Originally posted November 8, 2014

Berkeley-In this past election cycle, one of the few bright spots was the strong support for lifting the minimum wage. At Pacifica Radio however, things are going in the opposite direction as indicated by an ad for an early AM part-time position at KPFT in Houston – paying $10 an hour. Continue reading $10/Hr To Work In The Media →

Originally posted November 2, 2014

Berkeley– It’s a Pacifica election for Halloween. Maybe. The national board after considering a timeline developed by their elections committee, rejected the timeline, but did issue an order to unelected chair of the board/interim executive director Margy Wilkinson to hire someone to run the election by December 1st. This is not the first time the board has so instructed, but since Wilkinson voted to tell herself to make the hire, perhaps she will. Who will be hired is a mystery since the most qualified candidates Bill Crosier and Sanchez Montebello have both been ruled out, Crosier due to factional antipathy and Montebello withdrawing in anger after Wilkinson never acknowledged receiving his application. The election has many unanswered questions including how Pacifica will transition to online voting, where the money will come from to pay for it, and what seats are up for election –  as 1/2 of the delegates terms expired in December of 2013 (including Wilkinson’s term) and the other 1/2 expire in December of 2015. The rejected timeline proposed a completed election by July of 2015.  If the election covers all the seats, Pacifica subscribers will have to rank 18 candidates out of the 36-50 that will run in each signal area. Pacifica’s bylaws prevent delegates and directors from extending their own terms without the permission of the full membership. Continue reading Boo It’s An Election →

Originally posted October 27, 2014

Berkeley-Pacifica’s finance committee bears the responsibility for reviewing and recommending divisional budgets for the 5 stations, national office and archives and consolidating those 7 documents into an organizational budget for the upcoming year. That task is supposed to be completed by September 30th. But a month after the end of the fiscal year, the end is nowhere in sight. Pacifica is careening into 2015 with no fiscal plan at all. Continue reading The Nonprofit Without A Budget →

Originally posted October 17, 2014

Berkeley-The new corporate call center collecting pledges for Pacifica stations KPFK in Los Angeles and KPFA in Berkeley is owned by Bruce Hough, an Oregon republican who runs a Tea Party campaign advertising/fundraising business called Impact Marketing with his partner, rabid Tea Party congressman Sal Esquivel. Esquivel traveled to Arizona to stand with Michelle Malkin, the Minutemen and others in support of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law SB 1070. Hough (who regularly threatens to move his Medford-based call center Comnet to Nevada should the Oregon legislature raise taxes) and Esquivel are regularly called out for Tea Party shenanigans including funding vicious attack ads against local Democratic candidate and military veteran Jeff Scroggin. The ads were so disgusting that two out of three local Republican County commissioners refused to endorse Tea Party candidate Doug Briedenthal,  whose “Friends of” committee had the same address as Hough’s Impact Marketing and paid for the mudslinging ads. Hough and Esquivel were labeled “Rogues of the Week” by the Williamette Weekly for an unethical scam to charge gulliable voters to email Congress. Hough and Esquivel also house conservative PACS (political action committees) at Impact Marketing giving aways hundreds of thousands of dollars to local and national Tea Party candidates.  Each call to donate to KPFA or KPFK routes .90 cents a minute to Hough’s company or $3-5 per call. Continue reading Donating to the Tea Party and Expelling Spanish Speakers →

Originally posted October 12, 2014

Berkeley-Pacifica narrowly acquired FCC permission to engage in fundraising for an outside organization – 4 days after doing it – and by accident. After happening to listen to an edition of the Sojourner Truth program on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles last weekend promising 1/2 the pledges raised to a health charity for Ebola relief in West Africa, former PNB treasurer Tracy Rosenberg sent a note to Pacifica’s FCC lawyer giving him a heads-up on the third-party fundraising and asking him to make sure KPFK would not be fined. The attorney hand-delivered a notification to the Federal Communications Commission two days later and received permission based on the relevant facts presented in his written request. Continue reading Ebola-Gate →

Originally posted October 5, 2014

Berkeley-The network’s controversial CFO, Raul Salvador, has not responded to last week’s revelation that he did not, in fact, recently “discover” payments to the network’s profit-sharing pension fund had not been made in 2013, but made that decision himself in a meeting with the third party administrator in the summer of 2013. And he concealed it in the last Pacifica audit which reports the $200,101 accrued for both retirement plans was paid. The whereabouts of the $92,413 said to be paid to the pension plan, but never received, is unknown. Continue reading Archives Begone →

Originally posted September 27, 2014

Berkeley-The financial shenanigans at Pacifica Radio, which former ED Summer Reese referred to in this April 1 interview, have impacted one of the foundation’s two employee retirement plans as $92,415 has potentially flown the coop. An outside audit by Helin Donovan, required by the pension plan’s 3rd party administrator, revealed 2012 deposits (due 9-30-2012)  were never made, despite an affirmation by Pacifica’s auditor Armanino that the 2012 payments *were* made. The $200,101 amount Armanino states was paid into the network’s two retirement plans matches the records in the CFO’s financial statements (Lines K112-113) exactly. Continue reading Pension Fund Cover-Up →

Originally posted September 18, 2014

Berkeley-Apparently worried their slim majority is growing too slim, Pacifica’s rogue board has taken to individually targeting  their “enemies” with local board trials to remove them from the 501c3’s national board of directors. The first to undergo the treatment was Richard Uzzell, a Houston-based retired architect and contractor who served on KPFT’s local station board from 2004-2010 and was re-elected in 2012. Less than half the local board in Texas supported the removal at a vote taken on September 17th, so Uzzell will serve out his one-year term, but undeterred, the rogue board turned their attention to Los Angeles, scheduling another “trial” for the minority director there, Kim Kaufman. Continue reading Witch Hunts →

Originally posted September 16, 2014

Berkeley-The turmoil engendered at Pacifica Radio earlier this year sunk to a new low last weekend, with a shockingly deliberate exhibition of cooking the books by Upfront host and current treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert, distributed in an email newsletter by the “Save KPFA” group. Continue reading Why Is A Journalist Deliberately Cooking Pacifica Radio’s Books? →

Originally posted September 13, 2014

Berkeley-Un-elected chair/IED/IED Margy Wilkinson launched into a bit of a plaintive wail at Monday’s national election committee meeting, stating in response to a question from Houston rep Teresa Allen that she “didn’t know how much money Pacifica has, and didn’t know how much the stations have in their budgets”. The audio clip of Wilkinson’s statement can be found here.  Continue reading Nobody Knows →