State Rep. Jim Cox mails Republican propaganda at taxpayers’ expense

by Steve Reinbrecht

My state representative, Jim Cox, mailed us a “newsletter” a couple of weeks ago.

Cox represents much of Berks County west of Reading. His mailing is meant to look informative but is more a GOP party propaganda tool. 

It has the Republican line on the state budget and the “Property Tax Independence Act.” It includes a “survey” supposedly to garner constituent opinion. One asks about “welfare reform,” emphasizing the abuse that in GOP mythology is ruining budgets. 

But cracking down on poor people is the last thing Cox should be worried about.
In 2014:

• More than 190,000 Pennsylvania residents were enrolled in Temporary Aid for Needy Families [TANF], about one out of every 67 residents.
• The inspector general’s office reviewed 977 fraud tips involving TANF, about one for every 195 recipients.
• The office filed welfare-fraud charges against 162 people in the TANF program, about one for every 1,175 recipients.
• The office convicted 62 individuals in the TANF program, or about one of every 3,070 recipients.
• The fraud totaled almost $400,000, or about four-hundredths of a percent of the more than $1 billion in TANF expenses.

[This from Department of Human Services and Office of Inspector General spokespeople.]

Cox’s newsletter says:

“WELFARE REFORM: Legislators routinely hear about welfare recipients who abuse the system. While offenders are often prosecuted when caught, far too many welfare recipients continue to misuse the money provided to help them.

“QUESTION 10: Do you support or oppose strengthening state laws to fight welfare abuse and bring to justice those individuals who misuse the social safety net?

“□ I support taking stronger actions to penalize people who abuse the welfare system.

“□ I oppose taking strong actions to penalize people who abuse the welfare system.”

Now you decide. Is this a priority for state lawmakers? What about tax fraud – people not paying their taxes? Why not let Cox know what you think about the matter?

True journalists on the job in Berks County might challenge our elected officials on some of their bullshit and hold them accountable to the real needs of residents: better education and career training, better infrastructure, more help for researchers, innovators and libraries. None of these issues is mentioned in the newsletter.

Clueless Reading Eagle won’t question Berks County commissioners about children illegally locked up in county center

by Steve Reinbrecht

There’s a really big news story in Berks County, but the Reading Eagle editors don’t know enough basic journalism to tell the reporters whom to ask about it.

A U.S. federal judge ruled Friday that the government must promptly release immigrant children who are being held at family detention centers across the country – including the one in Berks.

Major national and international media have been watching this.

The Reading Eagle’s response to the ruling did get front-page, Sunday-morning play.

But what editor would accept such a non-story, much less allow it to run? It has no essential facts and uncovers nothing new.

The reporter has two lame-o sources – a federal ICE spokeswoman who won’t comment [they never do.] And a lawyer activist who disagrees with a prepared federal statement, although we’re told it’s “a prepared statement unrelated to the court case.”

Why not ask the elected officials who are truly accountable -- the county commissioners? What are their plans? Do the right thing? Defy the federal government? Woo-hoo! Shut it down by October? How would that affect the budget? 

A real newspaper would find out what our well-paid leaders think. Why not run it by county COO Carl Geffken while you’re working those newsroom phones?

The Eagle had a story in July when the judge first decided:

“The ruling was hailed as a victory, but its immediate implications for the nearly 100 detainees being held at the Berks County Residential Center, a facility that has produced millions of dollars for county government, remains unknown.”[sic]

Why do they remain unknown?

Because for some reason Eagle editors allow reporters not to ask the commissioners!

Another editorial lapse: I’ve read the stories I could find, and none have a nut-graf of required background information on the topic – the center’s address, when the county opened it, and how much the federal government pays. Why not nail down a couple of facts for us faithful subscribers?

The story about children indefinitely and unlawfully locked up in Berks shared Sunday’s A1 with the annual back-to-school-story, in this case 2,190 words of people telling the reporter how hard they work at their jobs. He writes it all down and it all gets printed.

“Kindergarten classrooms tend to be busy places, both in activity during the school year and decor. There are posters and markers and special bins and brightly colored books and all sorts of other things filling the walls and desks and counters.

“And they don't get there by magic.

“So on an August morning, [teacher] Dries slowly began the process again. She first pulled out box after box, setting them wherever there was room.

“ "I get everything out first, then I start putting it out and getting ready for the school year," she said.

“She also has some new items to unpack, items she had purchased for her students over the summer.”

Lots [and lots and lots] of words here, but very little value in our pseudo-newspaper.

Reading Eagle managing editor nauseates as spokesman for the city

by Steve Reinbrecht

The managing editor of the Reading Eagle bangs on in his Sunday column about how wonderful the Reading area is.

It's generally unremarkable pap -- along with the constant Establishment boosterism apparently demanded by the people who really call the editorial shots.

But it pisses me off because Harry Deitz pretends he’s talking about Reading as his “hometown” when really he lives in Wyomissing.

“For me, dear world, there aren't many places that are better than here in the Reading area. There aren't any places I would rather call home.”

If he really cared about Reading, he would do a better job leading the Reading Eagle newsroom.

He would assign the best reporters to cover City Hall and Reading School District, reporters who would go into the neighborhoods and schools and talk to residents and teachers and students and parents, not merely attend the council and school board meetings.

Deitz describes the Reading area as if it’s homogenously fun and light, a great place to live and visit. "Check out our real estate, schools and churches. [Not to mention our mosques and synagogues.]"

But most of the city’s 88,000 people live in a place much different from where Deitz lives.

Wyomissing is old and white, like Deitz, according to the latest Census figures. In his borough, 91 percent of the people call themselves white, and a whopping 27 percent are over 65.

The city is young and diverse, with 52 percent of the residents identifying as not white, and a whopping 31 percent of the residents under 18 years old.

In Deitz’s town, the median house costs $213,000. In Reading, it costs $68,000.

Where Deitz lives, half the people over 25 years old have at least a bachelor’s degree. In the city, just 9 percent hold a college degree.

In Deitz’s neighborhood, median household income is $70,000. It’s $27,000 in the city. But the income differences are not for lack of showing up at a job – Wyomissing and Reading have the same rate of participation in the labor force – 60 percent.

So if Deitz loves his greater hometown area as much as he says he does, he could run more stories in the Reading Eagle about the Reading School District.

The most important story in the whole county is how Reading School District leaders are working to improve it. We know it was allowed to sink into virtually criminal dysfunction. And no other Berks institution has more effect on Berks County’s economic development or even crime rates that what goes on in Reading public schools. But the paper never covers the schools, the principals, the curriculum, or how the new superintendent is achieving his refreshingly clear goals.

The Reading Eagle appears to cover business, but never asks important questions such as whether banks are lending to minorities, or using new credit-scoring methods to include more entrepreneurs.

Where does all Reading’s community development money go? Does it accomplish anything?

We could use stories about how candidates are groomed and chosen for positions in Reading.

In his column, Deitz tells us he’s worldly enough to have a better perspective on Truth than we non-editors.

“I am not a lifelong resident of Berks County. In some ways that is good, because I have a perspective that is less biased and broader than those who were born, raised and stayed here.”

In fact, Deitz grew up in the Coal Region, that cauldron of new ideas, of questioning deep assumptions, and of cultural diversity. Then he went all the way to Bloomsburg to get his bachelor’s in English.

Though he’s gotten miles from the slag heaps, Deitz still hasn’t escaped the blinkered view of cracker conservatives, in denial about the giant, quick and relentless change hitting Berks County as well as the rest of the world, driven by demographics, technology and globalization.

Someone else should run the newspaper.

A very straight proposal: Reading should legalize cannabis

by Steve Reinbrecht

I propose that Reading legalize marijuana.

Doing so would be an economic-development bonanza.

This is not fantasy. It’s happening for real in Washington D.C., the center of the free world, 150 miles away from Reading.

That city’s leaders legalized possessing and using cannabis after 70 percent of voters approved a referendum in November. Arrests are down and the sky hasn’t fallen.

By now, we’ve all heard the news from Colorado.

“Colorado’s experiment with marijuana legalization is a success — and not just economically,” writes Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

[Yes, yes, he’s somebody paid to promote the benefits of marijuana, but his facts are verifiable, and he did get his letter in the New York Times.]

Why shouldn’t Reading, showing boldness rare in Berks County, grab some of that excitement?

Police would not stop or arrest anyone for having pot or even smoking it in places where tobacco use is permitted. Police would continue to arrest people for burglary, robbery, shoplifting, public urination, assault, child abuse and neglect, murder, harassment, disorderly conduct, and having synthetic marijuana, which sounds like awful stuff.

Reading would get priceless publicity. Being famous for the only place in Pennsylvania where you can legally smoke a doobie on your front porch would be better than notoriety as the poorest or fattest city in the country, or for having a corrupt mayor and council president. Though the move would not play in Peoria, nor perhaps Albany Township, it would resonate with many city residents. Have a referendum and find out!

Reading, moving away from celebrating outlet centers, pretzels and baseball, could find itself in front of the wave of history, riding to a new national brand as a place of tolerance and recreation.

My idea would mesh with other Reading-booster initiatives, such as promoting Reading as an arts center and hosting music at Penn Square. Art and music thrive with cannabis. I can see people walking from West Reading’s annual festivals across the bridge to Reading. Such adventures appeal to stoned people. And cannabis tourists visiting Reading would walk to West Reading to visit the Paisley Moon head shop, until Reading opens its own tourist-friendly head shops on Penn Street.

Glassblowers at the GoggleWorks could expand into glass pipes and bongs and attract paraphernalia fans from all over. And people get the munchies when they are high. Stoned residents and visitors would flock to restaurants and food vendors. 

The city is working on a schedule of outdoor events involving music and food. That’s just the kind of atmosphere where it’s fun to get high. Many pot smokers would enjoy being able to relax by the Schuylkill River and not worry about getting hassled over their recreational drug of choice. Pot smokers are used to being discreet, so there’s no reason to think things would get out of hand.

Forbes, a business magazine, notes how the newly legal cannabis industry has spawned all sorts of economic development in Colorado and Washington state.

“Small businesses are connecting travelers with marijuana shopping expeditions, visits to growers, lodging in pot-friendly hotels, and opportunities to consume the product. Other entrepreneurs are creating cannabis cooking classes, spa treatments and pot-smoking airport layovers.”

Reading residents could grow their own weed, as they do in D.C., leading to much less organized crime and its trigger-happy operators and even more business opportunities. City entrepreneurs could open stores for growers. In Colorado, regulators issued 16,000 licenses in 2014 to new employees working legally in the marijuana industry, Armentano writes in the Times.

According to the Washington Post:

“After the D.C. law went into effect, Silver Spring, Md., resident Jacob Asbell founded Hydro-City, which sells and rents the equipment needed to grow marijuana indoors. Hydro-City’s grow kits include lamps, bulbs, tents, fans, timers, fertilizers and filters. Asbell and his co-workers started to install growing systems in D.C. homes in June.

“ ‘We come to your place, we set everything up for you, we teach you how to use it, we include everything you need to grow, and then just add seeds and water,’ Asbell said.”

Eventually, Reading could become known for regional contests to determine the best strains. 

I bet Reading Police Chief Bill Heim would honor a referendum.

Berks County District Attorney John Adams would need to agree to the experiment. I’m sure he’d want to avoid the election backlash if he opposed the idea.

State police would also have to agree to look the other way. I think they and most other crime fighters would prefer to use their resources to chase dangerous criminals.

Legalizing pot in Reading would certainly goad the many full-time staffers at the Greater Reading Convention and Visitors Bureau to spice up the top of their embarrassing website, whose mispunctuated top paragraph now touts [yawn!] the Pagoda [a natural wonder?] and Roadside America [double yawn!]. 

In fact, such a historic event could be a game-changer for the dozens of officials who make their living by struggling to create economic development at:

• The Greater Reading Economic Partnership
• ReDesign Reading
• City Hall’s Community Development Department
• The Reading Redevelopment Authority
• Our City Reading
• The Berks County Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• The Downtown Improvement District
• Berks County Community Foundation
• [Did I miss any organization?]

The results of many of their efforts have been dismal. 

Instead of “Take a Ride in Reading,” the slogan could be “Catch a buzz in Reading.”

To be really bold – or if the possession-experiment goes OK -- the city could allow people to sell pot, finding a quick revenue stream in taxes and an onslaught of visitors.

In April, retail cannabis sales in Colorado raised nearly $11 million in tax revenue and fees, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue.

“Under prohibition, this money is diverted to black-market entrepreneurs, not to licensed businesses,” Armentano points out in the Times.

However, to me at this point, allowing sales seems politically unworkable.

Reading mayor funneled city tax money to ex-consultant Mike Fleck

by Steve Reinbrecht

The Reading Eagle’s big Sunday package about the federal corruption investigation of Reading City Hall focused on campaign contributions.

The newspaper noted that thousands of dollars from Mayor Vaughn Spencer's supporters went into the pockets of his former political consultant, Michael Fleck.

But the Eagle failed to note that Spencer used city tax money to pay Fleck for his services as quasi-administrator.

The story Sunday said Fleck “was probably the biggest immediate beneficiary in the web of political contributions and expenditures that spanned the two cities [Reading and Allentown] since the start of 2011.”

Spencer’s and Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski’s campaigns paid Fleck and his employees at least $421,000 over that time, the Eagle calculates.

But Fleck not only worked to get Spencer elected in November 2011. After the election he worked to influence Reading laws and policies and was paid from city funds.

In 2012, Reading taxpayers paid Fleck $24,000 as an administrator after Spencer put Fleck in charge of five initiatives, according to the Eagle story at the time:
• a tax amnesty program
• broadening the amusement tax
• creating a community development fund as a tool to attract businesses
• studying the Public Works Department to see what it ought to be doing and ways to save money
• finding better ways to collect other city taxes.

City taxpayers also paid Fleck Consulting $24,000 for Michael Dee, the husband of a Fleck staffer, to work as Reading City Hall's media spokesman. I wish I had saved some of his news releases – he was comically illiterate.

In January 2012, Fleck helped present Spencer’s budget to City Council.

"It's because that's the team the mayor has chosen to implement his vision for Reading. The staff in the mayor's office is one of the most qualified staffs in city history.”

"Do you appoint your friends? Of course you do. These are people who are going to implement your policy when you get to City Hall."

His name dropped out of the Eagle after a Berks County elections board report said that Fleck was intimately connected with what it concluded was a scheme with Spencer to give illegal campaign contributions to a labor union in Philadelphia. State Attorney General Kathleen Kane eventually cleared him.

"FVS (Friends of Vaughn Spencer), Spencer, Fleck and [campaign treasurer Greg] Walker aided and abetted Local 98 in exchange for a $10,000 contribution (the money left over from the $30,000 donation)," the report says.

Spencer, Walker and Fleck recalled very little about getting the $30,000 contribution, the committee's largest, it says. They also couldn't remember who deposited it or how the two $10,000 checks got to Rubin and Green, the report states.

In January 2012, Fleck explained his efforts to reorganize City Hall, including outsourcing the computer and human resource offices.

A quote from the Eagle:

“Let’s be real,” Michael Fleck, Spencer’s political consultant, said last week. “We’re Democrats. We have certain policies. We like to in-source things, if we can do them for the same amount of money or less.

“But at this point, we can’t do that short-term. We have to outsource a couple years.”

Besides, he said, referring to the computer office that has nine employees, comparable cities have better service and fewer people.

Berks County somehow survives closing of Buttonwood Street Bridge

by Steve Reinbrecht

Carl Geffken, Berks County's chief operating officer, updated me last week on the Buttonwood Street Bridge project, managed by the county and expected to keep the bridge over the Schuylkill River between West Reading and Reading closed for two years. Before it closed July 21, it carried an average of 16,500 vehicles a day.

Geffken said the $14 million project has proceeded as planned.

“Residents and commuters are adjusting to the closure. There does not appear to be any traffic issues in Reading. West Reading has a fair amount of traffic, but it does not appear to be problematic,” he wrote in an e-mail.

There were no surprises or unforeseen problems with the closing and the detours, he said. No changes with the detours are planned, he said.

I'm betting on my source

by Steve Reinbrecht

Based on an unnamed source, the Reading Eagle reports that a federal grand jury sent Reading Mayor Vaughn Spencer's aide, Eron Lloyd, a "target letter" in connection with the probe into City Hall corruption.

The biggest newspaper in Berks County also reported federal agents searched his house.

Well, MY unnamed source says this is all wrong -- Lloyd didn't get a letter, and nobody searched his house -- and the Eagle is helping to ruin Eron Lloyd's life.


And the Eagle's source has been wrong already.

Reading Eagle won’t publish letter to editor questioning its newsroom diversity

by Steve Reinbrecht

Ernie Schlegel of Reading sent me a letter he said the Reading Eagle would not publish.

I’m happy to post it below. It seems fairly harmless compared to some of the fire-and-brimstone intolerance the newspaper often publishes in its letters-to-the-editors section.

Schlegel says the Eagle newsroom is not very diverse.

Schlegel said he got this response from editorial-page Jim Homan:

“Mr. Schlegel, You are welcome to comment on the editorial, but you may not comment on the diversity of the staff. The one has nothing to do with the other.”

The Eagle’s guideline says “Letters should … address a specific topic of general public concern or interest.”

It seems the makeup of the newsroom staff of our most powerful Berks County medium fits the criteria “a specific topic of general public concern or interest.”

Click here for “Not Everyone Will Be Saved,” a letter the Eagle DID publish that doesn’t seem to tackle any “specific topic of general public concern or interest.”

Anyways, Homan is on vacation. Managing editor Dave Mowery has not responded to my inquiries:

• How many reporters and editors do you have now who are black, Latino, Hispanic, Asian, brown-skinned, mixed-race, Native American or openly gay? 
• How many on the staff speak Spanish?

++++

“I read with interest the editorial ‘Good reason to evict Nathan Bedford Forrest from park’ [in which the [Reading Eagle] editorial board tried to be a moral compass when writing about the City Council in Memphis, Tenn., voting to remove a 9,500-pound statue of Confederate Lt. General Nathan Bedford Forest and its marble base, which contains his remains along with his wife. 

“This because the lieutenant general was responsible for the slaughter of black troops at Fort Pillow in 1864 and was the first Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard.

“Ironically, the Reading Eagle started in 1868 and in its 147 years seems no further along in diversity of its management. 

“The percentage of overall executives, editors and reporters who are black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American or multiracial has remained virtually unchanged and does not reflect the historical image of our city.

“It seems the Eagle is even further behind the national standard of minorities in its front office staff. There are a lot of Hispanics in labor jobs at the Eagle working hard to make living. America prides itself on being a melting pot. But the distinct cultures and personalities of its people remain intact. Minorities in America may embrace American values, but they hold on to their own uniqueness. 

“And minority journalists make sure that uniqueness, that perspective, is included in the media's coverage of minorities. They need to be here to tell our story. A competent reporter tells our story best. They need to be there in the meetings where decisions are made on how things are covered. It is time for the Reading Eagle diversify its reporting organization.”

No this is not in a developing country but a natural disaster in Berks County

by Steve Reinbrecht

I bet no streets in any city are supposed to flood like this, causing so much danger and damage. And the newspaper reporter didn't even ask any city official in charge of storm sewers why this happened. A quick inch of rain isn't unusual here. 

Reporters fill the pages with words, but don't answer basic questions: Were any homes flooded? Why did this happen? Is it somebody's fault? Does this happen every time it rains? Are there new conditions somewhere? Is anybody trying to solve the problem? 

It doesn't have to lead to a 10-page award-winning megaturd. Just basic Journalism 101 questions.

WFMZ’s story has this explanation: “It was a case of too much too fast.”

But then a bit of interest, though the reporter also failed to follow up: “Crews found that trash was their biggest enemy in allowing the water to drain properly.”

Here is a real news story about human suffering, but we won't get more than the most superficial account.