The Choate-Weinberg Report

It Wasn't The Cop Who Acted "Stupidly"

Let’s talk about teachable moments.

A few years ago, I lamented the possibility that we could elect Doogie Howser President.

Not because of his ideology, not because of his race but because of his age and complete lack of the requisite experience we expect from the elected leader of the most powerful nation in the world.

Well, it has happened and my concerns have proven valid.

Obama’s ideology has not been helpful.  America—no matter what the hard left says for public consumption—mostly regards itself as a right of center nation.  So, when you have a President and a Congress which leans heavily towards a left of center agenda, the cracks in the coalition which elected them will come to the surface pretty quickly.

We lived with both Bill Clinton on the left and Ronald Reagan on the right because they understood the Clint Eastwood doctrine: “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Obama has the absolute arrogance of youth and worse, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

And his own worst enemies are a Democratic leadership who know what they don’t know but also don’t care.

All of that is painfully obvious in the case of the President, the Professor and the Cambridge, MA Police Sergeant.

The Professor is Henry Louis Gates.  Gates happens to be a friend of the President, a scholar of sorts at Harvard if you think that African-American studies is a legitimate academic field and a man who is willing to yell “racist” at the top of his lungs at the slightest provocation.

The provocation came when the Professor came back from an overseas trip without the key to his house and enlisted his limo driver in an attempt to break into his own house.  A neighbor saw that two men were trying to jimmy the door and called the police.

Enter Sergeant James Crowley—by all descriptions one of America’s finest police officers—who caught the call.  Crowley came to the house, asked the professor for some ID and got the kind of lip you would expect from a street urchin in South Central LA.

At some point, he arrested the Professor for disorderly conduct.  A charge which was dropped the next day, well after the situation was defused.

The President, who held a prime-time news conference last Wednesday, was asked about the incident.  Here is his partial reply:

“Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.  That’s just a fact.”

First of all, they did NOT act “stupidly”.  Professor Gates did.

Secondly, Doogie Howser couldn’t resist shooting off his mouth and caused a situation which then caused him to have to come back to the daily press briefing and walk the situation back because America will not stand for its president—however immature—badmouthing a hard working cop.

Third, it is not inappropriate to point out to both Obama and Professor Gates that this incident happened to a black Harvard Professor who lives in a town with a black, female mayor in a state with a black governor in a nation with a black President.  Under those circumstances, the politics of race should be over.  Gates himself is essentially no longer relevant.  I don’t want to hear Gates’ pathetic yammering.

And I certainly hope that Obama will learn to stop shooting off his mouth before he does something more than insult someone.

How’s that for a “teachable moment”?

FRED WEINBERG

Cronkite Set Standard For Generations

When I was a kid, making up my mind what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, the most trusted man in America was Walter Cronkite.

At a pretty early age (about 44 years ago) I knew that I wanted to be in the business of telling folks what was happening in our world and, like everybody else who entered the business of journalism back then, I wanted to live up to the standards that Walter Cronkite set for all of us.

I have had the privilege of working at every level of the broadcast news business, of owning media outlets and doing virtually every job in the journalism business and during my entire career, Cronkite’s standards are those which I (and most of those in my generation) have aspired to.

I am now well aware that he was a liberal. But he never let us know that until he stopped being a reporter.  His newscasts ran right down the center.

When he was the Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News, he set a standard for pure journalism which may never again be equaled in broadcast news.

It is true that he came out against the war in Viet Nam during the late stages of the Johnson administration.

But it wasn’t a matter of ideology for him.  It came from boots on the ground coverage.

He had been to Hue to cover the Tet Offensive and drew his conclusions from actually being there.  Even then, he was uncomfortable in having a public opinion, but then CBS News President Richard Salant urged him to deliver the editorial.

Despite the Viet Nam commentary, nobody really knew of his political leanings until he retired—or more accurately was pushed from the anchor chair.

It is appropriate that he died on the 40th anniversary of the day he covered the launch of Apollo 11.

I’ll never forget seeing him choke up on the air after Neil Armstrong landed the Eagle on the moon.

I’ll never forget, as an 11-year-old, seeing him announcing the death of President Kennedy.

I’ll never forget seeing his coverage of Watergate.

And, I’ll never forget seeing him with Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) on the Mary Tyler Moore show—showing those of us on our way up the ladder that there was nothing wrong with a sense of humor. (“You can call me Walter.”)

The Walter Cronkite which today’s young commentators made fun of as a liberal could out-report them until the day he died—and maybe tomorrow.  That’s because many of those kids weren’t even born when Cronkite signed off for his last time as the Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News.

It was kind of like seeing Barack Obama meeting the Apollo 11 astronauts.  He was seven years old when we landed on the moon.

There is something to be said for grey hair and experience.

For a number of reasons related to technology, demographics and economics, network news will never regain the prominence it had during Cronkite’s day. Prominence which Cronkite, himself, was largely responsible for giving it.

But that doesn’t make integrity and fairness in reporting any less important.

Liberals, Conservatives, Republicans and Democrats alike should appreciate what guys like Cronkite, Collingwood, Karault, Severeid and Edwards brought to the table.

In a world of multiple 24-hour news networks, of minute by minute internet coverage, of instant coverage virtually anywhere in the world anytime, there is something to be said for a warm, trusted figure to take a half hour every night and explain what happened that day to the public.

One of the people interviewed in the CBS special tribute to Cronkite suggested that maybe we just got lucky that when we did trust one man to do that, we drew Cronkite and he was up to the task.  That person posited that maybe having one man with all that trust wasn’t such a good thing in the long term.

I have a different theory.

I think that one man had to set a standard that may only be honored in the breach and that man was Cronkite.

Living up to that standard in the future will be difficult.

But if you think journalism is bad today, imagine where we might be if Cronkite and his team of pioneers had NOT set that standard.

FRED WEINBERG

If Pigs Could Fly They'd Fly Over Nevada

Last Monday, I had an opportunity to talk with one of our advertisers on KWNA in Winnemucca, NV.

He is the fixed base operator at the Winnemucca Municipal Airport.

A few months ago, he came up with an idea to get people interested in learning to fly.  He invited them out to the airport on Fridays for a free Bar-B-Q, figuring that free food would get them into his world and it would be up to him to sell the idea that learning to fly isn’t that much more difficult than learning to drive. It was also a great way to get to meet people.

He got the local 4H chapter to serve the food and everybody was having a good time when a representative from the Nevada State Department of Health showed up and told him to cease and desist or he would be fined and the state could break him.  No kidding.

Being a law abiding type, he didn’t do what I would have done under the circumstances which is to say to the State, “you and what army?”

Instead, he cancelled the Bar-B-Q.

Now, I want you to picture how much money comes to the state, county and city when someone learns to fly and uses the airport in Winnemucca.

According to a 2005 report commissioned by state government, The total direct output to the local economy from the airport is $1,201,459 20 while the employment output adds another $417,466 which is over $1.6-million dollars a year and that was back in 2005.

That’s a chunk of change in a town the size of Winnemucca.

So that begs the question, why is the state health department interested in stopping free Bar-B-Qs?

A question we put to the Health Department’s Ben Kieckhefer.  And we can’t wait to hear the official answer.

Let’s not kid each other.

This is a case of a state health inspector with way too much time on her hands.

Sure, it’s possible that a food handling error could endanger the eating public.

It’s also possible that winged pigs could fly—if you rammed a jet engine up their butts.

I would observe that this is the same state government which its legislature found it necessary to fund by raising taxes a Billion dollars. That's because the current economic climate made its tax collections lower and, heaven forfend, we should cut “vital services”—like this.

Perhaps the employee assigned to Winnemucca needs to be reassigned somewhere else.  And the position needs to be left unfilled.

Because if this is the best this state department can do, I have a hard time thinking it is a good use for tax dollars when we have to cut teachers.  Or even dog catchers.

I’m sure that the officials from the health department are going to tell us how important it was to stop this rampant criminal Bar-B-Quing.  That the continuance of this sort of thing is a severe threat to the public’s health.

Well, I would answer them this way:

In the immortal words of Judge Judy, “don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining outside.”

FRED WEINBERG

Associated Press No Longer In Journalism Biz

A few years ago we bought KWNA-AM and FM in Winnemucca, Nevada.

They were and are two great radio stations in a great city where folks don’t have to worry about many of the idiotic things which their counterparts in more urban areas do.  Most of the folks who live in Winnemucca, America have a clear-eyed view of reality and don’t expect anything from their neighbors except civility.

When we bought the station, we refused to assume the contract with the Associated Press.

Many people asked why.

In the July 6th Las Vegas Review Journal (and other newspapers around the nation) I found my definitive answer in a story about rainwater harvesting in Tucson, AZ.

Now let me say at the outset that harvesting rainwater for things like irrigation—especially in the desert—makes a lot of sense.  And making commercial developers build such systems into their desert developments is probably NOT an unnecessary governmental intrusion.

I didn’t have any problem with that part of the story.

Here is the part which will add to the many reasons I will never again trust the AP as a news source:

Water supplies from the Colorado River are likely to diminish from effects of global warming and increasing demands from other states in the West. And groundwater is carefully managed to prevent overpumping the water that supplies the 1 million people who live in growing metropolitan Tucson.  That makes conservation and rainwater harvesting all the more important.

Yep.

There it was, stated as fact.  Water supplies from the Colorado River are likely to diminish from the effects of global warming.

The story was written by an Arthur Rotstein who, if my guess is correct, is a general assignment reporter at the AP.  General Assignment reporters have no credentials, scientific or otherwise, in climatology.  But many who work for the AP tend to have left of center political leanings.

When I was growing up in this business, wire services distributed THE NEWS.

THE NEWS did not include fanciful concepts such as global warming in NEWS STORIES.

This is the same AP which in 2002 called Muslim terrorists “devout” while it called Jewish victims “radical”.  The same AP which refused to call terrorists terrorists.

But it is perfectly content to allow a general assignment reporter to make the blanket statement in a story that water supplies from the Colorado River are likely to shrink because of global warming.

(As an aside, I’d like Mr. Rotstein to explain what it was that causes the corner of Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevard  to have about 15,000 hotel rooms as opposed to the glacier which was formerly there.)

The folks at the AP were fairly insulted that I didn’t think it was worth $10,000 a year of my company’s money to pay for crap like this.

It used to be that when the end of the world was announced it came with five bells from a Model 19 teletype machine run by AP or UPI.  You couldn’t miss it and you got it on the air immediately without question. 

Today, not so much.

It used to be that we could depend on a wire service to make sure we got the news of the day from a clear-eyed, unbiased point of view.

Those days died after 9-11 when the AP became clearly left-wing in its ideological bent and thus became of little or no use to media outlets like mine.

My guess is that companies like News Corp and others with a vested interest and resources to do so will fill the gap that the AP will leave.

But it didn’t have to be that way.

Had the executives of the AP merely stuck to their job, they might not be complaining how hard it is to stay in business in the age of the internet.

                              FRED WEINBERG

A Secret County Union Contract?

By FRED WEINBERG
Editor and Publisher

One of the bedrock rules of suckling at the public teat is that at least the terms and conditions of transactions using tax dollars are absolutely public.

That, perhaps, is why nobody usually needs to get a copy of a county’s contract with an employee’s union.  Everybody knows it will be available should they need to see it.

Last Sunday, the Las Vegas Review Journal exposed a glaring exception near the bottom of a 2,000 word story on the Clark County Fire Department contract with its union, the International Association of Fire Fighters.

When the contract was signed in 2007 (it expires in 2010) the following clause was added:

“The Union and County agree that the only way the public shall obtain a copy of this collective bargaining agreement is a request in writing to the Union or the County.”

In addition the county was forbidden from placing the 197 page document “in whole ir in part” on a web site.

And these morons on the County Commission, Susan Brager, Tom Collins, Yvonne Gates, Chris Giunchigliani, Rory Reid and Bruce Woodbury voted for it.  Gates and Woodbury are gone, Reid has visions of becoming Governor and the rest of them ought to know better or they will eventually join four of their 1999 colleagues in the crossbar Hilton.
What could these people be thinking?

We are indebted to the Review Journal which came across this ridicules and probably illegal clause when it was researching a story on (among other things) how it is that a firefighter with base pay of $79,000 a year could retire on $84,000 a year.

They immediately obtained a copy of the contract and published on their web site.  We have copied that copy and placed it here: Clark County Firefighter’s Contract.

We’ve always been big believers in sunshine being the best disinfectant. 

While we certainly do not begrudge firefighters reasonable pay and benefits for the very difficult job they do, we also doubt that if the public were to vote on the question “Do you believe that firefighters ought to make over $100,000” that the answer yes would be the winner.
Which, we suspect, was the object of the union’s crude and ultimately ineffective attempt to keep the actual contract away from the prying eyes of the people who actually pay the bill.

The point of the RJ story was that in Clark County, it seems that the system is being gamed to give certain firefighters near retirement a sendoff kiss.  Ironically, that does not seem to be the case in Henderson or North Las Vegas.

But then, Clark County has always been special when it comes to gaming any system.  Just watch the mostly true movie, Casino, if you don’t believe it.  Or go to our website, www.lasvegascrooks.com and listen to the wiretap recordings of the 1999 County Commissioner’s prison class which we enshrined there for future generations.

This is precisely the sort of thing which makes people want to live anywhere but in unincorporated Clark County.

Keep in mind that this contract cost the good citizens of Clark County an additional five+ million dollars a year.

What were they trying to hide?
And from who?

This is something we all need to remember  when the spawn of Harry Reid wants to become our governor.