Seems the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club in the Bronx has had their funding pulled by the city due to the diversion of hunderds of thousands of dollars from the club to Air America. The transfer was designated as a “loan”, in exchange for which Air America would give the club “free publicity”.
This is problematic for several reasons. First, the club is heavily dependent on city grant money for its operations, and these carry with it stringent audit requirements. Loans to fledgling radio operations probably aren’t part of the charter. There may be comingled state and federal money as well, with similar requirements.
There is also a conflict of interest involved, in that Evan Cohen, Air America’s former chairman, had served as the club’s director of development.
In light of this, and assuming all this is true, of course, what should Air America do to make restitution? Merely paying back the money isn’t enough if laws were broken, in my opinion.
Also, did the hosts have any knowlege of this arrangement? I don’t know that they did, but they should now that this news is breaking. What obligation do they have to their listeners to come clean?
You sound like you’re trying to make up a phony equivalent to the Rove scandal. Why would the hosts on the radio network know about loans arranged by the chairman, possibly before the network was on the air?
To put it another way, what kind of a dumbass would break the law and then pass the word on to a bunch of talk show hosts?
The articles make it clear the state is concerned about the actions of Rosen (club head) and Cohen (former chairman of Air America). As you say, state funds were used in a manner that is not allowed. It’d be right for Air America to return the money, but from the info you’ve thoughtfully provided I’m not sure they broke the law. And if there were laws broken on that end, it would appear to be by Cohen, not “Air America.”
Your own links contradict you here. The loan was to be repaid with MONEY, with interest. The station was also going to give the club free publicity. That’s a pretty big difference, as the former would be a barely-disguised payoff to Air America by its former chairman, and the latter (while apparently not legal) is a loan.
Are you normally this interested in the goings-on in Boys and Girls Clubs, or did the fact that Air America was involved make you more curious?
mmm, Evan Cohen resigned, under fire, as chairman of Air America Radio because of this… Last year.
And it was a loan, now, only if Air America does not pay, then you will have an scandal regarding Air America. As it is, the scandal belongs to Cohen for not properly dealing with his then conflict of interest.
Since the reason for his “resignation” was not explained then, it is clear now that Air America was one of the parties that pressured him to go. Now that would be an example for other groups that have important members that behave unethically. coughleakerscough.
The reason for Cohen’s departure was not clear, and it is not clear now. There were numerous fundraising irregularities at the time that could have been the impetus as well, so it is premature for you to state definatively that this incident was the sole reason.
As for you, Marley23, why don’t you speak to the issues rather than shooting the messenger? After all, I rather doubt you thought much every day about deep cover and NOC lists, at least until an event made such things newsworthy.
We could expand the debate to talk about Air Americas viability in the marketplace and the reasons why it is obviously not being embraced by listeners…but I don’t expect much interest in that topic here.
For example, in the latest New York numbers, Air America flagship WLIB scored an overall 1.0 in the ratings, compared to Limbaugh station WABC’s 3.2. Ratings for other cities can be found here.
I await the contention that the radio and records website is baised to the right.
One of the activities of the community center in question is Camp Air America, which is a camp for the children of the community. It was named for, and presumably sponsored by, Air America. This webpage for the community center indicated that the Morning Sedition show will be raising money for the camp in the months of June and July.
That would indicate to most people a charitable arrangement. But Air America owes money to the community center. Were listeners made aware of this debt when they were hit up for donations? I don’t think they were.
I would like to know the details of the loan. How favorable were they to the Club, i.e., how did the terms stack up against other investment options the Club had at its disposal.
If the loan was illegal, and got the city of New York to pull its grant money from the center and shut down its operations, then the loan terms could hardly have been favorable.
It would probably be more accurate to say that the loan terms wouldn’t matter at all. I doubt that the agreement with the city or the law states that there must be an interest rate no higher or lower than X or the loan is in violation.
I brought up the loan terms to examine Mr. Cohen’s motives. The article claims that he was just interested in generating loan interest for the Club’s coffers. If the rate was quite high, that wold tend to suport that claim. If it was unusally low, it would go to undermine the claim. It probably won’t show much (avcerage rate of return), but it woud be worth checkiing it out.
True, true. But those facts are stacking up in a disturbing way.
As it stands, a community center has loaned money largely derived from government grants to a private entity, falsifying documents to conceal this fact. This transaction was facilitated by the fact that the chairman of the private entity was the community center’s director of development. That individual subsequently left the business under a cloud.
Right off the bat, Air America has drawn one-third the audience that the well-established (since the 1980s) format of right-wing talk radio can manage, on a medium (AM radio) that’s mostly avoided by Air America’s target audience.
I consider that damned impressive.
But it reminds me of a question Matt Yglesias raised a couple days back: in an era where there are clearly more conservative gabfests on cable TV than there’s a market for (he notes the abysmal ratings of Tucker Carlson’s new show on MSNBC), how come cable programmers seem to think the market for conservative talk is about eight times as large as that for left-of-center talk?
Matt mentions that his readers tell him Keith Olbermann’s show on MSNBC tilts left. So that’s an 8-to-1 tilt.
And unlike AM radio, pretty much all sorts watch TV and have cable (I’m an outlier here), so a left-leaning talk show on cable could find an audience much more easily than one on AM radio.