Looting of America Continues: Major Newspaper Chain Bankrupt while Execs Collect Millions

The executives who mismanaged one of America’s largest newspaper chains; MediaGroup, and drove it into bankruptcy are walking off with multimillion dollar paychecks.

MediaNews is a holding company that owns 54 daily newspapers and 100 weekly papers. Its most famous publication is its flagship paper The Denver Post. Other prominent MediaNews papers include The San Jose Mercury News and The Los Angeles Daily News.

MediaNews was put together by advertising salesman turned press baron Dean Singleton. Singleton made his money by buying smaller papers and jacking up advertising rates. MediaNews has been bleeding red and wasting money for years.

Singleton’s brilliant strategies at The Denver Post included paying winos to stand on street corners and hound Denver residents into buying The Post in a fraudulent bid to increase “circulation.” He also jacked up advertising rates and drove advertisers away. Meanwhile readers noticed a decline in the quality of writing and journalism. Even though The Post was loosing money, Singleton borrowed heavily to build a fancy new skyscraper as his corporate headquarters in Downtown Denver.

According to Denver’s independent free daily The Denver Daily News Singleton could get up to $1.49 million for his work at MediaNews. Singleton brings home a salary of $994,000 and could collect a $500,000 bonus. Singleton will also get a lot of worthless MediaNews stock as compensation so there is at least some justice.

In the last year journalists and production workers at MediaNews papers have faced layoffs and unpaid furloughs. While journalists and printers are filling out job applications at Kinkos and Wal-Mart, The Denver Daily News reports that MediaNews President Jody Lodovic could collect up to $2.25 million in compensation. Lodovic gets a base salary of a little over $1 million and could collect up to $1.25 million in bonuses.

Like many of America’s rich incompetents Singleton and Lodovic are able to protect themselves through a prepackaged bankruptcy. This legal device could enable MediaNews to pay its creditors many of which are mom and pop businesses that are struggling to survive 19 cents on the dollar. When MediaNews goes down Singleton will still have his fortune, many small business owners will loose everything.

The MediaNews debacle is a perfect example of the looting of America by parasites masquerading as businessmen. Instead of modernizing newspapers, adopting innovative new business plans and improving journalism, Singleton and company artificially inflated circulation figures and used that as an excuse to raise advertising rates. The advertisers went away and the newspapers floundered.

Not surprisingly the sorry facts about MediaNews did not appear on the front page of The Denver Post. Fortunately, Denver residents have a real newspaper which did expose Singleton’s bungling and his shoddy attempt at a cover up.

The Denver Daily News a free newspaper put the news about the bankruptcy on its front page. Unlike The Denver Post the Daily News is an independently owned paper created by local entrepreneurs who took advantage of new printing and computer technologies. Even as the dinosaur Denver Post falls prey to the professional scavengers, The Denver Daily News is thriving and sticking it to Dean Singleton in his own backyard.

Sometimes neophytes make the best writers because they refuse to follow the rules and actually put what they think down on paper. That is certainly the case with James Hansen’s Storms of My Grandchildren.

Since James Hansen is a NASA scientist best known for climate research that supports the Global Warming hypothesis, I expected a book about Climate Change. Instead I found an expose written by a very angry man who feels disappointed by the institutions he’s loyally worked for all of his life.

Hansen’s anger is well placed especially his anger at the politicization of science in the United States. He accuses both the Clinton and Bush II administrations of trying to suppress scientific research and data they didn’t like. Worse he describes a growing tendency to manipulate releases of scientific information and scientific research for purely political reasons.

The frustration Hansen directs at the nation’s so called leaders is legitimate. Among the damning charges he makes: the Clinton Administration terminated a program to test a clean breeder nuclear reactor that could have led to fourth generation nuclear power. This fourth generation nuclear reactor could have powered cities without generating nuclear waste or greenhouse gases or depleting fossil fuel resources. Decades of research paid for with untold billions of tax dollars were quietly shelved away because the conclusions of the research threatened Clinton’s leftwing supporters’ world view and coal industry profits.

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations attempted to restrict the flow of information from scientists to the public and the press. The George W. Bush administration; in a policy eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s propaganda efforts, placed political hacks in charge of public information offices at NASA and other agencies to keep data that disproved its party line from reaching the public. At the same time the budget for scientific research was cut significantly to punish scientists who didn’t follow the party line.

In this book Hansen comes across as a very angry man, a loyal government employee and dedicated scientist who realizes that the institution he has so faithfully served has betrayed him. One is reminded of the writings of Soviet dissidents of the 1970s, people who realized that the system they believed would create utopia was really designed to empower an increasingly arrogant and corrupt elite at the common man’s expense. Hansen has discovered at age 68 that the government he thought existed to serve him really serves those with the deepest pockets and he’s angry about it.

I’m not qualified to say whether or not Storms of My Grandchildren is good science or not but it’s certainly a very effective expose of a failed ideology: American Progressivism. Progressivism is the delusion that government always has the people’s best interests in mind and that big government can solve any problem.

Hansen is certainly a Progressive and a very angry one. He’s frustrated that government isn’t solving the problem of air pollution and angry that politically motivated decisions encourage fossil fuel use. Yet like most angry Progressives he doesn’t see government itself as the problem.

He blames the problems in Washington on “money in politics” and wants money out of politics. How he would achieve these goals, Hansen doesn’t say. He just demands that government do these things for him. In this he sounds like the Party members in the Eastern Bloc who demanded that Communism transform itself into Swedish social democracy.

As with many frustrated liberals Hansen has turned to the political dead end known as civil disobedience. Instead of working constructively’ say with private industry to develop non polluting power sources Hansen now goes around chaining himself to coal trucks.

The anger and frustration in this book surprised me. I wonder if it is a harbinger of growing frustration and discontent from America’s educated classes. When people like James Hansen get radicalized you know that we are on the verge of social political and cultural upheaval.

The New Tribalism

One of the biggest developments in today’s world is the rise of the new tribalism.

The tribe is the most basic form of human organization it is a band of people who come together to stay alive in the face of difficult conditions. A tribe is not just a band of primitive hunter gatherers it can be a group of people fighting to stay alive and keep themselves fed in our modern world.

The New Tribes as described by John Robb are groups that will arise to replace traditional organizations and loyalties. People will form these tribes because they need to keep themselves fed, housed, entertained, educated, motivated and protected in an ever changing world.

Around the world we see historic organizations and institutions such as the nation state, some traditional religious institutions (such as the Main Line Protestant churches in the United States), labor unions, neighborhoods, corporations, small towns, schools and families failing to meet people’s needs. We also see some institutions, such as the American educational system, doing a poor job of meeting people’s needs.

The New Tribalism is strongest in failed nation states (such as Somalia and Iraq) and regions of nation states where traditional society has broken down (American sums and French housing projects). In many cases New Tribes will assume the functions that government and traditional institutions fail to provide. For example gangs and militias have taken the place of the police in Brazilian slums. Traditional Islamic schools provide education to poor Pakistanis because government schools don’t exist. Street gangs and organized crime take the place of the regular economy in some American and Latin American slums.

Now New Tribalism isn’t necessarily a bad thing yes street gangs are tribes by Mr. Robb’s definition but so is the Salvation Army. In many American cities the Salvation Army provides social services to the poorest people that government can’t or won’t. For example it actually provides hungry people with food while government provides confusing forms to fill out.

So what are some examples of the New Tribes and how do we deal with them? Well I’ll attempt to provide a short definition here. Here are a few rough thoughts on the subject that certainly need to be fleshed out:

• Technological Tribes are groups of people who come together because they share a mutual interest in some technology. They use their knowledge and skill in the manipulation of that technology to survive and prosper. Computer hackers are a perfect example of a Technological Tribe. Long term Technological Tribes could become formal organizations similar to Medieval Guilds which will dominate the economy through technological prowess.
• Warrior Tribes are groups of people that come together to fight some enemy real or imagined. Terrorist groups and street gangs are warrior tribes. So are British soccer hooligans. (See the movie Green Street Hooligans for an excellent look at the appeal of this behavior to young men). Warrior tribes have a strong appeal to young men because they provide discipline, purpose, leadership, excitement and adventure. Military forces and Marxist guerrilla groups could degenerate into Warrior Tribes. In the long run Warrior Tribes could become mercenary organizations. Selling their product namely violence to the highest bidder.

• Economic Tribes are individuals that come together to protect their economic interests. For example a group of merchants that wants to drive out competitors or workers seeking a better salary. Expect to see many such groups of people trying to get a better deal in the new world economy. Organized crime groups like drug cartels are a perfect example of an economic tribe.

• Religious Tribes come together around their faith which defines their life. Orthodox Jews, the Amish and Mormons would be perfect examples of religious tribes. Such groups will be very attractive in some parts of the world in the years ahead. Often because they will be eating and enjoying something like a normal family life while those around them aren’t. Many of these groups will have to take up arms to defend themselves from jealous neighbors in the near future.

• Ideological Tribes are similar to Religious Tribes except they come together around a strongly held belief. They believe they are right and everybody else is wrong. This gives them a motivation to survive and fight. Marxist guerrillas, Animal Rights Activists, Radical Environmentalists, and American White Supremacists are examples of Ideological Tribes. Ideological Tribes often evolve into Warrior Tribes which evolve into Economic Tribes.

• Residual Tribes are the remnants of older institutions that have the discipline, organization, skill and wherewithal to survive in the new order. In many cases their members just want to protect what they have and have the guns or skills to do so. A good example of this would be the KGB which has prospered in Post Communist Russia. Another example would be the Pakistani Army, which is still a potent and powerful force in Pakistan sixty years after the British Empire that created it collapsed. Expect to see many military and law enforcement organizations all over the world survive as residual tribes protecting their own interests and preserving their status as society collapses.

These are just some rough thoughts here but I have a feeling we’ll a strong body of scholarship about the New Tribes as they become a feature in our lives.