For an example of biased “journalism” see: Earnings Tax is tip of broader debate on city’s future by David Nichlaus of the Post Dispatch

Adam wrote on April 6 about the mayor of St. Louis planning for the demise of earnings tax despite the overwhelming support it received. . As any good journalist would, he pointed out that Rex Sinquefield's donations to the mayor raised the possibility of conflict of interest. Today David Nicklaus of the Post Dispatch took up the effort to repeal the earnings tax in opposition to the voters.
Mr. Nicklaus acknowledges that the voters overwhelmingly approved the tax. How could he do otherwise? However he asserts that the earnings tax is what prevents the city from being competitive. How did he arrive at such a conclusion? He based it on this statement by a contractor working for the Missouri Council for a Better Economy which is funded by Rex Sinquefield. So Randy Bauer, a man currently working for Rex Sinquefield, says
“We do a lot of work in a lot of cities, and I cannot think of another metro area where the suburb of 20,000 has a skyline like Clayton has. There is a reason all those companies have decided to go there.”Mr. Bauer does not say what the reason is but David Nicklaus assumes he means the earnings tax.
Maybe Mr. Bauer does not give a reason because like Mr. Nichols he has not studied the issue. Perhaps Mr.Bauer has standards of honesty and professionalism that preclude such a statement ? David Nicklaus is not burdened with such standards so he can say anything.
So if one wanted to honestly study such a phenomenon he or she might begin with some research before performing analysis.
How many cities have earnings taxes in the U.S.? answer 14 states and the district of Columbia a list encompassing hundreds of cities.

Has there ever been a documented scientific study that demonstrates that employers avoid such cities? In truth I do not know. Nor apparently does Mr. Nicklaus. Mayor Schoemehl did tell me personally that studies showed no correlation but I cannot speak from personal knowledge.
Of those how many like St. Louis have a competing burb like Clayton? Admittedly I have done no research but according to David Nicklaus's expert Randy Bauer, none. I will take him at his word.
How many cities that have a competing burbs like Clayton are a city which is also a county? If we assume that Mr. Bauer's assertion about no other city being like St. Louis, I would have to assume that St. Louis is the only city with only 72 square miles incorporated competing with its own county. (sloppy scholarship I admit but I make no claims)
Having dismissed Mr. Nicholas unsupported assertion that the earnings tax is THE reason lets go on with the rest of his article which is about the “excellent study “commissioned by Rex Sinquefield to explore how the replacing Earnings Tax can be accomplished.
According to David Nicklaus the study makes suggestions that will “anger powerful interest groups.” You know those interest groups, aka special interest, the people who unlike Rex Sinquefield and his toadies don't have the city's’ best interest at heart. The powerful interest groups include :

Homeowners : Nicklaus, Mayor Slay and Rex Sinquefield want to raise property taxes but those selfish homeowners may not think that is fair. The homeowners fear losing their homes, the renters higher rents and everyone fears paying a dispropotionate amount.

Small business owners and consumers: Rex Sinquefield et al want to raise sales taxes but those selfish business owners fear losing their businesses and the consumers skyrocketing prices or being forced to shop outside the city.

Hotel and entertainment industry: these selfish folks are concerned about scaring away tourist and conventions thus costing us millions in economic activity and thousands of jobs.
.
Not for Profits: The city’s largest employers feel that their not for profit status is deserved and that they should be rewarded for what they bring to the community not penalized. Evil Not for Profits.
Now I will say that Mr. Nicklaus makes one argument that may be valid. He says that a large reliance on one revenue source is not balanced. However I must ask; Is the earnings tax dependent on one revenue source or is every business is the city plus every business a city employee works in a fairly diverse source. Plus is 30% too great in one source?
The article ends “Just because something is difficult does not mean it is not worth pursuing. “ I must agree but is there any evidence that this change is worth pursuing? I mean besides the benefit to Rex Sinquefield?

A Tale of Two Rallies

Hotflash at Show Me Progress wrote yesterday about how the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shamefully ignored a 4,300+ person Rally Against Corporate Greed at Kiener Plaza in downtown St. Louis on Friday.

As a point of reference, compare this to a 500 person rally in downtown Clayton last April by the tea party. For the tea party rally:

• The Post-Dispatch wrote a 600 word article about the rally.
• The article was accompanies by a photograph.
• The article contained absolutely no opposing voices or criticisms of the tea party, but instead just shared their unfiltered message.

On the other hand, for a rally with 4300 (8 times more) people who support the middle class we had:

• No story.
• No photographs.
• Nothing.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the political reporting of the Post-Dispatch completely fails to fairly report on the issues that the citizens of St. Louis care about. One thing we can do is contact their political director Chistopher Ave (cave@post-dispatch.com ) and tell him to stop ignoring everyone to the left of Michelle Bachman. But the most important thing is that we need to start building our own media. We need our own people to cover, record, and photograph events, and our own ways of distributing the content. Relying on corporate media like Lee Enterprises will be a losing propositions in the long-term, and one only needs to glance at how they treat their workers to know that their loyalties lie far away from Joseph Pulitzer's.

Lee Enterprises Breaks Written Agreement, Screws Over Former Employees

I know people probably don't feel like reading about politics today, but this is an important story and I for one am thankful that I've been lucky enough to never have been in the unfortunate situation of my livelihood depending on the actions of unethical actors who care more about profit margins than the employees who spent their lives working their ass off for the company.

From the St. Louis Newspaper Guild:

Proving once more that the Post-Dispatch’s corporate owner has no heart – or holiday spirit – Lee Enterprises today notified that paper’s former employees who retired under the Guild contract in effect from June ‘04 to March ‘10 that their free medical coverage was being eliminated; those retirees would now have to pay 100% of the premium cost to keep their health care.

Such action flies in the face of contractual language in effect when those members retired and this office will soon file a grievance on their behalf. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Lee has launched an economic attack on former employees living on fixed incomes, so we have a pretty good idea of what their response will be and the likely course of action that will then ensue.

A few years ago Lee announced that they were doing the same thing to Guild members who left under a former (blue) contract that ran from 1994 to 2004. Initially it was for 30% of the cost but last year they raised that amount to 100%.

After that first assault, this office filed a grievance which was denied – based on the fact that retirees are no longer part of the bargaining unit and are no longer represented. Lee also maintained that expired contracts cannot be grieved (note that they waited to do this latest assault until after the yellow contract expired, as well). We countered, asserting that the right to medical care in retirement was a ‘vested’ right and that it vested the day the employee went out the door. All that other stuff about bargaining units and contract expiration – while nominally true – could not trump it.

They refused to participate in the grievance process, so we filed for arbitration. They refused to arbitrate, so we filed a federal lawsuit. They moved to dismiss and we cleared that hurdle. Along the way were other grievances, other filings and a bunch of other stuff (to read it all, check out the rest of our website) and we now find ourselves having won the initial lawsuit and preparing for appeal. After the judge’s decision in our case, I was hopeful that Lee would not attempt the same thing with our later retirees. But no. They did and here we go again.

However, while much of this looks and feels like deja vu, there are some notable differences. For openers, many of those who left during this last contract, left during one of two buyouts offered in 2005 and 2007. Many who took the buyout had not yet reached the age of 55; they were lured into retirement with enhanced credits for pension calculations and cash. And added to those lovely parting gifts was the written promise of free retiree medical. One has to wonder – it’s bad enough trying to circumvent our expired collective bargaining agreement – how do these scrooges plan to weasel out of such affirming letters on company masthead and upon which the ink is barely dry?

It’s terribly disturbing to realize that a lot of former coworkers will soon be without health care and are still more than ten years away from medicare eligibility. What does Lee Enterprises expect them to do? It would seem incredibly callous for corporate to take the position of, “Well, that’s their problem” when it was Lee who enticed them into retiring in the first place! This latest action by our corporate overlords goes beyond mere greed – it is a despicable act by an outfit that has apparently decided that employees who can remember JFK, Viet Nam and the Beatles are too expensive to keep around and are willing to lie to their faces in order to sever that relationship.

As before, the Guild will stand with its retired members and take all appropriate measures to hold Lee Enterprises accountable for this latest attack. Please know that the Guild office will be closed on Thanksgiving and the day after. We will file all necessary paperwork early next week and we will announce a meeting for our affected members sometime in mid-December. Until then, even though this action could be financially devastating, please try to not let this ruin your holidays – believe me, these people aren’t worth it. Growing up, my mother had a big sign in her kitchen. It read: Illegitimi non carborundum. Loosely translated, it means, ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down.’ Please hang in there; your Guild has your back and we’re fighting for you. In the meantime, if you can’t afford to pay 100% of Lee’s stated premiums and you have to go out and buy cheaper insurance, please keep good records and all receipts.

We will keep you posted on events as they occur.

Post-Dispatch Reporter Dismisses Substantive Criticism As "Sticks and Stones"

I've written a couple posts recently that were very critical of Post-Dispatch reporter Jake Wagman, and particularly his biased coverage of the Russ Carnahan/ Ed Martin race. I think I provided good evidence for my assertions, but as someone who tries to be open-minded, I realize that people might have reasons for disagreeing with me. However, in my posts, I did provide substantive criticisms, by which I mean specific claims that can be argued for or against. For example, I said that

Jake Wagman improperly left out crucial information in his latest article about the election in a way that fed into Ed Martin's insinuations that the election was somehow stolen or cheated.

Wagman trumped up stories about election problems in Ed Martin's 4,500 vote loss while completely ignoring well-documented voting problems in a race that Barbara Fraser lost by less than 180 votes. This suggests an inconsistent application of whatever criteria he uses to decide that a story is "newsworthy."

Wagman wrote a piece that was basically a press release for Ed Martin attacking Carnahan on the wind farm without getting a single quote from the Carnahan campaign or the Democratic Party.

In that same story, Wagman failed to do any research other than the press release, and so left out information that vindicated the Carnahans.

You can agree or disagree with these claims, but they are substantive claims. I provided evidence for those claims, and it should in principle be possible for people who disagree to provide evidence against these claims, such as saying, "the Post-Dispatch has a policy of always doing X, which is why Wagman did what he did," or "Wagman has X, Y, Z responsibilities that prevent him from getting quotes on every story." Those would be the types of reasons people could provide in a responsible, adult debate.

However, I submit that for anyone interested in honest and open debate, it is not cool to respond to substantive criticisms with vague dismissals that don't even attempt to address the substance. If I had just called Wagman a name, then it would make sense to respond with a vague dismissal. But I backed up my claims, so any legitimate response would similarly at least attempt to also make substantive claims and to back them up with evidence. So, with that in mind, consider this tweet yesterday from St. Louis Post-Dispatch Reporter Jeremy Kohler:
No substance. No supporting evidence. Nothing. Just a knee-jerk "circling the wagons" response that pretends that there was nothing worth responding to. So naturally, I invited him to expand on his critique:

So far, Kohler has not responded, and has instead moved on to other conversations.

Personally, I would like to think that a reporter at the Post-Dispatch who has time to make defensive remarks on Twitter would be interested in getting to the truth and as such seriously considering criticisms that relate to how journalism should be conducted. But we shall see.

Jake Wagman Fails As a Reporter

During the elections, I was mildly critical of Jake Wagman's puppy love of Ed Martin and unprofessional vendetta against Congressman Russ Carnahan. But after seeing his pattern of lazily reprinting Ed Martin press releases continue even after the election, it's now obvious that Wagman can no longer be considered a trustworthy source of information. Wagman's bias combined with the fact that he really just does not work very hard at his job creates a putrid mix: people who rely on him for news will for all practical purposes be less informed than those who ignore the Post-Dispatch entirely, because they'll be getting their information through a filter that's too blinded to get both sides and too lazy to check facts. I saw Wagman on election night and he told me that he doesn't take any criticism personally because it's just part of the business. He's right. It's not personal. He's just a bad reporter.

The latest example of Wagman's desperate plea for approval from "cool kid" Ed Martin is his "report" (read: paraphrasing what Ed Martin told him on the phone) about the security firm hired by the St. Louis City Board of Elections. The story is that a security firm hired by the Democratic chairman of the board was not voted on by the rest of the board, and that other members had complained about the decision. Now, this certainly seems like a reasonable news story and there's nothing wrong with passing this info on to the public (although it's an interesting choice considering just how much important information floats by Wagman as he's "busy" tweeting about the Cardinals and writing his 1 or 2 blog posts a day). But what's particularly defective about the story is the information that Wagman leaves out, which naturally plays into Ed Martin's story of a "cheated election." Wagman starts off his article with a false dichotomy:

When Republican congressional hopeful Ed Martin complained that the St. Louis Board of Elections hired a security firm that had worked for his opponent, it was easy to dismiss his concern as sour grapes by a candidate who lost a close election.

But e-mails obtained by the Post-Dispatch show that the chairman of the Election Board, a Democrat, hired the firm despite the objections of other board members, including a warning about the perception of a conflict of interest.

Actually, Ed Martin knew on Wednesday, November 3rd, that there were not enough disputed votes to change the election results, but he nevertheless refused to concede until the following Monday. So whether or not there was a dispute about hiring someone at the Election Board, it clearly was "sour grapes" for Ed Martin to wait a full week to concede, while sending out his tea party followers to scream "Voter Fraud!" and "Stolen election!" and generally to try to create the impression that something was untoward about the election (BTW, Wagman was also too lazy to note that the exact same people screaming outside of the Board of Elections were the Ed Martin supporters at his press conference). But more importantly, the fact is that two people in plain clothes "hanging out in the lobby" (which is all that's alleged) obviously had nothing to do with the outcome of an election that Carnahan won by 4,500 votes. Yet nowhere in Jake Wagman's article does he mention that this had no bearing on the election results, which is what Ed Martin was implying from the beginning.

Furthermore, compare Wagman's breathless "reporting" on Ed Martin's pet story with an election where one might actually have reason to question the results. Democratic State Senate candidate Barbara Fraser lost by less than 180 votes, while Washington University students in that district were apparently illegally purged from voter rolls and denied provisional ballots. The St. Louis Beacon reported on this. The local public radio reported on this. But Jake Wagman was too busy tweeting about the Cardinals. Or maybe Barbara Fraser just didn't seem "cool" enough for him. Either way, the fact remains that while Wagman pushed Ed Martin's bogus "voter fraud" story in an election that was decided by 4,500 votes, he completely ignored an election decided by 180 votes with numerous reports of disenfranchised voters.

Now, I suspect Wagman is the type of reporter who'd rather repeat the beltway tripe that "if you're getting criticism from both sides you must be doing a good job" than actually honestly consider any criticism. In fact, he'd probably use my criticism to try to pretend how objective he is. But if he does subscribe to that view, then what does it say about him that the St. Louis Tea Party (which says that the NAACP is "racist," that NPR needs to be defunded, that Fox News, Andrew Breitbart, and James O'Keefe are "objective journalists," etc.) has had nothing but glowing praise for Wagman for the past two months of election coverage? Consider:





Honestly, if you go two months of election coverage getting nonstop praise from a tea party that bases its whole philosophy on the Andrew Breitbart/ James O'Keefe model, you might want to reconsider your standing as a journalist. And there are so many other examples of Wagman's bias in this past election. He refused to ask Ed Martin certain questions, even when Charlie Brennan noted that Martin was being evasive. He didn't get quotes from the Carnahan campaign and from Democratic officials on many occasions. He would refuse contact from Democratic officials on multiple occasions. He wouldn't bother to get quotes from relevant parties during smear pieces on Carnahan. He refused to ask how the tea party was funded. He refused to ask what role St. Louisan John Burns played in James O'Keefe's plan to sexually humiliate a CNN reporter. He was too lazy to point out the St. Louis Tea Party's support of Roy Blunt, reported by his own colleague Tony Messenger, or to point out that their "criticism" of Blunt lasted approximately 2 days, exactly as much time as it took to get written up in the Post-Dispatch. And on...and on....and on.

Now, just to be clear, it's not quite as simple as saying that Wagman has a "Right-wing bias." In fact, Wagman has Democratic politicians he sucks up to just as much as Martin. His main criteria seems to be trying to impress the members of the good old boys club. But this sucking up to power comes at the expense of good journalism, and prevents him from doing the kind of honest reporting that is needed for a well-functioning democracy.

I realize that it's not a great idea to be so critical of a reporter at the only major daily newspaper in town. However, sometimes it's better to get things out in the open that many people are willing to say only in private. The reality is that Jake Wagman does not do a adequate job covering politics. St. Louis deserves better.

Fact Checking The Tea Party's Real Ed Martin Website Conspiracy Theory

I shared my thoughts earlier on the Real Ed Martin website that raised questions about what Ed Martin knew about sexual abuse allegations while he was serving as a member of the Curia for the Archdiocese. I also pointed out that the Post-Dispatch is failing to ask basic questions about the issue. But there were still a couple outstanding issues in the tea party's ramblings on the subject that needed to be addressed.

First off is the question of the timing of the payments. The Carnahan campaign has consistently maintained that they had nothing to do with the attack website and that the researcher Michael Corwin broke ties with them after they said they did not want to use this story because they felt it might offend Catholics. However, as noted by Jake Wagman, the group Veritas Research, which includes Corwin's partner in the project Jeannine Dillon, was paid $2,000 by the Carnahan campaign on Sept. 27. This led the tea party to accuse the Carnahan campaign of paying for the creation of the website.

However, Jo Mannies latest story for the Beacon provides an explanation for this fact. Mannies, unlike Wagman, spoke with Corwin about the timing. Here's what she found out:

Records show the duo purchased the domain name on Sept. 29 from GoDaddy for $12.17, including tax. That was two days after the Carnahan campaign paid just under $2,000 to Dillon's company, Veritas Research, according to the campaign's revised financial report filed earlier this week with the Federal Election Commission.

The money, said Corwin, had been owed to Dillon for months for expenses related to earlier research she had done for the Carnahan campaign. (Corwin earlier said the duo parted ways with the campaign in May or June over a dispute involving what to do with the information the researchers had collected about Martin's time with the Archdiocese. The Carnahan campaign didn't want to do anything because the congressman did not want to offend the district's Catholics, Corwin and the campaign have said.)

Corwin said that he and Dillon delayed purchasing the website name until she got paid, because they knew the Carnahan campaign would be upset if it learned about the site before it went online. Dillon feared she might then lose the money she was owed, he said.

That's strange, but still plausible. In fact, it's far more plausible than thinking that the Carnahan campaign paid a research firm $2,000 to create a website thinking that their public records would not be scrutinized.

The second part of the tea party conspiracy theory points out that Carnahan volunteer Teri Powers made the following comments on Facebook on Oct. 18, the day before the Real Ed Martin youtube video was created:

And how exactly did you, Chubby Checker, aid victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by priests when you worked for the Archdiocese? (note that the Activist Hub blog does not endorse the use of the term "Chubby Checker" to refer to Ed Martin)

The implication is that the Carnahan campaign knew that the video was about to come out, and was "telegraphing" its release.

However, after doing some facebook research of my own, I found out that Teri Powers had been referencing Martin's time at the Archdiocese well before Oct. 18 (the day before the video was uploaded). In fact, she was commenting about his time there before the website was even a twinkle in Corwin and Dillon's eyes.

Here's Teri's comments from October 12:

And from October 1st, two days before Corwin and Dillon had signed a web-hosting contract:

And from September 3, 26 days before Corwin and Dillon had even purchased the domain name.


In other words, Teri Powers had been commenting about the Archdiocese repeatedly over the past year, and these comments had nothing to do with the launch of the website. The conspiracy theory that the Carnahan campaign had tipped off Teri who in turn just couldn't help but spill her secret information has no evidence to support it, and I'm pretty confident from speaking with Teri that it's false.

So, while I'm very happy that the tea party was able to feel real joy for a brief period of time, it looks like the fun is over and it's time for them to move on to their next conspiracy theory. Maybe there are some LinkedIn profiles that still need examining?

P.S. Thanks to Brian Matthews and Teri Powers for a helpful discussion about this. And major hat tip to Jo Mannies for her extensive reporting on the subject.

The Squeaky Wheel: Post-Dispatch Reporting Pandering to the Right

I've argued many times on this blog that local media outlets have given tea parties overly favorable coverage and refused to do in-depth research about the tea party's claims. However, I'm not sure I've ever before seen a case that illustrates so perfectly the basic problem in the relationship between the tea party and the mainstream media. Basically, the problem is this: when the tea party complains loudly enough, the mainstream media caves in to them, regardless of whether the complaints have any merit. The mainstream media interacts with the tea party in the same way a bad parent interacts with a spoiled child: by always giving in if the child holds his breath long enough, or screams loudly enough.

To make the case, recall that back on August 17, someone broke the back window of Russ Carnahan's campaign office and threw in an incendiary device. Jake Wagman at the Post-Dispatch included the following passage in his story:

Apart from Martin, Carnahan is weathering a tumultuous political environment. A year ago, several people were arrested at a Carnahan town hall forum after a fracas broke out between protesters and Carnahan supporters.

Loesch freaked out about this throwaway comment, claiming that Wagman "misrepresented" the August incident and was blaming the tea party for the firebombing. Here's what Loesch wrote in response to Wagman's passage:

No. Protesters were harassed by people who identified themselves as Carnahan volunteers and people not even of the 3rd district, OFA bussed people in who were loud and disruptive at the meeting (I know, because they assumed me and the veteran who attended the townhall with me were with OFA and snuck us through the side door), and Carnahan supporters attacked a man they profiled as being a conservative. I and others have endless video and photographic footage of the evening. The “fracas” came from Carnahan supporters and there isn’t a police report or eyewitness that has stated otherwise. To report otherwise is disingenuous and the omission of the above implies that those targeted at the townhall contributed to the “fracas” and whether Wagman intended it or not, further implies that the “fracas” could be linked to the firebombing and that the perpetrator could be a tea partier. Also not cool.

She also later made the following criticism :

Does reporter Jake Wagman know what a “firebomb” is? From what I’ve seen of the carefully controlled photos in circulation, this looks nothing like the damage caused by such incendiary devices.

Moreover, on Twitter she said the following about the Post-Dispatch:

And later, she called on Wagman to apologize:

In a blog post, she wrote the following:

Why didn’t the Russ Carnahan campaign correct the narrative of the local alternative weekly and Jake Wagman’s subtle suggestion that it was a tea partier?

Even worse, she sent her toady Jimi971 out to harrass Wagman, as well as myself:

Think that old Jimi's tweets don't have anything to do with Loesch? Think again. Anyone who's followed his feed knows that he's basically her lacky: when he first started on Twitter all he did was attack anyone who was critical of her. And, of course, she made sure to include him in her select "follow Friday" group the following Friday:

Anyway, regardless of whether you see Jimi's actions as an extension of Loesch's, it's very clear that she was repeatedly attacking the Post-Dispatch by claiming that they had "blamed the tea party" for the firebombing. But, of course, the Post-Dispatch did nothing of the sort. Wagman merely said that it was a tumultuous political environment without saying anything about the tea party. Now I pointed out (and still believe) that the tea party's absurd behavior of burning photos of Russ Carnahan while chanting "death to the dictator" and carrying a coffin to his house are actions that are likely to encourage people to violence, and Chad Garrison made a joke by saying that the original suspect (who has not been charged) was middle-aged, white, and "bat-shit crazy" and hence fit the demographic for the tea party. But Wagman didn't even mention the tea party in his post. Yet Loesch and her followers targeted Wagman and demanded that he apologize.

As Loesch continued attacking the Post-Dispatch for nothing, finally their Political Editor Chris Ave was a guest on her show. And after weeks of posturing and attacking the Post-Dispatch, do you know what Loesch said to Ave? Nothing. She said nothing. Because there really was nothing she could criticize about Wagman's article. Instead, she spent much of the time trying to get Ave to criticize Chad Garrison's story on the subject. You can listen to the audio here if you are so inclined:

So Loesch attacked the Post-Dispatch for nothing, and when push came to shove, she really had nothing to say to Ave. This should have been the end of the story. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

As part of her "welcome" post as the new editor of the right-wing smear rag, Big Journalism, Loesch announced the following:

This past Saturday I sat in a hotel ballroom facing a host of journalists from across the Midwest as part of a panel which discussed reporting on the Tea Party movement. I told them what I believed was wrong with corporate media’s approach, “teabagging” notwithstanding. I was invited by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Political Editor, Christopher Ave, whose attention I caught when I railed against a particular piece the paper published involving a fire at Rep. Russ Carnahan’s office (which the alternative media implied was perpetrated by the Tea Party). He guested on my show after the piece published and we had a healthy discourse on journalism and its objectives. I trust him to deliver fair pieces on the movement, on conservatism – not coddling, kittens-and-sunshine hand-holding and kid gloves, but actual objective pieces designed to inform, not persuade. Perhaps in my lifetime there will be more exceptions to the rule like this

"Not coddling" said Loesch. How incredibly ironic. Because how else would you describe a situation where Loesch baselessly attacked the Post-Dispatch, and then was invited to a journalism conference by him in order to coach the media in how to cover the tea party? As I wrote previously, I sure as hell don't remember the media inviting the anti-war movement to come coach them in how to cover their rallies. Yet this is the principle we see again and again. The tea party, even when they are completely wrong, screams as loud as they can, and the media caters to their demands rather than showing some resolve. And after it happens, the tea party continues to whine about how biased the media is against them anyway.

It's hard for me not to see this in light of the shameful editing by the Post-Dispatch reported on today by FiredUp Missouri. The following passages from Tony Messenger's article about Republican Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder were cut online and then ultimately completely removed from the print edition:

The lieutenant governor's Twitter feed is filled with the most far-right Republican conspiracy theories of the day. Kinder has compared liberals to Hitler, politicized a hostage crisis and repeated false claims about "death panels" in the new federal health care law. He even speculated on the worst "tramp stamp" tattoos on women.

It's tough to take Kinder seriously when his daily communication with the public is either purely politically motivated or just plain unprofessional.

Was the removal of these passages a result of the "coaching" from Loesch about how to cover tea party tweets? As someone with no inside knowledge of what happened, I can't say, but I do think it looks bad.

I'll further note that no St. Louis reporters have yet gotten a quote from the tea party's John Burns, reported by CNN to be included in planning emails for James O'Keefe's plots to sexually humiliate a CNN reporter. Similarly, none have inquired, so far as I know, how the St. Louis tea party is paying for office space and billboards when they were only able to raise $900 in three months for their anti-transit campaign. Are they getting outside funding? If so, from whom? These are the types of questions reporters should be asking, especially in light of the fact that tea partiers were orchestrated by right-wing billionaires.

Anyway, the lesson for tea partiers is clear: scream as loud as you can and always claim that the media is biased against you, and they will bend over backwards to make sure to express whatever you want, regardless of whether it's true. The lesson for everyone else? Well, that's a little more difficult to ascertain.

Russ Carnahan Receives 14,000 More Votes Than Ed Martin

Congressman Russ Carnahan received 14,000 more votes than Ed Martin in the August 3rd primary elections, despite not having a seriously contested primary. Carnahan received 80% of the vote in the Democratic primary. On the other hand, Ed Martin, even after convincing the St. Louis Tea Party to blacklist and then attack his opponent John Wayne Tucker, was only able to get an underwhelming 63% of the vote in the Republican Primary. This is less of a percentage than Roy Blunt was able to secure against much-ballyhooed conservative challenger Chuck Purgason. So, in general, it was a pretty poor performance by Ed Martin.

But that make this evaluation from David Hunn at the Post-Dispatch extremely curious. The whole article reads like an Ed Martin press release. The article claims, "Some say this could be the year a Republican wins the 3rd," and then claims that Martin "overwhelmingly" won his GOP primary. Actually, 63% among Republican voters is not even close to "overwhelming," and strongly suggests that even Republicans are hesitant about voting for the ethically-challenged Martin.

Which brings up a question I have asked before: why does the Post-Dispatch pander to an unethical politician who called the paper "judas" in the past and openly roots for it to fail and for the Globe-Democrat to succeed? If media is now a business, isn't it bad business to try to empower the very people who are trying to destroy you? At the very least, stop writing the puff pieces and unbalanced articles that only tell Martin's side of the story.