After all, it was local workers who voted to unionize, and central Illinois donors and hospitals who are watching the rather embarrassing proceedings.

Personally, I’ve benefited from a Red Cross CPR class and donated blood and money to the Red Cross, but recent actions that some suspect did not originate with local management are troubling.

Representing the Red Cross, Wisconsin lawyer Michael Modl erroneously described planned leafleting by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) at a Dec. 21 blood drive at the Par-A-Dice casino as “picketing” and the event was cancelled. Modl asked AFSCME to refrain from its protected, concerted activities; AFSCME planned to distribute handbills thanking people for donating blood and updating them on Red Cross negotiations.

“The real reason for the Red Cross cancelling the blood drive [is] they are ashamed of their behavior towards their employees and the union, and do not want the donating public to find out about it,” said Kent Beaucamp, regional director of AFSCME Council 31.

Meanwhile, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that the Red Cross broke federal law in eight Unfair Labor Practices (ULPs) and federal Judge James Shadid issued an injunction that the Red Cross rescind changes in employees’ terms of employment and bargain in good faith. The NLRB said the Red Cross illegally changed wages, hours and working conditions following the June 1, 2007, representation election. Workers voted 112-48 in favor of unionizing, according to the certification – made on October 7, 2010, after Red Cross litigation delayed even counting ballots for more than three years.

The Red Cross nationally says that it treats all employees fairly.

“We value each of our highly trained blood services employees,” said Stephanie Millian, Red Cross director of biomedical communications.

In a statement offered when the NLRB filed suit against the Red Cross in August, the organization said it “strives to treat our unionized employees with fairness and respect.”

However, the national Red Cross has widespread problems with employees. Disputes have involved unions including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW); the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT); Service Employees International Union (SEIU); Communications Workers of America (CWA); Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU); United Auto Workers (UAW); United Steelworkers (USW); International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE); Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA); the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), and AFSCME, in St. Louis, plus Arizona, California, Connecticut, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington state and West Virginia.

Hundreds of Unfair Labor Practice complaints have been issued against the Red Cross nationally since the mid-1990s, and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service has been called in to facilitate bargaining about 150 times.

Some say the problems aren’t the fault of local leaders.

“Despite contentions by the American Red Cross that negotiations are handled on the local and regional level with workers and unions most affected, [lack of progress] suggests that the Red Cross national Human Resources Department is actually coordinating and directing the efforts to de-professionalize the workforce,” said author Philip Dine, who wrote a comprehensive 2009 report, “Labor Relations at the American Red Cross and Its Impact on Employee and Donor Safety.”

“Contract negotiations that used to be handled by regional or local officials are now run by the national Red Cross, coinciding with contentious negotiations.”

Jim Nowlan, a member of the Central Illinois Chapter Board of Directors, says he has noticed a trend toward consolidating away from local control.

“I’m on the board of the disaster side, not the blood-services side, but the Red Cross overall is experiencing what I’d call a centralization of authority to Washington [headquarters],” Nowlan said. “It seems like recent reorganization has taken some of the activities that used to be controlled locally and taken them up above even the regional level, to the division level or higher.”

St. Louis Red Cross worker Duane Jablonski, a 21-year Red Cross employee and a 30-year donor, says the organization used to take “incredibly good care of employees,” but that changed in the last 10 years or so. Jablonski said he’s “not a disgruntled employee; I’m definitely a dedicated employee” – but he says he’s seen the atmosphere change from “a pride thing to work for the Red Cross” to one where “they just use you up and throw you away.”

In Peoria, the ULPs range from not furnishing information as required and refusing to bargain in good faith in more than a dozen bargaining sessions, to illegally changing pay, pension contributions and health benefits, and improperly reclassifying bargaining-unit workers as supervisors. In Administrative Law Judge Arthur J. Amchan’s decision on the NLRB charges, he said the Red Cross must “cease and desist and take certain affirmative action designed to effectuate the policies of the [National Labor Relations] Act.”

Represented in negotiations by another Wisconsin attorney, Charles Pautsch, the Red Cross could appeal the order, further delaying an agreement.

“We’d like to resolve all the issues at the bargaining table rather than have a third party impose decisions,” said AFSCME Council 31 representative Tim Lavelle.

Besides the mandatory bargaining issues of wages, hours and working conditions, unanswered questions include the ULPs, a dispute about the Red Cross changing its past practice of 3 percent annual merit pay following a yearly evaluation, and the consequence of the Red Cross stopping its contributions to workers’ 401(k) plans.

“Our position is we can settle all this in negotiations,” Lavelle added.

Millian, the national Red Cross spokeswoman, said, “Whether we have reached tentative agreement on an item, or an issue is still being disputed, each is a local matter applicable to the local bargaining unit employees.”

If that’s so, it’s time for local leaders to negotiate.

Contact Bill at: bill.knight@hotmail.com

The Peoria area has a higher percentage of its population receiving retirement and survivor benefits from Social Security than Illinois or the United States, according to data from the Bureau for Economic Analysis and the Social Security Administration analyzed by the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University.

That’s typical of counties with small cities and rural areas, which depend more on Social Security than urban areas, researchers found. In large cities, about 5 percent of total personal income comes from Social Security. In rural counties, an average of 9.3 percent of personal income arrives in the form of a Social Security check.

In Washington, Congress is considering ways to limit government programs such as Social Security. Some suggest raising the retirement age beyond 62 or changing Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustment to slow the rate that monthly checks increase with inflation – making them smaller than forecast.

If such limits are enacted, economists say the effects will be felt most strongly in small cities and rural America.

“In many rural places, Social Security is a very critical element of the local economic base,” said Peter Nelson, a geographer at Middlebury College in Vermont. “It’s less important to a place like Los Angeles because there is so much additional economic activity going on there.

“Cuts would have a bigger negative impact on rural places, absolutely,” he continued. “They are more dependent on Social Security.”

Social Security payments come in three forms: an “old-age” pension to help retirement, a survivor benefit, or a disability check. Nationally, 16.7 percent of the population received some form of monthly Social Security payments in 2009, the most recent year for which complete data are available.

The percentage of all Americans who receive some Social Security benefit, then, is 16.7; in Illinois, it’s 15.4; in Peoria it’s 18.5; in Tazewell it’s 20.1; in Woodford it’s 17.8.

The percentage of all American recipients who receive old-age benefits is 69.4; in Illinois, it’s 70.9; in Peoria 71.5; in Tazewell 74.5; in Woodford 76.0.

The percentage of all American recipients who receive survivor benefits is 12.1; in Illinois, it’s 12.7; in Peoria 13.1; in Tazewell 12.8; in Woodford 12.9.

Peoria, Tazewell and Woodford counties all have less of a percentage receiving Social Security disability benefits than either Illinois or the nation as a whole. The percentage of all American recipients who receive disability benefits is 18.5; in Illinois, it’s 16.4; in Peoria 15.3; in Tazewell 12.7; in Woodford 11.2.

In large U.S. cities, Social Security income per resident in 2009 was $2,055. In Peoria County, Social Security income per resident was $2,547; in Tazewell it was $2,823; in Woodford $2.528.

Social Security is vital to entire communities as well as individuals – particularly to small cities and rural areas, because the money is mostly spent in those communities.

“The seniors who get these payments are primarily going to spend their money locally,” said Mark Partridge, an Ohio State University economist. “And they are a key reason why some communities are still viable. If this money dried up, there wouldn’t be a lot of these small towns.”

Another economist links Social Security payments to the viability of small businesses, too.

“We find that Social Security income can be the difference between success and failure for some local businesses,” said Judith Stallmann of the University of Missouri. “If you took away, say, 10 percent of the demand, would that local business be able to remain open? Often it’s that 10 percent that keeps them going. Social Security is providing that margin.”

Politicians too often tie the national debt or budget deficits to Social Security, which confuses the facts. Social Security is not part of the federal budget. It’s separately funded by a dedicated wage tax, the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). Workers are supposed to pay 6.2 percent of all wages up to $106,800 and employers an equal amount, for a total contribution of 12.4 percent. (This year, however, this payroll tax was cut by the Tax Relief Act of 2010 to 4.2 percent, reducing contributions to 8.4 percent.) Social Security funds are invested in government securities and backed by the full faith of the U.S. government.

The total amount of Social Security coming in to the Tri-County area is substantial. In 2009, Peoria County received $473 million – 6.1 percent of all personal income; Tazewell $373 million – 7.3 percent of all personal income; Woodford $98 million – 6.3 percent of all personal income.

A reduction due to decreasing the number of people eligible or cutting the cost-of-living adjustment in monthly checks could be devastating to communities, small businesses and the eligible beneficiaries who count on the checks they were promised.

So progressive groups – from AARP and the AFL-CIO to the NAACP and the National Christian Leadership Conference – are organizing resistance to another Right-wing attack on Social Security. Such progressive actions could include rallies, leafleting, phone banking and lobbying elected officials, but also could extend through next year’s election, according to AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.

“It would be very difficult for us to support, or mobilize for, any candidate at any level” who supported cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, Trumka told Press Associates Inc.

Contact Bill at: bill.knight@hotmail.com

Patients already seem like financial collateral damage in an archaic health-care system that puts profits ahead of people.

The time for a showdown could be approaching, as profits at big for-profit health insurers skyrocketed in the second quarter, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), and even non-profits are reporting sizable gains since 2010.

“Customers continued to cut back on doctor and hospital visits in a slowing economy, [but] record-breaking profits show that the health insurers continue to foist excessive and unjustified rate hikes on families and small businesses,” according to Melinda Gibson of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a grassroots health care advocacy organization.

According to financial data released by the industry and analyzed by HCAN, Wall Street-run health insurance companies took $7 billion in profits in the first half of 2011 by charging more and spending less – on patient care.

“While America’s families and businesses are struggling in a tough economy, insurance companies are racking up unconscionable profits,” said Ethan Rome, HCAN’s executive director. “Premiums have gone up 131 percent since 1999, and people are struggling with every kind of household expense.”

The five largest for-profit health companies, their second quarter profits (and the percentage change from the second quarter last year) are: Aetna, $536 million (+9.3 percent), Cigna, $408 million (+38.3 percent), Humana, $460 million (+35.3 percent), UnitedHealth Group, $1.2 billion (+12.8 percent), and WellPoint, $701 million (-2.9 percent),

Combined profits for the five, which together cover one-third of the U.S. population, surged 13.5 percent to $3.4 billion in the second quarter. If that trend holds, the five companies will take a record $14 billion in profits this year. The insurance industry claims to have a low average profit margin of 4.4 percent, but so far in 2011, Aetna has reported a health-care profit margin of 11 percent, Cigna 7.4 percent, WellPoint 7.8 percent, and UnitedHealth 7.7 percent.

In Illinois, Blue Cross/Blue Shield (Health Care Service Corp.) has more than 12 million members in the state, plus many others in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, making it the country’s largest “customer-owned” health insurer, a technical nonprofit with no shareholders.

With affiliates, Blue Cross/Blue Shield is the nation’s fourth largest health insurer overall, and its second quarter this year also showed dramatic improvement from 2010. BC/BS’s net income changed from a loss of $7.9 million to a loss of $825,000 – a $7 million turnaround. Its net capital improved from a loss of $5.3 million to a gain of $9.6 million – a $14.9 million swing. Further, BC/BS’s “net cash from operations” was up from a loss of $10.3 million a year ago to a gain $10 million this year, a $20 million increase.

Despite claims that insurance company premium growth reflects actual changes in medical costs, their increases have consistently been twice the rate of medical inflation.

“Insurers defend their increasing wealth by saying their profits represent less than one penny of every dollar of national health spending, but that is deceptive,” said Gibson of the HCAN group. “One penny of every health care dollar amounts to $347 billion over the 10 years ending in 2019, according to government projections.”

Also, under a consumer protection provision in the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that insurers could owe up to 9 million customers as much as $1.4 billion in 2011 rebates payable next year. The new rule (medical-loss ratio) sets a minimum percentage of premiums that insurers must spend on actual medical care instead of wasteful overhead, excessive profits and bloated CEO salaries. The minimum is 80 percent for individual and small group plans and 85 percent for large groups. Companies that fall short of the minimums must rebate the difference to consumers starting next year.

In a few states, including North Carolina and California, some insurers were so concerned about excessive profits that they reduced rates, declared “premium holidays” or issued refunds to policyholders.

“The entire industry should do the same on a national scale,” Rome said.

Besides charging hard-to-justify high premiums, health insurers are spending less on patient care.

“Aetna led the industry in finding ways to avoid covering actual health care by shifting medical costs to working families and employers through skimpier coverage and higher deductibles,” Gibson said. “As a result, the share of premiums Aetna spent in the first quarter on medical care (known as its ‘Medical-Loss Ratio’ [MLR]) [was] down 2.2 percentage points from a year earlier.”

Here are Medical-Loss Ratios reported for the first quarter this year for those same five for-profit health insurance corporations: Aetna, 77.9 percent, Cigna, 78.0 percent, Humana, 82.2 percent, UnitedHealth Group, 80.7 percent, and WellPoint, 85.7 percent.

Previously, Blue Cross/Blue Shield’s Medical Loss Ratio financially improved from an 86.1 percent in 2009 to 83.1 percent in 2010, according to Standard & Poor’s. However, Citi research in April reported BC/BS’s MLR in Illinois to be even lower – 72.1 percent; in Oklahoma it’s 73.5 percent and in Texas 64.4 percent.

“Americans are struggling to find work, hold onto their homes and provide for their families,” Rome said. “There’s no reason for insurance companies to wait a year to return premium overpayments that they owe and consumers need.”

Perhaps health insurers are piling up extra cash before the mandated refunds take effect.

Or maybe they’re hedging and hoping conservatives will convince Americans to vote against their own interests and elect people to repeal health care reform.

Will Peoria progressives or health-care providers stand up to the profitable, powerful insurance lobby?

Contact Bill at bill.knight@hotmail.com

So increasingly, listeners seeking voices and tunes they can’t find in central Illinois find them online – made even easier with smartphone technology. People who are tired of Limbaugh or who miss high-power, clear-channel stations of years past (Little Rock’s KAAY-AM 1090 and its late-night “Beaker Street” or WHAM-AM 1180 and Harry Abraham’s even-later “Best of All Possible Worlds” were classics in the ’60s and ‘70s) can find music or opinion they enjoy.

Alas, they give up local news and DJs when they do.

But radio programming today has few local people and little news. Most stations rely on nationally syndicated shows and even on news-talk stations nationwide, 86 percent of news and public-affairs programming isn’t local, according to Steven Waldman’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report, “The Information Needs of Communities.”

At its best, radio was always a fundamentally local medium, mixing immediacy with neighborliness, local color and public importance. News was a staple of radio since 1930, when the NBC-Blue network first started airing Lowell Thomas’ 15-minute weekday newscasts. Radio news grew in audience and influence through World War II, after which local news increased (filling the void where war news had been) and the FCC encouraged the trend in its report “Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees.”

In 1981, however, the FCC deregulated its requirement that 8 percent of AM station programming and 6 percent of FM programming be news and public-affairs programming (such as debates, documentaries and discussions of public interest). The FCC concluded, “We are convinced that absent these guidelines, significant amounts of non-entertainment programming of a variety of types will continue on radio.”

Ha.

It didn’t.

Such public-interest content declined.

Instead, stations cut shows, trimmed staff and lost such ties to listeners – and made a lot of money off using “the public’s airwaves.” Radio companies now make higher gross profits than the average S&P 500 firm, the FCC says, and even in the last few years and its Great Recession, radio station profits have remained above 20 percent, Waldman says.

In recent years, the news/talk format grew dramatically, whether Right-wing blowhards, sports or all-talk. But for radio journalism, public radio is the industry’s reporting core, with more than 1,400 reporters, editors and producers in 21 domestic and 17 foreign bureaus – more than any of the broadcast TV networks, according to Waldman.

Former president of CBS Radio’s Station Group, Mel Karmazin – now CEO of Sirius XM – said, “A lot of these larger companies abandoned what had made these radio stations enormously successful, which was local, local, local.”

Several radio stations that identify themselves as Peoria stations are actually licensed to other communities: WXCL, WCIC and WGLO to Pekin, WPIA to Eureka, WFYR to Elmwood, WHPI to Glasford, WDQX to Morton, WWCT to Bartonville, and WZPN to Farmington.

What a joke.

When was the last time WPIA or WFYR covered city council meetings in Eureka and Elmwood? Or WHPI and WDQX featured issues about public safety in Glasford and Morton? Or WWCT and WZPN addressed schools in Bartonville and Farmington?

No, deregulation let commercial radio ignore seeming obligations to serve the towns they were licensed to, plus cut news staffs or eliminate local news and local voices altogether.

Important local stories are not being covered on local radio; local voices – and a market’s variety – are not being heard.

By 2007, 40 percent of the too-few radio stations that still had news were outsourcing it to journalists working in other communities and sending it to the local station, according to Loyola University professor Lee Hood. Another professor, Andrew Jay Schwartzman of Johns Hopkins University, said, “It [local radio] has largely abdicated its responsibility to generate local news coverage to public radio.”

Meanwhile, satellite radio started in 1997 when American Mobile Radio Corporation (the predecessor of XM Radio) paid $89 million, and Satellite CD Radio (the predecessor of Sirius Radio) paid $83 million to win bids to operate a digital audio radio service in the 2320 to 2345 MHz spectrum band on the condition they not use them for locally originated programming or to seek local advertising revenue (reaffirmed in 2008 when Sirius and XM merged).

Sirius XM subscriptions grew 7.5 percent to 20 million and revenues rose 12 percent to $2.8 billion last year. Arbiton says more than 35 million people listen to Sirius XM in cars.

Now, besides using computers, listeners can use smartphones’ online browsers to listen live to any station they want, too.

“The Internet nullifies one of the fundamental characteristics of terrestrial radio – its boundedness to geography,” Waldman reports. “Up until the digital revolution, a radio station’s reach was physically constrained by the power of its transmitter.”

Although only a small number of Americans (17 percent) reported listening to online radio in 2010, the major shift in their listening choices is significant. Forty percent listened to AM or FM stations streaming online, and 55 percent listened to online-only radio (like Pandora or Slacker Radio). The app for Pandora – a sort of D-I-Y format – is one of the top five for all smartphone platforms.

Radio critic Alan Hoffman described Internet radio’s appeal: “Internet radio explodes the boundaries of radio broadcasting, opening up a universe of stations offering far more diversity. Once you start listening to Internet radio, the limits of AM and FM – a limited number of stations, within a limited geographic area – seem like a throwback.”

The media/financial consultant firm SNL Kagan projects that online radio revenue will rise from $552 million last year to $1 billion in 2015.

Unless…

Local radio could protect its franchises, continue to profit, and serve its communities with local news and local personalities.

Thanks goodness Greg Batton & Dan DiOrio are on WMBD-AM – along with newsman Ed Hammond. The same goes for Randy Rundle and Stacy Campbell on WSWT-FM, John Riley and Nancy Flagg on WPBG-FM, Daryl Scott afternoons on WCBU-FM and Mike Sabol afternoons on WIRL-AM, and Zach Teague’s lively “Solidarity Journal” on WAZU-FM 90.7 at 6:00 a.m. and repeated at 2:00 p.m.

Some air simultaneously, but all are local – and even the most liberal listener would surely prefer hearing Peorians Roger Monroe and Royce Elliott mornings on WOAM-AM than the provocative Stephanie Miller mornings on stephaniemiller.com.

But listeners will be lost if the music is too dull or safe, or if the voices are venomous Sean Hannity types. Audiences will abandon local radio UNLESS stations offer added value and unique content: LOCAL personalities and LOCAL programming listeners cannot get from online sources.

There are smartphone/online alternatives, from Chicago’s WCPT and the fire-breathing progressive Ed Schultz or the erudite intellectual Thom Hartmann, to musician/actor Steve Van Zant’s “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” on Sirius XM (registration required) to more open-source online specialty radio, such as the Grateful Dead on GDRadio.net, Van Morrison on “Van The Man” at Tunein.com, or NRBQ on Grooveshark.com.

Business journalist Peter Goodman said it best, writing, “Radio is under assault – from the sky, from the computer, even from tiny low-powered stations that threaten to sneak in under the radar…. It may still be called radio in ten years, but that familiar world appears to be going through changes that will add up to a revolution in how we get food for our ears.”

Contact Bill at bill.knight@hotmail.com

I’m going to watch to see which companies advertise there, because I won’t patronize companies who, with their commercials, enrich a New York corporation that devalues local journalists and disrespects its viewing audience: us. After I list which advertisers are spending money with WEEK, I’m going to stop watching and stop spending money with those advertisers.

I’ll miss WEEK but labor relations can pit brother against brother; employers or unions that don’t bargain in good faith as required by law inevitably draw others into the fray.

I buy American-made cars, don’t shop at big-box stores that pay workers wages so low they’re eligible for food stamps and Medicaid, and don’t cross picket lines. So unless WEEK’s owners settle the talks, I’ll stop watching it and stop spending at its local advertisers. Others might express displeasure by their viewing and shopping habits – or even complain to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

I’m less angry than frustrated, frankly; forlorn. I appreciate hometown news, whatever the medium, and that’s at risk.

Members of the Peoria Local 1080 of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) at WEEK have been trying to bargain a contract since November. Negotiations stalled but WEEK workers continue to work without a contract. Despite employee concessions to company proposals and AFTRA’s repeated requests to return to the bargaining table, the company hasn’t.

About 30 reporters, photojournalists and producers are represented by AFTRA, and the main issue isn’t wages. It’s the company’s demand that it be able to outsource news content from out of town, which employees see as a threat to their commitment to provide locally reported news to the area.

WEEK general manager Mark DeSantis has said that owners’ proposed contract language on outsourcing would provide “flexibility,” but the station doesn’t plan to use that flexibility. (What would you think if you found a car to buy and a lender said, “By the way, the loan contract has a clause that you might be required to make payments in gold or lose your house, but don’t worry. We have no intention of doing that”?)

WEEK is owned by Silver Point Capital, a $6 billion private hedge fund based in Greenwich, Ct., run by two ex-Goldman Sachs bigwigs, Robert O’Shea and Edward Mulé. It’s one of the most profitable investment firms in the country.

WEEK workers have leafleted, held subtle on-air demonstrations (wearing black during a newscast), gathered thousands of signatures on a petition to owners, and rallied with supporters as varied as the NAACP’s Don Jackson and the UAW’s Dave Chapman, and State Sen. Dave Koehler and Peoria Chiefs owner Pete Vonachen – all to no avail.

Many local TV stations are profitable, according to the National Association of Broadcasters, which finds that in 2009 a local TV station with average revenues and cash flow would have had a cash-flow margin of 23 percent of revenues and a national average of $1.1 million in pre-tax profits, “and local TV news had a strong year in 2010,” according to Steven Waldman in a new FCC report, “The Information Needs of Communities (online at:

http://transition.fcc.gov/osp/inc-report/The Information Needs of Communities.pdf).

Sadly, outsourcing happens. Independent News Network in Davenport produces newscasts intended to seem local for a dozen markets, including Springfield, Mo., and Waterloo, Iowa. Its boss concedes that it does no investigative, enterprise or beat reporting. WEEK owners tried to outsource local weather from Fort Wayne, Ind., but the experiment was an embarrassment – and violated the previous contract, according to an arbitrator.

Also, consolidation happens. WEEK now operates WHOI and WAOE (Nexstar operates WMBD and WYZZ). The Communications Workers of America union and Media Council Hawaii have complained to the FCC about markets where “shared services agreements” result in layoffs and decreasing diversity, and a study released June 22 by a nonpartisan media reform group – Free Press’s “Save The News” project – scolds such “covert consolidation” as jeopardizing “competition, diversity and localism.

“We cannot afford to let media companies use covert consolidation to squat on our public airwaves,” said Free Press program coordinator Libby Reinish. “The news and information needs of our communities cannot be met when photocopy news is allowed to stand in for real news in the public interest.

“The FCC should actively investigate … to protect and promote localism – so that people can get the news and information they need,” she added.

Some stations, such as Kansas City’s KSMO-TV 62 (owned by the big Meredith media company) expanded local programming. It now features weekly shows on local arts and the Kansas City Zoo, an English-language show targeting Hispanic viewers, and more than 70 live telecasts from local sporting events.“Regulators pay attention to how many ‘voices’ serve a media market,” wrote Aaron Barnhart in the Kansas City Star. “To make Uncle Sam happy, Meredith agreed to add more voices to KSMO.”

Voices are part of the public interest standard a station must follow – to serve the educational and information needs of its market and promote localism, according to attorney Erwin Krasnow.

“Policymakers view broadcast television primarily as a local service,” he wrote. “The station itself must be operated as if owned by the public. It is as if people of a community should own a station and turn it over to the best man in sight with this injunction: ‘Manage this station in our interest’.”

Congress and the courts have repeatedly mandated that licensees serve as “public trustees.”

The legal principle is that stations use the public’s airwaves, so there’s an explicit exchange expected for granting companies a free license to use the broadcast spectrum.

“The broadcasting privilege will not be a right of selfishness,” said Maine Republican Congressman Wallace White in the 1920s. “It will rest upon an assurance of public interest to be served.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 stated, “It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.”

Local is valued over distant, too. The FCC’s 1946 “Blue Book” lists four basic components for measuring public-interest performance of licensees requesting renewal, including “live local programs.” The FCC’s 1960 “Programming Policy Statement” lists 14 major elements necessary to the public interest, including local self-expression, local talent and news programs.

In the 1980s, the broadcast industry got more “flexibility” and deregulation from a business-cozy government, which had never been very active as a watchdog. (In some 75 years, the FCC has granted more than 100,000 license renewals. Four times the FCC denied a renewal application because a station failed to meet public-interest obligations, most recently in San Diego in 1980, when a radio outfit was found to have aired almost no news, public affairs or public-service programming. Still, citizens can object; there were 224 challenges against 1,772 TV stations requesting renewal between 2004 and 2007.)

In 1992 (after de-regulation started), Congress declared, “A primary objective and benefit of our nation’s system of regulation of television broadcasting is the local origination of programming.”

For its part, AFTRA has not called for a station or advertiser boycott.

“AFTRA is not taking economic action against the company and is not calling for a boycott of WEEK/WHOI at this time,” commented newscaster and AFTRA Local president Garry Moore. “It is still our hope that we reach a fair and equitable contract with the stations.”

Consumer boycotts are OK for individuals or other groups to pursue, and it can be as appropriate and effective as the picket line or “do not patronize” sign have been.

Local advertisers spending money with a company that doesn’t value its employees or viewers don’t deserve my business. So I won’t go to those food stores or banks, restaurants or retailers. It’s a personal choice in a still-somewhat free country where we’re not obligated to shop everywhere a corporation wants. If advertisers share a fraction of the discomfort workers feel, maybe they’ll talk some sense into station owners.

To view the “Save The News” interactive map, go to www.savethenews.org/changethechannels; to read the study, go to:

www.savethenews.org/sites/savethenews.org/files/Final%20Outsourcing%20the%20News.pdf

Contact Bill at:

bill.knight@hotmail.com

A bill to allow smoking in casinos passed the House in April, 62-52, and, as of press time, was stalled in the Senate.

The whole idea could ignore “casino casualties” two ways: public health, of course, but also pathological gamblers.

It isn’t much different than letting motorists who are probably going to hurt themselves and others have drivers licenses anyway – as long as they pay the state hefty fees and fines.

Senate sponsor Martin Sandoval (D-Cicero) in mid-May held off calling the bill for a vote in the Senate, where Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) is expected to try to stub out the bill (HB1965). It would let casinos have smoking rooms – if neighboring states’ casinos allow smoking. Supporters point out that Illinois casinos have been losing money to gambling joints in Iowa, Indiana and Missouri because of Illinois’ ban, which took effect in 2008.

Meanwhile, a UCLA study published in the Journal of Gambling Studies, surveyed casino gamblers to assess habits and lifestyles, and it indicates 69.7% of casino gamblers are at-risk gamblers, problem gamblers, or pathological gamblers. It also shows that self-identified smokers are more likely to be problem or pathological gamblers than non-smokers. (Interestingly, there was no corresponding association with alcohol use.)

The real background of the measure is the loss of such troubled gamblers – and their money – to other states, the recreational migration of people who smoke and gamble to excess – folks who gaming corporations and Illinois state government are not too proud to exploit in tough economic times.

Casinos did show a decline in business since the ban went into effect, according to the Illinois Gaming Board (IGB). But operators, lobbyists and some legislators seem to blame casinos’ drop in receipts exclusively on the smoking ban, a simplistic conclusion.

The IGB reports that the state’s nine casinos’ gross receipts fell 20.9% from 2007 to 2008, when the smoking ban – and the Great Recession – started. Another economic indicator is that casino admissions last year were down 16% from 2007, although gross receipts during the same time fell 30%. So people were showing up but spending less – like everyone else.

The Par-A-Dice showed a financial improvement in 2010 (+0.2%), but it’s still down about 13% from 2007, the IGB says. Par-A-Dice’s owner, Boyd Gaming (the fifth largest U.S. gaming company), had a big loss in 2008 ($223 million), but showed healthy net incomes in 2009 ($19.5 million) and 2010 ($15.6 million). Also, since Boyd has 17 properties in six states and some joint projects, it’s difficult to connect one state’s smoking law with corporate financials.

“We continue to think that 2011 consensus EBITDA [Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization] is too high due to less-than-inspiring results from the Las Vegas locals market,” J.P. Morgan analyst Joseph Greff wrote, quoted in The Street.com. “Overall, we view Boyd’s Las Vegas locals markets as the critical driver of its equity value, and this is a market that will endure tough sledding.”

The key for Boyd will be its ability to continue to reduce costs and allow for significant flow through on marginal revenue, Wells Fargo analyst Carlo Santarelli said, The Street.com reported.

In Illinois, restaurants and bars saw improvements, according to the state Department of Revenue – restaurants had a 1% gain in 2008, a 2% decline along with the financial meltdown in 2009, and a 2% jump last year. Bars’ business slipped in 2008 and 2009 (-1% and -0.7%), but gained 10% in 2010. Overall, restaurants are up 1% since the ban was enacted and the economy tanked, and bars are up 8% over the same period.

But legislators such as State Rep. Dan Burke (D-Chicago) say that the smoking ban hurts casinos and costs the state money because gamblers are going elsewhere to play. Since most pathological gamblers smoke, letting them smoke could lure them back, it’s assumed.

The state’s share of taxes from casinos fell 46% between 2007 and 2010, from $718.2 million to $383.5 million, and local governments’ share was down 28.6%, from $115.7 million to $82.6 million. But what state or host market would reject millions – any millions? Springfield seems to have relied too heavily on gambling and not enough on other revenue streams (such as taxes), spending cuts or both.

“We have limited opportunities to raise new revenues,” Burke said. “Why not take advantage of what we have at our disposal?”

Letting casino customers smoke in Illinois would mean “the money would start flowing,” he said.

Conducted by UCLA’s Gambling Studies Program, the study said, “Of those surveyed on site, 30.3% were classified as non-problem gamblers, 29.2% were at-risk gamblers, 10.7% were problem gamblers, and 29.8% were pathological gamblers.

“Our data support the notion of higher frequency of gambling problems among casino patrons.”

Sandoval said he thinks he can get enough bipartisan support to go to the full Senate, but there’s significant opposition, from Cullerton to Gov. Pat Quinn.

Casinos’ nonstop complaining about following state laws everyone else does is tiresome. Illinois changed laws to accommodate gambling interests, and the legislature has repeatedly made it easier for the gaming industry to take money from our neighbors – some of whom have gambling problems.

Illinois’ Clean Indoor Air Act protects Illinois workers and customers, including at casinos.

This should be a public health issue, not a money issue, and the legislature shouldn’t entice pathological gamblers who smoke simply to bring in more money.

Would the General Assembly authorize people prone to violence the convenience of carrying firearms if there were lucrative license fees involved?

Sometimes you wonder.

Contact Bill at: bill.knight@hotmail.com

There are hints in U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s House plan, which claims to cut $4 trillion from federal spending over the next decade by sacrificing programs (two-thirds of which come from programs serving people of limited means). But the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says “by the end of the 10-year budget window, public debt will actually be higher than it would be if the GOP just did nothing.” Further, fact-checking by theWashington Post found Ryan’s proposal has “dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures.” Most sobering, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimates the Republican budget plan would cost Americans 1.7 million jobs by 2014 – with 900,000 jobs lost next year. The progressive Economic Policy Institute is more pessimistic, predicting a loss of 2.2 million jobs in two years.

In mid-April, the House of Representatives passed this assault on vital programs, including Medicare, to pay for massive giveaways to millionaires – while doing almost nothing to balance the budget. The bill was passed without even a single Democratic vote. U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Peoria) voted for the measure.

Of course, a budget that’s passed the House isn’t law. But the danger is that the Senate will try to compromise in a way that meets Tea Party-swayed Republicans halfway. Why? Ryan (and Schock and Bobby Schilling [R-Rock Island] and 235 other House Republicans) would change Medicare so seniors would receive vouchers to help buy private insurance, vouchers that eventually would lose value as health-care costs increase. They’d fundamentally change or gut popular government services, such as Medicaid (half of which spending goes to long-term care for the aged), food stamps, school lunches and even open-government initiatives such as USASpending.gov. That way, Ryan, Schock and the rest can continue 30 years of tax breaks for the wealthy – which were never affordable or effective.

In Peoria County, the U.S. Government spent $1,740,319,663 in Fiscal Year 2009, according to the Census Bureau’s posting of the Consolidated Federal Funds Report. That’s $4.7 million per day in Peoria County – $195,833 per hour. Some Tea Partiers might argue that that’s proof of waste – unless they or someone they know is affected, of course.

Those numbers include more than $474 million in Social Security retirement, disability and survivors payments, and about $399 million in Medicare hospital, supplementary and drug payments. There’s $9.3 million in school lunch and the food for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) programs, and $30 million for highway construction.

Also, an additional $2 billion is spent in Peoria County for items listed as defense spending, direct loans and insurance, which includes $344 million in defense spending, $50 million in student loans, $2.5 million in small business loans, and $158 million in crop and flood insurance. Add the $1.7 billion in direct expenditures and the $2 billion in defense and other federal assistance, and the total is $3.8 billion ($3,835,304,606, to be exact). Put another way, Peoria County has a population of 186,494 people, so the federal government spends $20,565.29 per capita annually here.

Some Tea Party folks might say, “Give ME $20,000 and I’ll make do.” But would the elderly make do? Would highways be built? Would youngsters get lunch at schools? Would farmers cope with floods or worse?

“We can’t just think of ourselves,” President Obama said. “We have to think about the country. We have to think about our fellow citizens with whom we share a community.”

There is a deficit and a debt. The current budget (Fiscal Year 2011) spends about $3.5 trillion and receives $2 trillion in tax revenues. The difference of $1.5 trillion ($1,500 billion) is this year’s deficit. The U.S. Treasury must borrow that from bondholders, even foreign lenders. The recent compromise that cut spending $38 billion was much ado about nothing. It reduces this year’s deficit from $1,500 billion to $1,462 billion: big deal.

In Washington, politicians claim to be worried about deficits but conveniently forget why they happened. Most recently, the Great Recession increased unemployment and, therefore, cut income tax receipts, and the Bush and Obama administrations both borrowed more to bail out banks and Wall Street. (Politicians are inadvertently or intentionally misreading public opinion about the issue. Most polling shows more concern with jobs creation than the deficit. In March, a CBS News Poll found that 51% of the country finds the economy/jobs as the most important problem, compared with 7% for the deficit/debt.)

A third contributor to the deficit/debt dates to the 1980s: Giving tax breaks to wealthy individuals or corporations – the benefactors of elected officials. The national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan, and tripled again under George W. Bush. And now the GOP is worried – and still wants to repeat past policy errors

In 1981, the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) said, “The big tax cut was too big, and there is now no revenue growth left. And so the politics of the coming decade risk becoming an endless, joyless, pointless squabble about how big the budget cuts must be in order that the budget deficit not be even bigger.”

So concern about the deficit should concede that creating more loopholes for taxpayers who can afford to share the cost of government programs is harmful, volunteer to share any sacrifices made (again, billions is spent in Peoria County), and consider that a jobs program would make unemployed Americans taxpayers and consumers again.

“The underlying problem isn’t the budget deficit,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently wrote. “It’s that so much income and wealth are going to the top that most Americans don’t have the purchasing power to sustain a strong recovery.”

Contact Bill at bill.knight@hotmail.com

Gail Mazur: “Baseball holds so much of the past, pulls me back to it each year, to the soothing unclocked unrolling of the innings, to the sound of an announcer through an open car, the sweet attenuations of late summer afternoons. The sound of cleats on an asphalt drive, a bat cracking a ball, delirious cheers call out to surprise me in easy conversation with strangers in spring.”

Stanley Cohen:  “Baseball, almost alone among our sports, traffics unashamedly and gloriously in nostalgia, for only baseball understands time and treats it with respect. The history of other sports seems to begin anew with each generation, but baseball, that wondrous myth of twentieth century America, gets passed on like an inheritance.

Bill Veeck: “Destiny has become less manageable, and consequently life has become …. more difficult. Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very un-orderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can’t get you off.”

Bob Feller: “Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is.”

Buck O’Neil: “A guy [can] hit the ball out of the ballpark, or a home run to win a game, and that same guy can come up tomorrow in that situation and miss the ball and lose the ball game. It can bring you up here but don’t get too damn cocky because tomorrow it can bring you down there. You know there always will be a tomorrow.”

Tom Wicker: “The game has changed, but it’s not fundamentally different. All the old symmetry is there – the innings and outs in their orderly multiples of threes, the foul lines radiating out to the stands, the diamond in its classic dimensions Astroturf, designated hitters, Disneyland scoreboards, and Batting Glove Day can’t change all that.”

Stan Musial: “Baseball, perhaps preeminent among American institutions, fulfills this simple truth: The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Roger Angell: “Within the ballpark, time moves differently, marked by no clock, the unique, unchangeable feature of baseball — why this sport, for all the enormous changes it has undergone remains somehow rustic. This is the way the game was played in our youth and in our fathers’ youth. Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.”

Thomas Wolfe: “One reason I have always loved baseball so much is that it has been not merely ‘the great national game,’ but a part of our lives, of the thing that is our own, the million memories of America. Almost everything I know about spring is in it — the first leaf, the maple tree, the grass upon your hands and knees, the coming into flower of April. And is there anything that can tell more about an American summer than the smell of the wooden bleachers in a small town baseball park, that resinous, sultry and exciting smell of old dry wood.”

Tristram Potter Coffin: “Sportswriters argue about whether baseball is the national game or not. It doesn’t matter. The father shoving a glove and bat into the crib of his first son is a cliché simply because it symbolizes something typical about American hopes and fears.”

Doris Kearns Goodwin: “If I close my eyes against the sun, all at once I am back at Ebbets Field, a young girl in the presence of my father, watching players of my youth on the grassy field below. There is magic in this moment, for when I open my eyes and see my sons in the place where my father once sat, I feel an invisible bond between our three generations, an anchor of loyalty linking my sons to the grandfather whose face they never saw but whose person they have already come to know through this most timeless of all sports, the game of baseball.”

Donald Hall: “My father and I played catch as I grew up. Like so much else between fathers and sons, playing catch was tender and tense at the same time. Baseball is the generations, looping backward forever with a million apparitions of sticks and balls, cricket and rounders, and games the Iroquois played. Baseball is fathers and sons playing catch, lazy and murderous, wild and controlled, the profound archaic song of birth, growth, age and death. The diamond encloses what we are.”

Stan Isaacs: “I don’t love baseball. I don’t love most of today’s players. I don’t love the owners. I do love, however, the baseball that is in the heads of baseball fans. I love the dreams of glory of 10 year olds, the reminiscences of 70 year olds. The greatest baseball arena is in our heads.”

Finally, the late novelist Robert B. Parker: “Baseball is the most important thing in life that doesn’t matter.”

Contact Bill at: bill.knight@hotmail.com