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 →

Originally posted September 7, 2014

Berkeley-At Thursday night’s PNB meeting, the national board approved on somewhat nebulous terms a loan to Pacifica Foundation Radio of $156,000 from Southern California real estate magnate Aris Anagnos, the employer of board member Lydia Brazon. The reason for the loan was the payment of employee taxes for severance checks for 19 employees laid off from NY station WBAI in July of 2013. The loan is against WBAI’s future revenues, with $25,000 payments due after every station fund drive for the next year. The loan would cancel out for the next year a significant part of the potential cost savings from the hoped-for relocation of WBAI’s transmitter and antenna from its prohibitively expensive spot atop the Empire State Building. Continue reading Racking Up The Debts →

Originally posted August 30, 2014

Berkeley-When local activists blocked the Zim Piraeus from unloading the majority of their freight at the Port of Oakland to protest Israeli massacres in Gaza City, KPFA board operator, apprenticeship program coordinator and LSB staff rep Frank Sterling wanted Pacifica’s Berkeley station KPFA to be there chronicling the port blockade in real time. Sterling’s proposal to produce the coverage, which finally aired the morning before the 4-day community/labor blockade began, underwent a difficult internal battle at the station, that included a rantby Save KPFA-affiliated local board member Jack Kurzweil that the proposal to cover the demo was “wrongheaded” and an initial veto by management. Sterling went public with his distress in a heartfelt email where he said KPFA was breaking his heart, and after emails from the community flooded the station, the decision was reversed. Save KPFA-affiliated local board member Mark Hernandez expressed anger at Sterling for his efforts describing the appeal to the community as “not a good career move” in a Facebook discussion group. Sterling is paid for four hours a week of operational work. Continue reading Bad Career Moves →

Originally posted August 25, 2014

Berkeley-Conflicted attorneys Siegel and Yee are preventing workers at LA station KPFK from going ahead with a recall election for elected staff rep Rodrigo Argueta, whose actions on the PNB have not pleased many of his constituents. Despite a filed petition with the required number of signatures from paid and unpaid staff at KPFK, the law  firm is preventing the recall election on the grounds that Argueta is not accountable for how he votes on the national board. Siegel and Yee’s trumped up letter of retainer as counsel is dated prior to the board discussion and board member Hank Lamb has disputed that the board ever authorized it.  Continue reading Kangaroos Instead of Audits →

Originally posted August 16, 2014

Berkeley- The rogue board occupied itself on Thursday with a midnight-special lynching, picking the cheery time of 11:45pm EST to devote a solid 12 minutes to voting on a meaningless statement of censure to KPFT director Richard Uzzell and Affiliates Director Heather Gray. The censure gained the support of only half the members of the board (11 out of 22), divided entirely along factional lines, and prevented the objects of the “censure motion” from speaking in their own defense, with Uzzell being shouted down and Gray receiving an abrupt 90 seconds prior to the vote, at which point she was shushed into silence. The vote was followed by a shrieking match audible on the audio, during which unelected chair Wilkinson implores former PNB vice-chair Bill Croiser, the volunteer streamer, to “turn off the stream”. The board oddly reversed the normal schedule, holding the closed session at the open session time and the open session at the closed session time, presumably to do the censuring at the latest possible hour of the evening. Audio released by Berkeley’s Save KPFA faction omits the hysterical screaming match and the shouting down of Uzzell and Gray (the entire audio is available here).  The manipulated  snippet from Save KPFA features an amnesia-laden statement from KPFA programmer Brian Edwards-Tiekert that suing Pacifica is bad behavior – Edwards-Tiekert apparently forgetting about the multiple lawsuits and grievances (at least 8) that he, himself, was a party too. Uzzell’s tongue-in-cheek response can be found here. Continue reading Nothing But Shrieking →