Columbia Journalism Review: A Newspaper Deal Threatens Utah's Main Non-Mormon-Owned Daily, Critics Say

Why not sign the petition? Can't hurt... might help

Disturbing story for fans of the Salt Lake Tribune.  Utahns who are interested in a balanced Utah editorial narrative should read the lede and weep, O Gentle Weber County Forum Readers:

A deal reached last fall between Salt Lake City's two main newspapers is unraveling into an angry controversy as the Justice Department looks into allegations that the Salt Lake Tribune, in return for a lump-sum cash payment, is quietly ceding the market to the Mormon Church-owned Deseret News.
The deal, an amendment struck last fall to a longstanding Joint Operating Agreement, would give the News 70 percent of the print revenues generated by the two papers, in return for the payment, the amount of which is undisclosed. The onetime payment, critics claim, would benefit the New York parent, Digital First Media, owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, while choking off revenue needed to sustain the Tribune's newsroom.
"The hedge fund guys get what they want, which is a big pile of cash," says Jim Dabakis, a Utah state senator who this week started an online petition asking the Justice Department to reverse the deal. "And the Deseret News gets what it wants, its generations-long dream [fulfilled] to extinguish the other voice in the community. And they get a monopoly from now on."

Read the full Columbia Journalism Review expose' here, folks, and continue with your weeping:

• A newspaper deal threatens Utah's main non-Mormon-owned daily, critics say

And here's an interesting wrinkle to this story, provided by a knowledgeable and trusted WCF source, who works for the Salt Lake Tribune, and technically refutes the claim that "this deal [was] reached last fall between Salt Lake City's two main newspapers":

The thing to know is that no one who actually works at the Salt Lake Tribune was consulted or had anything to do with this agreement. Our corporate hedge fund owners got a pile of cash to service their Wall Street debt and the Deseret News, the weaker paper in terms of generating subscriptions and ad revenue, was handed the means to strangle the competition. 

Definitely no surprizes here.  Obviously this was a deal soley cut between Deseret News ownership (who have exactly the same amount of money as God hisself)  and the greed-head hedge fund managers who own the 'venerable" Salt Lake  Tribune, "lock, stock and barrel."
 
Interested in rolling up your sleeves and engaging in some useful and productive political action on an otherwise quite Utah Sunday? Sign the online petition, O Gentle Readers:

• STOP THE IMPENDING DEATH OF THE S.L.TRIBUNE!

Why not?  Can't hurt... might help.

New York Times: An Overview of Corporate Welfare in the USA

US Crony Capitalism 101: A series examining business incentives and their impact on jobs and local economies.

Fantastic three-part article series from the New York Times this week, exploring the nuances of government subsidization of  private business in the United States, and revealing some of the dynamics and troubling pitfalls arising in our massive American corporate welfare state. Times reporter Louise Story has truly done a yeoman's job on this blockbuster project; so we're delighted to link these heavily-researched stories on what might otherwise be considered a slow Weber County Forum news day.

Check it out, O Gentle Ones... a humdinger of an investigative journalistic series which we'll endearingly subtitle "Crony Capitalism 101":

• As Companies Seek Tax Deals, Governments Pay High Price
• Lines Blur as Texas Gives Industries a Bonanza
• Michigan Town Woos Hollywood, but Ends Up With a Bit Part

As these articles reveal, these corporate welfare public-private "partnerships" often don't prove to be, shall we say, the cash cows they're proposed to be.  Left-leaning Daily Kos's opening paragraph summary is even a trifle more harsh in its judgment:

It was the story of the weekend. A searing three-part investigative report by Louise Story at The New York Times describing in detail the gigantic rip-off that corporations across America extract from state, county and municipal governments when they start shopping for a place to land, expand or just stick around. "Rip-off," is not a word that Story or her editors chose, but that's the reality behind her exposé of all those tax breaks, land deals, infrastructure upgrades and assorted other arrangements desperate governments offer to lure companies to their turf or keep them in town.

You can check out the full Daily Kos writeup here, of course, if you'd really like to "get an earful":

• Corporations get billions from cities and states but they often don't keep their end of the bargain

Of course as all regular WCF readers already know, both The State of Utah and and our own Ogden City have been (and remain) fully geared-up for similar expressions of local and state government pro-corporate largesse.  In this connection Ms. Story drills down to the Utah numbers, distilled from the impressive "searchable" database which she's assembled:

• Explore Government Subsidies - Utah

We Utahns can breath a sigh of relief, we suppose.  It could have been a lot worse, we guess. Having said that, we'll add that it would no doubt have been enlightening to have been able to drill down to the Ogden City numbers by themselves.

We'll issue Ms. Story a WCF Tip O' The Hat for her most impressive work; and for WCF political wonks, the floor's now open.

Standard-Examiner: Ogden "Incentivizes" New Showroom for Auto Dealer

What's with John Watson getting RDA tax credits?

By: Smaatguy

Speaking of handouts... What's with John Watson getting RDA tax credits? Looking at the time frame it looks like he's getting them after he decided to expand. Like he's going to bug out of town and buy new real estate and build new without $10 to $20k credits?

• Ogden incentivizes new showroom for auto dealer

What a waste of taxpayer money. Watson planned that expansion long ago. Now Westland and the rest will also want to suck on the taxpayer teat.

Comments, anyone?

Standard-Examiner Guest Commentary: A Revival of Mercantilist Thought Among Conservatives

Some apparent parallels between post-feudal mercantilist thought and the views of some modern right-wing conservatives

Right-wing conservatives' ideology is even worse than mercantilism because it gives the impression to Americans that their policy actions, aimed at corporations and wealthy, will ultimately benefit low and middle income Americans. It is high time to bury the idea that making rich richer and wealthy wealthier through government policy will generate more opportunity for non-rich. What the political establishment has to do is to open up more avenues of opportunity aimed directly at non-rich, so that they can acquire more human capital and become successful entrepreneurs. I hope that conservative politicians' alliance with business and wealthy is a temporary phenomenon, because otherwise it will take the country's progress back to the mercantilist era and dismantle the middle class -- the fountain of entrepreneurship. It will have a deleterious effect on democracy, free competitive markets and growth.

Standard-Examiner Guest Commentary
A revival of mercantilist thought among conservatives
November 6, 2011

Fantastic Standard-Examiner Op-ed piece this morning, folks.

Although we sometimes disagree with Prof. Mathur's analyses, he definitely nails it this time, wethinks:

• A revival of mercantilist thought among conservatives

The merger of state and corporate interests in America is one of the greatest threats to individual liberty existent in the current national and local political environment, as we see it.

Of course we don't necessarily have to reach clear back to the "mercantilist era" for historical precedent, when 20th Century European "fascism" also serves as a more recent manifestation of the "corporatist" politico-economic phenomena which Mathur describes.

We hope you'll all read and comprehend the message that the good professor delivers this morning, without letting your eyes glaze over, even though it does deal with the sometimes-turgid topic of political economics.

So who'd like to throw in their own 2¢?

Ogden Ethics Blog: Can Corporate Campaign Contributions Be Banned?

Added Bonus: For an enlightening expose about how America has lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior, check out the below-linked book

The Ogden Ethics Project Blog has an informative new post up referring to the most recent pro-corporatist (fascist) federal court decision, in connection with the legality of corporate campaign donations. We invite you all to check it out:

• Can corporate campaign contributions be banned?

And for an enlightening expose about how America has lost the legal structures that formerly allowed "we the people" to control corporate behavior, following an 1886 U.S. Supreme Court decision which has been erroneously and repeatedly cited as ruling that corporations were "persons" and entitled to the same rights granted to living, breathing, natural people under the Bill of Rights, check out this book, which is available online through Amazon.com:

• Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights

In our view, the rise of corporatism in America represents one of the greatest threats to individual liberty since the founding of our great nation. For those of our readers who may share this view, or might be interested in learning a little more about it, we strongly recommend this book. It's a real eye opener.

And don't let the cat get your tongues...