Seth Goldberg Candidate Statement

I am running because I believe that WBAI is in serious financial trouble, and could use my help now. My expertise has nothing at all to do with radio or organizing – I work on cancer research at a very small non-profit medical foundation. But my professional experience, training, and skills in independent analysis and thinking – I am a 61-year-old physician-scientist who has had successful business experience – may be very helpful to the local station board at this time. Carol Spooner, who was the guiding intelligence in the lawsuit that brought democracy and listener sovereignty to Pacifica in 2002,

recently alerted many of us to some of the dire problems now facing WBAI, but which the current board does not seem to publicly acknowledge. Her concerns led me to take on the burden of running for a seat on this board. I am not an "ivory tower" kind of scientist; I am good at helping to clarify and if possible solve, with others, serious practical problems like this in a satisfactory way, so we can keep the wonderful thing we all have here working well.

WBAI needs that kind of experience because, according to Pacifica's most recent public audit, WBAI is currently insolvent, that is broke, after losing about $100,000 a year (out of roughly $3,000,000 of income) for each of the last three years. Pacifica has lately had its own financial challenges in addition to the weight of our debts. I do not know why our LSB – which has long been controlled by a voting majority called the JUC – has let the station spin so dangerously close to disaster in this way, but it needs to stop, now. WBAI's latest proposed budget continues to assume an unrealistically high projection for listener donations this fall, in the face of historically falling donations, just in order to break even. This appears to me as wishful thinking. According Pacifica's latest financial projection, at this rate WBAI will have difficulty meeting its payroll in a few months.

We can still fix this. Long outvoted, independent LSB members have been warning about this for several years. Therefore, at a minimum, the next LSB needs to be controlled by independents. Because the board is staggered, with only 1/2 of its members elected this year, and for safety, that means pretty much voting only for independents this year. As a scientist, and a physician, who has two decades of real-world business experience in running and overseeing two successful family owned companies, both somewhat larger than WBAI, I have learned to look at painful facts early so as to help make best treatment and recovery plans in good time. That means not being unduly reliant on hope or unchecked opinions. I will thereby try to give something back to this station which has meant so much to me and to so many of my friends for the last 35 years. www.sgwbai.blogspot.com or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (6) add comment

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Albert Baron Solomon: ... http://PACVID1.com

Rotsa ruck, Seth-- we need Revolution!

November 10, 2007

sigoldberg1: Pacifying the LSB

Answering the previous question about transmuting the anger and confusion on the WBAI LSB.

Thanks for the question. The best medicine, of course, would be some goodly amount of tranquility ("calm abiding") silent meditaion for everyone who wants to practice it. This would be very good for everyone. Maybe I'll be able to convince one or two people to give it a try.
More practical and limited approaches might include asking for LSB members to send around public emails prior to LSB meetings suggesting what problems they think are most important and suggesting proposed resolutions and amendments. In other words, it would be good to informally arrange an pre-meeting agenda by email so that there is less surprise at the actual meetings. Sadly, pre-meeting agendas seem to have gone the way of minutes (now more than a year behind). So meetings are usually marked already by acrimony when the agenda is set at each meeting's beginning.

It would be important to mention many times the advisory nature of almost everything that the LSB does. Typically, now, some symbolic and often self contradictory resolution is introduced, a giant fight develops over past injuries, various "clever" amendments are introduced, time expires, fights develop over whether to extend time, resolutions to extend time for debate etc fail, debate continues nonetheless, the arguments center aroun proceedure and Robert's rules, violence is narrowly avoided and everyone leaves hurt. Actually, little if anything would change whether or not the resolution passed or not. The slogan might well be, "In NYC we don't want amicable resolution; we want human sacrifice" (on both sides, when things really get going, see the Pacvid1.com videos for plentiful evidence) So maybe we can get some of this out of the way prior to the meeting.

I have considerable respect for many of the core opinions of JUC members. I think their idea of "Progressive minority view radio" is a theoretically good one, but it needs to be integrated in such a way that it pays the full expenses of the station. After all, to solve the problems of the larger society, we will need many different people understanding one another. So this goes to larger issues in the progressive community. Also, there are many very intelligent, even brilliant opinions, often from people of minority ancestry or culture which never make it onto the station. For example, as racial and ethnic bias and economic discrimination remain very important issues here, the idea of an extended giant teach in on race in the US produced by the station and/or Pacifica could both raise the general level of some of the programming and help heal the divisions.
Then we need the input of station management, which has been so offended in the past that they do not even attend LSB meetings. Until they trust us enough to appear personally, I would like at least to see monthly reports from them.

Hopefully, the station will slowly heal. Alternatively, if this fails we will have the same maniacal fights at the LSB, but about more real and less symbolic issues. :-)

The station is important. There is nothing else even close in NY. We need about 25% more listener sponsors in a generally declining environment. We have to work together to get them.

November 05, 2007

a lady in houston: ...

If elected, what actions could you reccommend to transmute the in-fighting and backstabbing that sends reasonable people running and corrodes the Foundation?

November 04, 2007

tom: ...

WBAI is bankrupt. Dan Siegel of the Pacifica National Board is corrupt. He has been temporarily placed on the national board for one month to sabotage the elections and allow the WBAI and Justice and Unity corruption to continue

November 03, 2007

edix: The real Carol Spooner

Carol Spooner, or someone pretending to be Carol Spooner, has spammed these blogs with identical comments urging people to vote for what she wants, living in the Berkeley Hills in California.
Spooner made sure, in a nasty offensive, that bylaws at Pacifica would not include affirmative action remedies in election results, which opened the foundation to control by whites majorities.
Spooner is angry that WBAI is not controlled by whites yet, so she is sticking her nose in at WBAI.
Her husband, Gregory Wonderwheel, regularly attacked many African Americans at WBAI in various attempts to force them out using lies, hyperbole and standard Republican-style put-downs. Make no mistake about it, Carol Spooner and her California cohorts want to control WBAI.

October 27, 2007

Carol Spooner: ...

If you haven't already received it, you soon will receive your ballot for the WBAI Local Station Board (LSB) 2007 election. Please don't lose your ballot -- vote!

I'm endorsing --

#1 - James Ross
#2 - Seth Goldberg

and, in alphabetical order,

Carla Cubit, Robert Gold, Jennifer Jager, Ken Laufer, Pat Logan, Don Mathiesen,
Lee McClure, Stefan Neustatder, Bernardo Palombo.

I hope you will rank James #1 and Seth #2 on your ballot, and then go on to rank the others listed above in order of your preference. James Ross is the only encumbent who deserves re-election this year. He has worked diligently to uncover and understand the station finances and to make recommendations to deal with the problems. Unfortunately, his efforts have been blocked by the current majority on the LSB (the "Justice & Unity" faction). Seth Goldberg has the financial and business skills that WBAI so desperately needs at this time. All of the above-named candidates are sincerely committed to helping to right the station by hiring station management that will strengthen & revitalize programming, restore the listener-base and rebuild financial stability. They can be the seeds of sanity at a very troubled institution if you elect them to serve this very important community resource.

This is a critical election for WBAI. I believe it is absolutely essential that NON "Justice & Unity" slate candidates take a majority of the seats on the Local Board if WBAI is to survive, and perhaps even Pacifica itself. As I wrote to you a few weeks ago, WBAI is bankrupt. It is paying its bills by borrowing money from the Pacifica National Office which is borrowing the money from other Pacifica stations. This whole house of cards could come down if the problems at WBAI are not solved quickly. There have been very serious financial irregularities at WBAI, including use of "restricted" grant monies for unauthorized purposes. In addition, when WBAI terminated Gary Null's program it also terminated a major source of listener-support for the station. Regardless of what you think of Gary Null's program, the station needed a realistic plan to replace that income or to reduce its expenses to live within its reduced income. It did neither, and that is one of the causes of the current bankruptcy. Other causes are overall mis-management, waste, poor staff morale, not enough good programming, and competition from other alternative media sources, both on the radio and on the internet.

The "Justice & Unity" faction has held the majority on the LSB for the past three years and has been blocking necessary management changes and other changes at the station. In addition, the LSB majority elects 3 of the 4 WBAI seats on the Pacifica National Board and they have been blocking necessary action by the Pacifica Executive Director and National Board. For this to change, at least 5 of the 9 listener seats , and 2 of the 3 staff seats on the LSB must be won by independents who are not part of the "Justice & Unity" slate. I honestly don't know why the "Justice & Unity" slate has been so destructive to WBAI, they have good "political" credentials and you would think they would want the station to grow and thrive. However, they have not acted that way, and if they are permitted to continue to control the Local board and to confuse and mislead the national board, then I am very very pessimistic about the future of WBAI and Pacifica. This is tragic in a time of national crisis where EVERY form of alternative media

Again, please vote -- Every vote matters. With "ranked choice" voting just one vote can determine who wins the last seat on the board.

Thanks, and best regards,

Carol Spooner
Pacifica National Board Member - Jan 2002-Jan 2005
Lead Plaintiff - Listeners' Lawsuit to remove the old Pacifica Board - 1999-Dec 2001

October 27, 2007

Write comment

Show/Hide comment form