Cablevision Drops $1 Bid For Daily News, Says Zuckerman Paper Isn't Worth Even A Buck

Wow:

It was one dollar too much for Cablevision Systems Corp (CVC.N). The cable company is planning to pull out of the auction process for the New York Daily News after spending hundreds of hours analyzing a potential deal, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Cablevision had bid just $1 for the tabloid newspaper in March, Reuters reported at the time. It is now planning to bow out ahead of a second-round bid deadline next week, the source said on Tuesday, asking not to be named because the process is confidential.

Cablevision, which owns the Long Island, N.Y.-based newspaper Newsday, could not justify paying even $1 for New York Daily News because of its poor financial condition and prospects, the person said. Even if Cablevision bought the newspaper's state-of-the-art printing press, it would have still lost money on the deal, the source said.

The DN is reported to be losing $30 million a year.

When Cablevision won't take the DN for even a buck, that's when you know it's in trouble.

Think about this story next time you see the DN editorial page get shrill over so-called "failing schools."

It's a newspaper that loses $30 million a year that isn't worth a dollar to Cablevision.

If anybody should know about failure, it's the Daily News.

If We Applied Education Reform Logic To Newspapers...

...Here's one that ought to be closed for "failure":

Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman's Thursday announcement that the tabloid is officially on the market, after 22 years of ownership by the billionaire real estate magnate, has media watchers wondering: Who would want to buy the thing?

The 96-year-old news organization's finances are tightly held, despite a very public circulation decline and numerous down-sizings that have characterized its most recent era.

But a source close to the News who's been briefed on its current finances told Capital it is believed to be losing around $20 million a year. A spokesman for Zuckerman said he would not comment on financials and that it was premature to talk about a timeline for a potential sale.

While online growth (nydailynews.com has been pulling anywhere between 26 million and nearly 40 million unique monthly visitors over the past year or so, per Comscore numbers) is a positive narrative—one that's put the News in the same orbit as the Daily Mail and other outlets making a big play for America's national advertising dollars—the print edition (which still brings in most of the money) tells a different story.

With readers flocking to computers and mobile devices amid an onslaught of competition from new-media players, average circulation for the six months ending Sept. 30, 2014, was 361,941 on Sundays and 281,907 on weekdays, down from 786,952 and 715,052 during the same period ten years earlier.

The numbers are stark - the DN has lost more than half its print circulation in the last decade.

And while the online DN site has seen growth, there's little money in that.

$20 million a year in losses is a "failure", no?

I mean, sure, online growth is nice, but isn't the bottom line always about actual revenue?

By that measure, the DN is a miserable failure, online growth notwithstanding.

The DN editorial board gets very pragmatic when it comes to "failing" schools, pointing out that the bottom line of test scores and graduation rates are the only things that matter when it comes to school measurement.

If we applied that same logic to the DN itself, the only thing that matters is the circulation and the numbers - therefore the DN is "failing."

It's time for a "turnaround specialist" to see if this "failing" newspaper can be turned around and if not, well, then it most be closed.

Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Wall Street Journal and the NY Post, is rumored to be in the market for the paper.

The Dolans - who are already doing such a magnificent job running Madison Square Garden - are also on the rumor list for potential buyers.

Finally I have heard Michael Bloomberg's name mentioned as well, although it seems to me the DN is a little down market for his blue blood.

If Murdoch acquires the paper, a merger with the NY Post (itself a multimillion dollar loser) is said to be in the offing.

In any case, whatever happens with the DN, the next time you see an editorial pontificating about "failing" schools with "low" tests scores and "poor" graduation rates, remember to apply the same bottom line logic to the "failing" Daily News itself.

Certainly the free market has.

How You Will Know If De Blasio Sold Out To Rupert Murdoch

Democratic mayoral nominee Bill de Blasio, he of the "Tale of Two Cities" campaign, spent all yesterday meeting with the oligarchs of the city, including having a private and secret meeting with NY Post publisher Rupert Murdoch, NY Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and other members of the New York plutocracy.

The de Blasio campaign is sending out the message that de Blasio was simply meeting with the plutocrats to tell them he will not back down from his campaign pledge to break the inequality that has brought about the "Tale of Two Cities" divide in New York, a problem he has spoken so eloquently about all during the mayoral campaign.

But some of us wonder if that's what he was doing, why keep the meeting with Murdoch, Zuckerman, Blankfein, et al. secret?

What's to hide if he was simply laying down the law to the plutocrats that the times they are a changing and they either get with those changes or get swept away?

Might it be that de Blasio didn't actually send that message to the plutocrats, that instead there was another message sent which was meant to assuage the nervousness and anxiety of a bunch of rich white guys who have had their own way with the city for the last 20 years?

Call me a conspiracy nut if you will, but I have to admit, my "Hmmm..." meter goes up when I hear de Blasio has been having secret meetings with Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman even as he's holding fundraisers with the rich and well-heeled across the city, hitting them up for the maximum contributions while they have tea and crumpets with Dante and Dad.

Now I don't know what was discussed at the de Blasio/plutocrat meeting, but I suspect there were no policy particulars talked about.

Rather, I suspect that the boys at that meeting (and they were all boys unless Kathryn Wilde was there too) had a frank and honest discussion about what the phrase "campaign rhetoric" means and how campaign rhetoric often gets forgotten in the heat of governing.

While we can't know exactly what was discussed at the de Blasio/plutocrat meeting, we can get a sense of how the plutocrats received the message.

The NY Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch, has been hammering de Blasio heavily for the last few weeks, calling him everything from Sandanista Bill for his work with a Jesuit-relief group in Nicaragua in the 1980's to going after his father's suicide.

If the tone of the de Blasio coverage in the Post changes from heavy hammer job to a softer, more gentle approach, you will know that what Rupert Murdoch heard de Blasio tell the plutocrats at the de Blasio/plutocrat meeting made Rupert Murdoch feel better about Bill de Blasio.

The Post coverage of Cuomo often follows this trajectory as well.

They run suck-up pieces about Cuomo when he's doing what they want, they go after him when he's doing stuff they don't like.

Now that de Blasio has met and had a frank discussion with Rupert and his fellow plutocrats, that pattern of Post coverage will play out with Sandanista Bill.

If we suddenly get more measured coverage from the Posties, you will know that de Blasio sold you out.

Bill De Blasio Has Private Meeting With Rupert Murdoch And Mort Zuckerman

Danger! Danger!

Democratic mayoral nominee Bill de Blasio attended a private meeting with a number of leading New York City business figures yesterday.

Among them were Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of both News Corp. and its sister corporation, 21st Century Fox (who has taken a particular interest in trying to reshape public education); Robert Thomson, the chief executive of News Corp.; and Mortimer Zuckerman, the wealthy real-estate magnate who also owns the Daily News and U.S. News & World Report.

Several sources with knowledge of the meeting confirmed the attendance of de Blasio and all three top media figures but stressed that other businesspeople were also in attendance. The total headcount was around "a couple dozen," one source said.

The purpose of the meeting, as well as where it took place, is unclear. A spokesman for de Blasio's campaign declined to comment, as did spokespeople for Zuckerman and News Corp.

But it was held one day before de Blasio spoke to a larger collection of the city's leading business titans, at a breakfast this morning hosted by the Association for a Better New York. The city business-leadership group has been described by de Blasio as the "lion's den." De Blasio is advocating a tax hike for the wealthiest New Yorkers and the reduction of tax breaks for corporations.

As I wrote earlier today, de Blasio didn't get where he is by being some intransigent commie pinko Sandanista

He got there by being an expedient politician.

How much do you want to make a bet the sell-out for all those leftie promises he made during the primary campaign became official at the meeting with Zuckerman, Murdoch and the other business criminals today?

2/3rds Of Primary Voters With Children In School Say Public Schools Either Same Or Worse Since Bloomberg Took Over

We've seen these very numbers before in polls conducted by the public polling outfits.

Now we get the same numbers from the exit polling:

On education, parents of public school children were divided as to how the schools have fared under Mr. Bloomberg. About a third said public schools stayed the same under his tenure, while about equal numbers said they had become better or gotten worse.

There's your legacy on schools, Mr. Bloomberg.

Hundreds of closures, four re-organizations of the system, churn and burn with the teachers, all kinds of curricula changes - and two-thirds of parents with kids in schools STILL say the system is about the same or worse since you took over.

Two-thirds, Mike.

But at least Rupert and Mort like what you've done with it.

And the hedge fundies too.

Let's be honest - that's all that matters.

The Corporatists Go On The Attack Against De Blasio

The Quinnipiac poll showing de Blasio not only in the lead in the Democratic Primary but closing in on the 40% needed to avoid a runoff has the corporatists in this city terrified.

As Politicker noted, they went on the attack this morning.

The NY Post in particular was in hysterics:

Surprise! Bill de Blasio is far ahead in the Democratic race for mayor. The latest Quinnipiac poll’s numbers put him at 36 percent. That’s almost double his chief rivals and inching up on the 40 percent that would give him an outright primary victory without a runoff.

Then again, maybe it’s not so surprising. Alone of the candidates of either major party, de Blasio has offered voters a vision. How tragic that it’s of two New Yorks — one prospering, one struggling — and that his answer is to pit them against one another.

Contrast this approach with that of his two leading rivals, City Council Speaker Chris Quinn and former Comptroller Bill Thompson. Each is running on a standard New York Democratic mix of select union endorsements and a grab-bag of feel-good proposals, with a dash of identity politics thrown in for good liberal measure.

On almost all these things, de Blasio trumps everyone else. Husband to an African-American woman and father of a son whose Afro has become a social-media phenomenon, he’s got his own identity cards. And when it comes to the agenda, he doesn’t stint: His policy proposals sound as if they were ripped from 1974 Detroit, with “solutions” that will only make life worse for all — especially those they purport to help.

Our vision is the opposite of de Blasio’s: We dream of a New York whose defining trait is opportunity for all, where those on the public payroll know they’re beholden to taxpayers, and where vital institutions (notably schools) are accountable to the citizens who fund them, not the special interests that run them.

Quinn and Thompson no doubt will spend much of the next 12 days before the primary pointing out that a cash-strapped Albany won’t go for de Blasio’s pie-in-the-sky proposals. If we read the poll numbers correctly, however, many Democrats prefer a leader with vision — no matter how ruinous — to a manager without one.

The class warriors at the Murdoch-owned Post, the ones who backed class warrior Mike Bloomberg on every one of his classist proposals and policies to ensure the 1% of this city gobbled up more and more of the wealth, are worried de Blasio is a class warrior on the side of the rest of us rather than just the plutocrats.

And notice how worried they are about education policy - "where vital institutions (notably schools) are accountable to the citizens who fund them."

By saying they're concerned that schools stay "accountable to the citizens who fund them," the Posties mean they want to make sure only the plutocrats have their say on how things get run, because certainly the citizens of New York had NO say in how Bloomberg ran his education system, not with the Panel for Educational Policy board rigged in his favor.

Again and again, you can see the terror these plutocrats and their p.r. functionaries in journalism are feeling at the thought that somebody might become mayor who isn't as malleable to them as Quinn or Thompson.

They destroyed John Liu long ago because they couldn't control him and they didn't like him.

I remember the day after the election in 2009 - Bloomberg invited the new public advocate and the new comptroller to break bread with him publicly.

De Blasio met with Bloomberg in a diner (they sat in a window table for effect) while Liu told Bloomberg he was busy.

After that day, Bloomberg and his attack dogs in the corporate news went after Liu while leaving de Blasio alone.

The message seemed to be, de Blasio will work with us, Liu won't.

I still think de Blasio will be more malleable to the plutocrats than Liu would have been.

Yet they sure seemed scared at the possibility he could be elected mayor.

They're trotting out the Detroit/1970's card to scare people into voting for one of their corporate sell-outs - Quinn or Thompson.

If you've been sitting on the fence wondering who you're going to vote for on Primary Day, watching the people, groups and corporate entities that have come out to attack de Blasio and/or back Quinn or Thompson ought to settle you on the matter.

As I wrote earlier in the week, you can judge a man by the measure of the enemies he makes.

In this election cycle, De Blasio has made all the right enemies.

The Daily News Is All Class

Anthony Weiner gave a commencement speech yesterday in Queens.

Here's the photo the Daily News ran:

Get it?

Isn't that oh so clever of them?

This is the kind of hard-hitting journalism former Murdoch hackster Colin Myler has brought to the Daily News ever since Mort Zuckerman hired him.

Garbage.

Layoffs At The Daily News

From Capital NY:

The Daily News is now undergoing what employees of the tabloid have been fearing for weeks: Multiple insiders tell Capital that layoffs have hit the newsroom today.

Several sources put the total number of pink slips at around 15.

Two high-profile bylines we've confirmed to be among the laid-off Newsers so far are columnists Albor Ruiz and Joanna Molloy, both longtime veterans of the paper. Ruiz will continue to freelance for the News, according to a source familiar with the situation.

The news of Molloy's termination was particularly shocking. She's arguably the most famous writer still at the paper, having helmed its gossip pages for 15 years with her husband, George Rush, who took a buyout in 2010.

...

Sources said other names on the list include reporters Christina Boyle and Robert Gearty and editorial writers Stephen McFarland and Alexander Nazaryan, who also writes the paper's books blog.

Those who are affected are being told that the headcount reduction is a result of a "restructuring" at the paper with an emphasis on digital, according to a source with knowledge of the discussions.

The News has been ramping up its digital operation this past year in a bid to capture national advertising dollars and grow its online reader base outside of New York. Two weeks ago, in a sign of its web ambitions, two major promotions were announced under digital editor Ted Young, a Mail Online alumnus imported last year by Myler, a fellow Brit.

Myler characterized the promotions in a memo as part of a "general restructuring of our digital and business development operation."

The News is the fifth most widely-read newspaper in the U.S., although its combined print and digital average weekday circulation slipped 11 percent year-over-year to 516,165 during the six-month period between October and March, according to data released last week by the Alliance for Audited Media.

The Daily News is unreadable these days.

Colin Myler has made it into absolute dreck.

It's all bikini photos of celebrities and sensationalized crime stories.

No wonder the average weekday circulation is down 11%.

Heckuva job, Colin.

Zuckerman is going to come to regret that you didn't go to jail for your hacking cover-up crimes.

What Does Christine Quinn Need To Do To Win Bloomberg's Love?

The Times has a story today saying Bloomberg is unhappy with Christine Quinn as his potential successor and has been trying to get higher profile people to run for mayor and succeed him in 2014.

The story says Bloomberg is suffering much angst in private that his policies will be undone by the next mayor, so he and his friends and associates are searching far and wide for someone they feel they can safely hand City Hall off to.

The list of people approached by Bloomberg's people includes Chuck Schumer, former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Hillary Clinton and Daily News owner/real estate magnate Mort Zuckerman.

All have turned Bloomberg down, but Zuckerman admits to entertaining the possibility:

“I would love to be in that job,” said Mr. Zuckerman, a student of policy who has no party affiliation and weighed running for the Senate a few years ago. 

He insisted that Mr. Bloomberg’s suggestion had an informal “teasing” feel, even as he acknowledged a longstanding call to public service in New York. 

“If I could be appointed, I’d probably be serious about it,” he added, wryly.

Appointed to an elected office so you can run it without the disadvantage of having to, you know, run for that office?

Sure, Mort, why not!

We already live in a fake democracy where money and power run everything.

Why not dispense with the election sham and just appoint rich corporate criminals like yourself to power.

Maybe we can make the term for life too?

Bloomberg overturned term limits just for himself, maybe Mort can overturn elections after he gets into office.

Unfortunately for Mr. Zuckerman, we still do have elections, and if he wants to be mayor of NYC, he's going to have to run for that position.

I, for one, wish he would.

Then we could put him on trial and see just how he made all his real estate money.

Or how he has tried to bust the newspaper unions.

Or how he hired a criminal found guilty of lying to Parliament in charge of his newspaper, the Daily News.

Of course Zuckerman isn't going to run for mayor.

He, like many powerful figures, likes to be fellated in the press with these kinds of stories, but in the end, the only thing these stories accomplish other than inflating the egos of already arrogant people like Zuckerman is undercutting Christine Quinn as the "inevitable" successor to Bloomberg.

Which is interesting in itself.

Many people were thinking that Quinn was the odds on favorite to succeed Bloomberg.

But each one of these stories knocks that inevitably peg down a notch.

It seems that Bloomberg's corporate criminal friends are not happy with Quinn, they are looking for a more-business friendly alternative, and they may not give her as much money and support as she thought she was going to get from them.

Christine Quinn has already sold her charred, blackened soul to the business community and Mike Bloomberg a  thousand times over - what does this poor, corrupt politician need to do to win their love?

NY Times Turns Its Attention To Colin Myler

The NY Times takes a look at New York Daily News editor-in-chief Colin Myler and his role in the News Corp. scandal.

Doesn't move the story much except to say that Myler seems to have been behind the “FIRE ’EM! Exposed: Perv Teachers Still on Payroll" stories and Mort Zuckerman is sticking by his gangster editor - for now.

The Times also notes that the Daily News has declined to cover the Commons committee report on News Corp. hacking that stated Colin Myler was guilty of misleading Parliament.

It seems in the world of the Zuckerman Daily News only innocent teachers accused and later exonerated of allegations need to be fired.

Daily News editors found guilty of lying to Parliament and accused by a Labor MP of sending reporters to dig up dirt on investigators in order to get them to drop their investigation of his newspaper - those offenses are apparently not cause for concern.

Just another example of the two-tier justice system we have in our neo-feudal society these days - one where elites can pretty much do anything they want with impunity, and another for the rest of us where even a remark on Facebook can get you fired.

Commons Committee Report: New York Daily News Editor-In-Chief Colin Myler Guilty Of Misleading Parliament

Not that this would surprise anybody who actually reads the New York Daily News, but there's a criminal running the newspaper.

Colin Myler, Daily News editor-in-chief and former editor of the now-closed News of the World, was found guilty of having misled the Commons committee on culture, media and sport in the News Corporation hacking scandal.

Along with Myler, former Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton and former News of the World lawyer Tom Crone were also found guilty of misleading the committee.

Hinton was also found to be "complicit" in a cover-up of the scandal as well.

The Guardian has the details:

The cross-party group of MPs said that Les Hinton, the former executive chairman of News International, was "complicit" in a cover-up at the newspaper group, and that Colin Myler, former editor of the News of the World, and the paper's ex-head of legal, Tom Crone, deliberately withheld crucial information and answered questions falsely. All three were accused of misleading parliament by the culture select committee.

...

The culture select committee charged Hinton with being "complicit" in a cover-up of wrongdoing at Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

MPs said that Myler and Crone deliberately withheld crucial information and answered falsely questions put by the committee.

The executives demonstrated contempt for parliament "in the most blatant fashion", the MPs said, in what they described as a corporate attempt to mislead the committee about the true extent of phone hacking at the News of the World.

The MPs said that Hinton, executive chairman of News International until December 2007, had "inexcusably" mislead the committee over his role in authorising the £243,000 payout to Clive Goodman, the former royal editor convicted of phone hacking in January that year.

"We consider, therefore, that Les Hinton was complicit in the cover-up at News International, which included making misleading statements and giving a misleading picture to the committee," the MPs said.

Crone and Myler were accused of deliberately misleading the MPs on the culture select committee in 2009 and again in 2011 about their alleged knowledge that phone hacking went beyond a single "rogue reporter" at the now-closed Sunday tabloid.

"Both Tom Crone and Colin Myler deliberately avoided disclosing crucial information to the committee and, when asked to do, answered questions falsely," the MPs said in the report.

All three executives now face the prospect of being called to apologise before parliament, in a constitutional move that has not been used for almost half a century.

How does a man who lied to Parliament and helped run the News Corporation hacking cover-up continue as editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News?

So far, both Colin Myler and DN owner Mort Zuckerman have maintained silence on this.

Indeed, the Daily News doesn't cover the Murdoch/News Corp hacking story in the paper because of Myler's proximity to the scandal.

And of course the NY Post NEVER covers the story (although the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal does.)

So most New Yorkers do not know the extent of the criminality at both companies.

The Commons committee found that the toxic culture at the News Corporation media outlets "permeated from the top" and "speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International".

Therefore, the committee concluded, "Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of major international company."

If Rupert Murdoch is unfit to exercise stewardship of a major international company, you can bet his former News of the World editor, the guy who lied to Parliament and helped cover up the hacking scandal, is unfit to exercise stewardship of the Daily News.

It is time for Colin Myler to go.

Daily News Editor-In-Chief Gets Scrutiny Over Latest Murdoch Corruption Allegations

Last week I asked if anybody would look into the allegation made by Labor MP Tom Watson that Colin Myler, former News of the World editor and current editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News, had sent reporters at the NOTW on a dirt-digging expedition against British politicians in order to intimidate them from calling his boss at the time, News International chief Rebekah Brooks, before a committee investigating phone hacking allegations against Rupert Murdoch's newspapers.

Today The Guardian reports that Colin Myler is getting that scrutiny.

And as is usual with people who like to hold other people accountable, neither Mr. Myler nor his boss, Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman, were available for comment about these allegations against Mr. Myler.

More on this later.

Suffice for now that it is good to see that Mr. Myler, a tireless champion of holding others accountable, may just be held accountable for his own crimes - including sending reporters into the garbage of public figures in order to extort them to stop investigating crimes committed by employees of his own company.

NY Times Poll Shows Support For Public Workers Unions

The corporate media - owned by corporate elites like Mort Zuckerman, Rupert Murdoch, and Michael Bloomberg or huge conglomerates like Comcast, Viacom and Disney - like to portray the country as a place divided between the "haves" (members of public employees unions with cushy jobs, great benefits, good pay and job protections) and the "have nots" (the rest of us without that stuff.)

They say that the rest of America is sick and tired of these unionized public employees with their "gold-plated benefits and pay" and want to bust them (see here for an example from Mort Zuckerman in US News.)

Just watch the cable news networks, even the supposedly "liberal" MSNBC, and you'll hear a bunch of corporate shills dish dirt on unions as "special interests" that most of America no longer supports.

Of all the public sector unions, teachers unions get special attention from corporate media types on both the right and left.

But the NY Times did a little poll about this issue and found the following:

As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Labor unions are not exactly popular, though: A third of those surveyed viewed them favorably, a quarter viewed them unfavorably, and the rest said they were either undecided or had not heard enough about them. But the nationwide poll found that embattled public employee unions have the support of most Americans — and most independents — as they fight the efforts of newly elected Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio to weaken their bargaining powers, and the attempts of governors from both parties to cut their pay or benefits.

Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by a margin of nearly two to one: 60 percent to 33 percent. While a slim majority of Republicans favored taking away some bargaining rights, they were outnumbered by large majorities of Democrats and independents who said they opposed weakening them.

Those surveyed said they opposed, 56 percent to 37 percent, cutting the pay or benefits of public employees to reduce deficits, breaking down along similar party lines. A majority of respondents who have no union members living in their households opposed both cuts in pay or benefits and taking away the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

Governors in both parties have been making the case that public workers are either overpaid or have overly generous health and pension benefits. But 61 percent of those polled — including just over half of Republicans — said they thought the salaries and benefits of most public employees were either “about right” or “too low” for the work they do.

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Feb. 24-27 with 984 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all adults. Of those surveyed, 20 percent said there was a union member in their household, and 25 percent said there was a public employee in their household.

OK, so this poll has a MOE of 3%, which is a helluva lot less than the 12%-35% margins of error the new teacher ratings systems have, so I think we can safely say that we now have hard data to show that Mort Zuckerman, Rupert Murdoch and the rest of the corporate class warriors may NOT be speaking for the country at large like they say they are.

In fact, they speak for themselves, and as corporate moguls with union-busting histories themselves and business interests that are served by powerless employees, they WANT people to think they speak for America at large.

But it looks very much like Americans are starting to wake up to the fact that a teacher in Rhode Island with 15 years seniority making $60,000 a year isn't receiving "gold-plated benefits."

This is good to see.

The fight in Wisconsin is exposing quite a few of the biases of the corporate media, especially the shills who work for Murdoch, Zuckerman and Bloomberg, but it is also providing us with evidence that many Americans think unionized public sector workers are receiving fair wages and benefits and do NOT support the busting of these unions or the downgrading of the wages or benefits that these workers receive.

Another thing we have seen as a result of the fight in Wisconsin is how union workers AND non-union workers are coming together to support the rights of ALL workers.

Watching 100,000 people protest Scott Walker's union-busting policies in Wisconsin has galvanized many in the middle and working classes to begin to FIGHT BACK in the class war being waged by the corporatists.

This is so interesting because I think the Walkers and Bloombergs and Zuckermans and Murdochs think they have this war won and they're just putting the final nails in the feudal chains right now.

And that certainly WAS the case before these past few weeks when protests in SUPPORT of unions and workers have erupted ALL over the country.

Wisconsin was SUPPOSED to be the beginning of the end for public employees unions.

Instead, it is the BEGINNING of the GREAT AWAKENING of the middle and working classes to the class war that has been waged against them for the last 30 years.

As a member of a teachers union in NYC, as the son of unionized policeman and the grandson of a unionized trackman, I couldn't be happier to see this.

As Victor Laszlo told Rick Blaine in Casablanca "Welcome back to the fight."

Billionaires Defend The Working Man From Evil Unionized Workers

Brilliant piece from Danny Lucia at socialistworker.org.

Read it all, but here's my favorite part:

WHO SAYS the corporate media doesn't care about the opinions of ordinary people? There have been lots of articles lately about what workers think, written by the people who study them the most--bosses.

As a vice president of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and a Wall Street Journal columnist, William McGurn naturally has his finger on the pulse of the American working class:

...

According to McGurn, a true American worker doesn't mind having their 401(k) cut by a CEO looking to increase his year-end bonus. But he's fighting mad at his daughter's teacher because she has a union that's been able to keep her pension intact.

This analysis truly does go against "popular orthodoxy"--otherwise known as: what most people think.

But McGurn's observations must have merit because they are corroborated almost word for word by Mort Zuckerman, real estate billionaire and publisher of U.S. News and World Report:

We really are two Americas, but not those captured in the stereotypical populist class warfare speeches that dramatize the gulf between the rich and the poor. Instead there is a new division in America that affronts a sense of fairness. That division is between the workers in the private sector and the workers in the public sector.

In Zuckerman's vision, government workers are different than you and me. They live in gated communities like Fireman Estates and flaunt their wealth on TV shows like Lifestyles of the Defined Benefit Plan and Who Wants to Marry a Child Services Case Worker?

In Public-Sector America, unionized postal workers and crossing guards pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for exclusive private schools for their kids, while the rest of us--Starbucks baristas, bank presidents, etc.--send our kids to overcrowded public schools. And now, this obscene inequality is apparently spurring a backlash from ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Mort the Media and Real Estate Mogul.

If Zuckerman and his fellow billionaire class warriors had any shame, they would be embarrassed by the bullshit they're slinging around.

But they have no shame.

Only an insatiable thirst for all the money in the world.