Back of the Book links for the October 15, 2022, program

It's Monday morning, October 17, 2022, 10:08, and I have updated this Web page a little bit. I've added more about pat Logan and I've put in a bit about Trump's failed attempt to get the Supreme Court to stop the Department of Justice from looking through the evidence to see if he should be indicted. I've also linked to the archive of this radio program. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ We talked about Putin's war against Ukraine, his bridge getting blown up, his revenge terror-bombing of more people's houses, the woes of Donnie Bonespur Trump over this past week, a bit of a fantasy fund raising idea that comes from an actual bill in the City Council, the pandemic and we talked about our late friend Pat Logan on this program. We also wished Saddle Pal Maxwell J. Schmid a belated merry birthday. I intend to update this Web page soon, so check back for the updates.

The next regular LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday November 9, at 7:00 PM on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. This meeting will be held as a teleconference meeting, as the 40 previous public meetings were because of the pandemic.

The WBAI LSB tried to meet on Wednesday, October 12, 2022. The LSB failed to achieve quorum and so the meeting was cancelled.

Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:

WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.

WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has ~~permanently~~ switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. You can take a look at it and see if I've been able to post anything on it lately. There are still some limitations, but I am assured that I can plug in the archive blurbs that were lost in the latest upgrade.

This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display, and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.

For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display, and find Specify Date, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Yeah, it looks like they'll have some alternating program's name prominently there, but if you have the right date it'll be our program. Good luck.

Since the General Manager has banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.

Bring Back Uncle Sidney!

Our friend, fellow WBAI producer and Saddle Pal Uncle Sidney Smith has been banned from WBAI by General Manager Berthold Reimers. The General Manager will not say why. He won't even tell Sidney why he's banned! This is grossly unfair to Sidney and constitutes abuse of Staff. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?

On Wednesday we heard that Pat Logan, who was a former WBAI LSB member, local Finance Committee member and long time WBAI listener and activist had passed away. Pat was a member of the WBAI local Finance Committee until her death last Sunday. Pat Logan was also our friend.

Pickles of the North and I talked about Pat, and our times bring with her, sometimes after meetings, sometimes on picket lines related to WBAI issues. I remember Pat joining Pickles and me at the Waverley diner, and one year when the LSB met on September 11^th, We all walked over to the area of Ground Zero where they had those memorial lights that shoot up in the air. The following E-mail that was forwarded to me alerted us to the fact that Pat had died.

Patricia Logan, long time WBAI listener, supporter, and member of the various WBAI Committees, and a fan has passed on. She died in her sleep, October 9, 2022 at 12:37pm.

Pat had been living in a nursing home for about 6 months, and was totally bed-ridden. She was in and out of lucidity. She had a radio, where, as you can rightfully imagine, it was tuned to WBAI. About two weeks ago, she recovered from a bout of pneumonia. She was rallying back to some sort of vitality. It turned out that the rallying was the last hoorah before her sudden end. She died peacefully, and was not in pain.

Right now, a Go Fund Me account is being set to pay for the coast of the cremation. We hope that once it's set up, you can help with the requests. The exact amount will be forth coming. It should be around $12 hundred.

Paul Gilman
A close friend of Pat.
Bronx Greens
347-898-4295

When Pat Logan ran for the LSB in 2007, she posted a candidate's statement, as everyone running was required to do. It's a statement of who she was.

Pat Logan Candidate Statement

Who am I? I'm a proud socialist/feminist, atheist and active member of School of the Americas Watch, the National Federation of The Blind, the Juanita Young Support Committee and the NYC Labor Chorus.

I have been a WBAI listener since 1966. During the mid-'90's I supported the UE affiliated staff Union. I was outraged when WBAI General Manager Valerie Van Isler successfully appealed the inclusion of unpaid staff to the NLRB. I understood quite early the extent of the problems which led to the listener law suits and the December, 2000 coup.

I was enraged by the bannings and the red bating which characterized the Leid administration. When the first elected Board took its' seats I was excited and optimistic. Since then I have attended almost all the LSB meetings which have become increasingly unproductive and hostile.

For several years I have participated in the Program Committee, observing its wrangling and lack of accomplishment. This year I joined the Radio Committee charged with putting together the LSB Reports To The Listener. The split in the Board which Justice And Unity erroneously claims is caused by racial animosity, a smoke screen designed to intimidate dissenters, results only partially from the extent to which members believe that identity politics should or should not be the dominant paradigm in determining programming and the makeup of the audience the LSB and management aspire to reach.

At bottom each meeting as well as this election are confrontations between those who want to maintain the status quo, i.e. current management, at almost any cost and those who recognize the need for fiscal responsibility, greater transparency, meaningful listener input and closer adherence to the Pacifica mission.

The current Board has accomplished so little because its J&U majority prevents the LSB from carrying out its mandated oversight and fiduciary responsibilities. If they remain the majority will WBAI survive? I fear that it will not.

Thousands of former listeners now seek information elsewhere. Disgruntled listeners withhold their dollars. They have given up on the potential of WBAI/Pacifica. You, on the other hand, can nurture WBAI by changing the balance of power on the Local Board and its Committees, ensuring that management will be thoroughly evaluated and that balanced budgets, based on realistic assessments of station income and expenses, will be submitted to the National Finance Committee; you who can determine the kind of folks the LSB elects to the National Board which, among other things, hires Pacifica's CEO, who, in turn, hires WBAI's General Manager.

So please vote for me, James Ross, Robert Gold, Bernardo Palumbo, Carla Cubit, Albert Solomon and Jennifer Jager.

According to the Johns-Hopkins Web site COVID-19 cases in the whole world reached 624,181,110 on Friday, and global deaths reached 6,566,194. In America the number of cases as of Friday was 96,935,812 and the death toll in America was 1,065,042, so 2,622 people have died of COVID-19 in America since our last program one week ago. That's slightly down from last week's death rate. It's still around 375 people dying every day, and we know that these figures are low ball estimates. We know that family members of the deceased and coroners are hiding the deaths especially. The pandemic is not over, no matter what Joe Biden says, but a lot of people are behaving as if it were. Keep your masks on. My new plan is to get the new BA.4 and BA.5 booster this week. Pickles of the North is way ahead of me, she's been thoroughly inoculated for weeks ago now.

By the time this program airs on Saturday morning all of those figures we quoted will be higher of course. This was all mostly preventable.

New York City Councilman Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn has introduced a bill in the City Council that would enlist regular citizens as bounty hunters for illegal parkers. It would have people call in complaints about cars illegally blocking bike lanes, sidewalks and intersections and pay them a 25% cut of any proceeds collected as a result of the process. So a maximum fine of $175 would result in the person making the complaint getting $43.75. Oh boy.

Councilman Restler said, Too many parents with strollers, people in wheelchairs and bicyclists face unsafe conditions every day because of sidewalks and bike lanes obstructed by illegal parking, NYPD has refused to take this issue seriously, so it's time to empower and incentivize citizens to help make our streets safer.

The bill would require the city's Department of Transportation to create a civilian reporting program where eagle-eyed observers could submit complaints as well as evidence of alleged violations. The Transportation Department would, in turn, bring the proceedings before the city's Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings using the evidence submitted. The Police Department doesn't like this bill. They say that they have issued hundreds of thousands of summonses for parking violations in the past year. A police spokesperson also said, The proposed law will pit neighbor against neighbor and will likely lead to violence. Our hard-working Traffic Enforcement Agents, who wear an NYPD uniform and have extra legal protection enshrined in state law, are assaulted dozens of times per year after issuing summonses. This law would outsource that risk to everyday New Yorkers. The legislation, while well-intentioned, leads to more problems than it solves.

We could make that a new way to raise money for WBAI. Listeners could call or E-mail in their complaints and WBAI could call them in and get the dough if the owner of the vehicle were found guilty. Oh boy, we could have the Parking Summons Department of WBAI!

Trump appealed to the Supreme Court regarding the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals stopping his pet judge Aileen Cannon from halting the Department of Justice from using seized materials to make a case against him. The Supreme Court responded to Trump's appeal in a one-sentence order with no noted dissents. It said the application presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied.

The decision from Cannon, who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump in 2020, cited the potential reputational harm Trump would incur if he were indicted. What reputation? As a grifter? As a Dracula landlord? As a philanderer? As an incompetent? As a traitor? As the star of a pee-pee tape?

Harvard constitutional law professor Lawrence Tribe said, It's a bad day for the president, and a good day for the rule of law.

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.

One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board, owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people board that was just totally out of hand.

In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.

Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board during the program.

There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.

Back of the Book — October 15, 2022

Bring Back Uncle Sidney!

Pat Logan Candidate Statement