Chaos continues at Radio One

The only national black talk network has been having a lot of trouble. Of course, I point to the day they pulled my show off the air as the beginning of the end.

1) According to the Washington Post: Radio One's stock lost 17 percent of its value this week, closing yesterday at $1.06. Since last year, when the company's stock traded at a [sic: high] of $7.59, its value has declined 85 percent.

2) The son of the founder of the company has just received a generous pay raise and compensation package. According to the Washington Post: Liggins would receive $980,000 in salary, a 70 percent increase over the $575,370 he made in 2007, and have the opportunity to match that in an annual bonus, contingent in part on the company meeting certain performance goals. He would be paid a $1 million "signing bonus" because, the Radio One compensation committee said, he has been underpaid for the last three years. Liggins also would be paid $4.8 million to compensate him for losses he incurred when he was forced to repay a company loan to buy Radio One stock several years ago.

3) The ReidBlog reports that Lee Michaels, former national program director of Syndication One and XM 169 The Power, has just gotten fired. Michaels is the one who pulled my radio show off the air after we had a dispute over my show on urban legends. Reid also tells the following story: Apparently, the company finally managed to sell its L.A. station, (then called KKBT - 100.3 The Beat, now called V100, and the station that used to employ Steve Harvey, before the Radio One folks kicked him to the curb, allegedly over remarks he made about Cathy Hughes as she sat in the audience for the BET Comedy Awards, which he was hosting. The station, which with Harvey had the number one show in the market, promptly went in the tank after that, and in 2005, Harvey jumped to Clear Channel. The rest, as they say, is history...

CJL

AIDS and the government

Rev. Jeremiah Wright has attracted a lot of attention with his theories about the federal government creating AIDS in a laboratory. Here's an excerpt excerpt from Talk Radio Can't Handle the Truth By Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eliot Morgan

Sunday, August 5, 2007; Page B03

Often, just one word can silence those who doubt the conspiracy theory of the day: COINTELPRO, the FBI's notorious anticommunist program that was used against groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Council and the Ku Klux Klan. From the Scottsboro Boys to the Tuskegee syphilis study, our government has displayed a willingness to conspire against its citizens.

Likewise, truth-squadding becomes difficult when such theories are linked to hard data: Black Americans constitute about 12 percent of the U.S. population but about half of the nation's AIDS cases. That sets up the conditions in which, according to researchers Sheryl Thorburn Bird and Laura M. Bogart, more than 20 percent of black Americans think that HIV was created to restrict the black population.

A 1990 survey by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference found that one-third of black American churchgoers believed that AIDS was a form of genocide. One-third also believed that HIV was produced in a germ-warfare lab, and 40 percent of black college students in Washington, D.C., agreed. An even higher percentage of blacks polled said they thought that crack cocaine was custom-made to be planted in African American communities to keep them crime-ridden and poor and that the government deliberately targeted black elected officials to drive them from office.

These beliefs keep some black Americans from having their children vaccinated, from receiving AIDS tests and early medical treatment, and from practicing safe sex or using clean needles, as Patricia A. Turner and Gary Alan Fine note in their book, "Whispers on the Color Line." They also make seeking the truth an uphill battle.

Quote Of The Day

Perhaps next year the Iraqis will get their act together and settle their internal differences. Perhaps next year Congress will balance the federal budget. Such developments are always possible. They are also highly unlikely.

Andrew J. Bacevich

Debate, at 20 paces

Hillary Clinton has challenged Barack Obama to a non-moderator debate, a la Lincoln-Douglass. Obama should go back even farther in history and challenge her to a duel.

CJL

Firearm Weirdness

We are constantly bombarded with propaganda that states that "assault weapons" have no other purpose in life besides killing as many people as quickly as possible.  So I have to wonder what exactly New York City is thinking when it's giving them to police officers who will patrolling in a very closed environment.  Setting aside the whole ignorance
displayed by describing something as a carbine rifle (a carbine being, by definition, a short rifle) it makes me wonder just what masses of people the NYPD is planning to quickly kill...and whether they've given any thought to possible injuries and death to innocent bystanders.

Nah.  The NYPD doesn't have to worry about liability for killing innocents.

Quote Of The Day

There's a lesson here for opponents of any law. The more people they can convince to join them in disobedience of the law, the more difficult it becomes to enforce the law. Eventually, the disagreeable regulation becomes nothing more than an annoying technicality to be ignored by opponents and enforcers alike.

J.D. Tuccille

Happy Arbor Day!

I've got a piece on the National Center for Public Policy Research blog talking about Arbor Day.

Frugalistismo

A big wave to Wendy McElroy and her Frugalista movement!  Cutting back on what you owe cuts back on the ties that the State can have to you!

Quote Of The Day

But there seems to be a popular delusion that transforming society is simply a matter of wanting hard enough and cleverly crafting legislation that everybody must follow as if it were a law of nature. As Jacobs puts it in the gun control context, "To a large extent, gun control is something that people believe in. It is embraced in principle without attention to practicalities, implementation and enforcement problems, and cost." Inevitably, the gun controllers, like all totalitarian "reformers," are disappointed when their neighbors prove resistant to social engineering.

J.D. Tuccille

Democrats For Democracy?

Quoth the New York Times:  "It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box."

In other words, skaaaaREW democracy and the will of the people.  Fire up those smoke filled rooms, boys, the Good Times Are Back!

How very...conservative...of them.

Self Fulfilling Prophecy Meets Market Realities

It is normal human nature, I believe, to want to get caught up in bubbles and panics.  The thought of getting something for nothing or losing something for nothing is strong within the human psyche, and so it is no surprise that with spiraling inflation there are people buying into the current food panic.  Bubbles and panics tend to go right past the (allegedly) thoughtful forebrain and hit right back into the lizard brain that we all still have.  And if you're a person who's not particularly keen on understanding and controlling the lizard brain...bingo, you're in a bubble or a panic.

This is not to say that costs aren't up and shortages aren't real.  Costs are traceable to both inflation and to the idiot food-into-fuel* panic that is currently in vogue.

So this will be another one of those interesting things to watch as it unfolds.  Will the stampeding herd pull back in time?  Will they overrun the pasture and wipe out the whole food chain?  Stay tuned...and maybe pick up some tulips for a light snack in the meantime.


*I know - the link is to Australia, but it's current and well-written and doesn't lose anything in the translation to American.