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DEF is a non-partisan, independent political blog based in the
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The Board unanimously passed a resolution at their morning meeting today stating their support for Mokwa. Leading the way was the alderman from one of the most crime-ridden parts of the city, Freeman Bosley, Sr. (3rd Ward).
Sure, the police officers want more money, Bosley said, but so do we all. The police motto is to protect and serve and sometimes, Bosley remarked in his raspy voice, that means doing some service for free.
Bosley also did not blame Mokwa or the department for crime — “Whenever we’ve called for help, you’ve been there.”
Besides, Bosley said, crime has been around since biblical times.
“Cain slew Abel,” Bosley reminded the chamber.
“Whenever you have more than three people, there is going to be crime,” Bosley said.
By the way, no such resolution has been introduced to show support for Fire Chief Sherman George, whose department, in comparison, is squeaky clean. And if it were, it would not likely pass unanimously.
Were you one of the hundreds of St. Louisans that traveled to Louisiana this week to show support for the Jena 6? Share your videos of the historic event.
Post them online (you can use YouTube, Blip.TV, Vimeo, or any other video hosting site) and then send us the link to editor@pubdef.net and we'll post them here on PubDef.net.
On Wednesday we filed a formal counter-notification with YouTube in response to our account being suspended and our more than 500 videos being taken off-line. The suspension came just hours after KSDK Channel 5 filed two complaints with YouTube alleging that we violated their copyrights by using clips of their broadcast in our piece criticizing their coverage.
We believe our usage of KSDK's video falls under the "Fair Use" provision in copyright law. From the Stanford University Libraries:
Fair use is a copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism. For example, if you wish to criticize a novelist, you should have the freedom to quote a portion of the novelist's work without asking permission. Absent this freedom, copyright owners could stifle any negative comments about their work.
The St. Louis Chapter of the Missouri Association for Social Welfare is hosting an education forum today featuring School Board President Peter Downs, Special Administrative Board member Richard Gaines, and PubDef.net editor Antonio French, who will serve as moderator.
The topic of discussion will be: "If the city public schools debate is about the children, then what about the children?"
What is best for the city school children as we move forward? What do the children need? And what can we do to help?
The event will be Friday, Sept. 21 (that's today) from 12:00—1:30 PM at the Heritage House, 2800 Olive Street (at intersection of Olive and Leffingwell). The event is of course free and all are welcome.
Last night at a special committee meeting, the four members of the elected St. Louis Board of Education who were present voted unanimously in favor of a resolution of support for Fire Chief Sherman George who is facing disciplinary action from Mayor Francis Slay.
Board members Peter Downs, David Jackson, Donna Jones and Bill Purdy passed the following resolution asking Slay to "refrain from micro-managing the fire department and allow Chief Sherman George to do his job without interference":
RESOLUTION OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS IN SUPPORT OF FIRE CHIEF SHERMAN GEORGE
WHERE AS, St. Louis Board of Education recognizes and salutes the outstanding leadership and performance of Fire Chief Sherman George.
WHERE AS, Chief Sherman George and members of his staff have diligently worked in partnership with the St. Louis Board of Education in providing students the opportunity to shadow city firefighters.
WHERE AS, Chief Sherman George was instrumental in creating an educational partnership with the Fire Department and the St. Louis Public Schools for the benefit of city high school students.
WHERE AS, Chief Sherman George is highly recognized within his profession and was selected to help identify a new Fire Chief for the City of Atlanta Georgia.
WHERE AS, Chief Sherman George is active in the St. Louis Community and attends many civic functions.
WHERE AS, Chief Sherman George was appointed to the position of Fire Chief by former Mayor Clarence Harmon.
WHERE AS, Chief Sherman George and members of his department have faithfully participated in Career Day programs for city youth at the annual Career Day Fair held at the convention center.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS, AS FOLLOWS:
The Board of Education hereby salutes and commends Chief Sherman George for his professionalism, knowledge and leadership within the fire department.
The Board of Education hereby strongly urges that Mayor Frances [sic] Slay and members of his staff refrain from micro-managing the fire department and allow Chief Sherman George to do his job without interference.
THIS RESOLUTION shall be dated September 20, 2007 and shall become effective immediately upon its adoption.
The Board of Aldermen returns from their long summer break this morning. They were scheduled to return last Friday but cancelled the meeting so that aldermen could attend the funeral of 10th Ward Alderman Joe Vollmer's father.
Today will mark the first meeting for new Board Clerk and Attorney Denise Watson-Wesley Coleman.
Here's today's agenda. Meeting starts at 10:00 as usual.
BARACK ME ALL NIGHT LONG - All the local Obama Girls will soon have a place to camp out at. We've learned that the Barack Obama for President campaign has come to Missouri. They are currently working out of a donated temporary office space — really a cubical — in a St. Louis business, but they are looking for more permanent digs. This comes just over four months before the Presidential Preference Primary Vote on Feburary 5, 2008.
IRONS BEHIND BARS? - If you were anywhere near a TV yesterday, you may have heard that former Vashon basketball coach Floyd Irons pleaded guilty to wire fraud and mail fraud Thursday. The charges are related to real estate purchases made in 2005 and 2006. Irons now faces 30 years in prison and one million dollars in fines. Sentencing is on November 29th. Swish!
ETHICS COMMISSION: 'NEVERMIND' - The Missouri Ethics Commission took back it's decision ordering candidates to either justify or give back campaign contributions over a retroactively imposed limit. The initial decision was made on September 11, but Republicans filed suit claiming the commission violated open meeting laws. The commission voted to withdraw that decision yesterday, and will take up the issue in their October 4 meeting.
The St. Louis Chapter of the Missouri Association for Social Welfare is hosting an education forum tomorrow featuring School Board President Peter Downs, Special Administrative Board member Richard Gaines, and PubDef.net editor Antonio French, who will serve as moderator.
The topic of discussion will be: "If the city public schools debate is about the children, then what about the children?"
What is best for the city school children as we move forward? What do the children need? And what can we do to help?
The event will be Friday, Sept. 21, from 12:00—1:30 PM at the Heritage House, 2800 Olive Street (at intersection of Olive and Leffingwell). The event is of course free and all are welcome.
The webzine NewTeeVee.com has written about our spat with KSDK Channel 5, which has resulted in all 500 of our YouTube videos being taken off-line:
French argued that the use of the clips — less than sixty seconds from two different newscasts, edited to include titles commenting on the station’s reporting — was clearly fair use. He pointed to past Pub Def footage used by Fox News to argue that this is standard operating procedure in broadcast journalism. “We think we’re ideal YouTube users,” French said of the site. “We work our butts off here; we don’t get any money, it’s completely free.”
Mike Shipley, the news director at KSDK, confirmed that the station had issued the takedown notice, but disagreed that French’s clip was clearly fair use. “It’s not my understanding that fair use allows for you to take the piece in its entirety and reuse it for your own purposes,” Shipley argued over the phone, continuing:
"He never approached us about the material at all. If he had excerpted something and edited all on his own and put together his own presentation about it, that would be one thing. But to simply pirate the video from our site and use it without our permission is copyright infringement."
French said that what troubles him is that in the course of a few hours he can go from providing a public service using YouTube’s platform to being completely removed from the site.
The Special Administrative Board and the teachers union are joining forces for a special panel discussion this afternoon.
Here's the press release:
Low-performing schools – and how to turn them around – will be the topic of a St. Louis panel discussion on public education. The Special Administrative Board (SAB) of the St. Louis Public Schools will join St. Louis Teachers and School Related Personnel, Local 420, in sponsoring the event.
The meeting will take place Thursday, September 20, at 1 p.m., at the SLPS Administration Building, 801 N. 11th St., Room 108. The discussion, which is open to the public, will feature a panel made up of selected district stakeholders. These stakeholders will question representatives of two school districts that have demonstrated success in improving low-performing schools. Fielding the questions will be educators from the Chicago Public Schools and the ABC Unified School District of Los Angeles County. They will describe collaborative partnerships, best practices, and research-based models that led to academic success in their districts. Officials from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) will also be on hand.
The public engagement committee of the St. Louis Special Administrative Board, chaired by Richard Gaines, is spearheading the event. The SAB, AFT and Local 420 are actively involved in exploring educational reform models with a proven track record in school improvement.
As dozens, if not hundreds, of St. Louisans head down to Jena, Louisiana today to support the Jena 6, and anti-war protestors settle into the third day of their week-long 24-hour protest outside the St. Louis office of U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, PubDef.net reporter Gabe Bullard asks the following question:
Why are today's college students so much less likely to engage in protest than their parents' generation?
The Instead of War Coalition, a St. Louis based peace organization, is holding a 24-hour week-long rally called the "Days of Decision" Watch outside the St. Louis office of U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill.
Neither KSDK, YouTube, Google, or even the Internet gods themselves can keep PubDef from delivering the news.
This week's videos are back online. We're working on last weeks now, then the week before that.
Feel free to drop us an email if there's one you'd like to see back up ASAP.
In the meantime, contact YouTube and let them know you'd like to see PubDef's videos back up immediately. And contact KSDK to let them know how much they suck.
Yesterday evening, Multimedia KSDK, Inc. filed a complaint with YouTube about our posting of a video contrasting a September 13 story by reporter Mike Owens which ended with a promise to air a tape of an allegedly crooked real estate seller "saying he makes regular payments of cash to the local alderman" with their September 14 follow-up story that makes no mention of the allegation.
At 5:29 PM we received notice that YouTube took that video off-line. Then late last night, around 1:00 AM, all of our videos went off-line. That's around the time KSDK Channel 5 filed a second complaint, this time on the posting of the original Sept 13 video. YouTube responded by suspending our account and taking all 500 of our videos off-line.
First, we believe our usage of Channel 5's video falls under the "Fair Use" doctrine, the same doctrine Channel 5 presumably operates under each week as they use video content from other sources in their news broadcasts. In fact, PubDef's own video has appeared on local television without our expressed written consent, presumably under "Fair Use".
Secondly, KSDK never contacted us to ask us to remove the content and its labeling of us as a copyright infringer with YouTube is wrong and has caused us and our readers quite an inconvenience.
As we work this issue out with YouTube, we'd just like our readers and our community to know what's going on, and the extent to which KSDK has gone to crush fair journalistic criticism.
Sources tell PubDef that State Rep. Joe Aull (D-Marshall) will be charged tomorrow in conjunction with providing State Senator Jeff Smith (D-St. Louis City) a false identification during a July 31 visit to the Isle of Capri Casino in Booneville.
(Our sources may be the same sources that told The Source, who beat us in reporting this story. We really hate being beaten.)
Smith is not expected to be charged tomorrow, but sources say the Cooper County prosecutor is still weighing the possibility.
It is also unclear if lobbyist Lynne Schlosser will be charged this week. She was the Isle of Capri employee who gave Smith Aull's players card to allow him to stay in the casino following a legislative tour, despite not having his own identification with him.
According to a new ranking by BlogNetNews.com, PubDef.net is the 7th most influential political blog in Missouri.
The site (more specifically BlogNetNews.com/Missouri) launched a new feature this week that ranks which Missouri state politics and news blogs are having the most influence on the direction of conversation in the state blogosphere.
Considering we haven't even heard of, let alone visited, half the other blogs on the list, we're not sure how realistic the ranking is, but we'll take the compliment just the same.
"Our rankings come from data provided in your RSS feeds, data from the activity of readers on BlogNetNews.com and data about Internet traffic from third parties," says the site's operators.
Each Sunday morning at 12:01 AM, BlogNetNews.com will release a new top 20 list of the blogs "most powerfully shaping opinion in the Missouri blogosphere." Here's the link.
And here's the current list:
1 Tony's Kansas City 2 Fired Up! Missouri - 3 The Turner Report 4 Politics Blog 5 KY3 Political Notebook 6 The KC Blue Blog 7 PUB DEF 8 CHATTER 9 Show Me Progress 10 Branson Missouri 11 Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal 12 Blog CCP 13 Ozarks Messenger 14 Arch City Chronicle News 15 Ozarks Politics 16 The Source 17 The Kansas City Post 18 Corner of the Sky 19 Missouri Politics 20 Gone Mild
Okay, so this is probably a great time to encourage you to ADVERTISE on this "influential" website. Rates are reasonable. Call (314) 260-7321 or email us for a quote.
And if you're not an advertiser, but still want to support PubDef and help us expand our coverage, SUBSCRIBE for only $7.00 a month. Get a quarterly DVD of our best videos and a warm and fuzzy feeling for helping to keep independent media alive in St. Louis.
Nixon: Pay Day Lenders are "Modern Day Loan Sharks", Need Caps on Interest
By Antonio D. French
Filed
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 6:35 PM
Attorney General Jay Nixon gathered with a group of local Democratic elected officials today to call for the Republican-controlled state senate to act to regulate the state's Pay Day Loan industry.
Joining Nixon were State Senators Rita Days (who Nixon praised for leading the charge against astronomical-interest lenders) and Jeff Smith, State Representatives Talibdin El-Amin, Robin Wright Jones, Jamilah Nasheed, and Juanita Head Walton, and Committeeman Joe Palm.
Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, the likely Democratic nominee for governor in 2008, today said that Governor Matt Blunt's office appears to be breaking the law by destroying their email records.
Sodexho's contract with the St. Louis Public Schools will continue at least until June 2008, at which time contract negotiations will start again. That's according to a spokesmen for the district.
Sodexho, which provides custodial services to the schools, sent a letter to the district last week announcing they were leaving in November of this year.
"Their main issue was our shaky financial situation," said SLPS Media Spokesman Eric Little. "But it's been worked out through at least the end of this school year."
PubDef has obtained a copy of that Sodexho letter. See below.
Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jay Nixon will be in north St. Louis this morning calling for stronger legislation against the payday loan industry.
Nixon says Missouri has some of the most lenient payday loan laws in the nation. Because of Missouri’s lax laws, some loan recipients could end up being charged as much as 1,950% APR (with an average of 422%). According to the most recent report by the Division of Finance, nearly 3 million payday loans were issued last year and the number of new loan licenses issued to lenders has increased by 69% since 2003.
The result of these lenient laws: Missourian families paid $317 million in fees and interest in 2005 alone, second in actual dollars only to the state of California.
Nixon's press conference will be held in vacant lot directly across the street from Payday Loan Center, 1315 N. Kingshighway, at 10:30 AM.
The Instead of War Coalition, a St. Louis based peace organization, is holding a week-long rally called the "Days of Decision" Watch outside Senator Claire McCaskill's office, 5850 Delmar.
The rally is aimed at urging McCaskill not to support the $190 billion war funding bill currently being debated in Congress unless it is attached to a specific withdrawal timetable.
The Missouri Republican Party and State Rep. Shane Schoeller (R-Willard) filed a lawsuit yesterday against the Missouri Ethics Commission for violating of the Sunshine Law when the commission met earlier this month to discuss campaign finance contributions.
The lawsuit filed in Cole County Circuit Court alleges that the Ethics Commission violated the Sunshine Law on September 11 by holding a closed meeting to discuss matters that its notice, tentative agenda and approved agenda stated would be discussed in open meeting, by closing a meeting without valid legal reasons and by holding a closed session that was not limited to the matters that could be discussed in closed meeting. The lawsuit also says the commission and commissioners “knowingly” and “purposely” violated the Sunshine Law by discussing policy matters which should have been discussed openly with the public having an opportunity to comment.
The Missouri Republican Party is seeking a temporary restraining order followed by preliminary and permanent injunctions prohibiting the Ethics Commission and its Commissioners and its agents from implementing any decision made in connection with the meeting and is seeking a court order voiding all actions taken by the Ethics Commission at the meeting and any actions taken by staff of the Ethics Commission pursuant to directions received at that meeting.
“The Missouri Ethics Commission blatantly violated the Sunshine Law by meeting in secret and denying Missourians their right to be informed about a significant public policy decision that affects the lives of thousands of contributors and candidates. The MEC’s actions run contrary to the notion of open government and that is why Missouri Republicans have stepped up and filed this lawsuit,” said Jared Craighead, executive director of the Missouri Republican Party.
“The Ethics Commission’s violation of the Sunshine Law tarnishes a campaign finance system already damaged by Jay Nixon’s collusion to tank the defense of a new law that injected transparency into the system.”
KSDK Chickens Out, Doesn't Name Accused Alderman or Air Tape
By Antonio D. French
Filed
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 11:20 AM
After promising that on Friday we'd hear a tape of a allegedly crooked real estate seller "saying he makes regular payments of cash to the local alderman," KSDK ran a short follow-up that did not include the tape, the name of the alderman, or any mention of the allegation.
An email to reporter Mike Owens, who investigated the story, has gone unanswered.
YouTube Note: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Multimedia KSDK, Inc"
Cops Gone Wild(er): $40,000 Stolen from Police Station Vault
By Antonio D. French
What's a few tens of thousands of dollars here and there? As long as you've got the unconditional support of your Board and the mayor.
It's good to be Police Chief Joe Mokwa.
Adding to the ever-growing list of scandals at Mokwa's police department (and reasons the chief should be held accountable to the people of this city, not a Governor-appointed board), the Post-Dispatchreports today that as much as $40,000 in cash has been stolen from the evidence room in the basement of St. Louis Police Headquarters.
Let me just skip to the end of this story before my head explodes from complete frustration: No one will be severely disciplined. Mokwa will keep his job. Slay and the police board will say how this actually adds to the level of confidence they have in him. And life will go on as usual in Crazy Town.
From the Post's story:
The department's internal auditors discovered the vault theft this summer. Those auditors were called in after a theft from one of three safes in the North Patrol Station on Union Boulevard earlier this year. That theft involved less than $500, sources said; a culprit has not been caught.
However, Mokwa took disciplinary action against several top assistants after that earlier theft was discovered. Assistant Police Chief Steve Pollihan received a written letter of reprimand; Lt. Col. Reggie Harris was given a day off without pay, and Capts. Steve Hobbs, Leman Dobbins and James Moran were all given two days off without pay.
A letter of reprimand? Two days off work? Oh, my! Now that's what I call cleaning house.
Crime may have shot up 20% last year, at least $40,000 in cash may have disappeared from the police vault, the number of rapes may have been systematically underreported, the Police Officers Association may be about to state they have "no confidence" in his leadership, he may have officers who steal and resale baseball tickets, and rookie cops may be killed after being left to patrol the roughest parts of town on their own, but the aldermen of the City of St. Louis still have total confidence in Police Chief Joe Mokwa.
From Political Fix:
