Student government whacks student newspaper’s funding

Every generation of secrecy-minded bureaucrats needs a breeding ground, a dark, dank place where they can perfect the ability to hide their machinations behind closed doors and retaliate against those who believe sunlight should trump darkness.

One such place, it seems, is the student government association at Montclair State University. Last week, it froze the funding it provides to The Montclarion because the student newspaper had the temerity to hire a lawyer to help it force the association to stop regularly holding closed meetings, a possible violation of New Jersey’s open-meetings law.

Karl de Vries, editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper, said that the student government association also demanded that, according to the Associated Press, the paper “turn over correspondence between the newspaper and a lawyer The Montclarion had previously retained to challenge the student government’s practice of closing meetings to the public.”

Wednesday, amid a furor of criticism including statements from the nation’s principal professional associations of journalists, the student government association relented and temporarily restored the paper’s funding for 30 days.

The association should never have denied the paper its funding in the first place.

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I am data; politicians micro-target me to get elected

I earn between $50,000 and $75,000 a year. I have three degrees. I teach at a small Catholic liberal arts university. I own several cameras. I have two vehicles, one four-wheel-drive, the other high-mileage. I belong to two environmental organizations. I commute more than 10 miles to work. I contribute to three non-profit organizations. I am single. I buy clothes from Lands’ End and L.L. Bean. I collect Rotring pens and pencils. I play guitar and piano. I read science and detective fiction, purchased mostly from Barnes & Noble and Amazon. I have two iPods, one computer and two TVs. I have several credit cards. I drink beer. I once owned a handgun. I have a mortgage. I have voted since 1964 as an Independent or Democrat.

To our presidential candidates, I am not Denny Wilkins, an individual human being: I am a set of data points, one of about 168 million sets of data points collected by both the Democratic and Republican national committees. They are interested in me only because I am an eligible voter. Democratic and Republican presidential candidates will base their direct-mail, push-poll, robo-call and volunteers-knocking-on-my-door messages on computerized analyses of me as data. I will be micro-targeted by candidates’ campaign organizations for the sole purpose of producing a vote for a candidate.

Hide your bong: New York to tax illegal drug sales

The governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer, has decided to raise $13 million for his proposed $124.3 billion budget by requiring your local purveyors of illegal drugs to affix state tax stamps to your nickel bag of horse or the fixings for your evening speedball.

His administration says the program will enhance enforcement and tracking of illegal drug sales. Riiight. That surly-looking fellow slouching on the street corner each night will be sure to run right down to the state Department of Taxation and Finance to buy those tax stamps. Surely that will make law enforcement happy, eh? Good for the fuzz to know who’s selling the fuel for your bong, right?

LA Times: Another editor out for refusing to make budget cuts

Today I’d hate to be the managing editor of The Los Angeles Times, John M. Arthur, 60, or its innovation editor, Russ Stanton, 49. That’s because rumor has it they’re on the short list to be the next top editor at one of the nation’s finest newspapers.

If named, this is what publisher David Hiller will expect of either: Cut The Times’ approximately $120 million budget by 1 percent. That would mean firing people. If either wishes to keep that job, they’d better do it — because Hiller fired the previous two editors who refused to make cuts he demanded.

Want a nice new top job? Quit your current job to seek it

Let’s say I want a new job. I’m not rich or powerful, so my employer is hardly likely to allow me to take a few weeks off — let alone more than a year — to search for a new job. My employer expects me to do my job. If I want to look for a new job, I’ll have to do it on my own time — and probably secretly.

At the moment, there’s a gaggle of politicians who have jobs — important jobs — who are running around the country looking for a new job. And none of their current employers seems to be complaining all that loudly. They should be.

I am one such indignant employer. I’m irritated that the woman I hired to do a job for me — be an fully effective senator for the state of New York — is too busy seeking a new job that she’s falling down on her current job.

This isn’t a complaint solely about Sen. Hillary Clinton. Accompanying her on the campaign trail are other officeholders seeking a new job while supposedly working to improve the lot in life of the people who hired them to perform competently in their current jobs.

I-35W bridge downed by design flaw; infrastructure issues fade from headlines

Buried inside the nation’s news pages — lost among the big takeout stories about which presidential candidate said what to whom with what insulting effect, President Bush’s confusing trip to the Middle East, and surge and resurgence in Iraq and Afghanistan — was the reason 13 people died and 100 were injured when the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed last year.

A weakness built into that bridge went undetected for 40 years because it involved a part so basic that highway departments and bridge contractors seldom considered it even when they reanalyzed a bridge’s capacity, experts said Tuesday.

The flaw: Undersized gusset plates. So, case closed? It wasn’t a portentous sign of a failing national infrastructure after all? Just a sad, tragic miscalculation by an engineer four decades ago?

Quotabull

You know, America is probably wondering why, why do you care? And one of the reasons we care about the suffering in Sudan is because we care about the human condition all across the face of the earth. And we fully understand that when people suffer, it is in our interest to help. And we also understand that when people suffer it makes it more likely that some may turn to the ideology of those who use murder as a weapon. So it’s in our national security interest and it’s in our — in the interest of our conscience to confront this, what we have called a genocide.

— President Bush at a Jan. 17 press briefing after meeting with Rich Williamson, U.S. special envoy to Sudan.

Kucinich a loser, NBC unfairly decides

NBC, in its infinite political wisdom, has declared that Democrat Dennis Kucinich should not be exposed to the public as a candidate for the presidency of the United States. While he may be qualified, he is not viable, NBC has summarily declared.

Only two days ago NBC had invited Rep. Kucinich to take part in the network’s Jan. 15 debate co-hosted by the Nevada Democratic Party. But, according to today’s The Hill, NBC “disinvited” him.

Quotabull

Maybe I have liberated us to actually let women be human beings in public. … There was just a really wonderful moment there when, you know, people I think got a sense of why I do what I do.

— Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a Jan. 9 interview with CNN.

It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you

— lyrics to “It’s My Party” sung by Leslie Gore, 1963.

John Edwards and his bundlers of joy

On Dec. 30, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards stood up at a “town hall” meeting in Boone, Iowa, and said: “To get real change, we need a president who will stand up against the big corporations and powerful interests who control Washington.”

That’s a bold claim. And his campaign Web site proclaims: “John Edwards is the ONLY candidate who has never taken a dime from PACs or Washington lobbyists ever.” In October, Sen. Edwards, labeling fellow candidate Hillary Clinton “the poster child for what’s wrong in American politics today,” began positioning himself as the candidate who could and would clean up campaign finance. He said he would expand public campaign financing and prohibit lobbyists from being campaign “bundlers.” But voters should measure actions against words.