Left In Lowell

Finally. Someone else is saying it. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! (Sorry, this is one of the things that just frustrates me to no end.) Thank you Al Gore…

If you’re like me, you’re a talk radio listener. I flip between mostly two stations - 90.9 WBUR, and 91.5 WUML.

Well, the flagship of local public radio - WUML’s drivetime show, Sunrise - is no more. Thanks to 9C cuts via the Chancellor. He can say he regrets this all he wants, but this was still a very bad move. Bad for the community, bad for UML.

I know the arguments - cuts have to come somewhere. I get it. I wouldn’t have objected to the scaling back of the show, or trying to work with the Sunrise staff to bring in more volunteers or more fundraising and underwriting to offset loss of revenues. But to give the listening audience less than a week to react to the loss of its premier source of local information - it’s criminal. It’s barbaric. This is about more than a loss of a show, to my mind. It’s a loss to the connection between the University and the community. Where else do you hear about what UML researchers and professors are up to, next to an interview with a city council candidate? Or hear from writers in the UML community in a radio essay, alongside two sisters cooking up a Greek fundraiser at The Brush?

Ellis, longtime UML’er and host of Sunrise, diplomatically states that he understands that academic programs need protecting in times like these. But the longterm outlook of a University’s health and well-being in a community is just as important. I’m outraged by this, as a frequent listener and as someone who knows that without Sunrise, there’s a whole lot of information, about the University, local culture and arts, and local politics, that will not get into the ears or eyes of the people who need it. The community and the University could have worked this out so that everyone could win - or, not lose so much. The measure of a society is not what it does when it is prosperous, but what it decides to value when times are tough. I think we have the measure of Chancellor Meehan now.

This Valley is losing one of its most valuable resources for news and information. That’s my $.02.

As Dick had mentioned on his blog last month that “City Life” a taped, local affairs program on Lowell Telecommunications Corporation (LTC: Building Community through Technology) was going live.

John McDonough is the show’s producer and George Anthes is one of the co-hosts; the two were formerly associated with the local radio station, WCAP, before the new ownership changed the programming. Anthes is joined by Tom Byrne as a co-host.

And as most LiL readers and commentators know, we had some issues in the past. However I, as many others who are concerned about Lowell’s public and civic life, agree with Dick’s comments that in addition to the blogs, the locally-owned radio station and the newspaper and other “media” outlets, “it [the program] will immediately become a major contributor to the local political scene and that’s a good thing – the more the better.”

I was able to view the programs as they are replayed in the morning. All LTC programs have a time slot for the original broadcast and another one for the repeat. Last week Professor Bob Forrant of UML, who also comments frequently on LiL was a guest on the show. This past Monday, Dick Howe was sitting-in as host and Cliff Krieger (Lowell’s newest blogger) was the guest. Yesterday, Jenn Myers, the Sun’s Lowell reporter, and Elkin Montoya of the CBA and Jeanne D’Arc Credit Union were the guests. So, it is an eclectic mix of guests and topics.

As one new outlet begins to take shape, apparently another one is seeing its sunset (excuse the pun). Marie is reporting on richardhowe.com that WUML’s Sunrise Show will end this Friday due to the UML budget cuts.

City Life is broadcast live daily from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. on 8 (Mon – Wed) and 95 on (Thur – Fri). It is repeated the next morning on 8 from 6:30 – 8:00 a.m. Because we are dealing with an entity (LTC) that promotes free speech, right after the City Life, the program Democracy Now is shown. I wonder how much of a cross-over audience there is.

The program has the look and feel of any local access television show. So it should not be judged by standards of commercial television. It should be judged by the impact it makes on raising the level of discussion in our community.

And I agree with McDonough who in his closing remarks on the program praises the staff LTC staff. This show may open the door for others to do the same. I encourage those of you who have strong opinions, and are committed and disciplined (somewhat) to join LTC, take a class or two and begin your own show. The staff is friendly, helpful and eager to teach.

Note: I am a member of LTC’s Board of Directors and a co-chair of the Program Sub-Committee.

Awesome, just awesome. And features Jack Black and the star of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. Even better.

Thanks to the hubby for pointing this out. Just the other day I was wondering if there’d been any movement on renting out the retail spaces at the new JAM-based Early garage.

A lease is slated to be signed tomorrow between the city and Garcia-Brogan’s pub, which will occupy 5,043 square feet of ground-floor retail space at the western corner of the 900-space garage. Construction is anticipated to begin in 60-90 days. […]

The city is also negotiating with Dr. Anshu Goel, a general dentist looking to occupy 1972 square-feet of space. […] Goel added that his wife is willing to provide some dental work for the poor in partnership with any of the city’s non-profit groups, as part of the lease. […] (Editor’s note: very cool.)

The third potential tenant, Edmilson Ramos, is in negotiations with the city to lease 8,000 square feet for a Brazilian restaurant and function area.

So there you go, perhaps three new tenants. Sounds like the food venues will be slightly different from what we already have downtown. I look forward to driving past the Early garage and seeing it not empty!

Kos tells us we told you so:

Of course, passing the bailout, and pissing away hundreds of billions of dollars to Bush’s and Paulson’s best friends haven’t really done much to stem the bleeding, we’re in a brutal recession and job losses are piling up in numbers unseen for decades, and the market sure as heck wasn’t propped up:

Government by Dow was a failure. […]

I understand the argument that had nothing been done, then things might be worse today. That’s an unprovable assertion, but it’s a plausible one. Yet can anyone really argue that had Congress waited a few more weeks for the smart economists and policymakers to weigh in, thus allowing for a better diagnosis and solution for the problem, that things would be that much worse?

Go read the rest. He’s right.

The second thing that you should read today is Michael Moore’s requiem for GM:

For all of that, the auto heads had to sit there in November and be ridiculed about how they traveled to D.C. Yes, they flew on their corporate jets, just like the bankers and Wall Street thieves did in October. But, hey, THAT was OK! They’re the Masters of the Universe! Nothing but the best chariots for Big Finance as they set about to loot our nation’s treasury.

Of course, the auto magnates used be the Masters who ruled the world. They were the pulsating hub that all other industries — steel, oil, cement contractors — served. Fifty-five years ago, the president of GM sat on that same Capitol Hill and bluntly told Congress, what’s good for General Motors is good for the country. Because, you see, in their minds, GM WAS the country.

What a long, sad fall from grace we witnessed on November 19th when the three blind mice had their knuckles slapped and then were sent back home to write an essay called, “Why You Should Give Me Billions of Dollars of Free Cash.” […]

Let me just state the obvious: Every single dollar Congress gives these three companies will be flushed right down the toilet. There is nothing the management teams of the Big 3 are going to do to convince people to go out during a recession and buy their big, gas-guzzling, inferior products. Just forget it. And, as sure as I am that the Ford family-owned Detroit Lions are not going to the Super Bowl — ever — I can guarantee you, after they burn through this $34 billion, they’ll be back for another $34 billion next summer.

So what to do? Members of Congress, here’s what I propose:

1. Transporting Americans is and should be one of the most important functions our government must address. And because we are facing a massive economic, energy and environmental crisis, the new president and Congress must do what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was faced with a crisis (and ordered the auto industry to stop building cars and instead build tanks and planes): The Big 3 are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.

2. You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company! (You’re going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the “loan,” and because we know they will default on that loan, you’re going to own the company in the end as it is. So why wait? Just buy them out now.)

3. None of us want government officials running a car company, but there are some very smart transportation geniuses who could be hired to do this. We need a Marshall Plan to switch us off oil-dependent vehicles and get us into the 21st century. […]

This proposal will save our industrial infrastructure — and millions of jobs. More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession.

In contrast, yesterday General Motors presented its restructuring proposal to Congress. They promised, if Congress gave them $18 billion now, they would, in turn, eliminate around 20,000 jobs. You read that right. We give them billions so they can throw more Americans out of work. That’s been their Big Idea for the last 30 years — layoff thousands in order to protect profits. But no one ever stopped to ask this question: If you throw everyone out of work, who’s going to have the money to go out and buy a car?

These idiots don’t deserve a dime. Fire all of them, and take over the industry for the good of the workers, the country and the planet.

What’s good for General Motors IS good for the country. Once the country is calling the shots.

This dkos diary by TocqueDeville, besides sounding the alarm that half of America’s credit lines will be cut (which is terrible timing considering that the American consumer is already not spending), also says one of the things that has been at the back of my mind a long time (emphasis mine):

How did we allow ourselves to be brought to our knees by parasites who produce nothing, and a monetary/banking policy that has sucked all of the money away from the real producers?

Corruption. Plain and simple.

Most people go their entire lives without even questioning where money comes from. It’s just always been. But currency is supposed to be a symbol, a tool. Not a shackle. We, as a society, have grown so accustomed to never asking questions about where the money comes from, that we don’t see the most obvious thing in the world - we have become slaves to bankers who make more money off the money itself, than the goods or services the money is supposed to represent.

Money is supposed to represent real wealth - so you don’t have to carry around your chickens. It should never be the sole source of wealth. Anyone who is making money solely off of money is a parasite.

What kind of system penalizes the producers of real wealth, things that have real value, and rewards the parasites? A system designed by parasites.

This is the greatest opportunity in almost a century to fix this absurd monetary system, and rebuild our country. But it won’t happen because the parasites also control our political system. So the people are being taxed to death to pay for the parasites ponzi scheme.

This is the meat of the nut of the whole entire problem. The reason the economy is failing and the credit crisis exists is because people making money off of money (mortgage-backed securities et al.) screwed all of us true producers of real wealth (the workers and the companies that produce things). They not only screwed us of our own money, but they overreached and overextended their investments and screwed us with the very real failure of their money, and now we are bailing out these parasites, because we have no choice, our whole system is going down because of it, and we all would lose if that happened. This crisis has shown us what this system truly is - of parasites, for parasites, so help me God.

The deck is stacked against the producer and the real wealth generator in this system, and it appears there’s nothing we can do about it. The robber barons will continue to make money with our money, our wealth, stealing it from us as surly as if they held up a bank. Which is, essentially, what they have been doing all these years under our noses.

And then, on top of all this, they pass themselves off as patriotic and American heroes. They pat themselves on the back, these giants of industry, and think they deserve the accidents of their birth or their luck in getting to robber baron status. Then as they begin to be buried by the detritus and dung that is a result of their greed, they come to Washington, with their hands out, to ask us, the producers they stole the money from in the first place, for more money to bail them out. It’s criminal.

Reading around the blogosphere, I came across this short post by Susan at Below Boston, suggesting that whatever gifts you buy, you buy locally. It’s an idea I’ve always promoted here, and there’s plenty of places to do so in and around Lowell - whether at the Brush Art gallery (plenty of arts and crafts gifts there) or at the extended holiday Open Studios at Western Ave (12-5pm December 6th and 7th, 13th and 14th) or other fine, locally-owned establishments like Humanity or Welles Emporium, or the new C’est wine and gift shop on Merrimack.

Here’s an open thread to list your favorite place to shop locally for Christmas gifts. Also, does anyone have good suggestions for “shopping locally” for a 1 1/2 and a 4 1/2 year old? I would rather not buy them junk from China, either, if I can help it, though it may come to that.

The biggest argument from the proponents looking to build CO2-polluting power plants in MA, like ones proposed in Billerica and Brockton, is that we’re constantly in need of more power, and need to ramp up our infrastructure to meet tomorrow’s needs. And anyway, natural-gas-fired plants are sooo much better than coal, so really, we need these in the interim…let us build these plants so we can make money hand over fist, your air quality won’t get that bad, and you need us. Sure we’ll be transitioning to renewables and conservation someday, but in the meantime…

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

The gas- and diesel-burning plant would produce 350 megawatts of electricity and is slated to open by 2012.

But new sources of power won’t be needed until 2014 at the earliest, according to a recent report from electricity overseer ISO New England.

And it may be even longer before the Brockton plant is needed if other plants come into service first, electricity projections show.

Yet that won’t mean state energy regulators will reject it. Under state law, such forecasts aren’t considered by the Energy Facilities Siting Board, the permit-granting board.

That’s a disappointment to project opponents.

(And remember, the more natural gas plants go up, the quicker our residential gas bills, yours and mine, go skyrocketing too.)

The thing is, by 2014, we should have long been seeing the effects of better policies at the local, state, and federal levels - both in conservation (reducing our need for power overall) and in ramping up the use of renewables, spurred on by such programs as Commonwealth Solar, or local contests (to start with). Thereby, I predict (and am quite sure of myself) that even 2014 will not see an increased need for power. If we’re seeing an increased need for power in five years, we have much bigger problems than having the cost of electricity go up due to scarcity (and honestly, having scarcity might be the only thing at that point that will force us to conserve like we should be).

Like the oil market these days, where a downturn has reduced demand so sharply we’ve seen the price slip to 1/3 its peak cost, below $50 a barrel (a price I never thought I would see in my lifetime again!), power and electricity demand should be going down, and also be supplemented by decentralized power, where every rooftop which is prime real estate for solar will have it, and every windy backyard will have a windmill, and home owners will begin to look beneath their foundations for geothermal.

Decentralized power, as discussed by such people as Jeremy Rifkin in “The Hydrogen Economy,” is a huge threat to the profits of Big Power types that like to pressure us with warnings of electrical scarcity, so they can keep building giant, polluting plants in our backyards. This time, we don’t have to listen to them. We’re on our way to true energy independence - including from our own industrial power giants. The plants in Brockton, or Billerica, or the myriad other sites being considered in MA, are not needed.

Let them go the way of the dinosaurs. Evolve, or get out of the way.

Just doing some catching up on my news here - holidays and family stuff has me behind.

I’d like to belatedly welcome to the Lowell blogosphere occasional LiL commenter Cliff Krieger, a local Republican activist, whose blog is far less alliterative than this one though quite comprehensive (albeit from a different point of view). If you hadn’t seen the link from richardhowe.com, Cliff started Right-Side-of-Lowell over a month ago. (Which side would that be, the north or the south?! Kidding!) Apparently the local blogosphere is now no longer tipped completely towards the progressive side.

Cliff strikes me as the sort of person who is doing the work his party needs on the ground (butchering my name notwithstanding) so it should be interesting to observe where the local Republican party can get itself. Frankly, good competition is never a bad thing. Just, don’t be too good at it.