Anyone who has listened, even sporadically, to the currrent edition of Berthold Reimers' infomercial series will not be surprised by the following post from R. Paul Martin's dying BlueBoard forum.
Just when it seemed that WBAI had reached its nadir, it started sinking even further and there isn't a ladder long enough to climb out of this hole.
It amazes many of us that Reimers can stay in that job, even though he has his very own accounting results—tallies that are always more favorable than the ones calculated by Pacifica's CFO.
If Reimers figures are correct, where is the money disappearing to? In the more likely reality that they are not correct, why isn't he vacationing on Rikers Island?
Read the following and see if you can figure it out.
Posted in his own forum by WBAI LSB Treasurer R. Paul Martin on May 25, at 4:19 PM EST:
The NFC got the Consolidated Income Statement for the first seven months of FY16 last week. It's pretty bad. The total consolidated bottom line is showing a deficit of $550,984 as of April 30, 2016. It was showing a deficit of $21,320 as of March 31, 2016. The magnitude of this increase is shocking.
The NFC got the Consolidated Income Statement for the first seven months of FY16 last week. It's pretty bad. The total consolidated bottom line is showing a deficit of $550,984 as of April 30, 2016. It was showing a deficit of $21,320 as of March 31, 2016. The magnitude of this increase is shocking.
And then there's WBAI's part of the Income Statement which shows WBAI's deficit as of April 30, to be $352,158. For March 31, it had been $250,178. That's an increase of about $100,000 in one month.
Now the Income Statement is the usual Pacifica mixture of cash and accrual accounting, so you need to have been informed about which figures are what before you can draw a lot of conclusions from them. But even with considering that the ESB rent is "really" only $12,000 a month, and that the difference, which is either $36,000 a month or $43,000 a month depending on whether you use the CFO's figures or the WBAI General Manager's figures, is in a nebulous state of accrued debt, it's still quite a question of how the station's finances got that much worse in 30 days. It doesn't help that the WBAI General Manager has held himself incommunicado with the local Finance Committee for more than four months now.
The May 31, NFC meeting is only supposed to be about KPFK, which has a lot of its own problems and which may be quite an interesting meeting, and that May 31, NFC meeting is only supposed to last for one hour, after which we go to some executive session meeting the details of which haven't even been revealed to the NFC members. But after that the next regular NFC meeting isn't until June 21. I think the NFC needs to look at the finances a lot more. I am not at all sure that the rump PNB has the competence to deal with the problems on its own, however I also wouldn't trust them to be honest about it if they did.
Meanwhile the Spring 'thon was at $179,810 as of this morning, which is a daily average tally of about $7,818 a day, as opposed to the budgeted daily tally of $12,432 a day.
Something is going to happen some time soon.
—R. Paul Martin
This has to do with auditing controls. Accounting deals with how you report your income and your expenses. Auditing deals with the mechanisms you have in place to know what is coming in and what is going out. if you lack these controls, income can come in and get "lost" and unjustified expenses can be incurred. I don't know what auditing controls WBAI has in place, but when the deficit is suddenly 25X or so what it was 30 days before, it's not a good sign. I was listening to the audio file of the recent PNB meeting that Albertson posted. At one point, someone questions the CFO if it is possible that all the income for KPFW is being recorded, since there was such a steep dropoff. The CFO says "I haven't come across anything like that." But it shouldn't be a matter of the CFO's coming across it. The controls should make it impossible for income to come in without being recorded.
ReplyDelete@Anon re Financial Controls
DeleteAt no time in the last few decades has Pacifica had adequate or proper financial controls. Auditors’ reports have consistently noted this fact, yet to date nothing other than a few faltering first steps in that direction have ever been attempted. At that point, as a rule, the ED or CFO is replaced or has resigned. Reese and Proffitt are fairly recent examples of the pattern.
~ ‘indigopirate’
You were every bit as awful as the rest of them and yet you clung to that air time like it was your wallet. You used to boast about going on air with no preparation for your show. And what did you raise in the marathons? A few hundred dollars? Where was the cash in hand for your show? They should have canned you decades ago and given your slot to one of the thousands of amazingly talented people in NYC who are trying to break into radio.
ReplyDeleteThat sucking sound? That must be David Wynyard.
ReplyDeleteKGT
Please explain what I assume to be an accusation.
DeleteMore of the same old stuff, but in an ever more spiraling drop.
ReplyDeleteA long time ago, on this forum, I made a comment about how WBAI had hit a ceiling in how much they can expect in donations from their paltry listenership. That ceiling is ever lowering as listeners abandon the station for many reasons. They are now at the point where they couldn't afford to operate if they couldn't accrue debt.
Gary Null must be laughing his organic ass off. Hey, it saved him donating that expensive mixing board he said he would to WBAI. I never heard anymore about that after he announced he would do so.
SDL
I didn't know that Null had made such a promise.... how long does it take to purchase a mixing board? Not long, but rescinding is a much shorter procedure.
DeleteAs I enter this, Amy is offering dinner and that special coffee for a mere $2,000.
This morning, Haskins—in his infinite stupidity—announced that this drive is winding dow, only a couple of days left and the goal has been reached. The jerk isn't wrapped too tight, but his propensity for distorting facts is boundless.
As for the truth. simple arithmetic belies any notion of WBAI surviving as a sub-par black Pacifica station.
One day on his show, shortly after WBAI moved the sound closet to 388, Null went on about how he was donating a barely used board to WBAI that was, of course, better than what they had. I never heard anymore about it.
DeleteI still say get a call girl over Amy for the price.
Well, according to Hay-tie's implication there, it must be a pretty low goal. Didn't the idiot say that the beg-a-thon would stop when they reached the goal?
SDL
I almost spit out my Grounds for Democracy coffee looking at that budgeted daily tally of $12,432 a day. By their own admission, they're coming in around $8,000 a day for some time now. Apparently, that is not enough so they try to massage the data but instead of cooking the books, they nuked it with pure BS. At around $200,000, they're going to need at least ten fundraisers to cover their annual costs not including whatever their share of Pacifica revenues. They're going to have to change the programming in order to attract funding including perhaps some kind of underwriting model. They also need to bite the bullet and get out of that ESB deal or renegotiate it. They simply can't continue as is as it affects all of Pacifica at this point.
ReplyDeleteNo chance of changing their programming, as we've seen for years. Friends aren't about to fire their friends.
DeleteNo one is going to underwrite these bozos. It would be a simple waste of money.
They couldn't renegotiate the ESB deal low enough to be able to afford it. Even at $12,000 it's way to high for WBAI, as is the 388 rent, evidently.
The only financially practical solution for WBAI is to move their sound closet and transmitter to some cheap slum on the edge of town.
SDL
megaphones and soapboxes would serve them much better .
ReplyDeleteAnd probably have more listeners to boot.
How about turning that around and giving the listeners these bozos to boot... Boot out the back door, that is.
DeleteThis morning, scammer Haskins declared that this drive will have reached Reimers' goal in a few days...
...the truth is that they are very far from reaching the goal, but the Prescod woman has.reached Angola, yet again!
That very rare, "suppressed" film, about Cubans fighting for Angola is rare, indeed, for Prescod's handful of copies continues to me down to the last handful of copies she obtained circuitously in France a drive or two ago.
These crooks have no shame whatsoever when it comes to swindling gullible listeners.
It's called bamboozling.and it should earn people like Prescod, Reimers, Haskins and Tony Bates a cell on a nearby island.
"That very rare, "suppressed" film, about Cubans fighting for Angola is rare."
ReplyDeleteit should be rare, or rather non-existent. it is a lie. the mighty Afrikaner/Boer army decimated the Cubans. the Boer army of Magnus Malan bypassed the Cuban stronghold of Cuito Cuanavale and was in sight of Luanda and was going to take it and liberate the Angolans from communist oppression when the traitor Henry Kissinger called them back. The leftists have always maintained that the Cubans whipped the Afrikaner Army at Quito Quanevale but that is an Elombe Brath lie. Ignore this propaganda film.
KGT
It never seems to occur to the Pacifica Bozos of Misinformation that some of their "rare" products are rare because there is no interest in them—rare=inferior. Ditto "you won't hear this on other stations", which generally indicates that other stations have a quality/integrity control that does not exist at WBAI and other—if not, all—Pacifica stations.
DeleteFraud appears to be second nature to the vermin that has infected Pacifica in recent years/decades. Were they not so dense and obsessed with self-promotion, and were intelligent people of integrity in charge, WBAI would have stood a chance of rising from this Pacifica-created sink hole.
I’ll once again emphasize that I’m not an expert and am merely speculating based on my limited understanding of the issues involved:
ReplyDeleteIf and when they are forced to seek ‘voluntary’ bankruptcy there’s an outside chance the appointed trustee will, in the course of raising money to pay debtors sell WBAI and also adhere to Pacifica’s requirement that any sale be to a nonprofit of comparable purpose.
That might be worthwhile and interesting.
I won’t give odds, I’d guess it’s only a very remote possibility, but a trustee’s first obligation would be to settle debts and, secondarily, to adhere to the extent practical to the organization’s foundational purpose.
It is not, however, a trustee’s obligation to return control to those who drove the organization into bankruptcy. A trustee will not restructure the existing failed organization to save them from themselves. The court might, however, pass the baton to a competent organization.
An outside outside outside chance, pure speculation.
~ ‘indigopirate’
I thought I heard that WBAI's license was actually a commercial one and they simply chose to act as a non commercial station. Also, even if it is a non-commercial license, can't a new owner simply file with the FCC to change the license class?
DeleteSDL
You heard right, and that is one reason why that frequency had added value. Lou Schweitzer's WBAI was a commercial station, albeit a tasteful one.
DeleteI think much of that nonsense traces back to Berthold Reimers, who still does not have a clue when it comes to the broadcasting field. As we hear from the WBAI LSB Treasurer, Reimers stays incommunicado. He only surfaces when he has no other choice, and then it is usually to give a report on the station's financial state. These reports are always inconsistent with the PNB CFO's calculations and inevitably created to make Reimers look better... i.e. they are never the actual figures. The fact that the Pacifica National Board keeps him in his $110,000.00 per annum position is a clear indication of that body's corruption and incompetence.
ReplyDeleteThere is no valid reason why the station runs the same fraudulent programs to death, except perhaps as payment to fraudsters like Joy deGrue (of the ludicrous "Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome" gimmick) or the family of John Henrik Clarke, a con artist who invented black history.
It is all a morally corrupt, criminal venture that not only has taken WBAI far down its path to destruction, but—as it fed on its own agendas and egos—sought to destroy centuries of genuine black accomplishments.
Fortunately, these fools also alienated the people upon whose generosity they relied to stay on the air. Consequently, the damage they might have caused is rendered insignificant by a dummied down, severely reduced listenership.
Think about it... it takes a whole lot of stupidity to not become aware of one's own mental shortcomings when all the factors point to them.
This isn't fair. Bruva Basir Mchawi was pre-empted.
ReplyDeleteKGT
Perhaps he took another wrong turn at the crossroads.
DeleteWhere is Reimers? The fundraising message is the first time I heard him on WBAI itself. I've only heard him on PNB conference calls. According to the JUC delegates, he has not been evaluated by the LSB in five years. To my knowledge, no one on the PNB has said anything about the GM of a station that is a severe burden on the network although they have plenty to say about WBAI itself. If he is their guy, how long are they going to stick with him?
ReplyDeleteI'd like to hear what he has to say. He should be out there making his case. What are the effect of the programming changes he has made to date? Is he still planning a build out of the studio? Is the station really OK apart from the transmitter deal like he has said in the past?
Reimers is a total fraud. He either has some heavy dirt on Pacifica or serves the PNB's corrupt "majority" well as a pawn. Those are my own unsubstantiated thoughts.
ReplyDeleteIf someone here has other assumptions, or facts, let's hear them.
I don't disagree but how is he serving them well? By any metric, he is doing a terrible job. The conspiracy theory is questionable because its not at all clear they can get the assets. The selling the station scenario doesn't work because they can't sell under the current circumstances. The status quo scenario only works if they can sort out the transmitter deal and somehow cover their budget.
ReplyDeleteMy guess (probably wrong):
ReplyDeleteThere is no meaningful conspiracy on the part of anyone – emphasis on the word ‘meaningful’.
These are all, without discernible exception, incompetent ineffective quarrelsome people – quite literally childish as well.
Various groupings rationalize their inability to function, which has resulted in a long-term downward spiral as being intentional, saying to themselves ‘I meant to do that.’ They then try to figure out how this might benefit them. Then they can say to themselves ‘I meant to do that and it’s working!’
Others, in turn, observing this process, credit the dysfunction as being carefully calculated.
Flash: It is not necessary to have a conspiracy in order to fail. Failure is easy.
Actually, they seem not to be terribly good even at that.
They fail at being failures but not so much as to actually not fail.
[Okay, that made my head spin a little, I will now sit down and sip some tea.]
There is in my opinion a tendency to overthink things like this.
They aren’t thinking, they only think they’re thinking – there’s no need to think for them.
~ ‘indigopirate’
Flipped the radio on about 11:35PM, just in time to hear a guy give us a quote from Herman Goering, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda... Yeah, I'm going to take him seriously...
ReplyDeleteSDL
Even better. The Irish Rebellion of 1916 was the world's first rebellion against a colonial power. Better tell Prescod it wasn't Haiti, and forget the USA.
DeleteThis just gets better and better...
SDL
The admiration for Hermann Göring has served as a blueprint for WBAI's programming. I think it's just a matter of time before they tell us that he was of African ancestry.
DeletePrescod has had her moments of believability, but she goes bonkers when she pitches. The Haiti angle is tired and flawed, so is her insistence that Paul Robeson was history's greatest Shakespearian actor. He was extraordinary, to be sure, but I think he himself would take a dim view of some of the things these Pacifica idiots come up with as the victimize a largely imaginary listenership.
DeleteApropos Prescod, she is now in her second week of celebrating Malcolm's birthday on his birthday. I wonder if any of these clods realize how the constant re-broadcasts of infomercials reveal the dishonesty Pacifica now routinely engages in? Prescod will tell you that she went to great length to obtain a limited number of this or that premium and that there are only ten left with no more to be had. In the same breath, she will tell you that the phones are ringing off the hook.
A day or so later, Prescod is back doing the ame infomercial for the same product. Remember, there were only ten left and the bells were ringing, right? Well, what do you know.. there are still only ten left and the phones are still ringing.
Perhaps, if the Pacifica stations actually told the truth and stopped lying about not lying, fewer listeners might abandon them.
Chris, what does the number of premiums sold and the phones ringing off the hook have to do with each other? The phone are probably all the people calling to ask where their two year old premiums are!
DeleteSDL
I think the sales count for premiums and phones ringing off the hook have one thing in common: They are lies!
DeleteYes, it's all too obviously a shifted rebroadcast--different station, different, time, different day.
DeleteErgo, different phones and different responding audience.
All that considered, the number of premiums left must also be different and we should ought perhaps to notify the Guinness Book publishers of the extraordinary serial rebirth of Mrs. little's Babyl X.
They went to the trouble of squeezing in multiple inserts, so one wonders why they didn't at the same time make it clear that the hour-long frenetic pitch reflects another time, place an circumstance.
That would introduce an element of truth... something the ruling faction of Pacifica routinely avoids.
"The admiration for Hermann Göring has served as a blueprint for WBAI's programming. I think it's just a matter of time before they tell us that he was of African ancestry".
ReplyDeleteYou're right. His father, Heinrich Ernst G̦ring (31 October 1839 Р7 December 1913), a former cavalry officer, had been the first Governor-General of the German protectorate of South-West Africa, (modern-day Namibia). there is a street in Windhoek, Namibia named Goering Street, with no Morris Dees type clamoring to change its name.
KGT
Prescod has had her moments of believability, but she goes bonkers when she pitches. The Haiti angle is tired and flawed, so is her insistence that Paul Robeson was history's greatest Shakespearian actor. He was extraordinary, to be sure, but I think he himself would take a dim view of some of the things these Pacifica idiots come up with as the victimize a largely imaginary listenership.
ReplyDeleteI dunno. Pauly, Jr. drank the BAI Kook-Aid for a long time after it lost it's fizzle.
KGT
I don't think Paul Robeson ever came close to being on the same frequency as the Pacifica idiots.
DeleteAlberta Hunter knew the Robesons very well. One night I asked her if Robeson was radical backstage when they starred together in the 1928 London production of "Show Boat". "Oh, he got those ideas from Lady Astor," she said with a giggle, "she was always running around after him, putting those ideas into his head."
Of course, he didn't need Lady Astor to tell him about racism, but I bet she opened a few thoughts. :)
In the late Forties, when my mother took me to a Robeson concert in Copenhagen, he included several Russian songs in his program. That bothered a couple of reviewers, who thought a concert hall was the wrong place for what they foolishly.saw as propaganda.
I just thought this ebay auction of Bob Dylan on Fass CD was interesting to pass along.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ebay.com/itm/BOB-DYLAN-RADIO-UNNAMEABLE-MARCH-1963-WBAI-NEW-YORK-1963-CD-DIGIPACK-NEW-SEALED-/141997367167?hash=item210fb3df7f:g:lWYAAOSwEK9UJwFr
SDL
I bet the source is one of the many private airchecks from that period. I wonder what the sound quality is like and how many such pirated releases are out there.
DeleteDear anon thank for your opinion of my work through the years. I enjoy hearing from listeners, and what they have to say. Again thank you for taking the time to tell us what you think. Your opinions are of value, and will be taken seriously. Again thank you.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the Goering quote and why was it made? Usually when you play the Nazi card, it means you're losing an argument.
ReplyDelete
DeleteHermann Göring- Quotes
“Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
KGT
My point in my Goering post was to point out that he was called the Minister of Propaganda on WBAI, which was actually Goebbels job. Goering was head of the Luftwaffe and other offices, until Himmler swiped some of them.
DeleteSDL
The only history these bozos know is the one they invented.
DeleteTake Mata Hari Krishna, for example.... nah, never mind.
Mata Hari... Do you know of Elsbeth Schragmüller? There is a mysterious woman. How much did she really do? Who knows, but she didn't get caught.
DeleteOne movie made about her, Fräulein Doktor, still has among the creepiest, most horrific scenes I ever witnessed in any film - the gas attack on the Allied trenches. Check out the link and go to about 1 hour 24 minutes to see it, if interested. Frightened me as a kid, especially once the German troops come out of the trenches to attack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1gUUMI2xk8
SDL
Horrific! Thanks for bringing this film to my attention—I don't know how I missed it.
DeleteDear All:
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago at meetings of the WBAI Finance Committee I had asked R Paul Martin, Chair of the WBAI Finance Committee what was the rent of the Empire State Building. Martin replied that it was privileged. Martin lied and said that the rent was privileged even though it appeared in the Pacifica Financial Statements.
But there was a reason why I asked this question. If I remember correctly, there were two lines for the Empire State Building. One was for the transmitting tower; the other was for the base where the WBAI transmitter is maintained. Regardless, Martin refused to present public information.
Several years later Mitchel Cohen, Chair of the WBAI Local Station Board at the time of my inquiries, mentioned Martin’s refusal to provide the rent for the Empire State Building. Cohen said that there was no problem with Martin refusing to provide public information because it could be found in other places.
Concurrently when I asked for the index number and venue (state or federal court and location) of Bernard White’s lawsuit against Pacifica and Stephen M Brown, Martin once again replied that this information was privileged. Of course that was a lie. The index number and venue of a publicly filed law suit are not privileged. One inebriated member of the WBAI Finance Committee even waved his credit card and told me to go to 500 Pearl Street and look up the information.
Several years ago Mitchel Cohen told me that Steve Brown wanted R Paul Martin to be Chair of the WBAI Finance Committee because Martin would not provide financial information to individuals, who requested it.
Thus when information was requested concerning the phone contracts for WBAI, both Cohen, at the time Chair of the WBAI LSB, and Martin stated that there had been one phone contract. But Martin had written a report in which Martin stated that there had been two phone contracts for the WBAI landline phone and the systems were not compatible.
Eventually it was stated that there were two phone contracts for the WBAI’s landline phone system and that the systems were incompatible.
For several years every member of the WBAI Finance Committee, who asked for information concerning the WBAI landline phone contracts, was told a lie- specifically that there had been one landline phone contract. Terry Goodman opined what does it matter if there were one or two landline phone contracts? The costs were not overwhelming. But that is not the issue; Martin and Cohen repeatedly lied about a minor expense. And if you lie about a minor expense, you will most assuredly lie about a major expense- such as the rent for the Empire State Building.
But the answer to Terry Goodman’s question was far worse. When I spoke to a Vice President of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I was asked how many phone contracts for the WBAI landline phone system there were. I replied that there were at least two phone contracts.
The CPB representative was annoyed. He told me that Berthold Reimers, General Manager of WBAI, said that there had been one phone contract. The CPB representative did not like being lied to by WBAI.
Here was WBAI going broke, and the CPB was aware of it. Yet when a simple financial question was asked, Reimers responded with a lie. And Martin and Cohen repeated the lie- to the federal agency, whose funds were desperately needed.
The CPB never moved against WBAI and Pacifica- except for not providing funds. Why, the CPB admitted that WBAI would go out of business. The CPB did not wish to be blamed for the insolvency of WBAI if it took administrative actions against WBAI.
I always stated that Pacifica and WBAI could not falsify financial information because eventually it would be exposed and WBAI would become insolvent.
And that is what has occurred.