Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Scary times

WTF?! Fox files a FOIA request to try to uncover the shady development deals behind the $1.5 billion-dollar State Center project involving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, but developers refuse the request saying they can't afford to make copies of documents. And now, says Fox, the state itself is suing plaintiffs who are suing for violations of procurement law-- a SLAPP suit, in other words. Nutrageous! A judge is going to stop the insanity and demand transparency any minute now, right? More on the State Center project here.

A man was stabbed at 100 E. Redwood Street early this morning

A city police officer is in Shock Trauma after being dragged two blocks by a pickup truck

Here's a shocking factoid: at present the government-- FBI, DEA, and presumably state and local police as well-- can attach a GPS device on your car and track your movements without a warrant. Particularly disturbing considering the very recent history of state police spying on anti-Iraq-war demonstrators.

In media news, Sam Zell, the Sun's gnomish overlord, was potentially awarded large shovels-full of money by a bankruptcy judge. And the Daily Record has laid off three people, citing costs.

Ps. don't forget to vote today, if you haven't already...!

2 comments:

Winston Smith said...

So I am debating what to do with my Sun subscription. I have gotten the paper for the past 5 years in an attempt to quash the guilt I had for consuming news online and to help support the local news scribes. I have not yet forked over the extra 30 bucks for a year of online access to the Sun. We already spend >$120 bucks per year on the paper only for most days to fill up the recycle bin. Someone please convince me why I should not just cancel both? Especially after it appears to me that all the profits are getting skimmed off to pay dividends and douchebags like Zell.

Maurice Bradbury said...

Well, I'm not that someone. On one hand it seems like we need the Sun to hold public figures and agencies accountable, to file those FOIA requests and push for transparency and accountability in government. But of your $120, how much of that goes to that mission, and how much towards rewarding the managers that have busted the unions there and work the remaining reporters to exhaustion under the constant threat of layoffs? And in the past year we've seen that we don't need the Sun, necessarily, to expose malfeasance. The blogger Adam Meister rousted Belinda Conaway. This week Fox, not the Sun, has been applying pressure on the smells-to-high-heaven State Center project. The Baltimore Brew has also been covering that, plus election fraud and the East Side Development hinkiness, as has the Daily Record. Justin Fenton uncovered the unfounded-rape-cases scandal, but who else at the Sun is doing those kinds of in-depth investigative reports any more, and after Fenton burns out or leaves in disgust, who else will be willing to put in the 12- and 15-hour days that it takes to do reporting in that kind of depth? ... young, fresh-outta-J-school twentysomethings, who will also leave as soon as they too are burned out and/or wise up. And the BPD already operates under near-total opacity-- the Sun hasn't shamed FHBIII into transparency one iota. So perhaps the answer isn't to keep donating to the Tribune Company, but towards local investigative sources like the Brew instead. All of the Sun's wire copy you can get elsewhere, and your local broadcast news will basically read what's left of the Sunpapers to you every night at 6 and 11. And we should all buy Fenton drinks and dinner (not that he'd accept it).