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Dec
31
Carnival of Ohio Politics, End of the Line 2008 Edition
Filed Under Blogging, Carnivals, Ohio, Politics, Writing | Leave a Comment
Many thanks to Lisa Renee Ward of Glass City Jungle for compiling and editing the Carnival of Ohio Politics, Last Carnival of 2008! edition. It’s crazy that it’s nearly two years from when I saw Barack Obama at Tri-C just after he announced that he’d be running (2/07) and now it’s less than three weeks to inauguration. Wow.
Sigh. I ate too many brownies and there are still 90 minutes before 2009. Should I just finish off the whole damn container?
Have a great new year, everyone – and stay safe, please.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:30 pm December 31st, 2008 in Blogging, Carnivals, Ohio, Politics, Writing | Please comment
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Dec
31
The Youngest Activists: Call Time Warner now and get back Nickelodeon
Filed Under Business, Media, Youth, activism | Leave a Comment
Well, here’s a response to anyone who thinks that all my time on the computer, in social media, connecting, talking about and going to events and talking about social media and connecting detracts from my parenting:
The youngest member of my family (age still in single digits) followed the instructions detailed in this Huff Po piece about the evil Time Warner and Viacom, trying to deny kids the right to watch Nickelodeon’s new years rockin’ eve.
Talk about bah humbug!
The trick now will be to see how many parents make the calls or just tell the kids that they made the calls…
FYI – I tried to extract info from my child to help me determine who was sponsoring the ads telling kids to tell adults to contact Time Warner. According to the Huff Po piece, it’s Viacom – they want to raise rates on Time Warner by 22-36% and TW says that that wil increase customer rates. And so it goes.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 4:49 pm December 31st, 2008 in Business, Media, Youth, activism | Please comment
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Dec
31
Gaza Israel, II
Filed Under Gaza, Israel, Media | 13 Comments
I can’t link to everything I’ve been reading but here’s a partial list that includes some link-bundling of interest:
Editing in belatedly: Poynter Institute’s coverage, “Gaza Battles on Twitter, Blogs.”
Random Thoughts, Fourth round-up – has links to round ups 1, 2, 3, 3.5 also
Feministing has a good round-up of feminist voices on the violence and the hoped for peace
For all the folks who love to push the criticism that Americans who love Israel will never and never do speak out against its government, read Will Obama, lawmakers listen to liberal pro-Israel groups’ criticism of the operation in Gaza? Sure, sometimes it’s like being the mayor of Whoville shouting, We are here! We are here! We are here! But people like Glenn Greenwald puffing themselves up by saying no one but him denounces Israel while still supporting it don’t help matters.
Daled Amos on a conference call held yesterday and “…sponsored by America’s Voices In Israel, in conjunction with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Israeli Consulate of New York.”
Responses from the Israel Consulate to questions asked during a two-hour Twitter press conference can be found here, here, here and here.
Twitter hashtags to follow (go here to insert as a search term) include #gaza and #askisrael but also #gazawarofwords for media bias.
Twitterers I’m following include (and are all across the spectrum):
AJGaza which is Al Jazeera’s special Twitter feed for this conflict
A column by Alan Dershowitz that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor today called “Israel, Hamas and moral idiocy.”
Finally, Kim Pearson tweeted links to video from Gaza and video from the IDF and I’ve updated the links in her tweet:
The Gaza conflict as seen on YouTube. IDF video of attacks: http://www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk vs. Al Jazeera reports: http://www.youtube.com/aljazeeraenglish
If you want to add a link to a resource you’re following, feel free to add them to the comments.
In addition to the local blogs to which I’ve already linked, here’s what a search on BlogNetNews/Ohio on “gaza” and on “israel” turns up (they are not all the same).
One trend I see as the conflict goes on longer and Westerners in particular explore its causes is the unmasking of the belief held, and hidden, by some people that Israel does not in fact have a right to exist. This trend looks like this: a focus on the horrors inflicted on the residents of Gaza, deflection of blame directed toward Hamas or the Arab League for that matter, and talk about how it is the decades through which the Palestinians have been living in Gaza and the West Bank that is the root of their problems.
And it stops there. I’ve yet to read any one of those writers actually write that they believe Israel should in fact cease to exist, cede their land to the Palestinians and be done with it.
If this is what a person believes, then why not just say it? If you’re willing to ignore the duress under which Israelis – Jews, Muslims and Christians – live under, why ignore what your arguments imply? Do you want a two-state or a one-state solution?
Then, of course, you’ll need to explain how and why it is that Israel would become the only country to have fought and won a war, but not actually have a right to that which it won. That is, no one who writes about the decades of suffering in Gaza and the West Bank go back to writing about how those areas came to exist in the first place, or the Egyptians outright refusal to invite Palestinians into their land – the Sinai now included, since 1985. Isn’t the Sinai Holy Land too? Why is that not a piece of property in which Palestinians could make a state?
Anyway, this group of people should get together with the group that says that there are no American Jews who will write about their love for Israel but their dislike and disagreement with the government and military’s actions and see what else they can come up with.
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what it is that Hamas actually wants. Or the Gazans. What do they want?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:14 pm December 31st, 2008 in Gaza, Israel, Media | 13 Comments
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Dec
31
[graphic] Gaza-Israel rocket range map in English & Hebrew
Filed Under Gaza, Israel, Military, middle east | 4 Comments
Many thanks again to Jameel at the Muqata (a must-follow live-blog from Israel of what is going on, including Hebrew-source only items like the attack of a tourist from Chicago in Nazareth yesterday). Here’s my post yesterday about this map.
Also, extremely poignant for me, a commenter at this post with the graphic says that Beit Shemesh, where I lived and worked, is now in range, even though it’s not marked on the map. I believe it is east of a place listed on the map as Yad Binyamin, in the last, outer-most stripe. Bet Shemesh is a bustling suburb of Jerusalem now, but when I lived there in 1984-85, it was a poor development town with extremely high unemployment and a not particularly welcoming community (I had rocks thrown at me for being there as an American volunteer). This year, during my visit, I learned that it couldn’t be more different. Our tour’s bus driver lives there and it was wonderful hearing all the stories of growth. I didn’t get to go there during the trip but did see it from the highway once or twice as well as the areas that have developed around it.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:34 pm December 31st, 2008 in Gaza, Israel, Military, middle east | 4 Comments
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Dec
30
Mideast Peace Forum holds meeting tonight in Lakewood
Filed Under Gaza, Israel, democracy | Leave a Comment
You should be able to watch information about it here but I’m having trouble seeing the video. Here’s what I gleaned:
Mideast Discussion
Tonight
6:30-8:30pm
Sponsored by the Middle East Peace Forum
Dan Haggerty was the reporter for NewsNet5.com and his email is haggerty@newsnet5 if people want more information.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:23 pm December 30th, 2008 in Gaza, Israel, democracy | Please comment
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Dec
30
Molotov cocktail hits Chicago synagogue
Filed Under Crime, Gaza, Israel, Jewish, Judaism | 3 Comments
From the Chicago Tribune:
No one was hurt in the arson at Temple Sholom, 3480 N. Lake Shore Drive, that police are investigating as a hate crime.
Bomb and arson detectives were at the scene Monday afternoon and the investigation was ongoing, said Chicago police officer Daniel O’Brien.
O’Brien said the fire “extinguished itself, nothing ever caught fire.” No suspect was in custody as of Monday afternoon, he said.
“The offender drove off and made a derogatory statement” to a witness, and police were working to review surveillance equipment in the area, said O’Brien.
[Temple president Roger] Rudich said the incident was not “terribly expensive or damaging,” but “it’s just so unsettling.”
Fighting speech with speech seems to be a reasonable strategy, but violence with violence has never appealed to me.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:31 pm December 30th, 2008 in Crime, Gaza, Israel, Jewish, Judaism | 3 Comments
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Dec
30
Assuming you don’t read Hebrew, here is some translation. If you’ve been reading reports, you will recognize many of the names of the cities.
The lightest blue rectangular area in the mid-to left of the image is Gaza, bordered by the Mediteranean Sea.
In the 10 km purple area, at the top of that sliver, around the curve to the Mediterranean, is Ashkelon and above it, Ashdod (in the light green which is 30 km).
Also in the Purple, right at the northern most bend of the stripe toward the sea is Sderot.
In the turquoise stripe, the 40 km area, is Beer Sheva.
In the burgundy stripe is Netivot.
The land in the blue, at the end of the Gaza Strip, is “Mitzrayim” – Egypt. So when you read about how Gazans seek to get into Egypt, it is along that southern border.
The entire area to the east of Gaza is the Negev, primarily dessert. To the north, and north of Ashdod, about 25 miles from Ashdod, is Tel Aviv.
Hattip Muqata who is liveblogging.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:36 am December 30th, 2008 in Gaza, Israel | 9 Comments
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Dec
30
Israeli Consulate to Tweet press conference tomorrow, 1-3pm
Filed Under Foreign Affairs, Gaza, Israel, Media, Tech, democracy, social media | Leave a Comment
Tomorrow, 30 December, from 1-3PM EST, David Saranga, Consul of Media and Public Affairs in New York, will answer your questions about the situation in Israel and Gaza in a “Citizens’ Press Conference.”
You can submit your question by directing it to our Twitter account at http://www.twitter.com/IsraelConsulate . We will do our best to answer through Twitter. If an answer requires more than the 140 character limit, we will respond on Twitter with a link to an answer posted in this blog.
We hope you will be able to join us–tell your friends!!
Hmm – I might have to live-blog it…
Read more from DIP and Boing Boing (thank you Xeni Jardin).
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:50 am December 30th, 2008 in Foreign Affairs, Gaza, Israel, Media, Tech, democracy, social media | Please comment
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Dec
29
The hopelessness in Gaza-Israel relationship
Filed Under Foreign Affairs, Gaza, Israel, Politics, democracy, middle east | 3 Comments
As for the Palestinians, they plan to declare victory regardless of what happens. If the IDF withdraws rapidly, without a ground operation and without having seriously reduced the rocket fire, Hamas will boast that it survived and Israel blinked first.
But Hamas officials and analysts said Monday that the organization would actually like Israel to launch a ground operation; it hopes this would let it inflict such heavy losses on Israeli tanks and infantry that Israel would flee with its tail between its legs.
Coupled with Ehud Barak declaring that they’ll fight to the bitter end?
What happened to Tzipi Livni’s get them to stop launching rockets?
What the hell governs the moves over there?
Someone I respect mentioned to me a perspective that should be considered: the embryonic nature of the nation building going on for the Palestinians. But does that mean that relations too must be characterized by immaturity – from both the Israelis and Hamas?
Come on, Arab League. Get in there.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:22 pm December 29th, 2008 in Foreign Affairs, Gaza, Israel, Politics, democracy, middle east | 3 Comments
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Dec
29
Gaza and Israel
Filed Under Foreign Affairs, Gaza, Israel, Politics, middle east | 7 Comments
A range of links, but you will have to visit them if you want to see for yourself just how wide a range they represent. I’ve been reading much more about Gaza and Israel than what I list but these are good for starters. The inclusion on this list has no connection to my opinions about what’s written in any of the items.
Across the Jewish world:
This link from a blogger inside Israel includes a live-blog with photos showing the tragedy of it all
Sabbagh Blog is blogged from Bahrain (you can read about the blogger here) and includes many photos of the tragedies
BlogHer with links to Global Voices Online articles about the use of twitter as well as several other interesting links
NPR news item this morning, an interview with Shibley Telhami
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:42 pm December 29th, 2008 in Foreign Affairs, Gaza, Israel, Politics, middle east | 7 Comments
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Dec
28
Haveil Havalim #198 (Carnival of Jewish Blogging)
Filed Under Blogging, Carnivals, Israel, Jewish, Judaism, Religion, Writing | Leave a Comment
Thank you to Material Maidel (great blog name) for hosting this week’s edition of Haveil Havalim #198, aka the carnival of Jewish blogging. Hard to believe the next one will be published in 2009 and that in two editions, the effort will be at 200.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:30 pm December 28th, 2008 in Blogging, Carnivals, Israel, Jewish, Judaism, Religion, Writing | Please comment
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Dec
28
RIP, Samuel P. Huntington
Filed Under Culture, Debates, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Government, Politics, RIP, Writing, democracy | 10 Comments
I learned of Samuel Huntington’s death from the opening line of this column by Stirling Newberry, which explores the economic oomph behind the status of the Middle East – a fancier but still persuasive explanation of the proxy quality of existence to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank – something which I’ve written about and stated since the mid-1980s.
As a government major with a political theory concentration, Huntington’s books (specifically, Political Order in Changing Societies) were central to the formation of my ideas about global relations and dovetailed extremely well with my double major in sociology. As Stirling Newberry writes in the above hyperlinked piece:
While Huntington warned against America imposing its order on the rest of the world, his paradigm left few other options. His late influence obscures his contributions to political realism, such as Political Order in Changing Societies, which featured perhaps the most concise discussion to its day of modernization which, despite its rationalism does not necessarily mean the rationalization of power, authority, structure, or political participation, because of the difference between modernization as a direction, and modernization as a process.
Ah. I got chills reading that line, while also, like Newberry, in amazement that Huntington’s death occurs at this moment in time. Maybe he doesn’t want to see what will happen?
The Boston Globe has a nice obit here. It includes this exactly right description:
Despite the brickbats that accompanied his first book, it was an article toward the end of his career that became his most cited, and most controversial, work. “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” centered on how differences between cultures throughout the world would be the cause of most post-Cold War conflicts. It was this premise, said former student Todd Fine, that inspired Dr. Huntington’s argument against the war in Iraq.
“Even though he didn’t make a big to-do about it ahead of time, he was against the Iraq war. [It was] his belief that it was unnecessary to antagonize other cultures and civilizations,” Fine said.
Bolding is mine.
I’ll always remember how, just after a college friend of mine had started on a PhD program at Harvard a couple of years after we’d graduated, she specifically commented on how now, she wasn’t just reading Huntington’s books, she had him as a professor. I remember how excited she was about that.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:29 pm December 28th, 2008 in Culture, Debates, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Government, Politics, RIP, Writing, democracy | 10 Comments
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Dec
27
Let Their Be Guns! in the movie theater, to shoot noisy people
Filed Under Debates, Government, Law, guns | 16 Comments
A man enraged by a noisy family sitting near him in a movie theater on Christmas night threw popcorn at the son and later shot the father in the arm, police charged.
James Joseph Cialella, 29, of Philadelphia, first told the victim’s family to be quiet, then threw popcorn at the man’s son, police said. The victim told police that Cialella was walking toward his family when he stood up and was shot.
Detectives called to the United Artists Riverview Stadium theater in South Philadelphia found Cialella in the complex still carrying the weapon — a .380-caliber handgun — in his waistband, a police spokesman said.
The movie playing? The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
The theater chain? Regal.
Happy New Year indeed.
Hattip to this tweet from Davidinindy.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 6:07 pm December 27th, 2008 in Debates, Government, Law, guns | 16 Comments
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Dec
27
Tennessean reports elevated levels of thallium, lead in water at TN coal ash disaster
Filed Under Energy, Environment, Government, Health Care, Media, Politics, Social Issues, Utilities | 11 Comments
The article is here.
What those levels mean isn’t clear or made clearer in the article. Much is made of the water downstream not being dangerous and the idea that the heavy metals will drop to the bottom of the river and then a system can be set up by which the safe water flows over that bottom without getting contaminated.
I don’t understand it all, but I don’t trust it either. This kind of incident is why we don’t trust – first TVA said that the pond that broke was not over capacity, but now that they’ve tripled the estimate of what was released, and that amount is more than double the capacity of the pond, it appears that the pond was in fact over capacity.
I’m a newbie to this, but the roll out of the information alone is not reassuring. Am I the only one who finds the uncertainty expressed by the very people hired by our government to manage such facilities and problems as completely bizarre and, frankly, unacceptable? I’m not interested in saying/hearing that it’s no surprise. We should be surprised and we should demand more. Don’t go off on what the people get in exchange – what do they get in exchange? A 30 year shorter life expectancy and death by cancer (several articles reported that the incidence of cancer is hundreds of times higher in these areas than elsewhere in the country).
Enlighten me.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:02 am December 27th, 2008 in Energy, Environment, Government, Health Care, Media, Politics, Social Issues, Utilities | 11 Comments
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Dec
27
The Progressive Year in Review
Filed Under Barack Obama, BlogHer, Civil Rights, Culture, Education, Elections, Energy, Environment, Gender, Health Care, Hillary Clinton, Immigration, Israel, Liberals, Media, Michelle Obama, Military, Politics, Race, Religion, Sarah Palin, Sexism, Social Issues, Voting, Women, activism, democracy, employment | Leave a Comment
You can read my thoughts about it here but for a teaser, here’s what I actually left out (until I added an addendum), so you can just imagine what I included:
The environment and energy: For progressives, probably a bad year, capped off with the TVA disaster that Kim Pearson wrote about here. And it’s getting worse. On the other hand, with energy, maybe not so bad a year, in that the conversation has intensified due to record high gas prices this summer and I would even venture to say the prominence of Alaska in the presidential race. How have women figured in the debate and the solutions?
Science: Think of research, space exploration, innovation.
Education: Wow – cannot believe I left this one out! But then again, the progressive desires in education aren’t so clear cut (or, maybe they’re better described as conflicting), other than a commitment to education for all and eliminating the achievement gap. Higher education, early education. A major bill was passed that put some good incentives in place for higher ed and work in more public-service-oriented professions, but there’s no appropriation for it at this time.
Military: another wow I can’t believe I forgot this. The presidential election helped focus on getting out of Iraq and it seems that while that goal may in fact get accomplished (and was pushed further this year than in previous years), the problem is that we’re now going to be on more fronts. This will be a big issue to watch. Here’s a good post by BlogHer speaker and expert Lorelei Kelly, Boomers: The Iraq War and Your Second Chance at Democracy that demonstrates progressive activism at its best.
State legislatures: I even wrote about this one on BlogHer! The New Hampshire senate is now a majority female legislative body. There’s been some fascinating debate about whether the fact that the legislators are only paid $100/year (you read that right) increases, decreases or leaves untouched the significance of the accomplishment.
Women’s eNews: just this morning publishd a top 10 news stories article which you can read here.
I just thought of yet another one: kids and health insurance – SCHIP failed and that hits families hard.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:26 am December 27th, 2008 in Barack Obama, BlogHer, Civil Rights, Culture, Education, Elections, Energy, Environment, Gender, Health Care, Hillary Clinton, Immigration, Israel, Liberals, Media, Michelle Obama, Military, Politics, Race, Religion, Sarah Palin, Sexism, Social Issues, Voting, Women, activism, democracy, employment | Please comment
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Dec
26
[chart] Stan Chesley among inaugural donors giving $50,000
Filed Under Barack Obama, Democrats, Government, Ohio, Politics, PostWH2008 | 1 Comment
President-elect Barack Obama’s upcoming inauguration is going to be expensive: up to $40 million. To help pay for it, his transition team is taking donations. To their credit, they’re being transparent about this process. They’ve posted a sortable online spreadsheet of all inauguration donors and bundlers. (Hat tip to the Los Angeles Times for providing a link to the spreadsheet in the paper’s inaugural roundup story.)
There is gold here for journalists looking for stories linking locals or celebrities to Obama …
Again, the link to click for the sortable online spreadsheet of all inauguration donors and bundlers is here – and it is nice!
Oh – who is Stan Chesley? Read about him here – Jim Petro is one of his partners. Here are the other Ohioans on the list:
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:58 pm December 26th, 2008 in Barack Obama, Democrats, Government, Ohio, Politics, PostWH2008 | 1 Comment
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Dec
26
Med Mart = Dead Mart? PD publishes more intensely local news when everybody’s away
Filed Under Business, Media, Ohio, Politics, conservatives | 2 Comments
This is just getting to be ridiculous: First, a reputed business analyst firm says Forest City is worthless but the Plain Dealer doesn’t publish anything about that for more than two weeks – including Forest City’s rebuttal of that analysis (no PD independent review that I could find, though, online anyway). Oh those wise editors who just are sure we don’t need to know any of that. Silly readers and consumers.
Then, on Christmas Day, they publish, on their blog, at 9pm at night, the article, “Progress for a Medical Mart in Cleveland remains a mystery.” Now, I found that article through a Google Alert I have set up with certain words and so that is a link to the blog.cleveland.com version – I do not know if it was in the print version of the PD this morning, but it is timestamped:
December 25, 2008 20:57PM
I will say that there are almost 30 comments there, so that’s a good thing to see. And the article itself is pretty good, hitting the highlights of this deal which so many NE Ohioans have distrusted from the beginning:
The owners of Tower City [that would be the aforementioned Forest City], the site favored by a selection committee for the medical mart, say that no one has talked to them in months.
Taxpayers have provided $100,000 so far to the county’s chief negotiator, lawyer Fred Nance, but his legal bills provide no clue about whom he is negotiating with or how long he is talking with them.
And even though county commissioners have set a Jan. 15 deadline for making a deal to manage the project with Merchandise Mart Properties Inc., Nance won’t commit to the date.
My problem with this reporting is the assumption that these business people see each other out and around all the time. This is a small city and a small business community when it comes to these deals. Who are they fooling? So what does it mean that “no one” (from the selection committee or otherwise related to Med Mart) has talked to Forest City?
One reason Forest City remains in the dark is that discussions between county leaders and MMPI are done in private. So are Nance’s briefings of county leaders. His bills to the county provide little insight. Nance’s paperwork summarizes only a few general tasks he agreed to perform 14 months ago, when he began working for the county on the project. The county’s contract with Nance could net him and his firm, Squire Sanders & Dempsey, an additional $75,000.
How convenient. You know, there’s a special place for elected people and public officials who get bent out of shape over the public wanting to know what the people who are hired and elected to serve the public are doing: out of a job.
Don’t like the site selection suggestions? Hey – just spend more money and do another review:
The privacy helped mask another reason Forest City is in the dark. MMPI is conducting its own site selection study, largely to find ways to reduce construction costs. As part of that look, MMPI examined a third location — a spot in the Flats — although the remoteness of that land may doom it.
Mark Falanga, senior vice president of Chicago-based MMPI, said the company has made numerous cost analyses based on different design sizes. He said the project’s complexity has made progress slow. He said MMPI will not pick a site just to meet a deadline.
“This has been largely an internal process,” Falanga said. “When we are ready to share results, we will be happy to do so.”
Cuyahoga County Commissioner Tim Hagan, who will be up for re-election next who was just re-elected to his position, insists that all will be known by 1/15/09.
Based on this last batch of info in the PD article, having the January deadline met is the least of my concerns:
The county will pay for the bulk of the complex with money from the sales tax increase that went into effect in October 2007. The quarter-cent tax increase is to run for 20 years. In the first full year, it generated $42 million. Although tax collections eventually could total $1 billion, the tax money is expected to cover only up to $500 million in construction costs. The rest will pay down debt.
The business leaders’ site selection report estimated construction and land acquisition costs at Tower City at $536 million. Work at the current convention center, off Lakeside Avenue, was figured at $583 million.
Falanga said MMPI wants to limit those costs to $400 million.
LaRue said he is concerned the size of the complex is being shrunk so it can fit into the convention center site for the same price as building at Tower City. If that’s the case, he said, MMPI should approach him about reducing the size at his site.
NOOOO! Such a surprise! MORE expensive? Will have to be made SMALLER? For more money?
Ugh.
Same old same old and nothing we didn’t all mention in one form or another during the very public hearings the public pushed on the process in the summer of 2007. Though, even so, look where that got us.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:52 pm December 26th, 2008 in Business, Media, Ohio, Politics, conservatives | 2 Comments
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Dec
26
Morningstar calls Forest City stock worthless, but FCE vehemently objects
Filed Under Business, Cleveland+, Economy, Media, Ohio, Writing | 18 Comments
This news may not be news to people who follow Forest City Enterprises more closely than I do, but I hadn’t seen anything about any of this until this morning in this post at Atlantic Yards Report, a blog that does follow FCE very closely.
First, Morningstar, on 12/9/08, in an article subtitled, “We’d prefer a pack of gum to these businesses”: [emphasis mine]
Last month, we highlighted five stocks, each with a fair value that we estimated at a nice, round “zero.” Since then, zero-dollar fair value estimates have experienced a virtual renaissance, with the total number of such calls more than doubling to 32 (
Click here to see a full list). I thought this phenomenon merited a second look, so this month, we present five more stocks that look completely worthless to Morningstar’s team of analysts.
…
From the Analyst Report: “At nearly 83%, Forest City’s debt/total gross PP&E is much higher than peers’. With EBITDA/interest expense expected to dip below 1 times during the next three years, Forest City could face severe financial distress, since it may need to refinance debt at ever-increasing interest rates while operating cash flow declines.”
The Washington Post writes about it on 12/21/08 in an article called, “Not Worth the Paper They’re Printed On”:
Morningstar tried to put it delicately and hedged enough to say things could change, improving the companies’ fortunes, but in the end there was no polite way out: “If we think a stock is worthless, there’s no point in saying otherwise,” the investment research company said in a recent report.
(Hattip to No Land Grab.)
Now, the Plain Dealer, on 12/25/08, in “Forest City Fights Back”:
Forest City Enterprises Inc. on Wednesday strongly disagreed with a recent Morningstar Inc. article, saying the author’s opinion that Forest City’s stock is worthless was based on flawed assumptions and inaccurate interpretations of the company’s debt obligations and its construction costs.
“We disagree in the strongest possible terms with Morningstar’s opinion,” spokesman Jeff Linton wrote in a statement. “Further, we are astonished and appalled that Morningstar would issue such an opinion without having made contact with Forest City.”
Linton said no Morningstar representative has contacted or spoken to any senior-level executive at Forest City in two years. In a recent article, Morningstar analyst Matthew Coffina named Forest City among five stocks that he considered to have a fair value of zero. Five analysts who regularly cover Forest City have taken a neutral stance on the stock or expect it to perform slightly better than the market.
The Atlantic Yards Report feels that FCE’s concerns are reasonable, and I have no idea how these things work My only question is, why did it take more than two weeks for Forest City to issue this rebuttal? And, again, it looks like this battle over the rating has been kept very very down-low. Given the economic times, that’s not surprising, but is it proper news provision on the Plain Dealer’s part?
The day before the Morningstar analysis was published, on 12/8/08, the PD published this item about FCE withholding dividends, but the Plain Dealer didn’t publish anything about Morningstar’s 12/9/08 review of FCE until two days ago, on 12/24/08, more than two weeks after Morningstar published its review. Do not even try to convince me that the PD didn’t know about the Morningstar pan before then. Then, the FCE objection was published…yesterday, two and a half weeks after the hit.
So – only if it comes home, we hear about it? Otherwise, it’s too business wonky?
Two things going on in this post:
1. Editorial filters should feel free to weigh in: what was the hold up on reporting on Morningstar’s analysis of 12/9/08? Why did FCE take so long to rebut the analysis in the Cleveland press?
2. I have no idea about the health of FCE or the value/veracity/accuracy of the Morningstar report. But this he said/she said of the PD – does anyone else think that maybe the PD should do its own analysis, given the importance of Forest City to the NEOhio economy?
If I’ve missed that PD coverage, major apologies. But in my searching, I could not find anything else on these topics in the PD archives online.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:20 pm December 26th, 2008 in Business, Cleveland+, Economy, Media, Ohio, Writing | 18 Comments
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Dec
25
RIP, Harold Pinter
Filed Under Culture, RIP | 5 Comments
In another place and time, I was a student of the theater. Lived it, breathed it hours and hours every week, from an early age through college. In the classes I took and activities I chose. I even muddled through producing The Lion in Winter at Georgetown with Mask and Bauble and spent several weeks at a theater camp in Canada one summer.
I have a lot of unparalleled memories from involvement in theater, like traveling from New Haven to NYC with one of my high school English classes to see Elizabeth Swados‘ Runaways (which starred a teen-aged Diane Lane until she was replaced because she went to work on a movie; this behind the subscription article from the NYT (1978) describes the replacement this way, “Miss Kelly is good but she does not command the absolute stillness and vivid desolation of Miss Lane.”) and learning about the producer Joseph Papp and La Mama.
Some of my closest friends and friends with whom I worked closely from high school and college years went into and remain in professional theater (Michael Suenkel at the Berkeley Rep and Howard Sherman, executive director of the Tony Award Productions – looks like he even authors the American Theatrea Wing’s blog – go Howard!). There are many others sprinkled around the country in big and small roles, like a good friend from high school theater, and another Jill, who has been been putting on plays in her community near Harrisburg, PA.
So when I read about Harold Pinter’s death, I devoured every word, and got swept up in remembering his distinctive style and that of his contemporaries. To people who don’t follow theater that closely, Pinter will be most familiar as the writer of Betrayal, an excellent play that translated fairly well onto screen (1982) with Ben Kingsley and Jeremy Irons (about extramarital affairs but…says the description, it mainly concentrates on her experiences as a woman in the male-dominated media industries” – more things change, more things stay the same?), and as the screenwriter for the movie, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), a seminal film for Meryl Streep lovers (me).
Harold Pinter was 78 and died after a several year battle against cancer of the esophagus.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:18 pm December 25th, 2008 in Culture, RIP | 5 Comments
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Dec
24
Clean coal argument a farce, Harriman, TN fly ash breach proves it
Filed Under Energy, Environment, George Bush, Government, Media, Politics, Scandal, Science, activism | 3 Comments
I’ve been following this since yesterday when Amy Gahran started to tweet about it. How many times here in Ohio have we heard politicians talk about the “promise” of clean coal? More like the fantasy.
Here’s what you need to read to get up to speed:
Nightmare before Christmas about the spill form the Center for Environmental Journalism.
Watching the detectives: how it’s been covered. That piece has fantastic links and amazing and depressing photos.
The Moderate Voice on the impact of the event on the rhetoric about clean coal.
Diane Rehm had an excellent hour of debate about clean coal in late October.
NPR covered the devastation caused by strip mining and how Bush’s administration was about to increase it. It’s my memories of Eastern Kentucky, near the Cumberland Gap, during the early 1980s, when James Watt was allowing the ravaging to begin, that drives me to write about these issues. For those of you who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about and for those who can stand to be reminded of that man, read this TIME magazine piece, The Legacy of James Watt.
Many thanks to Ed Morrison who tweeted links to the lax regulation of the practices involved.
The coverage by the MSM has been abysmal but Rachel Maddow mentioned it on her show last night and the NYT and CNN have a story each, last I checked.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:04 am December 24th, 2008 in Energy, Environment, George Bush, Government, Media, Politics, Scandal, Science, activism | 3 Comments
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