One of the first pre-requisites for being a socialist is having no sense of humor. I’d really love to see a reporter ask Bernie Sanders to name his favorite standup comic, and watch him default to “Who has time to laugh when the middle class is being decimated by Wall Street! Socialist lives matter!”
That’s why lefties won’t get this old bit from The Onion:
Marxists’ Apartment A Microcosm Of Why Marxism Doesn’t Work
AMHERST, MA—The filthy, disorganized apartment shared by three members of the Amherst College Marxist Society is a microcosm of why the social and economic utopia described in the writings of Karl Marx will never come to fruition, sources reported Monday.
“The history of society is the inexorable history of class struggle,” said sixth-year undergraduate Kirk Dorff, 23, resting his feet on a coffee table cluttered with unpaid bills, crusted cereal bowls, and bongwater-stained socialist pamphlets. “The stage is set for the final struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the true productive class. We’re well aware of that here at 514 W. Elm Street, unlike other apartments on this supposedly intellectual campus.”
“We were creating an exciting new model for living,” said Dorff, stubbing his cigarette into an ashtray that had not been emptied in six days. “It was like we were dismantling the apparatus of the state right within our own living space.”
This is by way of an update on my post last week on the collapse of Pacifica Radio and KPFK (“Feel Good Story of the Day”). I heard from a number of readers with additional insights about the story. A Power Line reader with inside knowledge of the story writes:
Basically the place is a chaotic zoo with various factions literally at war with each other. If they had guns people (i.e. counterrevolutionaries, running dog capitalists, etc.) would have been placed against walls and executed by now. It really is a caricature of the left – pretty much like the angriest Marxoid faculty on the planet.
Tens of thousands of dollars have gone missing and they are behind on taxes and audits. Sexual harassment suits have been tossed around (some lesbian). SAG/AFTRA is suing Pacifica over several issues. A large portion of the workforce (possibly approaching 50%) are “volunteers” and others reduced to part-time to avoid Obamacare and other labor regulations.
They are way overdue for their elections, yet don’t have the money for the elections, which are run as incompetently as imaginable.
Their version of Stalin – a woman named Margy Wilkinson – has apparently started a separate foundation with the aim of snagging Pacifica station licenses when the whole place is shut down by the state of California. Oh, did I mention the state of California is investigating them too?
And it goes on.
The word hypocrite would be an understatement.
This should actually be a news story but isn’t because the left protects its own.
But I am laughing my behind off…
Turns out there’s a sort of underground newsletter and website called Pacifica in Exile, put out by former Pacifica employees, that deals the dish. Here are portions a post from last week:
Margy Wilkinson’s Pacifica Skids Off The Rails
Berkeley– 22 months after scheming to depose her predecessor and replace her with herself and secretly setting up a nonprofit corporation to scoop up one or more Pacifica broadcasting licenses or other assets, Pacifica’s lame duck board of directors is facing the consequences and moving to mortgage real estate. In a startling national board meeting last night, reality overcame fraudulent financial statements trumpeting a “profit” for the year and chirpy election propaganda from Wilkinson’s faction sent out just a day prior.
Apparently Pacifica can’t even get its routine annual audit under way:
* Auditor Armanino will not consider opening the FY2014 Audit until past due amounts of $14,000 are paid in full. (Pacifica incurred this bill for the filing of the 990 tax form with the IRS on August 15th. Pacifica’s audited financial statement was required to be filed with the State’s Registry of Charitable Trusts on June 30 2015).
* At present, the $25,000 required as a down payment for long-overdue elections is not available. (After the board of directors postponed elections from 2013 to 2014 due to long-delayed staff layoffs at WBAI-FM in New York, whose insane tower rental costs at NY’s Empire State Building in a contract signed by the Siegel/Brazon faction in 2006 caused the NY station to bleed $500,000 a year in red ink for a decade. Wilkinson’s board omitted elections altogether in 2014 and Pacifica failed to send ballots in August of 2015).
* Armanino cannot begin the FY2014 Audit, already long overdue with respect to regulatory requirements until stations provide the necessary documents: This process is no more than 70% complete at best, and KPFK at present cannot project completion of its information for several weeks – quite possibly as much as six weeks. (The last temp imported from the Accountemps agency quit after a week).
Cue The Onion.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.