Friday, January 6, 2017

Exiles returning?



NOTICE WAS IMMATERIAL

Berkeley - After throwing out two consecutive elections by WBAI's delegates to fill 3 WBAI vacancies on the national board, and rigging the 2017 affiliates director election by not allowing any independent WBAI directors to vote, PNB treasurer and board majority member Michael Novick admitted that "in retrospect", the board majority was wrong and the "flawed notice" was immaterial. In correspondence with a Pacifica employee, Novick said:


"I abstained on the vote not to seat the people elected at the LSB meeting in December. In retrospect I think the flawed notice was immaterial, as it had no impact on the outcome of the vote. Since I abstained, however, I am not in a position to move for reconsideration"

You can read Novick's full email here.  In the 15 days between the 2nd thrown out election and Novick's retrospective recognition, the LA activist is not known to have spoken out about his discomfort with the action or attempted to reverse the injustice. 

This sound file contrasts the excuses used to throw out the first WBAI directors election (held on December 7 and thrown out on December 13) and those used to throw out the second WBAI directors election (held on December 14 and thrown out on December 15). 

The affiliates director election for 2017 was held 4 days later, without any independent representation from WBAI. The two affiliate directors will likely be the tie-breaking votes on a closely divided 2017 national board. Election teller Terry Goodman released the full election count publicly, showing the results when all ballots were counted, including those of the WBAI independent directors. His public report showed that David Beaton was the winner, with Temba Tshibanda as the first runner-up. It can be read here. Beaton received 44% of the first place votes cast (7/16). The second runner-up, Tshibanda, received 31% (5/16).

75% of WBAI's national representation has been exiled from the national board for an entire year, in violation of Article 5, Section 1 of Pacifica's bylaws, which states the board of directors has a minimum of 22 members and equal representation from all 5 Pacifica stations and that the board may not change the configuration by resolution. The reason for the WBAI vacancies is the board's interpretation of the "six-year rule" or term limit, which states delegates (local station board members) may not serve for more than six consecutive years. 

KPFA's local station board has planned another un-noticed "retreat meeting" for this upcoming Saturday at an undisclosed location unavailable to the public. Wilkinson will attend the secret meeting. It is said former CFO Sam Agarwal will be an invited guest speaker. Agarwal left the organization in September after tussles with the Siegel/Brazon board majority.
The Pacifica National Board meeting scheduled for this evening looks to be a contentious affair with the lame-duck Siegel/Brazon majority attacking each other with members Kobren, Sorden (WPFW), and Casenave (KPFT) all offering motions to discipline, censure or overrule the "Save KPFA" branch of the faction over matters of the secret retreat meeting, remote call-in meeting participation and Wilkinson's continuing activity after her delegate term expired. Pacifica in Exile will have a complete report on the meeting outcomes early next week. 

The 2 WBAI directors elections are not the only elections the board majority threw out. They threw out all of them on December 13, demanding a recount of all 10 local station board elections and declaring certified election results from vendor True Ballot and national election supervisor Lynne Serpe "provisional". In the ensuing three weeks, the board majority has not backed down from their attempt to invalidate the election, despite much criticism. The enclosed report from the board secretary Janet Kobren spends 22 pages exhaustively detailing a long list of write-in candidates, none of whom received more than 5 or 6 votes (most received only 1 or 2).The report provides no evidence that a single result would be altered. The "report"  can be read here.  It is a demonstration of the expression "fiddling while Rome burns". California Corporations Code Section 5615 states that the certification of an appointed election supervisor is final. 

Pacifica has still posted no financial information for fiscal year 2014 (10-1-2013 to 9-30-2014) on their website, despite statements the tardy financial audit is "done. The page for financial information for 2014 remains blank at 26 months after the close of the fiscal year.
In other news, LA station KPFK is facing the imminent loss of its chief fundraiser, producer Christine Blosdale. Blosdale, one of the KPFK employees whose severance benefits were reinstated in the SAG-AFTRA arbitration, has raised between 30% and 45% of KPFK's revenues in the last three fund drive cycles, and for many previous years with special fund drive programs. KPFK has been running fund drives about every 60 days since GM Radford took over and barely meeting fundraising goals. The station has no ready solution for a sudden drop in receipts. In the station's December 2016 fundraising effort, Blosdale's programs raised $185,000 of $438,000 raised during the drive or 42% of the total. 

The LA station's draft budget was approved by Pacifica's financial committee with the draconian move of terminating all dependent child and spousal benefits for both full-time and part-time employees.  The proposal would make KPFK the only unit in Pacifica that does not provide health coverage to spouses and dependent children of full-time employees. The plan to cut benefits would put Pacifica in default of the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act  (commonly known as Obamacare) which requires employers of 50 or more employees to provide dependent child coverage up to age 26, for no more than 9.5% of an employee's annual salary. If any of KPFK's employees seek alternate coverage for their children on the state exchange, penalties would be triggered against Pacifica. The benefits cut would affect 6 full-time employees at KPFK who are currently covering dependent children and another 3 employees covering spouses. Employees include management, program hosts and administrative employees. All but one of the impacted employees filed grievances upheld in the 2016 SAG-AFTRA arbitration. Pacifica may be vulnerable to litigation alleging retaliation since GM Radford indicated the benefits were to "pay for" Radford's 2015 contract violations, which assessed fees and penalties of $285,000. You can hear a summary reel from the finance committee discussion here. 

Legacy WBAI broadcaster Bob Fass made the NY Times, which reported Columbia University had purchased archival tapes of Fass' Radio Unnameable, the seminal countercultural program featured in a documentary film  The university bought the tapes directly from producer Fass,and will digitize them for permanent archival storage on the campus. You can read more about it here

Long-time WBAI broadcaster Gary Null took to the air on January 2 and talked about Pacifica's current state. His full hour long show can be heard in the program archives at wbai.org. A selection from his lengthier comments can be heard here.

In Texas, long-time manager Duane Bradley's tenure is coming to an end after a pitched multi-year battle with the Houston Siegel/Brazon group. Bradley, whose time as a Pacifica station manager is twice as long as anyone else since the 2002 democratization, finally threw in the towel a few months after long-time program manager Ernesto Aguilar went to the National Federation of Community Broadcasters last fall. KPFT's listeners, partially due to concern about the management drain, handed an overwhelming election victory to the independent group Move KPFT Forward, but the new board and the station will have to go forward with no program director  and a brand new interim manager Obidike Kamau, whose previous job was as a university library director. Kamau was a volunteer programmer at the station. 

60 comments:

  1. Maybe Pacifica can start a cyber currency, like Bitcoin, to pretend to save themselves? They could call it Crapcoin...

    SDL

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    1. The money you never see
      for speech that isn't free.

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  2. Shooting in Florida and WBAI talking about the same old Puerto Rico shit. Even corporate junk stations like WOR and WABC are giving us news about the shooting.

    SDL

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    1. It's really just messed up, ideological priorities. Even Linda Perry and her so called "news" is just ideological waste. These people live in ideological cocoons and really have no idea of the real world.

      SDL

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    2. With a suspect named Esteban Santiago, don't expect Jordan to talk about this shooting.

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    3. I said that to myself a few minutes ago. Of course, if he can find an angle to defend him and blame the USA for it...

      SDL

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    4. I think they all have a copy of "Bates' Book of Angles"—it's mandatory reading.

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    5. Where is her report on Puerto Rico? I want to hear what she has to say about the new governor calling for statehood.

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    6. When will Kuby with Felipe Luciano come on and give him the "Latino Rage Defense"?

      KGT

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    7. You won't have to wait long for someone to come up ith that. I jut saw this in a NJ paper:

      "He was charged with 13 robberies between March 2014 and January 2016 in Teaneck, East Rutherford, Wallington, Garfield, Ridgefield Park, Lodi, Carlstadt and Hackensack.

      "During a June 9, 2014 robbery of a Ridgefield Park gas station, Thomas shot the attendant, then rummaged through his pockets while he lay on the ground bleeding. A customer came to the attendant’s aid as Thomas fled the scene.

      "Man wounded in Auburn Street shooting, Paterson police say. Two different stories emerge in Paterson shooting trial.Thomas’ defense attorney, Saray Miller, told the judge that his sentence should be less than the agreed upon 20-year term because, she said, her client suffers from “post traumatic slave syndrome.”

      “Having been told he’s inferior and treated inferior, historically and personally his entire life,” Miller said, incarceration would be a hardship on Thomas and society."

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  3. He was hearing voices. I can cure that. I can shove a sharpened broom handle in one ear, a sharpened broom handle in the other ear and take pruning shears and cut off the temporal lobes (auditory cortexes) bilaterally.

    KGT

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    1. This Twinky defense-type of nonsense is best debunked by putting the Gru woman in a room with a microphone and an intelligent person—of any hue, but preferably her's—who sees through her gimmick.

      On WBAI, we often hear the Gru address an audience of the gullible—you can tell them that Shakespeare's Nubian ancestors wrote all his plays and sonnets during a first-century vacation in what is now known as East Orange.

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  4. Hi Chris! I appreciate the mention. Quick correction: I left KPFT in August 2016, rather than the fall. Also, Obidike Kamau, in addition to being a former programmer, may still be considered a volunteer programmer, as he's been doing a fill-in stint on Community Dialogue, whose program host has been sidelined due to health issues. You might find the program in KPFT's archive to check him out. Best to you all in Pacifica!

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  5. When you talk to God, it's called being religious and you are called pious and wonderful.
    When God talks back to you, you are called nuts, and put is a mental institution.
    Que pendejos!

    KGT

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    1. When you talk to such an entity, you have bought into the biggest scam of all time.

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    2. Would you prefer Scientology? Oy Vey

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    3. Any organized "religion" bothers me. They should all have their tax-exempt status removed. i.m.o.

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    4. I am an atheist, so I wouldn't miss it. Nevertheless, other weaker-minded people would be banging their heads on the walls, screaming at the top of their lungs and and pounding their chests. Let them waste their time on mishigoss. Who cares.

      KGT

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  6. A little birdie informed me that Bernard White is holding a going-away party in Brooklyn today - he is moving to North Carolina.

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    1. He'll be back. He's pulled this schtick before.

      KGT

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    2. I bet that "little birdie" is a not-so-little albatross named Cerene. She has been promoting this JUC non-event.

      I think she and the rest of that gang ought to pack their stuff and leave with White. Perhaps they can hook up with the Klan in NC and have a joint celebration of wannabe Admiral Marcus Garvey. :)

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    3. For sure "Imhotep" Gary Byrd SIMOTAP group is the head and I'll bet Amy Goodman is the token blonde haired- blue eyed Bat Mitzvah girl, just to inject just the right mix of multiculturalism and diversity. Vy Not?

      KGT

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    4. Let me tell you that I knew Bernard personally and liked him. We battled frequently, in a friendly manner but enjoyed it. Bernard despised Gary Null and for all the right reasons- (2) because he was arrogant and he was a quack. He was the only person on high management at WBAI who grasped that and said that if he ever became PD or station manager, he would fire him and the station wouldn't financially collapse if he did. And he did fire him when Gary Null acted out at the first moment. Give him that much.

      KGT

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    5. Your first-hand experience will always have more credence than the hearsay on which my opinion is based.

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    6. There is no more Klan. Morris Dees destroyed it. But I despise Morris Dees.

      KGT

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    7. Chris, you need some 'churching' up.:) Why don't you stop by Trinity Church by Wall St? They're Episcopal and you can soak in some history while you're there.
      You could also try one of those interdenominational services.

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  7. The Twinkie Defense was always nonsense. But if someone ODed on Gary's Green Stuff and mixed it with Gary's Brown Stuff and topped it off with a Diet Dr. Pepper and jumped up and downed and GREPSED, he could blow up the whole fucking airport!!!!

    KGT

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  8. Hey- Chris- I gotta meet you someday- in the flesh-

    KGT

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    1. I'll b ring my trumpet- Spring or early summer- You won't believe it but I am a relative of Chris Koch-kind of- met him once at a wedding reception in southampton- he was in a hippy robe with his hippy friends off to milk goats in Taos, NM. He had just married my first cousin. My grandmother despised him. I whispered to my mother, "This ain't gonna last". It didn't.

      KGT

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  9. I listened to the Gary Null clip here. Somehow, I found his call for civil disobedience on WBAI's own air unconvincing.

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  10. They have just charged the FL shooter on three federal death penalty offenses; but he was hearing voices, so he'll probably get life. Liberals strike again.

    KGT

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  11. I wonder if them four morons that tortured that white guy in chicago were "suffering" form p.t.s.s.?
    Let's call joyless degrusome and find out . On second thought ..... let's not , and say we did .

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    1. I have always felt that it is a very real flexion, but one taken advantage of and reduce and importance by disshonest members of the legal profession. I liken the DeGru slave defense to that Twinkie nonsense.

      Again, given your background, I take a back seat on this subject.

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  12. Lock him up so he can never get out. Just like this broad who murdered the three cops in the Rockland County Brink's armored car heist of 1981 who Cuomo just commuted out of prison this week. She's sorry.

    KGT

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  13. Chris- Nat Hentoff just died

    KGT

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    1. I know. I posted a comment on it yesterday on Facebook, he played an important role in my career.

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  14. I am not a Jazz guy even though I am a trumpeter- Give me Tommy Dorsey without Frank- Well Git It- Opus 1= Sy Oliver. I don't think that is exactly jazz- at least Phil Schaap says NO-

    KGT

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    1. I recall hearing Phil describe in detail an incident that allegedly took place at.one of my recording sessions. It never happened and he wasn't even there, so I take everything he says with a grain of salt the man should shut up and play some music.

      Perhaps not jazz, per se, but certainly of jazz value and musicians you mentioned style of her and Tommy Dorsey where in fact jazz musicians, but check out the source, Phil Schaap.

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    2. Phil Schaap has no degree in music.

      KGT

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    3. He doesn't need it, he absorbed knowledge and the ability to fake it while sitting on the laps of great musicians who babysat for his father, Walter. Walter was genuine, he did not need to make things up,

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    4. Also, he is cousins of Dick and Jeremy who also was/is genuine.

      KGT

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    5. I worked with Dick Schaap at WCAU in Philly (1958-59). In fact, he was sometimes one of the actors in a series of family-oriented skits written by me. I can vouch for his lack of pretense.

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    6. Phil actually does need a degree in music. It cost him a professorship at Columbia.

      KGT

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    7. I recall how that turned him into a crybaby. It was kinda embarrassing.

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  15. I remember Dick for telling his former friend Bobby Fischer that the latter didn't have a sane bone left in his entire body. Boy did that drive Bobby mishugana.

    KGT

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  16. What do you think of WBAI's new station manager being Michael Alig?

    KGT

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    1. I just mentioned it because I think it ought to "straighten" things out.

      KGT

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  17. This just in. The Federal Communications Commission denied WBAI listener Daniel Miller's request to have the radio station's license revoked following two years of complaints of objectionable content. The FCC determined that the "licensee has broad discretion -- based on its right to free speech -- to choose, in good faith, the programming it believes serves the needs and interests of its community of license."

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    1. Do you have any details regarding the alleged "objectionable content"? From an esthetic point of view, the overall programming is stained by false claims and incompetence, which may well ualify as ibjectionable.

      Delete
  18. When someone drowns, he always puts his head above water at least once to get a last gulp of air before going down for the last final plunge. Don't fret.

    KGT

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    1. The plunge is already taking place, albeit in slow motion. I have long since written WBAI off as having suffered irreparable damage. I am ready to see the perp walk, figuratively and/or literally.

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  19. I am beginning to think that WBAI will end with a whimper, rather than a bang. It will keep dwindling on in a descending spiral that will go on for months, if not years.

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    1. Basically, what I have said for in the past, except that I think when the end comes, WBAI will be sold off by Pacifica, perhaps with an LMA deal first. We'll have to wait and see if Trump has any effect on increasing listeners and donations, like it did during the Reagan junta.

      SDL

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    2. Does anybody think that there could be a Sinatra- Dean- Sammy- bobby Darin- type WNEW- type- WITHOUT the narcissist Jonathan Schwartz hopefully- American popular songbook Station on the FM dial commercially successful?

      KGT

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    3. On WBAI we have the "community's". Very own gang, Mumia, Clarke, "dr. Ben," a props department "admiral" called Marcus, and a plethora of narcissists.

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  20. Are they still on the air? WOW! I use to listen to them in the 1990s. They were FAIRLY decent. And I say that MILDLY. There has always been a disconnect with young people. It was always an OLD MAN's CLUB and being in my 20s, I just did not fit in. This was during Marksman Tenor, before he past away. I'm sure it is worse now.

    Bernard White really did not bring much to the table. And Amy Goodman was doing everything she could to HOLD ON to what she already had. You can say the same thing to the rest of the staff and volunteers.

    It always like that when I visit a few times. Everyone was so consumed with themselves, that often times, they did not notice me when I came in. Well.. those where the times when they were at 8th Avenue.

    They can't be everything for everyone. They need to sale the station and purchase several smaller stations with different missions. They need to provide competitive information that will make people succeed than to continue to make people feel hopeless.

    I'm not saying to get rid of all the activism type programs. I'm saying start promoting opportunities for these young people growing up. And make the young people part of the station, by encouraging them to host programs.

    With that said, if we don't empower our young people, they will continue to be disillusion.

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