Respect Is Earned, But Most Modern “Journalists” Wouldn’t Know It

Previously, I’d written about, and provided one example of, what I considered to be an exemplary model of poor journalistic practice — which is the failure to properly identify individuals quoted in stories by their academic/professional achievements, proper title, capitalization, organizational affiliation, and location, to which I added the practice of abbreviated (or not) states’ names.

There are at least TWO fundamental issues underlying the first matter, both of which can be boiled down to one, that one being respect:

1.) Respect for the individual whom is quoted and referenced in the story, most often only obliquely recognized as an authority or expert, and;

2.) Respect for the reader, the party whom is being informed by reading the story, and for whom the authors write.

Folks who earn PhD’s didn’t just have that terminal degree handed to them on a silver platter. They worked their hineys off for years to earn it. As a matter of fact, folks who earn ANY academic achievement didn’t have it handed to them on a silver platter. They had to WORK to EARN it.

And this is a corollary, though obliquely related matter, which is that

Criticizing Modern “Journalism”

The writing style of the majority of bodies of work (especially and particularly “news”) found online is abysmally poor, and uninformative. It’s a problem that I bitch about with seeming regularity. Doubtlessly, there are numerous contributing factors, but it is my opinion that a predominate role has been, and continues to be, played by corporate-profit-driven, Wall-$treet-controlled “media outlets,” whose exclusive concern is… MONEY.

Nothing else.

No concern for truth, no concern for veracity, for authenticity, no concern for quality, no concern for anything but MONEY.

And nowhere is that more excruciatingly shown than at Fox News, which stinking putrid pot has had the purifying and sanitizing light of day shown upon it brought by the MULTI-BILLION dollar defamation lawsuit against it by Dominion Voting Systems of Denver, CO, charging that Fox deliberately spread malicious lies about the November 2020 General Election, falsely claiming that Dominion’s voting machines were part and parcel of a giant conspiracy and fraud to alter the outcome of the election.

They were not.

And as tranche after tranche, raft after raft of documents and communications of myriad kind have shown, and continue to show, not even Fox’s lying talking heads believed the bullshit espoused by the crazies of the Party of Trump.

But more to the point.

Today’s journalists (I use that term loosely) are piss poor writers, uninformative, and more… and worse.

Here’s an example that occurs with calculable regularity.

A person is quoted, or mentioned, in some story, but

Let’s Talk About AVOCADOS! (Confronting lies, ignorance, and fear in modern journalism.)

Yesterday, I happened upon a story (a poorly written, and unconvincing one, at that — and there are several) about a complaint that someone, or some group, was making to so-called “chefs,” who in response were removing the avocado from their menus, ostensibly because of some alleged character flaw characterized as “un-sustainability.”

Avocados are a nutrient dense, heart-healthy food, production of which is SUSTAINABLE, and lucrative, for this, and other nation’s economies… contrary to what the goddamn ignoramuses tell you. There are PLENTY of academically, statistically, economically, and scientifically validated facts about avocados in this entry, ALL from HIGHLY REPUTABLE sources which almost every one DIRECTLY CONTRADICT the goddamn lies and BULLSHIT that so-called “journalists” write, and hope to get you to believe.

What a crock!

“Sustainability” my ass!

You wanna’ know what’s “unsustainable”?

Life without water. Life without food.

Besides… the fucking avocados are Hecho en Mexico.

Yeah, you stupid motherfuckers… Mexico produces the lion’s share of the world’s avocados, followed by Dominican Republic, Peru, Colombia, Indonesia, Kenya, Brazil, Haiti, Chile, and Israel.

NOT ‘Murka.

A business intelligence report on the global avocado market wrote this, in part, about the fruit:

“Avocados contain vitamins A, B, C, E, and K, including 25 essential nutrients. It also contains phytochemicals, like beta-sitosterol and antioxidants, like lycopene and beta-carotene. The essential nutrients are increasing the demand for the fruit, globally, and therefore acts as a major driving force behind the growth of the avocado market. The demand for avocados is increasing globally due to their health benefits as it increases vision, prevents heart-related diseases, and helps in improving digestion. The increased demand across the globe has resulted in increased production. According to FAOSTAT, avocado production was 5.7 million metric ton in 2016, which has increased by 12.7% and reached 7.1 million metric ton in 2019.”

FAOSTAT is the Statistics Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

So… that’s not enough facts, figures, and statistics about avocados?

You’re about to get more than you can shake a stick at. So, sit tight, and hold onto your hat. We’re about to go on a whirlwind ride!

Here are more facts, figures, and statistics about avocados, from NASS, 2020 (National Agricultural Statistics Service — i.e., your tax dollars at work):

In 2020 the United States produced 206,610 tons of avocados. That same year, economic value of U.S. avocado production was $426 million. California’s 2020 avocado production value was $411,720,000, with 47,300 acres in production, which yielded 3.98 TONS / ACRE.

For comparison, the U.S. Gross Domestic Product in Q3 2021 was $23.173496 TRILLION. California’s avocado production DOES NOT even make it into the state’s Top 10 most valuable agriculture products, which are:

• Dairy Products, Milk — $7.47 billion
• Almonds — $5.62 billion
• Grapes — 4.48 billion
• Pistachios — $2.87 billion
• Cattle and Calves — $2.74 billion

• Lettuce — $2.28 billion
• Strawberries — $1.99 billion
• Tomatoes — $1.20 billion
• Floriculture — $967 million
• Walnuts — $958 million

In California, avocados are the 16th most valuable crop. Tomatoes, strawberries, hay, oranges, rice, tangerines, almonds, pistachios, broccoli, and lettuce all outpace the state’s avocado production value.

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis found that in Q2 2021, the value of California’s Gross Domestic Product was $3,290,170 million ($3.29 TRILLION), and accounted for 14.5% of U.S. GDP.

In the U.S., a total of 52,720 acres were in stable avocado production. Certain varieties, such as the Hass, have a tendency to bear well only in alternate years. That’s a 50% reduction biennially. How would you like it if your income fluctuated like that?

In the past decade, U.S. avocado consumption the U.S. has doubled, and is now about

A Compendium of Events Leading Up to Trump’s Insurrection January 6, 2021

As a treasonously wicked, son of perdition and Manipulator in Chief, Trump’s planned corruption played out in public, in print and broadcast news reports (he’s a media whore), on Twitter (he’s a narcissist), on other social media, like FaceBook, and Parler, the favorite of White Supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other right-wing extremists.

His followers are rightly called the “Cult of Trump.”

Recall what he’d said to Chris Wallace of Fox News in an interview July 19, 2020 at the White House:

WALLACE: In general, not talking about November, are you a good loser?

TRUMP: I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose. I don’t lose too often. I don’t like to lose.

WALLACE: But are you gracious?

TRUMP: You don’t know until you see. It depends. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election. I really do.

WALLACE: Are you suggesting that you might not accept the results of the election?

TRUMP: No. I have to see. Look, Hillary Clinton asked me the same thing.

WALLACE: No, I asked you the same thing at the debate.

---

77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election

Within a few hours after the United States voted, the President declared the election a fraud — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power.

By Jim Rutenberg, Jo Becker, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, Matthew Rosenberg and Michael S. Schmidt
January 31, 2021

By Thursday the 12th of November, President Donald J. Trump’s election lawyers were concluding that the reality he faced was the inverse of the narrative he was promoting in his comments and on Twitter. There was no substantial evidence of election fraud, and there were nowhere near enough “irregularities” to reverse the outcome in the courts.

Mr. Trump did not, could not, win the election, not by “a lot” or even a little. His presidency would soon be over.

Allegations of Democratic malfeasance had disintegrated in embarrassing fashion. A supposed suitcase of illegal ballots in Detroit proved to be a box of camera equipment. “Dead voters” were turning up alive in television and newspaper interviews.

The week was coming to a particularly demoralizing close: In Arizona, the Trump lawyers were preparing to withdraw their main lawsuit as the state tally showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. leading by more than 10,000 votes, against the 191 ballots they had identified for challenge.

As he met with colleagues to discuss strategy, the president’s deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, was urgently summoned to the Oval Office. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was on speaker phone, pressing the president to file a federal suit in Georgia and sharing a conspiracy theory gaining traction in conservative media — that Dominion Systems voting machines had transformed thousands of Trump votes into Biden votes.

Mr. Clark warned that the suit Mr. Giuliani had in mind would be dismissed on procedural grounds. And a state audit was barreling toward a conclusion that the Dominion machines had operated without interference or foul play.

Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Clark a liar, according to people with direct knowledge of the exchange. Mr. Clark called Mr. Giuliani something much worse. And with that, the election-law experts were sidelined in favor of the former New York City mayor, the man who once again was telling the president what he wanted to hear.

Thursday the 12th was the day Mr. Trump’s flimsy, long-shot legal effort to reverse his loss turned into something else entirely — an extralegal campaign to subvert the election, rooted in a lie so convincing to some of his most devoted followers that it made the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable.

Weeks later, Mr. Trump is the former President Trump. In coming days, a presidential transition like no other will be dissected when he stands trial in the Senate on an impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection.” Yet his lie of an election stolen by corrupt and evil forces lives on in a divided America.

A New York Times examination of the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration shows how, with conspiratorial belief rife in a country ravaged by pandemic, a lie that Mr. Trump had been grooming for years finally overwhelmed the Republican Party and, as brake after brake fell away, was propelled forward by new and more radical lawyers, political organizers, financiers and the surround-sound right-wing media.

In the aftermath of that broken afternoon at the Capitol, a picture has emerged of entropic forces coming together on Trump’s behalf in an ad hoc, yet calamitous, crash of rage and denial.

But interviews with central players, and documents including previously unreported emails, videos and social media posts scattered across the web, tell a more encompassing story of a more coordinated campaign.

Across those 77 days, the forces of disorder were summoned and directed by the departing president, who wielded the power derived from his near-infallible status among the party faithful in one final norm-defying act of a reality-denying presidency.

Throughout, he was enabled by influential Republicans motivated by ambition, fear or a misplaced belief that he would not go too far.

In the Senate, he got early room to maneuver from the majority leader, Mitch McConnell. As he sought the president’s help in Georgia

So much blather! Blather! Blather!

Do you ever read a headline, and then desperately wade through the gobbledygook mumbo-jumbo to find the gem, or answer to the question posed very near the end of the article?

Yeah… so do I.

So, let’s just cut to the chase on this one, eh?

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Whatever Happened To … The Instant Hospitals Built In Wuhan For COVID-19 Patients?

September 10, 2020 6:40 AM ET
Joanne Lu

“The makeshift hospitals that were converted from existing large buildings have

CNN Called Out For Discrimination & Unethical Journalistic Practices

Abby Phillip, CNN

To anyone watching, it was as plain as the nose on your face.

I’m neither a CNN fan, nor a CNN hater.

But this is blatant, and inexcusable.

It demonstrates an utter lack, and wholesale abandonment of professional journalistic integrity.

It wasn’t merely the Democrats or Progressives who noticed, either.

In fact, voices from the Conservative Right Wing were the loudest to decry the moderator Abby Phillip’s action.

I mean to refer to the 7th Democratic Debate held at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa this past Tuesday evening, 14 January 2020.

For some, it was analogously like the 7th Level of Hell in Dante’s Inferno, which was also full of violence toward individuals, and the Earth.

Though there were no fisticuffs, no bomb threats, no armed shooters, and no physical violence of any kind, there was another killing – two, in fact.

One, was CNN, which along with Moderator Abby Phillip, burned her journalism career, and the last shred of respectability or integrity CNN had remaining.

The other was Bernie Sanders.

It was obvious from the get-go.

Corporate interests in America do NOT want to see him win the Democratic Nomination for President.

It’s.

Just.

That.

Simple.

The Federalist, one such website, Tweeted this about Abby Philip’s demonstration of lack of character, and her ethically unacceptable behavior:

Brianne Pfannenstiel, Chief Politics Reporter, The Des Moines Register, Iowa

“During the seventh round of Democrat debates Tuesday, CNN moderator Abby Phillip asked a shameful question that accused Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., of saying a woman could not win the 2020 election.”

They neither wasted any time writing about the unprofessional attack and exchange.

The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass, another conservative columnist, also laid into CNN and Abby Phillip over her unethical journalistic behavior.

His remarks from his column, in part, are found below.

Even Rolling Stone magazine’s Matt Taibbi found Abby Phillip’s disrespectful treatment of Bernie Sanders to be not merely a cheap shot, but a calculated and active interference to sway viewers’ opinion.

CNN’s Debate Performance Was Villainous and Shameful

The 24-hour network combines a naked political hit with a cynical ploy for ratings.

“This time, the whole network tossed the mud. Over a 24-hour period before, during, and after the debate, CNN bid farewell to what remained of its reputation as a nonpolitical actor via a remarkable stretch of factually dubious reporting, bent commentary, and heavy-handed messaging.

“The cycle began with a “bombshell” exposé by CNN reporter MJ Lee. Released on the eve of the debate, Lee reported Warren’s claim that Sanders told her a woman couldn’t win in a December 2018 meeting.

[These banal meanderings] “continued during the debate, with the chryon featuring questions like, “How will [Sanders] avoid bankrupting the country?” Or: “Does Sanders owe voters an explanation of how much his health plan will cost them and the country?””

CNN’s Chief Political Correspondent, Dana Bash, carried the ball over the line for the anti-Bernie Corporate Democrats – who were all assembled at CNN, including former DNC chair and commentator Terry McAuliffe, Clinton communications person Jess McIntosh, and former senior adviser to Barack Obama David Axelrod – and immediately after the debate concluded she said, “Do [voters] want a Bernie Sanders anti-interventionist, or do they want somebody who has experience and who has — as I’m sure you will hear behind us — voted for things like the Iraq war and maybe has made other decisions that he doesn’t regret and has been a leader on national security, but also has some that he does?”

Then McIntosh said this: “I think what Bernie forgot was that this isn’t a he said/she said story. This is a reported-out story that CNN was part of breaking. So, to have him just flat-out say no, I think wasn’t — wasn’t nearly enough to address that for the women watching.”

The Washington Examiner, another Right-leaning publication, also chimed in later that evening with a story headlined, “CNN debate moderator assumes Bernie Sanders is lying about women.”

In her story for the Examiner, Breaking News Reporter Madison Dibble wrote in part that, “A moderator from the CNN/Des Moines Register debate sided with Elizabeth Warren in the he-said-she-said dispute over whether Bernie Sanders said a woman couldn’t be president.

“Abby Phillip, a CNN reporter, phrased her questions in defense of Warren, who claimed that Sanders told her he didn’t think a woman could be president during a meeting in 2018. The Vermont senator has denied that he ever said such a thing, but Phillip worded the questions as though there were evidence backing up Warren’s claim.”

Even POTUS Trump sees it.

They are rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders, just like last time, only even more obviously. They are bringing him out of so important Iowa in order that, as a Senator, he sit through the Impeachment Hoax Trial. Crazy Nancy thereby gives the strong edge to Sleepy…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2020

POS45’s follow-up Tweet read, “….Joe Biden, and Bernie is shut out again. Very unfair, but that’s the way the Democrats play the game. Anyway, it’s a lot of fun to watch!”

Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile, who helped Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, was later discovered to have been pilfering debate questions ahead of time, and sharing them with Hillary, with the intent to defeat Bernie. Like Roger Stone, she remains unrepentant for her misdeeds. CNN also fired her for that activity. But CNN wasn’t the only one.

Fox News also showed Brazile the door with the left foot of fellowship.

Vice-President of Fox Ethics, Satya Martin, described Brazile’s firing:

“Donna Brazile is the worst reporter or commentator or whatever she is that I’ve ever known.
Her only goal, it seems, is to be contrary.
She literally claims opposite supposed ‘facts’ to everything that we report in the news. And her opinions are over the top in their opposition.
She’s like a child who just screams in tantrums against us for attention.

“She was fired from CNN for fabricating stories so she was already known as a purveyor of fake news.
The brass had their reasons for taking a chance on her.
I’m sure they wanted to attract a liberal audience just to show that we mean it when we say we’re fair and balanced.
But there’s fair and balanced and then there’s off her rocker crazy train journalism.
That’s Brazile.
Nuts.”

Donna Brazile is totally not sorry for leaking CNN debate questions to Hillary Clinton

It wasn’t long after she was fired by CNN that Donna Brazile quickly wrote a tell-all which fingered Hillary as the brainchild behind an unethically-appearing fundraising bargain with the Democratic National Committee, in which the DNC was rigged in Clinton’s favor because her campaign was largely financing the party early on in the presidential election. And Donna Brazile, who knew about it from the get-go said the agreement “was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical.”

Of course,
as Bernie has long said,
it’s all about the Benjamins,
and a
Corporate System
legally rigged
AGAINST
the
Average American.

Even John Kass sees it.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/john-kass/ct-bernie-sanders-cnn-kass-20200116-avuaiaxbfvdkbb2w6y4yoiafuq-story.html

“What CNN did to Bernie Sanders in the Iowa Democratic presidential debate — stabbing him with the gender card on behalf of a weakened Elizabeth Warren — was cheap and unfair.

“And it was shameful.

“I’m probably the last guy to defend Sanders. He is a man of the far left and I most certainly am not.

“But even a conservative like me can see that Sanders was cheated out of the Democratic presidential nomination the last time, with the Democratic National Committee rigging the whole thing for Hillary Clinton. And now it’s happening again.

“No wonder the Sanders supporters are angry.

“What happened on CNN in Iowa was bad for journalism. But it sure was good for Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden.

“Sanders, the authentic candidate on the left in this cycle, as he was in the last, was surging in the Iowa polls. Warren, also on the left, was fading, desperate and in full panic. She began waving her gender card on that dangerous Intersectionality Highway where Democrats, addicted to identity politics, often crack up.

…

“And Joe? With Bernie on Trump jury duty in Washington, Biden is left to wander around Iowa with (former) Mayor Pete — who also was not challenged by CNN — and that radical billionaire environmentalist who made his gold in fossil fuels.

“No wonder Sanders’ supporters are upset. They’ve seen this before. They watched the same game play out three years ago, when the Democratic nomination was almost his, and establishment media handmaidens of the Democratic National Committee protected Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump.

“A Sanders vs. Trump campaign in 2016 would have been a clash of populist titans. Sanders could have won. We might see this matchup in 2020. Establishment Democrats are panicked, and conventional wisdom suggests Trump would smash him, but I’m not so sure.

“The electorate has been primed by relentless media attacks on Trump, who attacks them back. Americans are unsettled and worried about their future in a world undergoing economic upheaval. Bernie could win.

“The Democratic base is energized for 2020. Sanders, who suffered a heart attack weeks ago, looks positively vital when compared to Biden. Conventional wisdom also once said Republican Jeb Bush couldn’t be beat. How did that turn out?

“Joe is the new Jeb.

“I suppose it would be much easier to focus instead on Trump impeachment theater in Washington. But the script has been written, the Senate won’t convict Trump. It’s all posture and gesture and fundraising.

“I disagree with Sanders’ policies, but at least he’s honest about what he wants to do. Establishment Democrats see Sanders’ base as full of energy and know they must stop him in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“They feed Warren so Sanders doesn’t defeat Biden. And they’ll use friendly media to shape a stiletto and slip it between Bernie’s ribs.

“Sanders’ voters have seen this one before.”

And that is precisely what Bernie has been saying all along.

 

Electing a god

Some Republicans and Trump voters/supporters have realized something that the Democrats, in large part, have not:

Their chosen candidate is not perfect – no, far from it.

And, that’s okay.

As I consider Mayor Pete, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, former VP Joe Biden, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders — the top four Democratic nominee contender-candidates — each one of them has increasingly been attacked, either by another candidate (though not by name), or by the media/press who pointedly critique their ideas and prospective policy platforms as if they were already done, set in stone, or otherwise enacted into law, though those same media critics neither offer, nor point to, nor counter any idea, or offer with any prospective alternative solution(s) themselves.

In other words, rather than offer constructive criticism, the press just bitches, gripes, moans, groans, and complains.

That’s not good.

Somehow, over the years (and more so in recent history), the “media,” as it’s called nowadays, has come to think of, and present themselves as, impartial arbiters, seemingly non-critical thinking, individuals who are neither opinionated, nor fraught with their own biases, however hidden (or not) they may want others to believe that they are. That somehow, they — and only they — know the truth, and only they can be trusted to always tell the truth at all times, in all circumstances, forever and ever… amen.

That’s just simply not the case, nor has it ever been.

The “Fourth Estate,” as it has long been known (though it’s now often simply monikered as “the media”), consists of the Press which

The Oracle at Delphi: Mitt Romney’s direct tie to increased unemployment in North Alabama

The average reader may not be aware that there was once a huge Delphi plant in Limestone county, Alabama, which facility was located directly across from Calhoun Community College.

Mitt Romney owned a significant interest in a firm that profited by laying off workers, dumping their pensions, moving to China, and then profiting rapaciously from the TARP bailout. That large plant – one among many, with the largest one being in Alabama – was the Delphi Steering Gear facility in Tanner, near Decatur, in Limestone County.

It was one of North Alabama‘s LARGEST employers – with emphasis on “was.”

The men & women who made careers there, whose labors enabled their children to attend college, provided their families’ clothing, groceries, housing & healthcare, and provided for their own retirement, and which was a union shop, was shuttered several years ago.

Most of what news I recall about it centered around how corporate traders, not unions, were wanting even more & more profit when they were already profitable. Time and time again, the workers took cuts in benefits & pay to keep their jobs for as long as they could… all to no avail.

Like a gazelle savaged on the plains of the Kalahari Desert in Africa, that once prosperous plant has been laid to waste, and there are only industrial skeletal remains. Even the human buzzards, scavenging metal for recycling from the industrial carcass, have left. For many years now, the hollow exterior hulk, instead of employees, materials & labor, has been drawing cobwebs, dust & rust. And soon, like all things left unattended, it too will crumble.

There are no taxes paid to Limestone county, or to nearby Decatur, Athens or Huntsville, or to Alabama for roads, schools, police & fire protection. But there is an even greater issue, one which is exceedingly more weighty and sorrowful. As a result of it all, there is no hope, there are no jobs, and there is no future.

Here’s the even more disturbing part: Mitt Romney had his hand in that pie.

And yet the saddest and most perplexing part is, that most Alabamians will vote for the GOP nominee/candidate.

Following the economic investigative report are historical local news reports that show the progression about the issue (which validate the economic investigative report by Greg Palast), from the:
• Decatur Daily,
• Huntsville Times,
• Associated Press,
• Athens-Limestone News Courier,
• Saginaw News (via MLive.com), and
• Wall Street Journal,
dating 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 & 2010.

For the benefit of the reader, Greg Palast is an economist and financial investigator turned journalist whose series on vulture funds appeared on BBC Television’s Newsnight. He is the author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin) and, most recently, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps (Seven Stories). For additional information about him, his website is: http://www.gregpalast.com.

—

Mitt Romney’s Bailout Bonanza

Greg Palast, October 17, 2012   |    This article appeared in the November 5, 2012 edition of The Nation.

This investigation was supported by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute and by the Puffin Foundation. Elements of it appear in Palast’s new book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps (Seven Stories). Research assistance by Zach D. Roberts, Ari Paul, Nader Atassi and Eric Wuestewald.

2012 GOP Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Mitt Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout has haunted him on the campaign trail, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio. There, in September, the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment.

It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or indirectly, more than $12.9 billion to Delphi—and to the hedge funds that had gained control over it.

One of the hedge funds profiting from that bailout—
$1.28 billion so far—is Elliott Management, directed by 
Paul Singer. According to TheWall Street Journal, Singer has given more to support GOP candidates—$2.3 million—than anyone else on Wall Street this election season. His personal giving is matched by that of his colleagues at Elliott; collectively, they have donated $3.4 million to help elect Republicans this season, while giving only $1,650 to Democrats. And Singer is influential with the GOP presidential candidate; he’s not only an informal adviser but, according to theJournal, his support was critical in helping push Representative Paul Ryan onto the ticket.

Singer, whom Fortune magazine calls a “passionate defender of the 1%,” has carved out a specialty investing in distressed firms and distressed nations, which he does by buying up their debt for pennies on the dollar and then demanding payment in full. This so-called “vulture investor” received $58 million on Peruvian debt that he snapped up for $11.4 million, and $90 million on Congolese debt that he bought for a mere $20 million. In the process, he’s built one of the largest private equity firms in the nation, and over decades he’s racked up an unusually high average return on investments of 14 percent.

Other GOP presidential hopefuls chased Singer’s endorsement, but Mitt chased Singer with his own checkbook, investing at least $1 million with Elliott through Ann Romney’s blind trust (it could be far more, but the Romneys have declined to disclose exactly how much). Along the way, Singer gained a reputation, according to Fortune, “for strong-arming his way to profit.” That is certainly what happened at Delphi.

* * *

Delphi, once the Delco unit of General Motors, was spun off into a separate company in 1999.

Late… again.

This is gonna’ get real old, real quick.

—

Sent from my typewriter.

Late… again.

The Huntsville Times is owned by the same company that owns the Times Picayune, Sports Illustrated & Condé Nast – Newhouse News.

Alabama‘s three most populous cities – Birmingham, Huntsville, and Mobile – all have a newspaper which is owned by Newhouse. And, like the Times Picayune, they are laying off staff & reducing coverage, which includes reducing publication to 3 days/week.

Further, those three papers – The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times & The Mobile Press-Register – are all now being printed in Birmingham, even though Mobile is on the Gulf Coast, Huntsville borders Tennessee, and Birmingham is in the middle. So, as you might imagine, it’s a logistical nightmare.

If you’re interested in knowing how many papers & publications they do own (which would astound you), see the entry “Advance Publications,” and the entry “Condé Nast Publications” on Wikipedia for a detailed & lengthy list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cond%C3%A9_Nast_Publications