Monday, January 13, 2014

The end of Summer?

THIS JUST IN - January 13, 2014

Late word from the Coast has it that KPFA and KPFK now (as of Noon  NY time) have the same interim General Manager, Richard Pirodsky. The stations are not exactly in the same neighborhood—do they have an app for that?

Guess we'll soon hear what happened, but none of this bodes well—Pacifica is seeing a hell of a Summer, one might say!


AS I WAS SAYING...

The following note from Andrew Phillips may not surprise you, but it is illuminating and pertinent. I am not certain of the original posting spot, but the date has to me January 13 or 14 (today).

ahhh..the Pacifica infighting..
I understand that KPFA interim GM, Richard Pirodsky is now interim manager of both KPFA and KPFT; that yesterday (January 13th at 3pm) Bernard Duncan stepped down or was moved aside by Summer Reese and very likely given a pay-out to make way for Pirodsky. Yesterday Summer Reese turned up at KPFA with Pirodsky to take the reigns. The respected current iPD, Alan Minsky is also targeted for dismissal by Summer Reese. Minsky is a supporter of Ian Masters, Reese's nemesis (Minsky) meet Reese in the KPFA lobby yesterday by she refused to acknowledge him - would not even shake the guy's hand! So his future looks shaky. He was previously paid senior producer at KPFA but that position is now occupied by Christian Blodsdale (who is the highest paid producer at KPFK) but produces nothing. She pitches with Null (and others) flying around the network pushing sketchy infomercial-like product but has minimal radio experience. She is a PR flack - 

Need to know more on Blosdale?

Meanwhile the current PNB steps down at the end of this month and a new board steps up and apparently will insist that Summer Reese produce her heretofore withheld personal information - details of parts of her background are included in this message. But none of this information has been vetted by the PNB. Perhaps at last it will be. Pacifica is currently led by people who seem to have very little radio background about whom we know very little. How and why has this happened and why has the current PNB not done their job to protect our valuable network?

Ian Masters, who was suspended by Reese for bringing some of this to the air, says his job is also on the line. Anybody challenging Reese faces termination. I certainly know that from my own personal experience. Masters, with no premiums, consistently returns the most money per hour at KPFA. Masters pithches programming.

I understand his story is about to break on major media in LA and The Nation. As of now very few are aware of these shenanigans. It's time of staff with backbone and certainly the Pacifica membership take the time to learn what is happening behind the curtain and step up to save what's left of Pacifica's legitimacy.

Here is Ian Masters plea for a listener intervention including links to Summer Reese's background. This information has been forwarded by Masters to the PNB. But don't hold your breath for the PNB to step up unless "feet are held to fire".

January 3, 2014

Dear concerned KPFK listeners, 
Happy New Year and thanks to all of you who emailed me at savekpfk@gmail.com and who visited our new website at listenerpoweredradio.org or Googled save pacifica radio and offered to join in a listener intervention to save Pacifica and KPFK. We are moving ahead but I have been warned by many inside of Pacifica who support this effort that I will be immediately fired by Summer Reese and Gary Null if I post the following on the website...



As we begin this New Year, Pacifica’s future hangs in the balance and will be determined by a background check. And while I am under a strict gag order on “free speech” radio not to say a word about the dire situation we are in, I can share what I know with you even though it may be difficult to convey just how disastrous our new leadership is and for you to realize that on the inside, the “peoples radio” now operates along totally authoritarian lines.


These dysfunctional boards that represent barely 10% of our listener/members, that tend to attract the most extreme among Pacifica’s various factions, were never meant to be a conduit for the one-eyed person in the land of the blind to maneuver themselves into a paying job. We are supposed to recruit professional management from the outside and our Executive Directors are supposed to administer, not hand pick cronies and micro-manage programming.


The lunatics have indeed taken over the asylum and today the Pacifica foundation is already in the hands of someone with such a dubious background, who is so demonstrably unqualified for any job, let alone running a radio network, but yet has shown sufficient bureaucratic cunning that both Stalin and the Koch brothers would be impressed by her “stealth” right wing takeover of America’s only left wing media outlet.


Pending a background check, Summer Reese will be officially in the position she already occupies and, once approved, she will quickly erase any vestiges of journalism and credibility Pacifica has left. News and Public Affairs will become a joke and so-called “health and spirituality” will be elevated to prime time, meaning that conspiracy and quackery will become our brand, if it hasn’t already come to that. 



It is important to stress that I have no objection to “health and spirituality” programs and that many of my friends enjoy Lisa Garr and Nita Vallens and find their guests and ideas interesting and helpful. But just as Oprah is on during the day and not in prime time, so too should these programs be segregated from News and Public Affairs which listeners expect to hear in prime time.

A simple Google search reveals that Summer Reese’s only professional experience was as an office manager for a tax avoidance scam artist, Peymon Mottahedeh, who is not a lawyer but runs the Freedom Law School in the California desert that is neither a school or has anything to do with the law except for breaking it through tax avoidance.


As one of their “paralegals”, Ms. Reese’s job was to con people into believing that the $6,000 package they were buying from the Freedom Law School would immunize them against an oppressive and illegitimate government’s efforts to collect taxes they owed.


Like the “sovereign citizens” movement, these far right wing anti-government conspiracy peddlers don’t believe in paying taxes or having social security numbers. According to information gathered so far which sources inside have leaked to me so it is yet to be officially confirmed, Ms. Reese has not paid taxes and does not have a social security number and operates on false identities.


Her other claim at having a professional background is that she was a lawyer for Sirhan Sirhan. Apparently she impersonated a lawyer representing a client who happened to kill Bobby Kennedy and claimed to be one at public meetings where she billed herself as Sirhan’s lawyer before gatherings of RFK assassination conspiracy theorists. 



As for the merits of the case she falsely claimed to be presenting on Sirhan’s behalf, he was not responsible for killing RFK because the hapless assassin was a government-brainwashed “Manchurian Candidate”. Need I say more. 



With no clue how to address the network’s declining listenership and slide towards bankruptcy, and with total disregard for Pacifica’s 501-C3 non-profit status, Ms. Reese is now turning our airwaves over to “Doctor” Gary Null whose miracle cure “products” are unregulated and whose fraudulent credentials have been exposed as mail order diplomas by the independent consumer watchdog website run by medical professionals, Quackwatch.com.


Gary Null is a private corporation. His annual revenues are $12.2 million. Should Pacifica become Gary Null’s private Home Shopping Network offering dubious products over our airwaves under the guise of fund raising? His fraudulent claims have certainly turned away a lot of our thoughtful and ethical listeners and I am personally disgusted when desperate terminally ill people are conned into spending money on expensive and unproven vitamin cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s.

“Doctor” Null actually claimed Patrick Swayze would be alive today had he taken his products. And then there are the young men who died following the advice of this HIV denier that Gary Null’s products could cure AIDS. So much for the hollow claim made by the "peoples" radio that we don't take money from corporations. Meanwhile our non-profit foundation status is being placed in jeopardy from the FDA, the IRS and the FCC.

So I suppose it should be no surprise given Summer Reese’s and Gary Null’s similar backgrounds of scamming gullible folks by distracting them with right wing anti-government dogma as they fleece them, that these two are working hand in glove. And while Gary Null is already on all the other Pacifica stations except Berkeley, the reason he did not participate in KPFK’s latest fund drive was because he is leveraging his position to get on prime time at KPFK and to make a better deal in the next fund drive so that he will be in a position to control the network before it goes into bankruptcy.

The experienced professional Program Director at WBAI Andrew Phillips (who discovered Amy Goodman) resigned when Ms. Reese demanded he take “Background Briefing” off the air at 10 AM in New York City to have it replaced by guess who?…Gary Null!

And in cavalier disregard of a petition from KPFK programmers, she has maneuvered to remove Alan Minsky the current Program Director at KPFK to have him replaced by a loyal flunky from Berkeley who, rumor has it, will propose moving the Pacifica Evening News to 5 PM to get “Background Briefing” off the air.

The head of Pacifica’s Jurassic Jazz station in Washington DC has already been replaced by a person with no prior radio experience who comes from a moving company who helped with the relocation of WBAI. Now Ms. Reese is moving to replace the current General Manager at KPFK in the coming months with a compliant functionary who will unshackle the 9/11 “truthers”, the RFK, JFK, MLK assassination ambulance chasers and the “Chemtrails” proponents waiting in the wings with evangelical zeal to get the real truth out.


Meanwhile, based on its latest public audit, Pacifica Radio's working capital has declined from positive $2,835,309 in 2007 to negative $1,034,153 as of September 30, 2011. At this rate of decline the Pacifica network is probably already bankrupt, given the millions they owe Amy Goodman and the piles of unpaid bills and lawsuits to collect past dues.


While I am merely road-kill and collateral damage compared to the death of Pacifica, you might ask why is Summer Reese on a Jihad to get rid of me? Well apart from the sin of telling the truth on “free speech” radio, my only personal contact with Ms. Reese was when she strongly urged me to read a book about the Fluoride conspiracy.

As you know, four days a week and on Sunday’s I seek out the best experts to discuss domestic and international events and issues of importance. Iran, Syria, unemployment, the decline of the middle class and the downsizing of working Americans, corporate greed, declining education, etc. So I did not follow up on uncovering the government’s Fluoride plot and that’s apparently how I ended up on her enemies list. But therein lies the tragedy for Pacifica; we will soon be no different from Fox News in our denigration of science and our disregard for facts.

Fox propagates “birther” conspiracies; Pacifica mirrors them with “truther” conspiracies. It’s no accident that the Producer of the “truther” Bible, the movie “Loose Change”, is the far right wing sovereign citizen Alex Jones. By pandering to the anti-government sentiment of Pacifica’s left-leaning listeners, stressing the legalization of pot and opposition to foreign wars, “stealth” right wing libertarians like Alex Jones and Summer Reese count on gullible Pacifica listeners not to notice their real agenda. They are careful not to mention their obsession with government plans to take away their guns and that we can do away with government altogether and have the Koch brothers run America.

We have only days left to mobilize every listener, activist on the left, and every liberal and progressive voice in the land, as well as the few in our politics like my friend Bernie Sanders. We all have to wake up and rescue Pacifica from its impending suicidal implosion. If only for the sake of political diversity in America’s already right wing-dominated media. We are about to lose the country’s last tenuous outlet for bottom-up voices and alternative opinion.

I am embarrassed that we even have to talk about this and that I have to explain the grubby antics of these tawdry characters but, in the short term Summer Reese will accelerate Pacifica’s self-marginalization, and then as the network goes bankrupt, Gary Null will pick up the pieces. 

Sincerely,
Ian Masters


Andrew Phillips adds this note: 


What you can do now 

Sign up to be part of our first online organizing meeting. We will have an update a group of radio professionals who could oversee a real rescue package and attract experienced talent from the outside world who would revive the network and make it solvent.


UPDATE JANUARY 18, 2014 —TRACY ROSENBERG OF THE PACIFICA NATIONAL BOARD RESPONDS TO IAN MASTER'S LETTER:


An Open Letter From Tracy Rosenberg Regarding the Ian Masters Letter
The letter Ian Masters claimed to have sent to the Pacifica National Board (which he didn't actually send as of 1-18) contains a boatload of inaccuracies and mis-statements.
While I don't enjoy left-wing shooting matches, the Pacifica stations deserve, from their listening community, the boards that are drawn from them, and their staffers, one basic thing: factual and reality-based discussion.
This transmission is lacking. It degrades Mr. Masters to have presented it. It's disappointing when food fights cause people to lose their perspective and dishonor what they claim to be about. Ian Masters claims to provide thoughtful commentary about complex issues in a search for truth. Not this time.
The letter begins with Masters asserting, on the basis of a 2-day suspension, that he is about to lose his show, but that is not “a winning strategy”. It isn't clear what is to be won, but since the next two thoughts are about management jobs at KPFK - perhaps that is what he means.
He expresses concern about the departure of the general manager Bernard Duncan, although Duncan announced he would not be renewing his contract which expires in April. The reason Duncan is not renewing his contract is his intent to relocate back to New Zealand in the summer of 2014. Masters expresses concern about the arrival of Richard Pirodsky as interim general manager from Berkeley. Pirodsky is vacating the general manager position at KPFA, having not applied for it permanently, and has long expressed interest in possibly applying for the LA managerial position should it become vacant. One can develop sinister conspiracy theories, but sometimes the truth is simple. The manager is moving back to New Zealand and another guy is soon to be without a gig and interested in the job. So the obvious … happened.
Masters then shifts to the interim program director at KPFK, Alan Minsky, who may possibly have the distinction of being the interim employee of longest duration in Pacifica history, having held on to a position he was appointed to without process, for more than 3 years . While Masters indicates he thinks the hiring process comes down to who-likes-who, he fails to mention a serious issue that delayed the program director hire for a long time: namely the problematic behavior of the interim.
I've applied for a number of jobs in my life: in none of those processes did I confront members of whatever hiring committee there was in a public workspace and berate them claiming I knew they had not supported me for the position because someone on the hiring committee told me so. Water cooler gossip exists - it's all about what you do with it – and being unprofessional, immature and creating liability for your employer is not the right thing to do. Why are you leaving that part out, Ian, and do you endorse job candidates behaving that way?
Again, we avoid the straightforward by claiming Ms. Reese's background check was delayed in some way by her actions. What it was delayed by was an employer reference hospitalized with penumonia who did not return many calls from Employment Screening Services (ESS), the background check company, for more than three weeks until after his release from the hospital. The background check has since been certified as clean with all references checking out. I suppose it may be dubious to have worked for someone with bronchial problems, but that seems a bit on the judgmental side.
The primary gist of Master's complaints about the executive director seem to be the issue of war tax resistance and the business about Sirhan Sirhan. To take the second complaint first, there is no claim by Ms. Reese to be a lawyer. There is a claim to be a certified paralegal, which she is. The story Masters is quoting blindly from his Google search was reported in 2 original sources:
The first is the Pasadena Weekly which reported it correctly: Reese is described as a legal associate, not an attorney and as an aide to attorney William F. Pepper (who represented Martin Luther King's family after his assassination).
The second reference is in an Orange Country Register blog, 5 days later, that incorrectly states Reese was, “one of Sirhan's lawyers”, a mistake that was uncritically picked up in the Daily Kos and the Democratic Underground when they re-ran the item (the sentence is the same in all 3– “a letter delivered to Reese, one of Sirhan's lawyers”)
If you look at them side-to-side, it's pretty clear the Pasadena Weekly wins the journalism award :)
The second complaint is an objection to war tax resistance and characterization of tax resistance as a right-wing activity. The People's Life Fund in Berkeley would beg to differ. http://nowartax.org/People's%20Life%20Fund.html
Whatever one thinks about the requirement to donate 20% of income to the maintenance of miltary bases around the world and US-backed coups and invasions in Iran, Chile, Cuba, Argentina, Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Savador, Grenada, Panama, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Phillipines, Afghanistan, Iraq, whatever else you want to throw on the list...its a personal decision to resist. Just as it was a personal decision for Lew Hill to serve out the “Good War” in a prison camp where he was subjected to Army medical experiments, and just as it was a personal decision for Bill Mandel to treasonously tell HUAC to go to hell. A personal decision of some bravery and some sacrifice. The Pacifica I value has better things to do than belittle tax resistance.
Which brings us to Gary Null. Twenty five years after the fact. For twenty-five years, Gary Null has broadcasted on the Pacifica network. Before Summer Reese. Before Grace Aaron. Before Dan Coughlin. Perhaps you can blame Pat Scott.
You can even go back to 1993, when Andrew Phillips said this: .(from the pd/"Pacifica's Fading Vision" july 1993/august folio/phillips) 
I have been program director at WBAI since November, 1989. I am disappointed that I have not been able to increase our membership substantially, pleased that I have maintained peace within our station and created a deeper programming rationale which has helped WBAI's income substantially increase. After more than twenty years in broadcasting, I am establishing a radio consultancy. Andrew Leslie Phillips and Associates will produce and distribute programs nationally. We also want to assist the station's fundraising efforts. Our first client is Gary Null who goes national, once weekly this month, as The Gary Null Show. Gary will continue to be heard on WBAI five days a week”
Finally, it is absolutely true membership numbers at all 5 Pacifica stations have been in free-fall for a long time, most acutely in the period starting in 2007. It didn't start in 2012. Pointing to actions taken in the past year as causing something that happened six years ago is wildly illogical and completely inarticulate.
After four years on - and three years chairing - the national finance committee - nothing would have made me happier than, even once, to have gotten a budget from KPFK management that said: We're fundraising too much and too dependent on premiums. We need to ramp it back, take the temporary financial hit and try to rebuild a stronger base of support that is more programming-based and less premium-based. But it never happened. All we got were budgets proposing more fund drive days, bigger goals and increasing expense levels. Just like all Christine Blosdale got from Alan Minsky was longer and longer stretches of pre-emptions during fundraising, to the extent that some days contained more than 8 hours of her fundraising specials.
Tell me why the lack of courage from people inside KPFK, most especially the manager and the interim program director, who could have proposed a different approach to fundraising at any time and delivered a budget to match, is someone else's fault? Because I don't get it. What was stopping you?
It wasn't Summer Reese. It certainly wasn't the finance committee. All we did was say KPFK had too many fundraising days and was too premium-dependent for four long years.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves”.
Answer that question honestly, Ian, and we can talk.

Tracy Rosenberg, 
Pacifica National Board member (until the end of January)

An interesting response to the above letter from Tracy Rosenberg was posted anonymously on the BlueBoard. THIS LINK WILL TAKE YOU THERE,

23 comments:

  1. Wow - I've been thinking the same thing for some time. I've not only been appalled by the quack medicine and mysticism but also by the right wing stuff like "loose change" the Federal Reserve stuff, the anti-UN stuff, etc. Like I've said before most of what is on BAI does not represent the left no matter what the deluded may think!

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    1. Sometimes. things really ARE as they seem. Then, too, such gross incompetence and crisscrossing personal/political agendas permeate through WBAI and Pacifica that the path can take unintended turns. "Left" is a word the clueless BAI bozos bandy about as they make up their silly slogans—like "free speech" and "community radio," it is blank tag.

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  2. The obvious and relevant question is, I think, simple enough: Why on earth don't Phillips and Masters file Petitions to Deny?

    ~ indigopirate

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  3. Now that I've learned a bit more about Christine Blosdale, it makes perfect sense that she and Gary Null are joined at the hip. They are both the products of intermingling the most wooly-headed parts of New Age mysticism with the hypocrisy of pretending not to care about money while pursuing it. They complement each other perfectly: She believes enough of what she doesn't understand to enable his "enlightened" entrepeneurship.

    That folks like them are associated with "The Left"--whatever that means anymore--only makes it easier for Limbeck and their ilk to caricature it--and for people to accept that caricature as a portrait.

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  4. Anon--I'm an outsider, so take my analysis for what it's worth.

    Here goes: Philips and Masters aren't filing Petitions to Deny because they know that BAI and Pacifica are sinking ships. They know that if (actually, when) the station and foundation end up at the bottom of the ocean, they will be seen (by some, anyway) as the ones who fired the fatal torpedoes. Resse, Null , Reimers and their loyalists will encourage such a perception

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  5. I, too, have no inside knowledge of this matter so I, too, am speculating:

    It seems to me to be a case of ‘put up or shut up’. Phillips and Masters are each in a position to file a Petition to Deny – they are ‘parties of interest’ per FCC definiton and would have ‘standing’. They need simply file, with accompanying affadavits as to their complaints/concerns.

    The central argument they present here is that ‘educational’ ‘non-commercial’ ‘free speech’ ‘non-profit’ radio is in fact being used consistently and pervasively by scams of for-profit enterprise acting in collusion with management and that this long-standing practice is massive and, if anything, likely to increase.

    The question in my mind then is simple: Are they prepared to back those assertions or not?

    The statement posted refers to a vague hope that some new grouping may be created to pressure Pacifica to change and to return to its foundational values.

    This seems to me an amorphous hope, one which has been sounded a thousand times over the last decades.

    Realistically, I can think of only two (exceedingly remote) possibilities for meaningfully reforming Pacifica and/or WBAI: Either an ‘angel’ with considerable monies and good intentions magically appears and offers Pacifica enough money, or; sufficient pressure is brought to bear with respect to licensure that Pacifica is forced to cast about for meaningful reform and/or seek out ‘angels’ and/or simply sell one or more stations to non-profits which might make some decent use of them.

    I think these scenarios face long odds, but I also think that the present course represents very-nearly-absolute certainty of failure.

    I’m curious, frankly, as to where Phillips and Masters are really coming from – I can’t imagine they have any hope of change at Pacifica unless pressure is brought to bear, and they’re in a position to file Petition to Deny to bring pressure to bear.

    If they aren’t so inclined, frankly, I’d have to conclude they’re simply more impotent, incompetent, whining advocates for a postion who hope for personal advantage and/or personal justification.

    Phillips took a principled stand in resigning over the scam issue – I’d like to see him (and Masters) actually willing to take a stand and fight.

    ~ Indigo Pirate

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  6. At around 12 midnight I heard a promo for the WBAI "Buddy" program. The gist of the promo was that if you want to get rid of quack medicine, non stop infomercials and crackpot conspiracy fantasies then you should sign up for the "Buddy" program - interesting - does this reflect some internal conflicts?

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    1. In the old days, the threatened alternative was Kate Smith singing "God Bless America" or a bubblegum medley, but this is a far more serious threat. It is also an empty one and, yes, internal conflict is de rigueur at WBAI, and will remain so as long as the few decent people can hold out.

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  7. Please allow me to just address the first paragraph of this article—I may come back to address the other issues on this site if there is an interest. I do consider all Pacifica subscribers/listeners to be smart people and therefore I would speak straight and direct.

    There is a flaw in your logic in describing the way the events occurred. Bernard Duncan had announced on KPFK’s airwaves Nov/Dec, 2013, that he would not seek to renew his contract with Pacifica once his three-year term limit contract reaches it end, which it would have been mid April 2014. So, three months till the end of his contract, Executive Director of Pacifica Foundation, Summer Reese, would fire him or forced him to resign, which is the same thing as wrongful termination! Do you know how much money Pacifica would have to pay for a contractual grievance like this to settle in, or out of, the court for wrongful termination? Everybody in the ‘progressive’ circle knows that Pacifica has no money to throw away at a bait of this minutia. For ease of calculation and understanding, let’s say GM was getting paid $80K/year (I don’t know his salary); three months of his pay would be $20K. So, you would think that ED would jeopardize Pacifica Foundation with financial drainage of $100K to $150K for a wrongful termination lawsuit plus the lawyers’ fee for the sake of saving $20K.

    Maybe the effect is not the result of the cause that you have mentioned in your piece. It does not add up!

    There is no serious threat at all. It is just Pacifica is trying to be relevant again and hopefully with all of us included.

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    1. Thank you for that information or is it your personal conclusion? Either is welcomed here. Let me first say that I believe this should be addressed to Andrew Phillips rather than the generic "you," so I hope he feels free to chime in.

      That said, at this point it is my experience that ruling out logic as an ingredient in any Pacifica decision is folly. When cool heads prevail and experienced professionals call the shots, such tangled situations as Pacifica finds itself in are not likely to occur. Pacifica has become a textbook in bungled business management.

      I hope you will make further comments on what you read here.

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  8. A petition to deny would be laughed at. The FCC is entirely content-agnostic and they couldn't care less what you think of the programming. Grow up and learn something about radio. What a flipping waste of time. If you don't like it, come up with the money to lease or buy WBAI and run it yourself. Anything else is just spinning wheels. As they say, put up or shut up.

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    1. It would help us to take you seriously if you at least gave us a hint of your authority on the subject of radio. The FCC keeps a license-specific file of correspondence, favorable or not—it may not act upon every complaint received, but the cumulative tenor is considered whenever potentially serious cases arise. I doubt if that procedure—which makes sense and I experienced first-hand—has been abandoned.

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    2. The FCC is and ought be content-agnostic – with that statement I agree.

      It would be inappropriate and pointless to challenge license renewal based on content, if by content one means, eg, political bias.

      There are, however, other serious considerations:

      The FCC requires that the station have studio, production facilities, and proper record keeping. These, in turn, are dependent upon at least minimally competent management and staff and these, in turn, are dependent upon financing – it is, granted, possible for a station to go bankrupt while still maintaing at least minimal required standards, but that is arguably not the case with WBAI and Pacifica management – these are valid grounds per FCC requirement upon which to contest license renewal.

      Also, there is one particular question with respect to content which is critical: WBAI and Pacifica are non-profits and though 99.5 is a commercial frequency WBAI must operate as a non-profit educational station. It has, as has been widely noted and reported, had a de facto policy for many years of being massively dependent upon the airing and promotion of for-profit quack cures. The fact that they are quack cures aren’t central tot he problem, it’s the fact that there is a clear, demonstrable, massive violation of the regulations per non-profit stations – this is very much a valid basis for challenging the license.

      There are, then, valid grounds for filing Petition to Deny and Informal Objections (the criteria differ slightly as to requirements for Standing and for presentation of an affadavit in the case of a Petition to Deny).

      ~ indigopirate

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  9. An absolutely moronic strategy. Do you guys have any idea how the FCC actually works and how the DC beltway works? Sheesh. Most educational stations run massive underwriting programs. No one cares about vitamin packs and water filters. That is literally the silliest thing I have ever heard. No station, including the ones that allow Chevron to underwrite puff pieces to oil companies and Republican politicians, lol, has ever had their license application pulled or even delayed. The best you can possibly hope for is a $10,000 fine for paperwork. In other words, yet another bill for a station that has been insolvent for a very long time. You're lost in your petty personality struggles and incapable of thinking about how to make your station solvent. "The end of Summer" is so totally beside the point. The end of WBAI is the point. And the fact that you can't tell the difference reveals the bankruptcy not of the station, but of the community that has failed to support it. If you had a local station board that wasn't composed of lunatics, you could have done anything you wanted with the programming. But you left the lunatics alone, didn't hold them accountable, trashed your own station and now you want to blame other people for the wreck it has become. It's your fault you can't pay the bills, it's your fault the station has no actual supporters besides Gary's customers (as the first day of your September drive demonstrated ($5,000 in total receipts - no Gary Null. Add Gary Null - $30,000 in total receipts) and all you want to do is shift the blame to someone else. Just get it together and raise the money to bail out the station and then you can play Ian Masters 12 hours a day if that's what you think New York wants to listen to. (Not that there's much evidence of that). But put up or shut up. It's about results. Anyone can whine that their programming strategy "takes time" - (Gary didn't "take time") and anyone can file nuisance petitions and waste even more money. The people whose opinion's will count are the people that can raise the money.

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    1. It appears to me that you have not followed the WBAI situation very closely, for you miss a number of points. For one thing, the LSB has by no means been spared the criticism due it. The problem is a systemic one and, yes, the removal of Summer Reese or any of the other decision-making bozos is not going to solve anything—there has to be a thorough cleansing process, one that includes every level. At WBAI, the point of no return was reached quite some time ago, so we are basically reduced to discussing what went wrong—the end is, I believe, assured and not far in the future.

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    2. Your argument, if it may in fact be considered to rise to the level of constituting an argument, consists of: 1) An argument from authority when you have asserted no meaningful claim to authority beyond ‘yuse guys doan kno nuttin and are maroons’, and; 2) An argument that a non-existant listenership ought somehow rise up in its nonexistant forms to force boards and management to become competent stewards so that this nonexistant audience might then become an actually existing audience (nice circularity there, sort of a perpetual motion machine sort of thing drawing existence from the fact of nonexistence) – you don’t suggest specific tools for this purpose, but I suspect you may have pitchforks and torches in mind as the Masses Arise to Reform the World and Thus Create Themselves.

      The FCC is a bureaucracy. It is thus forced, if approached in the proper fashion, to consider significant variations from its regulations if only to cover its collective and infividual posterior. The question is whether or not this can be usefully leveraged.

      The instances your refer to with respect to underwrtiting fall within the regulations. The approach of WBAI does not.

      I suggest you draw yourself up in a huff, reassert your claim to Superior Knowledge, Wisdom, and Authority and demand proof, with footnotes.

      That won’t happen – you’re clearly unfamiliar with the relevant regulations which have been referred to elsewhere, even on the lowly blue board.

      Do your own homework, or continue to huff and puff.

      I do love your suggestion that a nonexistant audience rise up and assert themselves though – are these nonexistant audience members who are to rise up the contemporary equivalent of Gogol’s ‘Dead Souls’?

      ~ Indigo Pirate

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  10. Anon, who knows how the FCC and the DC Beltway works, nobody might care about a few overpriced vitamin packs and water filters, but it matters to the IRS, when a company that operates as a for-profit business gets the 503C exempt status of the non-profit organization. I find it peculiar that you can not tell the difference between operating something for profit as opposed to public benefit. Also, I find it reprehensible, that Null's marketing franchise, allegedly worth 12.2. Million, is making a profit on the backs of a few 60-smethings on fixed incomes. This does not have to be. BAI can accepts grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Ford foundation and a few other Foundations, such as the Soros' organization. This will not affect the programming in any noticeable way, as a matter of fact, the quality and professionalism of the programming will improve, and the fund drives and the Gary Null Burden on the Listener will be eliminated. Yes, taking money from the large underwriters will require the Station to transparently maintain its not for profit status and be audited on the regular basis, it will be a good news for all except Null, Blosdale, and a few paranoiac conspiracists on the lunatic fringe. If you doubt this, just look at the good things this type of underwriting did for Amy Goodman and her Democracy Now! in its formative years. Yes, whoever runs Pacifica, is no fool, and they hedged their bets with the Goodman's show, by securing the large scale underwriting grants for it. Too bad, they also treat the BAI listeners, like you do, Anon, and are not averse to squeezing a few more dollars out of the listeners, but then again, they might not even be ***PROGRESSIVE****. If Summer Reese was working for a scam that was taking the money from the extreme right-wing libertarians, then the chances are that the show is run by a bunch of cynics who have no business running anything for the public benefit. That bit, in which she gave Andrew Phillips a book to read on Chemtrails, or other such nonsense, she was likely giving him a hint that he needs to target the same audience that Null and Blosdale does. This was NOT the core audience of the BAI, when Lew Hill started it. I happen to like Ian Masters show. You know why, Anon? Because I find his journalistic skills professional, his interviewing insightful, his guests fascinating, and his information actionable. He could work for NPR and not suffer any negative repercussions to his work. Finally, I also find reprehensible, how the current gang runs the show at BAI/Pacifica. The Soviet-era bullying authoritarianism that is contrary to the US Bill of Rights. This is a nation of laws and for every violation of ethics, standards of conduct or of law, there is a government body to address the issue and a core of dedicated civil service professionals eager to right the wrongs. Anon, is this also a moronic strategy?

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  11. The level of ignorance on this board is astonishing. First of all, there is no profit being made. WBAI is not making a profit, Pacifica is not making a profit, Null is selling the premiums at WBAI at cost and allowing WBAI to essentially mark them up and keep the difference between the cost of the premium and the amount pledged to get it in order to try to pay WBAI's operating expenses. No profit. WBAI accepts grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting already. Underwriting is not a grant. Underwriting is advertising. Like when Masterpiece Theatre is brought to you by General Electric. WBAI does not take underwriting. Does it ever occur to you that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about?

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    1. I believe they bungled the CPB grant, and don't kid yourself: Null is making money on WBAI. I think it is your own naïvité that makes you think the rest of us are so ignorant.

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  12. I assume you’re aware, with your vast financial, political, and legal sophistication that an organization need not turn a profit on the books in order for various stakeholders to turn a very nice personal profit indeed.

    Welcome to Hollywood, welcome to family nonprofit generation-skipping trusts, welcome to many many many nonprofits, welcome to a friendly little planet the locals call earth.

    Hollywood, it would seem, is pretty much a nonprofit business by your reckoning – very nearly nothing ever turns a profit, even though the gross may be in the hundreds of millions or billions. Nope, no profits there, we're a nonprofit....

    Interesting notion… risible, but interesting ;)

    ~ Indigo Pirate

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  13. I have been a KPFK listener/supporter since 1980. I have followed the most recent conflicts closely. What is going on can be summed up in a nutshell: a conscious and very systematic (rightist? Libertarian? racist?) and relentless campaign is underway to destroy Pacifica and hand it over to Null's "Progressive Radio Network." An Internet radio network he runs. Imo Null is a closet rightist and not so closeted racist.

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    1. You better have proof that "Null is a closet rightist and a not so closeted racist." Unless you can back this up, Null could sue you for libel and false allegations that are damaging to his reputation. Take a look at the Michael Mann lawsuit against the National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Mark Steyn. When man wins his case, all 3 are screwed big time. Do you think that posting as annonymous covers your butt? Oh, think again! Networking pros can find out your ip address and from where your message was sent from. All I can say, is have fun in court defending yourself!

      I have personally benefited from Gary Null's program. He often has doctors on who talk about their specialties, such as diabetes treatment, environmental illnesses, etc etc etc. The best thing I ever did for my health was have my mercury dental fillings removed, and all because Gary Null interviewed Alfred V Zamm MD who spoke at length about the mercury in dentistry problem on shows I heard back in 1993 and 1994. Do you think that's quackery? Well, look at what the New York Times science section had to say back in 1994. They showed that researchers put fillings into monkey's mouths, and they developed bacteria in their guts that were resistant to treatment with antibiotics.

      Don't get me wrong. I'm not of the opinion that Gary Null is the nicest guy you'll ever want to meet, based on things I've heard other people say, and also from listening to how he has conducted himself on a few radio shows over the years, but I will say, he aint no quack. I will however say, that on of his alternative cancer doctors in Houston wanted gobs of money, between $25,000 to $50,000 out of pocket, no insurance coverage, to treat my prostate cancer. I don't know if the treatments would have worked, but I knew I couldn't afford it, so I had surgery and only had a reasonable co-pay on my insurance. It seems that the filthy rich get the best alternative medical care. People like the Koch brothers could afford to drop that kind of dough, but not me.

      As for Gary Null running WBAI, why not? He obviously has good business sense. After all, he has a successful vitamin line, and he has put his own cash up to start the progressive radio network. I can't say I care to listen to much except his show, Exploration with Michio Kaku, and The Life Boat hour with Michael Ruppert, who in my opinion has done some fine investigative work, and a great Doc called collapse.

      Last but not least, when I lived in the NYC area, the power output from WBAI dropped drastically and stayed that way. The FCC coverage maps show it at 4300 watts, not the 50,000 it used to be over 25 years ago. How can you hear the station out in the boonies that way; answer is, you can't! If it can't be heard, it can't gather listeners. I think the power output was lowered to allow WJAR in Deleware to use 99.5FM with a full power signal, which according to FCC maps can reach into parts of Jersey near Pennsylvania. If WBAI was still at full power, the signals would clash and screw each other up, at least out on the fringes of their reception areas.

      Last thing on Gary Null; it's just my opinion, not stated fact, God help anybody who gets in his way when he becomes boss.

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  14. Just a small point--tax avoidance is legal. I think you have it confused with tax evasion, which is not legal.

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