Sayonara to Erie Times-News "public editor"

A couple weeks ago, I noted here the lack of a "public
editor" credit on recent Liz Allen columns whose content
would normally call for such a credit line.

I speculated that its absence may foretell an unannounced
decision by the Erie Times-News quietly to eliminate that position.

Liz is the third Times-News staffer to hold the "public
editor" assignment, following Jeff Pinski and Kevin Cuneo,
since it's inception five or six years ago, although I
may be a year or two off. Pinski held the title longest,
3 or 4 years; Cuneo one or two, and Liz only a few months.

Over the past couple weeks, events seem to confirm my
earlier speculation that the position has been quietly dropped,
as there's been no "public editor" credit on any of Allen's
columns in the interim.

This includes her last column on editorial matters which
appeared in Sunday's paper calling for reader contributions
to the Times-News's Op-Ed pages on the forthcoming general
election. Once again, no "public editor" credit line.

If my specualtion is correct, dropping the public editor title
is a development too long in coming, because it's been a fraud from
its outset. As I've pointed out here repeatedly over the past
couple years, the role of the public editor is to serve as an
advocate and voice within the newspaper for the readers.

But its Times-News practitioners have instead turned the function
on its head and converted it into a shrill mouthpiece for the
newspaper and its editorial, news and related operations.

Erie Times-New editor is pot calling TV kettle Black on slease campaign advertising

In his Sunday column, entitled "Truth becomes casualty
when politics mimics war," Erie Times-New Managing Editor
Pat Howard, commenting on presidential campaign TV advertising,
said among other things, that "fact-checking operations" tell
us attack ads "are spewing gross distortions and flat-out
lies more often than in the past."

Those who subscribe to these tactics, Howard wrote,"know that
while some voters are students of issues, positions and
evidence, many others, by inclination or aptitude, get
their information only in bits and pieces, and it tends to go
in one ear and straight to the gut.Such people are especially
prone to being frightened, manipulated and bamboozled."

This is the pot calling the kettle black.
The Erie Times-News's local and syndicated Op-Ed columns,
like the left wing national mainstream media (The New York
Times, The Washington Post, The Buffalo News, The Pittsburgh
Post Gazette, the L A Times, et al) all whose news and
editorial coverage is heavily slanted in favor of Obama/Biden
and against McCain/Palin, play the same role within the print
media that the false advertising Howard hollowly deplores exercises
within the electronic media.

What the "fact checkers" - in whom Howard seems to place so much
faith - need, including the Times-News, is someone to check their
facts. More errors and bias are typically asserted in the name of
fact-checking than are committed in the original fact scenario.

Why Sarah & Todd Palin ignore Troopergate subpoenas

A Buffalo News letter to the editor writer recently
asked "How can the Palins not honor subpoenas" in
the Alaska Troopergate investigation? That's
a good question that deserves a full answer.

The subpoenas were issued by an interim legislative
committee called the Legislative Council, which handles
administrative and other legislative affairs while the
legislature is not in session. It consistes of 12
mumbers appointed by the presiding officers of the
Alaska state House and Senate.

Because of the current coalition make-up of the Alaska
legislature, the council is made up of four Democrats
and eight Republicans.

Keep in mind that not all Republicans in Alaska are
political allies of Governor Palin, a Republican,
because her successful reform efforts in
Alaska have targeted both Democrat and Republican
members of the legislature.

She also successfully ran against the incumbent
Republican governor without the support or help of
the Alaska Republican Party which supported
the incumbent, and blew the ethics whistle on the
chairman of the Republican Party for corruption,
forcing his resignation from an important
state commission to which he was appointed by
the former Republican governor.

Partly as a result, she has an 80 percent-plus
favorable rating in Alaska and is the most popular
state governor in the nation's history. Many Republicans
ae among the 20 percent minority in Alaska who don't like
Governor Palin.

Thus, while the Legislative Council appears to be
a bi-partisan body, its membership is 100 percent
anti-Palin.The members' antagonism towards
Governor Palin was a condition of their appointments
to the council.

Two of the Democrats on the council, Senators Hollis
French and Kim Elton,are openly Obama supporters. They
were captured in a photo at Obama headquarters in Anchorage.

French was the prime instigator, is the manager of
the Troopergate investigation, and is likely to run
against Palin in the next gubernatorial election if
she is still governor. He handpicked the special
investigator handling the Troopergate investigation.
a personal friend whose wife was once a colleague of
the former Alaska public safety commissioner
whom Palin fired. Elton is the chair of the council,
and contributed more than $2,000 to Obama's
campaign.

Both the launching of the Troopergate investigation
and the issuance of the subpoenas by the council fly
in the face of Alaska's Constitution. The council is
expressly barred by the constitution from conducting
investigations of the executive branch, or issuing
subpoenas to its members.

Two other standing legislative committees, State Affairs
and Judiciary,are authorized to investigate the executive
branch and issue subpoenas,but neither has done so. The
legislature as a committee of the whole may
also launch investigations and issue subpoenas,
but has not done so.

Five Republican members of the legislature, including
the Republican speaker of the house, have filed an action
in state court seeking an order to dismantle the
investigation on constitutional grounds.

Alaska law also mandates that any investigation
into personnel matters may only be undertaken by
the three-member State Personnel Board, whose
members by law are appointed by the govenor. Governor
Palin has pledged to cooperate with any Personnel
Board investigation.

Shortly after the Troopergate investigation was launched,
Senator French issued a public statement predicting that
it would produce an "October surprise" implying that it
would adversely compromise Governor Palin's
vice presidential candidacy.

His comments, which revealed that the investigation
was predisposed against Palin, raised a firestorm of
controversy in Alaska, forcing French to retract them.

This is when the investigation's political "taint"
was exposed and bad faith demonstrated, prompting
Governor Palin to withdraw her previously
pledged cooperation.

It should also be kept in mind that the Alaska Constitution
unequivocally empowers the governor to fire any cabinet
member and certain other political appointees "without cause."

Thus, the short answer to the letter writer's question
is that both the Troopergate investigation and the issuance
of subpoenas by the Legislative Council are unconstitutional.
_____________________________________________________________

Author's note: I covered the Alaska Legislature and
state govenment in the state capital of Juneau for 20 years.
I also dsigned and taught a college credit course on the
legislative process at the Uiversity of Alaska. Senator Elton
was one of my students.

Erie Times-New press awards less than they seem

Sunday's Erie Times-News carried a self-serving article
reporting that the paper won seven, count them seven,
press awards announced by the Pennsylvania Newspaper
Assn. Foundation recently.

The article said the Times-News won the awards in
competition with other newspapers throughout the
state with circulations ranging between 35,000 and 70,000.

It neglected to mention that these are Division
Two newspapers. This division includes smaller
newspaper cities around the state like York,
Bucks County, Reading, York, Erie and others.

It does not include the bigger and more prestigious
papers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Philly News, the
Allentown Morning Call, the Pittsburgh Tribune
and the Harrisburg Patriot-News.

By failing to make that distinction, the Times-News
gave the false impression that the awards it received were
in competition with those far superior newspapers.

Attorney general puts bonusgate "in the freezer"

Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett says he has
temporarily suspended his investigation into the
legislative bonusgate scandal until after the
November general election, so as not to influence
election outcomes.

His decision comes on the heels of reports that the
investigation is now focusing on possible misconduct
by Republican legislators.

Earlier this summer, a grand jury indicted eight legislators,
one former legislator and a ranking legislative aide,
all Democrats, in the sweeping invesigation, which Corbett
said was expected to implicate Republican legislators as well.

The Democrats are alleged to have channeled nearly two million dollars
into partisan political election campaign activities, and illegally paid
hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses to legislative
aides who worked on election campaigns on state time.

So far no Republicans have been named or indicted, although
Corbett, a Republican, reported recently that half a dozen
Republican legislative aides have been interviewed in
connection with a scheme by House Republicans. They allegedly
used a $1.8 million state-of-the-art computer system paid
for by taxpayers for partisan political campaign purposes.

Corbett's announcement that the investigation would be
suspended until after the general elections is viewed
by some critics as a partisan scheme to protect
Republican candidates seeking election or reelection
who might be implicated if the investigation were to
proceed now.

In an editorial yesterday entitled "Criminal timing:
Corbett should not put Bonusgate in the freezer," the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said: "Justice delayed is justice denied.

"The legal cliche lies at the heart of what is wrong with
state Attorney General Tom Corbett's decision to put off
any presentments in the scandal known as Bonusgate during
the month preceding the election," the Post Gazette editorialized.

"Mr. Corbett, a Republican who is running for a second term,
was elected to investigate and prosecute crimes and corruption,
regardless of the political affiliations of any of the targets.
And that's what he has been doing -- witness the partisan
complaints made about his investigation from both sides of
the political aisle.

"Mr. Corbett's investigation started in 2007 and focused
first on the House Democratic caucus, which was logical
given the $1.9 million spent on questionable bonuses
in 2006 alone, a total that dwarfed sums allotted by
House Republicans and the Senate. Now his attention is
turned to House Republicans.

"When Mr. Corbett worked in the U.S. attorney's office,
it was the practice of federal prosecutors not to indict
in political corruption cases in the month preceding an
election, according to his spokesman, Kevin Harley. The
intention is to eliminate the suggestion that charges
are being filed in an attempt to influence the outcome
of an election.

"We'd argue that any information coming out of Mr. Corbett's
investigation is something voters might appreciate knowing
before they cast their ballots. If and when Mr. Corbett
gets enough evidence, that's when he should issue new
presentments," The Post Gazette said.

I agree. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
It smacks of partisan political favoritism to have prosecuted
Democrats facing reelection, while allowing potential
Republican wrongdoers to go before the voters unscathed.

Is the reign of the Erie Times-News "public editor" over?

Is Liz Allen's failure to identify herself for the first
time as "public editor" in the credit line at the bottom
of what appears to be the public editor column today a
nuanced annoucement that the Erie Times-News has decided
to eliminate the position of "public editor," so called?

Or is this not the irregular installment of that column?
It's hard to tell because the "public editor" at the
Times-News wears several hats, a contradiction in terms.
A "public editor" cannot by definition be any other
editor without creating an inherent conflict of interest.
Not to worry. The Times-News recognizes conflicts of
interest only in others, not itself.

If my suspicion is correct, there's no real loss, as the
Times-News's "public editor" has never served that function
as defined within the trade since its inception, starting
with Jeff Pinski through Kevin Cuneo and now Liz Allen.

Instead of being advocates for the public, as public editors
are wont to be, they've been mouthpieces for the newspaper, a
kind of unofficial director of public relations and promotions
for the Times-News.

In today's column, Liz writes about a phone conversation she
had with a reader, Richard Spaeder of Erie, who has subsribed
to the Times-News or one of its aberrations for 59 years.

He apparently called to express his dissatisfaction with the
Times-News's decidedly liberal bent in general, and its
unrelenting editorial campaign against Alaska Governor Sarah Palin,
the Republican vice presidential nominee in particular.

It's interesting to note how Liz distorted Mr. Spaeder's
complaint that the Times-News's Op-Ed content is heavily
weighted against Governor Palin.

To counter that criticizm, Liz broke down the Times-News's
Op-Ed columnists by ideology - liberal, moderate and
conservative. By that count, she said, there's only a
difference of one more liberal columnist than conservative
or moderate(assuming one agrees with her breakdown, which
I don't, e.g., David Broder a "moderate?" Hardly.
He's as left-wing as they come)

But Mr. Spaeder didn't complain about the columnists' known
ideological biases per se if Liz correctly characterized his complaint;
he complained about the ideological CONTENT of the Op-Ed page,
notably that trashing Governor Palin.

His complaint is well-founded. For example, on two consecutive
days last week, the Times-News ran a total of six columns back
to back trashing Palin, none supporting her.

In addition, the selection of Letters to the Editor by the
Times-News's left wing editorial page editor has also been
heavily biased against Governor Palin.

If Liz's omission of the "public editor" credit on her column
today is indicative of a surreptitious Time-News's decision
to eliminate that position, it's not an isolated case.

Today, for example, the public editor for the Sacramento
(California) Bee, the flagship newspaper of the fading
McClatchy Newspaper empire, announced in his column today
that it would be his last as public editor,a victim of top
management budget cuts, joining several other major newspapers
throughout the country which have done the same in recent months.

Republican legislators now under investigation by grand jury

You'd never know it from reading the Erie Times-News,
but Attorney General Tom Corbett has dropped the other
shoe in his investigation into corruption in
Pennsylvania's House of Representatives.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran an article yesterday
noting that the grand jury is looking into the Republican
caucus's allegedly illegal use of a state-of-the art
computer system for partisan political campaign purposes.
The fraudulent use of at least $1.8 million of taxpayer monies
is alleged.

Half a dozen of the House's Republican staffers have been
interviewed by the grand jury in the course of the investigation,
the Post-Gazette reported. The Post-Gazette has obtained a copy
of a contract between a former House majority leader and a company
which provided the computer services.

So far eight Democrat House members and two staff persons
have been indicted in the attorney general's on-going
investigation into what has come to be known as "bonusgate."

These ten Democrats have been charged with fraud
for rediredcting taxpayer funds into partisan political
campaigns, and paying certain staff persons
more than $1 million in bonuses for their allegedly illegal
campaign activities while on the state payroll.

While he has not been indicted, the House majority leader,
Bud DeWeese of Greene County, is under fire by some of his
own party members who have publicly called for him to step
down because of his failure of leadership.

So far, ten Democrat legislators have asked for DeWeese's
resignation as majority leader. DeWeese is up for reelection
to his House seat this year.

Two of the Erie area's five state legislators have remained
mum on what role, if any, they played in the bonusgate
scandal, viewed as the biggest ever to hit Pennsylvania.
They are Flo Fabrizio and John Hornaman.

The Times-News has been consistently behind the curve
on this scandal, and has never bothered to ask the area
delegation what they may know about it, and
has never published an article on what
the local tie-in may be.

Democrat Governor Ed Rendell has also remained curiously
silent on bonusgate, presumably because until recently,
only Democrats have been indicted. Will he maintain his silence
once Republicans are implicated?

The pedant and the demagogue

Not satisfied with six, read them, six editorial columns
yesterday bashing the McCain-Palin ticket and promoting
Obama-Biden, the Erie Times-News also ran a lengthy puff
piece, complete with mug shot, about a former schoolboy
buddy of Joe Biden's, Jim Lanahan, an administrator at
Mercyhurst North East.

The article had about as much substance as Obama's
tissue-thin resume. Its shaky premise hardly
justified so much space in the paper unless it was
intended primarily as a pretext to bolster even
further that day's six Op-Ed columns pumping up
the Democrat presidential ticket.

Lanahan both pushed the Obama-Biden candidacy and
dumped a ton of sour grapes on Palin, replicating the
vicious sexist attacks which the far left media have
piled on Palin since McCain elevated her to her historic role.

I find it interesting that Lanahan would denigrate
Governor Palin's alleged lack of experience, but
ignore that obvious deficiency in both members of
the Obama-Biden ticket.

Palin has more executive experience than both of them
put together, and is a proven political reformer, having
among other things challenged and defeated the incumbent
Republican governor with 22 years' seniority as a U.S.
senator from Alaska, a certified member of the old boys'
club, and blown the whistle on the chairman of the Alaska
Republican Party for ethics violations.

Biden, on the other hand, was caught plagiarizng material
while at law school and publicly misrepresenting his
collegiate academic status as a candidate for Congress.

Isn't it ironic that a college administrator
would advance as a role model someone with a resume as
checkered with academic pettifoggery as Biden's?

Obama has never led a reform effort of any kind, and
epitomizes the self-serving old boys' club which Palin
and McCain are committed to decimating in the nation's capital.

In a glowing reminisence of schoolboy days, Lanahan told
the Times-News that Biden eventually conquered a stuttering
handicap that plagued him as a youth. Senator Biden is to be
congratulated for overcoming that handicap. Now if he would
only do something about that demagoguery.

Runway extension costs: Short on details

In yet another of its “news” stories in the guise of
an editorial, the Erie Times News published an article
today on the progress of the airport runway extension,
currently estimated to cost $80.5 million, entitled
"Airport runway extension - 1st house torn down."
While wordy in length, it's short on pertinent details.

Reporters, as writers, are notoriously inherently
deficient in mathematics and finances. As a case in
point,the reporter who penned this story, quoting Erie
economic development director Bob Spaulding, wrote, in
part: "That means the county will not have to pay to
insure the ($21 million) bond issue. It will also
save on interest costs, he said."

A fiscally savvy reporter, an oxymoron, would have
asked the economic development guru he quoted the
next logical question: What did he mean when he
said "It will also save on interest costs."?

Revenue bonds which are repaid through revenue earned
by the project they are floated to finance are
substantially more expensive to float because of
much higher interest costs than general obligation bonds.

What are the life cycle financing costs of floating this
airport runway bond issue for a project which may not be
completed in years, and even then is never likely to
generate anywhere near the revenue necessary to pay
for its construction, amortization and life cycle
maintenance costs?

That means the payout will have to come, one way
or another, from general funds? In other words, how
much are taxpayers being asked to pay beyond the
face value of the bonds? And how about the huge
and inevitable project cost overruns? The devil
is in the details. It's a pig in a poke.

Not only don't we get the answer to the question,
we don't even get the question.

Gov. Palin's landmine # 2: The bridge to nowhere

This is yet another example of the folly politicians engage
when they’re not upfront with the public. Sooner or later the
truth will out, and when it’s later, it’s always worse
because untruth takes on a life of its own, complete with
unfounded rumors and distortions that could have been
avoided had the truth been told at the outset.

Although it’s not a major setback, and in the end Governor
Palin did the right thing, in this case she initially shaded
the truth and is now paying the consequences.

Several years ago, congressional funding in the amount of
some $400 million for two proposed new bridges in Alaska
was earmarked by one of Alaska’s two Republican U.S.
senators, Ted Stevens, arguably one of the most powerful
men in the nation’s capital in recent years.

The costlier of the two bridges was intended to link the
city of Ketchikan, Alaska’s fourth largest city, with
the offshore island on which its municipal airport is
located. The only way air passengers can get to or from
the airport is by ferryboat, about a 15-minute ride.

It would be the equivalent of going by boat from Erie’s Public
Dock to Presque Isle by ferry. (The second bridge would have
served the more populous Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city,
and isn’t especially relevant here).

The Ketchikan bridge, estimated to cost about $350 million,
would have served another purpose besides eliminating the
inconvenient and, in bad weather, hazardous ferry boat
ride to and from the airport. The city, now crowded on
a narrow shoreline between the water and the mountains
behind it has for decades needed more room for commercial
and residential expansion.

Although only a few dozen residents now live on the island,
the bridge would have opened up a whole new area to residential
and commercial development, allowing the city to experience
substantial growth.

Thus, there was a legitimate rationale for
what mockingly came to be known as “the bridge to nowhere”
which was lost in the growing unrest with Congress’s infamous
pork barrel politics. Instead it became a symbol for the
arrogance of lawmakers like Stevens who felt they could do
anything they like with impunity.

In the early stages of the efforts to obtain the funding
for the bridges, Palin was not governor. But as mayor of
a small Alaska city and later as candidate for governor,
she was an advocate for Alaska’s interests and actively
supported Stevens and the rest of Alaska’s congressional
delegation’s efforts on behalf of the Ketchikan bridge
funding. She is quoted in several Alaska newspaper accounts
as supporting the project.

It was only after she became governor that the pork barrel
politics which gave rise to widespread disaffection with
congressional earmarks that Palin opposed the bridge funding
and publicly spoke against it. Nevertheless, the funding was
approved and deposited into Alaska’s state treasury after
Palin became governor.

But once there, Governor Palin announced a year or so ago that she
would not authorize the money to be used to build the “bridge
to nowhere.” Instead, she said, it would be used to fund
other needed state infrastructure projects. That was the right
thing to do and it met with almost unanimous approval.

Fast forward to August 29, 2008 in Dayton, Ohio, the day
Senator McCain announced his decision to name her as his
vice presidential running mate. In the excitement and
chaos of the moment, Palin asserted at one point in her
acceptance speech that she had rejected the bridge to
nowhere and told Congress thanks but no thanks, drawing
a roar of approbation from the Republican partisans in Dayton.
She was technically correct, but misleading. She should have
said she accepted the funding, but used it for other state projects.

Some of the national news media did what they’re
supposed to do, check into the veracity of public
utterances issued by politicians and refute them
when they’re wrong.

That’s what happened to Palin. If she had told the
complete truth the day she was anointed,her dissembling
would not have come back to haunt her as it has, even
though her statement was partly truthful.

As a result, her credibility, one of her most prized
attributes,has been somewhat compromised, perhaps
irreverisbly.
Inevitably, the McCain campaign's political foes will
use this lapse against her at every opportunity during
the balance of the campaign.

The landmines in Governor Palin's path

With his canny decision to name Alaska Governor Sarah
Palin as his vice presidential running mate, U.S.
Senator John McCain has moved his chances of winning
the presidential election from dead in the water to
Olympian heights.

Critics from the left – Both Democrats and Republicans –
are condemning his choice as political. Well guess what?
This is politics. What do they think motivated U.S.
Senator Barrack Obama to choose U. S. Senator Joe Biden
as his running mate instead of Senator Hillary Clinton?
Good will and altruism?

While choosing Governor Palin does not by any means
guarantee Senator McCain’s team will win the presidential
election, it certainly improves his prospects. At this
point, anyone who thinks they know what the outcome will
be is fantasyzing. It depends entirely on how Goveror
Palin performs on the campaign trail over the next two
months.

If her remarkable, but largely unknown history - which is
rapidly being revealed,like peeling back layers of an
onion - is any indication, the prospect is promising.

While Palin has many qualities and characteristics in her favor,
there are a few ticking land mines in her path which
she and the McCain campaign failed to address at the outset,
leaving them to be sniffed out by her political critics,
thus making it appear she’s trying to hide something.

Landmine No. 1.

Governor Palin should have revealed and explained
at her very first public appearance as a candidate,
in detail, the circumstances surrounding the $100,000
investigation underway by her political foes in the Alaska
legislature.

It's designed to probe what role, if any, she played in the
firing of the former Anchorage police chief she had appointed
as the commissioner of public safety in her administration who,
among other things, is the head of the Alaska State Troopers.
She is vulnerable but not culpable in this scenario.

It stems from the fact that her sister was married to
and has divorced a state trooper with a checkered criminal
record, once suspended but never terminated from duty.
His record includes illegally shooting a moose without a permit,
virtually a capital crime in Alaska, driving a trooper vehicle
while drinking beer and probably drunk, tasering an 11-year-old boy
just for the hell of it, and threatening to shoot and kill Palin’s
father with a unsheathed pistol in his lap.

The pretext behind the legislative investigation is that Palin
and members of her staff and family used her office to try to
pressure her appointee, the commissioner of public safety, to
fire the trooper. He refused to do so, and later, based on what
her critics say was a pretext, Palin fired him, explaining only
that she “wanted to move (the department) in a different direction.”
Her critics say it was because he refused to fire the errant trooper.

What’s lost in the controversy is that the trooper clearly
deserved to be fired for his past record and actions. But in
handling the matter poorly and failing to give more plausible
and specific reasons for firing the commissioner, Palin left her
natural foes in the legislature – some of them still resentful
of the sweeping legislative reforms she pushed through last
year - found this way to get back at her.

While Palin and her husband Todd acknowledge they had
discussed the matter with the commissioner separately on
more than one occasion, she denies they ever asked him
to fire the trooper, though that was clearly their wish.

However, a ranking staff member has admitted he tried
to pressure the commissioner to fire the trooper. When
Pain learned of it she suspended him pending the outcome
of the invesztigation, which Palin said she welcomes.

To add fuel to the controversy, the fired commissioner
himself has publicly stated he believes the reason Palin
fired him was because he refused to fire the trooper,
which Sarah steadfastly denies.

Nevertheless, the legislative investigation, results
of which are due out the end of October, while vindictive,
politically-motivated and much ado nothing, will have
to be allowed to run its course, leaving a shadow
of a shadow over Palin's head until it’s resolved in her
favor.

So much for Landmine No. 1. I’ll continue this
post later to discuss a couple other landmines in
Governor Palin's path..