Washington Post Becomes a Fair Newspaper
Monday, December 22, 2008 3:17 PM
By: Ronald Kessler
Two newspapers set the agenda for the rest of the media: The Washington Post and The New York Times. The stories they break, the play they give them, and the way they characterize candidates, events, and issues are usually adopted by both print and broadcast reporters.
As a Christmas gift, I am happy to report that one of those newspapers — The Washington Post — appears to have discarded its liberal slant and become a fair newspaper.
As a Washington Post reporter from 1970 to 1985, I have been dismayed by the way the paper, along with much of the rest of the media, became openly partisan during the Bush administration. I cite examples of unfair coverage of Bush initiatives in my books on the war on terror, on Laura Bush, and on George W. Bush. I guarantee that if we had written stories like that during the Watergate days, Executive Editor Ben Bradlee would have fired us.
But since Katharine Weymouth, a granddaughter of former Post Chairman Katharine Graham, became publisher a year ago, the paper has steadily become more fair. A graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School, she practiced law at Williams & Connolly in Washington prior to coming to the Post. After Weymouth named former Wall Street Journal Editor Marcus Brauchli executive editor last September, the switch to more balanced coverage became even more noticeable.
No longer do I pick up the paper to find slanted stories that suppress or ignore the other side or that mischaracterize issues to further a liberal agenda. Instead, honesty has been restored to the coverage. It has become more probing and interesting as well.
Last week, the lead story on Page One was, “Charter Schools Make Gains on Tests.” Prior to Brauchli’s takeover, it would have been unthinkable for the paper to highlight that a pet Republican approach to education was successful. When conservative icon Paul Weyrich died last week, the Post ran the story under a three-column headline on Page One. In contrast, The New York Times ran a story on page B11.
Now when Post stories report problems, the subheads often cite countervailing progress. “Although U.S.-Run Detention Centers Have Vastly Improved Since the Abu Ghraib Scandal, No System Has Been Developed to Determine Who Is Guilty,” a Dec. 6 Page One subhead said.
Most important, the hit jobs that mischaracterized Bush administration programs, especially involving the war on terror, have vanished.
The editorial page, which continues to report to Don Graham, chairman and CEO of The Washington Post Company, has also become more fair-minded. Every day, the Bush White House e-mails friendlies a morning update. These days, it is not uncommon for the update to cite Washington Post editorials or Op-Eds. Last week, for example, a headline in the update said, “The Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl Praises President Bush for Meeting with Political Dissidents.” Diehl is the Post’s deputy editorial page editor.
Post insiders tell me Brauchli has not issued any edicts about fairness, but clearly he is setting a different tone and leading by example through his editing and choice of stories and play.
Conservatives have taken notice. Brad Blakeman, a Republican strategist who is a former Bush White House aide, says he is pleased to have observed the change.
In the long run, fair and balanced coverage should help the Post’s financial prospects as it earns back trust.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
Beware the church of climate alarm
Miranda Devine
November 27, 2008
The Sydney Morning Herald - As the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, an economist, anti-totalitarian and climate change sceptic, prepares to take up the rotating presidency of the European Union next year, climate alarmists are doing their best to traduce him.
The New York Times opened a profile of Klaus, 67, this week with a quote from a 1980s communist secret agent's report, claiming he behaves like a "rejected genius", and asserts there is "palpable fear" he will "embarrass" the EU.
But the real fear driving climate alarmists wild is that a more rational approach to the fundamentalist religion of global warming may be in the ascendancy - whether in the parliamentary offices of the world's largest trading bloc or in the living rooms of Blacktown.
As the global financial crisis takes hold, perhaps people are starting to wonder whether the so-called precautionary principle, which would have us accept enormous new taxes in the guise of an emissions trading scheme and curtail economic growth, is justified, based on what we actually know about climate.
One of Australia's leading enviro-sceptics, the geologist and University of Adelaide professor Ian Plimer, 62, says he has noticed audiences becoming more receptive to his message that climate change has always occurred and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
In a speech at the American Club in Sydney on Monday night for Quadrant magazine, titled Human-Induced Climate Change - A Lot Of Hot Air, Plimer debunked climate-change myths.
"Climates always change," he said. Our climate has changed in cycles over millions of years, as the orbit of the planet wobbles and our distance from the sun changes, for instance, or as the sun itself produces variable amounts of radiation. "All of this affects climate. It is impossible to stop climate change. Climates have always changed and they always will."
His two-hour presentation included more than 50 charts and graphs, as well as almost 40 pages of references. It is the basis of his new book, Heaven And Earth: The Missing Science Of Global Warming, to be published early next year.
Plimer said one of the charts, which plots atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature over 500 million years, with seemingly little correlation, demonstrates one of the "lessons from history" to which geologists are privy: "There is no relationship between CO2 and temperature."
Another slide charts the alternating periods of cooling and warming on Earth, with the Pleistocene Ice Age starting 110,000 years ago and giving way, 14,700 years ago, to the Bolling warm period for 800 years. This in turn gave way to the Older Dryas cooling for 300 years, then the Allerod warming for 700 years, and so on, until the cooling of the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850. Since 1850, we have lived through the "Modern Warming", one of the most stable climate periods in history.
Plimer said some astronomers predict we are headed for a new cooling period.
Plimer said there is a division between those scientists who sit in front of super computers and push piles of data into the mathematical models that drive the theory of climate change, and those who take measurements in the field.
We are not sceptical enough about the data. For instance, Plimer cited differences between results from temperature measuring stations in urban and rural areas. Those in urbanised Chicago, Berkeley, New York, and so on, show temperature rises over the past 150 years, whereas those in the rural US, in Houlton, Albany and Harrisburg (though not Death Valley, California) show equally consistent cooling. "What we're measuring is urbanisation," Plimer said.
To understand the chaotic nature of climate change, we need to consider all the inputs - cosmic radiation, sun, clouds and so on, he said.
There was much more but essentially Plimer's message is that the idea humans cause climate change has become a fundamentalist religion which is corrupting science. It is embedded with a fear of nature and embraced principally by city people who have lost touch with nature.
He likens the debate to the famous 1990s battle he had in the Federal Court, where he accused an elder of The Hills Bible Church in Baulkham Hills of breaching Australia's Trade Practices Act by claiming to have found scientific evidence of Noah's Ark in Turkey.
Plimer says creationists and climate alarmists are quite similar in that "we're dealing with dogma and people who, when challenged, become quite vicious and irrational".
Human-caused climate change is being "promoted with religious zeal … there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics. They have their holy books, their prophet [is] Al Gore. And they are promoting a story which is frightening us witless [using] guilt [and urging] penance."
It is difficult for non-scientists to engage in the debate over what causes climate change and whether or not it can be stopped by new taxes and slower growth, because dissenting voices are shouted down by true believers in the scientific community who claim they alone have the authority to speak.
Quadrant is under fire for publishing articles by sceptics but, as its editor, Keith Windschuttle, said on Monday night, "People who are really confident [of their facts] relish debate."
In any case, ordinary people already have suspicions. The zealotry and one-sidedness of the debate alarmed an 81-year-old Seven Hills pensioner, Denys Clarke, so much that last month, at his own expense, he hired the ballroom at the Blacktown Workers Club for two public forums, titled The Truth About Climate Change. He invited a climate sceptic, the James Cook University professor Bob Carter, a geologist, to speak. More than 300 people attended, some from as far away as Nowra.
Carter, like Plimer and Klaus, has come in for his fair share of vilification. But as Clarke proves, you can't stop people thinking. Yet.
November 27, 2008
The Sydney Morning Herald - As the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, an economist, anti-totalitarian and climate change sceptic, prepares to take up the rotating presidency of the European Union next year, climate alarmists are doing their best to traduce him.
The New York Times opened a profile of Klaus, 67, this week with a quote from a 1980s communist secret agent's report, claiming he behaves like a "rejected genius", and asserts there is "palpable fear" he will "embarrass" the EU.
But the real fear driving climate alarmists wild is that a more rational approach to the fundamentalist religion of global warming may be in the ascendancy - whether in the parliamentary offices of the world's largest trading bloc or in the living rooms of Blacktown.
As the global financial crisis takes hold, perhaps people are starting to wonder whether the so-called precautionary principle, which would have us accept enormous new taxes in the guise of an emissions trading scheme and curtail economic growth, is justified, based on what we actually know about climate.
One of Australia's leading enviro-sceptics, the geologist and University of Adelaide professor Ian Plimer, 62, says he has noticed audiences becoming more receptive to his message that climate change has always occurred and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
In a speech at the American Club in Sydney on Monday night for Quadrant magazine, titled Human-Induced Climate Change - A Lot Of Hot Air, Plimer debunked climate-change myths.
"Climates always change," he said. Our climate has changed in cycles over millions of years, as the orbit of the planet wobbles and our distance from the sun changes, for instance, or as the sun itself produces variable amounts of radiation. "All of this affects climate. It is impossible to stop climate change. Climates have always changed and they always will."
His two-hour presentation included more than 50 charts and graphs, as well as almost 40 pages of references. It is the basis of his new book, Heaven And Earth: The Missing Science Of Global Warming, to be published early next year.
Plimer said one of the charts, which plots atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature over 500 million years, with seemingly little correlation, demonstrates one of the "lessons from history" to which geologists are privy: "There is no relationship between CO2 and temperature."
Another slide charts the alternating periods of cooling and warming on Earth, with the Pleistocene Ice Age starting 110,000 years ago and giving way, 14,700 years ago, to the Bolling warm period for 800 years. This in turn gave way to the Older Dryas cooling for 300 years, then the Allerod warming for 700 years, and so on, until the cooling of the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850. Since 1850, we have lived through the "Modern Warming", one of the most stable climate periods in history.
Plimer said some astronomers predict we are headed for a new cooling period.
Plimer said there is a division between those scientists who sit in front of super computers and push piles of data into the mathematical models that drive the theory of climate change, and those who take measurements in the field.
We are not sceptical enough about the data. For instance, Plimer cited differences between results from temperature measuring stations in urban and rural areas. Those in urbanised Chicago, Berkeley, New York, and so on, show temperature rises over the past 150 years, whereas those in the rural US, in Houlton, Albany and Harrisburg (though not Death Valley, California) show equally consistent cooling. "What we're measuring is urbanisation," Plimer said.
To understand the chaotic nature of climate change, we need to consider all the inputs - cosmic radiation, sun, clouds and so on, he said.
There was much more but essentially Plimer's message is that the idea humans cause climate change has become a fundamentalist religion which is corrupting science. It is embedded with a fear of nature and embraced principally by city people who have lost touch with nature.
He likens the debate to the famous 1990s battle he had in the Federal Court, where he accused an elder of The Hills Bible Church in Baulkham Hills of breaching Australia's Trade Practices Act by claiming to have found scientific evidence of Noah's Ark in Turkey.
Plimer says creationists and climate alarmists are quite similar in that "we're dealing with dogma and people who, when challenged, become quite vicious and irrational".
Human-caused climate change is being "promoted with religious zeal … there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics. They have their holy books, their prophet [is] Al Gore. And they are promoting a story which is frightening us witless [using] guilt [and urging] penance."
It is difficult for non-scientists to engage in the debate over what causes climate change and whether or not it can be stopped by new taxes and slower growth, because dissenting voices are shouted down by true believers in the scientific community who claim they alone have the authority to speak.
Quadrant is under fire for publishing articles by sceptics but, as its editor, Keith Windschuttle, said on Monday night, "People who are really confident [of their facts] relish debate."
In any case, ordinary people already have suspicions. The zealotry and one-sidedness of the debate alarmed an 81-year-old Seven Hills pensioner, Denys Clarke, so much that last month, at his own expense, he hired the ballroom at the Blacktown Workers Club for two public forums, titled The Truth About Climate Change. He invited a climate sceptic, the James Cook University professor Bob Carter, a geologist, to speak. More than 300 people attended, some from as far away as Nowra.
Carter, like Plimer and Klaus, has come in for his fair share of vilification. But as Clarke proves, you can't stop people thinking. Yet.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
US Media Election Absurdity 9
The death of objectivity
October 24, 2008
Colorado Springs Gazette - Regardless of who wins the presidential election, one outcome of the 2008 campaign is decided. This will go down in history as the year the mainstream media came clean, throwing all pretense of objectivity and fairness out the door to indulge a no-holds-barred mission to elect the Democratic ticket. The Fourth Estate will never be the same. It's not a bad thing, because Americans have a more honest relationship with the media than they have ever enjoyed.
The vast majority of reporters and editors at the big three networks, the wire services and the nation's major newspapers and magazines have historically been liberal Democrats proclaiming objectivity while providing biased coverage. That's one reason right wingers do so well on A.M. radio. It's a niche born of blowback against the establishment press.
It's the last refuge of Joe the Plumber, whose radio plays while he solders pipe.
Journalism faculties at major universities are overwhelmingly and radically liberal. It's the nature of the beast. The liberal Democratic politics of taxing, spending and redistribution are interpreted as populist policies that will give comfort and aid to people who have the least. That makes liberalism the obvious refuge for journalists who embark upon their careers to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
A famous 2004 report by the Media Research Center summarized media bias just four years before the façade came down: "Surveys over the past 25 years have consistently found journalists are much more liberal than the rest of America. Their voting habits are disproportionately Democratic, their views on issues such as abortion and gay rights are well to the left of most Americans and they are less likely to attend church or synagogue.
When it comes to the free market, journalists have become increasingly pro-regulation over the past 20 years, with majorities endorsing activist government efforts to guarantee everyone a job and to reduce the income gap between rich and poor Americans." (They should love Obama, who says he'll take from the rich and give to the poor).
Way back in 1986, when there was an effort at balance in the nation's leading news rooms, three leading political scientists surveyed 240 journalists at ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. In no election they asked about did the percentage of journalists voting Democrat ever dip below 80 percent.
Historically, however, the liberal Democrats who staff major media organizations have made concerted efforts to at least feign objectivity. Not anymore. By mid-August, Obama had graced the cover of Time, the country's premiere weekly news magazine, seven times in one year! John McCain had been featured twice. Newsweek gave Obama the cover for the 10th time in mid-August, but suffice to say he's on the cover of Newsweek and other major slicks pretty much every week these days. Newsweek editors have rendered their once-great magazine a national laughing stock. Newsweek's Obama covers are reportedly tweaked to make the candidate look flawless. One Obama cover features a white light shining down on his head, creating the image of a halo around his hairline. An unflattering cover of Sarah Palin, by contrast, features every wrinkle and every flaw, and the headline: "She's one of the folks, and that's the problem."
The Media Research Center reported Oct. 2 that ABC's "Good Morning America" skipped reporting the results of its own poll, which showed at the time a tight race between Obama and McCain in Florida and Ohio. Instead, it reported a Quinnipiac poll that showed far more favorable results for Obama.
The mainstream media have rightly given scant attention to silly GOP-driven scandals, like the one that portrays Obama as the bosom buddy of some loser who tried to terrorize his own country when Obama was 8. Journalists have taken the high road with that story, preferring to focus on more substantive policy issues. Yet mainstream journalists burned substantial print space and air time this week alerting us that donors spent $150,000 to outfit Palin for the campaign - the biggest "who cares?" ever told in a national campaign.
In one classic last-minute effort to ensure an Obama landslide, CNN's Drew Griffin used an interview with Palin to fully distort the text of a National Review article written to expose media bias. National Review's Brian York wrote: "Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or - or, well, all of the above."
Clearly, he was criticizing the press. But York's words were parroted back to Palin as an example of criticism she's receiving even from conservatives. He asked Palin to answer to the fact a National Review writer had penned: "I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above." He reversed the message of a tiny niche magazine in order to fool an enormous, mainstream TV audience into believing that even conservatives think Palin is awful.
The anecdotal evidence of bold, overt and unapologetic mainstream media bias seems endless. That's why a Pew Research Center poll released Oct. 22 showed that by a whopping 70 percent margin Americans say "most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4." Only 9 percent think the media favor McCain. Rarely has an opinion poll about anything shown such overwhelming and decisive results.
The pretense of objectivity, long a part of our country's Fourth Estate, has been sacrificed at the altar of Obama. A majority of mainstream journalists have given up on the illusion of objectivity. They want the Democrats to win, they don't have the time or energy for fairness, and they'll give their professional lives for the cause if necessary. And that's OK. The genie has emerged from the bottle and she's never going back. At least Americans see her and know her better than ever.
*Courtesy of the Colorado Springs Gazette, OPINION column, dated Sunday, October 26, 2008
October 24, 2008
Colorado Springs Gazette - Regardless of who wins the presidential election, one outcome of the 2008 campaign is decided. This will go down in history as the year the mainstream media came clean, throwing all pretense of objectivity and fairness out the door to indulge a no-holds-barred mission to elect the Democratic ticket. The Fourth Estate will never be the same. It's not a bad thing, because Americans have a more honest relationship with the media than they have ever enjoyed.
The vast majority of reporters and editors at the big three networks, the wire services and the nation's major newspapers and magazines have historically been liberal Democrats proclaiming objectivity while providing biased coverage. That's one reason right wingers do so well on A.M. radio. It's a niche born of blowback against the establishment press.
It's the last refuge of Joe the Plumber, whose radio plays while he solders pipe.
Journalism faculties at major universities are overwhelmingly and radically liberal. It's the nature of the beast. The liberal Democratic politics of taxing, spending and redistribution are interpreted as populist policies that will give comfort and aid to people who have the least. That makes liberalism the obvious refuge for journalists who embark upon their careers to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
A famous 2004 report by the Media Research Center summarized media bias just four years before the façade came down: "Surveys over the past 25 years have consistently found journalists are much more liberal than the rest of America. Their voting habits are disproportionately Democratic, their views on issues such as abortion and gay rights are well to the left of most Americans and they are less likely to attend church or synagogue.
When it comes to the free market, journalists have become increasingly pro-regulation over the past 20 years, with majorities endorsing activist government efforts to guarantee everyone a job and to reduce the income gap between rich and poor Americans." (They should love Obama, who says he'll take from the rich and give to the poor).
Way back in 1986, when there was an effort at balance in the nation's leading news rooms, three leading political scientists surveyed 240 journalists at ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. In no election they asked about did the percentage of journalists voting Democrat ever dip below 80 percent.
Historically, however, the liberal Democrats who staff major media organizations have made concerted efforts to at least feign objectivity. Not anymore. By mid-August, Obama had graced the cover of Time, the country's premiere weekly news magazine, seven times in one year! John McCain had been featured twice. Newsweek gave Obama the cover for the 10th time in mid-August, but suffice to say he's on the cover of Newsweek and other major slicks pretty much every week these days. Newsweek editors have rendered their once-great magazine a national laughing stock. Newsweek's Obama covers are reportedly tweaked to make the candidate look flawless. One Obama cover features a white light shining down on his head, creating the image of a halo around his hairline. An unflattering cover of Sarah Palin, by contrast, features every wrinkle and every flaw, and the headline: "She's one of the folks, and that's the problem."
The Media Research Center reported Oct. 2 that ABC's "Good Morning America" skipped reporting the results of its own poll, which showed at the time a tight race between Obama and McCain in Florida and Ohio. Instead, it reported a Quinnipiac poll that showed far more favorable results for Obama.
The mainstream media have rightly given scant attention to silly GOP-driven scandals, like the one that portrays Obama as the bosom buddy of some loser who tried to terrorize his own country when Obama was 8. Journalists have taken the high road with that story, preferring to focus on more substantive policy issues. Yet mainstream journalists burned substantial print space and air time this week alerting us that donors spent $150,000 to outfit Palin for the campaign - the biggest "who cares?" ever told in a national campaign.
In one classic last-minute effort to ensure an Obama landslide, CNN's Drew Griffin used an interview with Palin to fully distort the text of a National Review article written to expose media bias. National Review's Brian York wrote: "Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or - or, well, all of the above."
Clearly, he was criticizing the press. But York's words were parroted back to Palin as an example of criticism she's receiving even from conservatives. He asked Palin to answer to the fact a National Review writer had penned: "I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above." He reversed the message of a tiny niche magazine in order to fool an enormous, mainstream TV audience into believing that even conservatives think Palin is awful.
The anecdotal evidence of bold, overt and unapologetic mainstream media bias seems endless. That's why a Pew Research Center poll released Oct. 22 showed that by a whopping 70 percent margin Americans say "most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4." Only 9 percent think the media favor McCain. Rarely has an opinion poll about anything shown such overwhelming and decisive results.
The pretense of objectivity, long a part of our country's Fourth Estate, has been sacrificed at the altar of Obama. A majority of mainstream journalists have given up on the illusion of objectivity. They want the Democrats to win, they don't have the time or energy for fairness, and they'll give their professional lives for the cause if necessary. And that's OK. The genie has emerged from the bottle and she's never going back. At least Americans see her and know her better than ever.
*Courtesy of the Colorado Springs Gazette, OPINION column, dated Sunday, October 26, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
US Media Election Absurdity 8
A Giddy Sense of Boosterism
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 17, 2008; C01
Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled "Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story." Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama's campaign.
Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue -- "Obama's American Dream" -- filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.
Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.
What's troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there's nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.
"The Obamas' New Life!" blares People's cover, with a shot of the family. "New home, new friends, new puppy!" Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: "I Think I'm a Pretty Cool Dad." The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle "is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- combined!" for the fashion world.
Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed "Generation O"?
Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. "OBAMAISM -- It's a Kind of Religion," says New York magazine. "Those of us too young to have known JFK's Camelot are going to have our own giddy Camelot II to enrapture and entertain us," Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it "BAM-A-LOT."
"Here we are," writes Salon's Rebecca Traister, "oohing and aahing over what they'll be wearing, and what they'll be eating, what kind of dog they'll be getting, what bedrooms they'll be living in, and what schools they'll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas' tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?"
But aren't media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?
"Obama is a figure, especially in pop culture, in a way that most new presidents are not," historian Michael Beschloss says. "Young people who may not be interested in the details of NAFTA or foreign policy just think Obama is cool, and they're interested in him. Being cool can really help a new president."
So can a sense of optimism, reflected on USA Today's front page. "Poll: Hopes soaring for Obama, administration," the headline said, with 65 percent saying "the USA will be better off 4 years from now."
But what happens when adulation gives way to the messy, incremental process of governing? When Obama has to confront a deep-rooted financial crisis, two wars and a political system whose default setting is gridlock? When he makes decisions that inevitably disappoint some of his boosters?
"We're celebrating a moment as much as a man, I think," says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, whose new issue, out today, compares Obama to Lincoln. "Given our racial history, an hour or two of commemoration seems appropriate. But there is no doubt that the glow of the moment will fade, and I am sure the coverage will reflect that in due course."
One of the few magazines to strike a skeptical tone is the London-based Economist, which endorsed Obama. "With such a victory come unreasonably great expectations," its lead editorial says.
Web worship of Obama is nearly limitless. On YouTube alone, the Obama Girl song, "I've Got a Crush on Obama," has been viewed 11.7 million times. Even an unadorned video of the candidate's election night speech in Chicago has drawn 3.5 million views.
I am not trying to diminish the sheer improbability of what this African American politician, a virtual unknown four years ago, has accomplished. Every one of us views his victory through a personal lens. I thought of growing up in a "Leave It to Beaver" era, when there were no blacks in leading television roles until Bill Cosby was tapped as the co-star of "I Spy" in 1965. When the Watts riots broke out that year, the Los Angeles Times sent an advertising salesman to cover it because the paper had no black reporters. The country has traveled light-years since then.
It is hard to find a precedent in American history. Ronald Reagan was a marquee star because of his Hollywood career, but mainly among older voters, since he made his last movie 16 years before winning the White House in 1980. Jack Kennedy was a more formal figure after winning the 1960 election -- "trying to look older than he was, because he thought youth was a handicap in running for president," Beschloss says -- but quickly took on larger-than-life dimensions.
"The Kennedy buildup goes on," James MacGregor Burns wrote in the New Republic in the spring of 1961. "The adjectives tumble over one another. He is not only the handsomest, the best-dressed, the most articulate, and graceful as a gazelle. He is omniscient; he swallows and digests whole books in minutes; he confounds experts with his superior knowledge of their field. He is omnipotent."
Soon afterward, Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs debacle.
The media would be remiss if they didn't reflect the sense of unadulterated joy that greeted Obama's election, both here and around the world, and the pride even among those who opposed him. Newspapers were stunned and delighted at the voracious demand for post-election editions, prompting The Washington Post and other papers to print hundreds of thousands of extra copies and pocket the change. (When else have we felt so loved lately?) Demand for inaugural tickets has been unprecedented. Barack is suddenly a hot baby name. Record companies are releasing hip-hop songs, by the likes of Jay-Z and Will.I.Am, with such titles as "Pop Champagne for Barack." Consumers, the Los Angeles Times reports, are buying up "Obama-themed T-shirts, buttons, bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, wine bottles, magnets, greeting cards, neon signs, mobile phones and framed art prints."
A barrage of Obama-related books are in the works. Newsweek's quadrennial election volume is titled "A Long Time Coming: The Historic, Combative, Expensive and Inspiring 2008 Election and the Victory of Barack Obama." Publishers obviously see a bull market.
MSNBC, which was accused of cheerleading for the Democratic nominee during the campaign, is running promos that say: "Barack Obama, America's 44th president. Watch as a leader renews America's promise." What are viewers to make of that?
There is always a level of excitement when a new president is coming to town -- new aides to profile, new policies to dissect, new family members to follow. But can anyone imagine this kind of media frenzy if John McCain had managed to win?
Obama's days of walking on water won't last indefinitely. His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 17, 2008; C01
Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled "Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story." Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama's campaign.
Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue -- "Obama's American Dream" -- filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.
Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.
What's troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there's nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.
"The Obamas' New Life!" blares People's cover, with a shot of the family. "New home, new friends, new puppy!" Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: "I Think I'm a Pretty Cool Dad." The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle "is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- combined!" for the fashion world.
Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed "Generation O"?
Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. "OBAMAISM -- It's a Kind of Religion," says New York magazine. "Those of us too young to have known JFK's Camelot are going to have our own giddy Camelot II to enrapture and entertain us," Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it "BAM-A-LOT."
"Here we are," writes Salon's Rebecca Traister, "oohing and aahing over what they'll be wearing, and what they'll be eating, what kind of dog they'll be getting, what bedrooms they'll be living in, and what schools they'll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas' tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?"
But aren't media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?
"Obama is a figure, especially in pop culture, in a way that most new presidents are not," historian Michael Beschloss says. "Young people who may not be interested in the details of NAFTA or foreign policy just think Obama is cool, and they're interested in him. Being cool can really help a new president."
So can a sense of optimism, reflected on USA Today's front page. "Poll: Hopes soaring for Obama, administration," the headline said, with 65 percent saying "the USA will be better off 4 years from now."
But what happens when adulation gives way to the messy, incremental process of governing? When Obama has to confront a deep-rooted financial crisis, two wars and a political system whose default setting is gridlock? When he makes decisions that inevitably disappoint some of his boosters?
"We're celebrating a moment as much as a man, I think," says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, whose new issue, out today, compares Obama to Lincoln. "Given our racial history, an hour or two of commemoration seems appropriate. But there is no doubt that the glow of the moment will fade, and I am sure the coverage will reflect that in due course."
One of the few magazines to strike a skeptical tone is the London-based Economist, which endorsed Obama. "With such a victory come unreasonably great expectations," its lead editorial says.
Web worship of Obama is nearly limitless. On YouTube alone, the Obama Girl song, "I've Got a Crush on Obama," has been viewed 11.7 million times. Even an unadorned video of the candidate's election night speech in Chicago has drawn 3.5 million views.
I am not trying to diminish the sheer improbability of what this African American politician, a virtual unknown four years ago, has accomplished. Every one of us views his victory through a personal lens. I thought of growing up in a "Leave It to Beaver" era, when there were no blacks in leading television roles until Bill Cosby was tapped as the co-star of "I Spy" in 1965. When the Watts riots broke out that year, the Los Angeles Times sent an advertising salesman to cover it because the paper had no black reporters. The country has traveled light-years since then.
It is hard to find a precedent in American history. Ronald Reagan was a marquee star because of his Hollywood career, but mainly among older voters, since he made his last movie 16 years before winning the White House in 1980. Jack Kennedy was a more formal figure after winning the 1960 election -- "trying to look older than he was, because he thought youth was a handicap in running for president," Beschloss says -- but quickly took on larger-than-life dimensions.
"The Kennedy buildup goes on," James MacGregor Burns wrote in the New Republic in the spring of 1961. "The adjectives tumble over one another. He is not only the handsomest, the best-dressed, the most articulate, and graceful as a gazelle. He is omniscient; he swallows and digests whole books in minutes; he confounds experts with his superior knowledge of their field. He is omnipotent."
Soon afterward, Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs debacle.
The media would be remiss if they didn't reflect the sense of unadulterated joy that greeted Obama's election, both here and around the world, and the pride even among those who opposed him. Newspapers were stunned and delighted at the voracious demand for post-election editions, prompting The Washington Post and other papers to print hundreds of thousands of extra copies and pocket the change. (When else have we felt so loved lately?) Demand for inaugural tickets has been unprecedented. Barack is suddenly a hot baby name. Record companies are releasing hip-hop songs, by the likes of Jay-Z and Will.I.Am, with such titles as "Pop Champagne for Barack." Consumers, the Los Angeles Times reports, are buying up "Obama-themed T-shirts, buttons, bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, wine bottles, magnets, greeting cards, neon signs, mobile phones and framed art prints."
A barrage of Obama-related books are in the works. Newsweek's quadrennial election volume is titled "A Long Time Coming: The Historic, Combative, Expensive and Inspiring 2008 Election and the Victory of Barack Obama." Publishers obviously see a bull market.
MSNBC, which was accused of cheerleading for the Democratic nominee during the campaign, is running promos that say: "Barack Obama, America's 44th president. Watch as a leader renews America's promise." What are viewers to make of that?
There is always a level of excitement when a new president is coming to town -- new aides to profile, new policies to dissect, new family members to follow. But can anyone imagine this kind of media frenzy if John McCain had managed to win?
Obama's days of walking on water won't last indefinitely. His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card
Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?": "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.
That's where you are right now.
It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.
This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.
Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?": "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.
That's where you are right now.
It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.
This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
US Media Election Absurdity 7
TV station covers Democrat candidate's ignorance by editing comments made during debate.
A local television station took the extraordinary step of censoring a congressional debate because a candidate wrongly said Sovereign and Wachovia banks had folded.
WFMZ-TV, Channel 69, muted the sound and blurred the lips of Democrat Sam Bennett (pictured right) as she made the statements in her taped debate with Republican Charlie Dent. Both seek to represent the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, on Capitol Hill.
Station officials, working behind the scenes on behalf of Democrat Bennett, ensured her ignorant and ill-informed statement was not viewed by the electorate. Station staff then altered the videotape.
''In the end,'' WFMZ General Manager Barry Fisher said, ''we did not feel that broadcasting the names of the banks served the public in any way.''
Kelly McBride, a confused media ethics expert, said the station was right to do something, but did the wrong thing. A media outlet's first loyalty is to the viewer, she said.
''Ultimately the voters deserve to know what information this candidate got wrong,'' McBride said. ''I think the truthfulness of the moment was compromised.''
The debate was held Friday before an audience and taped for later airing on Channel 69. The Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce sponsored the event, which was moderated by Tony Iannelli, its president and chief executive officer.
Dull-witted and media favourite Bennett erred in saying in the opening minutes that ''Wachovia Bank and Sovereign Bank folded and now those shares are only worth a dollar each.''
When she erred, Bennett was blaming incumbent Dent and the Bush administration for lax regulation and inaction that she said contributed to Wall Street's recent woes.
''Wachovia and Sovereign Bank very well would not have failed if the right action had been taken at the right time, that's the point I'm making,'' she told the audience. WFMZ-TV, Channel 69, then worked hard behind the scenes to ensure their candidate was not harmed by the statement.
Neither bank has failed. Both have been purchased recently by larger corporations. Wachovia announced last week a takeover by Wells Fargo, and Sovereign announced Monday a takeover by Spanish-owned Banco Santander Central Hispano.
Wachovia's share price was $6.31 and Sovereign's $3.45 at the close of trading Tuesday.
Station manager Barry Fisher said the station considered several options during daylong talks, including leaving the statements in with a clarification. But ultimately, the goal to protect Democrat Bennett from public ridicule was the ultimate driving concern.
An ethics expert at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., a professional school for journalists, said an option would be to interrupt the broadcast with a statement that Bennett's information was false.
However, this would ultimately expose Democrat Bennett as being out of touch and poorly prepared and would not serve the political mission of WFMZ.
Meanwhile, debate moderator Tony Iannelli said as moderator he did not believe his role was to correct the 15th District debaters.
''Rightly or wrongly, I did not feel a need to correct it,'' Iannelli said. ''If you spent the majority of your time correcting what might be exaggerations or misstatements, you'd be a busy boy.''
Reached Tuesday, Bennett campaign manager Josh Levin downplayed the incident, saying Bennett simply left out the word ''nearly'' when she spoke of the banks folding.
''Sam misspoke,'' Levin said. ''She left out a word.''
Video of the debate can be seen at WFMZ.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Democrat weasel Barney Frank, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
Bill O'Reilly slaps down Democrat weasel and chairman or the Financial Services Committee Barney Frank for refusing to acknowledge his part in the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae fiasco. Democrats needn't worry for poor Barney though, the rest of the print/broadcast media had his back and worked diligently to turn the guns back on O'Reilly.
“I want [Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae] to help with affordable housing, to help low-income families get loans and to help clean up this subprime mess. Otherwise, why should they exist?”
- Rep. Barney Frank, earlier this month.Denying Cover Up of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae - The Main Cause of Our Economic Crisis
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
US Media Election Absurdity 6
September 23, 2008 - 13:04
Associated Press reporter Sara Kugler pounded out a 7-paragraph article today on how McCain running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), has "[Banned] reporters from meetings with leaders" from around the world. Palin is in New York City for the open of the United Nations General Assembly. A review of media coverage from Obama's behind-closed-doors chats with European heads of state, however, shows no such complaint by the media about a lack of access.
Kugler complained that Palin "has not held a press conference in nearly four weeks of campaigning, on Tuesday banned reporters from her first meetings with world leaders, allowing access only to photographers and a television crew." The reporter noted that her news agency objected to the terms of media coverage the McCain campaign set for Palin's meetings with Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai and Colombia's Alvaro Uribe:
Associated Press reporter Sara Kugler pounded out a 7-paragraph article today on how McCain running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), has "[Banned] reporters from meetings with leaders" from around the world. Palin is in New York City for the open of the United Nations General Assembly. A review of media coverage from Obama's behind-closed-doors chats with European heads of state, however, shows no such complaint by the media about a lack of access.
Kugler complained that Palin "has not held a press conference in nearly four weeks of campaigning, on Tuesday banned reporters from her first meetings with world leaders, allowing access only to photographers and a television crew." The reporter noted that her news agency objected to the terms of media coverage the McCain campaign set for Palin's meetings with Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai and Colombia's Alvaro Uribe:
Those sessions and meetings scheduled for Wednesday are part of the Republican campaign's effort to give Palin experience in foreign affairs. She has never met a foreign head of state and first traveled outside North America just last year.
The campaign told the TV producer, print and wire reporters in the press pool that follows the Alaska governor that they would not be admitted with the photographers and camera crew taken in to photograph the meetings. At least two news organizations, including The Associated Press, objected and were told that the decision was not subject to discussion.
US Media Election Absurdity 5
September 23, 2008
Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal and National Review Online, Ethics and Public Policy Center senior fellow Stanley Kurtz traces Barack Obama’s partnership with former domestic terrorist William Ayers when the two collaborated at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a charity established to help Chicago’s public schools that was commandeered by Ayers to promote his radical agenda.
The association between Obama and Ayers has received virtually no attention from the three broadcast networks, with the conspicuous exception of a primary-season debate sponsored by ABC when George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his relationship with Ayers. Out of 1,365 broadcast evening news stories about Obama prior to the end of the primaries, only two mentioned Ayers — one a brief mention of the debate question on the April 17 Nightly News, and the other a World News Sunday story about McCain raising the Ayers issue on This Week.
With just 42 days left until Election Day, the broadcast networks have not presented a single in-depth report on Obama’s relationship with Ayers. But Kurtz’s review of the documents at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) shows the two “worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda,” which “flowed from Mr. Ayers’s educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism.”
US Media Election Absurdity 4
September 23, 2008
It's utterly predictable that the aging-hippie magazine Rolling Stone would publish an article titled "Mad Dog Palin" with a cartoon of Alaska's governor as a female bulldog with spiky teeth. It's predictable their staff attack dog Matt Taibbi would find her "symphony of sneering remarks at the convention was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag." What may not be predictable in this Year of Obama is their arrogant Bill Maher-esque lack of faith in the idiotic American people. This is their version of Palin and her populace:
She’s a puffed-up dimwit with primitive religious beliefs who had to be educated as to the fact that the Constitution did not exactly envision government executives firing librarians. Judging from the importance progressive critics seem to attack to these revelations, you’d think these were actually negatives in modern American politics. But Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules. Which is why Palin has only seemed to grow in popularity as more and more of these revelations have come out.
US Media Election Absurdity 3
By Matthew Balan | September 23, 2008
CNN’s Ed Henry: Palin Trip to UN ‘Like Speed Dating with World Leaders’
CNN’s Ed Henry introduced a new and odd adage about Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s trip to the United Nations on Tuesday’s American Morning. Instead of trying something similar to the "education" line that CBS’s Julie Chen used, the White House correspondent focused on how the McCain campaign was "trying to cram a lot in for Sarah Palin over the next two days in New York:" "It's like speed dating with world leaders. In the span of just 30 hours in New York, Sarah Palin will meet with nine major international players during the U.N.'s General Assembly meetings, from the presidents of Iraq and Afghanistan, to Henry Kissinger and the rock star Bono -- all aimed at beefing up Palin's thin foreign policy chops"
Without going into the grouping of a mega-rock star like U2 front-man Bono with Hamid Karzai, Henry’s "speed dating" line might raise some eyebrows over possible sexism in the media, given how the female Alaska governor is meeting with these nine world leaders, all of whom are men. Katie Couric could be consulted with this matter, given what she said about the coverage Hillary Clinton received during the Democratic primaries.
CNN’s Ed Henry: Palin Trip to UN ‘Like Speed Dating with World Leaders’
CNN’s Ed Henry introduced a new and odd adage about Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s trip to the United Nations on Tuesday’s American Morning. Instead of trying something similar to the "education" line that CBS’s Julie Chen used, the White House correspondent focused on how the McCain campaign was "trying to cram a lot in for Sarah Palin over the next two days in New York:" "It's like speed dating with world leaders. In the span of just 30 hours in New York, Sarah Palin will meet with nine major international players during the U.N.'s General Assembly meetings, from the presidents of Iraq and Afghanistan, to Henry Kissinger and the rock star Bono -- all aimed at beefing up Palin's thin foreign policy chops"
Without going into the grouping of a mega-rock star like U2 front-man Bono with Hamid Karzai, Henry’s "speed dating" line might raise some eyebrows over possible sexism in the media, given how the female Alaska governor is meeting with these nine world leaders, all of whom are men. Katie Couric could be consulted with this matter, given what she said about the coverage Hillary Clinton received during the Democratic primaries.
US Media Election Absurdity 2
By Michael M. Bates | September 23, 2008
'Dateline NBC' Alumna Jane Pauley Stumps for Obama: 8 People Show Up
There's a heartwarming story in today's Times of Northwest Indiana. Jane Pauley, one-time co-host of NBC's Today and Dateline NBC programs, made an appearance yesterday for Barack Obama. Joining her was Steve Skvara, the retired steelworker who in August of last year tearfully asked Democratic presidential candidates at a debate, "What's wrong with America? And what will you do to change it?" The Times reported:
PORTAGE Former television news anchor and Hoosier native Jane Pauley returned to her professional roots Monday during a local appearance on behalf of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
Pauley, who said she worked for the state Democratic Party before launching her successful news career, took part in a panel discussion aimed at touting the benefits of Obama's economic plans for Hoosiers over that of his Republican challenger John McCain.
US Media Election Absurdity 1
By Associated Press | Tuesday, September 23, 2008
University of Massachusetts officials yesterday quashed efforts by an Amherst campus chaplain to offer two college credits to any student willing to campaign in New Hampshire this fall for Democrat Barack Obama.
Chaplain Ken Higgins told students in a Sept. 18 e-mail, “If you’re scared about the prospects for this election, you’re not alone. The most important way to make a difference in the outcome is to activate yourself. It would be just fine with McCain if Obama supporters just think about helping, then sleep in and stay home between now and Election Day.”
Higgins added that an unnamed “sponsor” in the university’s History Department would offer a two-credit independent study for students willing to canvass or volunteer on behalf of the Democratic nominee.
“It is relatively (easy) to do late add-ons,” Higgins wrote.
But university officials disavowed themselves of the effort after inquiries yesterday by the Associated Press. They said it could run afoul of state ethics laws banning on-the-job political activity, as well as university policy.
“There is no independent study for credit in the History Department that involves partisan political work, and no such activity has ever been approved,” said a statement issued by UMass-Amherst spokesman Ed Blaguszewski.
Higgins refused to identify the History Department sponsor and referred all further questions to university officials.
University of Massachusetts officials yesterday quashed efforts by an Amherst campus chaplain to offer two college credits to any student willing to campaign in New Hampshire this fall for Democrat Barack Obama.
Chaplain Ken Higgins told students in a Sept. 18 e-mail, “If you’re scared about the prospects for this election, you’re not alone. The most important way to make a difference in the outcome is to activate yourself. It would be just fine with McCain if Obama supporters just think about helping, then sleep in and stay home between now and Election Day.”
Higgins added that an unnamed “sponsor” in the university’s History Department would offer a two-credit independent study for students willing to canvass or volunteer on behalf of the Democratic nominee.
“It is relatively (easy) to do late add-ons,” Higgins wrote.
But university officials disavowed themselves of the effort after inquiries yesterday by the Associated Press. They said it could run afoul of state ethics laws banning on-the-job political activity, as well as university policy.
“There is no independent study for credit in the History Department that involves partisan political work, and no such activity has ever been approved,” said a statement issued by UMass-Amherst spokesman Ed Blaguszewski.
Higgins refused to identify the History Department sponsor and referred all further questions to university officials.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Thow mocks Canadian white collar crime enforcement
On September 21, 2004, Ian Thow had lunch at a restaurant near the Toronto International Airport with Lou Vavaroutsos, owner of Old Mill Pontiac Buick in Toronto and East Side Chevrolet in Markham, Ontario.
It was a business lunch: Thow was in Ontario to placate Vavaroutsos and several other clients worried about their Bank of Jamaica investments.
After a spring 2004 salmon fishing weekend north of the Queen Charlotte Islands, Vavaroutsos and several friends had each given Berkshire Investment Group senior vice president Thow between $750,000 and $1 million to invest on their behalf in the Bank of Jamaica. However, Thow failed to provide transaction documents or certificates. Now, Vavaroutsos wanted his money back.
Thow did not have any share certificates because, of course, they did not exist. Thow’s lunchtime mission was to calm down the anxious and angry businessmen with empty platitudes about “brotherhood” and “trust” and to embolden them with assurances that their “investments were rocking.”
Thow was simply doing whatever it took to keep his confidence scheme aloft.
In many ways, Thow’s business was not unlike that of many other entrepreneurs. From the outset, Thow considered the risk-reward paradigm. Not unlike the aspiring franchisee owner mortgaging his family home, or the frustrated middle manager considering cashing in her RRSP and launching her own business, he asked: does the reward warrant the risk?
For the aspiring franchisee, the potential loss of the family home must be considered; for the middle manager, the loss of retirement security. Thow had a few more risks to weigh against long-term financial gain and short-term prestige: eventual vilification, the personal inconvenience of unseemly flight and, oh yes, any legal bother that may arise.
Morals, integrity and honour aside, it appears Thow made the correct assessment.
On June 25, the RCMP’s Integrated Market Enforcement Team [IMET] announced that it had laid 25 fraud charges against Thow. The RCMP alleges Thow conned clients out of approximately $10 million. It took the RCMP three years to lay charges which capture less than one-third the amount people allege he actually stole.
The charges were laid on June 9. However, for whatever reason they were not announced until 16 days later. Maybe so as not to tip off Thow, who had been living in a condo north of Seattle Pike’s Place Market; or possibly police hoped to nab Thow as he returned from a Las Vegas or Caribbean holiday.
Whatever the reason, it did not work. At time of publishing, Thow was still at-large and, by most accounts, still living large.
In the event of a downturn, businesses must keep their contingency plans current and up-to-date. This may mean additional lines of credit or downsizing procedures.
In Thow’s instance, when Canadian law enforcement, market regulators and victims became bothersome, his plan was to become scarce, as he did in 2005.
As the scope of Thow’s alleged deceit became apparent, with the number of alleged victims and dollar amounts doubling and tripling, Thow simply retreated to his Central Saanich mansion. He eventually packed up his pick-up with household appliances and plasma screen televisions and left for the U.S.
Even with the enormity of the fraud allegations, Canadian law enforcement did not see it necessary to apprehend or secure Thow.
Thow would have had more face-time with a law enforcement officer had he been caught shoplifting a can of Coca Cola from 7-11.
However, Thow’s business was not petty pilfering. Thow dealt in tens of millions of dollars, helicopters, yachts and $10,000-bottles of scotch. All made possible by the Canadian criminal justice system.
Thow, like the other sharks and wolves prowling Canadian capital markets, rely on the soft touch of our country’s criminal justice system to operate. Meanwhile, investors have been offered up as prey.
So far, two Thow-related administrative actions have concluded. Last December, the B.C. Securities Commission fined the insolvent Thow $6 million and banned him from the B.C. securities market for life. The Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada fined Berkshire $500,000.
Meanwhile, Thow was working as a mortgage broker at Flagstar Home Lending in Seattle, as if nothing even happened in Canada, where 73 bothersome former clients and friends allege he ripped them off for more than $32 million.
Many consider Thow a cautionary tale. The BCSC, legislators and law enforcement will morosely warn against investments that appear too good to be true and remind the public to be sure to do proper due diligence.
Fine and dandy that.
However, to really knock the air out of enterprises like Thow’s, the risk-reward paradigm requires recalibration. The risk needs to be ratcheted up in the form of serious jail time.
The maximum prison sentence for fraud is 14 years and inmates get statutory release after two-thirds of their sentence. If the RCMP locates Thow, extradite him, place him on trial and convict him, the maximum time Thow could spend in prison is 9.3 years.
Frank Biller, criminally convicted and sentenced to three years in jail for his role in the $175-million Eron Mortgage Corp. fraud, did seven months before being released. Brian Slobogian – Biller’s partner in crime – served one year of a six-year prison term. Former Victoria resident Kevin Steele, who conned investors out of $7 million in a commodity trading scam, served one-sixth of a six year sentence.
A lawyer friend predicts Thow – if convicted - would spend a maximum of two years in prison.
For Thow – and other swindlers and charlatans - two years is clearly an acceptable risk. Twenty-five years makes the risk untenable.
Until white-collar crime prosecution is taken seriously and penalties that will serve as real deterrents are introduced, it will be business as usual for swindlers in B.C.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Risk and reward
GARY SALEWICZ
editor
Report on Business magazine
May 30, 2008
After each issue of Report on Business magazine comes out, the staff gathers for a postmortem, an opportunity to look back on our work before we rush headlong into writing, editing and designing the next issue. We talk about what we accomplished and the chances we took--those that paid off and those that didn't. More often than not, the conversation turns to what we can do better the next time. We are our own toughest critics.
Each year, the Canadian magazine industry holds its own kind of postmortem. The National Magazine Awards reward excellence in illustration, photography, design and, of course, writing and editing. When the nominations were announced on April 29, this magazine's name came up 16 times, putting us fourth overall among the 70-odd publications that submitted entries. We dominated in the business category--out of a total of 10 nominations, we came away with six. Three of those were for articles that demonstrate the quality of our international coverage: Home Depot's plan to paint China orange (Chris Nuttall-Smith and Geoffrey York), Magna's dicey deal with a Russian oligarch (Paul Webster) and Four Seasons' foray into India (Derek DeCloet). Lyle Jenish was recognized in the investigative category for his piece chronicling how British Columbia mutual fund adviser Ian Thow bilked investors out of $30 million. Photographer Liam Sharp got a nod for a photo he shot for our Smart Money column. Four nominations went to our art director, Domenic Macri, including two for memorable covers.
Sinclair Stewart, ROB's New York correspondent, won twin nominations in the business category--one for his behind-the-scenes look at Michael Sabia and the BCE auction, the other for a piece on the rise of private equity. Stewart makes an appearance in this issue, too, introducing our Risk package. The urge to take chances, he writes, is likely hard-wired into our DNA. That can mean spectacular flops, but amazing rewards, as well.
editor
Report on Business magazine
May 30, 2008
After each issue of Report on Business magazine comes out, the staff gathers for a postmortem, an opportunity to look back on our work before we rush headlong into writing, editing and designing the next issue. We talk about what we accomplished and the chances we took--those that paid off and those that didn't. More often than not, the conversation turns to what we can do better the next time. We are our own toughest critics.
Each year, the Canadian magazine industry holds its own kind of postmortem. The National Magazine Awards reward excellence in illustration, photography, design and, of course, writing and editing. When the nominations were announced on April 29, this magazine's name came up 16 times, putting us fourth overall among the 70-odd publications that submitted entries. We dominated in the business category--out of a total of 10 nominations, we came away with six. Three of those were for articles that demonstrate the quality of our international coverage: Home Depot's plan to paint China orange (Chris Nuttall-Smith and Geoffrey York), Magna's dicey deal with a Russian oligarch (Paul Webster) and Four Seasons' foray into India (Derek DeCloet). Lyle Jenish was recognized in the investigative category for his piece chronicling how British Columbia mutual fund adviser Ian Thow bilked investors out of $30 million. Photographer Liam Sharp got a nod for a photo he shot for our Smart Money column. Four nominations went to our art director, Domenic Macri, including two for memorable covers.
Sinclair Stewart, ROB's New York correspondent, won twin nominations in the business category--one for his behind-the-scenes look at Michael Sabia and the BCE auction, the other for a piece on the rise of private equity. Stewart makes an appearance in this issue, too, introducing our Risk package. The urge to take chances, he writes, is likely hard-wired into our DNA. That can mean spectacular flops, but amazing rewards, as well.
The bull and the bear
In his quest to build the massive Bear Mountain resort—the largest planned development in Vancouver Island history—former NHLer Len Barrie has elbowed past the opposition. He's also made a mountain of money for his investors, including an all-star roster of his hockey pals
BY LYLE JENISH
Globe and Mail
Report on Business magazine
March 28, 2008
Even six years after retiring from the NHL, Len Barrie still sports the hockey do—his shaggy blond hair is just long enough to peek out from under the back of a helmet. And though he's now the developer behind the largest planned community in Western Canada, he still has a fondness for locker-room couture: Barrie strolls into his regular Tuesday meeting on a recent morning in flip-flops, cargo shorts and a Lululemon T-shirt, his hair still wet from a post-workout shower.
As he takes his place at the head of the table, he exchanges barbs with his lieutenants.
"We dug up a bunch of arrowheads for you," one engineer shoots back.
Then it's down to business. As Barrie slumps in his chair, Les Bjola, his development manager and de facto deputy, launches into an update of a proposed interchange for the Trans-Canada Highway that will lead to Barrie's Whistler-esque Bear Mountain resort, 20 minutes northwest of Victoria. The company is waiting on an environmental and archeological assessment that will determine whether the new road is feasible—there's concern it will upset the local ecology and plow through sacred First Nations sites (hence the arrowhead jab). To protest the proposed new interchange, activists have been occupying tree-borne platforms along the route since April, 2007.
This is just the latest showdown in Bear Mountain's six-year history. When it's finally complete, Barrie's $2.4-billion complex will encompass 1,300 acres and include more than 5,000 residential units (a mix of single-family homes, condos and townhouses), more than 600,000 square feet of commercial space, plus two golf courses designed by Jack Nicklaus.
So far, the former NHLer—and the project's majority shareholder—has sold more than half a billion dollars worth of real estate. (Residential prices range from $250,000 for a 5,500-square-foot lot to $2.5 million for a two-acre estate, sans house.) Meanwhile, Bear Mountain Village is filling up with bars, restaurants and hotels. The winding approach to the 156-room Westin Bear Mountain Victoria Golf Resort & Spa is lined with a high-end sushi bar, the Jack's Place pub (named in honour of Nicklaus), the as-yet-to-be-completed Bear Mountain Village Market, and a spindly collection of construction cranes.
All of which makes Barrie's investors, including a roster of NHL players past and present, very happy (they've put $230 million into the project). "It's the most audacious development on Vancouver Island," says builder Fraser McColl. "I mean, how can you not be impressed by what has happened?" McColl, who moved to Bear Mountain during the early development phase, is building the Stonehaven, a four-storey condo complex on the Mountain golf course. "Most people love it or hate it," he says. As for Barrie himself, McColl has this to say: "Obviously Len is the guiding spirit, and no one else could have pulled off what he has. Most people thought it would never happen. Give Barrie credit: He didn't listen to anyone else."
To his fans, Barrie is among the vanguard of Western Canada's brash and belligerent new bourgeoisie: Success is the only option; opposition be damned. To his opponents, he's the Beelzebub of Bear Mountain, a man bent on laying waste to the island's pristine wilderness, spreading the brimstone of condos, fairways and big-box plazas.
"The bear has come over the mountain, and look what he has done," says Vicky Husband, the grande dame of Canada's conservation movement and a 40-year resident of the tiny Highlands district into which Bear Mountain is expanding. Husband says Barrie has stopped at nothing to move the development forward. "It has split the community asunder," she says.
This is not the only developer-versus-conservationist battle that's being waged in B.C., but it's by far the largest (see "B.C.'s contentious construction," page 73). Since 2002, when Barrie started knocking down trees in the hills northwest of Victoria, he has enraged environmentalists, town councillors, local residents and aboriginal groups—and done it with a certain amount of glee. "What you see is what you get," says Barrie. "I call a spade a spade, and if you don't like it, who cares? I have lots of friends."
Now, Barrie is embarking on his second project. In mid-2007, he paid $2.1 million for a chunk of oceanfront property (including a marina) near Mill Bay, 40 kilometres north of Victoria. "The Victoria International Airport is right across the Saanich Inlet," says Barrie, standing on the pebbly foreshore of Mill Bay, pointing east. "We'll also expand the marina, which means Americans can dock here and easily fly out."
The transformation of this leafy hillside sprinkled with dowdy houses into a hopping condo development is bound to cause trouble—especially if Barrie uses the same tactics he took to Bear Mountain. "Generally, a business must look out for its shareholders," says Bob McMinn, a Highlands resident and one of Barrie's most vocal opponents. "They do this with the soft soap or with the hammer. Bear Mountain brought the hammer."
Barrie never made much of a mark in the NHL. At 18, he was drafted by the Edmonton Oilers in the sixth round. He was a gritty but faceless journeyman, skating with the Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, L.A. Kings and, finally, the Florida Panthers. In October, 2000, in a game against New Jersey, Barrie took a shot in the kidney that required surgery. Nonetheless, that season was Barrie's best: five goals and 18 assists in 60 games. But the injury had left him in pain and "pissing blood." In 2001, at 32, he hung up his skates.
Barrie was already an avid golfer—his house in suburban Victoria, where he lived with his wife, Kristy, and their two kids, backed on to the swank Royal Colwood Golf Club. He teed off there as often as five times a week. The 95-year-old course, which prides itself on its "natural and unspoiled" setting, wends through a forest of 450-year-old Douglas firs and majestic Garry oaks, home to deer, herons and bald eagles.
But in April, 1999, Barrie had decided he wanted a better view of the course. So he hired a contractor to cut down 28 trees—Douglas firs, an arbutus and a few wild cherries—that ran between his property and the green. As it turned out, some of the trees were as much as 16 metres beyond Barrie's property line. Then, as now, he insisted it was all a misunderstanding; he thought the trees were in his yard. (Besides, he adds, many were "half dead" anyhow.)
The Royal Colwood sued Barrie for $18,500 and, after several appeals, he settled for $14,700. But he and his then-nine-year-old son were barred for life.
To fill his days, the newly retired Barrie began riding his bike into the hills east of his house. Over the years, mountain bikers had cut trails through the 1,000-acre lot, and these were drawing a growing number of people to the area. The increased traffic irked the Highlands council, which was dedicated to keeping out the big-box sprawl that characterizes neighbouring municipalities like Langford and Colwood. "We wanted to build and maintain a rural community," says McMinn, former mayor of the rustic town, which has just 2,000 full-time residents, many of whom live on five-acre-plus homesteads.
The first major developer to come sniffing around Highlands, in 1993, got nowhere. In fact, Vancouver's First National Properties ended up suing McMinn and the town itself, alleging foul play. In her ruling, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gina Quijano found that the mayor's actions—including purposeful stalling and the sharing of privileged information—met the test that his conduct was "so malicious, oppressive and high-handed that it offends the court's sense of decency." The judge ordered McMinn to pay $10,000 in punitive damages. McMinn, another administrator and the district itself had to hand over another $500,000. McMinn resigned, though the decision was later overturned by the B.C. Court of Appeal.
Barrie knew none of this as he crashed through the bush on his mountain bike one fall day in 2001. When his bike chain snapped, Barrie was left stranded on the steep western slope of the mountain. He looked southeast and caught his first glimpse of what would later become the site of the Bear Mountain resort. "The view over the ocean, Victoria, Esquimalt and Colwood was unbelievable," remembers Barrie. Directly below him was an undulating canyon that ran for a couple of kilometres east to west. It was heavily treed and dotted with boulders and rock outcroppings, but Barrie could imagine a fairway running through it. He ditched his bike and hiked off the mountain with a head full of inspiration.
A few days later, he returned and "walked off" the approaches, greens and tee boxes. He liked what his feet and golf sense told him, and was determined to buy the property, owned by Western Forest Products (WFP), a large, B.C.-based lumber producer.
Bob Flitton was the land manager of WFP's lot. He'd been a deputy minister in B.C.'s long-reigning Social Credit government, which had encouraged the development of the province's ample natural resources. In 1991, when the Socreds lost to the NDP, things had changed. The economy stagnated, and tradespeople fled to oil-rich Alberta. There was little energy, or appetite, for the type of large-scale development the Socreds had embraced. Nonetheless, in the mid-'90s, Flitton submitted a modest development proposal to the Highlands and Langford councils: 149 houses, a small commercial area, a lodge and an 18-hole golf course. It was estimated the new 424-acre subdivision would add 400 people to Highlands' population base. Flitton had dealt with the Highlands council before—he'd even donated a large chunk of land for the new municipal office. Still, they turned him down.
By the time Barrie called in 2001, Flitton was ready to unload the lot—let someone else try and get past the council. After a few conversations with Barrie, however, Flitton became convinced that he knew zip about real estate development. "Here was some guy I knew nothing about, other than what I had read in the papers, calling me wanting to buy this land," says Flitton, who now works as Barrie's residential project manager. Flitton demanded to speak with someone—anyone—with experience. Barrie put him in touch with his lawyer, and negotiations began.
Barrie's bid got a boost from an unlikely source: the U.S. Department of Commerce. In August, 2001, the DoC imposed a 19.31% tariff on Canadian softwood lumber imports. Suddenly, the margins on WFP's lot of second-growth forest were significantly tighter, and the company agreed to sell it to Barrie for about $8 million. He had 60 days to come up with the money. "I had no partners, and I wasn't sure if the golf course would even work," he says. "But I'm a gambler, and I put up $300,000 (U.S.), non-refundable. I had to close the sale or lose the deposit."
Barrie began working the phones. His first equity partners were NHL goaltender Mike Vernon and Barrie's brother-in-law. Soon after, Allen Vandekerkhove, the former owner of the Payless Gas chain, floated Barrie $3 million. On Dec. 28, 2001, Barrie and WFP sealed the deal. Then the trouble began.
Barrie's vision for Bear Mountain is ambitious: an entire village carved into the mountainside, complete with restaurants, shops, hotels and a pretty town square. Lining the fairways of the world-class golf courses will be thousands of residences, from condos to estates. When Barrie started shopping around his plan, not many people believed he could pull it off. For one thing, Vancouver Island had never seen a development of this size. And besides, the guy behind it was a hockey jock with zero development experience. "We were skeptical," says Frank Bourree, a Victoria tourism consultant. "But Barrie has proven everyone wrong. His leadership and tenacity have driven the entire initiative. Bear Mountain has become a world-class facility."
Getting the project going has required muscle—but then, Barrie was never afraid of a fight.
Because Barrie's lot is sandwiched between Langford and Highlands, he needed zoning and building permits from both districts. Langford was no problem—the place is a property developer's heaven, with councillors who seemingly don't know how to say no. Bjola, a development consultant, came on board to draft a proposal for a housing development and golf course. By the spring of 2002, Langford had granted Barrie all the permits he needed.
Highlands, however, had no intention of playing along. Barrie was planning to build a second golf course, plus 100 residences on a 30-acre chunk up against the Langford border. His proposal, says conservationist Husband, "provided no buffer zone and went against everything the residents of the Highlands stand for."
With monthly carrying costs of $20,000, Barrie couldn't afford to wait on this "group of amateur politicians and environmental activists." With nary a permit in hand, he sent in chainsaws, excavators and skidders to start work on the golf course. "It sent a clear message," says Barrie. "This is big business, this is our partnership's land, and you guys had better pay attention."
Highlands wouldn't budge, so Barrie tightened the screws. His Plan B had always been to log the land if it didn't get rezoned. He'd already cut down $1.7 million worth of timber from the lot, selling about half of it back to WFP. "The worst-case scenario: I would have clear-cut the property," says Barrie. "It would have been a crime scene to do that, but it was all logged 80 years ago."
During a presentation to Highlands council in August, 2002, Barrie stated his intentions: "I'm the guy paying the bills here, and the interest clock is running on this. Let's be clear: Either we move ahead on this tonight or we don't. If we don't, okay. But the tree-cutting permits will be on your desk Monday morning."
The Highlands council relented, and Barrie got his rezoning.
Construction on the Langford part of the property, meanwhile, was well under way. Barrie's first move had been to start carving out the golf course. It was risky: Most developers presell the residential lots, then use the proceeds to finance the course. But getting the boot from the Royal Colwood still rankled—he wanted a place of his own where he could tee off. That meant raising almost $20 million. Barrie turned to former teammate Ray Whitney, then a left-winger with the Columbus Blue Jackets, for help.
Whitney's financial adviser had "90 reasons why he shouldn't invest in Bear Mountain," says Barrie. "We got it down to 45, then down to 20 and 12; then they flew out to Victoria," he says. Whitney's $3-million investment made him the fourth-largest shareholder in Bear Mountain. Barrie says he learned a lot from the legal wrangling, and it made it easier to approach other investors.
Other NHL bright and lesser lights invested, including Whitney's teammate Mike Sillinger, Rob Blake, Gary Roberts, Greg Adams, Joe Nieuwendyk, Matt Pettinger, Mike Vernon, Rob Niedermayer, Ryan Smyth, Scott Mellanby, Sean Burke and Trevor Kidd.
But Barrie was running out of money. His cost estimates, he realized, had been way out of whack: He'd budgeted $8.5 million for the golf course; it ended up coming in at $18 million. Building roads, he'd figured, would eat up $5 million; they cost double that. B.C.'s hot construction market was partly to blame.
The real estate boom also meant that demand for Bear Mountain's properties skyrocketed, however. Lots doubled or tripled in price as interest rates dropped and pent-up demand erupted. Barrie realized his resort could be bigger—much bigger. Over the next several months, the project grew from 1,500 residences, one course and a smattering of commercial space to its current girth of almost 6,000 doors, over 200 hotel rooms (the Westin Bear Mountain opened in 2005), a 12,000-square-foot spa, three restaurants and an expansive gym and athletic club.
The first 10 phases of lots sold out; so did four luxury condo buildings, three townhome developments and most of the quarter-share offerings. By October, 2007, presales totalled $400 million. Bear Mountain sold $140 million worth of real estate on one day in November, 2005, a record for Vancouver Island.
It wasn't Bear Mountain itself that caused the biggest trouble for Barrie. Instead, it was the construction of his own 15,000-square-foot house that finally turned First Nations groups against him.
Barrie had chosen a prime spot for his new ranch-style pad, on a steep hillside overlooking the resort. With views of the ocean, Victoria and the Esquimalt naval base, the spot is thick with arbutus trees. It is also, according to the Songhees and Tsartlip First Nations, home to a cave and subterranean lake once thought to be the stuff of legend.
In February, 2005, Cheryl Bryce, the land manager for the Songhees, demanded that Barrie halt construction on the property and conduct an archeological assessment of Bear Mountain. The Langford council agreed, sending Barrie and his company a letter advising them to bring in an archeologist to assess the site. Barrie ignored it. "We couldn't afford to stop," he says.
That spring, Bryce threatened to seek a court injunction to stop construction. Yet, Barrie says, she refused to disclose the exact location of the cave (she says it was to save the sacred site from "scavengers"), and at a May meeting, he went so far as to dispute its very existence. "You know, if we want to blow up a cave and put up a hotel, we will," he told the angry crowd. "I bought the property, I own it, we have the mining rights, so what?"
Eventually, the province and municipality intervened, and Barrie agreed to an archeological survey. But the dispute erupted again in November, 2006, when First Nations activists led Victoria reporters and photographers to a cave whose entrance had been filled with wood debris, tree stumps and old tires. The natives alleged Barrie had purposely destroyed the cave, telling the press he was committing "cultural genocide."
Early on Nov. 17, hundreds of construction workers tussled with protesters near the cave. The RCMP kept the angry groups apart while racial epithets flew. Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, evoked Oka and Ipperwash, two of the most toxic confrontations over native lands in Canadian history.
Barrie admits he helped orchestrate the showdown, though he adds it took little to motivate his workers: "The guys who work up there are not guys who live in Oak Bay [a wealthy Victoria community] and drink tea," he says. "These are guys who have to feed their families and respect what we've done. We have jobs here—not low-paying jobs, but hundreds of hundred-thousand-plus-dollar jobs, and people are going to stand up and defend them."
Nonetheless, he and a group of provincial officials met native leaders around a fire at the Tsartlip band longhouse. "If I was there as Len Barrie, I would have lost it and hit someone," he says. "But I was there as a representative of Bear Mountain, and I had to make this work." In the end, the province, the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, Bear Mountain Development and the City of Langford negotiated a cost-sharing deal for construction of Barrie's long-sought-after, $30-million Bear Mountain Interchange, which will ease congestion and serve residents heading north and into the development. They also worked out an outline of economic opportunities for the Songhees.
That was enough for Chief Robert Sam, who washed his hands of the cave dispute during a press conference in December, 2006: "The dissension comes from the group who have been trying to occupy the mountain—the young people," he said. "We've been trying to tell them that maybe this cave has served its purpose and maybe it's time to move on."
In December, the interchange won formal approval after consultants released their long-awaited archeological and environmental reports. (The road is to be rerouted around a limestone cave, a stand of protected Garry oaks and a pond full of endangered red-legged frogs.) One obstacle remained, however: the Bear Moutain Tree Sit, which had been holding its treetop vigil since April, 2007. In the predawn hours of Feb. 13, up to 50 RCMP officers, some armed with assault rifles, surrounded the protesters' camp and arrested three activists. Soon after, backhoes moved in to clear a path for the new interchange.
As Barrie navigates his white cadillac Escalade up Malahat Drive, a steep and twisting road that leads north from Victoria to bucolic Mill Bay, his mobile rings continuously. One call is from Rick Lanz, the coach of the Victoria Grizzlies, the B.C. Hockey League team that Barrie owns. The NHL's Colorado Avalanche has offered him a job as its scout for Western Canada. "It would be f---ing foolish not to take the offer," Barrie tells him. "Opportunities like this are rare."
After a couple wrong turns and more than a few expletives, we arrive in Mill Bay. This is Barrie's first visit to the property—he bought the lot after swooping over it in a helicopter. Waiting for him are caretaker Jeff Quinton and his realtor, Alex Robertson, a onetime sports reporter who knows Barrie from his days with Victoria's former Western Hockey League team, the Cougars. Robertson, who served a term as director of the Cowichan Valley Regional District, put Barrie onto the property when he heard plans were afoot to run sewer service down the slope to the half-dozen residences and bed-and-breakfasts on the boot-shaped property, as well as the 70-slip marina.
Barrie's plans for Mill Bay aren't as grandiose as the development of Bear Mountain. He'll relocate a 1903 mansion to create a community centre, and build 74 townhouses cantilevered from the hillside. He figures it can be developed for $300 a square foot, including the cost of land. Barrie tromps around the hillside, sharing ideas with three associates from Vancouver's Merrick Architecture.
Back in Bear Mountain, Barrie parks the Escalade at Jack's Place. The pub is filled with old hockey sweaters and other sports relics, including a Lance Armstrong racing jersey. He's there to meet Roger Perry, an engineering consultant, to discuss the best possible route for a new residential road at Bear Mountain—one that's the least likely to provoke controversy. Over iced tea and halibut burgers, they pore over a topographical map and eventually settle on adding a spur to an existing road. One problem: They have to convince a local property owner to sell them the land. "That guy hates us," Barrie says, "but let's make him an offer he can't refuse."
Perry seems relieved. A couple years ago, Barrie probably would have taken a chainsaw to the guy's trees himself. Now, though, he just wants to get the job done. As Perry gathers up his maps and drawings, he tells Barrie: "You have grown so much over the last five years."
After lunch, Barrie jumps back in the SUV and heads for his new house—he needs to talk to the contractor who is building his pool. The place is 15,000 square feet of custom-built luxury. An army of workers are installing custom-milled baseboards, mouldings and doors. Though his kids aren't around much these days—16-year-old Tyson was a first-round draft pick for the WHL's Kelowna Rockets, and 19-year-old Victoria moved out after graduating from high school—the place has five cavernous bedrooms, including an almost 1,500-square-foot master suite. It also features an enormous media room, a wine cellar, a full gym and, clinging to the steep mountainside, the pool.
A stone staircase runs under the pool, leading to a grotto reminiscent of Hugh Hefner's at the Playboy mansion. "Oh God," Barrie chuckles, "you aren't going to write about that, are you?" For the first and only time, Barrie appears uncomfortable, almost apologetic.
It quickly passes, as he chatters on about his very own golf course at Bear Mountain, which opened in August, 2004. When it comes to selecting members (who pay a membership fee of $35,000, plus monthly dues of $375), he's cautious. "If you are not a happy person, and I do not care how much money you have, go spend it somewhere else," says Barrie. "It's not a right to be a member of Bear Mountain, it is a privilege. The nice thing is, there is no committee—I am it."
BY LYLE JENISH
Globe and Mail
Report on Business magazine
March 28, 2008
Even six years after retiring from the NHL, Len Barrie still sports the hockey do—his shaggy blond hair is just long enough to peek out from under the back of a helmet. And though he's now the developer behind the largest planned community in Western Canada, he still has a fondness for locker-room couture: Barrie strolls into his regular Tuesday meeting on a recent morning in flip-flops, cargo shorts and a Lululemon T-shirt, his hair still wet from a post-workout shower.
As he takes his place at the head of the table, he exchanges barbs with his lieutenants.
"We dug up a bunch of arrowheads for you," one engineer shoots back.
Then it's down to business. As Barrie slumps in his chair, Les Bjola, his development manager and de facto deputy, launches into an update of a proposed interchange for the Trans-Canada Highway that will lead to Barrie's Whistler-esque Bear Mountain resort, 20 minutes northwest of Victoria. The company is waiting on an environmental and archeological assessment that will determine whether the new road is feasible—there's concern it will upset the local ecology and plow through sacred First Nations sites (hence the arrowhead jab). To protest the proposed new interchange, activists have been occupying tree-borne platforms along the route since April, 2007.
This is just the latest showdown in Bear Mountain's six-year history. When it's finally complete, Barrie's $2.4-billion complex will encompass 1,300 acres and include more than 5,000 residential units (a mix of single-family homes, condos and townhouses), more than 600,000 square feet of commercial space, plus two golf courses designed by Jack Nicklaus.
So far, the former NHLer—and the project's majority shareholder—has sold more than half a billion dollars worth of real estate. (Residential prices range from $250,000 for a 5,500-square-foot lot to $2.5 million for a two-acre estate, sans house.) Meanwhile, Bear Mountain Village is filling up with bars, restaurants and hotels. The winding approach to the 156-room Westin Bear Mountain Victoria Golf Resort & Spa is lined with a high-end sushi bar, the Jack's Place pub (named in honour of Nicklaus), the as-yet-to-be-completed Bear Mountain Village Market, and a spindly collection of construction cranes.
All of which makes Barrie's investors, including a roster of NHL players past and present, very happy (they've put $230 million into the project). "It's the most audacious development on Vancouver Island," says builder Fraser McColl. "I mean, how can you not be impressed by what has happened?" McColl, who moved to Bear Mountain during the early development phase, is building the Stonehaven, a four-storey condo complex on the Mountain golf course. "Most people love it or hate it," he says. As for Barrie himself, McColl has this to say: "Obviously Len is the guiding spirit, and no one else could have pulled off what he has. Most people thought it would never happen. Give Barrie credit: He didn't listen to anyone else."
To his fans, Barrie is among the vanguard of Western Canada's brash and belligerent new bourgeoisie: Success is the only option; opposition be damned. To his opponents, he's the Beelzebub of Bear Mountain, a man bent on laying waste to the island's pristine wilderness, spreading the brimstone of condos, fairways and big-box plazas.
"The bear has come over the mountain, and look what he has done," says Vicky Husband, the grande dame of Canada's conservation movement and a 40-year resident of the tiny Highlands district into which Bear Mountain is expanding. Husband says Barrie has stopped at nothing to move the development forward. "It has split the community asunder," she says.
This is not the only developer-versus-conservationist battle that's being waged in B.C., but it's by far the largest (see "B.C.'s contentious construction," page 73). Since 2002, when Barrie started knocking down trees in the hills northwest of Victoria, he has enraged environmentalists, town councillors, local residents and aboriginal groups—and done it with a certain amount of glee. "What you see is what you get," says Barrie. "I call a spade a spade, and if you don't like it, who cares? I have lots of friends."
Now, Barrie is embarking on his second project. In mid-2007, he paid $2.1 million for a chunk of oceanfront property (including a marina) near Mill Bay, 40 kilometres north of Victoria. "The Victoria International Airport is right across the Saanich Inlet," says Barrie, standing on the pebbly foreshore of Mill Bay, pointing east. "We'll also expand the marina, which means Americans can dock here and easily fly out."
The transformation of this leafy hillside sprinkled with dowdy houses into a hopping condo development is bound to cause trouble—especially if Barrie uses the same tactics he took to Bear Mountain. "Generally, a business must look out for its shareholders," says Bob McMinn, a Highlands resident and one of Barrie's most vocal opponents. "They do this with the soft soap or with the hammer. Bear Mountain brought the hammer."
Barrie never made much of a mark in the NHL. At 18, he was drafted by the Edmonton Oilers in the sixth round. He was a gritty but faceless journeyman, skating with the Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, L.A. Kings and, finally, the Florida Panthers. In October, 2000, in a game against New Jersey, Barrie took a shot in the kidney that required surgery. Nonetheless, that season was Barrie's best: five goals and 18 assists in 60 games. But the injury had left him in pain and "pissing blood." In 2001, at 32, he hung up his skates.
Barrie was already an avid golfer—his house in suburban Victoria, where he lived with his wife, Kristy, and their two kids, backed on to the swank Royal Colwood Golf Club. He teed off there as often as five times a week. The 95-year-old course, which prides itself on its "natural and unspoiled" setting, wends through a forest of 450-year-old Douglas firs and majestic Garry oaks, home to deer, herons and bald eagles.
But in April, 1999, Barrie had decided he wanted a better view of the course. So he hired a contractor to cut down 28 trees—Douglas firs, an arbutus and a few wild cherries—that ran between his property and the green. As it turned out, some of the trees were as much as 16 metres beyond Barrie's property line. Then, as now, he insisted it was all a misunderstanding; he thought the trees were in his yard. (Besides, he adds, many were "half dead" anyhow.)
The Royal Colwood sued Barrie for $18,500 and, after several appeals, he settled for $14,700. But he and his then-nine-year-old son were barred for life.
To fill his days, the newly retired Barrie began riding his bike into the hills east of his house. Over the years, mountain bikers had cut trails through the 1,000-acre lot, and these were drawing a growing number of people to the area. The increased traffic irked the Highlands council, which was dedicated to keeping out the big-box sprawl that characterizes neighbouring municipalities like Langford and Colwood. "We wanted to build and maintain a rural community," says McMinn, former mayor of the rustic town, which has just 2,000 full-time residents, many of whom live on five-acre-plus homesteads.
The first major developer to come sniffing around Highlands, in 1993, got nowhere. In fact, Vancouver's First National Properties ended up suing McMinn and the town itself, alleging foul play. In her ruling, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gina Quijano found that the mayor's actions—including purposeful stalling and the sharing of privileged information—met the test that his conduct was "so malicious, oppressive and high-handed that it offends the court's sense of decency." The judge ordered McMinn to pay $10,000 in punitive damages. McMinn, another administrator and the district itself had to hand over another $500,000. McMinn resigned, though the decision was later overturned by the B.C. Court of Appeal.
Barrie knew none of this as he crashed through the bush on his mountain bike one fall day in 2001. When his bike chain snapped, Barrie was left stranded on the steep western slope of the mountain. He looked southeast and caught his first glimpse of what would later become the site of the Bear Mountain resort. "The view over the ocean, Victoria, Esquimalt and Colwood was unbelievable," remembers Barrie. Directly below him was an undulating canyon that ran for a couple of kilometres east to west. It was heavily treed and dotted with boulders and rock outcroppings, but Barrie could imagine a fairway running through it. He ditched his bike and hiked off the mountain with a head full of inspiration.
A few days later, he returned and "walked off" the approaches, greens and tee boxes. He liked what his feet and golf sense told him, and was determined to buy the property, owned by Western Forest Products (WFP), a large, B.C.-based lumber producer.
Bob Flitton was the land manager of WFP's lot. He'd been a deputy minister in B.C.'s long-reigning Social Credit government, which had encouraged the development of the province's ample natural resources. In 1991, when the Socreds lost to the NDP, things had changed. The economy stagnated, and tradespeople fled to oil-rich Alberta. There was little energy, or appetite, for the type of large-scale development the Socreds had embraced. Nonetheless, in the mid-'90s, Flitton submitted a modest development proposal to the Highlands and Langford councils: 149 houses, a small commercial area, a lodge and an 18-hole golf course. It was estimated the new 424-acre subdivision would add 400 people to Highlands' population base. Flitton had dealt with the Highlands council before—he'd even donated a large chunk of land for the new municipal office. Still, they turned him down.
By the time Barrie called in 2001, Flitton was ready to unload the lot—let someone else try and get past the council. After a few conversations with Barrie, however, Flitton became convinced that he knew zip about real estate development. "Here was some guy I knew nothing about, other than what I had read in the papers, calling me wanting to buy this land," says Flitton, who now works as Barrie's residential project manager. Flitton demanded to speak with someone—anyone—with experience. Barrie put him in touch with his lawyer, and negotiations began.
Barrie's bid got a boost from an unlikely source: the U.S. Department of Commerce. In August, 2001, the DoC imposed a 19.31% tariff on Canadian softwood lumber imports. Suddenly, the margins on WFP's lot of second-growth forest were significantly tighter, and the company agreed to sell it to Barrie for about $8 million. He had 60 days to come up with the money. "I had no partners, and I wasn't sure if the golf course would even work," he says. "But I'm a gambler, and I put up $300,000 (U.S.), non-refundable. I had to close the sale or lose the deposit."
Barrie began working the phones. His first equity partners were NHL goaltender Mike Vernon and Barrie's brother-in-law. Soon after, Allen Vandekerkhove, the former owner of the Payless Gas chain, floated Barrie $3 million. On Dec. 28, 2001, Barrie and WFP sealed the deal. Then the trouble began.
Barrie's vision for Bear Mountain is ambitious: an entire village carved into the mountainside, complete with restaurants, shops, hotels and a pretty town square. Lining the fairways of the world-class golf courses will be thousands of residences, from condos to estates. When Barrie started shopping around his plan, not many people believed he could pull it off. For one thing, Vancouver Island had never seen a development of this size. And besides, the guy behind it was a hockey jock with zero development experience. "We were skeptical," says Frank Bourree, a Victoria tourism consultant. "But Barrie has proven everyone wrong. His leadership and tenacity have driven the entire initiative. Bear Mountain has become a world-class facility."
Getting the project going has required muscle—but then, Barrie was never afraid of a fight.
Because Barrie's lot is sandwiched between Langford and Highlands, he needed zoning and building permits from both districts. Langford was no problem—the place is a property developer's heaven, with councillors who seemingly don't know how to say no. Bjola, a development consultant, came on board to draft a proposal for a housing development and golf course. By the spring of 2002, Langford had granted Barrie all the permits he needed.
Highlands, however, had no intention of playing along. Barrie was planning to build a second golf course, plus 100 residences on a 30-acre chunk up against the Langford border. His proposal, says conservationist Husband, "provided no buffer zone and went against everything the residents of the Highlands stand for."
With monthly carrying costs of $20,000, Barrie couldn't afford to wait on this "group of amateur politicians and environmental activists." With nary a permit in hand, he sent in chainsaws, excavators and skidders to start work on the golf course. "It sent a clear message," says Barrie. "This is big business, this is our partnership's land, and you guys had better pay attention."
Highlands wouldn't budge, so Barrie tightened the screws. His Plan B had always been to log the land if it didn't get rezoned. He'd already cut down $1.7 million worth of timber from the lot, selling about half of it back to WFP. "The worst-case scenario: I would have clear-cut the property," says Barrie. "It would have been a crime scene to do that, but it was all logged 80 years ago."
During a presentation to Highlands council in August, 2002, Barrie stated his intentions: "I'm the guy paying the bills here, and the interest clock is running on this. Let's be clear: Either we move ahead on this tonight or we don't. If we don't, okay. But the tree-cutting permits will be on your desk Monday morning."
The Highlands council relented, and Barrie got his rezoning.
Construction on the Langford part of the property, meanwhile, was well under way. Barrie's first move had been to start carving out the golf course. It was risky: Most developers presell the residential lots, then use the proceeds to finance the course. But getting the boot from the Royal Colwood still rankled—he wanted a place of his own where he could tee off. That meant raising almost $20 million. Barrie turned to former teammate Ray Whitney, then a left-winger with the Columbus Blue Jackets, for help.
Whitney's financial adviser had "90 reasons why he shouldn't invest in Bear Mountain," says Barrie. "We got it down to 45, then down to 20 and 12; then they flew out to Victoria," he says. Whitney's $3-million investment made him the fourth-largest shareholder in Bear Mountain. Barrie says he learned a lot from the legal wrangling, and it made it easier to approach other investors.
Other NHL bright and lesser lights invested, including Whitney's teammate Mike Sillinger, Rob Blake, Gary Roberts, Greg Adams, Joe Nieuwendyk, Matt Pettinger, Mike Vernon, Rob Niedermayer, Ryan Smyth, Scott Mellanby, Sean Burke and Trevor Kidd.
But Barrie was running out of money. His cost estimates, he realized, had been way out of whack: He'd budgeted $8.5 million for the golf course; it ended up coming in at $18 million. Building roads, he'd figured, would eat up $5 million; they cost double that. B.C.'s hot construction market was partly to blame.
The real estate boom also meant that demand for Bear Mountain's properties skyrocketed, however. Lots doubled or tripled in price as interest rates dropped and pent-up demand erupted. Barrie realized his resort could be bigger—much bigger. Over the next several months, the project grew from 1,500 residences, one course and a smattering of commercial space to its current girth of almost 6,000 doors, over 200 hotel rooms (the Westin Bear Mountain opened in 2005), a 12,000-square-foot spa, three restaurants and an expansive gym and athletic club.
The first 10 phases of lots sold out; so did four luxury condo buildings, three townhome developments and most of the quarter-share offerings. By October, 2007, presales totalled $400 million. Bear Mountain sold $140 million worth of real estate on one day in November, 2005, a record for Vancouver Island.
It wasn't Bear Mountain itself that caused the biggest trouble for Barrie. Instead, it was the construction of his own 15,000-square-foot house that finally turned First Nations groups against him.
Barrie had chosen a prime spot for his new ranch-style pad, on a steep hillside overlooking the resort. With views of the ocean, Victoria and the Esquimalt naval base, the spot is thick with arbutus trees. It is also, according to the Songhees and Tsartlip First Nations, home to a cave and subterranean lake once thought to be the stuff of legend.
In February, 2005, Cheryl Bryce, the land manager for the Songhees, demanded that Barrie halt construction on the property and conduct an archeological assessment of Bear Mountain. The Langford council agreed, sending Barrie and his company a letter advising them to bring in an archeologist to assess the site. Barrie ignored it. "We couldn't afford to stop," he says.
That spring, Bryce threatened to seek a court injunction to stop construction. Yet, Barrie says, she refused to disclose the exact location of the cave (she says it was to save the sacred site from "scavengers"), and at a May meeting, he went so far as to dispute its very existence. "You know, if we want to blow up a cave and put up a hotel, we will," he told the angry crowd. "I bought the property, I own it, we have the mining rights, so what?"
Eventually, the province and municipality intervened, and Barrie agreed to an archeological survey. But the dispute erupted again in November, 2006, when First Nations activists led Victoria reporters and photographers to a cave whose entrance had been filled with wood debris, tree stumps and old tires. The natives alleged Barrie had purposely destroyed the cave, telling the press he was committing "cultural genocide."
Early on Nov. 17, hundreds of construction workers tussled with protesters near the cave. The RCMP kept the angry groups apart while racial epithets flew. Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, evoked Oka and Ipperwash, two of the most toxic confrontations over native lands in Canadian history.
Barrie admits he helped orchestrate the showdown, though he adds it took little to motivate his workers: "The guys who work up there are not guys who live in Oak Bay [a wealthy Victoria community] and drink tea," he says. "These are guys who have to feed their families and respect what we've done. We have jobs here—not low-paying jobs, but hundreds of hundred-thousand-plus-dollar jobs, and people are going to stand up and defend them."
Nonetheless, he and a group of provincial officials met native leaders around a fire at the Tsartlip band longhouse. "If I was there as Len Barrie, I would have lost it and hit someone," he says. "But I was there as a representative of Bear Mountain, and I had to make this work." In the end, the province, the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, Bear Mountain Development and the City of Langford negotiated a cost-sharing deal for construction of Barrie's long-sought-after, $30-million Bear Mountain Interchange, which will ease congestion and serve residents heading north and into the development. They also worked out an outline of economic opportunities for the Songhees.
That was enough for Chief Robert Sam, who washed his hands of the cave dispute during a press conference in December, 2006: "The dissension comes from the group who have been trying to occupy the mountain—the young people," he said. "We've been trying to tell them that maybe this cave has served its purpose and maybe it's time to move on."
In December, the interchange won formal approval after consultants released their long-awaited archeological and environmental reports. (The road is to be rerouted around a limestone cave, a stand of protected Garry oaks and a pond full of endangered red-legged frogs.) One obstacle remained, however: the Bear Moutain Tree Sit, which had been holding its treetop vigil since April, 2007. In the predawn hours of Feb. 13, up to 50 RCMP officers, some armed with assault rifles, surrounded the protesters' camp and arrested three activists. Soon after, backhoes moved in to clear a path for the new interchange.
As Barrie navigates his white cadillac Escalade up Malahat Drive, a steep and twisting road that leads north from Victoria to bucolic Mill Bay, his mobile rings continuously. One call is from Rick Lanz, the coach of the Victoria Grizzlies, the B.C. Hockey League team that Barrie owns. The NHL's Colorado Avalanche has offered him a job as its scout for Western Canada. "It would be f---ing foolish not to take the offer," Barrie tells him. "Opportunities like this are rare."
After a couple wrong turns and more than a few expletives, we arrive in Mill Bay. This is Barrie's first visit to the property—he bought the lot after swooping over it in a helicopter. Waiting for him are caretaker Jeff Quinton and his realtor, Alex Robertson, a onetime sports reporter who knows Barrie from his days with Victoria's former Western Hockey League team, the Cougars. Robertson, who served a term as director of the Cowichan Valley Regional District, put Barrie onto the property when he heard plans were afoot to run sewer service down the slope to the half-dozen residences and bed-and-breakfasts on the boot-shaped property, as well as the 70-slip marina.
Barrie's plans for Mill Bay aren't as grandiose as the development of Bear Mountain. He'll relocate a 1903 mansion to create a community centre, and build 74 townhouses cantilevered from the hillside. He figures it can be developed for $300 a square foot, including the cost of land. Barrie tromps around the hillside, sharing ideas with three associates from Vancouver's Merrick Architecture.
Back in Bear Mountain, Barrie parks the Escalade at Jack's Place. The pub is filled with old hockey sweaters and other sports relics, including a Lance Armstrong racing jersey. He's there to meet Roger Perry, an engineering consultant, to discuss the best possible route for a new residential road at Bear Mountain—one that's the least likely to provoke controversy. Over iced tea and halibut burgers, they pore over a topographical map and eventually settle on adding a spur to an existing road. One problem: They have to convince a local property owner to sell them the land. "That guy hates us," Barrie says, "but let's make him an offer he can't refuse."
Perry seems relieved. A couple years ago, Barrie probably would have taken a chainsaw to the guy's trees himself. Now, though, he just wants to get the job done. As Perry gathers up his maps and drawings, he tells Barrie: "You have grown so much over the last five years."
After lunch, Barrie jumps back in the SUV and heads for his new house—he needs to talk to the contractor who is building his pool. The place is 15,000 square feet of custom-built luxury. An army of workers are installing custom-milled baseboards, mouldings and doors. Though his kids aren't around much these days—16-year-old Tyson was a first-round draft pick for the WHL's Kelowna Rockets, and 19-year-old Victoria moved out after graduating from high school—the place has five cavernous bedrooms, including an almost 1,500-square-foot master suite. It also features an enormous media room, a wine cellar, a full gym and, clinging to the steep mountainside, the pool.
A stone staircase runs under the pool, leading to a grotto reminiscent of Hugh Hefner's at the Playboy mansion. "Oh God," Barrie chuckles, "you aren't going to write about that, are you?" For the first and only time, Barrie appears uncomfortable, almost apologetic.
It quickly passes, as he chatters on about his very own golf course at Bear Mountain, which opened in August, 2004. When it comes to selecting members (who pay a membership fee of $35,000, plus monthly dues of $375), he's cautious. "If you are not a happy person, and I do not care how much money you have, go spend it somewhere else," says Barrie. "It's not a right to be a member of Bear Mountain, it is a privilege. The nice thing is, there is no committee—I am it."
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Friday, February 8, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Who is Xenu?
I’m going to tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Right, then I’ll begin.
Once upon a time (75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack.
Now Xenu had a problem. All of the 76 planets he controlled were over-populated. Each planet had on average 178 billion people. He wanted to get rid of all the overpopulation so he had a plan.
Xenu took over complete control with the help of renegades to defeat the good people and the Loyal Officers. Then with the help of psychiatrists he called in billions of people for income tax inspections where they were instead given injections of alcohol and glycol mixed to paralyse them. Then they were put into space planes that looked exactly like DC8s (except they had rocket motors instead of propellers).
These DC8 space planes then flew to planet Earth where the paralysed people were stacked around the bases of volcanoes in their hundreds of billions. When they had finished stacking them around then H-bombs were lowered into the volcanoes. Xenu then detonated all the H-bombs at the same time and everyone was killed.
The story doesn’t end there though. Since everyone has a soul (called a “thetan” in this story) then you have to trick souls into not coming back again. So while the hundreds of billions of souls were being blown around by the nuclear winds he had special electronic traps that caught all the souls in electronic beams (the electronic beams were sticky like fly-paper).
After he had captured all these souls he had them packed into boxes and taken to a few huge cinemas. There all the souls had to spend days watching special 3D motion pictures that told them what life should be like and many confusing things. In this film they were shown false pictures and told they were God, The Devil and Christ. In the story this process is called “implanting”.
When the films ended and the souls left the cinema these souls started to stick together because since they had all seen the same film they thought they were the same people. They clustered in groups of a few thousand. Now because there were only a few living bodies left they stayed as clusters and inhabited these bodies.
As for Xenu, the Loyal Officers finally overthrew him and they locked him away in a mountain on one of the planets. He is kept in by a force-field powered by an eternal battery and Xenu is still alive today.
That is the end of the story. And so today everyone is full of these clusters of souls called “body thetans”. And if we are to be a free soul then we have to remove all these “body thetans” and pay lots of money to do so. And the only reason people believe in God and Christ was because it was in the film their body thetans saw 75 million years ago.
Well what did you think of that story?
What? You thought it was a stupid story?
Well so do we. Unfortunately this stupid story is the core belief in the religion known as Scientology.* If people knew about this story then most people would never get involved in it. This story is told to you when you reach one of their secret levels called OT III. After that you are supposed to telepathically communicate with these body thetans to make them go away. You have to pay a lot of money to get to this level and do this (or you have to work very hard for the organisation on extremely low pay for many years).
We are telling you this story as a warning. If you become involved with Scientology then we would like you to do so with your eyes open and fully aware of the sort of material it contains.
Most of the Scientologists that work in their Dianetics* centres and so called “Churches” of Scientology do not know this story since they are not allowed to hear it until they reach the secret “upper” levels of Scientology. It may take them many years before they reach this level if they ever do. The ones who do know it are forced to keep it a secret and not tell it to those people who are joining Scientology.
Part of the first page of the secret OT III document in L. Ron Hubbard’s own handwriting.
Now you have read this you know their big secret. Don’t let us put you off joining though.
Even if they promise Tom Cruise-esque powers.
Source: Operation Clambake
Once upon a time (75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack.
Now Xenu had a problem. All of the 76 planets he controlled were over-populated. Each planet had on average 178 billion people. He wanted to get rid of all the overpopulation so he had a plan.
Xenu took over complete control with the help of renegades to defeat the good people and the Loyal Officers. Then with the help of psychiatrists he called in billions of people for income tax inspections where they were instead given injections of alcohol and glycol mixed to paralyse them. Then they were put into space planes that looked exactly like DC8s (except they had rocket motors instead of propellers).
These DC8 space planes then flew to planet Earth where the paralysed people were stacked around the bases of volcanoes in their hundreds of billions. When they had finished stacking them around then H-bombs were lowered into the volcanoes. Xenu then detonated all the H-bombs at the same time and everyone was killed.
The story doesn’t end there though. Since everyone has a soul (called a “thetan” in this story) then you have to trick souls into not coming back again. So while the hundreds of billions of souls were being blown around by the nuclear winds he had special electronic traps that caught all the souls in electronic beams (the electronic beams were sticky like fly-paper).
After he had captured all these souls he had them packed into boxes and taken to a few huge cinemas. There all the souls had to spend days watching special 3D motion pictures that told them what life should be like and many confusing things. In this film they were shown false pictures and told they were God, The Devil and Christ. In the story this process is called “implanting”.
When the films ended and the souls left the cinema these souls started to stick together because since they had all seen the same film they thought they were the same people. They clustered in groups of a few thousand. Now because there were only a few living bodies left they stayed as clusters and inhabited these bodies.
As for Xenu, the Loyal Officers finally overthrew him and they locked him away in a mountain on one of the planets. He is kept in by a force-field powered by an eternal battery and Xenu is still alive today.
That is the end of the story. And so today everyone is full of these clusters of souls called “body thetans”. And if we are to be a free soul then we have to remove all these “body thetans” and pay lots of money to do so. And the only reason people believe in God and Christ was because it was in the film their body thetans saw 75 million years ago.
Well what did you think of that story?
What? You thought it was a stupid story?
Well so do we. Unfortunately this stupid story is the core belief in the religion known as Scientology.* If people knew about this story then most people would never get involved in it. This story is told to you when you reach one of their secret levels called OT III. After that you are supposed to telepathically communicate with these body thetans to make them go away. You have to pay a lot of money to get to this level and do this (or you have to work very hard for the organisation on extremely low pay for many years).
We are telling you this story as a warning. If you become involved with Scientology then we would like you to do so with your eyes open and fully aware of the sort of material it contains.
Most of the Scientologists that work in their Dianetics* centres and so called “Churches” of Scientology do not know this story since they are not allowed to hear it until they reach the secret “upper” levels of Scientology. It may take them many years before they reach this level if they ever do. The ones who do know it are forced to keep it a secret and not tell it to those people who are joining Scientology.
Part of the first page of the secret OT III document in L. Ron Hubbard’s own handwriting.
Now you have read this you know their big secret. Don’t let us put you off joining though.
Even if they promise Tom Cruise-esque powers.
Source: Operation Clambake
Friday, January 4, 2008
What would Satan drive?
Much deliberation has gone into the philosophical quandary: "What would someone-or-other drive?" The question is usually targeted to the best among us – Jesus, the good, the kind, the saintly. But point is often worthless without counterpoint and good is a meaningless concept without evil to help define it. If we explore what the best of us might drive, we should also explore the darker side of the philosophical equation.
What would Satan drive? Satan lives beyond time and human dimension, so what he drives is not the type of information mere mortals can fix in their minds by describing year, make and model. Satan's conveyance appears differently to people of different eras and nations. Egyptians circa 1500 BC might see a big-ass chariot with spiky wheels. Venetians of the 16th century envision an oil black barge with a mysterious gondoliero plying the canals.
Throughout history, those who report seeing such mysterious dark vehicles have no doubt about what they've witnessed, but it's more of an impression than an image. When glimpsed in current times, Satan might drive a car that takes on various characteristics. A few hours after the encounter, witnesses might recall only one or two details about what they saw. If you put all the reports together, they might read something like this:
• Satan drives a big old car, with its vital statistics measured in Imperial units. Two tons strong and 21 feet long with a 10-foot wheelbase.
• Satan drives a big two-door model, 'cause he couldn't care less how easy it is for his passengers to get in or out. He wants a great big door so he can whip it out to clip bicyclists and unwary skateboarders when he's parked.
• Satan's car is a hybrid, running on gasoline primarily and coal when necessary. His car gets eight miles to the gallon in the city and nine on the highway, but, with a 40-gallon tank, that's enough to complete any evil mission on the roster, there and back.
• Satan's car loves to guzzle leaded gasoline because it gives him a sm-o-o-o-o-ther ride.
• Satan's car has 23 well-oiled cylinders and only 17 functioning spark plugs.
• Satan's car has a smooth idle. You can't hear the engine, even though he keeps it running 24/7.
• Satan's car has manual brakes that stick and a big fat aftermarket gas pedal designed specially for cloven hooves.
• Satan's car has a single bumper sticker that reads: "I brake for succubi."
• Satan believes in emissions control. It's called a tailpipe and it directs the fumes behind the vehicle instead of letting them up through the ragged holes in the floorboard.
• Satan's car has four wide-profile blackwalls with no treads and missing air caps.
• Satan's car has a sound system: an AM radio with three pre-sets and an eight-track tape player stuck on an endless loop of Cat Stevens' Tea for the Tillerman. Speakers supplied by Lloyds.
• Satan's car has a video entertainment unit: a 26-inch Electrohome console screwed to the dashboard and held there with barbed wire. There's a Sony Super-Betamax in the glove compartment.
• Satan's leather upholstery is made up of the skins of endangered species. He didn't kill the last few because he figures some day he might need a matching upholstery patch.
• Satan's car features end-to-end chrome and no plastic except for a cracked vinyl roof and an evil little dashboard figure that dances when he does doughnuts in the church parking lot.
• Satan's air freshener is shaped like a lump of coal. It hangs from the rear-view mirror and smells like a mixture of brimstone and bad aftershave.
• Satan's car has a big klaxon horn that goes "A-WHOOO-GA" when you least expect it. He can also flip a switch to play La Cucaracha like the catering trucks that show up on construction sites.
• Satan's car is equipped with a Mr. Microphone so he can startle other drivers who are trying to concentrate on the road or whisper evil messages to them over the FM band.
• Satan's car has ice cold air that he blasts with the windows open. He has a warehouse full of CFC refrigerant that he bought off the back of a truck in Mexico in 1978, 'cause the AC sprung a leak and he never bothered to fix it.
• Satan's car has cavernous storage capacity. The trunk holds 473 tormented souls if you take out the spare tire.
Source: National Post 2008
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Happy New Year
Man stabs another man with pork chop bone
ARDMORE -- An Oklahoma man was arrested after police say he stabbed another man in the neck with a pork chop bone during a food fight.
Police in Ardmore, Oklahoma responded to call of a fight outside a local business New Year's day. When they arrived, they found the victim covered in blood with a puncture wound to his neck.
Police arrested the suspect, 38-year-old Tony Willis a few block from the crime scene. According to authorities, Willis had blood on his clothes and they found the bone used in the attack.
The victim was treated at a local hospital and released.
Source: NBC News
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