When I’m wrong, I’m wrong…(updated)

When I blow it, I know it!

Yes, I am taking the day off, but not until I correct my own post from yesterday where I had, it is now clear, quite the wrong impression about something.

I wrote: I guess that “the paper of record” is going to get away with printing not a word – not a single word – concerning the misuse of public funds by Air America Radio, about whom they have written some 67 gushing articles.

Twelve days into it, and the Times is still silent, and some in the blogosphere are, I think, getting weary of the topic.

And today, I decided just to peek in at a few blogs (not planning to blog, myself) and discovered, “whoaaaa, there, Anchoress! Pull yourself back from the cliff! Not so fast, there!”

Seems that while I have been mooning around feeling defeated, others have been tirelessly pursuing the story – and today we have this and this (a twofer!) on the subject from Ed Morrissey, who writes in the former piece:

Air America Radio did not start out with Evan Cohen, as Piquant and Franken convenienly suggest. It started out with a man named Sheldon Drobny, a wealthy Chicago investor who wanted to build a leftist media empire and settled on radio to start it.
…
The Drobnys still remain the big backers and now control the board; Jon Sinton remains with the company as president of programming; Doug Kreeger remains with the company as an investor. The notion that the asset sale changed management and ownership significantly is a mirage, a smokescreen to avoid Progress’ debt and obligations and to allow Air America to free itself of the taint of Cohen’s alleged deeds.

There is a lot in between those two paragraphs on ownership, how things have passed through these hands and those – the bottom line is, the current owners of AAR are…the previous owners, and the assertion that the current owners are under “no obligation” to repay misused public funds is…well, not quite right, as we see in the latter CQ piece in which Ed consults with an attorney who has been closely following the story. It is a lengthy analysis, which Ed sums up thusly:

Even if legal, it shoots Mack Truck-sized holes in the argument that Piquant’s ownership has no responsibility for Progress Media’s obligations.

But you’ll want to read the whole thing.

THEN – because as I said, when I am wrong, I am majorly wrong, and yesterday’s piece was quite the boner, note that Professor Bainbridge has this piece up and running at his place, in which he seems to be setting up a virtual tag-team, call-and-response with the excellent Thomas Lifson.

Lifson: I am far from an expert on corporate law, but it strikes me that these shenanigans…may be awfully close to the edge of conspiracy to defraud creditors of the current owners. Were the assets adequately priced? Was there an auction? I can only hope that some of these creditors are wondering the same thing.

Where the heck is Elliott Spitzer when you need him?

Bainbridge: (jumping off from a subscription-only piece in the WSJ (WSJ, Anchoress? And you still think no one is paying attention?) Indeed, if the facts turn out to be as the article reports, there is a very high probability that investors will be able to sue Cohen and Sorensen for securities fraud.

Political Calculations has put up a tremendously researched and detailed post tracking the financing of AAR – really, this is a terrificly informative piece. Of particular interest is his focus on this article from May 2005, Milwaukee Business Journal:

The article follows the story of Terry Kelly, the President of Weather Central, Inc. who, along with his wife, was a principal investor in originally launching the network as well as a major player in its early bailout. As such, Kirchen notes that he was “one of a half-dozen investors in the startup network who lost their initial $7 million outlay to the mismanagement, if not outright fraud, of the original management team.”

What follows is a major excerpt from the article, outlining the general history of Air America’s financing from Kelly’s point of view (links and emphasis added):

The couple decided to invest “a substantial amount of money” in the venture, Terry Kelly says. Based on press accounts on Air America, the Kellys believed they were joining such celebrity investors as television producer Norman Lear and Laurie David, the wife of comedian Larry David. However, the identity of the other investors was kept secret.

By the time Air America held a lavish kickoff party March 31, 2004, in New York City, Terry Kelly realized “something was clearly amiss” with the organization because then-chairman Evan Cohen said he “forgot the check” to pay the $85,000 bill. Cohen paid it with his American Express card, Kelly recalls.

Within one month, Kelly received a panicked call from David Goodkind, who had become Air America’s general counsel, stating the company had no money and couldn’t make payroll. The network lost its affiliates in Chicago and Los Angeles because it hadn’t paid for the leases.

Kelly demanded a list of Air America investors — Lear and David were not among them —

Hmmm…I remember the press carrying on about how Lear and David would be backing this venture, too. Was the press carrying water for these tricksters knowingly or un? Again, go read the whole piece.
Macho Nachos gives me a gentled correction and finds the chinks in the armor, while Brian Maloney shares some thoughts about Al Franken being so shocked, shocked!

Obsidian Wings has An open letter to the financial backers of Air America. (They suggest AAR give it up and put their backing behind liberal bloggers, natch!) but you see…even the left-side bloggers are covering the story, while, the NY Times…is…still not writing a word about it.

It is very clear to me, now, that my funk yesterday was due to my long habit of actually, still, considering the NY Times a newspaper, “the paper of record.” Had I reminded myself that the Times has long-since ceased to be a printer of news, and has devolved into your basic Pravdian propaganda tool, I would not have been so downcast! Indeed, I was quite wrong. The blogosphere is not surrendinging, (just check out the number of trackbacks each of these featured blogs has, to its pieces), and I’ll beg you to excuse my pessimism of yesterday. We all have our downers, and that was mine.

Now, to end on an UP rather than DOWN note, and since we’re talkin’ radio, check out the tireless Michelle Malkin’s piece about a different sort of radio show, altogether!

UPDATED: Since posting, Michelle has put up another blast to “Air Enron,” with lots of links, a kinda kewl Scandal Counter and more. In the words of the fake Mad Eye Moody in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) – CONSTANT VIGILANCE! There is no let-up!

I think I’m still going to take the rest of the day off, though. Meanwhile, check out Ed Morrissey’s piece, today about “Abel Danger.” If you recall, I <a href="http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/08/09/atta-was-identified-in-2000/"wondered yesterday if the 9/11 commission had not mentioned anything about it in order to protect Jamie Gorelick – the creator of the “wall” between the CIA and the FBI which precluded the sharing of needed intelligence. It’s a good question. Go read the Cap’n, and then Tom McQuire who has more.