New radio product
Freshly posted to my Radio archives (links at original): November 13, 2010 Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters on the nomination of Cathie Black to run NYC’s public schools, and the whole education reform scam • Richard Walker on California’s crises October 30, 2010 David Cay Johnston on the dismal state of incomes in the USA (see important update here) • Michael Hudson, author of The Monster, on the subprime beast
My farewell to Thursdays at 5
I read this intro to today’s show on WBAI: Hello, and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood. This is my last show in this timeslot, and perhaps my last show on WBAI. Back on Monday, November 1, as I was walking to pick my kid up at school, I got a call from the station’s interim program director, Tony Bates, informing me that he and his colleague on the interim management team, interim general manager Berthold Riemers, had decided to move this show to Saturday mornings and to… Read More
Arlene Engelhardt’s cell phone number
Apparently Arlene Engelhardt, the head maniac at Pacifica, isn’t returning phone calls from her Pacifica number, 510-849-2590 ext. 208. So, folks, here’s her cell phone: 510-402-9880.
KPFA morning show: off
The idiots and maniacs who are now running Pacifica have decided to lay off the entire staff of the excellent KPFA Morning Show and to take it off the air: BREAKING: Pacifica management lays off entire staff of Morning Show | KPFA Worker. The show is the station’s most popular, and its best fundraiser. But its quality comes at a price: much of the staff actually earns a salary, with benefits. KPFA faces serious budget problems, but the union has proposed a way to deal with them. It looks like a faction of… Read More
The meaning of the election
You heard it here first (well maybe it was somewhere else, but I missed it): yesterday’s “historic wave” was of the same lasting significance as the “historic wave” of 2008—none. Or, more exactly, it’s another instance of the eternal recurrence of American politics, another iteration of the status quo. A country that’s rotting from the head, poisoned by alienation, plutocracy, and an aversion to thinking, careens from one idiocy to another, with the winning side celebrating its momentary triumph, and then it all goes sour in a few months. Engels nailed it long… Read More
Voting in NYS
I meant to post this yesterday but my tsuris with WBAI hijacked all my attention. This is for people registered to vote in New York State. I admire a lot of the work that the Working Families Party has done. They’ve been crucial to getting the state minimum wage raised, reducing the penalties in the Rockefeller drug laws, and getting a bill of rights for domestic workers, among many other things. For that reason, they’ve been under intense attack by Wall Street and real estate interests and the ideological right (the New… Read More
My letter to Tony Bates
For the record, as they say, here’s what I just wrote to Tony Bates: I really don’t want to do a show every other week on Saturday morning, and you probably knew that when you made the decision. So I think I’ll just quit, effective immediately. It takes a remarkable amount of balls for you, Tony, to engineer a reworking of the grid having just masterminded yet another failed fundraiser. Falling 1/3 short of your goal is a disgrace. But evidently your vision of WBAI is of chemtrails and footpads and 9/11… Read More
The end of “Behind the News”
I just got a call from Tony Bates, WBAI’s interim program director, informing me that as part of changes to the schedule, my show would be moved from Thursdays at 5 PM to every other Saturday at 10 AM. This is clearly a considerable marginalization, so I’m going to quit. The rot of WBAI has been wearing on my nerves, and this change would bring the cost/benefit ratio into seriously negative territory. It’s remarkable that an interim program director who’s just masterminded another failed fundraiser—this one’s fallen about 1/3 short of its… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 
Posted on November 13, 2010 by Doug Henwood
Radio commentary, November 13, 2010
Pacifica • deficit commission • QE2 • education “reform” Before that, and before some comments on the news, a few words on the Pacifica situation. I did this show on WBAI in New York for 15 years. I was given the show by our late program director, Samori Marksman, who was a very intelligent and charismatic man with contacts all over the world. After his early death at the age of 52 in 1999—a death I’m certain was hastened by the pressures of Pacifica infighting—he was succeeded by an endless procession of… Read More