course responsible for their actions, but it's hard to avoid wondering what's afoot in the darkest recesses of what we like to call American exceptionalism. For so long, the national narrative has been so bullish about equality of opportunity, so persuasive in its romance of possibility for all. Is it so subversive to speculate, then, that when the engine of possibility runs into roadblocks, people can't cope?

Without excusing one whit of the violent tendencies that ended with so many bullets in so many bodies from Binghamton to North Carolina to Alabama to California in the past month, isn't it time, finally, to figure out where this national dream makes a wrong turn?

''Maybe research can prevent further tragedies of this type,'' a man named Charles Whitman wrote one day in 1966. Then he ascended a tower at the University of Texas, looked out over the campus, pulled out a shotgun, three rifles and three pistols and killed 16 people.

Forty-three years and countless reams of research and lost loved ones later, we have not figured it out. Today, the American Civic Association in Binghamton says so. The Pittsburgh Police Department says so. The vulnerable people at the Pinelake Health and Rehab Center in Carthage, N.C., say so.


President Obama returns from Europe to a nation on the brink and at risk for the latest tragedy from someone with a gun.

Something beyond mega billions of dollars to the financial industry and more troops sent to Afghanistan needs to be done right here at home.

A federal judge comes to defense of good newspaper journalism; he's right, but industry gave up on making a difference too long ago

From a blog on Politico.com, Federal Court of Appeals Judge Harvie Wilkinson makes an appeal for the newspaper industry of the past, one that held institutions and those in power accountable.

Wilkinson was part of a majority decision that overturned a lower court decision throwing out a lawsuit filed by a Baltimore Police Department major over violation of his First Amendment rights. He complained to the Baltimore Sun over a botched murder investigation and was fired.

Wilkinson's worries about what will happen to people such as the police major when there no longer are newspapers of substance that will take their complaints, investigate, then publish.

There are a handful of newspapers still willing to take that risk. But most are worried about the bottom line, and how much time an investigation would take from their reporters filling the newspaper each day because of drastically reduced staffs. Many beats such as the courts aren't even covered daily. Newspapers also don't want to risk advertisers pulling out because of unfavorable content.

Still, I greatly appreciate the judge's concerns. I mourn for the loss of that industry that was first about making a difference and afflicting the comfortable. And with the institutional scandals of these times and the number of people in need, great newspapers are desperately needed.

But Judge Wilkinson is speaking about newspapering that has mostly died, particularly here in Nashville.

Still, his honor makes a most eloquent appeal worth reading for those of us who miss the old days. I just wish there was an industry left that would heed it:


WILKINSON, Circuit Judge, concurring: I agree that the dismissal of Andrew’s First Amendment claims was premature. In Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), the employee spoke on a matter as a part of his official duties. Here, as the court notes, that is very much in dispute. In Garcetti, the employee did not distribute the statement to a news organization. Here he did. And the matter about which Andrew spoke was not just an office quarrel or routine personnel action, but a question of real public importance, namely whether a police shooting of a citizen was justified and whether the investigation of that shooting was less than forthcoming.

To throw out this citizen who took his concerns to the press on a motion to dismiss would have profound adverse effects on accountability in government. And those effects would be felt at a particularly parlous time. It is well known that the advent of the Internet and the economic downturn have caused traditional news organizations throughout the country to lose circulation and advertising revenue to an unforeseen extent. As a result, the staffs and bureaus of newsgathering organizations—newspapers and television stations alike— have been shuttered or shrunk. Municipal and statehouse coverage in particular has too often been reduced to low-hanging fruit. The in-depth investigative report, so essential to exposure of public malfeasance, may seem a luxury even in the best of economic times, because such reports take time to develop and involve many dry (and commercially unproductive) runs. And in these most difficult of times, not only investigative coverage, but substantive reports on matters of critical public policy are increasingly shortchanged. So, for many reasons and on many fronts, intense scrutiny of the inner workings of massive public bureaucracies charged with major public responsibilities is in deep trouble.

The verdict is still out on whether the Internet and the online ventures of traditional journalistic enterprises can help fill the void left by less comprehensive print and network coverage of public business. While the Internet has produced information in vast quantities, speedy access to breaking news, more interactive discussion of public affairs and a healthy surfeit of unabashed opinion, much of its content remains derivative and dependent on mainstream media reportage. It likewise remains to be seen whether the web—or other forms of modern media—can replicate the deep sourcing and accumulated insights of the seasoned beat reporter and whether niche publications and proliferating sites and outlets can provide the community focus on governmental shortcomings that professional and independent metropolitan dailies have historically brought to bear.

There are pros and cons to the changing media landscape, and I do not pretend to know what assets and debits the future media mix will bring. But this I do know—that the First Amendment should never countenance the gamble that informed scrutiny of the workings of government will be left to wither on the vine. That scrutiny is impossible without some assistance from inside sources such as Michael Andrew. Indeed, it may be more important than ever that such sources carry the story to the reporter, because there are, sad to say, fewer shoeleather journalists to ferret the story out.

So I concur in Judge Alarcón’s fine opinion, because it recognizes this core First Amendment concern with the actual workings—not just the speeches and reports and handouts— of our public bodies. This case may seem a small one, involving a single incident in a single locality, but smaller cases are often not without larger implications. The court is right to note that at this early stage, we cannot foresee who will prevail. But as the state grows more layered and impacts lives more profoundly, it seems inimical to First Amendment principles to treat too summarily those who bring, often at some personal risk, its operations into public view. It is vital to the health of our polity that the functioning of the ever more com- plex and powerful machinery of government not become democracy’s dark lagoon.

From the Left: Robert Reich says America is in a Depression and needs more stimulus spending

Just when the rallying stock market made Americans a bit hopeful, Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich tells Politico.com that we're in a depression -- with an unemployment rate that is actually twice that of what was announced today.

The Department of Commerce said the nation has a jobless rate of 8.5 percent.

From what I've seen and heard locally and across the nation, I believe Reich is right. But I'd rather see government spending deferred from the financial industry and its toxic assets and into communities with growing populaces needing simple help to survive. These banks don't want to loan money to help the average American anyway.

President Obama's stimulus package really is not being noticably felt. And that's because most of its spending is not until after 2010.

Here is Reich's interpretation of the unemployment rate and current economic conditions:


The March employment numbers, out this morning, are bleak: 8.5 percent of Americans officially unemployed, 663,000 more jobs lost. But if you include people who are out of work and have given up trying to find a job, the real unemployment rate is 9 percent. And if you include people working part time who'd rather be working full time, it's now up to 15.6 percent. One in every six workers in America is now either unemployed or underemployed.

Every lost job has a multiplier effect throughout the economy. For every person who no longer has a job and can't find another, or is trying to enter the job market and can't find one, there are at least three job holders who become more anxious that they may lose their job. Almost every American right now is within two degrees of separation of someone who is out of work. This broader anxiety expresses itself as less willingness to spend money on anything other than necessities. And this reluctance to spend further contracts the economy, leading to more job losses.

Capital markets may or may not unfreeze under the combined heat of the Treasury and the Fed, but what happens to Wall Street is becoming less and less relevant to Main Street. Anxious Americans will not borrow even if credit is available to them. And ever fewer Americans are good credit risks anyway.

All this means that the real economy will need a larger stimulus than the $787 billion already enacted. To be sure, only a small fraction of the $787 billion has been turned into new jobs so far. The money is still moving out the door. But today's bleak jobs report shows that the economy is so far below its productive capacity that much more money will be needed.

This is still not the Great Depression of the 1930s, but it is a Depression. And the only way out is government spending on a very large scale. We should stop worrying about Wall Street. Worry about American workers. Use money to build up Main Street, and the future capacities of our workforce.

Full-time jobs as we knew them will not return; Washington will have to provide health care

CNBC has a trend story that will become a truth in the employment market for the rest of our lifetimes.

Freelance work that does not tie companies down with paying health benefits and 401ks will become permanent no matter when the economy recovers. And that makes universal health care a must for this nation's welfare.

If companies are no longer going to pay for health care, then government will have to. It is as simple as that.

Contract work does not provide the kind of security that American families require. Leaving families uncovered only increases costs to emergency rooms and the health care industry.

CNBC reports:

Diane Shader Smith was laid off from her Los Angeles public relations job in December, but has found herself working nearly full-time since February—doing freelance PR for various companies.

"It's a very scary job environment out there, and I consider myself lucky to have any work," says the 49 year old Smith. "But I've got a list of seven clients and I love them. I'm very happy."

Shader Smith is part of a growing trend of workers who have gone from regular full-time jobs to contract work—or freelancing. They may not all be happy about it—but at least it's a way to keep working and maintain some income. For some, it also may be the best way to find a permanent job.

At the same time, contract workers are becoming a permanent fixture in the economy that is likely to continue even after the recession is over.

"I think we are seeing a fundamental change," says Tom Mobley, a professor of the Farmer School of Business at Miami University in Ohio. "Companies will staff up at certain levels again, but I think they will use freelancers or consultants on a regular basis going forward."

The recession clearly has prompted the rapid growth of freelancing in a wide variety of professions.

Obama is having his best week of presidency; financial markets showing astounding strength

President Obama is having the best week of his presidency, with successes overseas in bridging a compromise of financial regulation and gaining passage of his budget here at home with a remarkably rallying stock market.

Is the guy that good?

Of course, the budget will have to go to conference committee, but the differences in the bills between the houses is not the big.

The stock market, despite shocking jobless numbers Friday, is only showing a small loss. A change in accounting rules for banks and their toxic assets fueled yesterday's gains. The market is threatening to finish the day above 8,000 one session soon.

Obama has been treated as a liberator by crowds overseas at the EU summit. And at least from pictures, world leaders also are taken with him. His NATO summit may be more difficult in convincing leaders to commit more troops to Afghanistan.

I truly hope the president is succeeding with his policies. The suffering across the globe is growing. It is just hard for me to believe that the reckless and shameful actions of so many industries that caused the Great Recession can so quickly be turned around.

I hope I am wrong.

Legal industry hit hard by recession; so there is justice in the world; change in billable hour a must for industry beyond public oversight

The New York Times reports today on how the Great Recession is hitting America's law firms hard, which shows there is some justice in the world.

American Lawyer is calling it “the fire this time” and warning that big firms may be hurtling toward “a paradigm-shifting, blood-in-the-suites” future. The Law Shucks blog has a “layoff tracker,” and it is grim reading. Top firms are rapidly thinning their ranks, and several — including Heller Ehrman, a venerable 500-plus-lawyer firm founded in 1890 — have closed.

The employment pains of the legal elite may not elicit a lot of sympathy in the broader context of the recession, but a lot of hard-working lawyers have been blindsided, including young associates who are suddenly finding themselves with six-figure student-loan debts and no source of income.

No sympathy here. The legal profession has the least oversight of the estates supposedly supporting society. And too many attorneys and judges have used this lack of transparency to rip off the public, mostly when people can least afford it and are hurting and children are involved, such as in divorce cases.

And that's were the infamous billable hour comes in.

Always ask for billable hours from your attorney throughout the period of representation. You need to see what you are being charged for -- the most and least. For instance, only use e-mail to communicate and have all your questions in the e-mail. Each time you bother them, you get charged. Electronic communication is the least expensive.

I requested my billable hours from a Williamson County divorce attorney I fired for getting my divorce case into the courts and to a hearing. In divorce, staying out of court and before a judge are the primary aim. The attorney had used up all of my $3,000 retainer, and the document I requested said I owed $30.

So if I had met with her for a billable hour for us to set our strategy for the bad advice she had given me that got me in court, that would have cost $300. Waiting on the judge and then the hearing would have cost $600. And getting past that obstacle was not even approaching mediation or any resolution, which would have cost another $4,000 at the minimum.

Then, if the judge was crazy(or corrupt), which is a distinct possibility from divorce cases I've been hearing about across this state and across the nation, then the cost would have multiplied many times.

In divorce court, the biggest problem too often is not what the law says but whether the judge likes you and what he or she says the laws says about your case. And you can even be jailed for exercising your First Amendment rights. Then if the judge and the attorney opposing you have a strong bar association relationship, then you may have another set of problems.

Our Founding Fathers would be shocked, I hope.

Thankfully, my wife and I have gone about negotiating and completing our case outside of billable hours. She has kept her attorney to simply review our agreements and give advice, and then file with the courts what we agree on.

We've ultimately agreed that it is better that these thousands of dollars go to her than the legal industry profiting from divorce and keeping sides angry at each other. We must quit feeding the beast with accusations and counter-accusations.

You can see how easily the legal industry surrounding divorce cases makes its money, big-time. So to hear it is being hit hard is sweet music and deserved justice. May this recession last 1,000 years.

And attorneys, touched by a brief moment of decency, are re-looking at the fairness of the billable hour and perhaps, just perhaps, basing their pay on the success of their representation -- not getting you in court like my fired attorney. (She still defended her representation as "competent". Doesn't everyone want a competent attorney instead of a good one?)

The Times reports of changes that MIGHT sweep the legal industry if this recession lasts long enough, beginning with big corporate clients, not peons like us:

Clients are also likely to benefit — and consumers, since legal fees are built into the cost of almost everything. Even before the downturn, big-firm clients, led by the Association of Corporate Counsel, were pushing to phase out the billable hour — which can go as high as $1,000. Tight corporate budgets will give clients more leverage to push to pay by the project or for successful outcomes.

Change can be good.

Sometimes, only hard times can force institutions to recognize others instead of only its perpetuation and power.

There are good attorneys and judges out there. I personally know many of them including my oldest brother and good friends and advocates. But attorneys cannot speak out against bad judges or they would lose their income before that court. Judges are not going to turn in their colleagues. That would make for ill feelings at bar association gatherings.

I was introduced to the legal system at 12 years of age when my father was tried for federal offenses in Oklahoma City. He was exonerated bu a jury because of an honest federal judge and a young attorney with brains and bravado. Dad had simply made the mistake of being a very successful civil service manager at the local Air Force Base -- and a Mexican-American. The Solicitor General's office had cleared him. But the local U.S. attorney went ahead and put our family through Hell.

But we were actually lucky and blessed.

If mom and dad had not been able to take out a second mortgage on the home they were buying, and if the young brash attorney had not been able to get my father's case shifted to a more liberal judge, I could very well have been raised by only my mother during my teen years. That means I would not have had my writing career, nor this blog to write.

Life should not come so close to disaster, particularly in our legal system. A lot of money is needed for justice.

From personal experience and communication with regular people, evidence is mounting of the corrupt nature of the divorce industry and the gross lack of oversight in states like Tennessee. Here, a former judge serves as the gatekeeper for public complaints at state commission. So few complaints survive. And this immorality continues because we don't speak up and demand our rights from the legal system that belongs to us, not the bar association.

While we should pray for the Great Recession to ease on this nation, it would be better if it continues on the legal industry, to force some contrition along with draining its pocketbooks filled by so many years of hurting people and their children more than helping them.

Markets zoom past 8,000 but there is little data to support such a surge; be careful about reinvesting

The Dow has zipped past 8,000 in intraday trading despite the lack of data to support such a surge.

In fact, data just released today shows a personal financial and employment situation continuing to crater across the nation.

CNBC reports:

More U.S. consumers have fallen behind on loan payments than ever before, and the problem may worsen as millions more find themselves out of a job, a study released Thursday shows.

According to the American Bankers Association, which represents most large U.S. banks and credit card companies, the percentage of consumer loans at least 30 days late rose to a seasonally adjusted 3.22 percent in the October-to-December period from 2.9 percent in the prior quarter.

The ABA said the fourth-quarter rate was the highest since it began tracking the data in 1974, with delinquencies rising in nearly every category. It said these credit trends are unlikely to improve before 2010.

"Job losses have really hurt the economy and will continue to inflict pain for several months," James Chessen, the ABA's chief economist, said in an interview. "The greater the losses are, the more severe an impact it has on all credit markets."

The ABA study covers direct auto, indirect auto, closed-end home equity, home improvement, marine, mobile home, personal, and recreational vehicle loans. It excludes bank credit card and education loans.

A report issued Wednesday by ADP Employer Services said U.S. private employers shed a record 742,000 jobs in March, pushing year-to-date losses above 2 million.

Economists polled by Reuters expect the Labor Department to say on Friday that the U.S. jobless rate rose to 8.5 percent in March, a level not seen since 1983, from February's 8.1 percent.


I just don't find a lot of hope in those numbers to get back into the financial markets. But perhaps I am wrong.

Here's why politics stink: Biden takes credit for new fire station being built by Bush administration

In an effort to sell the Obama administration's stimulus plan as immediately helping Americans, Vice President Joe Biden went to a rural North Carolina town and tried to take credit for a fire station being built with Bush administration money.

That's really sad and typically political. Both political parties stink and betray. And the Obama administration is a tad desperate to show it is doing something as numbers released today for continuing jobless claims reached a record high.

McClatchy Newspapers report in this excerpt:

PIKEVILLE, N.C. — Vice President Joe Biden brought a clear message to this tiny Eastern North Carolina town Wednesday: The federal recovery money isn't just for big banks and auto companies.

Biden and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced a new wave of $10.4 billion in federal stimulus money for home loans across the country, and billions more for essential services in rural communities such as Pikeville, which is getting money for a new fire station. Biden used the outdated, current station as a backdrop. Pikeville is just north of Goldsboro in Wayne County.

"We're investing in places like this all across the country," Biden said, "to demonstrate the vital role towns like this play in the recovery."

Most of the money for the station that was announced Wednesday, however, had been secured last year under the Bush administration, according to fire department officials.

State Sen. David Rouzer, a Republican who represents Pikeville and worked in the Agriculture Department under President Bush, said he helped secure the fire department money last year out of the federal agency's regular programs.

"They're coming in and cherry picking the best projects and switching out the money, saying it's stimulus money," Rouzer said. "But it was already approved and in the pipeline. It's totally disingenuous to come down here and say this is stimulus money, when regardless of whether a stimulus bill passed, they were getting the money."

More signs of the times: Libraries, storage unit operators feeling the hurt of hard times; but garage sales are made more expansive, exciting

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that a new and rather exciting opportunity has emerged for officiandos of garage sales to discover hidden treasures.

A lot of folks can no longer make payments on storage units, so the operators are allowed to put the possessions in the unit up for auction. People are allowed five minutes to look inside the unit, but are allowed to wade through the stuff.

Bids go from $10 to $3,000. One buyer discovered a Harley autographed by Elvis. But most of the stuff usually is not that valuable.

You can Google auctions in your area.

The New York Times reports that libraries have turned into gathering places for the dispossessed. And library workers feel ill-prepared to deal with outbursts from these newest patrons whose stress level is peaking. One dispute ended up in a stabbing outside the library.

It reports in this excerpt:

As the national economic crisis has deepened and social services have become casualties of budget cuts, libraries have come to fill a void for more people, particularly job-seekers and those who have fallen on hard times. Libraries across the country are seeing double-digit increases in patronage, often from 10 percent to 30 percent, over previous years.

But in some cities, this new popularity — some would call it overtaxing — is pushing libraries in directions not seen before, with librarians dealing with stresses that go far beyond overdue fines and misshelved books. Many say they feel ill-equipped for the newfound demands of the job, the result of working with anxious and often depressed patrons who say they have nowhere else to go.

The stresses have become so significant here that a therapist will soon be counseling library employees.


Why relay these pictures of despair on this blog?

Because things are not getting better out there, no matter which way the Dow is going and no matter what nonsense Dave Ramsey and others disperse.

Prepare your own budget for these times. And see what you and your place of worship can do to address these hard times affecting so many new people each day.

Texans are interesting people, but I would not want to be one: their sense of history lacks truth

I ran into a group of Texans Saturday night at Mexican restaurant in Nashville.

As an Oklahoman most of my life, I've learned how to loathe Texans but keep it to myself.

But Saturday, I couldn't help it. I asked them how they could stand being away from God's country and among us peons in Tennessee.

They remarked how Tennessee was a sort of sister state, since so many Tennesseans were invited by the Mexicans in the 1830s to come and help fight for independence.

Excuse me.

These Texans have had to depend on a false history to justify not only the supposed fight for independence from Mexico but then the illegal Mexican-American War that was simply a land grab pushed by another Tennessean, James K. Polk.

An enraged Congress, including then Congressman Abraham Lincoln, passed legislation providing $15 million in reparations to the Mexican government for the destruction of that war brought upon a sovereign nation and innocent families.

All those wonderful Tennesseans and Texans reinstituted slavery in Texas once they took over. Mexico had outlawed it. So much for these folks being the good guys. It would not be until Juneteenth in 1865 that Texas' slaves would be notified of their freedom.

I reminded the Texans that their beloved Tennesseans came to the land of people who looked like me with guns. Consider what would happen to Hispanics today if they came to Tennessee with guns.

I then asked if all the American Indians asked for all the freedom fighters from Texas to push further out West and decimate their numbers and civilizations.

Texans don't like to be challenged, particularly when it comes to the truth. But I enjoyed the exercise, because Texas by 2020 is going to be majority Hispanic. And the group of Texans I came across are going to have helluva time dealing with that. You can already see the fighting in Dallas, which is majority Hispanic.

What was taken illegally and with guns, God and Our Lady of Guadalupe have simply returned with the peaceful births of All-American children who happen to have brown skin like me. His justice and timing are perfect.

And these children will rewrite the history of Texas from fable to the truth.

'60' Minutes' Kroft has good advice to journalism students and newspapers still trying to survive

"60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft had some good advice for journalism students at Indiana University:

Learn to write.

There is no replacement for good writing, telling a story in an effective, powerful way.

One of deepest points of deterioration in newspapers has been in the writing. A lot of the old pros have been put out to pasture for younger reporters who are forced to do many things -- which shows in their lack of attention to good writing.

It is poor. And it is hard to come up with a good writer left in the Midstate print market.

Kroft also told students that 60 Minutes' ratings are up sharply this year as viewers look for content and solid reporting, two other casualties of the decline in newspapers.

In a note on inter-office politics, Kroft said that the late Ed Bradley felt that Mike Wallace had screwed him out of a couple of good stories. Competitive fires within a newsroom also make for better content.

Here is an excerpt from the J-school's coverage of Kroft:

Kroft, who has been with the show for 28 years, said ratings are up about 15 percent in the last year, perhaps because viewers want this kind of reporting, something that is beginning to disappear from other media outlets as newspapers’ shrink and fold.

“The business model is changing,” Kroft said of how media outlets make money. “It’s up to journalists to make content and corporate to make money – they just haven’t figured out how to make money in this new media world. There’s always going to be a place for good content.”

“Good content” is more than just entertaining stories. Kroft talked about the Washington Post’s investigative coverage of injured soldiers’ treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and 60 Minutes’ later coverage of that story. Kroft said this is the kind of reporting that makes a difference, and it often finds its beginnings in newspaper reporting.

To the journalism students in the crowded theater, Kroft advised learning to shoot and edit video in order to make themselves more marketable. But his main piece of advice had to deal with something a bit more basic.

“Learn to write,” he said. “You can be born with that ability, but it’s also something that can be learned and, if that’s all you get from what you learned here, you’ll be fine.”

WSJ on retirement of Craig Moon; says he'll explore opportunities in media where values are way down; that's great news for readers here

The Wall Street Journal wrote the following story from an interview with former Tennessean publisher Craig Moon, who is returning to Nashville to explore media business opportunities.

That's good news for readers here who are poorly served by the existing print media outlets.

USA Today President and Publisher Craig Moon announced his sudden retirement Tuesday, leaving the country's largest newspaper with its top two jobs unfilled during perhaps the most difficult stretch in its 27-year history. He also said the newspaper has lost about 100,000 subscribers just from the slowdown in travel.

Mr. Moon said in an interview that the slowdown has resulted in a reduction of more than 7% in the number of copies of USA Today distributed through partnerships with hotel chains such as Marriott, which account for more than half of its circulation.

The 59-year-old executive, who spent 23 years at parent company Gannett Co. and the last six as publisher of USA Today, has overseen a publication that has come under increasing economic pressure. Gannett expects ad revenue to fall by as much as 35% in the first quarter, Chief Financial Officer Gracia Martore said at an investor conference in March. Gannett executives also had said at the conference they were bracing for a significant circulation hit.

The 1.3 million daily copies distributed at hotels in the six months ending Sept. 28 accounted for more than half of USA Today's average weekday circulation of 2.3 million, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. ABC releases figures for the six months ending in March at the end of April.

Mr. Moon said he decided to leave USA Today to explore investment opportunities in the media industry, where "values are way down." He said he did not view his departure as an escape from a sinking industry, adding in USA Today "you still have the workings of a successful business."

Mr. Moon's departure expands the void at the top of the paper following the recent resignation of editor Kenneth Paulson, whose replacement has not been named. John Hillkirk is serving as Mr. Paulson's interim replacement.

Gannett said it hasn't decided on a successor for Mr. Moon.

The move was largely unexpected within Gannett. USA Today founder Al Neuharth, who still writes a weekly column for the paper, said he found out in a call Tuesday morning from Mr. Moon and Gannett Chief Executive Craig Dubow. "It would be unfair to say I expected that news," Mr. Neuharth said. "But things happen. People retire."

Mr. Moon isn't walking away empty-handed. Gannett in its 2008 proxy statement valued Mr. Moon's pension at $3.3 million as of Dec. 31, 2007.

Shocking sign of the times: Owners abandoning boats too costly to keep in today's economy

America's coastlines are becoming littered with the unthinkable: boats that owners now consider too expensive to maintain.

As the economy worsens, these luxuries are being abandoned.

A new survey on employers reported today that 742,000 private industry jobs were lost in March. That's the largest number since the survey began. The nation's unemployment rate comes out Friday.

Here's is The Times' story:

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — Boat owners are abandoning ship.

They often sandpaper over the names and file off the registry numbers, doing their best to render the boats, and themselves, untraceable. Then they casually ditch the vessels in the middle of busy harbors, beach them at low tide on the banks of creeks or occasionally scuttle them outright.

The bad economy is creating a flotilla of forsaken boats. While there is no national census of abandoned boats, officials in coastal states are worried the problem will only grow worse as unemployment and financial stress continue to rise. Several states are even drafting laws against derelicts and say they are aggressively starting to pursue delinquent owners.

“Our waters have become dumping grounds,” said Maj. Paul R. Ouellette of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “It’s got to the point where something has to be done.”

Derelict boats are environmental and navigational hazards, leaking toxins and posing obstacles for other craft, especially at night. Thieves plunder them for scrap metal. In a storm, these runabouts and sailboats, cruisers and houseboats can break free or break up, causing havoc.

Some of those disposing of their boats are in the same bind as overstretched homeowners: they face steep payments on an asset that is diminishing in value and decide not to continue. They either default on the debt or take bolder measures.

Marina and maritime officials around the country say they believe, however, that most of the abandoned vessels cluttering their waters are fully paid for. They are expensive-to-maintain toys that have lost their appeal.