Don't tax you, don't tax me. . . .

To read the comments on newspaper stories is to understand why the Founding Fathers gave us a representative democracy, not a direct one.

Basically, Americans always want something for nothing. They also think you don't have to spend money to make money. And, of course, a people hooked on iPhones, three cars in the driveway, plasma TVs and credit-card debt can't help but lecture city fathers about living within one's means.

So, when the Omaha World-Herald reported Saturday that the city is facing another $11 million shortfall next fiscal year, that the city budget already has been cut to the bone and that something drastic will have to be done, folks were quick to denounce being "taxed to death." Well, that and the new downtown baseball stadium.

THIS COMMENT is pretty typical:

What was the city thinking of when they approved the new stadium, the Qwest center,and annexing Elkhorn. Obviously the city of Omaha can't afford these. We are not a big city like Chicago, or New York. Omaha is just a little hick city in Nebraska. Why are we trying to be like the big guys. We didn't need a new stadium. Rosenblatt has served well over the years, and should have been maintained all along. We have the Civic Auditorium and that should have been sufficient. Also it cost a lot more for city services out west in Elkhorn. They should have been left alone, providing their own services. Plus the services they now receive and not near as good as Elkhorn was providing. I also disagree that the nation should mandate the update of sewer systems, however I know that is out of Omaha's control. Mayor Fahey did a lot of damage to the city's financial picture, and it seems as if Jim Suttle is not doing any better so far. We can't afford these things and now us taxpayers are going to have to pay. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people and businesses move out of Omaha, because just like us, we can' afford the high taxes.

UNSUPRISINGLY, the combox warriors' bile seems not to be exactly reality-based. Here, from the World-Herald, is the problem Omaha actually faces:

Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle met with business leaders Friday to outline possible tax hikes — including new taxes on entertainment and workers — as ways to resolve the city's budget crisis.

While Suttle didn't say he had decided in favor of any tax increase, his message was that Omaha would be hard-pressed to avoid one at a time of slumping revenues.

Sales tax revenues this year are expected to drop for the first time. Meanwhile, the property tax base is not growing significantly. Sales and property taxes are the city's main revenue sources.

As a result, the city already is cutting $14 million from the current budget, although a large portion of that depends on a wage freeze that has yet to be negotiated with the city's unions.

For 2010, when the revenue slump is expected to continue, city officials are projecting an $11 million shortfall in the amount needed to maintain city services.

Suttle is considering additional spending cuts that would close the gap, including ending yard waste pickup, closing three libraries and allowing police staffing to shrink by not hiring new recruits.

But Suttle is also looking at raising revenue in 2010 with one of the following: higher property taxes; a new 2 percent tax on entertainment, including restaurants and bars; and an occupation tax that would collect $2 a month from people who work in Omaha and an equal amount from their employers.

Both of the two new taxes would affect not only Omaha city residents but also people who come into the city to work, dine or catch a movie.

Suttle has not decided that higher taxes are necessary, said spokesman Ron Gerard. But the mayor is concerned that current revenue may not be adequate to fund city services over the long run.

“We're at the edge of a cliff, and we don't want to fall off,” Gerard said.

(snip)

Suttle outlined the two new taxes that the city could impose, each raising about $10 million a year. Both have been controversial in the past.

— The entertainment tax was proposed in 2007 as a way to finance the city's new downtown baseball stadium. It was dropped amid heated opposition from the restaurant industry. If Suttle revives the idea, he would need City Council approval.

— The occupation tax on employees has actually been on the city's books since 1983, when it was passed as a way to balance the budget in an earlier shortfall. But sales tax revenue rose, and the tax was never implemented.

WANT TO MAKE the city's financial problems a lot worse in a few years? Don't build the new stadium, and let the NCAA use the breach of contract to move the College World Series to another city -- one with a shiny new stadium. See $41 million in annual economic activity and more than $2 million in annual tax revenue disappear.

I wonder how much more taxes would have to be raised to make up for that? Alternatively, how much more draconian would cuts in city services have to be to fill the even wider budget gap?

Likewise, for the want of Joe Omaha paying an extra $42 in property tax for a $100,000 house or an extra $24 annual occupation tax, how much are Omahans really willing to sacrifice in quality of life?

Do they really want to live in a city even more underpoliced than it is now? Do they really want to live in a city that's closing public libraries? Or has noticeably rattier parks and public facilities?

Do they really look forward to living in a town without yard-waste collection?

HERE'S A reality check for you: Having your yard waste hauled off by a private contractor will cost you a lot more than $24 . . . and probably more than $42.

Hauling it to the dump yourself will set you back, too. And burning it in the back yard will get you a visit from the fire department -- assuming it can get there before you burn the neighborhood down, you idiot -- and an illegal-burning citation.

And how much is it worth to you to have the cops actually show up when you need them?

How much do you think the quality-of-life losses you're willing to set in motion for fear of having a decade of property-tax cuts rolled back a bit are worth to companies considering opening up shop (and creating jobs) in Omaha?

I'VE LIVED places with too much blight, not enough libraries and more crime than cops. You don't want to go there. Coincidentally, neither did companies that could have created lots of well-paying jobs.

Listen, it's not complicated.

We live in a pretty wealthy area of an extremely wealthy country. Times are tough, tax revenues are off, and the city has cut the budget close to the bone. Those are the plain facts.

If you value the city Omaha has become, and if you value not living in a s***hole, it's time to suck it up and do what needs to be done. Even $10 more in city taxes a month won't kill you -- it just won't.

Leave the third car in the driveway, cut back on your pay-per-view habit, tell Junior he has to choose between soccer and taekwondo, then just suck it the hell up.

Omaha is a great city. That would be a hell of a thing to waste.

3 Chords & the Truth: Ride, Captain, ride!

I think this just might sum up this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth quite nicely:

Ride, Captain, ride upon your mystery ship,
Be amazed at the friends you have here on your trip,
Ride, Captain, ride upon your mystery ship,
On your way to a world that others might have missed. . . .

THAT, AT ITS HEART, is what the Big Show is all about. 3 Chords & the Truth is a mystery ship on a mystery trip -- a musical voyage of discovery on the sea of life. It's not neat, and it doesn't fit into prefab categories.

Then again, neither does life.

You're never quite sure what you'll get from 3 Chords & the Truth. Just like life.

But you know it's going to be an interesting ride, and you're on board with all your friends. The ship is leaving from Port Internet at your convenience -- get on board and let's hear what there is to hear out there in this great big ol' world.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Jesus is straight outta Compton

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I turned on the network news tonight and found Jesus.

All my churchy friends will think this odd, but it's true nevertheless. It seems Christ hit a rough patch for a while and got messed up with blow, but he's clean now and still hanging in there in Compton, that hardest scrabble of Los Angeles suburbs.

HE'S COACHING Little League baseball in the 'hood, Jesus is. Resurrected an abandoned ball field, too, so the kids would have a place to play.

And, by extension, Christ is the father a bunch of these Little Leaguers never had. He knows the value of a good stepfather.

What up? Jesus is. Jesus is straight outta Compton . . . living in his car -- never was much on real estate, don't cha know? -- and watching the Dodgers on a little bitty TV. Watch more here.

Quo vadis, Domine?

Dear Diary: Quo vadis, Domine?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.

TUESDAY, NOV. 12, 2002

Dear Diary,

The other week in youth group, a couple of Catholic-school girls (I think they were Catholic-school lobotomized) were expressing grave doubts about the Real Presence. The next thing I knew, I was tracing the prefigurement of the Paschal sacrifice -- and the logic of consuming that sacrifice in a meal -- from the Last Supper to John 6:56 and all the way through the Old Testament from the Passover back to Abraham, Isaac and the ram caught in the brush.

And then I told one of the girls, "Don't take my word for it. Look it up for yourself."

Funny thing is, I knew all that was in my brain already, but I never really systematically looked at the Eucharist past the prefigurement in the Passover. Never.

I think the message was meant for me more than the unbelieving teen-ager: "You're not leaving the Catholic Church. You damn well can't leave the church."

Still . . . the lunacy just doesn't let up. In the Catholic Church or at Pope FM -- where for the first time I'm starting to fear a catastrophic spiral into oblivion. And feel that, no matter how much I might like to see the SOB crash and burn, I have to find a way to gently steer Manic Don away from a self-immolation that could incinerate EVERYTHING and everyone.

THE PROBLEM at Pope FM is pride and delusions of grandeur -- that the only way to serve the Lord and evangelize, evangelize, evangelize the universe into becoming the "right" kind of Catholics is to become some sort of corporate, Papist media empire of the upper Midwest. Folks are getting big heads, and the medium is becoming the message.

Unfortunately, actually taking care of business and simply being present to suffering souls is so mundane. No, what we want is a kind of Hollywood Catholicism, where it's so much more important to look good than be good. The rub, however, is that you live in a radio Hooterville, the phone is at the top of a utility pole and the carpenter who built your new studios is a woman named Ralph.

And it's all starting to fall apart.

Somehow, I'm getting past some of my anger at the whole mess and starting to feel like I just can't walk away from the cross here. Kind of a personal "Quo vadis, Domine?" moment.

OH, DID I mention our contractor did such a lousy job -- and that warnings from our engineers were so completely ignored -- that our new studios are anything but soundproof? In radio, that's a VERY bad thing. They'll be next to useless, and the work of the station will be significantly crippled.

All for the low, low cost of $100 grand or so. Perfect.

The Revolution will not be tweeted

Ultimately, the Revolution will not be tweeted.

That's because even though much has been made of the use of Twitter -- and Facebook -- as a means of communication and organization in the ongoing Iranian election uprising, it's Twitter's same ubiquitous and open nature that can allow the Empire to strike back. Or the theocracy of goons, as the case may be.

IN OTHER WORDS, if I'm looking in and the American media is looking in, you know that the Iranian government is looking in, too. And it is, as reported on MSNBC:

Social media’s short messages aren’t as comprehensive as an Associated Press report, and the photos aren’t magazine quality. And while much of the material could not be independently verified, at least it was real-time — for many incidents, it was the only news available.

Tuesday afternoon, messages from people claiming to be witnesses to the demonstrations flowed into Twitter at the rate of hundreds a minute. Posts would flood in, only to slow to a trickle for a minute or two as Iranian censors sought to stanch the flow of information. Then posts would resume in a torrent as users found ways around the censorship.

(snip)

One Twitter user called the communications battle “cyberwarfare at its best,” and there were unconfirmed reports that Iranian security forces were fighting back by creating their own Twitter accounts to spread their version of events.

I'D BE SURPRISED if public relations -- to put it mildly -- were the only use Iranian security forces were making of Twitter and Facebook.

If ordinary Iranians can spread information via tweets, the government likewise can spread misinformation the same way. It can tweet to meet at such and so place for a demonstration, thus leading people into an ambush and making evil use of sites such as Anonymous in Iran to disguise its efforts.

The site says it's screening out tweets from Iranian government IP addresses, but do you really think the Ahmadinejad regime is dumb enough to be using official IP addresses?

If the Iranians want to throw themselves a proper revolution -- or run a proper resistance -- I imagine they're just going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. They'll have to organize in cells, devise a proper code for secret communications via open sources . . . then hit the bloody bastards where they ain't expecting it.

Dear Diary: I inhabit M*A*S*H . . . as told to O'Connor . . . by Fellini

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 6, 2002

Dear Diary,

Sometimes I think I inhabit a Midwestern sequel to A Confederacy of Dunces. Other times, I think it's Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins.

Today, I'm pretty sure I inhabit a revival of M*A*S*H. I am Hawkeye Pierce, and my new program director at Pope FM is a fat Frank Burns.

Manic Don is 35, ex-Coast Guard and has never gotten over it. He doesn't know jack excrement about radio but tries to act like he's God's gift to the airwaves.

He writes everything in military lingo, puts all times on the 24-hour clock, asks everyone whether everything's "5-by-5," and organizes (to use the term loosely) a tiny station staff like it's the Pacific Command.

He also specializes in trying to downplay his own glaring failures by trying to make others look worse.

And today he ordered me to reduce the time I spend on production work by 75 percent. All the while he desperately tries to foist the more tedious and mundane parts of his job description off on others (read: "me") . . . by fiat.

I called him on that once, in a very Southern manner (despite the fact that he has 100 pounds on me). Within two days, I got a new job description allowing him to do just that.

Two words: Captain Queeg. Furthermore, I refuse to tell the SOB what I did with his @#$!* strawberries.

I've been trying to hold on until he crashes and burns, but I don't know whether that will be possible. OK, Pope FM is M*A*S*H as written by Flannery O'Connor based on a storyline by Fellini.

I keep trying to remember that I once loved my job, and that it was supposed to be about Jesus. It sure as hell doesn't look like Jesus now. Egos, money and the general dysfunction in every aspect of Catholic life today have seen to that.

I'm damned good at what I do. Damned good. I thought I had found my calling in Catholic radio.

I guess I was wrong. Again.

-- Hawkeye Pierce

When television was . . . analog

Dear Diary: The post 'Pledge-a-Thon' post

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another in the occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago from the front lines of Catholic radio -- Pope FM.

SATURDAY, OCT. 26, 2002

Dear Diary,

The "Pledge-a-Thon" ended last night, raising roughly half of our stated goal of $250,000. Still, it was more money than we raised during the on-air portions of any previous Pledge-a-Thon.

I don't know what this means for the future at Pope FM, because God seems to be driving this situation like a Noo Yawk cabbie drives from La Guardia to midtown Manhattan when he's got a fare from Peoria in the car . . . by absolutely the most "direct" (heh) route possible.

All I do know is that I am absolutely, positively wiped. On top of everything, we spent today moving furniture out of my mother-in-law's apartment and into the assisted-living place.

NEVERTHELESS, it's a strange thing what happens when you just do your damn job the best you can when you would rather not do it at all.

I got nothing but compliments the whole Pledge-a-Thon . . . from the engineering of the show to the music I was playing (which would have -- and, in the past, had -- given my old boss, Mary, the next best thing to angina). You would have thought I was the Lou Gehrig of Catholic radio.

God, I'm old. Make that the Cal Ripken, Jr., of Catholic radio.

Thursday morning, our secretary, Penny, came into the control room bearing a large bottle of Rolaids and a kiss on the cheek. I wish she had come with a bottle of limoncello, too.

And all through the week, people would call in to ask the name and artist of songs I was playing. One was Ken the GM's 13-year-old son when I was playing some Christian techno music by Ultrabeat. Another was Ken's wife, who dropped into the control room to say she loved one song I played and thought the voice was familiar.

It was "The Rising" by Bruce Springsteen.

AND FRIDAY NIGHT, after the Pledge-a-Thon ended, Ken came into the control room to shake my hand. Manic Don gave me a high five.

Kind of surreal, being that minutes before (the end of the Pledge-a-Thon bearing down on them) Manic Don and Fred the Development Guy -- you know, the one who believes in God expanding time -- sounded much like Catholic used-car salesmen in a desperate bid to get the phones to ring.

That always happens when fund drives are falling woefully short. I always find it dismissive of the providence of God and beneath Christian dignity. Therefore, I always go into my Zen-master mode, becoming more and more calm as the pitch-people become more and more frantic.

And I always try to send not-so-subtle messages to knock it off through forcing them to go to break, and through the music I play when they do.

This time, when the frenzy just was getting to be too much, I got them to go to break -- which Manic Don told me had to be a SHORT song. So I played all 5:35 of Aaron Thompson's "No More Fear." Thompson is a gifted Catholic singer-songwriter from Phoenix.

And at the end of the show, I played a chant version of the Kyrie, followed by Nicole C. Mullen's "Redeemer":

Who taught the sun where to stand in the morning?
Who told the ocean you can only come this far?
Who showed the moon where to hide 'til evening?
Whose words alone can catch a falling star?

Well I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
All of creation testify
This life within me cries
I know my Redeemer lives

The very same God that spins things in orbit
He runs to the weary, the worn and the weak
And the same gentle hands that hold me when I'm broken
They conquered death to bring me victory

Now I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
Let all creation testify
Let this life within me cry
I know my Redeemer, He lives

To take away my shame
And He lives forever, I'll proclaim
That the payment for my sin
Was the precious life He gave
But now He's alive and
There's a new day

Now I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
Let all creation testify
Let this life within me cry
I know my Redeemer, He lives

©2000 Wordspring Music/Lil 'JAS' Music/SESAC

MAYBE the wind has shifted at Pope FM. Then again . . . aw, who the hell knows.


Wearily yours,

Me

Dear Diary: The blowup. No, really. . . .

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.

THURSDAY, OCT. 24, 2002

Just a quick note before I collapse from exhaustion. But if the anthrax comes again, I'm covered . . . I'm on two weeks' worth of Levaquin, of the Cipro family.

Meanwhile, the "Pledge-a-Thon" proceeds apace. And my general manager seems to have had an epiphany after the new control room damn near self-destructed because of a defective wiring punch block. Our contract engineer went to punch in one set of wires for the air monitor, and . . . kerflooey. We were putting out nothing but the sounds of silence.

It was the first time I ever saw true panic in his eyes.

After he got the room back on line (precariously, warning us not to bump into the wall), I took the hour's break I got when we went to "Catholic Queries Live" (which originated the past two days from our unfinished new studios) to wire up the men's room . . . uh, old control room . . . the way I originally had it. I told the GM that was the only "Plan B" we had, and that no one had better touch it.

Today, he complimented me on the wisdom of my approach, said that Manic Don hadn't had a clue how much was involved in putting on the Pledge-a-Thon, that he was impressed with how I put all the pieces of the operation together and that he'd gotten several compliments on the music we were playing.

And some other board members complimented the show -- one saying his 13-year-old daughter told him Pope FM was sounding "like a real radio station."

Sometimes, the Lord sends His small consolations and vindications. He's a good guy.

The Curse of Homer Simpson be upon them

Instead of hounding preachers who criticize the gay-rights agenda and publishers who speak out against the Great White Jihad, why don't Canada's human-rights tribunals attend to some real violations of inalienable rights?

We're talking As Bad as It Gets, here.

FOR INSTANCE, this unspeakable horror perpetrated against the elderly, as reported by Reuters:

Beer maker Molson is turning off the tap and cutting off the supply of free suds to its retirees, the Toronto Star reported on Tuesday.

Molson, a division of Molson Coors, said it was looking to "standardize" its complimentary beer policy.

There are 2,400 Molson retirees in Canada and their free beer costs the company about C$1 million ($900,000) a year, the Star said.

Molson retirees in the province of Newfoundland will see their monthly allotment of beer fall from six dozen a month to zero over the next five years.

IF THIS ISN'T awful enough on its own merit -- in my opinion, far worse than anything right-winger Mark Steyn may have had to say about the booze-hating Mahometans in Maclean's newsweekly -- let me add this in hopes of prodding the Canadians into action.

Read carefully: Molson Coors is half-owned by Americans, who no doubt have, with imperial malice, exerted malign influence over their Dominion partners.

Now go get 'em, eh?

Hey, Rocky! Watch the new mayor pull a hybrid (and your $$$) out of his hat

Omaha's broke.

Property-tax revenue is flat. Sales taxes are in the crapper. The police and fire pension fund is a half billion in the hole. City government can't cut departmental budgets fast enough.

And you can't go to the library on Sunday anymore.

THIS SAD state of affairs calls for decisive action, and that's just what Mayor Jim Suttle gave us on his first day in office. He has taken the bull by the horns and decided to spend $62,868 to lease a $40,000 SUV.

Ah, but it's not just any SUV. The mayor is overspending for a "green" SUV -- a 2009 Dodge Durango Hybrid. "Hybrid," of course, is tech-speak for "costs a crapload more money to get just six more miles per gallon."

Surely, though, hizzoner has valid reasons for spending $13,000 more to lease a too-big vehicle over four years than it would cost to just buy the thing. I am sure, when all is said and done, administration officials will outline the complex and nuanced decision making our civil-engineer mayor employed to reach a conclusion so brilliant that mere liberal-arts-major schmucks like me just can't comprehend it.

I NOW TURN to the Omaha World-Herald in search of elucidation and enlightenment:

In one of his first acts as incoming mayor, Suttle has leased a 2009 Dodge Durango Hybrid SUV for an annual cost of $15,717.

That’s $2,157 per year more than what former Mayor Mike Fahey paid to lease a 2008 Chrysler Aspen SUV. The city typically provides a vehicle for the mayor to use on official business.

A spokesman for Suttle said the new mayor wants to tout energy efficiency.

“We’re trying to increase awareness of the use of other forms of technology and different ways of at looking at things,” said spokesman Ron Gerard.

He said the lease, through GMAC, cost more because the nation’s lending collapse last year made leases more dif­ficult to get. The city also is paying more to be able to get out of the lease quickly, if needed, Gerard said.

(snip)

Suttle decided to lease be­cause that is how the city tradi­tionally has handled mayor’s ve­hicles, his office said.

When asked why Suttle didn’t choose a less-expensive vehicle — even a non-hybrid — Gerard said Suttle had campaigned on increasing the use of alternative energy and driving a hybrid fit that message.

BOYS AND GIRLS, I'm no engineer, but I know bulls*** from Bullwinkle. And that ain't Rocky the Flying Squirrel the mayor's flack just pulled out of his hat.

If Omahans can expect four more years of this kind of fertilizer flung from the executive suite of the City-County Building, perhaps it's time for the mother of all community-garden initiatives. Or if the mayor is really all that hepped-up about "alternative energy," maybe he needs to dust off his slide rule and figure out how to run the Metro Area Transit bus fleet on hot air.

Hot air and fertilizer are two things Omaha is sure to have plenty of so long as Jim Suttle is engineering policy at city hall. And all it cost is Suttle's $98,000 salary.

Well, that and Ron Gerard's mental health. Because when it comes to the new mayor's decision-making skills, it looks like Matthew Samp just might be as good as it gets.

Dear Diary: Rope. End. Near.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another in the occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago from the front lines of Catholic radio -- Pope FM.

MONDAY, OCT. 21, 2002


Dear Diary,

I'm nearing the end of my rope, but I just can't quit without another job. I think divine intervention of some sort is needed . . . if only for my endurance.

I'm short on time, and I have to go to bed soon, being that I have to be at Pope FM by 6:15 or so in the morning for a 13-hour shift (every day for the rest of the week) during the "Pledge-a-Thon." To boot, a nasty chronic ailment has returned with a vengeance after several years' absence (after a several-year off-an-on run).

I JUST SENT the following note to a longtime volunteer -- the 25-year-old intern who was weeping in my office last week:

Susie,

Be prepared. I have absolutely no idea what to expect tomorrow. I came to work today to find everything I had prepared in the present control room/men's room ripped apart with no good explanation, other than the engineers now thought they could get the new control room functioning "enough." Everyone seemed to think I should be happy about this.

They were still frantically working on it when the Missus came to get me after 7 to take me to the doctor. Manic Don still was revising and explaining the "run sheet" for the first day of the Pledge-a-Thon. The other days have yet to be scripted . . . and he is scripting everything to within an inch of its life.

I spent the entire day trying to decide whether to just quit . . . that and praying for enlightenment. But I decided I wouldn't give the Don the satisfaction.

So far, he's been working the other two interns like dogs.

Welcome to the new Pope FM. Don't be sad, and don't be afraid. But do be prepared, and do be resolved. In all the wrong ways, Pope FM is becoming incredibly close to "the real thing" in radio.

Hang in there. . . .

GOD HELP US at Levy Pants, Midwest Division.


-- Me

Dear Diary: Live . . . from the crapper

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.

SATURDAY, OCT. 19, 2002

Dear Diary,

Well, the insanity continues apace at Levy Pants, Midwest Division. Pope FM, remember, equals Levy Pants in A Confederacy of Dunces.

Thursday, "The Triumvirate" (Ken, Fred the Development Guy and Manic Don) grudgingly admitted the reality of what I'd been telling them for a month -- our new studios wouldn't be ready for the "Pledge-a-Thon" this coming week. I'll be engineering it from the men's room.

No, really. The crapper. The head. The loo.

The Facilities.

See, right now, we have a cobbled together, temporary control room in what will be the men's room. The commode drain is there, but not the stool itself, or the sink, or the urinal. That would take up too much room, leaving none for the equipment. But the plumbing and the floor drain are all there -- complete with that certain je ne sais quoi . . . the intermittent fragrant hint of sewer gas.

CONTRARY TO THE OPINION of Fred the Development Guy, God did not "expand time."

I plugged a Behringer studio mixer into the borrowed control board we have, just to make it functional enough for me to engineer the Pledge-a-Thon with minimum hassles and give me enough inputs for a line feed from the makeshift interview studio and to run microphone cables to the phone room, which conveniently is just outside the men's room -- uh, CONTROL ROOM -- door.

But to make room for the volunteers and telephones, Manic Man, our fearless program director, had to move out of his temporary digs.

Where would he go? Where would he go?

Well, let's just say I ended up literally begging him and the GM not to move our temporary, jury-rigged and very precarious production room into a still under-construction space so Manic Man could take over the present room for his office . . . right now.

Did I mention all this was less than a week out from the Pledge-a-Thon?

ME, I THINK the Lord is a fan of A Confederacy of Dunces. And, as an added benefit, He is teaching me radical compassion for an intern I used to have little patience with but who was, fairly literally, crying on my shoulder Friday over her mistreatment by the Manic Mad Man of the Midwest. She referred to him as "a male chauvinist pig."

When you hear meek, charismatic-Catholic 25-year-old women use the term "male chauvinist pig," you absolutely KNOW he's probably worse than that, even.

Really, this guy is making a crapload of enemies real fast. And he's starting to make the wrong enemies. Or at least make them for the station.

I don't know what the Lord has in mind for all this, but I know in my heart it involves my stepping up to the plate to try to rally the troops and hold them together to weather the raging storm.


Taking to the factory floor
with a banner made of a . . .
a . . . an (ahem) bedsheet,

Me

It was necessary that this happened. . . .

Because you should never have to pay $275 to look like wussy versions of The Ramones.

It's Hammertime!

Operation Louisiana Bloodbath

It occurs to me that my home state, Louisiana, is a lot like Iraq.

The government's pretty crooked, people are always squabbling, the "Sunnis" in the north hate the "Shiites" in the south . . . and everybody hates (for lack of a better Iraqi analogy) the "Christians" in New Orleans. And if the fishermen learn how to make car bombs out of roadside "fresh-shrimp trucks," we all in trouble, Cap.

Then the rednecks will start booby-trapping meat pies, and it'll be a bloodbath.

Anyway, Louisiana's version of Saddam Hussein -- Huey Long -- kept things in check for a while from the late 1920s through 1935, mainly through a masterful balance of bribing Louisianians with petrodollars and, when necessary, exercising brute political force.

If there had been wood chippers big enough back then, he probably would have put some prominent "anti-Longs" through one. Mulch one, instruct a thousand.

But then, in September 1935, one of the "anti-Longs" got off a lucky shot before being turned into Swiss cheese by Huey's version of the Republican Guard, and Louisiana's been going to hell ever since.

OH, SURE, various governors -- including Huey's little brother Uday Earl -- kept the peace, more or less, through keeping up the varying combinations of petrobribery and demagoguery. But that wasn't going to last forever.

At some point, your oil money ceases to exceed the amount you're paying out in bribes to the warring tribes, and then it's all she wrote.

Welcome to All She Wrote.

Oil revenue tanked. The Great Recession hit. And one day, Louisiana realized it had been spending all this money but folks were still poor, dumb and contentious, and the state was fresh out of grease for all those outstretched palms.

Budget cuts would have to be made. Civic leaders, newspapers and (GASP!) even legislators began to talk about ending Louisiana's program of Every Community College a University. Oxen, at some point, must be gored.

One of the early targets might be the "Sunni" enclave of Alexandria, which has its own ox, but nobody knows exactly why that is. And the newspaper there, the Town Talk, is making ominous noises. From a Wednesday editorial:

The editors of a New Orleans newspaper looked long and hard at the state of higher education in Louisiana, the demand by the governor to "right-size" the bloated university landscape, and the need to help the state become a smarter, better place.

From within their city -- which wallows in a sea of tax dollars lapping at the doors of colleges and universities -- these thinkers ruminated and then pointed a crooked finger at how to fix higher education.

They, the editors of the Times-Picayune newspaper, wrote this: "Certainly a plan for downsizing is needed -- and the state ought to look at duplicate and underperforming programs. The Legislature foolishly upgraded Louisiana State University at Alexandria to four-year status in 2001, even though there was already a public university in nearby Natchitoches."

Forget for a moment how such wisdom is shaped -- by people who brag about a town built on government handouts and perpetual corruption, who are comfortable with poverty and murder rates that dwarf the national averages, and who are so numbed by dysfunction that they drop everything to march in drunken parades.

Forget about the river of education funding washing through the Big Easy, a city so detached from learning that the state had to commandeer the local school system because of its chronic failure, and where 44 percent -- nearly half -- of the adults can't read well enough to fill out simple forms.

"SO NUMBED by dysfunction that they drop everything to march in drunken parades"? Them's fightin' words.

I've been accused by aggrieved Louisianians of taking gratuitous shots at my home state. Shots, yes. Gratuitous, hardly.

But I never, ever in a million years would have written that. Especially if I lived in Alexandria, which isn't exactly the municipal version of one of Saddam's grand palaces. With an editorial like that, the Town Talk editors could have saved precious newsprint and simply written "Dear New Orleans; F*** you. And Baton Rouge, too. Die soon."

I imagine the warm fuzzies will spread from town to town as more hard-to-justify state colleges end up on various hard-times hit lists. And when the state finally succumbs to the budgetary inevitability and actually starts trying to save what it can and cull the rest. . . .

BUT I GUESS civil war is inevitable when you have jobs programs masquerading as state universities, and every town has one. Especially when the Sunnis already hate the Shiites, and everybody hates the Christians.

3 Chords & the Truth: Just a little bit loony

We're all just a little bit crazy, aren't we?

Well, not all of us are over-the-top tormented like Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett (God rest his soul) was three-plus decades ago when the Band released Barrett-inspired songs like "Brain Damage" -- featured this week on 3 Chords & the Truth -- and "Shine on You Crazy Diamond," et al. But we all are at least a little bit "eccentric," aren't we?

I mean, how boring would life be if we weren't?

Take my wife, for example. . . . You wouldn't believe h




ON SECOND THOUGHT, my lovely bride is perfect in every way. Sometimes, she feigns imperfection or eccentricity, but that is solely a ruse to make me feel less conspicuously inadequate as a human being.

I am flawed. I am unworthy.

And if you're like me, I have just the set for you this week on the Big Show. Because we're all "Crazy as a Loon."

Or something like that -- except for my wife. Whom I love.

WE'LL ALSO spend a lot of time this week strolling through the history of rock 'n' roll (and all the flavors of rock, too) . . . at least a little bit. Lots of fun this week on 3 Chords & the Truth.

And that's about all I have to say about that. To say any more would just give the whole thing away, and that would be no fun.

It's the Big Show, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

David Carradine hangs self

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

"Sounds of Silence"
Simon and Garfunkel (1965)

Triple cocktail of doom

Can I get a "radio"?!

RADIO!

Can I get a "records"?!

RECORDS!

Can I get a "newspaper"?!

NEWSPAPER!

What's that spell?!

R.I.P!!!

And that's the "dead and gone" of it. When you have a newspaper dedicated to covering radio and the record industry, and then you count on selling it -- for a hefty subscription fee -- to people in those two woebegone industries, you're pretty much toast.

JUST LIKE Radio & Records, dead of a terminal business model after a 36-year run. Here's what passes for an obit in The Tennessean:

Radio & Records, a major music industry trade publication, announced plans to close on Wednesday (June 3) citing the current economic climate as the reason.

Founded in 1973, R&R is headquartered in Los Angeles and was acquired in 2006 by VNU, a company that also owns Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter. VNU changed its name to the Nielsen Company in 2007.

Billboard and R&R publisher Howard Applebaum met with R&R employees in Los Angeles at noon Wednesday and told them the publication was closing. More than 40 employees lost their jobs, including at least one in Nashville.

IT'S BRUTAL out there. Good night, and good luck.

Omaha . . . I am your archbishop

The Diocese of Springfield, Ill., where the Vatican went to find Omaha's next archbishop, was a MESS when Bishop George Lucas got there, and he's spent a decade trying to clean it up.

Lucas will find his next see to be merely a mess, with the most pressing problem being that vocations to the priesthood here have dried up -- the Archdiocese of Omaha will ordain no new priests this year and none next year, either.

Other than that, the new prelate will face a bunch of run-of-the-mill millennial Catholic crises . . . lousy religious education for the church's youth, not enough priests to do the job, the ongoing ecclesiastical Fifth Column that is Catholic secondary and higher education, etcetera and so on.

HERE'S A BIT from this afternoon's story in the Omaha World-Herald:

In his prepared remarks, Lucas said he is humbled to be given the responsibility of leading the 220,000-member Omaha Archdiocese.

"I look forward to learning about all the ways the Gospel is preached and lived in the Archdiocese of Omaha," he said. "I have a great deal to learn and you all have much to teach me."

Lucas showed he had done his homework by prominently mentioning Catholic schools, a focus in the family and social lives of many Omahans. He said even a casual observer would be impressed by Catholic education here.

"I look forward to not being a casual observer, but an active participant in this endeavor," he said.

To priests, Lucas said, "Not only will I depend on you to teach me, I will depend on you to support me, as I support you."

To non-Catholics, Lucas said he had been very active in inter-faith work in Illinois and plans to continue that in Omaha.

Lucas, 59, was named today by Pope Benedict XVI as the replacement for retiring Omaha Archbishop Elden F. Curtiss, who had submitted his mandatory resignation when he turned 75 two years ago this month.

(snip)

Pope John Paul II appointed Lucas bishop of Springfield in October 1999. He was installed Dec. 14, 1999.

The Springfield diocese is home to about 170,000 Catholics in 164 parishes, according to the diocesan Web site.

The diocese, in south-central Illinois, is served by 99 active diocesan priests and 62 religious order priests. The diocese also has eight Catholic hospitals, a religious seminary, a Catholic university, a Catholic college, seven Catholic high schools and 54 Catholic elementary schools.

Lucas comes to Omaha under much different circumstances than when he went to Illinois in 1999. A sex-abuse scandal involving the former Springfield bishop, Daniel Ryan, was brewing in Springfield at the time. It eventually erupted into greater scandal and lawsuits along with the national clergy sex-abuse crisis.

In an interview today, Lucas said the diocese had taken the steps it needed to take to protect children, to be transparent and to ensure that the diocese was operating with integrity.

That said, he added, "The hurt of the abuse is still felt very deeply by those who were abused."

BUT AT LEAST he won't -- at this writing at least -- have to deal with allegations his predecessor had a taste for underage boys or deal with a diocesan chancellor who gets beaten up in city parks by teens who take umbrage at being propositioned for sex.

If he's lucky, he won't have to call in an outside investigator here in the next five years, and he won't have the Omaha equivalent of the radically traditionalist, bomb-throwing Roman Catholic Faithful accusing him of a hands-off policy toward "predatory homosexuals." That and of having a taste for high-school boys himself.

The Decatur (Ill.) Herald & Review reported on the whole mess in August 2006:

Lucas called for an investigation of alleged clergy misconduct "amid a climate of increasing doubt and mistrust" in February 2005, the report stated.

The probe was spearheaded by Springfield attorney Bill Roberts, a Methodist.

The investigation found "some misuse of power and some serious misconduct" by a "very small number of priests," Lucas said.

Lucas remains confident in the virtuous service of the vast majority of the more than 120 priests in the diocese. He acknowledged the "painful truth" of revelations and hopes the investigation will restore the confidence of parishioners.

"I'm deeply sorry for the misdeeds of any priest whom I have placed in or allowed to remain in a position of trust in this diocese," Lucas said.

The report stated that former Bishop Daniel Ryan engaged in sexual misconduct with adults and used his authority to conceal his actions.

"Although denied by Bishop Ryan, this behavior did occur and caused scandal in the church by leading others to do evil," the report stated. "It resulted in feelings of hurt and anger, as well as thoughts of doubt and mistrust, both in the church as an institution and in its leaders."

The report documents anecdotal evidence of Roman Catholics abandoning the faith because of Ryan's actions.

"The investigation found a culture of secrecy fostered under Bishop Ryan's leadership which discouraged faithful priests from coming forward with information about misconduct," the report added.

Ryan no longer participates in public ministry and does not live in the diocese, the report stated.

"We saw a culture that had grown very permissive, very lax, a culture lacking discipline, a culture in which at some point the people became distrusting and wary of bringing things to the head of their church in this diocese because they believe that it wouldn't be handled appropriately," Roberts said.

Some believe Lucas rewarded priests who protected Ryan by honoring them with the designation "monsignor," the report noted. The probe found no evidence Lucas was aware of alleged misconduct by honorees but found Lucas could have researched some priests' characters more carefully.

The panel found false and without merit the allegations by area resident Thomas Munoz, who claimed to have engaged in sex acts with Lucas, five priests and three seminarians. Munoz failed a polygraph test and has a history of criminal and deceptive behavior, the report stated.

IT'S NOT EASY being an archbishop. But it's got to be easier than being bishop of Springfield, Ill.

At least once the Star Wars jokes get old.

His brain hurts

After the week he's already had just two days in, I'm sure Jim Suttle's brain hurts. Maybe his staff can help a mayor-elect out.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

The mayor-elect came. The mayor-elect blathered. The mayor-elect hauled ass.

(Sigh.)

Omaha's incoming chief executive, Jim Suttle, called a press conference to say his "community chief of staff" is out amid allegations the aide had a homosexual affair with an underage boy in the 1990s.

"I have asked Matt Samp to separate himself from my administration," Suttle said. "He will not be my community chief of staff; he will not serve in my administration."

Suttle spent the next couple of minutes saying a criminal background check wouldn't have uncovered the allegations against Samp, that too many challenges face Omaha to worry about a single blah blah blah, blahblah, blah, blah blah blah blah, blahblahblah, blah.

Nothing to see here. Move along. No questions. I'm out of here.

And then Suttle was gone.

THE QUESTIONS about the mayor-elect's intelligence and judgment remained, however, along with an angry press corps and a besieged Suttle press aide, Ron Gerard.

During his no-questions "press conference," Suttle spoke about trust and how it's "important to maintain faith among our citizens that we will not be deterred from the mission we have in the Mayor’s office." The first "mission" for any public official, though, is not to squander the people's trust by acting in a recklessly stupid manner.

Jim Suttle's first big test came before he even has taken office, and the result was an epic fail.

The mayor-elect is being disingenuous in saying no background check would have turned up problems with his prospective co-chief of staff; Suttle didn't need a criminal-records check to unveil what was stinking to high heaven right under his nose.

FOR EXAMPLE, one commenter on an earlier post maintains Samp's practice of "'mentoring' male teenagers" is no secret in local Democratic circles. I don't find that hard to believe, being that Omaha is the big-city version of a small town -- everybody knows everybody else, and people talk.

And mayors-to-be don't have the luxury of dismissing scandalous gossip when it comes to hiring a staff to do the public's business, as opposed to pubic business. Suttle had a duty -- an obligation of trust, as it were -- to get to the bottom of those "ugly rumors." That probably would have required one phone call from the mayor-elect to the police chief.

Furthermore, it wasn't just talk. Democrats had been warned about Samp by Nebraska's attorney general. From Monday's Omaha World-Herald story:

Nebraska attorney General Jon Bruning wants Suttle to rescind his offer to hire Samp.

"We can't have someone like that working in government," he said of Samp.

Bruning said an Omaha father contacted him earlier this year, concerned about e-mails and other communication that his 16-year-old son recently had been receiving from Samp. Although the interaction was not criminal, Bruning, a Republican, said he notified two Democratic leaders about the complaint.

When Bruning heard about Samp's city job last month, "I was sick to my stomach and angry," Bruning said. "The citizens of Omaha deserve better."

BRUNING WAS even more explicit today with KETV television:

Bruning said he thought Samp's relationship with the teen was immoral, but there was no evidence of criminal conduct. [The age of consent in Nebraska is 16 -- R21.]

"If Matt Samp can explain why he's calling a 16-year old at 1:30 in the morning and e-mailing him sexually explicit emails, then I'd like to see that explanation. But I can't imagine there's anything that I or the citizens of Nebraska are going to buy," Bruning told KETV.

He said the latest complaint doesn't warrant criminal charges but he will investigate any further allegations that may come to his attention.

CRIMINAL-BACKGROUND check, my eye. The whole stinking heap . . . right under Jim Suttle's nose. But he couldn't be bothered with such unpleasantness.

There's a word for that kind of indifference. It's negligence. Just the thing we're looking for in a mayor. Especially now.

"The mission of the next administration is important and the challenges facing city government are too numerous to focus our energies on one news story," Suttle said before fleeing from the assembled news media. In other words, having demonstrated his incompetence and negligence in the little things, Suttle wants us to "move on" and not worry that he's now in charge of the Really Big Things.

The mayor-elect is not only stupid, he thinks we're nuts.

Kaboom!

It takes a special kind of stupid. . . .

* To, if you're the incoming mayor, not conduct background checks on people you're appointing to key jobs in your administration. Like chief of staff.

* To tell the local newspaper that background checks represent a "suspicious, punitive system, and that's not something I build on. . . . What goes on in private lives is private business. I don't sit down with anybody and say, 'Tell me about your past.'"

* To refuse to ask police for documents detailing accusations that your designated "community chief of staff" began a homosexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy and kept it up for two years. (A law-enforcement source told the Omaha World-Herald the teen, who killed himself after going to the police, "was credible and the investigation of the first-degree sexual assault allegations he made when he was 19 would have been pursued if he hadn't died.")

* To dismiss the allegations about the aide, Matthew Samp, out of hand as "character assassination" and tell a reporter something as dumb as "You have to set (rumors) aside and just look at whom is trying to embarrass whom. I've seen this, and this happens."

UNFORTUNATELY for Omaha, alas, it looks like Jim Suttle is going to be a "special" kind of mayor. God help us all.

Imagine for a moment that we're not talking about the chief executive of a city of 435,000. Imagine instead that we're talking about a Catholic bishop who has just named a new chancellor for his diocese.

And say there were credible allegations that the priest picked as chancellor had initiated a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy, who five years later reported the underage relationship to police, who found the teen "credible" and initiated an investigation, but then this tormented youth killed himself.

Furthermore, let's say the new bishop was taking a leisurely swim down the River of Denial and publicly refused to even consider looking into the matter himself. And let's just imagine His Excellency then proclaimed that he didn't believe in conducting background checks, calling them a "suspicious, punitive system, and that's not something I build on."

How do you think that would go over?

ME, I THINK an enraged public would be burning the chancery down by now -- and not totally without justification, given the recent history of these kinds of things. In fact, a Catholic priest facing "credible" allegations of the sort now dogging Samp would be immediately removed from active ministry pending a complete investigation.

What, is it somehow more dangerous (or unseemly, or unjust, or whatever) when sexual-abuse scandals occur in the Catholic Church than when they hit city hall?

But that's a rhetorical question. Here's something more concrete: Your average forklift driver probably undergoes more pre-employment scrutiny than Jim Suttle's average chief of staff.

According to this morning's World-Herald, we are not amused:

Some angry and appalled leaders and residents want Omaha Mayor-elect Jim Suttle to look further into allegations that a top aide had a sexual relationship with a teenager in the late 1990s.

The World-Herald reported Sunday that a 19-year-old Omahan told police in 2001 that he had a sexual relationship, starting when he was 14, with Matthew Samp. Samp, now Suttle's co-chief of staff, was about 23 at the time.

It is illegal for an adult to have sex with someone under 16.

Suttle said Saturday, while out of town on vacation, that he did not plan to ask police for more information and did not do background checks on employees.

Suttle, who could not be reached Sunday, plans a statement today at a 1:30 p.m. press conference, spokesman Ron Gerard said. Suttle, a Democrat, takes office June 8.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning wants Suttle to rescind his offer to hire Samp.

"We can't have someone like that working in government," he said of Samp.

(snip)

A 2001 police investigation into the report about Samp stalled when the youth, Brad Fuglei, killed himself a week after filing a police report. Fuglei was 19.

Patlan said Samp, expected to handle communication with external groups such as neighborhood associations, will have no credibility unless he is cleared.

"If the kid was still alive," Patlan said, "the question remains: Where would Samp be now? Would he be in prison? There's too many questions."

Omaha resident Amy Adams, who attended high school with Fuglei, was incensed to hear that Suttle wasn't investigating further.

"That disgusts me," she said. "If allegations come up and you don't look into it, that seems ridiculous."

THAT SEEMS ridiculous because it is ridiculous. I guess Jim Suttle is just a ridiculous kind of guy.

Who is going to be our next mayor.

I think we're about to learn the hard way that not being Hal Daub is no good reason to elect somebody mayor.