Letting a Commenter Do My Work For Me

There's a slow motion back and forth going on between my regular commenter MoonDragon and teabagger extraordinaire psumba  on the comment thread of this post. I highly recommend giving it  a read. MoonDragon has far more patience than I do when it comes to arguing with our paranoid defender of all things Palin and he/she is  doing a very good job of of it. Here's a taste,

Everyone getting the same shot you had is problematic, considering disparaties of the original circumstances from which people start (I, myself, was very lucky - caring parents, choosing a major that didn't become obsolete before graduation, remaining relatively healthy.) Government can help remediate some circumstances, particularly of institutional, disadvantage. Support of such policies is one of the family values I inherited from caring parents.

I hope your students learned about unions in their studies, that may be the only way to a better life than that of their parents. The decline of the middleclass parallels the decline of union membership.

The biggest boosts to the "ruling elite" over the last few years have been in the tax code that has fed the growing gap between the top 2% and the bottom 98%, especially the recinding of the "death tax" is particularly amusing, as it is creating a defacto aristocracy. Just watch an episode of BRAVO's NYC Prep.

It's the railing against unions and taxes on the top 2% by the Tea Party, two things that will help people get back in the game, amuses me.

Why do I call psumba paranoid, you may ask?  Well, consider these remarks. This is from his first response to my post about him from over a month ago.

You must really have some "juice" to have the CDT take down the Palin article & comments that the above remarks were posted against ...

This one is from three days ago.

What was represented as my original posting was really my fifth posting in a long thread. Hence my compliment to Veblen about getting the original article taken down ... destroying the context of the original remarks.

Of course, I had nothing to do with the vanishing comment thread. The CDT puts most of their articles behind a paywall after two weeks and the comment thread for an article vanishes when the article goes behind the paywall. But psumba's first instinct was  to accuse me of conspiring  with the powers at the CDT to victimize him and  more than a month latter he still thinks that he's the victim of a conspiracy to make him look bad....did I mention that psumba is huge Glenn Beck fan, too?

Phds Aren't All Brilliant and Teabaggers Aren't All Teetotalers

About a month ago, I had a post highlighting the CDT's most teabagelicious commeter, psumba, who showed up in comments here  to defend himself.  He wrote, in part,

Let's see ... I'm charged with:

- anti-intellectualism - as a student, I was considered to be quite intellectual. In fact, I did earn two simultaneous undergraduate diplomas from Penn State in four years ... in two demanding fields from different Penn State colleges. What happened ...

To which one of my regular commenters, MoonDragon, wrote,

I will take your word for it that you have the degrees you claim. Earning a college degree is an achievement in and of itself, however it  isn't proof of intellect. Your statement may be evidence of being highly trained, but isn' t proof of either education or intellectual capacity. Pardon the anecdote, but I know more than a few Phds who are dumber  than dirt.

Today we no longer have to depend on MoonDragon's anecdotal evidence concerning dumber than dirt Phds. From Kevin Drum comes this Quote of the Day, from the man behind the Teabagging curtain,

...Dick Armey, PhD University of Oklahoma, former economics professor at the University of North Texas, and former Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives:

One of the things that we see as we look at Glenn Beck's work that's been fascinating to me, is we see a more true and accurate history of the United States, and we see it documented at levels of rigor that, in fact, one would expect out of Ph.D. dissertations — it is serious, scholarly work....[Liberal critics] don’t have to argue with Glenn Beck. They have to argue with his documentation and they can’t match that level of rigor.

Somebody just shoot me now.

Digby adds,

It has often been rumored that Dick Armey is a falling down drunk and his behavior on TV certainly suggests that he's on something. I'm guessing it's acid...

What is it with Teabaggers and alcohol? Here's psumba

You should have taken me up on my offer last Fall to have a drink together the last time that I was in State College.

The Media Finally Reports on a GT No Vote and Gets a Quote From Him

Last week House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (R-CA) called the House back into a rare August session to vote on an emergency funding bill for Medicaid and education. The bill passed, despite GOP opposition, and Obama signed it into law.

In Pennsylvania, its passage staved off a financial catastrophe.

The Pennsylvania Legislature approved a budget for 2010-11 based on the hope of receiving $850 million in Medicaid funding.
Gov. Ed Rendell, who once predicted as many as 12,000 layoffs if no additional Medicaid money were received, has said that, with $600 million, some layoffs are still possible next month. The governor and legislative leaders are expected to meet to decide how to close that gap.

But GT voted against the bill, and thanks to WENY-TV in Elmira, New York, we know, for once, what GT says about the reason he voted the way that he did.

Northern Tier Congressman Glenn Thompson voted against it, saying it's spending more money at a time when the country can't afford it. “This is about the fact that we're experiencing challenging times fiscally.” Thompson says, “and when you experience challenging times, everybody has to tighten the belt.”

However the Congressional Budget Office says while the bill does add to the deficit over five years, in ten years, it would break even and actually reduce the overall deficit

Well, there you have it, we, in the Centre Region, have to rely on an out-of-state TV station to get GT's bullshitting on record.

Technorati Tags: Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA5), emergency medicaid education bill

For GT Legislatin' is Like Paintin' by Numbers

Last week GT joined 158 of his Republican colleagues to defeat a bill which would have created a fund for  9/11 emergency responders who have health problems due to the toxic environment created by the collapse of the World Trade Center.

As with his no vote on extending emergency  unemployment insurance, GT has not  seen fit to issue a press release explaining  why he has voted the way he has on this. He hasn't  even a twitter twatted, his favorite form of keeping constituents abreast of the depths of his mind. I'm guessing he isn't too proud of the vote and hopes than no one in the local  press notices it. A pretty good bet around these parts.

You can find the background on the bill here and what other wingers in the House have said about their no votes here  The reaction of both Democrats and Republicans are  here and a  Democrat responded in detail here. Then you can try to guess which Clown Caucus approved talking points (PDF) GT would check off as his reason for voting no, if forced to explain his "reasoning."
(Cartoon via watertiger at Dependable Renegade ,a very funny blog which I highly recommended.)

Technorati Tags: 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA5)

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Times Must be Really Tough at the CDT

Bob Heisse blogged today about attending the AP's Managing Editors board meeting in NYC this past weekend.  What's interesting is how he traveled to and from the Big Apple. Bob

...took the Megabus for the first time to and from New York and had a nice ride. The New York stop right outside Penn Station was organized and effective in letting passengers know about their departures.

Now that's frugal.

Technorati Tags: Centre Daily Times, Bob Heisse, Megabus

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I Personally Know...

....is a phrase which should be avoided in arguments unless you are willing to provide specific information which will allow others to judge the reliability of your personal knowledge.  Hence anonymous commenters should never use this phrase, but it is, none the less, one of the favorite means of argument amongst the ignoratti at the CDT. Here's the CDT regular Fred on unemployment benefits extensions this morning.

...Unemployment benefits are becoming the newest welfare program extended for no other reason then to persuade more voters in November to vote dem. I personally know of several unemployed folks who will not begin to look for another job until their unemployment benefits expire.

This is pretty typical stuff over there. They love their anecdotes about lazy acquaintances

The connection of welfare to unemployment benefits, as I discussed the other day, suggests that he doesn't want his  money helping out brown folks, while the anecdotes about lazy folks leads me to believe neither does he want his money helping out some guys down at the bar that he doesn't like...so screw everyone, as far as Fred is concerned.

As an antidote to these anecdotes about the indolent, I suggest reading the The Breadline Blog written by by a former reporter for a small western Pennsylvania newspaper who was laid off from his job and is now in the ranks of the long term unemployed. The blog was featured earlier this summer in the Wall Street Journal.  The Breadline Blog will put a much different face on our current economic problems than the 'baggers want you to see.

Technorati Tags: Tebaggers, wingnuts, unemployment benefits, welfare

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Teaching a Pig to Sing

I'm sorry I was side tracked over at the CDT again this evening trying to educate a Teabagger, or it might have been a garden variety wingnut.... political cladistics is tough.  I really didn't want to. I  left a snarky reply earlier today to the said dimwit, I think that covers most conservative subtypes these days, since reasonable conservatives are all but extinct,  with no intention of  engaging them. But then I just couldn't help myself...I had to take them to school. As you might expect, the pig still sings off key.

In the future, I'm going to try to focus my energies here and ignore the ignoratti. For now,  you can go over to the sty and see if you can get LessIsMore to hit high C.

Technorati Tags: Teabagger, wingnut

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Outback at the Forefront of a GOP Meme?

Yesterday, the Senate overcame the Republican filibuster of the legislation to extend emergency unemployment benefits and Mitch McConnell tried to divert attention of the Republican's unprecedented  opposition of the extension by linking the long term unemployed to Obama's policy, in the process calling these individuals "chronically unemployed."  Kevin Drum wondered today if there might be something more to  McConnell's choice of words.

...talking about "chronic" joblessness is also a way of suggesting that some of the unemployed are shiftless and lazy. Someone who's "chronically unemployed" isn't your unlucky next door neighbor, it's those guys in the ghetto or down in the hollow who just hang around all day and have never held an honest job in their lives for more than a few weeks at a time. Are these the kind of people you want to run up the national debt for?

I didn't think so. But guess what? Democrats do!

Well, it's hard to say with certainty if this is the game McConnell is playing, but , it just so happens, I was engaged in a back and forth over the past couple of days at the CDT (Hence my absence here.) with one of their regular's, outback, who helps to make the comment threads there  a  fever swamp, which makes Kevin's speculation very plausible to me.

Good News and Bad News From McClatchy

There was good news today for anyone holding McClatchy stock

Sacramento-based McClatchy said its second-quarter profits soared to $42.2 million from $19.7 million a year earlier. Per-share earnings rose to 50 cents from 24 cents.

The news wasn't so good for people that rely on the chain's papers for news.

The improvement came in spite of a 25.4 percent decline in revenue, including a a 30.2 percent drop in advertising sales.

[...]

[A] 29.3 percent drop in expenses returned [McClatchy] to profitability.

The chain survives, but it does so not by increasing revenue, which continues to slide, rather it does it by doing less of what it supposed to do, report the news. Don't look for any improvements in the reporting at the CDT until the revenue end picks up.

Technorati Tags: Centre Daily Times, McClatchy

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Taking a Swing at the King

The Centre Daily Time, an already  weak paper, has been weakened further by the financial crunch facing most newspapers today. Consequently it is unlikely that the paper will report on this story with a local connection. Therefore I bring it to you.

Ten Westmoreland County landowners claim in eight civil lawsuits that they are owed millions of dollars by a State College-based energy company that agreed to lease their properties to tap into the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale seam, only to back out of the contracts when energy prices plummeted.
[...]
The most recent filing was a class-action lawsuit on July 10 against Rex Energy Corp. in Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court....

The chairman of the board and founder of Rex Energy is Lance Shaner.

Technorati Tags: Rex Energy, Lance Shaner, lawsuit, Center Daily Times

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A Developing Story

It appears that an animal rights advocate may have provoked a Penn State research associate into making a veiled threat against her.fabricated a threat against her by a Penn State research associate. Well, at least that's my read. The alleged threat is supposed to have occurred on this Facebook discussion board. See if you can find it.

Of course, it may be possible for the original post, which contained the threat, to have been edited by its author or deleted by Facebook. Google Cache isn't any help in straightening this out. More investigation is needed.

The advocate is now demanding action from Graham.

Let's see if the CDT comes out of its stupor long enough to cover this story and get to the bottom of it.

Technorati Tags: Animal Rights, Penn State, Centre Daily Times

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If You Feed the Watchdog, Will It Keep Quiet?

Every year since 1996 the Pennsylvania General Assembly has issued financial reports on the state-related universities called Stairs Reports (Take a look over to your right). For even longer, the General Assembly has also issued reports on credit hours, teaching loads, etc... for both the state-owned and state-related universities. These are called Snyder Reports. This year, for the first time,  the Pennsylvania Department of Education has posted  on their Web site, without any fanfare, the raw data submitted by the state-related universities to the General Assembly which form the basis of these reports.

As you might imagine there is substantially more information in the raw data. For example, one important difference is that the  the raw data  lists the names of all entities which have received  contracts for goods and service in excess of $1000, while the Stairs Reports only provides the names of those that have received contracts in excess of $750,000.The raw data, unlike the Stairs Reports,  also has the budget category for the contract.

This raw data is a potential goldmine.

As a test, I decided to look at how much money the Centre Daily Times was paid by Penn State in 2007-2008. The results are shown in the embedded table.
Payment to Centre Daily Times by Penn State 2007-2008

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Other Research stairs report centre daily times

The total amount, $346,627, is a very large amount, but its not large enough to make the cutoff for inclusion in the Stairs Report. Its size does raise the question of whether, or to what extent, these payment have compromised the Centre Daily Times role as a watchdog over Penn State. This question is particularly of interest now that the CDT is experiencing financial difficulties.


Technorati Tags: Penn State, Centre Daily Times, Penn State financial disclosure, conflict of interest

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The Missing Context for the pro-EFCA Rally at Old Main

Friday's rally at Old Main in support of the Employee Free Choice Act was a great success.  The Collegian reports that,

[m]ore than 120 Penn State student activists, professors, union representatives and community members congregated Friday at Old Main to urge Penn State President Graham Spanier and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to support the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Unfortunately, the Centre Daily Times has, so far, ignored the rally.

While I'm on the topic of media failures, neither the Collegian nor the CDT have reported on the fact that Old Main lobbied against EFCA when it was considered by the last congress. This  important piece of context for the rally  should have been mentioned in the Collegian article.

The only place that you will have read about Old Main's opposition to EFCA is at Left of Centre. Why has the local media ignored the anti-labor activities of Graham?

Technorati Tags: The Daily Collegian, Centre Daily Times, Employee Free Choice Act, Penn State, Spanier,

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CDT In Critical Condition. Doctor Takes Extraordinary Actions

The Centre Daily Times has announced that it ain't doin' too well.

Citing unprecedented economic challenges posed by the recession, the Centre Daily Times announced Thursday a series of cost-cutting measures.

Those measures, said CDT President and Publisher Susan Leath, include a workforce reduction of three positions and wage reductions of 2.5 percent to 5 percent for all employees earning more than $25,000 a year.

“These are very difficult decisions,” Leath told the newspaper’s staff. “This is very difficult for all of us.”

Leah said the people being laid off have been notified and the company will do “everything we can to make their transition as smooth as possible.”

Other cost reductions are planned, including reducing the width of the newspages by one, and reducing the number of comic strips in the daily newspaper.

..not a big surprise to those who read this blog.

Technorati Tags: Centre Daily Times, retrenching, cost cutting

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Death Watch

On the heals of last weeks sudden announcement that Adrian Pratt had resigned as publisher of the Center Daily Times comes this,

McClatchy Co., publisher of the Sacramento Bee and 29 other daily newspapers, is planning to cut 1,600 jobs -- 15 percent of the company's work force -- and reduce salaries from the chief executive down, the company said Monday.

Technorati Tags: Centre Daily Times, McClatchy,

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Did the CDT make a Half Gainer Off the Frying Pan into the Fire This Afternoon?

The Centre Daily Times announced this afternoon that Adrian Pratt has resigned as its publisher and that he will immediately be replaced by CDT advertising executive Susan D. Leath. While the paper has occasionally had its moments, it is not a bastion of hard hitting reporting. There is no reason to belive that the new publisher, whose entire background is in marketing, will strengthen the paper's reporting.

Take a look at this. 

...Leath, who will continue to oversee the newspaper's advertising operations in her new role, said she was excited by the opportunities ahead.

"Despite economic challenges nationally, the Centre County region remains strong," she said. "We are home to Penn State University, have the lowest unemployment rate in the state, home values continue to grow, automotive sales are outpacing national trends and our local banks are solid.

"As for the future, it will be up to what we all do with this moment in history," she said. "As a change agent, I truly believe this is a great moment to lead. The Centre Daily Times has a talented group of dedicated professionals committed to proving quality news and information. We are innovators who are constantly seeking new ideas to better serve the community."

It think it is reasonable to be concerned that  she may let her advertising responsibilities interfere with her publishing decisions. 

Technorati Tags: Centre Daily Times, Susan D. Leath, Adrian Prutt

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Do Penn State Students Run the Development Office?

The Old Main Propaganda Shop has been very successful in branding the Penn State Dance Marathon, a.k.a  THON, as the largest student-run philanthropy in the world. They pitch the meme relentlessly. Here's the Penn State Propaganda Portal last week as THON was underway.

THON 2009 began Friday, Feb. 20, in the Bryce Jordan Center on Penn State's University Park campus. The 46-hour Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon, the largest student-run-philanthropy in the world ...

And news outlets, like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, uncritically repeat the claim. Last year I put the lie to this idea and this year the Centre Daily Times  did some very good reporting which made it even clearer that this isn't a student-run event in an meaningful way.

Penn State spokeswoman Jill Shockey said the university’s Associated Student Activities office within Student Affairs helps the finance committee for Thon — as it does with all student clubs — and the university development office handles corporate donors and donations for those wanting tax receipts.

Information on those donors is considered “proprietary,” Shockey said.

If this were a student-run philanthropy wouldn't this information be controlled by the students and not Old Main?

In its other reporting on the event this year, the CDT,to its further credit, did not state as fact that THON is the largest student run philanthropy in the world.

Organizers call "THON" the largest student-run philanthropy in the world. They say they've
raised $52 million since 1973, including $6.6 million last year.

I  hope this signals a more skeptical attitude from the CDT toward Old Main.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, THON, false branding

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CDT Photo Contest Gone Wild

Technorati Tags: Centre Daily Times, humor

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Thon: The CDT Late to the Party, But a Welcome Guest

Nearly a year ago I wrote about the lack of transparency and accountability which surrounds the fund raising for the Penn State Dance Marathon.

...THON is not registered as an independent charitable organization. When you make a donation to THON you use Penn State's tax-exempt identification number:24-6000-376. [Ed 2/19/09: The link from last year is dead. Here are screen shots from this year and of the Penn State's IRS W-9 Form used for the tax-exempt donations to Thon.] Hence the money disappears into the the Penn State information blackhole and since The Four Diamond Fund is also a part of the University, the money never sees the light of day again.

Is the money misused? There is no way of telling. But it is worth recalling how Old Main has been handling the donation to student groups and colleges.

Beginning this year, donations to colleges and student groups exceeding $5,000 will take a pit stop at the Office of University Development for 90 days while Penn State pockets the interest, a university official said.

And the University never told anyone about this scheme including the those donating the money. Imagine then what they might do with $6.6 million.

Yesterday, Anne Danahy at the Centre Daily Times wrote a piece about this very issue.

...Thon and the Four Diamonds Fund are not independent charitable organizations. Rather, they are part of Penn State and get their tax exempt status from the university. As such, they — and Penn State — are not required to make any part of their finances public.

Aside from the list of the top 10 fundraising fraternity and sorority teams, and the top three independent fundraising groups, Thon releases few details on its donors. Similarly, the Four Diamonds Fund doesn’t have to provide specific information about its budget.

In Pennsylvania, educational institutions are exempt from the Charitable Purposes Act, which oversees registration of charities.

Danahy does some good reporting and the article is well worth a read. I would like to see more of this type of reporting in the CDT.

Technorati Tags: Thon, Penn State Dance Marathon, Centre Daily Times, Ann Danahy, Penn State,

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You're Supposed to Hyperlink!

Earlier today in his blog, Centre Daily Times editor Bob Heisse approvingly quoted from one of my posts on the football team being put up overnight at Toftrees before home football games.

Have to say I laughed out loud when I read the post below by one of our anonymous bloggers (Veblen) in town.

I'll give credit where it's due: He's so right and I wish I would have come up with this line.

Here's what he wrote, after having been burned by posting a perceived "negative" comment about Penn State football on our Web site:

" ... just a warning, making any comment at the CDT that can be construed as the least bit negative to Penn State football is the cyberspace equivalent of walking in a Penn State frat in an Ohio State sweatshirt."

Bob should take note of what I did here. I linked to his blog post. He should have done the same with mine. [Update 2/6/09: I checked Bob's blog a few moments ago and found that he's put in a link to the post. Thanks, Bob.]

While I'm on the topic of links and the CDT, there's something I've been meaning to write about for awhile now:permalinks. If the CDT is serious about its online presence then they should, at the very least, give bloggers permalinks to their articles. Even the blogs at the CDT are full of dead links to CDT stories which diminish the value of those posts. It should be good economics. Giving bloggers permalinks should generate more traffic to the newspapers Web site which should help it sell more advertizing. Even better, the CDT should open up its archives on which it could then sell advertizing.

Com'on "Bob wha'da ya say?

Technorati Tags: Centre Daily Times, Bob Heisse, hyperlinks

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