Recalling Big Three's 1990s Corporate Welfare Grant

If GM, Ford and Chrysler end up getting a big corporate welfare grant from the “U.S. Corporate Welfare State” before they begin their new wave of 2009 layoffs of UAW members, it won’t be the first corporate welfare grant that the Big Three ever received. As Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman noted in the 1996 edition of their book Take The Rich Off Welfare, in the 1990s the U.S. government gave “GM, Ford and Chrysler—whose combined 1994 profits were almost $14 billion--$333 million a year to develop more fuel-efficient cars;” yet “at the same time, the Big Three” propagandized “in favor of watered-down fuel-efficiency standards.” During the 1990s, Ford, GM and Chrysler also “each used accelerated depreciation to defer a billion dollars in tax payments,” according to the Take The Rich Off Welfare book.

The same book also recalled:

“The extent to which automobiles dominate our lives didn’t just happen by accident—at least part of it was the result of a criminal conspiracy. Back in the early 1930s, most people living in cities got around on electric streetcars. Concerned that this wasn’t the kind of environment in which they could sell a lot of buses, General Motors, using a series of front companies, began buying up streetcar systems, tearing out the tracks, buying buses from itself and then selling the new, polluting bus systems back to the cities—usually with contracts that prohibited purchases of `any new equipment using fuel or means of propulsion other than gas.’ Sometimes the contracts required that the new owners buy all their replacement buses from GM.

“…In 1949—after these companies had destroyed more than 100 streetcar systems in more than 45 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Oakland, Baltimore, St. Louis and Salt Lake City—GM, Chevron and Firestone were convicted of a criminal conspiracy to restrain trade…”

With regard to the most recent corporate welfare grant to the Big Three proposal, UAW Local 2334 President David Sole in Detroit recently wrote the following:

“Handing more money to the same auto bosses who got us into this mess won’t solve the problems the auto industry faces.

“…They will continue to try to eliminate jobs and cut wages and benefits. Their only concern is maximizing profits, which is what led them to concentrate on making SUVs and trucks domestically, while shipping production of fuel-efficient cars overseas…

“Since the auto bosses have brought the companies to the brink of ruin, the workers, their unions and the communities in which these factories are situated must assert their right to run the plants and replace the bloated, short-sighted executives and the big shareholders who kept them at the helm.

“Worker-community control of the Big Three is the only solution. Under worker-community control the demand for government funds to rebuild and retool the plants to make energy-efficient cars and mass transit equipment could rally wide support.”

"Non-Profit" New School Paid Its President $457,000 In 2006

The tax-exempt New School University in Manhattan claims to be a “non-profit” institution. Yet according to its Form 990 filing for the year beginning July 1, 2005 and ending June 30, 2006, New School University earned over $3.5 million in dividends and interest from the over $233 million in stocks and bonds which the New School then owned. And the “non-profit” New School University board of trustees paid its president—a former participant in the U.S. War Machine’s immoral military intervention in Viet Nam named Robert Kerrey—an annual salary of $457,329 in 2006.

In 2006, the “non-profit” New School University also paid its then-Provost, Arjun Appandurai, and its executive vice-president, James Murtha, each annual salaries of $360,782. In addition, the New School’s then-Vice-President for Development, Kristin Sorenson, was paid an annual salary of $224,462 in 2006, while the New School’s then-Senior Vice- President for Student Life, Linda Reimer, was paid an annual salary of $224,646 that same year.

New School Vice-President for Human Resources Carol Cantrell was also paid an annual salary of $209,877 in 2006, while an annual salary of $205,877 was paid to New School Vice-President for CEA Nancy Donner Martin that same year. Two other New School Vice-Presidents, Frank Barletta and Sherry Brabham, were also paid annual salaries exceeding $197,000 by the “non-profit” New School University board of trustees in 2006.

The Deans at New School University in 2006 also apparently were paid a lot more by the “non-profit” New School in real wages than clerical workers like myself were paid by the New School Administration when I worked at the New School registrar’s office in the late 1970s. A New School University Dean named Paul Goldberger, for example, was paid an annual salary of $356,618 in 2006, while a New School Dean named Fred Hochberg was paid an annual salary of $265,043 that same year. Another New School Dean named Benjamin Lee was also paid an annual salary of $233,077 in 2006.

In addition, the “non-profit” New School University also paid two of its professors, Professor Claudio Lomnitz and Professor Ann Stolar, annual salaries that exceeded $174,000 in 2006; while a New School professor named Adolph Reed was apparently paid an annual salary by the “non-profit” New School of $215,305 in 2003, according to the Form 990 financial files for the 2002-2003 academic year.

(additional information added on Nov. 23, 2011)
Some more updated figures on salary from form 990 filing for 2009 for the year beginning 7/1/09 and ending 6/30/10:
During 2009-2010 academic year, the "Non-profit" New School paid its president, administrators and some of its professors the following annual salaries:

1. New School President Bob Kerrey was paid an annual salary of $687,812;

2. New School EVP James Murtha was paid an annual salary of $501,770;

3. New School Provost Tim Marshall was paid an annual salary of $427,435;

4. New School SVP Frank Barletta was paid an annual salary of $300,495;

5. New School SVP Carol Cantrell was paid an annual salary of $266,445;

6. New School SVP Shelley Reed was paid an annual salary of $287,232;

7. New School SVP Mary Sanger was paid an annual salary of $246,197;

8. New School VP Lia Gartner was paid an annual salary of $282,490;

9. New School VP Robert Gay was paid an annual salary of $274,470;

10. New School VP Ben Lee was paid an annual salary of $569,900;

11.New School VP Nancy Donner was paid an annual salary of $261,156;

12. New School VP Roy Moskowitz was paid an annual salary of $276,408;

13. New School VP Doris Suarez was paid an annual salary of $269,612;

14. New School SVP Kristin Sorenson was paid an annual salary of $239,331;

15. New School SVP Joseph Westphal was paid an annual salary of $360,419;

16. New School SVP Linda Reimer was paid an annual salary of $263,802;

17. New School Dean Linda Dunne was paid an annual salary of $267,462;

18. New School Dean Neil Gordon was paid an annual salary of $247,976;

19. New School Dean Joel Lester was paid an annual salary of $242,883;

20. New School Drama School Director Robert Lupone was paid an annual salary of $218,309;

21. New School Dean Michael Schrober was paid an annual salary of $242,910;

22. New School Dean Lisa Servon was paid an annual salary of $268,968;

23. New School Dean Joel Towers was paid an annual salary of $227,061;

24. New School Dean Jonathan Veitch was paid an annual salary of 154,849;

25. New School Professor Sinom Collins was paid an annual salary of $223,597;

26. New School Professor Paul Goldberger was paid an annual salary of $210,668;

27. New School discharged Professor Ann Stoler was paid an annual salary of $267,945;

28. New School Professor Richard Bernstein was paid an annual salary of $206,730;

29. New School Professor William Bevington was paid an annual salary of $188,532;

30. New School VP Nancy Stier was paid an annual salary of $216,685; and

31. New School Professor Greggory Spence was paid an annual salary of $132,228.

Knight Foundation & Newspaper Dyansty's Hidden History--Conclusion

“A $200,000 grant proposal, submitted by a group of Indymedia volunteers to the Knight News Challenge contest, has been blocked by other IMCs and subsequently dropped due to the abiding ethos that Indymedia is a counter to corporate, money-fixated media entities. The grant application to the Knight Foundation was to fund technical development work for Independent Media Centres (IMCs)…

“The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation describes itself as "an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting journalism and supporting the vitality of 26 communities" where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers….In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the US. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Its trustees include Paul E. Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company in June 2006, Knight-Ridder was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the US, with 32 daily newspapers...” (Corporate Watch UK and www.leftgatekeepers.com sites)

Since Akron, Ohio was the city where the Knight Dynasty established the local press monopoly from which, historically, it was able to build its newspaper chain, as well as the city where the rubber companies had, historically, a special economic influence until recently, ties between the Knight family and rubber industry executives were historically close. Edwin J. Thomas, who was Goodyear Tire & Rubber’s chairman of the board until 1964, for example, also served as a Knight Newspapers director prior to its merger with the Ridder newspaper chain in 1974. The 1989 book Knight: A Publisher In The Tumultuous Century by Charles Whited described the nature of this rubber industry executive’s relation to Jack Knight for many years:

“Among all the people Jack Knight knew…there was none so close as Edwin J. Thomas. This was a…man…closer to Knight than any blood relative…They played golf frequently…They talked almost every day, by telephone if not in person, often long-distance…”

And in the early 1990s, at least one rubber industry company director—B.F. Goodrich Co. Director John Weinberg—also sat on the corporate board of the Knight-Ridder media conglomerate.

As previously mentioned, much of the $200 million worth of Knight-Ridder media conglomerate stock which John “Jack” Knight owned at the time of his death in 1981 was left to the Knight Foundation to avoid payments of heavy estate taxes. And, coincidentally, in 1975 a former Goodyear rubber company executive named C.C. Gibson had been hired to be the Knight Foundation’s then-president.

(Downtown 9/15/93)

Knight Foundation & Newspaper Dynasty's Hidden History--Part 5

“A $200,000 grant proposal, submitted by a group of Indymedia volunteers to the Knight News Challenge contest, has been blocked by other IMCs and subsequently dropped due to the abiding ethos that Indymedia is a counter to corporate, money-fixated media entities. The grant application to the Knight Foundation was to fund technical development work for Independent Media Centres (IMCs)…

“The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation describes itself as "an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting journalism and supporting the vitality of 26 communities" where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers….In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the US. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Its trustees include Paul E. Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company in June 2006, Knight-Ridder was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the US, with 32 daily newspapers...” (Corporate Watch UK and www.leftgatekeepers.com sites)

During the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, John S. Knight apparently also used his personal editorial column to defend HUAC’s investigation of the U.S. entertainment industry—which often led to the civil liberties of U.S. actors and actresses being violated. As the 1989 book Knight: A Publisher In The Tumultuous Century by Charles Whited recalled:

“In an `Editor’s Notebook’ column of August 21, 1955, Knight praised the work of the House Committee on Un-American Activities [HUAC] investigating suspected Communists and fellow travelers in the entertainment industry: `We feel nothing but disgust and indignation over the refusal of actors to give satisfactory answers to questions put to them by the committee. It is their responsibility as citizens to speak up or be adjudged in their true colors as principals in the Communist conspiracy.”

Prior to the CIA’s unsuccessful 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the editors of the Knight Dynasty’s Miami Herald “figured an invasion of Cuba could happen anytime” and “John McMullan, assistant managing editor, wanted to break the story and publish what reporters had gathered, which was considerable,” according to the book Knights Of The Fourth Estate by Nixon Smiley. But coincidentally, according to the same book, “Jack Knight…ordered the story held…” (end of part 5)

(Downtown 9/15/93)

Knight Foundation & Newspaper Dynasty's Hidden History--Part 4

“A $200,000 grant proposal, submitted by a group of Indymedia volunteers to the Knight News Challenge contest, has been blocked by other IMCs and subsequently dropped due to the abiding ethos that Indymedia is a counter to corporate, money-fixated media entities. The grant application to the Knight Foundation was to fund technical development work for Independent Media Centres (IMCs)…

“The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation describes itself as "an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting journalism and supporting the vitality of 26 communities" where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers….In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the US. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Its trustees include Paul E. Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company in June 2006, Knight-Ridder was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the US, with 32 daily newspapers...” (Corporate Watch UK and www.leftgatekeepers.com sites)

The Knight Newspaper Dynasty may not have been too generous to their Knight-Ridder workers, historically, but its Knight-Ridder board of directors was quite generous, historically, to the newspaper chain’s top managers in the 1990s. In 1992, for example, Knight-Ridder’s then-chief executive officer [CEO] and Chairman of the Board James Batten was paid an annual salary of $604,000 (in 1990s money).

During the years when he controlled the Knight newspaper chain, John “Jack” S. Knight apparently was also a strong political supporter of Richard Nixon. When some Republican Party officials attempted “to dump” then-Vice President Nixon from the Eisenhower re-election ticket during the mid-1950s, “rising to his defense was John S. Knight,” because “he liked Richard Nixon,” according to the 1989 book Knight: A Publisher In The Tumultuous Century by Charles Whited. The same book also described how John Knight had used his newspaper chain column and editorial power to back Nixon in his rise to power during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s:

“In the early days, when he had been a congressman or vice-president or private citizen, it had been `Dick’ and `Jack.’ Nixon would send chatty little notes referring to this Knight column or that, provided the article had been favorable. The practice continued…into Richard M. Nixon’s presidency…

“…Knight had been his consistent supporter, even during…the 1950s when critics in and out of the Republican Party dismissed him as `Tricky Dick’…Knight Newspapers thus endorsed him for president against John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Hubert Humphrey in 1968…” (end of part 4)

(Downtown 9/15/93)

Knight Foundation & Newspaper Dynasty's Hidden History--Part 3

“A $200,000 grant proposal, submitted by a group of Indymedia volunteers to the Knight News Challenge contest, has been blocked by other IMCs and subsequently dropped due to the abiding ethos that Indymedia is a counter to corporate, money-fixated media entities. The grant application to the Knight Foundation was to fund technical development work for Independent Media Centres (IMCs)…

“The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation describes itself as "an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting journalism and supporting the vitality of 26 communities" where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers….In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the US. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Its trustees include Paul E. Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company in June 2006, Knight-Ridder was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the US, with 32 daily newspapers...” (Corporate Watch UK and www.leftgatekeepers.com sites)

The idea of further reducing competition in the U.S. newspaper industry by merging the Knight Dynasty’s newspaper chain with the Ridder Dynasty’s newspaper chain was first mentioned in a memo of the Goldman, Sachs & Co. Wall Street investment banking firm in 1966, when Alan Stern wrote the following:

“Ed Hoffman of our buying department at Goldman, Sachs is the cousin of Herman H. Ridder, president of Ridder Publications. Through Ed I met with Mr. Ridder…Mr. Ridder indicated that his first interest was merging with another…newspaper chain. Specifically, he mentioned Knight newspapers…”

And as the 1989 book Knight: A Publisher In The Tumultuous Century by Charles Whited noted, “Eight years later, the suggestion would develop into the most lucrative merger in U.S. newspaper history.” In July 1974, the Knight and Ridder dynasties merged their companies in a chain of 35 daily and 23 Sunday newspapers with a 3.8 million daily circulation that made it the largest U.S. newspaper chain at that time.

The Knight-Ridder media conglomerate whose stock was owned by the Knight Foundation in the 1980s apparently then violated U.S. environmental protection laws. For example, according to Knight-Ridder’s 1992 10-K Disclosure form:

“The Company has been identified by certain regulatory agencies as one of several potentially responsible parties in connection with the generation of allegedly hazardous substances which may have been disposed of or reclaimed by third-party contractors at sites in New Jersey, Maryland, South Carolina, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The company, certain other potentially responsible parties and the United States Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] have entered into consent orders relating to the sites in New Jersey, South Carolina, and North Carolina.”

One reason the Knight Dynasty was able to run its newspaper chain so profitably prior to the 1974 merger with the Ridder Dynasty’s chain was that it wasn’t too chivalrous in its treatment of its unionized employees. When the Knight Dynasty owned the Chicago Daily News, for example, it broke the 1947 to 1949 ITU printers’ strike of the newspaper, rather than negotiate a fair settlement with its employees.

The Knight Dynasty also chose to break a 1948-1953 strike of its unionized Miami Herald workers rather than negotiate in good faith. As the book Knight recalled: “The Miami Herald…defied work stoppages to the point of ousting troublemaking unions from their operations…" When pressmen and mailroom employees struck the Miami Herald in 1961, the Knight Dynasty again refused to bargain in good faith. Although Knight-Ridder was a huge, profitable media conglomerate in the early 1990s, only 60 percent of its employees in the 1990s were unionized. (end of part 3)

(Downtown 9/15/93)

Knight Foundation & Newspaper Dynasty's Hidden History--Part 2

“A $200,000 grant proposal, submitted by a group of Indymedia volunteers to the Knight News Challenge contest, has been blocked by other IMCs and subsequently dropped due to the abiding ethos that Indymedia is a counter to corporate, money-fixated media entities. The grant application to the Knight Foundation was to fund technical development work for Independent Media Centres (IMCs)…

“The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation describes itself as "an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting journalism and supporting the vitality of 26 communities" where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers….In 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the US. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Its trustees include Paul E. Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a vice president at Dow Jones & Company. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company in June 2006, Knight-Ridder was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the US, with 32 daily newspapers...” (Corporate Watch UK and www.leftgatekeepers.com sites)

After C.I. Knight died in 1933, his then-39-year-old son—John “Jack” S. Knight—inherited the Knight Dynasty’s Akron Beacon-Journal and the Massillon Independent (which had been purchased in 1928 with the money the Knight family obtained from selling its Springfield Sun newspaper after C.I. Knight’s defeat in the Ohio gubernatorial election) in Ohio. Current Biography 1945 described how John S. Knight then managed to increase the profitability and special influence of his family’s business during the Great Depression:

“Extending his newspaper holdings, Knight bought the Miami (Florida) Herald in October 1937 for $2 million. Two months later he arranged to trade his Massillon Independent for the Miami Tribune which he then discontinued. (He had purchased it with the intention of suspending publication, for he felt there was no room in Miami for three papers). Thus, the publisher of the Herald became the owner of the only Miami morning daily…In 1938 he eliminated competition to the Beacon-Journal by buying out the Scripps-Howard Times Press. In this way Knight achieved a press monopoly in Akron, making the city and its suburbs `the largest one-paper community in the country.’”

At the same time he was shutting down previously-competing newspapers and using media monopolization techniques to increase the profitability of his family’s newspaper chain, John S. Knight was also serving as a member of the Summit County Republican Party Executive Committee in Ohio, and was complaining about “New Deal spending and labor philosophy,” according to the 1989 book Knight: A Publisher In The Tumultuous Century by Charles Whited.

In 1940, John S. Knight then dished out $3.1 million to add the Detroit Free Press to the family’s chain and in 1944 another $2.1 million was dished out to add the Chicago Daily News to the family’s stable, until it was re-sold in 1959 for $24 million to Marshal Field Jr.. In 1954, the Charlotte Observer was added to the Knight newspaper chain for $7 million and in 1959 the previously competing Charlotte News was also added. In 1965, the Tallahassee Democrat in Florida was also purchased.

By 1968, the Knight Dynasty’s newspapers’ combined daily circulation in Detroit, Miami, Charlotte, Akron and Tallahassee approached 1.5 million and “The Knights also had interests in a TV station, three radio stations, and three Florida weekly papers,” as well as a gross annual income of about $123 million (in 1960s money), according to Knight. The following year, the Knight family purchased the chain’s Philadelphia newspaper for $55 million and immediately replaced 70 Philadelphia Inquirer reporters and editors. And in 1972, the Knight Dynasty dished out another $37 million ot buy yet another newspaper operation which some other family had built: the Lexington Herald & Leader in Kentucky. (end of part 2)

(Downtown 9/15/93)