`Greensboro Massacre Song'

The Klan arrived
The cops moved aside
The sharpshooters aimed their guns
The FBI laughed
The Nazis attacked
And shed five workers’ blood.
Five fighters for freedom now lay dead
Slain in Greensboro, their deaths will be avenged.

Jim Waller
Was a doctor
Who always served the poor
And he also saw
That mill workers
Needed to wage class war.
He led a strike and workers chose him head
But those who owned the factories wished him dead.

And brave Cesar
Was a fighter
Inside Duke Hospital
He fought the Klan
With his bare hands
Until they mowed him down.
He saw that those who work are still enslaved
And for his thoughts, they sent him to an early grave.

And Mike Nathan
Carried no gun
Yet still helped Africa
He did not run
But helped the wounded
Till shot from the Klan car.
On his deathbed, the Party honored him
But those who sent his killers, they still grin.

And Bill Sampson
Did not give in
And fired in self-defense
And as he died
He said “keep on firing”
As the bullets took effect.
He also led a union at his plant
And was not afraid to be a communist.

And Sandy Smith
She knew racists
All wished to see her dead
She saved children
Then took a gun
To make sure the Nazis fled.
They shot her down like many women before
The government killed her, `cause she was a fighter.

To listen to "The Greensboro Massacre" protest folk song, you can click on the following music site link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/More+Protest+Folk+Songs/The+Greensboro+Massacre

“The Greensboro Massacre” protest folk song was written nearly 30 years ago, shortly after five anti-racist left activists were murdered on November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina.

According to The True Story Of The Greensboro Massacre by Paul and Sally Bermanzohn:

“The U.S. Treasury Department Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [BATF] had sent agent Bernard Butkovich to North Carolina to join the Nazis and oversee the assassination. On Nov. 3 [1979] he brought the list of who was to be shot and helped the killers escape. The caravan of Klan and Nazis were recruited and organized by Klansmen and FBI provocateur Edward Dawson. Dawson worked in league with the Greensboro Police Department. While Dawson led the caravan into our demonstration, Greensboro Police Detective Jerry Cooper followed them, deliberately delaying the arrival of any other cops.”

On Nov. 17, 1980 the Southern jury found the six Klansmen and Nazis indicted for murder, as a result of their apparent involvement in the Greensboro Massacre, to be “not guilty.” Coincidentally, African-Americans had not been allowed to serve on the jury. (Downtown 11/9/94)

To listen to some other protest folk songs, you can check out the “Columbia Songs for a Democratic Society” music site at the following link:

http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music


Additional protest folk songs from the 1970s and 1980s can be found at these other links:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman

and

http://www.mp3.com/artist/bobafeldman/songs/

How Newhouse Dynasty Obtained Wealth Historically--Conclusion

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

By the time the Newhouse family somehow found the capital to purchase more newspapers in Syracuse, Jersey City and Harrisburg in the 1940s and in St. Louis, Oregon and Alabama in the 1950s, some people began to wonder how the Newhouse family obtained so much money. And by the time the Newhouse family—whose wealth approached $200 million [in 1950’s money] in the late 1950s—laid down its cash to gobble up Vogue and the other Conde’ Nast magazines, more suspicions about the Newhouse family’s source of wealth had developed. As the book Newspaperman by Richard Meeker recalled:

“Newspaper analysts were so suspicious of the source of Newhouse’s funds that they discussed openly the possibility that he was laundering money…Some went so far as to suggest that his newspaper operations had been used as a front for the notorious Reinfeld mob, a group of booze-peddling hoodlums, whose boss had made millions during prohibition.”

One way the Newhouse family apparently was able to accumulate so much money so rapidly during the 20th Century was by hiring accountants and lawyers who figured out unique ways for the Newhouse Dynasty to avoid paying a fair share of taxes on their rapidly growing family wealth. As Newspaperman reported:

“`They played every tax game there was,’ recalled one man who once served as publisher for several Newhouse newspapers. That meant that every cost that could conceivably be written off as a business deduction was, that assets were depreciated as rapidly as possible, ant that new acquisitions were `written up’ as high as the law allowed…Where Newhouse developed a special advantage was in the way he avoided paying taxes for the profits that remained to him after the payment of corporate taxes…

“Thanks to an ingenious device created by his accountant, Louis Glickman, and implemented by his attorney, Charles Goldman, Newhouse was able to avoid paying taxes on accumulated earnings and, thus, to multiply the value of his earnings several times. Doing so involved the creation of a special corporate structure for the various newspapers…Because the Goldman-Glickman construct kept the various enterprises separate—for tax purposes at least—each could claim the right to its own surplus. Taken together, the accumulation that resulted was many times what the IRS would have allowed had Newhouse simply treated all of his operations as a single corporation.”

The same book also characterized the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation as “a charity his [Samuel I. Newhouse I’s] lawyers had created as an additional tax dodge” and charged that Newhouse Foundation funds were used by the Newhouse family to finance its $18 million purchase of Alabama’s Birmingham News in 1955.

After Samuel Newhouse I died in 1979, his two sons, S.I. Newhouse, Jr. and Donald Newhouse, were accused of tax evasion by the IRS during the 1980s.

Six months after their father’s death, S.I. Newhouse, Jr. and Donald Newhouse valued his estate at $181.9 million and filed a tax return which claimed they owed $48.7 million in inheritance taxes. In 1983, however, the IRS informed the Newhouse brothers that their father’s estate “was worth an estimated $1.2 billion, and thus the tax as computed was deficient by more than $609 million” and “the government tacked on a 50 percent penalty ($304 million and change) for civil fraud,” according to the March 13, 1989 issue of The Nation magazine.

Although the IRS dropped its tax fraud charge against the Newhouse Dynasty later in the 1980s, it increased its tax delinquency bill for the Newhouse family to $1.2 billion, since it claimed the Newhouse estate was actually worth $2.2 billion—not $1.2 billion—when Samuel Newhouse I died in 1979, according to The Nation.

The U.S. court system was apparently not too eager, however, to rule against the Newhouse Dynasty and the “Newhouse Tax Evasion Case” ended with a favorable “not guilty” verdict for the Newhouse brothers.

Besides owning Parade and his other Big Media publishing properties, in the 1990s S.I. Newhouse, Jr. also owned a big collection of post-World War II paintings; and in the late 1980s, he spent $17 million to purchase modern artist Jasper Johns’ “False Start”. Coincidentally, the owner of Jasper Johns’ modern work of art also sat on Midtown Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art’s board of trustees in the early 1990s. (end of article)

(Downtown 11/18/92)

How Newhouse Dynasty Obtained Its Wealth Historically--Part 1

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

Ever since Samuel Newhouse I started working as an office-boy, bookkeeper and rent-collector in Jersey Democratic machine politician, Bayonne Times owner and Judge Hyman Lazarus’s law office in 1908, the Newhouse family has shown a remarkable ability to accumulate more money, more swiftly, than most families who get involved in the U.S. media world.

By the time Samuel Newhouse I was 21 in 1916, he was earning around $30,000 per year and had been given 25 percent ownership of the Bayonne Times by his boss, Judge Lazarus, for his loyal service. By 1922, Newhouse had saved up enough money to purchase the Staten Island Advance in partnership with Judge Lazarus. And a few years later, when his original partner, Judge Lazarus, died in 1924, Newhouse also had enough money to buy up the Lazarus family’s share of Staten Island Advance stock.

During the 1920s, the Newhouse family also had enough money to loan the money to Henry Grafinkle which enabled him to open newsstands that were quite good at selling the Newhouse family’s Staten Island Advance at the St. George’s Ferry Terminal on Staten Island, as well as to open newsstands throughout Manhattan, at LaGuardia Airport, at Newark Airport and at the Port Authority Bus Terminal (the world’s largest and most lucrative newsstand)—which also sold other Newhouse publications quite well throughout the years.

During the 1930s Depression, the Newhouse family still had enough money to buy the Long Island Press in Jamaica and the previously competing Long Island Star, North Shore Journal and Nassau Journal, as well as the Newark Ledger, the Newark Star and newspapers in Syracuse. At the Long Island Press during the 1930s—where the Newhouse family was paying its non-unionized newsroom employees only 33 percent of what unionized New York Times and New York Daily News employees were earning for similar work—Samuel Newhouse I’s salary was more than the total of all the salaries paid to the Newhouse family’s 65 newsroom employees there. (end of part 1)

(Downtown 11/18/92)

Newhouse Dynasty Power And Wealth In The 1990s

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

In the 1990s, the sons of Samuel Newhouse I continued to hold a lot of U.S. Big Media power. As the Magazine In America: 1741-1990 book by John Tebbel and Mary Zuckerman then observed:

“…S.I. Newhouse, Jr., could be considered the most powerful man in the publishing business, controlling what Fortune called the greatest concentration of wealth in private hands. He shared responsibility only with his brother Donald, a year younger, who directed the company’s newspapers and cable-television interests, while he concentrated on the magazines…Since Advance Publications, the umbrella covering all the family interests, is owned exclusively by the Newhouse brothers, there are no shareholders (and therefore not even the S.E.C.) to interfere in the administration of a communications empire worth between $8 to $10 billion.”

(Downtown 11/18/92)

`Parade''s Cable-TV Connection Historically

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

Perhaps one reason why many U.S. cable TV shows haven’t, historically, talked too much about either the amount of money and Big Media power that the Newhouse Dynasty possessed in the 1990s or the literary quality of its Parade, Vogue and other Newhouse media conglomerate magazines, was that Newhouse also owned many U.S. cable television systems in the 1980s and 1990s. As the book Newspaperman by Richard Meeker observed:

“By early 1981, the Newhouse family owned and operated dozens of cable systems throughout the Northeast, South and Midwest, with a total of 500,000 subscribers—making theirs the 8th largest cable-TV operation in the United States.”

In the early 1990s, the cable-TV operation of the Newhouse media conglomerate was the 14th-largest one in the USA. Among the cable-TV companies owned by its Newhouse Broadcasting Corporation in the early 1990s were Metrovision Inc., News-Channels Corporation and Vision Cable Communications. Coincidentally, S.I. Newhouse III was the assistant secretary of the Metrovision Inc. subsidiary and Jo Newhouse was the personnel director of the Vision Cable Communications Inc. subsidiary of the Newhouse media conglomerate in the early 1990s.

Newhouse’s Metrovision operated 21 cable systems in states like Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming in the early 1990s; and over 450,000 households subscribed to cable-TV systems which it owned in the early 1990s.

Newhouse’s Vision Cable Communications operated 15 cable-TV systems in states like Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Carolina in the early 1990s; and over 470,000 households subscribed to cable systems which it owned in the early 1990s.

Newhouse’s NewsChannels Corp. operated 31 cable systems in Alabama, Pennsylvania and upstate New York in the early 1990s; and over 380,000 households subscribed to this subsidiary’s cable systems in the early 1990s. Coincidentally, Newhouse’s NewsChannels Corp. operated a cable-TV system in Syracuse—where Newhouse also markets Syracuse’s daily newspaper—in the early 1990s.

(Downtown 11/18/92)

African-American Male Worker Jobless Rate Under Obama Regime: 17.2 Percent

The official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for African-American male workers over 20 years-of-age in the United States increased from 15.4 percent to 17.2 percent between March 2009 and April 2009 under the Democratic Obama Regime, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for African-American female workers over 20 years-of-age also increased from 9.9 percent to 11.5 percent between March 2009 and April 2009; and the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all African-American workers under the Democratic Obama Regime increased from 13.3 percent to 15 percent during this same period.

The “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for white male workers also increased from 8 percent to 8.5 percent between March 2009 and April 2009.

The “seasonally adjusted” rate for all Hispanic or Latino workers in April 2009 was 11.3 percent.

For all U.S. workers over 20 years-of-age, the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate increased from 8.5 percent to 8.9 percent between March 2009 and April 2009.

The “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for African-American youth between 16 and 19 years-of-age increased from 32.5 percent to 34.7 percent between March 2009 and April 2009 under the Democratic Obama Regime, while the unemployment rate for Hispanic or Latino youth increased from 24.9 percent to 26.5 percent during this same period.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 8, 2009 press release:

“…In April, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major private-sector industries. Overall, private-sector employment fell by 611,000.

“The number of unemployed persons increased by 563,000 to 13.7 million in April…

“Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs rose by 571,000 in April to 8.8 million….

“The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 498,000 to 3.7 million over the month…

“About 2.1 million persons…were marginally attached to the labor force in April…These individuals wanted and were available for work…They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 740,000 discouraged workers in April…

“Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 539,000 in April to 132.4 million; private-sector employment declined by 611,000…In April, job losses continued in most major private-sector industries…

“Employment in manufacturing fell by 149,000 over the month…

“Construction employment declined by 110,000 in April…

“The professional and business services industry lost 122,000 jobs in April….Half of the April decline occurred in temporary help services.

“Employment in retail trade fell by 47,000 in April…. Wholesale trade employment was down by 41,000 over the month…

“Employment in transportation and warehousing declined by 38,000 in April…Employment in financial activities declined by 40,000 over the month…The leisure and hospitality industry lost 44,000 jobs in April…”

`Parade' Magazine's Newhouse Newspaper/Advance Publications Connection Historically

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

In 1962, Oregon Senator Wayne Morse argued that “The American people need to be warned before it is too late about the threat which is arising as a result of the monopolistic practices of the Newhouse interests.” But, 30 years later, many U.S. newspapers were still owned by the Newhouse interests in the early 1990s.

One reason why neither Parade nor the Vogue/Conde’ Nast magazines nor the Newhouse Dynasty need to worry about being satirized too much in many U.S. daily newspapers is that many U.S. daily newspapers are owned by the Newhouse Dynasty’s Advance Publications holding company. In the early 1990s, the fourth-largest newspaper chain in the U.S. was owned by Newhouse. Over $1.7 billion per year was taken in by the Newhouse family company from its 26 newspapers during the early 1990s. And the daily circulation of Newhouse’s newspapers exceeded 3 million in the early 1990s. The following U.S. newspapers are still all owned by the same media conglomerate which owns Parade and the Vogue/Conde’ Nast magazines: Newark Star-Ledger; Jersey City Journal; Trenton Times; Staten Island Advance; Syracuse Post-Standard; Portland Oregonian; Harrisburg Patriot/Patriot-News; Cleveland Plain-Dealer; Birmingham News; Huntsville Times/Huntsville News; New Orleans Times-Picayune; Springfield Union News/Republican; Ann Arbor News; Flint Journal; Grand Rapids Press; Kalamazoo Gazette; Bay City Times; Saginaw News; Jackson Citizen-Patriot; Muskegon Chronicle; and the Mississippi Press-Register.

During the 1950s, Newhouse’s Newark Star-Ledger (whose circulation exceeded 400,000 in the early 1990s) apparently agreed “to be used as a conduit for charges [Joe] McCarthy himself didn’t dare make public,” and “when certain of its syndicated columnists, Drew Pearson among them, began to attack McCarthy, the Ledger refused to print the revelations,” according to Newspaperman: S.I. Newhouse And The Business Of News by Richard Meeker.

Coincidentally, when a book critical of the Newhouse media conglomerate’s seemingly monopolistic practices, Newhouse, Newspapers, Nuisances: Highlights In The Growth Of A Communications Empire by John Lent, was published in the early 1960s, none of the newspapers which were part of the Newhouse newspaper chain printed a review of the book.

Newhouse newspapers are not particularly known for being examples of quality journalism. Indeed, in 1964, Newspaper Guild Vice-President William Farson made in reference to Samuel Newhouse I the following comment:

“More people jump on Newhouse than other monopolists because he has a history of putting out poor newspapers. He wants no competition because if he had to compete, he couldn’t afford to put out a poor paper, and in the process he wouldn’t make as much money.”

When More magazine—a magazine not owned by the Newhouse Dynasty—“compiled a list of the 10 worst big-circulation daily newspapers in America” in the 1970s “three of Newhouse’s newspapers were on it,” according to the Newspaperman book.

(Downtown 11/18/92)