The Pacifica Foundation as of 10/20/01 is close to bankruptcy. Essential bills (such as the power bills for its 5 stations) are past-due. This fact has dire consequences for the future of KPFT/Houston. This is because all revenues of the network (including all the dollars raised in the recent fall KPFT fund drive) go to the National Pacifica office in Washington D.C. They are then used to pay bills and salaries entirely at the discretion of national management.

Garland Ganter wants you to believe that your dollars are going to pay the light bill. Not true. In past years, increasing percentages of KPFT revenues have gone to support national operations (mostly increased management salaries). As of 1999, approximately 20% of all dollars were going right off the top to national Pacifica management.

This situation changes drastically in the last 2 years as Pacifica managers have diverted an increasingly large part of the revenues from each of the 5 stations to pay bills to lawyers, security services, camera surveillance companies and public relations flacks. All of these bills were incurred by Pacifica managmenet in its bid to fight democratization and open process. It is now clear that in the last 6 months essential bills for utilities and station services have gone unpaid as Pacifica management has diverted nearly all resources to pay for its own high-priced legal defenses.

Let's start with their huge expenditures on the services of high-priced public relation firms to do "damage control" (why you ask is a community station paying for smear jobs and puff pieces? Why indeed, read on....)

In just one incident, the PR firm Westhill Partners charged the Pacifica Foundation 10,000's of dollars this year trying to defend the network against its own listeners' questions. Westhill Partners, the 3rd PR firm Pacifica has hired in the last year is also the most expensive. Westhill is famous as a "last resort" firm used by companies and politicians who are in serious trouble. They specialize in extreme damage control and they charge a pretty sum for their services (when former Senator Bob Kerrey's activities in Vietnam were revealed this year, he liquidated his million-dollar campaign warchest and headed straight to Westhill).

But one has to wonder if Westhill has lost their touch. It seems their reputation as a smart, guerilla outfit is highly overrated.  In the last 6 months, Westhill has flooded the national media with "opinion pieces" blasting Pacifica's listeners as terrorists and violent reprobates. Typical corporate smear tactics, of course, but the only problem was that Westhill didn't even bothered to rewrite its faked Op-Eds before passing them on.

For instance, I submit to you that the two pieces that Michael Powell of Westhill ghost-wrote and then placed in the New York Daily News and Houston Chronicle (under the names "Garland Ganter" and "Bessie Wash" ) were incompetant cut 'n paste jobs that expose their author as a lazy, unethical hack.   Mr Powell is not only spreading lies but is wasting KPFT listeners' pledge-dollars double-billing for his lame efforts.

For instance, in her NY Daily News Op-Ed from 8/30/01, "Bessie Wash" ends her piece:

"Pacifica will only survive as a true citizen's voice if those opposing change let the network respond to the evolving information needs of our listeners with sound management and socially relevant programming. If not, the self-appointed defenders of the status quo will burn down this remarkable on-air village to "save" it."

And "Garland Ganter" ends his 8/10/01 piece in the Houston Chronicle in a stunningly similar fashion:

"But Pacifica and KPFT will only survive as a true citizen's voice if those opposing change allow the network's management to respond to the unique and evolving information needs of local communities with independent, culturally diverse and socially relevant radio programming.If not, then the self-appointed defenders of the Pacifica Radio status quo will end up burning this remarkable on-air village in order to "save" it"

"Bessie Wash" begins her piece....

"(Pacifica's) future threatened by a small cadre of former staff and disgruntled listeners who resist efforts to adapt the network......"

In the Chronicle, "Garland Ganter" identifies the enemy as:

"a small cadre of former employees and disgruntled listeners resistant to these changes...."

"Bessie Wash" claims:

"Garland Ganter" echoes that eerily:

"(we) have sought to modernize programming and operations to improve its service..."

The words speak for themselves. Westhill Partners cannot be trusted to even plagiarize themselves with skill. Aren't you glad your hard-earned contributions to KPFT are going to pay for such garbage.

And let's not even get started on Pacifica's expenses on lawyers this year. A conservative estimate is that Garland Ganter and Bessie Wash have spent 1-2 million dollars of listener's money on very expensive law firms in FY2001 (that is ~20% of Pacifica's entire yearly budget), defending themselves against their own listeners. One of them is Houston's own Fulbright & Jaworsky about the most expensive firm that you and I could never afford.

(KPFT and the Pacifica Foundation bury much of their lawyer, PR and telemarketing expenses in the "miscellaneous" category so you gotta dig around a bit. It's worth it, though, Pacifica management has literally misspent millions of dollars in the last year. Anyone have any doubts that the IRS would find their 1998, 1998 & 2000 filings very interesting. Hey, calling Ms. Valrie Chambers, I think we need a REAL accountant 'round here.)