To say I was shocked this morning to hear the news reports detailing the allegations against Associate Head Basketball Coach Bernie Fine would be one of the greatest understatements of all time. Within moments of hearing the news headline on television I went from a profound sense of dread, to disbelief, to anger.
Unlike the news at Penn State about Jerry Sandusky, this was not an abstract to me. Bernie Fine was somebody with whom I was well acquainted. Not only had I watched him coach on the sidelines for the past 35 years, but I attended his basketball camp for two years in my teens, his wife used to cut my hair (yes I used to have hair), I remember when he got married and what joy he had when his kids were born.
I am not one who came out and defended Fine instinctively and furthermore trashed the accusers as did Jim Boeheim. This isn't because I necessarily believe the allegations, or the denials, but simply because I know through experience that such things are possible. I have never heard someone stand up and state after some pillar of the community is revealed as a horrific, evil, child raping bastard "I have known this man for 40 years and have called him my friend, and I am not at all surprised by these allegations, but in fact always kind of suspected that he was raping children in his basement, I just never had proof." Molesters don't wear signs, they don't act in the open and they don't wear trenchcoats and have straggly beards. More often than not, they are the last person you would expect -- the minister, the Rotarian, the seemingly most moral person in the community.
That being said, I don't know if Bernie Fine did the things that he is accused of doing. I hope, for him, the Syracuse University community that I love, and his family that they are not true. And if they are not true, I hope that justice is somehow served to the accusers. But I am also not willing to state that they could not have happened, because experience has shown me that all too often these seemingly unbelievable allegations are in fact true.
However, what this story does appear to show is that once again the privilege of big time college athletics seems to have skirted around the legal process. Whatever your feelings about Bernie Fine and his accusers, there is no doubt that the several previous investigations of these allegations have at best been botched and at worst have been a cover-up of immense magnitude.
Everything that occurred previously in regard to the allegations of child molestation against Bernie Fine that broke last night on ESPN, whether it be from the Syracuse Police Department, the news media, or Syracuse University could have been completely above board. They could have been honest, hard hitting, exhaustive, unbiased investigations. But the obvious potential biases and the failure to take the necessary precautions and next steps that would have insured an unquestioned investigation and would have indeed helped Bernie Fine were either not identified or were simply ignored.
First, the allegations were apparently reported to the Syracuse Police Department in 2003. Depending on what news report you believe, the department investigated the allegations and found them to be baseless or they simply looked at the complainant and said "Sorry, statute of limitations has run, nothing we can do," and closed the books on the report.
In any case, the actions of the Syracuse Police Department in 2003 because of the individuals and the program involved created the appearance of impropriety and they failed to take the proper actions to address this. At the time of the initial report, the Chief of Police for the SPD was Dennis DuVal. From everything I have ever heard about DuVal, he is a very good human being and was a good police chief. However, he was also a standout forward in the 1970s for the Syracuse University men's basketball program. When an allegation is made against one of the biggest names in that program, the department out of an abundance of caution should have turned that investigation over to someone else. This would have insured an investigation that would have been conclusively and unquestionably credible to any critic. What we are left with is an investigation that raises obvious questions of impropriety and conflicts whether true or not.
Next, the accuser reported the allegations in 2005 to Syracuse University. The university has stated ad nauseum over the past 24 hours that it conducted a four month investigation conducted by the university's law firm which found no credible basis for the accusations. No action was taken by the university.
I have seen first hand the type of cover-up that Syracuse University can conduct under the guise of carrying out a thorough investigation of rape allegations. If these allgations concern someone connected with the athletic program, this cover-up machine goes into overdrive.
I have said this before and I will say it again. Universities are not the proper parties to conduct investigations of felonies. Why they continue to do so simply boggles my mind. I repeated this over and over and over and over again to Syracuse University officials when I was a student there 20 years ago. In 1989 when I arrived on the SU campus as a student, students were told that if they were raped or sexually assaulted to contact campus security, not the police. Rape and other serious felony criminal investigations were handled (and by all indications still are) by a student judicial board made up of minimally trained undergraduates, often either never being reported to law enforcement and sometimes even derailing ongoing law enforcement investigations. There is simply no reason to believe the results of the investigation conducted by the university.
Last, the Onondaga County District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick stated today that at no time during any of these investigations was he or anyone else from the DA's office made aware of the allegations, so they took no part of investigating the allegations. The allegations should have been forwarded to the DA by the Syracuse Police Department in 2003 and should have definitely been forwarded to the District Attorney's office by SU in 2005. As much as the police or private attorneys think they know about felony investigations, the DA is the best judge of whether a case should be brought or not and not reporting these allegations to him, even to simply let him look at it and decide there is no action to be brought, is simply inexcusable.
By failing to take proper actions, the SPD and Syracuse University have done a great disservice to all of those involved in these allegations, and possibly most of all to Bernie Fine. Because of the apparent conflicts of interest and the internal nature of all of these investigations, the prior investigations lack credibility and now have led to an embarassing re-opening of the investigations both by the SPD and the DA. The institutions involved in the prior botched investigations give the appearance of incompetence and of a cover-up whether any such cover-up existed in reality.
In any event, whatever comes of these investigations, the prior actions, or inactions on the part of the university and law enforcement have created a mess which will inevitably leave the university, the basketball program and Bernie Fine with a black eye, which will take a long time to heal, if it ever does.
One last note for the legislators in Albany. YOUR LAWS ARE OUTDATED AND NEED TO BE REFORMED. The simple fact that there is a statute of limitations on these types of crimes in ridiculous. The fact that they are so short (if you are raped under the age of 18 and you don't report it by the time you are 23, you are shit out of luck) is criminal. I don't always think that North Carolina's laws are the best, but the fact that we have no statute of limitations for any felonies is one for which we can hold our heads high. New York needs to immediately and radically change their statutes of limitations as they related to sex offenses and especially child sex offenses. In failing to act on this, the legislature is protecting sick evil criminals and aiding and abetting child rapists.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
The Third Servant
24 Then the one who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Sir, I knew that you were a hard man, harvesting where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered, ‘Evil and lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I didn’t sow and gather where I didn’t scatter? 27 Then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received my money back with interest! 28 Therefore take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten. 29 For the one who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough. But the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 30 And throw that worthless slave into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’” Matthew 25:24-30
This one is going to be quite a departure for me. I am certainly not a person who is overt in religion, nor do I speak of religion very often. I was raised in a very liberal Catholic parish with a very liberal Catholic family. I attended Catholic school for twelve years and studied the religion each and every one of those years. You could say that my religious background and training was probably at least as rigorous, if not more so, than most.
Yet, perhaps in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, I find myself drifting in my faith. Many of my problems stem from profound and fundamental differences with the teachings of the Catholic Church, especially the teachings both on spiritual and worldly matters coming out of the Vatican of our current Pope. Other differences are more due to my own understandings of God, the world, the afterlife, which I believe may be more profound, but still in keeping with the teachings of Christian religion, but what many would hear as anything but.
Be that as it may, I find myself in an almost continual process of returning and then once again fleeing from the Church and religion in general. Sometimes I seriously and deeply miss the Church. Sometimes I find that my life is perfectly content without it.
But every once in a while I am so struck by something that I hear when attending Mass that it literally overwhelms me, excites me and makes me long for the Church in which I was raised.
Such an event happened this past Sunday. I was attending Mass with my wife and daughter and my wife's parents at their parish in High Point. The Gospel reading was the Parable of the Talents. Many of us have heard this Gospel reading tens if not hundreds of times in our life. The gist goes like this -- the Master sends out three of his servants (slaves, really) each with a certain number of Talents (a denomination of money) and asks them to be fruitful in their investment of it. The first two when the return have doubled their money and give their Master the money with interest and are rewarded by sharing in the masters wealth. The third servant, however, returns with the one Talent he was given and what happens from there is not good for the servant as quoted above at the beginning of the post.
Every time I remember this being read at Mass, the homily that followed was some variation on one of the two following themes: 1) you must be faithful to God when entrusted by Him and if you are you will be rewarded with great happiness in Heaven; 2) using Talents metaphorically, use your talents in the community and spread them throughout and you will be justly rewarded. In both of these interpretations, it is clear (as it has been taught my whole life) that the first two servants are the ones to emulate if you want happiness.
What always bothered me about this, is that the Master never seemed like a very good person. First off, he owned slaves. God was certainly never shown anywhere else that I can recall as a slave master and his disciples were never called slaves. The other thing was that the master in addition to being a slave master was also a pretty bad guy -- he sows where he does not reap and he gathers where he has not scattered. In other words, he's a thief. I also found it disconcerting that he is apparently advising the third servant to invest the money in a bank for interest, which must be a Roman bank, since lending at interest violates Talmudic law -- so on top of everything else, the dude's a bad Jew (or worse yet an occupying foreigner and oppressor).
The priest in my in-laws church stated in his Homily that he also had the same problems with this particular parable. But, when he was shown a different interpretation by a priest who was an expert in the Gospels and especially the parables, the reading took on a whole new and powerful meaning. I want to share it with you.
The Third Servant is the good guy. The Palestine of Christ's day was similar is some ways to the world today in that the vast majority of wealth was kept in the hands of a very few. The Masters grew their wealth through the means of sending out their minions to increase their wealth in whatever way they could, usually through unethical and illegal means (thus the reaping where he has not sown and gathering where he has not scattered). What the Third Servant does is refuse to take part in a corrupted and unjust system in order to benefit his Master to the detriment of others. As a result of refusing to take part in this system, he suffers great personal destruction, being thrown out into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The priest went on to explain that this was a way to prepare his followers for the immense deprivations and attacks they would receive for refusing to take part in the system against which Christ's teachings were standing. Perhaps he was even preparing them for His own death wherein he was taken from the walls of Jerusalem a mere week after arriving to loud Hosannas and celebrations, to be crucified on a wooden cross.
What is most significant about this interpretation, and I will say that it immediately struck a chord in me to the point where I am convinced that this is the correct interpretation of this story, is that I know there are many who will or who have used this story to justify their own greed or exploitation of others. I can see Herman Cain quoting this to explain that if you are poor it's because you are lazy just like the Third Servant. But this interpretation pulls back the curtain on this wrong-headed argument and shows how it is not the Master who should be emulated, but it is the Master who should be condemned by us for his greed, opulence and exploitation.
The parallels to what is going on today are obvious. Those who are taking a stand against a system which doles out unearned and unjustified riches to the Masters who reap where they have not sown are suffering greatly. In New York, Oakland, Portland, Chapel Hill and elsewhere in the United States they are paying through arrest, deprivation of rights and sometimes physical injury. In Damascus, Cairo, Tripoli, Yemen and across other parts of the world they have paid and are paying for it with their lives.
But the fight is the right one. Will we be like the First two servants going on blithely supporting our Masters and enriching them for our short term gain supporting a system which will inevitably result in our destruction? Or will we be like the Third Servant suffering the deprivations of ostricisation we will receive by refusing this system, only to achieve greater rewards when our Masters are brought to justice? The choice is ours.
This one is going to be quite a departure for me. I am certainly not a person who is overt in religion, nor do I speak of religion very often. I was raised in a very liberal Catholic parish with a very liberal Catholic family. I attended Catholic school for twelve years and studied the religion each and every one of those years. You could say that my religious background and training was probably at least as rigorous, if not more so, than most.
Yet, perhaps in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, I find myself drifting in my faith. Many of my problems stem from profound and fundamental differences with the teachings of the Catholic Church, especially the teachings both on spiritual and worldly matters coming out of the Vatican of our current Pope. Other differences are more due to my own understandings of God, the world, the afterlife, which I believe may be more profound, but still in keeping with the teachings of Christian religion, but what many would hear as anything but.
Be that as it may, I find myself in an almost continual process of returning and then once again fleeing from the Church and religion in general. Sometimes I seriously and deeply miss the Church. Sometimes I find that my life is perfectly content without it.
But every once in a while I am so struck by something that I hear when attending Mass that it literally overwhelms me, excites me and makes me long for the Church in which I was raised.
Such an event happened this past Sunday. I was attending Mass with my wife and daughter and my wife's parents at their parish in High Point. The Gospel reading was the Parable of the Talents. Many of us have heard this Gospel reading tens if not hundreds of times in our life. The gist goes like this -- the Master sends out three of his servants (slaves, really) each with a certain number of Talents (a denomination of money) and asks them to be fruitful in their investment of it. The first two when the return have doubled their money and give their Master the money with interest and are rewarded by sharing in the masters wealth. The third servant, however, returns with the one Talent he was given and what happens from there is not good for the servant as quoted above at the beginning of the post.
Every time I remember this being read at Mass, the homily that followed was some variation on one of the two following themes: 1) you must be faithful to God when entrusted by Him and if you are you will be rewarded with great happiness in Heaven; 2) using Talents metaphorically, use your talents in the community and spread them throughout and you will be justly rewarded. In both of these interpretations, it is clear (as it has been taught my whole life) that the first two servants are the ones to emulate if you want happiness.
What always bothered me about this, is that the Master never seemed like a very good person. First off, he owned slaves. God was certainly never shown anywhere else that I can recall as a slave master and his disciples were never called slaves. The other thing was that the master in addition to being a slave master was also a pretty bad guy -- he sows where he does not reap and he gathers where he has not scattered. In other words, he's a thief. I also found it disconcerting that he is apparently advising the third servant to invest the money in a bank for interest, which must be a Roman bank, since lending at interest violates Talmudic law -- so on top of everything else, the dude's a bad Jew (or worse yet an occupying foreigner and oppressor).
The priest in my in-laws church stated in his Homily that he also had the same problems with this particular parable. But, when he was shown a different interpretation by a priest who was an expert in the Gospels and especially the parables, the reading took on a whole new and powerful meaning. I want to share it with you.
The Third Servant is the good guy. The Palestine of Christ's day was similar is some ways to the world today in that the vast majority of wealth was kept in the hands of a very few. The Masters grew their wealth through the means of sending out their minions to increase their wealth in whatever way they could, usually through unethical and illegal means (thus the reaping where he has not sown and gathering where he has not scattered). What the Third Servant does is refuse to take part in a corrupted and unjust system in order to benefit his Master to the detriment of others. As a result of refusing to take part in this system, he suffers great personal destruction, being thrown out into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The priest went on to explain that this was a way to prepare his followers for the immense deprivations and attacks they would receive for refusing to take part in the system against which Christ's teachings were standing. Perhaps he was even preparing them for His own death wherein he was taken from the walls of Jerusalem a mere week after arriving to loud Hosannas and celebrations, to be crucified on a wooden cross.
What is most significant about this interpretation, and I will say that it immediately struck a chord in me to the point where I am convinced that this is the correct interpretation of this story, is that I know there are many who will or who have used this story to justify their own greed or exploitation of others. I can see Herman Cain quoting this to explain that if you are poor it's because you are lazy just like the Third Servant. But this interpretation pulls back the curtain on this wrong-headed argument and shows how it is not the Master who should be emulated, but it is the Master who should be condemned by us for his greed, opulence and exploitation.
The parallels to what is going on today are obvious. Those who are taking a stand against a system which doles out unearned and unjustified riches to the Masters who reap where they have not sown are suffering greatly. In New York, Oakland, Portland, Chapel Hill and elsewhere in the United States they are paying through arrest, deprivation of rights and sometimes physical injury. In Damascus, Cairo, Tripoli, Yemen and across other parts of the world they have paid and are paying for it with their lives.
But the fight is the right one. Will we be like the First two servants going on blithely supporting our Masters and enriching them for our short term gain supporting a system which will inevitably result in our destruction? Or will we be like the Third Servant suffering the deprivations of ostricisation we will receive by refusing this system, only to achieve greater rewards when our Masters are brought to justice? The choice is ours.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
The Outrageous Incident at Penn State
This past weekend we learned that former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was being charged with multiple counts of child molestation for incidents occurring over several years and involving various levels of child abuse, indecency and rape perpetrated on children as young as 10 years old. As shocking as this was, what was even more shocking was that the Penn State Athletic Director and a university Vice President were charged with failing to report these incidents several years earlier and perjury for lying to the grand jury about it.
What is most shocking about this incident, however, is not that these horrific actions occurred, but looking at the tendency of university administrators to cover up incidents such as these and stymie law enforcement in their efforts to investigate them, that they ever came to light at all.
Since my years in undergraduate study at Syracuse University I saw incident after incident after incident of rape and sexual assault covered up by university administrators and others in power at the university. In most cases, this appeared to be for the sole reason that if the facts of these cases were allowed to see the light of day, the university would be seen in a bad light and the University would do everything in their power to cover up these cases or find a way to blame the victim and excuse the behavior of the perpetrator. Rarely, if ever, were these incidents ever reported to the police or local non-campus legal authorities and rarely, if ever, did the university work with prosecutors once a report made its way through the labyrinthine university process to get attention from the local prosecutor's office. In fact, more often than not, the university's judicial process worked against the state's prosecutorial case often derailing an ongoing prosecution.
As awful as these incidents were on an everyday basis, the process became even worse when the allegations concerned an offender who was also an athlete or related in any way with the athletic program. Athletics for a university is big business. There were many attempts by the university to single out one group or another (usually fraternities and sororities) for discipline and restrictions in the name of greater campus safety and fighting sexual assault, sometimes deserved, often not deserved. But there was never any action taken to address the epidemic of sexual assault and other sexual violence that involved athletes. Even when coaches approached my organization, Students Concerned About Rape Education, to address their male athletes and give presentations to them about sexual assault and rape (as I personally know happened on at least one occasion), these plans were very quickly nixed by the higher-ups at the Athletic Department.
The nature of modern college sports has made the situation involving the approach to allegations of sexual assault against athletes, and in the case of Penn State at least coaches, even worse than it was twenty years ago when I was an undergraduate. There is no doubt that Penn State from what little has been reported about this incident put the reputation of the school and the status of its football program as one of the best and cleanest programs in the country before the welfare of the young boys that were allegedly preyed on by its high profile assistant football coach.
Athletes and coaches enjoy a privileged status in college towns, one that lends itself to certain advantages especially when it comes to dealing with law enforcement. It is this culture of privilege and immunity that led to the violations of the public trust in which the administrators of Penn State engaged. This culture and the actions of the administrators could have taken this predator off the streets decades before he was ultimately arrested and could have saved the lives of countless victims on whom Sandusky forced his evil and sick perversions.
Thank God in this case there were brave prosecutors and law enforcement officers who were not swayed by the enormous pressure that they undoubtedly faced from the huge college sports machine. I have a feeling that we are not done with this scandal. I expect that we will see further resignations including the President of the university along with head coach Joe Paterno. Whether these resignations are deserved or not, I cannot see a situation in which these two and probably several other members of the Penn State community are able to hang onto their jobs.
Hopefully this criminal prosecution will have an effect nationally of tearing down this sports culture in colleges across the nation. It's good to have sports heroes, and I challenge you to find anyone who roots harder for Syracuse athletic teams than me. But along with that, we need to remember that these young men and women, and the older men and women in whose trust we place these athletes, need to be held accountable for their actions. And administrators who cover up their crimes in the name of continued prestige and money need to be held accountable to an even higher degree.
What is most shocking about this incident, however, is not that these horrific actions occurred, but looking at the tendency of university administrators to cover up incidents such as these and stymie law enforcement in their efforts to investigate them, that they ever came to light at all.
Since my years in undergraduate study at Syracuse University I saw incident after incident after incident of rape and sexual assault covered up by university administrators and others in power at the university. In most cases, this appeared to be for the sole reason that if the facts of these cases were allowed to see the light of day, the university would be seen in a bad light and the University would do everything in their power to cover up these cases or find a way to blame the victim and excuse the behavior of the perpetrator. Rarely, if ever, were these incidents ever reported to the police or local non-campus legal authorities and rarely, if ever, did the university work with prosecutors once a report made its way through the labyrinthine university process to get attention from the local prosecutor's office. In fact, more often than not, the university's judicial process worked against the state's prosecutorial case often derailing an ongoing prosecution.
As awful as these incidents were on an everyday basis, the process became even worse when the allegations concerned an offender who was also an athlete or related in any way with the athletic program. Athletics for a university is big business. There were many attempts by the university to single out one group or another (usually fraternities and sororities) for discipline and restrictions in the name of greater campus safety and fighting sexual assault, sometimes deserved, often not deserved. But there was never any action taken to address the epidemic of sexual assault and other sexual violence that involved athletes. Even when coaches approached my organization, Students Concerned About Rape Education, to address their male athletes and give presentations to them about sexual assault and rape (as I personally know happened on at least one occasion), these plans were very quickly nixed by the higher-ups at the Athletic Department.
The nature of modern college sports has made the situation involving the approach to allegations of sexual assault against athletes, and in the case of Penn State at least coaches, even worse than it was twenty years ago when I was an undergraduate. There is no doubt that Penn State from what little has been reported about this incident put the reputation of the school and the status of its football program as one of the best and cleanest programs in the country before the welfare of the young boys that were allegedly preyed on by its high profile assistant football coach.
Athletes and coaches enjoy a privileged status in college towns, one that lends itself to certain advantages especially when it comes to dealing with law enforcement. It is this culture of privilege and immunity that led to the violations of the public trust in which the administrators of Penn State engaged. This culture and the actions of the administrators could have taken this predator off the streets decades before he was ultimately arrested and could have saved the lives of countless victims on whom Sandusky forced his evil and sick perversions.
Thank God in this case there were brave prosecutors and law enforcement officers who were not swayed by the enormous pressure that they undoubtedly faced from the huge college sports machine. I have a feeling that we are not done with this scandal. I expect that we will see further resignations including the President of the university along with head coach Joe Paterno. Whether these resignations are deserved or not, I cannot see a situation in which these two and probably several other members of the Penn State community are able to hang onto their jobs.
Hopefully this criminal prosecution will have an effect nationally of tearing down this sports culture in colleges across the nation. It's good to have sports heroes, and I challenge you to find anyone who roots harder for Syracuse athletic teams than me. But along with that, we need to remember that these young men and women, and the older men and women in whose trust we place these athletes, need to be held accountable for their actions. And administrators who cover up their crimes in the name of continued prestige and money need to be held accountable to an even higher degree.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Drop Out Of MSM
Fox News claims a right-wing oriented alternative to the mainstream liberal bias. As if being an arm of the largest international media conglomerate was anything other than mainstream media. MSNBC takes a left-leaning approach to their editorial segments, positioning themselves as a more progressive minded alternative to the Fox News onslaught (their new slogan is "Lean Forward" something that I've always thought was odd since if you keep leaning forward you will eventually fall on your face).
Most of what we see in the mainstream media is what you generally see on the major networks and CNN which is a reportedly non-biased middle ground which claims to be fair to both sides. The problem with this is that they report both sides equally without comment no matter how absurd the argument from one side or the other may be. I could say the earth is round and the sky is blue, and the "reporting" would add that my opponents on the other hand claim that the earth is flat and the sky is green. This reporting without any insight or commentary is worse than the truly biased reporting of the aforementioned networks.
Recently, several conservative groups went after National Public Radio claiming they had a liberal bias. This was especially true after their decision to fire commentator Juan Williams for incendiary remarks on Muslims he made on Fox News. Later, an executive was found to have made negative remarks toward Conservative politicians while trying to raise money from someone claiming to be a wealthy liberal donor. The upshot of this is that there has been a perceivable shift in the reporting heard on NPR toward more of the equal time approach of CNN and the major networks. This is unfortunate because NPR's tilt was not necessarily liberal as much as it was non-corporate.
What we see in the mainstream media news reporting of today is a dance that tries to present news stories while at the same time making money for their shareholders and not offend their corporate bosses. And by corporate bosses, I'm not being metaphorical, I mean literally corporate bosses -- GE, Disney, Time Warner, etc. The mainstream media has a decidedly pro-corporate bias in their news reporting. This is why most Americans are simply unwittingly ignorant as to many issues that are incredibly important to their daily lives, such as finance and the economy. This is why issues such as which Kardashian is divorcing or what Lindsay Lohan did or didn't do at her community service assignment today get more airtime than the implications to the future of the U.S. economy of Greece's decision to put Europe's latest bailout proposal to a referendum.
What I have done over the past several months is to voluntarily and intentionally remove myself from the mainstream media's presentation of news stories as much as possible. I began this to an extent a few years ago with making my main news source Huffington Post. However, HuffPo is as mainstream as anyone else. Sometimes you will see some truly alternative press on HuffPo, but for the most part it is just a Democratic Party spin on the same corporatist news that we get anywhere else. Or in other words, it's MSNBC.
Although I still read HuffPo, as well as other mainstream news media including major networks, my venture into more alternative sources has educated me on the issues that are important to me as well as allowing me to look at the mainstream media with a much more critical eye. The more you educate yourself, for instance, on the events that led to the economic collapse of 2008 and subsequent economic bailout, the more you can see how absurd some of the claims being made by the large banking institutions and reported as fact on mainstream news outlets are.
This can, of course, be dangerous to your well being. For instance yesterday driving home, listening to a WFAE (NPR affiliate in Charlotte) report on debit card fees, I found myself screaming "WHY ARE YOU REPORTING LIES!?!?!?! AND WHY ARE YOU NOT QUESTIONING THEM?!?!?!?!?" when they reported the outright lie that Bank of America and others are putting forth that they have to charge outrageous fees to their customers because they aren't allowed to charge the usurious card swipe fees any more and they are not able to make money on mortgages because interest rates are so low. This kind of reporting is at best lazy and at worst complicit. I can't tell you how many times I've heard this line given in the media without a second thought to the fact that the interest rate charged to consumers is based on the interest rate the Federal Reserve charges banks to borrow money from it. So, in other words, they are getting the same profit because they are charging 4% interest on a mortgage for which they borrowed money at 0% to pay for, whereas before they charged 8% on a mortgage for which they borrowed money at 4% to pay for.
But that is the way that mainstream media works. In this constant tightrope act to make profit, achieve ratings and not rock the corporate boat, what usually gets lost is the truth.
So where do you turn? Although the internet is rife with craziness and outright false information, it also contains some of the best journalism out there. For critical financial reporting, I have found a plethora of sources right at my fingertips.
The best and most hard hitting financial reporting out there is being done by Max Keiser. I was first introduced to Keiser's reporting and commentary when he was referred to in a post by Matt Taibbi in which he linked to a BBC interview where in response to a question about the TARP bailout and the reasons for it Keiser said simply "Well, Goldman Sachs are scum." His blog can be found at www.maxkeiser.com . This also contains links to his thrice weekly "Keiser Report" television show on Russia Today network and his once weekly On The Edge with Max Keiser on Press TV out of Iran.
Of course there is also Matt Taibbi. You can find all of Taibbi's influential reporting on the crimes of Wall Street at www.rollingstone.com , but even more entertaining than his regular Rolling Stone articles is his blog Taibblog located at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog . The Blog is updated more often than his longer more involved Rolling Stone reports. It also contains opinions from his Supreme Court of Assholedom which passes judgment on figures in the news as to how much of an asshole they really are. I'm hoping for one on Herman Cain before too long.
As for financial news in general, one of the absolute best blogs is www.zerohedge.com. Zero Hedge is out front on most every financial issue there is in the world and is virtually always correct in their analysis. It is also incredibly voluminous in the sheer amount of information it has. There is a subscription service for Zero Hedge, but I have found that all of their news and posts are available without subscription. There is also Reggie Middleton's Boom Bust Blog http://boombustblog.com which contains research and information on stocks, bonds and financial issues. There is a lot of information on this blog which is only available to subscribers and you have to put up with Middleton's bombastic braggadocio (not to mention his super hero alter-egos), but the information contained even in his non-subscription service is useful as well as often hilarious.
Another great financial news source for general financial news is The Big Picture at www.ritholtz.com/blog. This is the blog of financial reporter Barry Ritholtz and I have found it to be quite informative. Along the same lines, though not nearly as regular as Ritholtz's blogs is Terri Buhl's blog at www.teribuhl.com. Buhl is a financial investigative reporter whose insightfulness and tenacity uncovers some of the most outrageous financial scandals that you won't find anywhere else. Another former Wall Street trader who has dedicated herself to uncovering Wall Street's excesses and the scandals that have destroyed our economy is Nomi Prins. Her site www.nomiprins.com is mainly a site to promote the books she has authored but also contains the best and most complete and ongoing analysis of the Wall Street bailout. These are contained in the "Reports" section of her blog and these are updated monthly. Also included are her articles such as her most recent listing the Top 10 reasons not to bank with Bank of America.
Lastly, for general news,opinion and analysis my favorite non-mainstream media website is www.truthdig.com. This is the home of two of my favorite columnists Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer. Both of these columnists used to work in the mainstream media but have given it up intentionally because of its corporate bias. Hedges reports some of the best social criticism out there these days, and Scheer's finance and banking reporting is top notch.
So, there is plenty out there to expand your view of what is really going on in the world. The more you look for sources of information outside of the convoluted and quite frankly false world being perpetuated in the MSM, the more you will learn to think more critically of the world around you, not to mention the more you will be able to think for yourself.
I am always open to learning more from many different points of view. If you have some websites or sources that you suggest, please feel free to post them in the comments section or on my facebook page. I'll be sure to check them out and might even add them to my list of daily news sources.
 |
| Max Keiser |
In our never-ending election cycle, we hear repeatedly about the "mainstream media" and how they favor one side or the other. Tea Party windbag and former part time Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin has even cleverly referred to it as the "Lamestream Media" in her incessant television and paid speaking engagements. Usually it is the conservative politicians who make the most political hay out of this issue stating that the mainstream media has a liberal bias.
Fox News claims a right-wing oriented alternative to the mainstream liberal bias. As if being an arm of the largest international media conglomerate was anything other than mainstream media. MSNBC takes a left-leaning approach to their editorial segments, positioning themselves as a more progressive minded alternative to the Fox News onslaught (their new slogan is "Lean Forward" something that I've always thought was odd since if you keep leaning forward you will eventually fall on your face).
Most of what we see in the mainstream media is what you generally see on the major networks and CNN which is a reportedly non-biased middle ground which claims to be fair to both sides. The problem with this is that they report both sides equally without comment no matter how absurd the argument from one side or the other may be. I could say the earth is round and the sky is blue, and the "reporting" would add that my opponents on the other hand claim that the earth is flat and the sky is green. This reporting without any insight or commentary is worse than the truly biased reporting of the aforementioned networks.
Recently, several conservative groups went after National Public Radio claiming they had a liberal bias. This was especially true after their decision to fire commentator Juan Williams for incendiary remarks on Muslims he made on Fox News. Later, an executive was found to have made negative remarks toward Conservative politicians while trying to raise money from someone claiming to be a wealthy liberal donor. The upshot of this is that there has been a perceivable shift in the reporting heard on NPR toward more of the equal time approach of CNN and the major networks. This is unfortunate because NPR's tilt was not necessarily liberal as much as it was non-corporate.
What we see in the mainstream media news reporting of today is a dance that tries to present news stories while at the same time making money for their shareholders and not offend their corporate bosses. And by corporate bosses, I'm not being metaphorical, I mean literally corporate bosses -- GE, Disney, Time Warner, etc. The mainstream media has a decidedly pro-corporate bias in their news reporting. This is why most Americans are simply unwittingly ignorant as to many issues that are incredibly important to their daily lives, such as finance and the economy. This is why issues such as which Kardashian is divorcing or what Lindsay Lohan did or didn't do at her community service assignment today get more airtime than the implications to the future of the U.S. economy of Greece's decision to put Europe's latest bailout proposal to a referendum.
What I have done over the past several months is to voluntarily and intentionally remove myself from the mainstream media's presentation of news stories as much as possible. I began this to an extent a few years ago with making my main news source Huffington Post. However, HuffPo is as mainstream as anyone else. Sometimes you will see some truly alternative press on HuffPo, but for the most part it is just a Democratic Party spin on the same corporatist news that we get anywhere else. Or in other words, it's MSNBC.
Although I still read HuffPo, as well as other mainstream news media including major networks, my venture into more alternative sources has educated me on the issues that are important to me as well as allowing me to look at the mainstream media with a much more critical eye. The more you educate yourself, for instance, on the events that led to the economic collapse of 2008 and subsequent economic bailout, the more you can see how absurd some of the claims being made by the large banking institutions and reported as fact on mainstream news outlets are.
This can, of course, be dangerous to your well being. For instance yesterday driving home, listening to a WFAE (NPR affiliate in Charlotte) report on debit card fees, I found myself screaming "WHY ARE YOU REPORTING LIES!?!?!?! AND WHY ARE YOU NOT QUESTIONING THEM?!?!?!?!?" when they reported the outright lie that Bank of America and others are putting forth that they have to charge outrageous fees to their customers because they aren't allowed to charge the usurious card swipe fees any more and they are not able to make money on mortgages because interest rates are so low. This kind of reporting is at best lazy and at worst complicit. I can't tell you how many times I've heard this line given in the media without a second thought to the fact that the interest rate charged to consumers is based on the interest rate the Federal Reserve charges banks to borrow money from it. So, in other words, they are getting the same profit because they are charging 4% interest on a mortgage for which they borrowed money at 0% to pay for, whereas before they charged 8% on a mortgage for which they borrowed money at 4% to pay for.
But that is the way that mainstream media works. In this constant tightrope act to make profit, achieve ratings and not rock the corporate boat, what usually gets lost is the truth.
So where do you turn? Although the internet is rife with craziness and outright false information, it also contains some of the best journalism out there. For critical financial reporting, I have found a plethora of sources right at my fingertips.
The best and most hard hitting financial reporting out there is being done by Max Keiser. I was first introduced to Keiser's reporting and commentary when he was referred to in a post by Matt Taibbi in which he linked to a BBC interview where in response to a question about the TARP bailout and the reasons for it Keiser said simply "Well, Goldman Sachs are scum." His blog can be found at www.maxkeiser.com . This also contains links to his thrice weekly "Keiser Report" television show on Russia Today network and his once weekly On The Edge with Max Keiser on Press TV out of Iran.
Of course there is also Matt Taibbi. You can find all of Taibbi's influential reporting on the crimes of Wall Street at www.rollingstone.com , but even more entertaining than his regular Rolling Stone articles is his blog Taibblog located at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog . The Blog is updated more often than his longer more involved Rolling Stone reports. It also contains opinions from his Supreme Court of Assholedom which passes judgment on figures in the news as to how much of an asshole they really are. I'm hoping for one on Herman Cain before too long.
As for financial news in general, one of the absolute best blogs is www.zerohedge.com. Zero Hedge is out front on most every financial issue there is in the world and is virtually always correct in their analysis. It is also incredibly voluminous in the sheer amount of information it has. There is a subscription service for Zero Hedge, but I have found that all of their news and posts are available without subscription. There is also Reggie Middleton's Boom Bust Blog http://boombustblog.com which contains research and information on stocks, bonds and financial issues. There is a lot of information on this blog which is only available to subscribers and you have to put up with Middleton's bombastic braggadocio (not to mention his super hero alter-egos), but the information contained even in his non-subscription service is useful as well as often hilarious.
Another great financial news source for general financial news is The Big Picture at www.ritholtz.com/blog. This is the blog of financial reporter Barry Ritholtz and I have found it to be quite informative. Along the same lines, though not nearly as regular as Ritholtz's blogs is Terri Buhl's blog at www.teribuhl.com. Buhl is a financial investigative reporter whose insightfulness and tenacity uncovers some of the most outrageous financial scandals that you won't find anywhere else. Another former Wall Street trader who has dedicated herself to uncovering Wall Street's excesses and the scandals that have destroyed our economy is Nomi Prins. Her site www.nomiprins.com is mainly a site to promote the books she has authored but also contains the best and most complete and ongoing analysis of the Wall Street bailout. These are contained in the "Reports" section of her blog and these are updated monthly. Also included are her articles such as her most recent listing the Top 10 reasons not to bank with Bank of America.
Lastly, for general news,opinion and analysis my favorite non-mainstream media website is www.truthdig.com. This is the home of two of my favorite columnists Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer. Both of these columnists used to work in the mainstream media but have given it up intentionally because of its corporate bias. Hedges reports some of the best social criticism out there these days, and Scheer's finance and banking reporting is top notch.
So, there is plenty out there to expand your view of what is really going on in the world. The more you look for sources of information outside of the convoluted and quite frankly false world being perpetuated in the MSM, the more you will learn to think more critically of the world around you, not to mention the more you will be able to think for yourself.
I am always open to learning more from many different points of view. If you have some websites or sources that you suggest, please feel free to post them in the comments section or on my facebook page. I'll be sure to check them out and might even add them to my list of daily news sources.
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