Archive » Air America

UCLA corporate law prof Stephen Bainbridge, a man ahead of his time, analyzes MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting Inc.’s complaint against Air America Radio, which Brian Maloney and I first reported on here.
A reminder that attorney Eric Costello’s analysis is here. Costello sends this addendum:
An oddity, from reading the default judgement…The judgement refers to a $156,000 bond [...]

David Lombino of the New York Sun updates yesterday’s article about MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting’s lawsuit against Air America/Piquant. This morning Lombino reports that the $255,754 lawsuit first reported on by Brian Maloney and me two days ago is part of a larger attempt by MultiCultural to collect more than $1.5 million it says Air America [...]

Part II is up at The Radio Equalizer.
Brian Maloney and I take a close look at the financial plans of Sheldon and Anita Drobny, the deep-pocketed, far left Illinois Democrat couple who dreamed up Air America and have been involved in its many strange and dubious business reorganizations. The key questions that curious radio [...]

The New York Sun is the first print outlet to pick up on yesterday’s Air America post authored by Brian Maloney and me. Reporter David Lombino writes:
A lawsuit filed by an owner of radio stations claims that the transfer of ownership of the Air America radio network from Progress Media to Piquant LLC in May [...]

*see updates below*
Inside Air America: An Investigative Blog Report
Part 1: A Trail of Debts
By Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney
michellemalkin.com/radioequalizer.blogspot.com
August 17, 2005
***
It’s not just the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls that’s knocking on Air America Radio’s door looking for lost money. According to court records obtained by Radio Equalizer/MichelleMalkin.com, another major creditor has been demanding that [...]

The subject of my latest column: Where in the world is Evan Montvel-Cohen? The former chairman of Air America Radio and disgraced development director of the Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club has been unavailable to the MSM. New York investigators will not comment on whether they have been able to interview him. And [...]

The Associated Press is reporting this evening:
The husband of Cindy Sheehan, the mother camped outside President Bush’s Texas ranch to protest the death of a son in the Iraq war, has filed for divorce, according to court documents.
Patrick Sheehan filed the divorce petition Friday in Solano County court, northeast of San Francisco. His lawyer [...]

New York Times Public Editor Byron Calame once again ignores the Times’ abysmal coverage of the Air Amerca scandal. Fortunately, the story continues to get attention on the editorial/opinion pages of smaller papers.
Doug MacEachern, the Arizona Republic columnist who wrote about the Air America loan scandal last week, revisits the issue today. An excerpt:
Details of [...]

Despite liberals’ insistence that the Air America / Gloria Wise story is “undersourced” and “appears to be phony,” the AP article by David Caruso is being carried by dozens of MSM papers, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Baton Rouge Times Picayune, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Myrtle Beach Sun News, Kansas [...]

As I reported here on Thursday night, New York Times reporter Alan Feuer botched the Al Franken quote in his article about the Air America loan. To its credit, the New York Times has run a correction acknowledging the error:
An article yesterday about state and city investigations of a loan made by a [...]

According to Emily Gest, a spokeswoman for the New York City Dept. of Investigation, the “transcript” of Al Franken’s remarks cited by the New York Times in this article apparently does not exist. “There is no official transcript,” Gest informed me. “You should expect to see a correction in the Times.” As I [...]

After 15 days of silence, the New York Times has filed a thin little report on the Air Scamerica/Air Enron fiasco. But you need a magnifying glass to find it. Go the the NYTimes.com homepage. Nothing there. Click over the National section. Nothing there. Find your way to the NY/Region section. Scroll way down past [...]

*scroll down for updates*
Anti-war activists and far-left organizations have been galvanized by Cindy Sheehan’s continuing protest outside President Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch. MoveOn.org has hopped on the bandwagon with a newspaper ad and Internet campaign. Air America hosts, all too happy to talk about something other than their own unpleasant political and financial woes, have [...]

The New York Post reports this morning on a drastic shake-up at the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club, the Bronx non-profit charity ensnared in smelly “loan” schemes with the liberal Air America radio network:
Just days after the executive director abruptly resigned following Post reports that the club had provided $875,000 in bizarre loans [...]

Al Franken is laughing it off and the elite media is still blowing it off, but the Air America/Air Enron financial fiasco continues to unfold. Ed Morrissey and his legal consultant/reader Eric Costello shine renewed light on the Piquant buyout shell game here and here, previously explored by Leon H. at Macho Nachos.
The Washington Times [...]

Cue the violins. Get out the Kleenex. The New York Post’s John Mainelli reports that Air America host Al Franken is playing the victim card:
Al Franken says 20,000 poor kids and old people weren’t the only victims of an exec who allegedly arranged a Bronx charity’s mega-buck “loan” to Air America.
“About three weeks into the [...]

The New York Times still hasn’t covered the burgeoning Air Enron financial mess. And the NY Times ombudsman had nothing to say on Sunday:
The public editor’s column will return next week.
But the Times’ online “Readers’ Forum on the Public Editor” does include a good post about the newspaper’s failure to cover the Air America/Gloria Wise [...]

“Air America looks like the broadcast version of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, whereby money earmarked to save starving moppets somehow winds up in the bank accounts of bloated self-described do-gooders with political connections.” - Mark Steyn
And see David Reinhard’s delicious column today in the Portland Oregonian. It’s a riot. An excerpt:
Liberals are always letting the [...]

This morning’s New York Post is reporting that New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has launched an investigation into the shady $875,000 loan from Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club to Air America.
Spitzer’s inquiry is focusing on the conduct of Gloria Wise’s board of directors. “The question is: Was their action appropriate?,” Spitzer spokesman [...]

One of my readers and advertisers, Bob Johnson of Rightalk.com, is a business veteran and has compiled a helpful list of questions regarding the transactions between Progress Media, Gloria Wise and Piquant, LLC. Feel free to forward these to your favorite Air America host or New York Times editor:
A Third Rate Burglary
1. Which owners, officers [...]

Yesterday, on Your World with Neil Cavuto, commentator Bill Press stated repeatedly that the current managers of Air America bear no responsibility for the shady loan the network received from the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club because the money was stolen by former Air America chairman Evan Cohen. “The point I’m making is, this [...]

Well, now we know why the NYTimes hasn’t bothered to cover Air Enron/Air Scamerica. They’re too preoccupied with prying into the adoption records of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ young children, according to the Drudge Report.
For God’s sake.
Jeff Goldstein has a list of what’s next on the NYTimes’ dirt-digging agenda.
4: Can Judge Roberts account for [...]

Number of NY Times articles mentioning Air America since March 2004: 59
Number of NY Times articles mentioning the Air Enron scandal: 0
(Via Nexis)
It seems we’re not the only ones monitoring the MSM’s near-total blackout of Air America’s financial shenanigans. New York Times ombudsman Byron Calame (public@nytimes.com) is “closely watching” the Air America story and how [...]

It’s not just the MSM that wants the Air Enron/Air Deadbeat/Air Scamerica scandal to go away. My latest column sheds light on a new angle: the silence of the race-hustling reverends, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
If you are wondering why they are not picketing the headquarters of Air America over the reported bilking of one [...]

David Lombino of The New York Sun continues to move the Air America story forward. According to Lombino’s latest article, Al Franken revealed that Air America’s current owners have known about the loan from Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club for some time:
Mr. Franken said he has learned details of the story only in [...]

*this post will stay on top for the morning with rolling updates. scroll down for new, non-Air America related posts below.*

Air America Radio and its left-wing acolytes hoped the loan scandal would go away, but there continues to be growing interest in AAR’s ever-evolving financial woes.
Air America’s pom-pom squad at the New York Times remains [...]

Blogger Leon H. takes a hard look at Air America’s latest explanation for the public funding mess involving NYC non-profits. Writes Leon:
There are a couple of other rather large glaring holes in this statement. If Gloria Wise went under, was that due to the fact that they were short about half a million in cash? [...]

Late last night, I received an e-mail from Air America’s webmaster and former Howard Dean staffer, Adam Mordecai. He wrote “Some answers to your questions” and included a link to/text of a new statement from the beleaguered liberal radio network about the New York City corruption probe of alleged diverted funds from inner-city non-profit clubs [...]

In response to questions from radio reporter Perry Michael Simon about New York City’s corruption probe involving the alleged diversion of public funds from two non-profit clubs that benefit poor kids and seniors to Air America, the liberal radio network put out a statement yesterday. Bottom line: Don’t blame us. Here’s the text via [...]

*scroll down for updates*
Air America is being investigated in New York for diverting federal/local funds–possibly “hundreds of thousands of dollars”–meant for inner-city kids and senior into the station’s coffers.
Um, why isn’t the New York Times, which has spilled tons of adulatory ink on the liberal radio network, covering this scandal on its front page?
Radio [...]