More Proof That Many of the Newspaper Industry's Wounds are Self-Inflicted

A month or so back we indulged in a lengthy reminiscence of our salad days at a daily newspaper in a small and comically corrupt town in southwest Louisiana (you remember it, right?), noting in passing that the paper was “swallowed into the Gannett maw” long after our departure.* Since that writing we have learned that the Gannett Corp. has now fully digested the property and shat forth the sparse leavings.

According to this blog item from The Independent, a locally owned alternative weekly in the Hub City (an actual alternative, not a delivery system for sex and restaurant ads), Gannett recently sold the building that had housed the newspaper for decades (the paper is the Opelousas Daily World; for some reason that is now obscure to us we thinly disguised it as the Atakapoulsa Tribune in our earlier posting). The Independent reported that the Daily World’s ad reps are now working out of the Gannett-owned Daily Advertiser down the road in the larger and somewhat more cosmopolitan Hub City, and its remaining employees---one reporter and a photographer---presumably will be stationed at another, less spacious location in Opelousas (that’s ah-pa-LOU-sas for you non-native English speakers).**

One reporter and a photographer! When we worked there three decades ago the paper had four news reporters, two photographers, one features writer, an editor and managing editor and a features-society editor/copy editor (the “society” goings-on there being of the scale to permit part-time copy-editing). It wasn’t the greatest operation going, but it was good place for young journalists to hone their craft and it had a bit of a rep. Founded just before World War II by two locals, it was the first paper in the United States printed on an offset press. During our brief time there it regularly beat out larger papers for awards, and it seemed to do a reasonably adept job of telling citizens what was going on in town (within the usual limits, of course).***

Gannett, which owns five papers in Louisiana, is also squeezing the life out of the aptly named Daily Advertiser, which has been one of the worst newspapers in the English-speaking world for as long as we can remember. Last month Independent reporter Leslie Turk authored a lengthy report detailing how Gannett has “ransacked” the still insanely profitable property to burnish its supposedly lagging bottom line and prop up less profitable papers elsewhere in the chain. Her story opens with a hilarious anecdote: Because the clerk who handled the public notices for the paper had been laid off and no one else in the cut-in-half classifieds department bothered to publish the agenda for the upcoming meeting of the city-parish council, the meeting had to be postponed. That’s damn funny!

Funny-sad, we mean.

Unlike all but a handful of monopoly dailies, however, the Daily Advertiser has actual competition for news and advertisers' dollars: the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, a solid, independently owned paper 50 miles to the west that has three reporters, a photographer and assorted stringers in the Hub City and regularly beats the hometown paper with the local news.

But you get the feeling that no one at the Gannett paper cares much about that side of its paper. While visiting our mother over the holidays we noticed that on two successive days the Advertiser ran banner stories that each had appeared as the main story in the previous day’s Advocate (as if no one would notice). The chain product is now so thin and devoid of news that our mother says she’d drop her subscription but for her pressing need to check the local obituaries.


*When we worked there it was owned by Worrell, a downscale small-paper chain out of Virginia; it then fell for a while into the more refined corporate hands of the New York Times, an arrangement that did not result in a hoped-for improvement in editorial quality.

**Home to slave trader and knife aficionado Jim Bowie before his move west, as well as the timeless Opelousas Sostan and the annual "Yambilee."

***We must share one more story from our tenure: Early one morning Tony Chachere, namesake of the now world-famous line of packaged Cajun spices (and whatnot) and then probably the town's most prominent citizen, was taken into custody for driving his automobile extremely fast the wrong way up a one-way thoroughfare. News of his arrest was displayed prominently on the paper's front page. As we made our rounds of the district attorney's office the next day the head man himself called us over and asked, "What y'all got against Uncle Tony?"

Chronicle to Anti-Amnesty Sheep: You Are Under the Influence of Lou Dobbs and Therefore Unable to Think Rationally About Illegal Immigration

Jesse Jones would be proud. Ever since our very own Greater Houston Partnership announced it would be mounting a multimillion-dollar lobbying/PR campaign to keep the pipeline of cheap Mexican labor primed and pumping, Jones’ old property, the Houston Chronicle, has been in a near-swoon, very much like a 7-year-old girl with a ticket to Hannah Montana. Ordinarily, the daily newspaper’s tastemakers would be in a lather over a big-money lobbying effort by corporate interests, but when it comes to illegal immigration they’re deep down in the pocket and glad to be there. First there was the approving pro-Partnership editorial of a couple of Sundays ago---more on that in a minute---and this week, following the “news” that a Partnership-sponsored study by noted shill Ray Perryman has “found” that the disappearance of 8 million-plus illegal workers would cost the U.S. $1.8 trillion in annual spending (give or take a billion, we presume), came another sustained round of applause from Chronicle business columnist Loren Steffy.

Neither of these efforts had much to recommend it, although Steffy’s straight-faced embrace of Perryman’s numbers crept close to being funny (even pro-amnesty Metro columnist [is there any other kind at the daily?] Rick Casey briefly roused himself to point out that economist-for-hire Perryman has a long history of giving his customers exactly what they want). But the conscientious and appraising reader may have taken note of the extra-thick layer of condescension Steffy lathered over his analysis:

Perryman's research firm on Monday released an economic study that attempts to blunt the blaring blather of talk radio and other anti-immigrant fear-baiting.

Yes, dear reader, if you have any reservations whatsoever about amnesty and the obvious (that is, visible to your own goddamn eyes) deleterious effects of illegal immigration, then you are a fear-baiting nativist know-nothing whose weak mind has been befogged by the “blather” of talk radio.

We presume Steffy was directing his reductive Obamaism at many of his own readers, given that almost all of the comments affixed to the online version of his column were, how shall we say, uncomplimentary. Our favorite was from “clothesliner,” who wrote:

Assuming 18 million illegals in the US, $1.8 trillion in spending divided by 18 million illegals is equal to $100,000 in spending per illegal. If my arithmetic is correct, we not only need the illegals that are here now but a couple million more could definitely put the economy back on the growth side.

We can't vouch for the math, but obviously “clothesliner” isn’t taking into account the effect of those magical, mystical “multipliers.” Then consider the observation of another Steffy reader, “inaruba,” who points out

I don't see anything anywhere in here about the billions of dollars per month being sent South of the border. That is money NOT being spent here. How do you take account for that in one study and not account for it in another?

And from “sunspotbaby,” citing Perryman’s comment to Steffy that without cheap illegal labor "we'd have to raise wages a lot, which is inefficient and bad for the economy" ...

I agree Mr Steffy. We need more illegal immigrant business columnists or maybe some out sourcing through the internet. You'll be understanding when your salary is cut to the point where taking the bus to work is the only option. We ALL need more of that.

That seems presumptuous of sunspotbaby: Why does she or he think Steffy isn’t already a bus rider? Perhaps he takes the same Park-and-Ride as the Upper West Siders on the paper’s editorial board, who on Sunday before last beat the business columnist to the punch in huzzahing over the “news” that America’s employers---or at least the Partnership---“are finally speaking out for sound immigration policy,” as the headline over the editorial put it. (It is not an exaggeration or misrepresentation to say that the daily newspaper considers “sound immigration policy” to be “amnesty for all, enforcement for none.” How else to interpret its repeated insistence on the necessity of the “pathway to legalization” side of the comprehensive “reform” legislation while repeatedly and insistently tsk-tsking and tut-tutting any effort at enforcement of current law since the proposal tanked [in a sea of Mexican flags, we’d say].) According to the editorial

The [Partnership-led] movement aims to inform and motivate the grass roots, where people's views of immigration too often are shaped by commentators such as Lou Dobbs.

At this late date it’s a sign of a very weak mind to stoop to invoking Lou Dobbs when telling readers what a lot of sheep they are. But here’s how the editorial explains the failure of the comprehensivist legislation:

Businesses, trades and large corporations are finally speaking up about this reality. Many say they were caught off guard last year, when a hailstorm of constituent e-mails and letters capsized a promising immigration compromise in a few days …

Yeah, that’s called democracy. Sometimes it works, contrary to the wishes of editorialists.

For a healthy corrective to all this bile, we suggest a few moments with this often-quoted piece by Heather McDonald (the anti-Tamar Jacoby), who knows more about the true costs ("facts on the ground") of illegal immigration than the Greater Houston Partnership, Loren Steffy, Ray Perryman and the Houston Chronicle editorial board combined (we’ll throw in Rick Casey, too). “Lived experience fuels citizen movements for immigration control,” McDonald notes---a truism the daily newspaper’s tastemakers might consider the next time they set out to gratuitously insult so many of their readers (what’s left of their readers).

The Invisible Hand ... of Phil and Bill!

From "What Created This Monster?" , an examination of the Bear Stearns bailout and "the private trading of complex instruments that lurk in the financial shadows ...," by Nelson D. Schwartz and Julie Creswell, the New York Times, March 23:

A milestone in the deregulation [of derivatives] effort came in the fall of 2000, when a lame-duck session of Congress passed a little-noticed piece of legislation called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. The bill effectively kept much of the market for derivatives and other exotic instruments off-limits to agencies that regulate more conventional assets like stocks, bonds and futures contracts.

Supported by Phil Gramm, then a Republican senator from Texas and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, the legislation was a 262-page amendment to a far larger appropriations bill. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton that December.

Mr. Gramm, now the vice chairman of UBS, the Swiss investment banking giant, was unavailable for comment. (UBS has recently seen its fortunes hammered by ill-considered derivative investments.)

"I don’t believe anybody understood the significance of this,” says Mr. Greenberger [Michael, a former senior regulator at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission], describing the bill’s impact.

Down in the Hole: The Newspaper Business is Just like Any Other Business, Only More So

If you were one of the unfortunates at the Houston Chronicle whacked by the wide-swinging scythe of publisher Smilin’ Jack Sweeney’s “position elimination program,” take heart: You can set aside some of that buyout money (if you got bought out---hey, the Hearst Corp.’s hurtin’) to get hooked up to the cable and order HBO (which, we must sadly report, has risen by $10 a month under Comcast's ownership of the city's cable monopoly). Then you’ll be ready to pull up a chair come January for the fifth and final season of the network’s The Wire---now the best show on television after the exit of The Sopranos*---whose main story line will be devoted to downsizing at a big-city monopoly newspaper. It will be worth forgoing a few meals.

We can’t wait for the new season: It’s probably the first time we’ve actually looked forward to something on television since we heard The Beatles were going on Ed Sullivan. Given The Wire’s grand theme---the relentless commodification of the human, on all fronts---and its past treatment of the drug war, urban politics, the declining white working-class and shot-to-hell public schools, we suspect its approach to the faltering newspaper business will strike a chord for anyone involved with, or concerned about, the faltering newspaper business.

In a long story on The Wire in a recent New Yorker, bombastic creator David Simon offered some lacerating insights on the state of newspapers. We knew that Simon was a long-time cop shop reporter for the Baltimore Sun before his book Homicide was turned into a television series in the early ’90s, but we were surprised to learn that he had worked at the Sun as late as 1995 and left only after “bitterly” accepting a buyout offer, believing the newspaper “was squandering talent under new management.” (“Tone-deaf and prize-hungry and more interested in self-aggrandizement than in building lasting quality at the paper,” is the way Simon describes his superiors; the last season of The Wire will be partly set at a newspaper called the Baltimore Sun.) He’s a newspaper guy but clearly sees the medium’s major (and self-imposed) limitation:

This final season of the show, Simon [said], will be about “perception versus reality”—in particular, what kind of reality newspapers can capture and what they can’t. Newspapers across the country are shrinking, laying off beat reporters who understood their turf. More important, Simon believes, newspapers are fundamentally not equipped to convey certain kinds of complex truths. Instead, they focus on scandals—stories that have a clean moral. “It’s like, Find the eight-hundred-dollar toilet seat, find the contractor who’s double-billing,” Simon said at one point. “That’s their bread and butter. Systemic societal failure that has multiple problems—newspapers are not designed to understand it.”

Yes, there’s little that comes neatly packaged in black-and-white on The Wire, but it’s a more accurate depiction of the master narratives of urban life circa 2007 than you’ll ever get from reading a daily newspaper, including the two or three left in the country that are worth a shit.

*Meaning it’s the second-best show of all time, behind The Sopranos and just ahead of The Beverly Hillbillies.

War in Iraq Affords Opportunity for Another "Local Boy" to Get His Name in the Paper

The Wall Street Journal reported on its front page Thursday that a Houston businessman named Samir Itani is a “key figure” in what appears to be a wide-ranging federal investigation of fraud, kickbacks and price-gouging by contractors supplying food to the U.S. military in Iraq.

Mr. Itani---doesn’t ring a bell, does it?---is described by the WSJ as a Lebanese American who runs privately held American Grocers Inc. According to the Journal, Itani

has worked closely with a pair of Kuwaiti companies that lie at the heart of the U.S. government’s fraud inquiry. American Grocers supplied them with peanut butter and other food items, according to court records and corporate spread sheets. Investigators suspect the goods were overpriced.

The two Kuwaiti companies, Sultan Center and Public Warehousing Co. (the latter being the main contractor for providing food to American troops), appear to be intertwined, the Journal says, with “members of Kuwait’s powerful Sultan merchant family … among the largest stockholders in both.”

Sultan Center acted as middleman in supplying Public Warehousing with pepperoni, calzone, potato wedges and other American products made by Con-Agra Foods and other U.S. firms, which originally shipped the products to American Grocers. It’s unclear why American Grocers couldn’t ship the food directly to Public Warehousing, instead of adding Sultan Center as a middleman.

It’s also unclear why American Grocers was a necessary link in the food chain, at least according to the scenario the FBI has outlined. Itani was indicted in July by a federal grand jury in Houston on 46 counts of conspiracy to defraud the government, an event that rated just five paragraphs in the daily newspaper (Itani appears not to have generated much in the way of publicity prior to his indictment). The indictment alleges that American Grocers gained about $2 million from the false claims. In a lengthy news release following the grand jury action, the FBI summarized one part of the scheme:

Itani allegedly instructed an American Grocers employee to bill [Public Warehousing Co.] for the cost of trucking food products to its warehouse, when in fact American Grocers did not incur such costs. American Grocers directed its suppliers, according to the indictment, to ship products directly to PWC, bypassing American Grocers’ warehouse in the supply chain. At Itani's instruction ... the employee billed PWC for the bogus trucking costs by inserting the costs into invoices that American Grocers presented for payment to PWC. PWC paid the invoices, and pursuant to its government contract, billed the government for the moneys it paid to American Grocers, which included the bogus trucking costs. The government then reimbursed PWC for the bogus trucking costs PWC paid to American Grocers.

Peanut butter, calzone, Houston warehouse, fraudulent invoices, Sultan merchant family ... war in Iraq. Yes, we've lost our appetite now.*

*An indictment, of course, is not a finding of guilt. (Hey, we really believe that!)

What was with that McDonald’s Commercial We Saw on TV a Couple of Weeks Ago?

Perhaps you saw it too: The one that showed a vaguely Hispanic guy sitting in a hammock or lawn chair on a sunny stage set decorated with fake blooming flowers and buzzing birds and/or bees? The guy is happily feeding his face with a wad of grease from McDonald’s while an announcer yammers something about the entrée costing only a dollar now and in the future, too, apparently because the dollar is so strong (which was news to us and the rest of the world, English-speaking and non-English speaking). Then you see another, similarly Euro-ish Hispanic guy who for some reason is holding up a hand-lettered sign that says “8.75 pesos” (it may have said “9.3 pesos,” as we weren’t taking notes, saw the ad only twice and didn’t snap-to to pay attention until the second viewing*) while standing against a dark, moody, urban-ish backdrop. The guy in the hammock smiles and waves the guy with the sign over, the non-verbalized message being that he needs to be over in the sunshine, where he can unload those shaky pesos and enjoy the still-only-a-dollar feed from McD’s. Next thing you see is the guy with the sign, except now he’s in the sunshine/on the hammock, eating some artery-clogging McDonald’s fare and motioning over a woman who’s standing against the dark backdrop and holding a sign reading “10.75 pesos” (maybe 11-something), a fairly remarkable slide in the space of 60 seconds.

This was one of the most bizarre things we’ve seen on television in a half century-plus of watching**---stranger, even, than the mere notion of the oreo pizza, our new favorite metaphor for early 21st century America---and not just because it’s the only commercial we can recall that uses currency exchange as a hook to sell a product. We can only conclude that McDonald’s is urging all of Mexico to come on over, have a hamburguesa and enjoy our strong, stable dollar (at least when compared to the peso, which may not qualify as a real currency).

But a multinational corporation wouldn’t encourage illegal activity just to sell hamburgers, would it?

We only hope one of our Republican U.S. senators will promptly sponsor a resolution condemning this outrageous abuse of free speech.


*This was about three weeks back and though we have waited eagerly for its return we have not seen the ad since, suggesting someone at McDonald’s may have sobered up.
**We’ve fallen into a deep depression after realizing the implications of that line. Excuse us while we sit down.

Don’t Vote for Zaf Tahir If He Persists in Running for Houston City Council (A Special Slampo’s Place Non-Endorsement)

Zafar Tahir may be a prince of a fellow and for all we know would make an exemplary public servant, but he shouldn’t be running for city council, at least in Houston, and if he continues with his charade we call on all right-minded readers of this blog---at least the two or three who are registered to vote in the city---to shun his candidacy in favor of some suitable alternative (your choice).

Last week the Chronicle’s indefatigable Matt Stiles reported that Tahir and another candidate for the Position 5 at-large seat, former state board of education member Jack Christie, had both assumed addresses of convenience in the city in order to meet the loosely interpreted “residency” requirement for candidates. Each lived outside the city in before launching his campaign---Christie in the wealthy northwest enclave of Bunker Hill, Tahir in the rapidly diversifying burg of Sugar Land. Stiles proceeded to beat on Christie with his reportorial Ugly Stick---and it was beauteous thing---by revealing that Christie not only was claiming two homesteads for tax purposes with his estranged wife but had allowed an unsightly build-up of algae---what some would call “scum”---in the swimming pool at his in-town rental digs. Stiles’ reporting apparently led not only to a health department citation for the algae but to Christie’s quitting the race (results!). That was a good thing, because we're fairly certain we weren’t the only Houstonian unwilling to vote for a man who couldn't keep his pool clean.

Tahir, meanwhile, has of this writing escaped further blows from the Ugly Stick, apparently having no algae-infested pool---and possibly no pool at all---at his throwdown address, and no marital complications that might result in dual homestead claims. He has called for a return to a discussion of, ahem, real issues, whatever those are, presumably with the idea that the residency matter is but a temporary and minor obstacle on his road to taking his rightful place on City Council alongside his sponsor, fellow Paki-American and former (still?) non-Houston resident M.J. Khan. (And isn’t it a little odd for an incumbent council member to be so out front in backing an aspirant for another, open council seat at so early a date? It’s not, you say? Sorry we asked.)

We notice that Stiles’ stories have generated some discussion over whether “residency” really matters. Let us resolve the issue by explaining why it does: When you move into a jurisdiction solely to run for an elective office, you’re telling us (at least me) that you view the office first and foremost as a vehicle for your personal ambition(s), not as an opportunity for public service or to engage in the setting of public policy (yes, we know, most candidates for office are slightly touched egomaniacs driven by an admixture of motives, personal ambition being foremost, but the taking-an-apartment-in-town ruse makes it just too damn obvious). What you’re saying is that place doesn’t matter, that one is just the same as the other (false), and, above all, that commitment to place is meaningless. Commitment as in establishing a home and paying property taxes (at the least) in the jurisdiction where you want to serve, becoming part of a neighborhood (and not some phony-baloney “community”) and, if you want to get real crazy, sending whatever kids you have to the area public schools (okay, that might be asking too much).

We don’t know much of anything about Tahir, but we see his campaign Web site is full of blather about transforming Houston into a “truly global city” and so forth. We didn’t see the word “potholes” on the site, but maybe filling ’em is kinda passé and boring in our new borderless, place-less, flattened-out, gimme-the-money globe. Tahir himself apparently is in the business of expanding global economic opportunities, through an entity called International Spectrum Development and his affiliation with the government of Pakistan’s Board of Investment.

We suspect Tahir could find a similar opportunity for service on the Sugar Land City Council, although it might leave something to desire in the personal ambition category (less money, fewer outside business contacts/opportunities, less ass-kissing and having your ass kissed, etc.). But at least he wouldn’t have to bed down in that little townhouse all by his lonesome for the next two months.

Money for Nuthin’ (Updated With Latest Breaking Jason Yoo News, Correction of Misspelling of Our Own Councilmember's Name)

The Wall Street Journal, which is down like white on rice (’scuse us) on Democratic Party benefactor and recently apprehended fugitive Norman Hsu, revealed Wednesday that at least one possible source of the mysterious Chinaman’s heretofore inexplicable largesse was $40 million from a fund headed by Joel Rosenman, an investment banker who, as the WSJ put it, “first gained fame as one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969.”

Yeah! Wooden Ships on the Water! This is turning into a story imagined by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity during a night of heavy drinking.

According to the Journal, the Rosenman-run fund, Source Financing, entered into 37 separate deals with Mr. Hsu but recently found that checks from Hsu’s Components Ltd. were being returned for insufficient funds. Hsu’s attraction for Rosenman was understandable:

Hsu told Mr. Rosenman the money would be used to manufacture apparel in China for Gucci, Prada and other private labels, yielding a 40% profit on each deal [our emphasis] …

The Journal obtained a pitch letter from Rosenman outlining the deal for prospective investors, in which the Woodstock majordomo related that the funds would be lent

“ … to U.S. private label designers that needed interim financing to fill orders for a select group of well-known, high-end U.S. apparel retailers."

… In a "step-by-step" outline of a typical transaction prepared for investors, Source Financing describes the way a deal worked with Mr. Hsu. Source Financing would agree to provide bridge loans for seasonal high-ticket, high-quality retail goods made in China for exclusive brand names, according to investors. Mr. Hsu told the company that he would obtain from Chinese manufacturers a price quote for apparel production. He would then add a mark-up and give the quote to a high-end buyer in the U.S.

Now, the Journal reports, Mr. Rosenman’s attorney is asking that the many Democratic beneficiaries of Mr. Hsu’s generosity not return the tainted (and in some cases, it would appear, illegal) campaign donations so that Source Financing and investors in other apparently non-existent Hsu ventures can recoup some of their losses. "It appears that Source Financing Investors joins Hillary Clinton...and many others as his victims," the lawyer says of the presidential candidate for whom Hsu raised $850,000 before he ran out of suckers.

Victims.

On second thought this story isn’t just a wet dream for right-wing talk hosts---it ties together almost everything that’s gone wrong with America for the past 25-30 years in one not-so-neat and still-developing narrative. Stay tuned, and beware.

Closer to home (yet oh so far away), the Chronicle’s Carolyn Feibel reported that Houston Mayor Bill White, who is said to harbor gubernatorial if not presidential aspirations, is involved in a move to unilaterally extend a “lucrative” food-sales concession at Bush Intercontinental without “a potentially messy competitive bid process.” The beneficiary of this extension would be Jason Yoo, described by the newspaper as “a local businessman” who owns JDDA Concession Management. Yoo has donated at least $28,000 in campaign funds to eight council members and $1,260 to White in the last four years, according to Feibel.

A council vote on the extension has been delayed a week by Councilmember Anne Clutterbuck, who wants the franchise to franchise outlets that sell extortionately overpriced food and drink at Terminal C put up for bid. White says he agreed to negotiate an amended contract with JDDA at the urging of some council members, whom Feibel identified as Jarvis Johnson and Michael Berry. (Update: In a Thursday follow-up Feibel and colleague Matt Stiles add the name of our very own representative on council, M.J. Khan, to the list of Yoo sponsors. Yoo, who according to the Chronicle urped up $4,000 in campaign funds for Khan, is listed as “president, construction co.” in the list of endorsements the councilman is touting in his re-election bid.) The mayor contends he’s wrangled a much better deal than if the city were to seek bids.

That may be so, but we didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or have our self voluntarily committed after reading the council members’ justifications for the extension:

"They had, I guess, a slump in business," said Berry, who received a $5,000 contribution from Yoo in 2005. "And they didn't think it was fair that the contract was up as soon as it was."

JDDA purchased the contract from the previous vendor, Entertainment One Inc., in 2005, but the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and renovations at Terminal C meant lower-than-expected revenues, according to JDDA's attorney, Robert Miller.

Johnson said the extension was the "right thing for the city to do," since food sales declined during the airport renovations.

"The new deal gives us what we need. It also gives the city more income," the councilman said. Johnson received a $2,000 contribution from Yoo this May. Yoo's daughter also worked briefly on Johnson's staff in early 2006. But Johnson and Berry denied any political favors or conflict of interest.

Yes, sure: Jason Yoo and his JDDA, a 65-percent minority-owned business, are victims of circumstance, much like Hillary Clinton and Rosenman of Woostock fame. And what about the legions of suckers who didn’t read or couldn’t understand the fine print in their mortgages … don’t they deserve an extension? Life is soooo unfair.

By the way---for those of us who don’t spend a lot of time loitering at City Hall---who is Jason Yoo?

Is he the same Jason Yoo listed on the steering committee of Friends of the Airport?

The same Jason Woo who founded HBS Construction, a certified Miniorty/Women-owned Business Enterprise and Historically Underutilized Business? (A designation apparently granted to make up for years of discrimination against Korean-Americans.)

The same Jason Yoo listed as a Friend of Bill?

The same Jason Yoo who dropped a grand on Clutterbuck, which the council member told Feibel she’s considering returning “but for reasons unrelated to the airport contract, which she declined to discuss.” Do tell, council lady: it’s the public’s business. Perhaps Clutterbuck has performed some kind of due diligence. We sure hope White has: Democrats need to be extra picky about their “friends” these days.