The Star Gives Republican Ryan Silvey A Free Pass to Lie

Jason Noble of the Kansas City Star proved today that he is a stenographer, not a journalist.

Back in the day, journalists had a higher duty than simply copying down whatever lies a favored politician offered up. Instead, they would ask follow-up questions to expose the lie, or even put a sentence in their article explaining that what the politician said was false.

But, at the Kansas City Star, if the lie you are spouting is an attack on our Mayor, you face no such hostility or defense of the truth.

Today, Republican Ryan Silvey pulled a shallow publicity stunt, threatening to harm Kansas City because he wants our city to take tax dollars from basic services and donate it to the County for the stadiums. So far, so good - I understand that Ryan Silvey is part of a minority of people who think that we should not fully fund our police department but we should fully fund stadiums for suburbanites. We disagree, but he's entitled to his own positions.

Ryan Silvey is not entitled to make up his own facts, though. In defending his publicity stunt, Silvey claimed, "Pulling the money breaches the city's contract with the Chiefs and Royals . . .".

Folks, that's a lie. A big, fat whopper of a lie that no serious observer of the stadium drama could fail to recognize. There is no contract between the city and the teams.

Did Jason Noble challenge the falsehood? Did Jason Noble point out in his article that there is no contract between the city and the teams? Did Jason Noble ask a follow-up question to clarify the point?

No.

(Update: A commenter below points out that the Kansas City Business Journal has the journalistic integrity and tenacity to look at the contracts and acknowledge that there is no legal agreement binding the city to any payment.)

Let's Talk Politics This Time

Last year about this time, we discussed whether the City Council should make a $2,000,000 donation to the County, in the form of stadium subsidies. I opposed the decision, the Mayor opposed the decision, but the City Council voted 12-1 to give money away.

Since then, the Chiefs and Royals have had horrific seasons with terrible attendance, the City has not had sufficient money to clear streets, our murder rate remains high, a rapist roams Waldo, city employees have been laid off, remaining city workers have had their wages frozen, and we've installed Cathy Jolly's odious red light cameras to generate revenues. All this, and nobody has had the cleverness to point out that the City Councilmembers who voted for the donation should be held accountable for their shocking priorities.

And now the issue is back again.

(As an aside, why don't some of the crack reporters for the Star do an article about the FREE Royals and Chiefs tickets handed out to County and City politicians? Who's sitting in those seats? Are they even being used? I'd be willing to bet there's a story there - either the politicians are handing them out to donors, or they're wasting the tickets. And, as another aside, why doesn't the Star do a story on why, exactly, we even have a Jackson County Sports Authority? How much bureaucracy do we need to pay for simply to keep track of two tenants??)

This year, I'm not even going to bother arguing about the wisdom of stealing $2,000,000 from the city's coffers. My opinion remains clear, but let's look at a much smaller issue.

How do the politics of this debate work this year? Will Funkhouser's suggestion that we end the exemption do him political harm or political good? Will it harm him by showing him (again) as out of step with the Council and willing to risk our sports franchises? Or will it help him by showing him (again) as out of step with the Council and being the only one who prefers to spend $2,000,000 on things like police protection, snow removal, and city workers rather than weak athletes?

I'm curious about what people think. A good friend emailed me when the news came out and said that this closes off Funkhouser's path to reelection - "Voters won’t tolerate our Mayor screwing Chiefs and Royals, regardless of the budget shortfalls." He may be right, or he may be wrong, and the decision could be a step on the path toward reelection. (I know a lot of you disagree with a lot of Funkhouser's decisions, and believe that reelection is utterly impossible. That's fine - but, if you can, try to analyze the politics of this one decision. I'd love to know what you think.)

(Update: A commenter claimed that city officials get tickets, but county officials don't. The commenter is mistaken. Under the lease agreements, County officials get a suite and prime parking. See page 16, section 7.4. It's offensive to think that the City Council would steal money from city priorities so that county officials can watch games from a suite.)

3 Quarters Well Spent

75¢ won't buy you much these days. Even most candy bars will set you back a dollar. Don't bother walking into a coffee shop with 75¢.

But that same 75¢ will buy you a copy of the Kansas City Star to read as you're drinking a cup of that coffee you can't afford.

Most of the times I have mentioned the Star on this blog, I am complaining. I complain about Abouhalkah, I complain about Kraske, I complain about whatever grabs my eye. If I assembled my mentions of the Star into one grand post, it would be a vitriolic mess of negativity and mockery. (The fact that it would be mostly justified doesn't make it any more attractive.)

In keeping with my lapse-prone resolve to be a more positive voice, though, consider what your 3 quarters could buy you today. Dan Margolies does a masterful job of analyzing numbers and arguments in an article debunking the myth that "tort reform" can play a sizable role in lessening health care costs. That's the sort of work that takes time and judgment to produce - time and judgment you won't often see invested on a TV clip or a partisan blog.

There's also an ironic article provided by the Associated Press about Washington University closing its Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values in the wake of scandals involving two faculty members (Jeff Smith and Timothy Kuklo).

The letters to the editor include thought-inspiring contributions by Dan Cofran, Ed Casey and Larry Rizzo.

The sports page brings good news about the Cardinals and bad news about the Royals, along with an interesting article about whether Tank Tyler is "mean enough" to play nose tackle for the Chiefs.

All this, plus the comics, for 75¢.

It's true that you can freeload and get most of this material online, but unless you're really strapped for cash, it's worth the money to get the actual paper version to have and to hold, and feel good for paying your share to support what's left of the Kansas City Star.

(As an aside, I never knew how to make the ¢ symbol on my keyboard until a friend directed me to this site, which has a great menu of keyboard tricks.)

Fred Arbanas - "I've told many, many people that this is my last term."

It seems my post yesterday about Mr. Arbanas caused a bit of a stir. According to the KC Star, they asked him about my suggestion that he plans to not run for reelection, and he "responsed" (sic), "That's a bunch of bunk." The Star elaborated that Mr. "Golf Course" Arbanas says, "he has made clear to numerous eastern Jackson County organizations that he intends to run for re-election."

I wonder if they're the same people he told back in 2004 that he was then in his last term (fast forward to the 4:50 mark). At that time, he stated, on the record and in a meeting, that "I've told many, many people that this is my last term."

Apparently, when nobody filed against him, he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and stayed in his seat.

This time around, though, he's going to be almost exactly the same age as John McCain when he's running for office. He hasn't run in a contested race since Salt n Pepa and 'N Sync broke up. But the only way he gets to handpick his successor is if he convinces potential opponents through a gullible press that he still has the fire in the belly.

Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. He hasn't cast a dissenting vote in the past quarter (probably the past few years, but my patience for downloading and reading minutes of legislative meetings has limits). I couldn't even find an instance where he was alert and engaged enough to second a motion.

I'm sticking with my prediction.

When To Ignore Your Lawyers

Despite their reputations as pit bulls and sharks, lawyers turn into timid mice when advising clients. The only good risk is an avoided risk, and self-preservation is valued more than common sense or human decency. If any hypothetical threat of litigation lies down a given path, legal counsel will advise you to stay at the trailhead.

Diane Stafford's column in last Thursday's KC Star raised the troubling issue of employers refusing to provide references for former employees. It's a common practice for corporate employers to refuse comment on former employees beyond the dates of employment, former job title and, perhaps, whether they are eligible for rehire.

From the risk-loathing view of an over-paid lawyer, this makes perfect sense. There's no direct benefit to the employer from sharing descriptions of the former employee's skills or flaws, and there is an infinitesimal chance that if you say something negative, the employee could (somehow) find out and use it as evidence to support some sort of discrimination claim. Even more hypothetically, if you say nice things about good employees but nothing about bad ones, the bad ones could conceivably (somehow) find out that they aren't getting the same kind of references that the better employees are, and use that fact as evidence to support some sort of discrimination claim.

Whatever.

There's also a chance that flying monkeys might attack your corporate headquarters, so legal counsel advises you to keep the windows closed and locked.

The fact is that we all risk litigation every day, when we drive, when we speak, when we go to the grocery store. The risk of litigation in most things is minuscule for those who are not flaming jerks, and the same goes for corporations. If you treated an employee well during his or her time with you, chances are pretty remote that you're going to get sued, and, if it does happen, the chances are even more remote that a reference setting forth your views are going to be outcome-determinative in a lawsuit.

But as long as that chance exists, dancing somewhere on the head of a pin, corporate counsel will want you to avoid it unless you can articulate a valid reason to face it. And, no, common sense and human decency don't count as valid reasons to corporate counsel.

If you're in a policy-setting role at your company, this is an instance where you should tell your lawyer that you appreciate their advice, but that you're going to provide references on your former employees that are fair, accurate and informative, in the hopes that other employers will similarly help you in your decision-making. It might not be the most conservative legal approach, but it's the right thing to do.

(By the way, this isn't legal advice. This is human being advice. Sometimes they differ.)

Has Journalism Reached a Tipping Point?

Something really interesting and perhaps troubling happened last week. A local blog, Tony's Kansas City, made the Kansas City Star tumble into irrelevance regarding a major local story.

It all surrounded the turmoil involving the Citadel and spending city money on a project that has been festering for years. But the merits of that particular project matter less to me than the way it got handled.

In a nutshell, the KC Star was, once again, falling down on the job. While backroom manipulations were going on, the Star remained essentially silent while Tony roared to life. It was Tony, not the Star, that drew public attention to the story. It was Tony, not the Star, that got tongues wagging. I've been watching local politics for decades, and, for the first time I can recall, the backroom shenanigans of the insider aristocracy got stopped in its tracks without the Star's involvement.

Tony derailed a process that the Star was too lazy, incompetent or uncaring to write about.

Sadly, Star reporter Lynn Horsley is stamping her foot and claiming that she didn't drop the ball, rather than acknowledging that Tony did a better job than she did, and promising to be more responsive and courageous in her work.

Will this be the wave of the future? Will smart tipsters, who want to see their information have an impact, eschew the blase' and insider-cozy attitude demonstrated by the Star's fading political coverage?

I think it would be best for all concerned if the Star would show more of Tony's willingness to stick his nose into backroom business and gore a few sacred cows, so Tony could go back to being a joke blog.

Traffic Cops Jogging? - Why Local Control of the Police is a Bad Idea

When you mix Dave Helling's journalistic judgment and the inability of some council members to think before they speak, you wind up with a KC Star front page that makes it clear why we do not want our City Council involved with decision-making for our Police Department.

Several Council members are shocked, simply shocked, that the Police Department bought cars for the officers to use. Their shock is triggered by the unheard-of concept that the Police Department didn't wait until after they needed the cars to purchase and outfit them for regular use, patrolling our streets and keeping us safe.

I suppose, if you're really, really thoughtless (or really, really stretching for news), you could argue that it looks bad that the Police Department spent $2.1 million over a couple budget years to adequately equip our police force with vehicles, at the same time they were complaining that the City Council preferred to donate $2 million for stadiums rather than invest in public safety. The coincidence of similar numbers, plus the eagerness of some Council members to play politics with our safety, makes for an intoxicating mix.

Sadly, some of the Council members are demonstrating their financial illiteracy by arguing that the money spent on cars should have been spent on keeping some of the cops on the street that they themselves idled. There's a difference between capital expenditures and payroll. The "rob Peter to pay Paul" idiocy espoused by some council members goes a long way toward explaining why politically ambitious City Council members make such terrible decisions for our city when it comes to spending money.

Right now, our Police Department is overseen by an appointed board, and City Council members will agree - off the record - that it is one of the best-run departments in the City. But it bothers them that the only control they have over the Police is in approving the budget. As they demonstrate in today's paper, they thirst for the ability to micro-manage the Police Department and misdirect funds to cover their own mistakes. As they also demonstrate in today's paper, such local control would be an unmitigated catastrophe for the citizens of Kansas City.

It was a blow to our collective safety when City Council members chose to fund stadiums instead of police in the last budget cycle. Perhaps they should direct their attention to micro-managing the Royals instead of taking potshots at the Police Department.

Who Wrote It? Yael Claims Authorship of Botched Diuguid Column

Things are breaking down over at the KC Star. Yesterday, a column published under the name of Lewis Diuguid was promptly hijacked by Yael Abouhalkah and posted prominently on Abouhalkah's "recent posts" page of the Star's Midwest Voices. Meanwhile, Diuguid refused to post the amateurish hatchet job on his own page at Midwest Voices.

The controversy over the botched column is understandable. It blithely repeats a false explanation of why the Recall Petitioners backed away from their failed petition drive, repeating the lie that the group gave up because of lack of funds. That lie was exposed on this blog, and the petition folk will acknowledge the money was not the problem.

Factual sloppiness is nothing new for the Star, though, and the real reason that confusion reigns concerning authorship of the column is the utter lack of thought or writing skill it demonstrates, along with the lack of a clear voice.

If it were really Abouhalkah's work, it would have more of a strident and hysterical tone. Abouhalkah has been unable to write about the Mayor without bitter emotions boiling up - failed dreams of walking through green fields hand in hand with the Mayor he so lovingly supported during the election. When it turned out that Mark prefers to hold hands with his wife, Abouhalkah felt scorned, and has repaid the slight with every bitter word Roget can provide.

On the other hand, the column could not possibly have been written by Lewis Diuguid. It does not include a single "I", or even a "we" - the hallmark of everything written by Mr. Diuguid. Surely, Diuguid had written this column, it would have included a couple paragraphs about him talking with his Hispanic friends at a bodega, or what the old black gentlemen had to say at the barbershop. It's his schtick - it's what he does.

Obviously, the webmaster at Midwest Voices was confused by this bland piece of poorly written bias, relying on falsehoods and old complaints. Who can blame him/her for going ahead and tossing it into the Abouhalkah bin despite the Diuguid byline. When it's factually wrong, wildly biased and tediously written, it just seems more like Abouhalkah than anyone else.

Something's Fishy With the Recall Excuse

The Recall Group is claiming that the only reason it is not seeking a recall in court is because they don't have $10,000 to bankroll a lawsuit. The Star does its best to bury the smelly corpse with the remarkably gullible claim that "In the end, the effort to recall Mayor Mark Funkhouser simply ran out of money."

Folks, I don't think they're telling us the whole truth.

First off, there's no way they couldn't find $10,000 if they really thought they had a chance in court. Friends of other candidates would find a way to make it happen overnight. Barring that, they could have gone back to the streets and raised the money in a couple weekends. Not even counting the bogus signatures, that would be less than a dollar each. This thing has been headed up by a real estate lawyer and an experienced campaign professional - no way in hell are they giving up because they can't raise $10,000.

Second, they had a lawyer right there. Harris Wilder, their long-winded spokesperson, is an attorney in good standing, fully capable of typing up a petition and filing it. Dividing the $10,000 by $200 per hour (a fairly low rate for experienced attorneys), they're ballparking the thing at 50 hours of time - a long week of work, perhaps, but dwarfed by the hours other people put in on this whole misguided effort.

Third, there wasn't a deadline here. If they thought they had a valid claim, they could spend the time they need to raise the funds for the suit. Why would they throw in the towel so quickly? Remember when, a few weeks ago, they made a big deal out of hiring an experienced Civil Rights lawyer to give them legal advice?

And that, friends, is the fly in the ointment.

They've received their legal advice, and they know it's time to exit the stage. They failed to gather enough signatures, and no lawyer can change that fact. On top of that, I imagine those volunteers who submitted bogus signatures begged for this thing to go away as quickly as possible, in the hopes of avoiding criminal charges. When you ask someone for $10,000, they ask smart questions, and I imagine every donor lost interest the moment they saw the legal grounds proffered.

By pretending that their effort is shutting down because they could not raise $10,000, the Recall people are refusing one last time to admit the truth. They failed, plain and simple. $10,000 was not going to bring them any success, or they would have their $10,000, and plenty more where that came from. But they don't have to admit that to themselves if they can point the finger at someone else for failing to rescue them from their own failure.

DJ Jazzy Jeff, Rationality, and the Myth of Corporate Decision-Making

It appears fairly unanimous among the bland white oracles of Kansas City that the P&L District must be in the clear on this whole DJ Jazzy Jeff situation. Indeed, the Baron of Bland, Mike Hendricks, has decided from his Johnson County perspective, that there's not a racial narrative to be seen here. Move along, folks.

There are four main points he makes, and I'll address them in the order he makes them.

1. Nobody is stupid enough to hire a hip hop performer and not expect a hip hop performance, so DJ Jazzy Jeff's claim that the nature of his music is what caused the shut-down is baseless. This is certainly the spin that most defenders of "the way things are" have accepted. The unstated assumption, however, is that the corporation is rational, while the black performer is not. Nobody questions that DJ Jazzy Jeff would be perfectly happy to blow out a sound system and ruin his own reputation among booking agents, because, well, he's just a stupid black rapper. "They" do that kind of thing, don't they? But a corporation would never have one division (security, perhaps) disagree with a decision of another division (booking, perhaps). Anyone who has ever worked in a corporation knows that speaking of Cordish as though it is one rational decision-maker is insane. It is entirely plausible that the person who booked DJ Jazzy Jeff did so enthusiastically, while the security patrol on duty that night was horrified at the look and sound of the performance. It's also implausible to me (though I am no sound engineer) that Cordish would blow my tax dollars on a sound system that doesn't have some sort of system to prevent such overloads.

2. The black dude is being childish because he couldn't have everything his way. From his privileged suburban perspective, Mike Hendricks is perfectly willing to assume that Cordish is a model of effective decision-making, but he cannot conceive that the black people involved are telling the truth. Instead, it seems way easier to conclude that they were being immature and that DJ Jazzy Jeff was acting out his "huge ego". Notice that the guy who has managed to build a career catering to mostly white venue-owners is the irrational one with his ego out of joint, not some rent-a-cop working Saturday nights. You need to put your faith in someone, and it's clear that Hendricks, like much of the rest of the opinion-makers, prefers a paler, more corporate brand of truth.

3. "This being Kansas City, some are trying to turn this into a racial thing. . . . So until there's more proof to say there was anything more to this than a dispute over the sound system, everyone needs to calm down." Yes, friends, that is a direct quote. "Some" people want to turn stuff into a racial thing. This may be the most infuriating line of Hendricks' nonsense, but it underlies the thought-process of all of us who want to tuck this incident safely into a non-racial category. If there's not absolute proof that there was racism involved, we give the white, corporate people the benefit of the doubt and instead accuse those crazy black people of being bomb-throwing, over-reacting race-baiters.

Sorry, but a hip-hop concert at the P&L District is "a racial thing", whether anything happened or not. The very fact of DJ Jazzy Jeff playing on Cordish turf has more racial angles than a geometry book, and for Hendricks to try to strip this incident of its racial overtones is the height of blindness brought on by white privilege. Shame on him and on any person who wants to act like it is black people trying to make this into a racial thing. It is a racial thing, through and through. Even if the shut-down was motivated by absolutely pure motives, this was a "racial thing" from the git-go.

4. Blacks don't matter as much as greens. Fortunately, this is not a direct quotation, but Hendricks flat-out argues that potential money is more important than potential racism. Read it again for yourself, just in case you missed it:

It's not funny, though. Kansas City needs the Power & Light District to succeed.

So until there's more proof to say there was anything more to this than a dispute over the sound system, everyone needs to calm down.

Mike Hendricks is telling people to "calm down" about a potential tax-payer funded incident of racism because we need Cordish to make more money. He fails to state clearly what level of potential profitability we need to see at the P&L District before we should again care about racism in our community, but I'm sure he'll let us know when they reach it. Until then, calm down about racism, okay?

Kraske Loses Chance at Redemption

(Kraske's latest effort inspired me to offer a similar analysis.)

Steve Kraske, a writer for the Kansas City Star, has survived the rounds of lay-offs that have claimed better, more useful writers in those hallowed halls.

Steve Kraske, there went your best chance.

One final shot to start all over again and give this writing thing a fresh start.

It's an enormous irony. You've held onto a job at a paper with dwindling circulation and influence approaching zero. A significant victory, this is not.

This coup was staged by a rag-tag group of bloggers with little money, toiling away on folding chairs, in basements, living rooms and kitchens throughout the region. And they've bested you. When you've made off-base predictions, they've been correct. When you've asked foolish questions, they've asked insightful ones. When he has failed to produce any news worthy of publications, they have scooped him time and time again. When they have predicted a rising Democratic Party, he saw the Democrats as "doomed in November".

So, you survived, but in a strange way, you still lose.

Because getting fired from the Star offered you that last chance.

Here's my thinking: If the Star fired you, you had an opportunity to start up your own blog, and have one more time to face the naysayers and beat them into the ground. You could have tried to form an audience based on merit, rather than proximity to the sports page or comics.

You could have showed 'em, Missouri-style. You could have built traffic and been a real part of the thriving part of the media world. You could have rubbed the bloggers' noses in it when you were right. You could have built a monumental readership that would have demonstrated that you're a worthy commentator.

Now?

Now we have more of the same. The Big Muddle, I call it.

That is, just more of the same at the Star: More turmoil. More uncertainty. More off-base analysis and more discord. More aimless drift out of your column, just as things have been since virtually the day you took over.

Don't breathe too easy yet. The newspaper industry continues to suffer, and a columnist who continually produces analysis that is weaker than that produced by at least a half-dozen local bloggers is not in a safe position. Day after day, week after week, smart, informed analysts are publishing better stuff than you. Meanwhile, McClatchy continues to look at ways to cut costs.

Maybe you'll get that shot at redemption after all.

Playing Games with "Cops on the Street"

After hacking $15 million dollars from the budget of the Kansas City police department, the Kansas City Council wants to act like it didn't do anything wrong. Incredibly, two City Councilwomen have sought to breeze in and wallpaper over their budgetary attack by encouraging the Police Department to eliminate support positions and change the working conditions for 200 cops - all so that they can claim that their budgetary attack didn't reduce "cops on the street".

These are the same people who voted to donate almost $2,000,000 to the stadiums, instead of using it to reduce the cuts to cops.

Frankly, avoiding a reduction in the number of "cops on the street" is political showmanship, not effective public safety. "Cops on the street" need support off the street, and $15 million in cuts to the back office is going to have an impact on the ability of the cops on the street to do their jobs. Those cops on the street need supplies, they need well-maintained vehicles, and they need supervision. Like any business, they need support services, and cutting those support services while artificially maintaining the number of cops on the street is likely to do more harm than good.

Sure enough, after the Police Board passed the budget without a single negative vote, one of the City Council members took the low road and preemptively slimed the Police Chief. "If officers are pulled off the street that will be Corwin's decision, not the council's." Folks, I've seen some pretty vile attempts at denying responsibility for one's own behavior before, but that one ranks way up there.

Of course, in the anti-Funk hysteria this town is currently suffering through, nobody wants to talk about the irresponsibility of the council. Instead, people are aiming their guns at the one person who has worked hardest to preserve the police force. The same Council member mentioned above had the unmitigated gall to complain that "Funkhouser hadn't helped the city officials dicker with the police staff during task force meetings about the budget."

I believe that the Council "dickered" the police department quite well without Mark's help.

Showing an amazing ability to focus on the irrelevant, Yael "Funk is a Big Poopyhead" Abouhalkah even took a cheap shot at Funkhouser for not attending the meeting at which the budget passed without a single negative vote. Again, showmanship gets valued over substance in Yael's mind. Instead of even mentioning the vote tally, Yael wrote two columns attacking Mark for the same missed meeting, and implied that pre-meeting participation in the budgetary process doesn't matter if none of the voters mentions it during the vote. Amateurish, petty hack job.

If we want to talk about failure in Kansas City, we ought to be talking about the attempts of certain City Council members to paper over the impact of their disastrous police cuts, and the Star's biased refusal to call them on it.

Success has a proud father, but failure is an orphan

When should lawyers get their name in the paper? I suppose it depends . . .

In today's Star, Dan Margolies' column consists of two stories. In the first, he covers a decision by the 8th Circuit to reverse a local trial judge's decision to dismiss a case for discovery abuse. The Eighth Circuit agreed that both sides had provoked the Judge Whipple, but felt that he should be recused on the case because he lost his temper toward the plaintiff.

None of the lawyers' names appear in the paper. I know and like both sides' attorneys, so I'm kind of glad that they dodged mention in this stinker of a case, but it seems an odd editorial decision to include this quotation:

“You didn’t hear enough with four phone conferences, and I’m sorry you missed one, with three, four, I kept telling you to produce stuff, expert stuff. You ducked. You wove. You did everything to keep from producing them. You go to the Eighth Circuit. They tell you to produce them, and you still god---- don’t produce them. Now what the hell do you not understand? You must produce them”,

and not mention who the "you" was. I completely understand that in many discovery disputes, the lawyer is caught in the hard place between a recalcitrant client and an angry court, but the inclusion of such a gem of a quotation without a clear pronoun reference is striking.

At the other end of the spectrum, Kansas City's largest law firm is featured glowingly in the very next item. We are told that "Shook Hardy & Bacon won a big victory in Florida last week in a smoker’s liability case." It's notable that Shook, not the client, won the big victory, because when the vedict goes the other way, it's the client's loss:

In February a Broward County jury ordered Philip Morris USA to pay $8 million, including $5 million in punitive damages, to the widow and son of a chain smoker of Benson & Hedges cigarettes, finding that Philip Morris showed a reckless disregard for the smoker’s safety. Shook represented Philip Morris in that case also.

In victory, Shook wins, but in defeat, Shook merely represents its client.

In summary, the lesson seems to be that if the judge is yelling at you, then only your client's name will show up in the paper. If a verdict goes in favor of your client, though, the victory is yours.

Ignoring John Stossel

The Star's Prime Buzz is trying to draw attention to a special involving John Stossel that will be on TV sometime soon. No links, intentionally.

John Stossel is undeserving of attention. He is an immmoral libertarian, with a flair for dishonest mock journalism. I'm saddened that the Star is promoting the man.

Stossel had the gall to do a story lying about a local victim of death by denial. If you're interested, the victim's widow did a fine letter addressing Stossel's integrity here.

Dave Helling Beyond Satire

I've made sport of Dave Hellings' inability to do simple math and everyone agrees that his hilarious hand-wringing about the demise of the Democratic Party after a triumphal primary season was an unintentional masterpiece of cluelessness.

Dave Helling doesn't produce much copy anymore, but when he does publish something, it often carries that special glow of obtuseness that makes real political observers stop in their tracks and say "Huh?".

Yesterday's gem was this - Kansas City should raid its general revenue to support the stadiums because that is the same as Johnson County giving money. This is the actual title of Hellings' piece - and, no, I haven't altered it to make it seem more ridiculous - "End of $2 million stadium subsidy could let JoCo off the hook for ballparks".

Because Johnson Countians pay a portion of the earnings tax. Which goes into general revenue.

Absolutely incredible. The Kansas City Star actually published that analysis.

By the same analysis, the City can bestow the benefits of Bistate funding anywhere it redirects general revenue by laying off enough police officers and cutting enough basic services.

It's genius! If Kansas City uses every nickel of its money to support things that suburbanites like, a new Age of Aquarius will dawn, and regionalism will reign over the unpatrolled and unpaved streets of Kansas City. That's the way things work in Hellings' world.

All the News that's Comfortable to Print

In case anyone was wondering whether the Prime Buzz Blog Watch column would mention the massive blind spot in the Star's coverage of Jackson County, don't be silly. Instead, they found space for a piece about being a careful pedestrian in Kansas City.

As Elvis Costello wrote, "I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused . . .".

REJECTED

As a skinny, nerdy teenager with acne, I was once a connoisseur of rejection. If it weren't for blind dates with a gentle sense of humor or a strong sense of pity, I might not have had any dates at all in high school.

But this is reeeediculous. This one hurts.

The Kansas City Star emailed me yesterday to tell me I won't be one of their Midwest Voices columnists. The paper that actually publishes Jason "Attention Whore" Whitlock, Steve "Hacktastic" Kraske and Yael "Spiteful Teenager" Abouhalkah on a regular basis won't put me on their page for a year.

And then there's Jenee' Osterheldt. Jenee' Osterheldt! Ouch.

This one hurts, hurts bad. I feel like the Chess Club just blackballed me because I'm not athletic enough, or the Math Club rejected me for a lack of social skills.

As I learned in High School, rejection teaches you that one door doesn't close without another door opening. Unfortunately, the door that opened was usually the one that led to watching the Carol Burnett Show on Friday night with my parents, while other kids were out doing all kinds of things I was yearning for. But still . . .

Funkhouser to Electric Chair? - Journalists Make Lousy Bloggers, Too

I wrote a recent piece about the dangers of confusing bloggers with journalists, and several journalists emailed me with compliments on the piece, which I really appreciated. I meant what I said - bloggers rarely present original news that has been well-researched and based on reliable sources. Red letters, exclamation points and claims of "exclusive" are poor substitutes for fact-checking, confirmation and attempted even-handedness.

While my piece on Tuesday was directed at bloggers who act like they are journalists, today I want to consider journalists who think they are bloggers.

If you want to blog, close down the Prime Buzz, open up your own blogger account under your own name, and have at it. Because you, more than Tony, more than any self-deluded "citizen journalist", are to blame for blurring the distinction between news and nonsense. When you hold yourselves out as journalists and then behave as bloggers, you can't blame readers for getting the two confused.

Take, for example, the Star's Yael T. Abouhalkah. When he publishes a column in the Star, we all expect him to have checked the facts, spoken with the players, placed the issue into context, and considered all perspectives. And, while I frequently disagree with his published columns, I respect the fact that they uphold journalistic standards.

When Yael publishes something on Midwest Voices, though, we don't know what to expect. We can see, however, that we're getting a lower standard than we'd expect for something published. Where are we, as consumers, expected to draw the line between Yael the Kansas City Star Journalist, and Yael the Blogger?

On Thursday evening, I heard that Yael had a civic bombshell posted - the Mayor could be dismissed at any moment by a vote of 9 councilmembers. Sure enough, I went to his collection of posts and saw red letters and "Exclusive!" notices highlighting a post entitled "City Charter allows City Council to throw Funkhouser out". And I read a sensationalistic account of a Charter Provision that has been in the Charter for years, and that does not, in fact, allow the City Council to throw Funkhouser out - unless they find significant misconduct in office beyond anything that has been even alleged.

The red letters and "Exclusive!" notices have been deleted now. On sober reconsideration, the story is no more valid or newsworthy than a similar story entitled "Criminal Code allows State to Put Funkhouser to Death" - if he is found guilty of a capital crime which has not been charged. It's funny that Yael isn't even holding himself up to Blogger ethical standards, which frown upon altering a prior post in order to make yourself look better. (See, for example, that Tony has not tampered with his mistaken post about Funkhouser getting fired by his lawyer.) On Thursday, Yael wanted to out-Tony Tony.

The point is broader, though, than one blog post or one ethical lapse by Yael Abouhalkah. The point is that when journalists report gossip on blogs, or publish material without the rigorous fact-checking and placement into context that ought to go into their published work, they devalue themselves as journalists.

Back in the pre-blog world, journalists were privy to a lot more than they published. The line between what was "newsworthy" and what was "between us" was respected and dependable - and often abused. Real journalists kept us in the dark about womanizing and backroom deals - the public's right to know suffered to support the journalist's access to information.

Now, the pendulum has swung. An off-the-cuff elevator remark about a fellow politician's lack of fashion sense could show up on the Prime Buzz, and the line between journalism and blogging gets further blurred. When you add in the sad fact that McClatchy is asking fewer people to do the real work of journalism, you have a dangerous pressure to pass along quick gossip rather than solid analysis. And that pressure shows itself in Yael's page of recent posts, which, as of this moment, includes Yael trying to write intelligently about Blagojevich, the auto bailout, a gossipy piece with a glaring error about Marcason and Funkhouser's relationship, the Golden Globes, sewers, Tyler Thigpen, Mets baseball, cars, Tony DiPardo, and Big 12 Football. Plus much more, all over the course of 5 days! While still supposedly doing his real work of producing press-worthy copy. (I don't mean to pick on Yael, but his Tony imitation on Thursday evening was the "ah hah" moment that sparked this piece.)

If a journalist wants to join the blog world and post about whatever shiny issue attracts his or her attention, that is great. The more bloggers, the merrier. But if they want to publish their blog as an adjunct to the Kansas City Star, and approach public figures as a multi-headed blogger/journalist, then they have no right whatsoever to complain if the public equates bloggers with journalists.

For those journalists who like to blog on the side, I have a few questions.

When you earned the title of "journalist" by going to school and learning from your superiors, did you really want to become a blogger?

Do you think that public figures should treat you with respect, if they know you are looking for material that would never be newsworthy in hard copy?

When you were first hired by the Kansas City Star, one of the great journalistic institutions of the country, did you feel like you were taking on mantle that you would strive to live up to, and maybe even improve? Do you think you're doing that?

Abouhalkah - Not Much of a Lawyer

In Yael's world, deponents should volunteer information in their depositions. In the real world, they shouldn't. It's up to the examining attorney to ask the right questions, and leading questions often fail to get the complete picture.

Mr. Abouhalkah, if you're going to accuse someone of inconsistency, you truly ought to find some real inconsistency.

Wall Street Journal and Abouhalkah's Achy Breaky Heart

We all thought it was going to be huge. A couple Wall Street Journal writers came into town to learn about the battle between the City Council and the Mayor's wife, and the political insiders got the vapors. What will they say about us? Did they read the Christmas letter? How bad will it be? What will a real journalist do with a story that the Star has done its sensational best with? Can they out-sensationalize the Star?

And when it came out, it turned out that article was crushingly even-handed. No bombshells. No excruciating recaps of how we all suffered so terribly when he accepted then returned a car. No dramatic retelling of how awful it was that one out of dozens of his appointments turned out to be a kook. No hand-wringing or outrage, OUTRAGE, that he does some of his work at home now. In short, the article made all the hullabaloo that occupies the Star seem kind of silly.

Humorously, Yael Abouhalkah sniffs that the non-sensational approach was a "Valentine" to Mark and Gloria. That is funny on so many levels that I have to admire his complete lack of circumspection.

On one level, it's a case of "it takes one to know one". As a Funkhouser supporter, I would never deny that his Mayoral campaign benefited from regular "Valentines" from Abouhalkah. It was almost embarrassing to read Abouhalkah's man-crush missives about Mark. For him to complain now about the Wall Street Journal writing a reasonable piece about the Mayor sounds like a failed suitor questioning what he ever saw in his unrequited love.

Second, Abouhalkah's complaint shows that he is dangerously bipolar on the topic of our Mayor. Having withdrawn the Star's endorsement, like a spiteful teenager ripping love-lorn pages out of her diary, Abouhalkah is now seething with resentment that when real journalists come to town, they don't see the same poopyhead that he sees. He grouses that the article fails to list every single one of what Abouhalkah sees as failures of the Funkhouser's administration. Rational people would question whether that was the actual assignment of real journalists, but such a thought apparently never crosses Abouhalkah's fevered mind.

The saddest and most embarrassing moment, though, lies in this tear-stained, ungrammatical gem:

Instead, the story gives all kinds of credit to Squitiro for how she ran his campaign in 2007, seemingly without any help from professionals (untrue) or anyone else (think The Star's endorsement -- since retracted -- didn't help the mayor in the Southwest corridor with his narrow margin over Alvin Brooks?)

Good God, man, get a grip on yourself!! Yes, we all know you were important, and that it hurts to see your former love smile at his wife. But, really, get a shred of dignity!

Abouhalkah had such grand dreams of what life with Mark would be, and it's sad to see him bitter now that they've been dashed. But it's getting ridiculous. Better journalists than him came to town, spent plenty of time with both sides of the controversy, and wrote an objective piece that made Mark look better than the Council on this petty issue.

Pull yourself together, Yael. Get a box of tissues, take a walk on the beach, crank Human League's "Don't You Want Me" or Ben Folds Five's "Song for the Dumped", and wipe your nose.

Funkhouser wasn't perfect to begin with, and he's not a monster now. Most of us knew that. The Wall Street Journal, as you point out, didn't tell us anything we didn't already know.

But your reaction to it sure exposed you.

Dave Helling Misquotes Himself

On Wednesday, I did a brief post chiding Dave Helling for his sloppy research and factual misstatements in claiming that the turnout for the 2008 election will fall short of the turnout four years ago, in his post titled "Turnout lower than 2004?".

Yesterday, he defensively addressed the issue, and claimed that "I'll stick by my original post: While impressive, the actual 2008 turnout was not the overwhelming vote many predicted." But that's not what his original post claimed! Helling is trying to play off his blunder by backing away from his bold proclamation.

In his original post, he claimed " . . . it appears almost certain turnout for the 2008 election will fall short of the turnout four years ago, when George W. Bush beat John Kerry," and "Late returns may boost the turnout number a bit, but it appears unlikely it'll be more than 2004."

Now he's trying to pretend he only said turnout wasn't as large as expected. That's like writing a pre-season baseball article saying it is virtually certain that the Royals will win the World Series, and, at the end of the season, claiming that you are sticking with your original post that they would win a few more games than the previous year. Actually, that would be a little less egregious, in that everyone would know the baseball prognosticator was making a guess, while most people probably assumed that Dave Helling's post was based on real analysis of real numbers by someone who is paid to interpret them.

Humorously, he misquotes me, too, in a minor fashion, by claiming I said that everyone agrees with Dr. McDonald's prediction about voter turnout. I'm neither surprised nor upset by the minor misquotation, though, in light of his much more serious misquotation of himself. He got the gist of what I was saying correct, but he changed the entire import of his own post.

Meanwhile, Helling has no explanation whatsoever about the egregious factual mistake in the Star's editorial on the Storm Water Amendment.

All Things Considered - Council's the Source of the Embarrassment, and Yael Expects No Gatekeeper

I winced when I heard that NPR's All Things Considered was going to be doing a story on the saga of the Volunteer Ordinance. I feared that they, like the local media, would mischaracterize the story as being about something other than the a power grab by the City Council in a misguided attempt to decide how the Mayor should run his office.

NPR got it right, but I'm still wincing. Our City Council was shown to be the source of the problem, interfering with a Mayor's decision to work with his spouse. NPR even went further and gave Yael Abouhalkah enough rope to hang himself, quoting him as "a columnist with The Kansas City Star, [who] says city residents don't need a gatekeeper in the mayor's office."

Really, Yael? You, in your infinite wisdom, have decided that Mark doesn't need a gatekeeper? Even though every Mayor since Henry Kumpf has had a gatekeeper of some sort? (Confession - I really don't know if Henry Kumpf had a gatekeeper - I just looked back at some historical KC Mayors and picked one with a funny name.) It takes guts for a columnist at the Star to issue such an opinion, sitting in an office shielded by more plexiglass and paranoid guards than a payday loan shop at two in the morning.

In the big picture, though, NPR saw that the City Council is at fault here. Mark clearly states that he just wants to be left alone to run his office and focus on the real city issues. The City Council, though, wants to play around with staffing decisions that aren't theirs to make. The KC Star is annoyed that Mark doesn't maintain an open-door policy that they themselves don't emulate.

Meanwhile, we had 21 murders in August, and the City Council wants to play games.

Last Thursday, I saw Alvin Brooks talk about a local murder, and he challenged each of us to think about how the blood of a hopeless young man is on our own hands. 5 or 6 Council members were there, fresh from their override of the Mayor's veto. Sadly, I doubt that any of them even thought about how their silly, unconstitutional game-playing was a part of the problem.

Instead of being on the national media for innovative crime solutions, we're on NPR because our City Council doesn't like the Mayor's wife. Our Council has chosen to focus its attention on the feisty Italian in a cubicle rather than the poor kids shooting each other, and that's what NPR found worthy of broadcasting.

How embarrassing.

The Star's Sloppy Endorsements

I was early to make my endorsements during this cycle because. as I wrote then, "I'd hate for anyone to think that the Star's analysis influences me . . ." At the time I wrote that, though, I had no idea how sloppy the Star would be.

I'm not complaining about endorsing candidates other than the ones I support. I'm complaining of my disappointment with their ability to get facts straight and arguments lined up correctly. This season, the Star has erased its own credibility.

In the Sheriff's race, the Star had nice things to say about my favorite candidate, John Bullard, but wound up endorsing Mike Sharp. That's fine with me - reasonable minds can differ as to who is the superior candidate. But what made their endorsement laughable was their mistaken reasoning - the headline of their endorsement noted "Sheriff jobs require experience, solid administrative skills" and the text of their endorsement claimed "Mike Sharp has impressive credentials for the sheriff’s job, given his combination of service with the Kansas City Police Department and years of experience as a businessman". That all sounds pretty reasonable, but Mike Sharp has hardly any relevant experience! What happened was that the Star took at face value Sharp's claim that he has twenty something years of experience as a reserve officer, but, in fact, that's apples compared to oranges. That's like claiming that a kid who received a pair of pilot's wings on his or her first plane trip a dozen years ago has 12 years of experience as a pilot. It's absolutely fine to endorse Mike Sharp if you like him personally, or you think he will bring fresh perspective, or whatever, but it's just plain sloppy and embarrassing to endorse him because he has experience. He doesn't, and the Star should have realized that.

As sloppy as that endorsement was, though, they really shocked me with their endorsement of Jeff Harris - even when we agree that Jeff Harris is the best candidate! Clearly they reached the right result, but they gave him an edge "based on his leadership role [in the General Assembly] and prosecutorial experience". There are two things wrong with that statement - in an Attorney General race, prosecutorial experience is only important for those who do not know what the AG's office really does, and, second, Jeff Harris doesn't really have much irrelevant prosecutorial experience. Instead, Jeff Harris has experience as a division leader in the Attorney General's office itself - much better, and much more relevant!

Over the past several years, political insiders have been chattering about how fewer and fewer people pay attention to the Star's endorsements. Is it because of the rise of blogs, is it because of declining circulation, or some other reason?

I suspect the reason fewer people are paying attention to the Star's endorsements is because the Star is not paying attention when they are making them.