Stimulus-Funded CEDA Props Up Leftist Radio: Big Ad Buyer On WCPT-AM

CEDA is a major advertiser
on Chicago's Lefty Talk WCPT

Yesterday the Chicago Tribune published a scathing investigative report on the wasteful use of "shovel ready" federal stimulus monies by the Community and Economic Development Association (CEDA) of Cook County. But they didn't mention that the government-funded entity was simultaneously dropping big advertising bucks to prop up Chicago's financially shaky left wing talk radio outlet, WCPT.

The Tribune expose chronicled laughably inept, Stalinesque inefficiencies in CEDA's $90.5 million stimulus program scheme to weatherproof the homes of Chicago-area poor.

Their predominately minority-owned contracting firms with fly-by-night sounding monikers like "Sturdy Builders," gobbled up the CEDA cash and left a wake of unfinished jobs, damaged homes and shoddy, unsafe workmanship.

According to the report, the CEDA contractors failed 12 of 15 Department of Energy inspections and 1 in 7 of local building inspections.

Meanwhile, CEDA was also out spending its cash on heavy radio ad buys, exclusively on WCPT -- Chicago Progressive Talk

The station, an offshoot of the economically disastrous "Air America," gives a forum to such lefty talkers as Ed Shultz, Alan Colmes, Stephanie Miller and Dick Kay.

Many of WCPT's offerings are unable to attract major advertisers and their shows are often interspersed with ads from little Oak Park designer boutiques or free public service announcements.

But over the past two months, CEDA was all over their airwaves with its paid spots touting its weatherproofing boondoggle. In the case of Dick Kay's Saturday afternoon, on-air, labor union love fest, CEDA was mentioned as a principal sponsor.

And CEDA is listed prominently on the list of paid program sponsors on the WCPT site.

So it seems the $5 billion in federal stimulus cash also was spread a bit into shovel-ready lefty radio. But the WCPT talkers do spread their statist drivel on so thick, you do need a shovel just to cope.

AFSCME'S Spivak: Unemployment is 15%

The Obama administration and its "Amen corner" in the mainstream media were cheering Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics report that the unemployment rate had dropped to "only" 8.9%.

Not so, said one of Chicago's Big-Labor chieftains.

Speaking for the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)this past Saturday on WCPT's Dick Kay show, the public employee union honcho, Larry Spivak, said the actual unemployment rate in Illinois is more like 15 per cent.

The Labor Bureau reports fail to account for the tens of thousands who have simply thrown in the towel and stopped even looking for a job, Spivak said.

So what gives?

Is Spivak saying that Obama is lying?

Is he saying that after 2 years and billions in economic stimulus cash, Obama and his Congressional Democrats have failed miserably?

Spivak also, inadvertently endorsed one of the key arguments of the immigration control movement.

He lambasted firms like Walmart for paying skinflint wages and giving no healthcare coverage to the people they hire. He said that those firms are parasitically content to let the American taxpayers foot the bill for their employees' healthcare costs.

Isn't that precisely the same argument that the border controllers have been making about the profiteers who hire illegal aliens?


Yet the AFSCME public employees union has been quiveringly giddy in its adoration of Barack Obama. And the AFSCME is an ardent backer of the the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights -- the lynchpin of the illegal alien lobby in Chicago.

With arguments like those he spouted on Dick Kay's left-wing show Saturday, AFSCME's Larry Spivak might consider taking out membership in his local Tea Party group.

Dying WGN Radio Resorts To Leftist Cheap Shot Artistry: Look Out WCPT

I was only listening to WGN Radio on a Sunday afternoon because WFMT was playing some aphonic modern Slavic stuff and the better AM stations were clogged with sports coverage. After the Wisconsin Badgers football season is over, I have no interest in that.

So now I find that WGN, which now touts a laughably low 23rd place rating on the December mobile Arbitron scores, seems to have decided to bolster its market share by shooting for some of the crumbs of listenership held by the Pravda-like, radical leftist, Air America remnant, WCPT.

They most recently did this last Sunday afternoon with some odd audial abomination called the “Alex and Amy Show.”

This features two WGN neophytes named Alex Quigley and Amy Guth.

Combined they boast no experience in serious public policy analysis, but that hasn't seemed to stop them from playing journalistic blowhards on WGN's megawattage.

Quigley is a person who has no business whatever of being in this position. According to renowned Chicago media critic, Robert Feder, his only recent on-air experience consists of having been a promotional shill for what Feder called, “The Tribune's infomercial for its blog network.”

Prior to this, Quigley was a wannabe.

At the University of Illinois, he was a wannabe jock who spent his time on campus as the ball boy and tee carrier for the punters and place kickers.

He may have spent time with the real jocks in the showers, as well – male bonding – you know.

And then he spent time as a wannabe Grease Man or Howard Stern, playing a blissfully ignorant, fat and happy, record-spinning, cool-dude, shock jock on various FM stations.

Now he has decided that he wants to become a serious commentator on matters of serious public polity.

WGN radio, in its ratings death throes seems to have said, “Why the hell not?”

So this jockish shower room towel snapper now has access to 32 states on the WGN radio airwaves each Sunday afternoon.

His general level of intellectual intake seems to extend no further than the 7.5 column inches of the daily AP copy in the Tribune's “RedEye.” giveaway newspaper for dummies. Or the e-mail talking points that he most assuredly gets from the Daily Kos and Move-On.Org hatemongers.

This would be a matter of no consequence, save for what this clown did last Sunday.

Less than 24 hours after the smoke from the gunpowder had cleared the air in Tuscon, AZ – after the murder of 6 fellow humans – this lamebrain, Alex Quigley was on the air blaming the tragic event on ….......... SARAH PALIN!!!!!

YIKES!!!

He was also blaming it on all conservative talk radio hosts and conservative elected officials and anyone else who may have ever expressed an opinion outside of the realm of that approved by leftist-liberal orthodoxy.

When I heard this I was shocked.

My response to the murders was, after all, what any natural and decent American felt. We were still grieving over these events.

Comrade Quigley was politicizing them.

And then in Orwellian style, he wantonly asserted that people who didn't agree with Obama had dangerously “politicized” the public discourse.

He began an on-air diatribe blaming the event on the “climate of hate” created by Sarah Palin and other conservatives – mostly radio personalities.

A dispassionate analysis of fact played no role here. Quigley blithely impugned the character of an entire class of Americans and implied their complicity in the acts of a crazed gunman. We learned, however, on Tuesday from friends of the gunman that he was either apolitical or leftist in orientation, never listened to conservative talk radio and certainly had no respect for the views of Ms. Palin.

But, Quigley, not one to worry his block head with trifles like facts, plowed right ahead with his MoveOn.org talking point-induced, blood libel against Palin – who was probably out innocently shooting moose and peering at the coastline of Russia when the events in Arizona were going down

The previous Sunday, this quasi-educated clown, Quigley, displayed his cheap-shot radical-liberal inclinations by running an on-air multiple choice contest, for which he awarded Tribune Corporation subsidized prizes to the winners.

One of the questions mocked Governor Palin.

Another mocked conservative talk show hosts.

What is most disturbing is that this may represent a growing leftward trend in WGN radio policy.

With its ratings tanking to unprecedented lows, WGN veep Tom Langmyer has fired its lone libertarian-conservative voice, Jerry Agar, (a serious man who is an analyst for the Illinois Public Policy Institute), inserted the trite “Alex and Amy” in his old timeslot and appointed this knee-jerk lefty goofus, Quigley, as “assistant program director.”

One hopes that that this title is a function of a cheapskate radio organization handing out meaningless titles in lieu of cash.

It had better be.

And one other thing, Alex Quigley.

Mark Levin, a nationally syndicated talk show host on the # 1 Chicago AM station, WLS, and a former attorney in the Reagan Justice Department said that he will sue any radio talker who accuses him of being complicit in the Arizona murders ---just as you did last week with regard to Sarah Palin and conservatives in general.

Levin said that he will sue any such lefty talker and his parent organizations. He will depose them, not settle out of court and expose them for the frauds that they are.

So hey, smart guy, Quigley.

Just dare to cast the same foul aspersions on Levin as you did on Palin and other conservatives last week.

I'd love to see your big fat Illini ass squirming on the docket.

But you won't dare, will you, wannabe jock-boy?

Ending the Iraq War With Cool Jewelry

I have to admit it. I occasionally listen to WCPT radio. Principally so that you don't have to, but also because the "Chicago's Progressive Talk," offspring of lefty Air America has one genuinely amusing and marginally reasonable program. That is, of course, the offbeat, Saturday morning, "Awake with Jake," which features the acerbic and witty, Jake Hartford, a recent castoff from WLS-AM.

So while listening to that show this morning, I was jolted by a paid advertisement for custom jewelry. It seems that Anne Maxfield, the annoying liberal feminist former radio talker, is now hawking her line of semi-antique necklace creations.

Her paid ad, which airs only on WCPT, pleads with you to buy her jewelry because she is a morally superior fellow leftist.

"When Anne was on with right wingers on an all-sports show, she was thinking about how to end the war in Iraq and about making cool jewelry," says the ad's female announcer.

This is what you might call: making a virtue out of necessity.

Maxfield had a solid gig at behometh WGN radio for more than a decade, last working with fellow liberal, John Williams.

But she succumbed to the siren song of a far bigger paycheck and left WGN to join conservative Mike North at WSCR sports radio. She is a big girl and went into that situation with eyes wide open (and no doubt primarily focused on her bank account.)

She was not a fan favorite of the predominately male SCORE listeners and didn't help her cause by making inane Maoist utterances to the effect that all golf courses should be turned into public parks.

So when the tensions between Maxfield, North and North's audience became untenable, she got the sack. Anyone who has been in broadcasting knows that that is hardly an unusual occurence. Radio talkers, as a rule, have less job security and longevity than Tiger Woods' mistresses.

But now, the liberal sheep listeners of WCPT are being urged to show their "progressive" colors by shelling out upwards of $100 for Maxfield's necklace creations. Some of the necklaces, the ad tells us, are also suitable for men, a fact that will be certain to get her items stocked at the more esoteric boutiques around Clark and Diversey.

I went to her website, http://www.circa1856.com and must admit that some of the creations were, indeed interesting. They are essentially historically colorful old watch fobs from the Civil War era onward, that she has transformed into necklaces.

I particularly liked the one with the hunter theme, which shows a sportsman blasting away with his rifle.

I wonder how Anne explains that one away to the sensitive "friends of Bambi" who listen to WCPT.